I have been on a calorie-restricted diet and lost I have 35 lbs so far (ibb.co/cwtCzf3) The only regret is not starting to take weight loss more seriously. One of the reasons I didn't take weight loss seriously much earlier is because I kept reading how extremely hard it is and how those who lose weight almost inevitable gain it back.
But in the last 6 months I've discovered how much easier it is that I thought (I eat whatever I want but keep it under 1600 cal/day and I substituted cauliflower rice for rice which cut down normal carb consumption by 50%). Telling people weight loss is extremely difficult is itself a major contributor to obesity.
You are 100% on point here, Richard, but you stop one step short in your analysis. Not only have we abandoned shaming, but we are moving in the polar opposite direction...accommodation. It's not enough that we no longer shame obesity or simply ignore it; we must accommodate them to make them as comfortable as possible in their poor choices.
What does she mean by protect? For one - "Provide accessible additional seats: All plus-size passengers should be provided with an extra free seat, or even two or three seats depending on their size, to accommodate their needs and ensure their comfort during the flight." Of course, taking up this (potentially) entire row of seats comes free of charge because the small seats violate the "rights" of the obese (is there is any more abused word in the English language than "rights" at this point?)
More egregiously, there is an organization called NAAFA, or the National Association to Fat Acceptance (https://naafa.org/). The NAAFA vision statement is: "We envision a culture where all fat people are free, celebrated, and liberated from every form of oppression." From my perspective, the only liberation the obese need is freedom from their poor choices.
I am writing a piece on this right now, which is why I had all this at my fingertips, but I promise you, the reality of this fat acceptance movement is far more entrenched and organized than people realize.
Holding your breath is under conscious control. Does that mean you can hold your breath until you suffocate? Not really. Our bodies (i.e., subcortical brain structures) are capable of exerting very strong pressure on our behavior in certain circumstances, regardless of what our conscious minds do/don't want to do. Of course, it's a matter of degree - hunger mechanisms are not as extreme as breathing/oxygen - but nonetheless, the comparison is useful. Having held your breath doesn't mean you know how to hold it until you suffocate. They're two different things. Likewise, being thin (or even formerly fat) doesn't mean you know what losing weight is like for most fat people.
There's discussion here of genetic/twin studies, but that's only a small portion of the science on fat/weight loss. Most of our caloric expenditure is due to our basal metabolic rate. After periods of substantial weight loss, humans' basal metabolic rate drops dramatically. Meanwhile hormones that produce hunger increase. Exercise burns calories, but then also produces a reduction in that basal metabolic rate. The "calories in/calories out" adage is true in a sense, but but elides these very important points.
Ultimately, the blame-fat-people perspective seems stuck in the "philosophy of fatness", rather than reaching the "science of fatness." I concede that being fat is not unchangeable in the same way race, etc. is. But that's really the wrong question. The question ought to be how effective are the interventions (dieting, exercise) that we're discussing. There have been dozens of studies of hundreds of thousands of people and the clear answer is "not very effective". Some people lose weight, but not very much. Most of those people who did lose weight regain most of it in the medium term. If you were studying a drug that worked that well (i.e., poorly) and presented it to the FDA, they'd look at you like you were crazy. Would you berate the patients in your study, telling them that they aren't using your drug correctly and that it would work if only they wanted it to sufficiently?
Similarly, the stronger case against fat shaming is that, for the outcome of weight loss, it works only to a small degree. In clinical research, the norm is to include balancing measures (undesirable outcomes that might be inadvertently be produced by the intervention and therefore undermine it's utility). For an intervention like fat shaming, mental distress would seem to be such an outcome and, indeed, the research literature shows that fat shaming works very well for producing mental distress. For a lot of people this outcome (very little weight loss, a lot of mental distress), is enough to make us not want to use fat shaming, though that is admittedly a values-dependent question.
Of course, this discussion also ought to be informed by recent research on drugs, such as tirzepatide, that actually CAN produce substantial weight loss (~40% of body weight) in randomized-controlled trials of obese people. It seems to work by targeting the hormonal mechanisms that work against weight loss more generally. I think if you consider this and other research findings, you can see why the attendees of the conference discussed in the NYT article don't lean into the "blame the fat people" line.
It's totally reasonable, in principle, to implement obesity interventions that ask for effort and behavior change of fat people, but to ignore both the broad findings of weight loss intervention studies (both the dismal results of diet and exercise based-interventions and the promising science of new classes of drugs) and the basic science research of the mechanisms underlying both, is, frankly, an unscientific approach. Unfortunately, it is a common perspective even among many of those trained in a scientific discipline.
