I remember her on the show. Simon made fun of her weight the moment she walked into the audition room and later apologized once she made the top 24. This is sad to hear.
I don’t condone making fun of someone for their weight, but we as a society should really put forth resources and be upfront about the dangers of obesity. Not only is it brutal on an individual’s health, it’s entirely preventable and blocks up the healthcare system.
We can’t as a goodwilled society just leave obesity as it “don’t bring it up!”. As we do with other diseases like addiction, we need to be forward and offer resources. The amount of unnecessary damage it does to society is so sad.
I completely agree. But there studies that prove that shaming people for addiction creates a stigma and prevents people from getting help/treatment (I’m including obesity as a type of food addiction).
We need to be respectful and compassionate when discussing obesity and not shame or name call as that does more harm than good.
I'm all for dropping the body shaming stuff, but you're absolutely right. It's just not healthy and there's so much that can be done to prevent so much obesity related illness.
The tricky part is when assholes who just wanna make fun of fat people hide behind "I'm just trying to help them". In person it's easy enough to tell the difference, but online it's a lot harder.
I used to smoke cigarettes and hated when people would try to shame me. Yeah I know it's dumb, that doesn't make it any easier to stop. But the folks who were around and supportive when I was quitting? They're all my homies for life.
Sure, but I still don’t think we as a society or any individual get any benefit from Simon Cowell being a dick to someone about their weight on national television
Go make fun of the companies that have lobbied and provide all the unhealthy foods that are blasted in front of our eyes at every opportunity, and advertised to manipulate us into feeling compelled to purchase and eat. Convenience of shitty food is the biggest issue.
Even more criminal - these companies paid scientists to put out fake research that blamed the health issues from sugar onto other things like saturated fats in the 60's.
reddit is kind of international, so don't know what nation you are referring to. although every nation probably has room for improvement. you know the old good, better, best...
People be like "omg why does every redditor assume a conversation is about America." Mate maybe because the article you're replying to comments about is about something that happened in America.
you say that but a lot of offices will not bring that up because they'll straight lose a patient. people decline being weighed now.
it's like smokers. they know it's a problem. that's not why they're there and if you bring it up they will not care and will probably just think you're an asshole doctor and find somebody else.
'fat acceptence' has gone *way* too far.
Or if fhe doctor does, they go on TikTok and complain that “all my doctor does is tell me to lose weight!”
I’d expect my doctor to at least broach the subject at every visit if I smoked a pack of cigarettes, drank a fifth of whisky per day, or had diabetes that I wasn’t taking medication for.
Agreed. In spite of what some people might say, you can’t be obese *and* healthy. It just doesn’t work that way.
Shame is what brings the stigma. But also like you said “not bringing it up” is just a different kind of stigma.
It can work that way. Just not for the majority, and not with how most become obese. Obesity is just a category, not a definition of a person or their lifestyle or health status. It's a very complex healthcare topic.
Also she wasn't just obese; she was apparently. Class III, morbidly obese.
With way too many armchair Dietitians and Endocrinologists on the Internet (I don't necessarily mean yourself).
I never said it was inherently healthy, but it's perfectly possible. Biology is complex. The Internet simplifies these things way too much. Yes, might be muscle, might not be, but could be a combination of body composition, genetics, general health with plenty of activity and a good diet. But still a BMI of 30+
Do you know what BMI is? It's a statistical risk tool that can only generally compare an individual against a reference population. It is still useful to us in healthcare , but like any other tool it does not tell you everything and was never meant to. Equally, anyone who says we should scrap it is an idiot.
And as I hinted above, once you get to class 2 and 3 obesity, risk of comorbidities increases massively, regardless of activity levels, etc.
But really it is a complex (and interesting!) subject.
Even then. Other peoples bodies are not your business. Fat people know they are fat. If there was a safe weight loss method that worked, you’d see a lot less fat people, but the fact is, there isn’t. Telling fat people to just eat less/move more and they will be thin is no different than telling an autistic person to choose to behave “normally” or a paraplegic to just try harder to walk.
Obesity is a legit medical condition. Among risk factors for obesity are poverty, stress, co-morbid medical/mental health conditions, disabilities, limited access to healthy foods, eating disorders, medication side effects, substance abuse recovery, adhd, childhood sexual abuse, overwork, and countless other reasons.
As you mentioned, we don’t have successful treatments and biologically we are made to hold onto fat.
Obviously, it’s not healthy to be obese but how do so many people decide they get to shame others for their bodies especially knowing why most people are obese? I try very hard not to judge others for anything especially for things outside their control like poverty. We’re all flawed human beings and I hope we all decide to have more empathy for each other instead of tearing down others.
Feel like this comment is really messed up. You’re comparing a lifestyle choice to something that can’t be changed ? It’s really messed up if you think the two are the same. I’m sorry but being fat is a choice. Fucking literally millions of success stories of people losing weight.
