On Fat Acceptance

With obesity rates skyrocketing among pretty much every demographic and the weight loss industry growing into a I-shit-you-not 70 billion dollar industry the topic of obesity, it’s health effects, and the stigma of being overweight are constantly on the minds of the American collective.  As I write this it is March 12^th, 2012.  The year is almost 20% done.  More than likely if you had a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight you have given up and failed.  You also more than likely failed while spending some money either on a gym membership, a weight loss product, or a diet book.  Unfortunately if you are among the New Year’s Casualties within another month or so you will be right back to where you started.

But this isn’t about the weight loss and diet industry and the misinformation that is spewed forth on a daily basis by people like Dr. Oz, The View, and every crappy article on websites like Fitbie.  This is about the people that go through life every single day being obese.  I grew up fat as a kid.  I was never what someone would call obese but I was never in danger of wasting away.  I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me to this day.  It’s a stigma that has permeated our society right down to its core.  When young girls as young as five or six are subjected to beauty pageants by their parents, young gymnasts who weigh less than 100 pounds are told they are too fat to make the team, and eating disorders run rampant among young kids you know there is something wrong.

The preoccupation with how people look has created a back lash that has led to the creation of fat acceptance groups like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA).  The NAAFA and groups like it claim that fat people are heavily (no pun intended) discriminated against, especially women, in the media and society at large (again, no pun intended).  They also claim that health is independent of, not dependent on, weight.  They argue that many of the health claims of fat people being unhealthier than people of normal weight are consequences of the psychological pressures put on them by society for being fat and that fat people are less likely to go to the doctor because of the stigma of being fat.

I’ll bite on the second point but I’m calling bullshit on the first.  If I was overweight and knew all that was going to happen when I went in for my yearly physical was my doctor telling me I needed to lose some weight I’d skip it too.  But there is no way that breathing heavy from walking down the street or feeling faint every time you stand up is a healthy way to go through life.  Our hearts only have some many beats in them and being overweight uses them up at a much greater rate.  Having all that extra mass forces the heart and the rest of the vascular system, like veins and arteries to work harder at rest, let alone when doing anything physical.  Then there is the issue of insulin resistance which can ultimately lead to Type II Diabetes.

TV chef Paula Deen, who is known for her ultra-rich southern comfort food, has recently come out saying that three years ago she was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes.  Type II diabetes is caused by the body becoming resistant to the insulin that is produced by the pancreas.  One factor that can bring this on is chronically elevated insulin levels brought on by consuming high amounts of processed grains and sugars. 

This isn’t the place to rant about the inappropriateness of selling recipes that are high in sugar and processed carbohydrates deep-fried in highly processed oils while she’s hiding a disease that can be brought on by the consumption of such food and then signing on with a company that sells drugs to control said disease.  But suffice it to say she isn’t helping the obesity epidemic in America.

I don’t dislike fat people.  I dislike that they are fat.  In my humble opinion obesity is caused by lifestyle choices.  That’s it.  You can claim genetics or glands and show me the tests, but you still need to eat the food.  I’ve never heard of someone who got fat eating a balanced diet of lean meat, vegetables, fruit, and a moderate amount of nuts and dairy.  It doesn’t happen, especially on a diet where protein is the main nutrient.

In order for protein to be stored as fat an excess must be consumed.  The excess will be converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis in the liver.  If and only if all of the body’s muscle and glycogen stores are full, which is about 400 grams for the average person, will it be converted to fat and stored in the fat cells.  And that doesn’t just happen by magic.  That shit needs energy to work.  The normal person can’t eat that much food.  Meat, fruits, and vegetables aren’t nutrient dense enough.

But this isn’t about this or that nutritional strategy.  This is about obesity.  It’s about getting rid of delusions.  If you’re obese you are not healthy.  You were not made to be fat.  More than likely your genes, glands, or whatever are not making you fat.  You are.  There are some out there that will eat right, exercise, and still gain fat, but they are few and far between.  

But like I said, I don’t hate you for it.  I do hate, however, the “acceptance” of a life of poor health.  Humans are capable of so much more than we think.  We consign ourselves to a life of mediocrity and obesity because there is no real consequence to not be obese.  Sure obese people get stared at and every picture of them is taken from the neck down, but it is not an immediate life or death situation. 

Now, back up and few thousand years and it’s a different story.  You’ve got to chase down a deer.  You’ve got to climb a tree for fruit.  You walk into a clearing and come face to face with a lion.  If you have a hundred extra pounds to deal with none of those situations are going to turn out good.  Some may even lead you to instant game over-ness and there is no reset button.

Every time.  Notice the lack of a natural predator.

What spurred this article is a YouTube video I saw the other day.  In it a morbidly obese young woman was singing a very poor rendition of a currently popular hip-hop song.  It’s one of those videos you can’t help but feel embarrassed for the person.  Even though I knew what they were going to say I decided to check out the comments.  They came in three categories; 1. Stop singing, 2. You are fat and ugly, 3. Don’t let the haters get you down.  You are beautiful and brave for putting this on the internet.

Face palm.

Number one aside, none of the comments really does the subject any good.  The people calling her fat and ugly do nothing to help the situation.  Immature comments from immature people who will probably never reach a level of consciousness higher than an eighth grader.  It’s just stupid people picking on an easy target.  Judging from the number of videos she has posted I don’t think she lets them get to her.  Kudos to her for that.

The other comments, however, are, to me, just as dangerous.  They are of the kindly enabler variety.  Everybody has a well-meaning enabler somewhere in their life.  When I was a little kid my Grandma Bev was mine, as are most grandmas.  Sugar on Frosted Flakes?  You go right ahead.  Most grow out of that.  Some don’t.  The point is that enabling certain behaviors is about the most counterproductive thing you can do.  Telling a morbidly obese person that they are fantastic and don’t need to change to me is the same as slowly killing them.

Then you’ve got the real haters.  Sometimes these people are one and the same as the enablers.  These are the people that ridicule you and put you down for doing the right thing and TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT!  There is a documented backlash among some groups of the fat acceptance movement against people trying to lose weight.  They say that fat people can be just as healthy as skinny people, losing weight is a futile endeavor, and the stigma of trying to lose weight just adds to psychological harm. 

Face palm #2.

I really have nothing nice to say about people like this.  To get the exact opposite of support from people who are going through what you are is absolutely mind boggling.  I would parallel it to a terminal cancer patient telling someone with a treatable cancer to just give up cancer treatments.  If it’s going to take me it should take you.

I am of the mind that all people can change.  But most people don’t want to change.  Type II diabetes can be easily managed and sometime cured by simply eating less sugars and carbohydrates and exercising more.  Yet people suffer through and die from it every single day.

I don’t dislike or judge people because they are overweight.  Becoming overweight is a very easy thing to do in the society that we live in.  It’s a corpulent time and it has created corpulent people.  Change is hard.  Change is scary.  Change requires sacrifice.  And sometimes it’s the people who you call friends and family that would need to be excised in order to be successful.  Not everyone is willing to do that, I get that.  And some people are perfectly fine with being overweight. 

But to accept a life of pain, misery, and ill-health if you don’t want it is a sad phenomenon.  To watch people struggle to change only to be brought back down by so-called friends is disheartening.  To watch people put hopes, dreams and hard earned money into weight loss fads, pills and supplements that do nothing and outright scams makes me almost embarrassed to be in this field.

But there are good people who have excellent products and systems for weight management.  They are all different but have one common denominator: they require hard work and sacrifice to be effective.  If you want change you have to go and take it.  Help is out there, but change doesn’t happen by accident no matter how many magazine covers you read in the check-out line at the supermarket.