I'd be more inclined to agree with this theory, and do very much believe in free will and personal responsibility, however so much advice on nutrition is just dead wrong it's no wonder so many people are fat. My grandmother struggled with her weight and followed her doctors orders to drinks lots of skim milk and orange juice and eat margarine and 8-10 servings of grains and cereals per day. She was warned to avoid meat, eggs and full fat dairy. She took this advice continued to gain weight and collected chronic diseases until her early death.
A nutritionist I subscribe to decided to wear a blood sugar monitor for a week and follow the American Diabetic Society's meal plan recommendation from their website. His blood sugars constantly rose and crashed and his insulin was all over the place, and this was a metabolically healthy man! The plan would probably give you diabetes if you didn't have it already. This is why people believe diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease. If you follow the "experts" it most certainly is!
I'm a fledgling health coach and you'd be amazed how many out of shape people with chronic conditions follow their doctors orders meticulously then wonder why they are so hungry all the time and can't seem to lose the weight. The doctors orders are shite. And for God's sake people, STOP going low-fat raw vegan and then wondering why you have massive nutritional deficiences and your hair is falling out! You are not "detoxxing", you are dying! Sorry, I digress.
My point is that most health and nutrition guidelines are just wrong. Tufts University just came out with guidelines that stated Fruit Loops are more nutritious than scrambled eggs because the eggs contained cholesterol and the Fruit Loops were vitamin fortified. As if the supposed dietary dangers of cholesterol weren't debunked decades ago. Providing you aren't allergic to them and their sourced from an ethical farm (pastured chickens get better diets with insects, etc) eggs are practically the perfect food. Look for ones with bright orange yolks and thick, clear whites. It shoudn't come as a surprise that General Mills and Kelloggs were financial backers of the Tufts study.
So yes people need to get off their butts and walk, but from a nutrition standpoint their biggest enemy might be their propensity to listen to their doctor.
As a person who was obese most of my life, there was a point when it hit me hard that I needed to lose weight. I lost 180 pounds in my mid-forties and have kept most of it off now 15 years later. I can tell you from experience shaming only makes the person doing the shaming feel better about themselves. It does nothing for the other person. Shaming is a holier-than-thou attitude. Especially who that person has changed. Like when you lost the weight. You are not righteous in saying people should be shamed. I changed because I wanted it I was not shamed into it. In the article, you point out that you decided to change. Shaming you as a child or as an adult was not something you mentioned as a motivator.
Shaming does not stop racism, bigotry, or any other hate. We enact laws to take care of people who are wrong and hurt people.
I would add that on top of everything else, our garbage food, and sedentary culture has certainly contributed to the fat epidemic, but it's only a contributing factor, not the sole driver of it. Also, it's a family culture of eating and not exercising, hence the recent appearance of "the fat family", which is when you see families of 2 parents and 2-3 kids, and everyone of them is fat, even the very young kids. Add a basic over-abundance of "food", and many just end up fat by default.
People should exercise, if they are interested in living longer, healthier lives, and attempts to normalize and de-stigmatize obesity isn't doing them any favors.
The fact that everyone started simultaneously becoming more fat in the 1980s, and that introducing skinny natives/foreigners to an American diet reliably starts making them fatter, leads me to believe there is a biological component here.
I wouldn't be surprised if massive changes to our gut bacteria due to the use of things like Roundup, traces of different drugs in the water supply, and other things like that are significant contributors to the obesity epidemic. Processed food is clearly a culprit--I don't think I've ever seen a study where eliminating processed food didn't reduce weight and increase health to some extent.
I think where people make a mistake in shaming fat people is assuming that being skinny automatically makes you morally superior. I think what's more likely is that fat people have the same amount of willpower as the average person (on average! there are obviously exceptions), but are physically much hungrier, so they have to use more willpower to lose weight. Someone who remains skinny on a sh*t diet, using zero willpower and eating potato chips everyday, isn't morally superior to a fat person who tries really hard to diet and feels hungry 24/7 and gives in from time to time. If I eat whatever the f*** I want with no restrictions, no thoughtfulness, no attempts to be healthier or "eat right," I end up right on the border between a healthy BMI and an overweight BMI, maybe slightly overweight. It is physically impossible for me to eat enough to become obese. I just feel sick and stop. If someone is missing that feedback mechanism in their body, then they may need heroic amounts of willpower to stop being obese.