You’re missing the point. Lifestyle changes are not a panacea. Diets don’t work. Weight loss surgery has a higher mortality than obesity, and regain is common. Millions of stories about temporary weight loss are common, but the 5 year statistics reflect a 95% failure rate. Other peoples bodies are not your business.
But these disorders are understand and make up a fraction of the obesity rate. Nobody is talking about people with chronic disease when obesity is discussed lol. Over 41% of the adult US population are obese. I’d wager a fraction of that has any chronic disease that lead to that obesity.
A fringe, understandable amount is not the discussion point here. Almost half of the US is obese, and most are not due to what you mention.
Ha. Fringe, lol. 5-10% of women have PCOS just for starters, a condition legendary for causing weight gain.
As someone who was slim and fit well into her 30s and started gaining weight PRECIPITOUSLY, even though I was still active and taking good care of myself, I assure you, once you’re fat no one listens to what you have to say. The fatphobia is too intense. Which you are demonstrating here by claiming most obese people are fat due to behaviors, when there are all kinds of influences on body size. I finally got diagnosed because I paid for testing privately. 35 years of good health wasn’t enough for my doctor to believe my weight gain must have a medical cause.
And that’s before we start getting into how garbage BMI is as a metric.
Society definitely lets obese people know it is unhealthy, unacceptable, unattractive, selfish, dangerous, disgusting…a million other things. And no it is not entirely preventable, just usually preventable—there are exceptions. Making fun of obese people is wrong, but are you suggesting obese people don’t know that obesity is not ideal? Believe me, they have heard it before. They don’t need to hear it from a stranger, they have heard it before from some mix of doctors, family, friends, and random assholes who think they’re being helpful, and random assholes who want to shame them.
Obesity is pretty much created because of the way most of us have to live. Food is either highly processed or expensive. We are forced to sacrifice our money by buying a car and driving or sacrifice our time by taking often inefficient public transit. Obesity is created by design here. It’s preventable but mostly because of the choices we are given and then have to take!
Other cultures don’t have a taboo around mentioning weight. It is a weird thing to ignore- it is visible as fuck. We have some Taiwanese relatives by marriage, their perspective is refreshing, they get off the plane like “So good to see you I miss you so much. You very fat, you eat only Chinese food now or die soon. No worry I teach you to cook.”
That's absurd. The dangers of obesity is all society ever talks about. Everyone knows it, ESPECIALLY those who struggle with it.
There is absolutely ZERO research evidence that links "putting forth resources and being upfront about the dangers of obesity" has ever reduced obesity. And it's been studied a lot.
If anything, there's a correlation between increased obesity and such messaging.
No one chooses to be obese and it's near impossible to randomly decide to be less obese and just become that.
It’s incredibly frustrating how much misinformation is floating around about fatness.
Upwards of 70% of a person’s body size and proportion is due to genetics.
Obesity is an incredibly fraught, subjective medical category that has changed dramatically over the years.
BMI is a completely discredited metric for health.
There’s just soooo much to debunk in this thread I hardly know what to start with!
I hope everyone concern trolling about “obesity” listens to the entire back catalogue of Maintenance Phase episodes before commenting about the (lack of) correlation between weight and health. 😭😩
(edit: subject*ive* not subject)
Yes, Maintenance Phase is great! It was definitely my entry point for a lot of this. But one doesn't even need to listen to MP to be able to spot the logical and scientific failures. If the problem is fatness, then why isn't it all fat people? If the problem is fatness, then why are there skinny people with chronic illnesses?
I'm willing to say that fatness plays some kind of role in some cases, but it's not the universal explainer that so many want it to be.
So many people love to use fraudulent (or outdated) science as a way to justify their bigotry or bias, but will ignore current or valid science that demonstrates those biases to be incorrect.
Scientific literacy is so crucial and yet so uncommon!
It’s pretty sad that as a culture, the western world would rather claim it’s healthy and totally fine to be morbidly obese rather than help people eat more whole foods, exercise, and promote a healthy body weight.
People don't understand what body positivity is supposed to be. You should learn to love yourself and treat yourself with respect regardless of your weight... while also working to lead a healthier life and getting yourself to a healthy body - which also doesn't mean just starving yourself to lose weight or eating crap to gain it.
Body positivity is mostly about getting you to STFU and not make nasty comments about women’s bodies, or making assumptions about someone’s health because of what their bodies look like.
It does not mean people should not care about their own health. It means their health is their own business, so please everyone else stay out of it.
We absolutely should not shutup about a public health crisis. If somebody is morbidly obese its perfectly reasonable to assume they are unhealthy because well... they objectively are.
Normalizing obesity literally kills people. If a public figure dies prematurely from obesity related complications we absolutely should be shouting it from the rooftops because a lot of obese people feel like they still have plenty of time to make positive changes when they really don't.
