I’ve since dropped this position because the world has changed, and so has my view. Heart Disease kills more people than anything, and now we effectively have a cure for obesity. Obesity should now be seen as smallpox or polio - something to be eradicated. No excuses, and now they’re actively limiting the supply of this - forcing more product out of the hands that need it and into the hands of people like musk

I used to be fat, and when I watch morbidly obese people talk about how much they love food and it makes them happy and makes them feel better that is 100% me. Food is absolutely an addiction for some people, including me. Thankfully I have it under control to be at a healthy weight and lose weight when I need to, but some of these people have absolutely tragic childhoods or life experiences and I don’t blame them at all for coping in that way. I could 100% see myself in that position if I had been through what they have been through.

However, those people are self aware that they are unhealthy. The people I can’t stand are the “healthy at every size” fat acceptance people. Healthy at every size was SUPPOSED to be that you can make positive health focused changes at any size and there is no point of no return. But it got twisted into I can be morbidly obese and I am still 100% healthy forever. And they even make people feel bad for wanting to lose weight, even if it’s for health reasons. Those people are trash and fall on the same level as antivax people IMO.

Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, until you start spewing harmful bullshit and then I will judge you as much as I want.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately and your comment is interesting. Your first sentence is definitely phrased in a more controversial way than the rest of your comment, but I can’t help seeing it as very similar to “Being depressed is a choice the vast majority of the time, and I have a huge bias against depressed people.” Is that an unfair comparison?

I know that treating fatness/obesity as a disease is kinda controversial but I feel like folks give people dealing with mental health a lot more grace than people dealing with health issues related to being fat. I’ve also heard that for some people they can be perfectly healthy at a higher weight (though this is clearly not the case for many fat people who are seeing health impacts). I guess I’m assuming that a lot of fat people would potentially like to be less so, but can’t (for any number of reasons) quite get there. This seems really similar for me to people dealing with depression, anxiety, etc who want to change things but keep falling back into the problem.

I guess my question is do you have bias against people who can’t escape other bad cycles like mental health or even stuff like alcoholism? Or is it more just that you think it’s fair to judge people without the discipline/willpower to get out of a state they didn’t want to be in, like you did.

Sure.

But that doesn’t mean go out and harass fat people. Trust me we fucking know. You can’t lose weight instantly. Some of us may actually be working on it.

Also fat people have the right to be happy. People hating on “happy at any size” is just being assholes for the sake of it.

As a disabled person who struggles to maintain a healthy weight, I’ll tell you that yours is not an unpopular opinion. I know that mine is not the typical experience, and there are far more people who are overweight for reasons within their control, but let’s not pretend the people celebrating obesity are the norm.

Regardless of your problems, shame is never productive. Looking down on people you perceive as “fat, lazy fucks,” is just a way to make yourself feel better about yourself. “God, I’m glad I’m not like that piece of shit anymore.” It’s a form of self loathing, hating the way you used to be.

Be kinder to the person you used to be. That person probably could have used to positive support and thoughtful advice. Maybe then you wouldn’t have needed to turn your entire life upside down just to get healthy. Don’t be ashamed of your past choices. Own them, recognize why you made them, and learn how to be a better person tomorrow.

I totally get that, same here.

But ultimately you can’t just blame people. There is literally an entire industry trying to sell you cheap carbs and fat. Down to the sound a bag of chips makes when you open it (this is not a joke).

So on one hand you have evolution, your body still being stuck in the past where food was scarce. On the other hand you have too much food and it’s highly engineered to be addicting on purpose.

It’s no surprise most people are going to lose that challenge.

I especially hate when everyone’s conclusion is genetics. That’s such a minuscule percent of obese people that it’s ridiculous.

I would’ve thought you would’ve learned kindness out of that ordeal. Didn’t people make fun of you? How’d it feel, even if you knew they were right? It’s just rude and inappropriate. There’s no need. eve

After I got diagnosed with some weight related shit, I turned my entire life upside down, am at a much healthier 150 lbs (68ish kg), and feel so much better, both physically and mentally.

Something disillusioning from the field of psychotherapy research: Our best, most interdisciplinary, low-threshold therapeutic strategies allow people to, on average, lose and hold the loss of up to 7-10% of the weight they’ve started with. Which isn’t even enough to get most people out of the obesity range. What you’ve been through is exceptional. By far most people will never manage to lose that much, not even with professional help.

To put it this way: If we look at obesity like a mental disorder it’s one of the hardest to overcome, harder than depression or anxiety.

I get why so many people share your opinion on this, I just feel like it’s missing context. Because sure, physiologically its possible for a depressed person to “just go out more” or an anxious person to “just stop breathing so fast” or an overweight person to “just eat less and move more”, but this is such an oversimplified way to look at how humans work and why they do what they do that is simply stops being correct. Every now and then you’ll meet someone who managed to do all this just like that, but for the vast majority it’s an unrealistic and unfair thing to ask.

Obesity is a chronic disorder and will continue to be until we get better treatments.

Hmm I think that for a lot of people, it wasn’t a choice to get fat. I know a lot of kids who are already obese and they aren’t even in their teens.

However, I do think it’s a choice once you’ve realized it and have the ability to actually do something about it.

Kinda related but unrelated: it irks me when someone comments how easy it is for me to be skinny, bc it isn’t. As a previously underweight person, I think gaining and losing weight are just as hard. I had to control my diet, work out, and have a lot of self control to not lose the habits I was building. I folded and stagnated a lot, and yeah it was demotivating but I still had to make a choice to keep going.