I believe that being gay and being attracted to kids is largely genetic. When I try to bring that up with some people, they get all mad and say that I’m homophobic. Yet all I’m doing is stating scientific facts. The genetic fallacy is real with most people. They cannot separate “this thing is natural” with “this thing is good”.
Funny you're talking about shaming as a solution to obesity, while the culture has already moved on to lying about the poor health outcomes linked to obesity. In 10 years nobody will believe you when you say obesity is unhealthy! Well, nobody in normie lib spaces at least.
People hate living with the consequences of their actions, so they blame their circumstances on anything else, not willing to accept responsibility. Many such cases.
> As mentioned above, the arguments against fat shaming strike me as odd because you could make the exact same arguments about crime, but almost no one says we should stop “shaming” rapists and murderers. Why exactly is this?
...Because being fat doesn't harm other people? I think there's a pretty obvious difference here.
The case for "stigmatization" or "shaming" strikes me as being mostly about justifying cruel behavior. As you observe, people do not enjoy being shamed. A full utilitarian case for cruelty would consider these impacts on the victim. Your priors should be that being cruel to people harms them and you shouldn't do it for that reason, rather than asking everyone to engage in ad hoc probability games about whether a marginal increase in cruelty will incentivize a victim to improve their lifestyle. I would guess that something like 99% of cruel/shaming behavior causes more harm than it helps, in the case of obesity. I'm shocked that this isn't obvious to you.
I agree that the incentive structure in America is largely responsible for obesity but there are ways to
shift the incentive structure that don't involve actively advocating for and justifying cruelty.
The definition of choice is flawed. Saying something can be altered with incentives is merely saying outsiders can manipulate someone. That still isn't "choice".
As to the topic generally, anyone who looks at introduction and adoption of high fructose corn syrup into foods can see the correlation with obesity rates. Banning it would likely drop 20 lbs from each average American. It likely is the reason one can eat an identical diet and have the identical lifestyle in another part of the world and be 20 lbs lighter.
And that is not getting to the rest of the additives in American food that are banned elsewhere.
It is truly mind-boggling how much of our culture and politics is shaped by the desire to deny racial differences.
>As mentioned above, the arguments against fat shaming strike me as odd because you could make the exact same arguments about crime, but almost no one says we should stop “shaming” rapists and murderers. Why exactly is this?<
Perhaps not full-on rapists and murderers, but there is a clear and obvious desire among liberals not to shame criminals in general. And I think we all know where that impulse comes from. It is interesting that you note a lot of this "destigmatizing" started in the 1960s, which happens to coincide with some other major cultural changes around that same time. People adopted the "it isn't their fault" mentality instrumentally at first, in order to push the idea that racial differences don't exist, and the premise once accepted has now blossomed out into all sorts of different directions, such as the idea that people are "born gay" and that homosexuality is not a choice, the same with being "trans," and so forth and so on.
1. Eating is highly emotional, and overeating can be a way to avoid one's problems. This generates addiction.
2. Diet high in processed foods, incl. corn syrup and vegetable oils. This junk is much less common in Europe, though Europeans still eat plenty of sugar, meat, fat, etc.
3. Over-medication. Americans are on loads of pharma drugs that cause weight gain, such as anti depressants.
4. Extreme sedentary lifestyle. I'm not talking about exercise...just walking. Europeans get their daily 10,000 steps, and 90 year olds live in 5th floor walk ups.
That said I'm against shaming and negative judgment. Much better to use positive incentives to create change.
Yes, absolutely agree with you on the choice/shaming issue and I've made the same comparison with the shaming of smokers. It's amazing how the medical establishment/media/popular culture is like, "smoking is horrible for you and if you smoke you're a bad person and a drain on the medical system" but completely turns a blind eye to obesity, not just the "normal" complications from obesity (heart disease, diabetes, etc) but especially during the COVID pandemic, where it was the #2 predictor for death from COVID behind age. We had magazines lauding "healthy at any weight" with the picture of a morbidly obese woman on the cover!!
“there was a very strong correlation between how much I ate and how much I weighed” haha. My guess is that fat people generally know they eat too much but just don’t want other people to remind them of that. I don’t know the biology of it, but once you’ve got fat, the body tries it’s best to keep it. As a former skinny, I know now just how hard it is to lose those extra pounds. My body seems to conspire with my appetite. I also know I could drop those pounds if I really really wanted to.
I have been on a calorie-restricted diet and lost I have 35 lbs so far (ibb.co/cwtCzf3) The only regret is not starting to take weight loss more seriously. One of the reasons I didn't take weight loss seriously much earlier is because I kept reading how extremely hard it is and how those who lose weight almost inevitable gain it back.