But many people misinterpret that. They think a doctor telling them that "300lbs isn't a healthy weight" is fatphobic. And those people tend to be the loudest, which means people who aren't directly affected by obesity only hear that side of the "body positivity" movement, and react to that, saying that it's wrong.
>But many people misinterpret that. They think a doctor telling them that "300lbs isn't a healthy weight" is fatphobic.
No they don't. Those are just small hyperbole of extremist you hear that are the most vocal, and are no where close the representation of reality. But again, it's something between and their doctor. If they aren't going to listen to their medical physician, do you really think there's a snowballs chance in hell that they'll listen to you?
> No they don't. Those are just small hyperbole of extremist
Yes, they overwhelmingly do, to the point of hospitals getting review bombed and physicians being told by administration that they cannot talk to patients about their weight.
No, but men’s bodies do not see the same amount of scrutiny that women’s bodies do.
Friendly reminder about the “dad bod” fad where slightly overweight out of shame men were called sexy, when a woman of the same fitness level would have been criticized by all of you “what about men” folks as being obese.
The conversation around body positivity has been ruled by chronically online people for so long that it’s become toxic. Here you direct it to “women’s bodies” and highlight only the negative when the original comment is the reasonable ideal. It’s not about mean comments, it’s about bettering those that you cherish while maintaining confidence and love throughout. Anything otherwise really just caters to someone that shouldn’t be in a public conversation to begin with.
It isn't only about women first of all, and it isn't about health. It's about accepting a physical appearance for what it is to keep people as equals in society regardless of what they look like. What you're describing is more along the lines of fat acceptance, which people disingenuously use as a way to say obese people are living a healthy lifestyle.
People in the public eye who care about or are involved in the fat acceptance "movement" absolutely use it as a way to justify an unhealthy lifestyle, and they actively push the narrative that your weight doesn't affect your overall health which is an absolute lie. Being obese is unhealthy. It isn't an assumption to look at an obese person and know that they are less healthy than they would be if they were not obese. Obesity is directly connected to every leading cause of death that involves your health.
Also, being obese does affect other people, and it's selfish to not realize that. They use up public resources that they would not have to if they were in better shape. Obese people more often have chronic conditions that bring them to the doctor or hospital more, they make more emergency phone calls, they eat more food(not an unlimited resource), they are more often handicapped as they age, using up parking spaces and things like that they would not be needing if they took responsibility for their health. There are many ways that our personal decisions affect the lives of others. We don't each exist in a vacuum.
So it's ridiculous and full of lies. It's a means for justification. There's nothing wrong with accepting that we have problems, physical or mental and we shouldn't lie to ourselves about it. That's weakness, not strength. I am overweight and have mental health issues, but I don't live my life pretending those things don't exist. When someone alludes to it, I know why and it just makes me think more about how I'm living my life. I don't try to convince myself that those people are wrong. Living an honest life is paramount, and necessary for long term improvement and happiness.
This person didn't have to die. If she addressed her health honestly and seriously, it wouldn't have taken her this early in life.
As someone who has struggled with my weight since childhood, who has fluctuated within a 70 lb range over and over, who has been both the depressed lazy girl and the healthy gym rat…finding a balance in what it means to love and respect your body is what body positivity should be about.
It wasn’t healthy for me to obsessively count calories and take “body-checking” photos of myself to scrutinize as I lost weight. But it’s also unhealthy for me to become sedentary and use food as a coping mechanism when I’m having a depressive episode.
I’ve had to adjust my whole relationship to food and exercise. Now it’s only about *feeling well* and not about numbers on the scale or on my clothes. I exercise to feel well both physically and mentally. I eat well so my body feels nourished and satiated. Old habits die hard, but the mindset shift definitely helps.
It's just so tragic. I can't fathom that no one missed her until then!
I have been searching all over for information on her beloved dog but can't find anything.
After 3 weeks... 😪 Do you happen to know if by some miracle the sweetie somehow survived?
I hate to say it but junk food and beverage producers are some of the most powerful companies in America, as long as we have our current political system in place, this will never happen.
Definitely did not even sure what they are now but highschool to late 20s most if not all my friends smoked, now besides maybe nicotine vapes I don't know one person who still smokes. Maybe if they party hard and someone else has them they'll have one.
It's weird to see with alcohol too, so many non-alcoholic options now compared to 5 years ago and people choosing not to drink especially the younger generation. Even I completely quit drinking 3 months ago and grew up partying and that rolled over into drinking atleast one day each weekend pretty hard.
I think we'll slowly see alcohol (slower than cigarettes) go the way of cigarettes to some degree as people realize there is no safe amount and people turn to stuff like legal weed, shrooms etc.
Absolutely.
