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Again, fat person here. Being fat is not healthy, physically or mentally. No we shouldn't attack or criticize people for being fat, but acting like being fat is perfectly fine is wrong. BMI might not be a good system, but that doesn't mean the idea behind it isn't.
“obese” arbitrarily medicalises fatness
Fatness is medical. Fatness comes with a host of health problems. To say it's not medical is some anti-science bullshit.
I don't think I can respond directly to your first point, as I think we are working from very different premises. I think being fat is normal and okay, and you think that it is inherently unhealthy. I recommend the Health at Every Size reading from last week if you would like to understand where I'm coming from.
and I think you can just as easily say having a body is medical. The emphasis in my phrasing is arbitrarily, it's difficult to say what is obese and what isn't, as body fat is distributed differently across races, body types etc.
I know being fat is inherently unhealthy. I am unhealthy and so is every fat person I know. "Healthy at Every Size" is complete bs.
You might be able to keep yourself relatively healthy for your weight, but being fat is still inherently unhealthy. Whatever you do to stay "healthy" while fat would be easier to accomplish and work even better while at a normal weight.
I managed to lose ~50 pounds from my walk to work over the course of 2019 (still fat though, and that loss stopped in 2020 for obvious reasons). Even without changing my diet at all, I started feeling much better because of it.
it’s difficult to say what is obese and what isn’t, as body fat is distributed differently across races, body types etc
Yeah it's difficult to set a hard bottom line for obesity, and it can differ greatly depending on a number of factors, but that doesn't mean obesity isn't real or that it's some completely arbitrary thing that should just be dismissed.
just to let you know, losing weight with your walk to work is something that is completely compatible with Health at Every Size. Like HAES doesn't say you can't lose weight, but that you should stay active, eat intuitively and losing weight can be a side effect of those healthier choices.* It's hard for me to imagine that focusing on being healthy, rather focusing on decreasing your weight is complete bs.
From what I can tell, I think you are mistaken that the "Health" in HAES is a noun rather than a verb
edit: I meant * you should pursue staying active, eating intuitively rather than pursuing losing weight itself
All of those things inherently lead to losing weight. I wasn't healthy at almost 300 lbs, even when I started walking. It was only when my weight was significantly lower that I started feeling better (still not healthy, but healthier than 50 lbs ago). Getting healthier coincides with weight loss. If you aren't losing weight, you aren't getting much healthier.
If you want to reduce some social stigma around being fat, that's fine. Don't treat people like shit or blame them for their health problems or whatever. But to insinuate that you can stay 300 lbs and be healthy is complete bullshit. So the social goal should be to replace negative stigma with positive social encouragement and support towards losing weight and becoming healthier. Not to just act like being fat is perfectly fine in every possible way, including medical.
There's a bit of a tricky situation though, in that just because you lose weight doesn't automatically mean you are healthier. Anorexic women are praised by society for their unhealthy eating habits, and fat anorexic women:
Erin Harrop, a researcher at the University of Washington, studies higher-weight women with anorexia, who, contrary to the size-zero stereotype of most media depictions, are twice as likely to report vomiting, using laxatives and abusing diet pills. Thin women, Harrop discovered, take around three years to get into treatment, while her participants spent an average of 13 and a half years waiting for their disorders to be addressed.
The HAES movement moves the focus from losing weight, as dieting is a strong predictor of eating disorders:
In a large study of 14– and 15-year-olds, dieting was the most important predictor of a developing eating disorder. Those who dieted moderately were 5x more likely to develop an eating disorder, and those who practiced extreme restriction were 18x more likely to develop an eating disorder than those who did not diet. Golden, N. H., Schneider, M., & Wood, C. (2016). Preventing Obesity and Eating Disorders in Adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(3). doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1649
Staying active and eat intuitively do lead to losing weight, but there are many ways to lose weight and harm your body. By focusing on health, you avoid a lot of these pitfalls
None of what you said is consistent with being "healthy at every size". Of course how you lose weight can be unhealthy, but again, someone who is 300 lbs is not healthy and will never be healthy unless they lose weight. Healthy at every size insinuates it's possible to stay 300 lbs for the rest of your life and be perfectly healthy. It's just not.
You've created a strawman of HAES and you're asking me to defend it, please read the article from last week https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybfbkqak4wtu3wp/What%20is%20%22Health%20at%20Every%20Size%22%3F.pdf?dl=0
It's not a strawman, it's what those words in that order literally mean...
I'm not engaging in this conversation until you read that piece. Health at Every Size is a very specific movement, it's not just the meaning you assign to the words. There's a little FAQ at the end of that piece with common myths, one of the myths is "The HAES model argues that people of every size must be healthy"
"These words we use that have a certain meaning aren't actually what we mean."
I looked through the paper, I get what you are trying to say, but the phrase "healthy at every size" just doesn't work. And neither does the insistence that being fat isn't necessarily unhealthy.
There are some good ideas in there. A reduced focus on weight and focusing on a more holistic approach to health can be good, but weight is still an important factor. But again, that's not at all what the words "healthy at every size" convey. It conveys the idea of a very fat person having no more health problems than the average person, which just isn't the case.
But reading the paper I get the impression that they think there is not necessarily anything wrong with being fat. That fatness is perfectly fine. It's not.
lmao, here's a particularly egregious line from the paper:
The diseases that are associated with higher BMI also occur at low BMI. If fat-ness causes these diseases, why do they exist across the weight spectrum?
"Lung cancer also occurs in non-smokers. If smoking causes lung cancer, why does it exist in both smokers and non-smokers?"
And the story about "Jody" shows someone doing all the wrong things to lose weight. It's not her trying to lose weight that's bad (at 195 anyway), it's the way she tries to lose weight. No shit 1000 calories a day isn't healthy. And avoiding fat and carbs is misguided as well. As for 105 Jody, that's a problem of thinking she's overweight when she's not. That may come from some social stigmas that need to be worked on, but that doesn't mean overweight doesn't exist, and it doesn't mean 195 Jody isn't overweight.
one of the myths is “The HAES model argues that people of every size must be healthy”
I didn't say that. The model says fat people can be perfectly healthy, which just isn't true.
Thanks for putting effort into fighting this nonsense. This poster is making medical concerns arbitrary by bringing attention away from the syndrome of obesity and focusing on the symptoms which possibly can be “present at every BMI level.”
Your analogy of the syndrome of smoking causing the symptom of lung cancer is apt here. For how are we to stop endemic lung cancer without stopping endemic smoking, and how are we to stop what are provably endemic symptoms of obesity without first dealing with obesity?
(my usage of ‘symptoms’ and ‘syndrome’ was chosen bc the word syndrome is widely considered ‘that which causes symptoms’. by calling obesity a syndrome, i am only claiming that it produces symptoms. there is not meant to be any further negative connotation than it being the thing that produces symptoms)