But in the last 6 months I've discovered how much easier it is that I thought (I eat whatever I want but keep it under 1600 cal/day and I substituted cauliflower rice for rice which cut down normal carb consumption by 50%). Telling people weight loss is extremely difficult is itself a major contributor to obesity.
You are 100% on point here, Richard, but you stop one step short in your analysis. Not only have we abandoned shaming, but we are moving in the polar opposite direction...accommodation. It's not enough that we no longer shame obesity or simply ignore it; we must accommodate them to make them as comfortable as possible in their poor choices.
A perfect example is this NY Post piece about an obese travel blogger who has kicked off a change.org campaign to "Demand for the FAA to Protect Plus-Size Travelers." https://nypost.com/2023/04/15/plus-sized-airline-jaelynn-chaney-demands-free-seats-in-petition-to-faa/
What does she mean by protect? For one - "Provide accessible additional seats: All plus-size passengers should be provided with an extra free seat, or even two or three seats depending on their size, to accommodate their needs and ensure their comfort during the flight." Of course, taking up this (potentially) entire row of seats comes free of charge because the small seats violate the "rights" of the obese (is there is any more abused word in the English language than "rights" at this point?)
More egregiously, there is an organization called NAAFA, or the National Association to Fat Acceptance (https://naafa.org/). The NAAFA vision statement is: "We envision a culture where all fat people are free, celebrated, and liberated from every form of oppression." From my perspective, the only liberation the obese need is freedom from their poor choices.
I am writing a piece on this right now, which is why I had all this at my fingertips, but I promise you, the reality of this fat acceptance movement is far more entrenched and organized than people realize.
Holding your breath is under conscious control. Does that mean you can hold your breath until you suffocate? Not really. Our bodies (i.e., subcortical brain structures) are capable of exerting very strong pressure on our behavior in certain circumstances, regardless of what our conscious minds do/don't want to do. Of course, it's a matter of degree - hunger mechanisms are not as extreme as breathing/oxygen - but nonetheless, the comparison is useful. Having held your breath doesn't mean you know how to hold it until you suffocate. They're two different things. Likewise, being thin (or even formerly fat) doesn't mean you know what losing weight is like for most fat people.
There's discussion here of genetic/twin studies, but that's only a small portion of the science on fat/weight loss. Most of our caloric expenditure is due to our basal metabolic rate. After periods of substantial weight loss, humans' basal metabolic rate drops dramatically. Meanwhile hormones that produce hunger increase. Exercise burns calories, but then also produces a reduction in that basal metabolic rate. The "calories in/calories out" adage is true in a sense, but but elides these very important points.
Ultimately, the blame-fat-people perspective seems stuck in the "philosophy of fatness", rather than reaching the "science of fatness." I concede that being fat is not unchangeable in the same way race, etc. is. But that's really the wrong question. The question ought to be how effective are the interventions (dieting, exercise) that we're discussing. There have been dozens of studies of hundreds of thousands of people and the clear answer is "not very effective". Some people lose weight, but not very much. Most of those people who did lose weight regain most of it in the medium term. If you were studying a drug that worked that well (i.e., poorly) and presented it to the FDA, they'd look at you like you were crazy. Would you berate the patients in your study, telling them that they aren't using your drug correctly and that it would work if only they wanted it to sufficiently?
Similarly, the stronger case against fat shaming is that, for the outcome of weight loss, it works only to a small degree. In clinical research, the norm is to include balancing measures (undesirable outcomes that might be inadvertently be produced by the intervention and therefore undermine it's utility). For an intervention like fat shaming, mental distress would seem to be such an outcome and, indeed, the research literature shows that fat shaming works very well for producing mental distress. For a lot of people this outcome (very little weight loss, a lot of mental distress), is enough to make us not want to use fat shaming, though that is admittedly a values-dependent question.
Of course, this discussion also ought to be informed by recent research on drugs, such as tirzepatide, that actually CAN produce substantial weight loss (~40% of body weight) in randomized-controlled trials of obese people. It seems to work by targeting the hormonal mechanisms that work against weight loss more generally. I think if you consider this and other research findings, you can see why the attendees of the conference discussed in the NYT article don't lean into the "blame the fat people" line.