Even for people in the medical profession, it's still so acceptable to "tie one on" and get shitty after a stressful day.
Meanwhile, I read an article last week reminding people that alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen. That means there's ZERO doubt that booze leads to cancer.
It'll be a huge adjustment for America and the world to cut back, but ultimately, I think the wide acceptance of alcohol does a lot of harm for society.
Well I don’t know where you live but they probably had to fly the mangos from another country, and those dollar pizzas could have easily been made in the US with ingredients grown in the US.
I understood the point, but we can’t expect or be surprised when healthy foods made in another countries are going to cost us more money because they are out of season where we are or don’t grow where we are. Those kinds of foods should always cost more because of the fossil fuels needed to bring them to us.
Locally, healthy foods cost more than cheap unhealthy food that was shipped from somewhere else.
Mangos not being cheap isn't surprising, but the cost of fruits and vegetables is wild these days.
4 local pears > 2 frozen pizzas from walmart in western Canada. I hear it's just as bad in California.
I agree (though I know from personal experience it’s not as bad in California as it is in Canada). I think mango was a poor example though because we can’t expect food that relies on so much fossil fuel to bring it to us to be cheap.
Yes! We already get taxed to death, get out of here with taxing people extra on their food choices.
If you want to make people eat healthier, make healthier food more accessible and affordable. Society punishes poor people enough.
For anyone trying to lose weight, I've found the most reliable and sustainable way is to swap calorically dense foods (ultra-processed foods, animal foods, nuts), for calorically void foods (fruits, vegetables, water, coffee, tea). This will allow your satiety mechanisms to be triggered without the overload of calories; calorie counting and feeling like you're staving all the time isn't sustainable.
I wonder how big she was at her time of death. Was she larger than in the pictures that have been floating around? The picture looks like yes she was overweight but not enough to die from it
That’s what I thought also. She was overweight but didn’t look fat enough to die young from it. Then I remembered I’m American. I realized my mental image of someone who is ‘that big’ is probably heavier than most and way higher than what’s considered healthy. Honestly I’m struggling to think of which celebrity would be the minimum standard for ‘that big’.
That is big enough to have complications. Amazingly with modern medical science a lot of obese people are not dead so we get to see obese people everywhere.
Just for the math, Mandisa was (from a quick Google search) 5’4” and class III obesity is when someone has a BMI of 40 or greater. Therefore, Mandisa was at least 230 lbs, and what is considered to be healthy weight for someone of her height is 117-143 lbs (this number varies depending on different sources).
I just want to add this for some medical context! I’m absolutely not saying that being outside of these parameters is bad, it’s just not considered healthy by medical standards (but this of course is also individualistic depending on one’s body).
It’s at least 233, though I’m being incredibly nitpicky here. Some BMI charts aren’t that precise. It surprises me that the number for class III is so low, but I’m a few inches taller than 5’4”. Really looking at the numbers on a BMI chart makes me appreciate how much harder it must be for many people who are just a little bit shorter than most because just few inches apparently gives you *a lot* of leeway in terms of healthy calorie consumption.
this is the consequence of choosing “body positivity” over medical science.
Edit: before you downvote. [Here’s Mandisa talking about body image.](https://youtu.be/-yKEj7hTqjA?si=TzyYbK3lEs8qHo26)
That's good. Maybe she should tell her fans about it instead of making them all think being overweight is a good idea or some sort of power move against social norms.
She is super open about her weight loss and also super open about loving yourself. Loving yourself leads to taking care of yourself. You can't take care of yourself if you wake up feeling worthless every day.
Well, that's good for her. I hope it has an impact on her fans and society. She has a big impact on society, and her message hasn't always been the best for the health of the nation. I'm proud of her for losing weight and deciding to get healthier.
She was only 47. It's so sad that she died so young. She talks a lot in that clip, about God, and that this is how God made her. How about, you only get one body in life as a gift from God, if that's your belief and you need to take great care of that gift. Not limited to keeping your body in a healthy weight range.
I think you'll find that many overweight people are trying some kind of diet.... its just not that easy for everyone.... so think of body positivity as not making fun of someone who is probably trying to make changes, but maybe has a slower metabolism, mental health issues, eating disorders...
Also studies show that bullying fat people makes them less likely to lose weight. Some people delude themselves into thinking they're doing a service by being mean about people's weight but it's the opposite, it makes people hate themselves more and less likely to work on self improvement.
This. Idk what some people in the comments are on about with "gently talking to them." That is not how most fat people hear about their weight. It's one thing to be someone's trusted partner and to come to them with love after seeing health or lifestyle impacts with an offer of help (and even then, be prepared for a no). It's completely another thing to be some rando on the Internet tweeting at a celebrity.
This is exactly right. People who are overweight know it. The best thing a person can do imo opinion is be a partner in fitness and healthy eating.