It's totally reasonable, in principle, to implement obesity interventions that ask for effort and behavior change of fat people, but to ignore both the broad findings of weight loss intervention studies (both the dismal results of diet and exercise based-interventions and the promising science of new classes of drugs) and the basic science research of the mechanisms underlying both, is, frankly, an unscientific approach. Unfortunately, it is a common perspective even among many of those trained in a scientific discipline.
I'd be more inclined to agree with this theory, and do very much believe in free will and personal responsibility, however so much advice on nutrition is just dead wrong it's no wonder so many people are fat. My grandmother struggled with her weight and followed her doctors orders to drinks lots of skim milk and orange juice and eat margarine and 8-10 servings of grains and cereals per day. She was warned to avoid meat, eggs and full fat dairy. She took this advice continued to gain weight and collected chronic diseases until her early death.
A nutritionist I subscribe to decided to wear a blood sugar monitor for a week and follow the American Diabetic Society's meal plan recommendation from their website. His blood sugars constantly rose and crashed and his insulin was all over the place, and this was a metabolically healthy man! The plan would probably give you diabetes if you didn't have it already. This is why people believe diabetes is a chronic and progressive disease. If you follow the "experts" it most certainly is!
I'm a fledgling health coach and you'd be amazed how many out of shape people with chronic conditions follow their doctors orders meticulously then wonder why they are so hungry all the time and can't seem to lose the weight. The doctors orders are shite. And for God's sake people, STOP going low-fat raw vegan and then wondering why you have massive nutritional deficiences and your hair is falling out! You are not "detoxxing", you are dying! Sorry, I digress.
My point is that most health and nutrition guidelines are just wrong. Tufts University just came out with guidelines that stated Fruit Loops are more nutritious than scrambled eggs because the eggs contained cholesterol and the Fruit Loops were vitamin fortified. As if the supposed dietary dangers of cholesterol weren't debunked decades ago. Providing you aren't allergic to them and their sourced from an ethical farm (pastured chickens get better diets with insects, etc) eggs are practically the perfect food. Look for ones with bright orange yolks and thick, clear whites. It shoudn't come as a surprise that General Mills and Kelloggs were financial backers of the Tufts study.
So yes people need to get off their butts and walk, but from a nutrition standpoint their biggest enemy might be their propensity to listen to their doctor.
As a person who was obese most of my life, there was a point when it hit me hard that I needed to lose weight. I lost 180 pounds in my mid-forties and have kept most of it off now 15 years later. I can tell you from experience shaming only makes the person doing the shaming feel better about themselves. It does nothing for the other person. Shaming is a holier-than-thou attitude. Especially who that person has changed. Like when you lost the weight. You are not righteous in saying people should be shamed. I changed because I wanted it I was not shamed into it. In the article, you point out that you decided to change. Shaming you as a child or as an adult was not something you mentioned as a motivator.
Shaming does not stop racism, bigotry, or any other hate. We enact laws to take care of people who are wrong and hurt people.
I would add that on top of everything else, our garbage food, and sedentary culture has certainly contributed to the fat epidemic, but it's only a contributing factor, not the sole driver of it. Also, it's a family culture of eating and not exercising, hence the recent appearance of "the fat family", which is when you see families of 2 parents and 2-3 kids, and everyone of them is fat, even the very young kids. Add a basic over-abundance of "food", and many just end up fat by default.
People should exercise, if they are interested in living longer, healthier lives, and attempts to normalize and de-stigmatize obesity isn't doing them any favors.
The fact that everyone started simultaneously becoming more fat in the 1980s, and that introducing skinny natives/foreigners to an American diet reliably starts making them fatter, leads me to believe there is a biological component here.
I wouldn't be surprised if massive changes to our gut bacteria due to the use of things like Roundup, traces of different drugs in the water supply, and other things like that are significant contributors to the obesity epidemic. Processed food is clearly a culprit--I don't think I've ever seen a study where eliminating processed food didn't reduce weight and increase health to some extent.
I think where people make a mistake in shaming fat people is assuming that being skinny automatically makes you morally superior. I think what's more likely is that fat people have the same amount of willpower as the average person (on average! there are obviously exceptions), but are physically much hungrier, so they have to use more willpower to lose weight. Someone who remains skinny on a sh*t diet, using zero willpower and eating potato chips everyday, isn't morally superior to a fat person who tries really hard to diet and feels hungry 24/7 and gives in from time to time. If I eat whatever the f*** I want with no restrictions, no thoughtfulness, no attempts to be healthier or "eat right," I end up right on the border between a healthy BMI and an overweight BMI, maybe slightly overweight. It is physically impossible for me to eat enough to become obese. I just feel sick and stop. If someone is missing that feedback mechanism in their body, then they may need heroic amounts of willpower to stop being obese.
I believe that being gay and being attracted to kids is largely genetic. When I try to bring that up with some people, they get all mad and say that I’m homophobic. Yet all I’m doing is stating scientific facts. The genetic fallacy is real with most people. They cannot separate “this thing is natural” with “this thing is good”.
Excellent essay.
Funny you're talking about shaming as a solution to obesity, while the culture has already moved on to lying about the poor health outcomes linked to obesity. In 10 years nobody will believe you when you say obesity is unhealthy! Well, nobody in normie lib spaces at least.
People hate living with the consequences of their actions, so they blame their circumstances on anything else, not willing to accept responsibility. Many such cases.
> As mentioned above, the arguments against fat shaming strike me as odd because you could make the exact same arguments about crime, but almost no one says we should stop “shaming” rapists and murderers. Why exactly is this?
...Because being fat doesn't harm other people? I think there's a pretty obvious difference here.
The case for "stigmatization" or "shaming" strikes me as being mostly about justifying cruel behavior. As you observe, people do not enjoy being shamed. A full utilitarian case for cruelty would consider these impacts on the victim. Your priors should be that being cruel to people harms them and you shouldn't do it for that reason, rather than asking everyone to engage in ad hoc probability games about whether a marginal increase in cruelty will incentivize a victim to improve their lifestyle. I would guess that something like 99% of cruel/shaming behavior causes more harm than it helps, in the case of obesity. I'm shocked that this isn't obvious to you.
I agree that the incentive structure in America is largely responsible for obesity but there are ways to
shift the incentive structure that don't involve actively advocating for and justifying cruelty.
The definition of choice is flawed. Saying something can be altered with incentives is merely saying outsiders can manipulate someone. That still isn't "choice".
As to the topic generally, anyone who looks at introduction and adoption of high fructose corn syrup into foods can see the correlation with obesity rates. Banning it would likely drop 20 lbs from each average American. It likely is the reason one can eat an identical diet and have the identical lifestyle in another part of the world and be 20 lbs lighter.
And that is not getting to the rest of the additives in American food that are banned elsewhere.
It is truly mind-boggling how much of our culture and politics is shaped by the desire to deny racial differences.
>As mentioned above, the arguments against fat shaming strike me as odd because you could make the exact same arguments about crime, but almost no one says we should stop “shaming” rapists and murderers. Why exactly is this?<
Perhaps not full-on rapists and murderers, but there is a clear and obvious desire among liberals not to shame criminals in general. And I think we all know where that impulse comes from. It is interesting that you note a lot of this "destigmatizing" started in the 1960s, which happens to coincide with some other major cultural changes around that same time. People adopted the "it isn't their fault" mentality instrumentally at first, in order to push the idea that racial differences don't exist, and the premise once accepted has now blossomed out into all sorts of different directions, such as the idea that people are "born gay" and that homosexuality is not a choice, the same with being "trans," and so forth and so on.
1. Eating is highly emotional, and overeating can be a way to avoid one's problems. This generates addiction.
2. Diet high in processed foods, incl. corn syrup and vegetable oils. This junk is much less common in Europe, though Europeans still eat plenty of sugar, meat, fat, etc.
3. Over-medication. Americans are on loads of pharma drugs that cause weight gain, such as anti depressants.
4. Extreme sedentary lifestyle. I'm not talking about exercise...just walking. Europeans get their daily 10,000 steps, and 90 year olds live in 5th floor walk ups.
That said I'm against shaming and negative judgment. Much better to use positive incentives to create change.
Yes, absolutely agree with you on the choice/shaming issue and I've made the same comparison with the shaming of smokers. It's amazing how the medical establishment/media/popular culture is like, "smoking is horrible for you and if you smoke you're a bad person and a drain on the medical system" but completely turns a blind eye to obesity, not just the "normal" complications from obesity (heart disease, diabetes, etc) but especially during the COVID pandemic, where it was the #2 predictor for death from COVID behind age. We had magazines lauding "healthy at any weight" with the picture of a morbidly obese woman on the cover!!
“there was a very strong correlation between how much I ate and how much I weighed” haha. My guess is that fat people generally know they eat too much but just don’t want other people to remind them of that. I don’t know the biology of it, but once you’ve got fat, the body tries it’s best to keep it. As a former skinny, I know now just how hard it is to lose those extra pounds. My body seems to conspire with my appetite. I also know I could drop those pounds if I really really wanted to.