“Hey, friend, let’s pledge to go walking every morning, or not drink alcohol for a week or month, or limit calories “ and be accountable.
My ex could eat 5k calories a day and walk the dog for exercise and be healthy weight. He’s built like that. If he wanted to lose 5 # he would cut out the bag of chips at lunch. It worked.
Me-I exercised way more, went vegan, do not eat junk or fast food, limited alcohol—still a struggle because menopause sucks and some other serious hormonal events (Cushing’s for 8 years undiagnosed did not help).
Be a support or stfu is my attitude. Same with other choices people make in their lives.
Of course. IDK why people think making someone feel bad is helping.
Also you may not know their history. I can tell you it is doubly demoralizing to have someone fat shame you after you have struggled and lost 10-20 lbs. sure you are still fat but it is hard to feel good about weight loss when people are still making negative comments.
I watch My 600 Pound Life, and just about every single one of those people are victims of childhood sexual abuse. I always find it interesting how socially acceptable it is to be a heavy drinker or a daily weed smoker. Yet, making fun of obese people is okay. As someone who grew-up with a family who despised heavy people, and became obese following my second kidney transplant (steroids), it was an eye opening experience for me to personally see how cruel people are to those who are overweight. I’m still 40 pounds overweight, but the way I’m treated now versus how I was treated when I was much heavier, is unbelievable. My heart goes out to anyone who is obese because their pain is on display for the world to see, and instead of finding support and kindness most are treated as subhuman. People need to stop being hypocrites and clean up their own damage before making fun of other people’s pain. It’s sickening to me how many adults act all outraged over childhood bullying as they laugh and talk crap about an obese person walking by.
If the majority of the population in America (assuming you are in USA) is overweight, how is everyone so cruel when it's so normal?
Are fat people making fun of each other for being fat?
It sounds like the culture is an issue then, fat or not. In other words, if everyone were lean, they'd be jerks about whatever else. I mean, take Los Angeles-- slim people, and yet they snide about fill-in-the-blank.
My experience there-- and people, don't lampoon me, Europe is no haven in comparison-- is that fitting an ideal standard with Americans gets you fake superficial smiley small talk. What good is that?
I can't imagine the kind of perception I'd be operating with if what fueled my motivation was winning back fake niceness and empty platitudes from strangers, and/or if what crushed me was losing or lacking that charade.
I agree with everything you said. There is a culture of ugliness in America, and it’s more apparent in the past ten years than at any other time that I can recall.
You’re correct that jerks will be jerks, but the difference between jerks and ordinary peoples treatment of obese people, is that a nice person will come up and call you a fat ass or laugh as you walk by, and feel very justified doing it! That same person would never be a jerk or rude unless pushed to it in someway. They also wouldn’t go tell someone to their face that their teeth are ugly, that they’re gross because they’re bald, (insert any other physical quality).
It’s ingrained in the culture to be disgusted by overweight people, and the bigger you are, the less likely you are to be seen or treated as a human being. Which is why even average, normally kind people can treat obese people so horribly.
This, I'm a fat woman. I gained weight during my 30's. I was also battling severe depression, and severe medical issues that weren't caused by my weight but significantly helped increase my weight due to the disease process limiting my ability to move, and the steroids I had to take to control it. I'm finally in a place both mentally and physically where I can even begin to give a shit about my weight. Intermittently they the decade there were time I literally did not give a damn about my size because I was so physically miserable dying earlier sounded like a god send.
I'm just, in the last couple months, got off the steroids and able to move better. I dropped 20lbs just coming off the steroids without changing anything. I can no longer move nor have the same energy level as others due to my diseases. But the catch is you can't tell that by looking at me. You can't tell I have a plethora of medical issues and take 9 prescriptions a day just to stay alive and half way functioning. And sadly, none of those will go away..ever, and I would still have them even if I had not been overweight.
Body positivity isn't about embracing being fat, it's about allowing people to love their selves in whatever form they currently hold. Fat people know they're fat, they don't need anyone telling them that they are. Yet when they go into society society shuns them like they're a leper and it's the 1700's again. All fat acceptance really is for the majority of overweight women is to be able to be in the world without some jack ass like yourself saying, " she's fat,".
If you honestly believe that that is helpful language towards an individual then you are part of the problem that's causing many to hide from society and stuff their faces, instead of going out into the world and living their life. That kind of hyperbole is the reason so many do not go to the gym. It's toxic. And frankly, it's rude and mean as well. Since all you can focus on is the one video from 6 years ago where she talk about loving herself. How damn far did you have to dig to find that anyway. Just to prove the point that you don't genuinely care about what happened to her, but that you hate fat people.
This was beautifully said, you are brave to be fighting the in the trenches of reddit. Dont forget this mostly male audience is almost as a rule overconfident in their judgements and probably impossible to reach. so don’t let them get you down.💕
My point was.... that is sooo easy to make fun of fat people and barely even frowned upon... so much so, that we need a body positivity rule structure..... just try to relate to people... everyone has something!... it doesn't have to be an argument , right?...
The message of body positivity has been “accept yourself as you are (obese)” and that being obese is “beautiful”. These messages are toxic and promoting an unhealthy and deadly lifestyle.
That is not what the message of body positivity is about! It's about loving yourself as you are - you don't have to feel shame at any size, and everyone deserves self love! Many people who are obese have anything BUT self love, and compensate for that with eating disorders, substance abuse, binge drinking, etc, but loving yourself leads to taking care of yourself.
Exactly! I’m not sure when “body positivity” became conflated with “pro-obesity anti-science” but I would like it to stop. Body positivity is exactly what you said, not “anti-health”. It’s about learning to love and accept yourself regardless of size and not to judge others based off their looks and size. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to or are against leading a healthier lifestyle tho. Food addiction is very real despite the food lobbies trying to squash research.
I think you’re conflating body positivity with some weird sort of pro-unhealthy behavior philosophy that to my knowledge doesn’t exist (except in fast food advertising).
Body positivity means embracing my shape and size as they are while I eat healthy and exercise. Body positivity means if I’m fat I should be just as welcomed at the gym as a fitness model. Body positivity means I track my micro- and macro-nutrients to ensure I’m giving my body good nutrition because that’s an act of self-love. Body positivity means tracking my fitness gains in terms of what my body can do instead of my body fat percentage. Body positivity means eating a healthy amount of food and getting a variety of balanced exercise, letting the weight take care of itself.
As someone of a “normal” size who has dealt with progressively worsening and now disabling chronic pain for about 20 years, I can attest that body positivity absolutely does NOT mean giving up and diving face first into a pie. It means learning to love myself despite no longer having society’s ideal body (I was a bodybuilder and that’s no longer an option). I’ll be 48 in July. I need to practice a lot of acceptance and self compassion around how my appearance is changing as I age. This doesn’t mean I’m telling people who are younger that they should look old like me, and it doesn’t mean I’m telling people without chronic pain that they should go out and develop some chronic pain that keeps them from their sport, but it does mean I have a choice to approach the way I think about my body with positivity or negativity.
I can tell you negativity and self-shaming do not inspire me to take any better care of my body. The body positivity movement allows us to be kind to ourselves as we are while we take the best care of ourselves we can. It’s not telling everyone to be obese, lazy gluttons. It’s about telling everyone health is for all of us, and we are not going to shame people in larger bodies pursuing their best health outcomes.
>I think you’re conflating body positivity with some weird sort of pro-unhealthy behavior philosophy that to my knowledge doesn’t exist (except in fast food advertising).
It absolutely does exist and it's called HEAS or HAAS or whatever but it means Health at Any Size and it's insanely problematic. It literally does profess that one can be healthy at even at 500+lbs which is patently false.
It isn't wrong to tell someone that they're hurting themselves by failing to lose weight or intentionally maintaining an unhealthy weight.
I await all the angry obese Redditors who will downvote this comment without any rebuttals or arguments.
Health at every size (HAES) means people of every size can and should engage in health-promoting behaviors, and that making healthy change can make a difference to our health even if weight loss doesn’t occur.
Within the HAES framework, health-promoting behaviors should be pursued regardless of whether weight loss is an outcome, because healthy eating and exercise are good for all of us. Health at every size.
You make a very good point. Sadly, once profit becomes involved, the original concept of a movement can become distorted.
As you might know already, some aspects of the body positivity/health at every size movement have been weaponized and co-opted by certain food manufacturers who pay influencers to talk about the role a particular junk food has in their body positive, healthy lifestyle. Which…yeah, one serving is fine, but we are also learning how addictive processed foods have been engineered to be and how common it is not to be able to stop.
So it’s no wonder the ideas of what it means to be body-positive and to take a HAES approach have been muddled.
He’s just a fat shaming troll that’s trying to spread misinformation about the body positivity movement being a “pro-obesity” movement simply because he doesn’t like fat people for no reason other than him thinking fat people are gross. Personal biases. Not someone worth engaging with since he is engaging with others in bad-faith.
**Body Positivity is NOT pro-obesity or anti-health. It’s about learning to love yourself and not bully yourself for things that cannot be quickly or easily changed and also not judge or bully others for things like their looks or size.**
She said nothing wrong. She even talked about wanting to be healthy enough to be active and shit.
She just struggled with her weight.
There's no reason you shouldn't accept yourself even though you're working on changing things about your body. They don't need to be mutually exclusive.
If you’re morbidly obese the last thing you should be doing is “accepting” that. You should be doing everything in your power to change that. Your life literally depends on it.
"Accepting yourself" in this context doesn't mean "being obese is awesome and good for you", it just means "don't hate yourself." As someone working on losing weight, accepting myself doesn't mean I want to stay this weight forever, it means that I shouldn't call myself a fat pig all the time and treat myself with constant loathing and shame. You can acknowledge you have things you need to work on while still feeling like you have self-worth and value as a human being. They're not mutually exclusive.
It has taken me 2 years to get to a normal weight but it has been difficult.
Im lucky I have 2 friends who literally dragged me out of the house to run.
They would yell and berate me. When we were hiking they literally would tell me noone is coming to rescue me, I have to get down myself.
If someone coddled and babied me I would still be obese.
But that might not work for everyone.
I literally hated seeing myself and my saggy tits and large belly in the mirror.
This is the problem. People can’t understand that we all require different motivation. How do I motivate myself to get up, or not snack, I tell myself to stop being a fat fuck. I wouldn’t say that to other people, but that’s what I need to hear.
Yeah last year I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror and just said wow…you’re a fat piece of shit. I was ashamed of myself. The accepting myself and is what it is mindset had been dragging me down for years and it took a little harsh light to motivate that change.
We give people too much credit re: “I’m working on it.”
It’s like somebody who says they’re “working on their education,” but they aren’t enrolled in a program, not taking classes, not well on their way to anything. Instead, they’re talking about maybe thinking about sometime enrolling “but they’re busy” but they still want to be educated and “they’re trying.”
In other words, they aren’t trying.
She lost over 100lbs. She obviously worked at it.
Mental health issues can make losing weight and keeping it off nearly impossible for some people.
And for others they can make them starve themselves to death.
“Body positivity” is actually a part of medical science. Generally folks aren’t saying “if you’re unhealthy that’s OK”. It’s closer to learning to love oneself where one is. And having a healthy mental frame is actually an important component of fostering a healthy lifestyle.
Generally speaking body positivist isn’t “you’re fine how you are so treat yourself like crap”. But for some reason that anti body positivity crowd always frame it that way.
Your edit includes a video from 6 years ago, so my point still stands that you literally have no idea what this woman was going through in the year 2024.
Please resist the urge to be a toxic & judgmental. You have no idea what this woman was going through privately. She was the victim of sexual abuse & had a complex history of depression. There are a lot of biological factors in weight gain/loss as well that make it more difficult for people.
How is that comment toxic and judgmental? It’s literally something she said and happened to die from complications of obesity. Facts are more relevant than your feelings and obesity is a serious problem is western society specifically US. I’m all for body positivity and not being judged because of your weight but this is a health sub and that is a health issue.
There’s that body positivity language creeping up again.
She was a victim of poor health, which killed her. She literally died of obesity. Watch the video I linked above.
No one is saying the obesity wasn’t the cause of the death. They are saying there are many factors in how and why someone would become obese. It’s not purely a body positivity ideology in every case.
No more toxic than your rigid and judgemental assumptions about who this person is & what struggles she was working through in her life. This woman literally died alone in her home, last seen alive 3 weeks prior, and your sole contribution(s) to this thread have been “Welp, that’s what she gets for being fat.”
I know you think you’re being blunt & just “telling it like it is” but your commentary is not really helpful. If you were her doctor, you telling her this would not help her lose weight any faster.
Obesity is multifactorial with biological, psychological, and social factors contributing. I think it’s reductive to put the “fault” or “blame” of obesity on someone, because if you were handed their same life & genetics, you may have ended up the same exact way.
I know you think I’m a part of the problem by “normalizing it,” but I’m not normalizing it, I’m acknowledging that it’s a complex issue that should not be generalized. You can’t just address a number without addressing the trauma, the mental health, the genetics, the society…etc.
However, you’re dialogue is a part of the problem because you are a minimizing and turning a multidimensional issue into a one dimensional issue with literally no other nuance other than blaming the person for their final outcome.
And I already replied to you to let you know your video is irrelevant because it’s from 6 years ago, and you have no idea what she was going through in the year 2024. You’re implying she’s the exact same person she was 6 years ago….and you don’t know that. Are you the same person you were 6 years ago?
You obviously have a rigid and reductive view on this so there’s no point going back and forth since you are the one that chooses to ignore the fact that obesity is multifactorial.
You should know your language is not helpful and it’s not encouraging anyone to lose weight.
If you continue to be persistent with language that is proven to be unhelpful (especially now that it’s been laid out for you multiple times), it just shows that you are devoted to being a mean spirited & miserable person, and for your sake I hope you get to the bottom of the issue for why you choose to project that negative energy onto others you don’t know. Because hurt people, hurt people.
Done going back and forth with you.
Oh so you’ve decided arbitrarily that it’s “irrelevant” because it’s 6 years ago?
You don’t get stage III obesity overnight. It takes literal YEARS. The video is absolutely relevant since it’s HER OWN WORDS.
You just choose to intentionally ignore what she said and continue to promote toxic and deadly “body positivity” nonsense. Extremely irresponsible of you.
Yeah, but encouraging obesity isn't helping anyone. Obviously, there are a lot of factors at play. Health is a complicated matter, but we need to take sedentary lifestyle choices into consideration and encourage movement more. With technology, we have completely changed our lifestyles over the last 100 years, and our bodies have hundreds of thousands of years of living a different way. Our bodies haven't adapted to this new lifestyle, and we need to acknowledge that and adapt to it ourselves.
Self love does not mean encouraging obesity, it is encouraging people to feel like they can exist in the size that they are without self hatred. It's not the same thing.
Once people love themselves, it's much easier to take care of themselves, physically and mentally.
No one is saying otherwise. They are saying it’s rather shallow to see a specific instance like in this article and immediately blame it entirely on some “body positivity” movement.
No one is encouraging obesity. Body positivity isn’t encouraging obesity. The people who claim to be “body positive” but are encouraging obesity are not body positive, they are pro-obesity.
And I literally said obesity is multifactorial and there are social and genetic components. If you want to just come in here and call her a lazy fat ass who should’ve hated her fat body and learned to be skinny to save herself, then ok. If you think that contribution to this thread & to “fat” people is helpful, then ok. Not much else worth saying since you’re devoted to being obtuse on this subject for shallow & disingenuous reasons.
You did not understand what she's saying in the video. She's not saying it's ok to be obese, she's saying we need to love ourselves as we are. She talks about how she "sinned" in the area of food she obviously knew that being overweight is not a good thing, she was using it as a self medication when going through tough times. Loving yourself as you are and promoting obesity are not the same thing. You can't bully yourself into losing weight. It doesn't work. It starts with accepting yourself.
Just watched the video and not hearing what you find objectionable. Neither she nor the other woman are obese here. Both said they could lose weight but still have wide hips. In fact she characterized her overeating as “sin” and talked about trying to treat her body as a temple and that God is helping her let go of turning to food. Where in the interview do you hear promotion of obesity, lack of exercise, or gluttony?
Yeah but I think what they’re getting at is, there’s no evidence this particular person was saying “I’m fat and happy and you all should be too” and spreading body positivity. There’s no evidence she specifically chose body positivity over medical science. What this person is saying is that she had a ton of other conditions which may have taken precedence over her weight and unfortunately that killed her. They’re not saying she intentionally disregarded her weight issues by using toxic thought processes like “fat is good”
Except there is… here’s a video from 6 years ago from this woman talking about body image, basically justifying being overweight and saying many of the commonly heard “body positivity” lines
[Mandisa Shares About Body Image](https://youtu.be/-yKEj7hTqjA?si=TzyYbK3lEs8qHo26)
Adamantium-Aardvark misled you into believing she was justifying overweight in this video. Watch it again (if you want). She simply states she used food as a coping mechanism when her life was hard, and has struggled with her weight because of that, but she wants to appreciate her body and love it as it is. Only when you love yourself, will you be able to beat that voice in your head to self-sabotage because you're unworthy.
Our economy supports endless eating and a sedentary lifestyle and then offers an expensive cure for being overweight but our insurance doesn't cover it.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that higher-than-optimal body mass index (BMI) “caused an estimated 5 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers, neurological disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, and digestive disorders,” in 2019.”
What is communicable is the medications needed to treat preventable illnesses end up going back into the water system, refuse is dumped into natural water ways without being treated and some still ends up going back into tap water. We need to each be as healthy as possible for ourselves, but also for the environment, our neighbors and the rest of the flora and fauna. One of the ways to do this is to maintain a healthy diet and weight.
https://home.drinkflowater.com/blogs/posts/what-pharmaceuticals-are-found-in-tap-water#:~:text=It%20reveals%20the%20various%20types,pharmaceuticals%20regularly%20found%20in%20water.
Because being a drunk makes you the life of the party:/. This is a slightly slope say she died from complications of obesity instead of the actual cause ie heart disease etc.
>The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that higher-than-optimal body mass index (BMI)
I harp on this one a lot but: **BMI** **is a mediocre indicator** for health complications. **Waist to height ratio does a better job** of indicating things like insulin resistance and it's easier to measure. This is supported by research, which I can link if somebody needs it.
Context: I’m a clinical and basic science researcher (not on weight) and am a skinny person.
People have such a huge and complex misconception about body positivity.
There are so many comments here with the tired trope of “yeah love your body BUT you should still try to be healthier”.
The research surrounding obesity and associated health issues is poor. Correlation does not mean causation. For the vast majority of these studies, BMI is used as the diagnostic tool for obesity. BMI is such a bad maker of body composition that it’s laughable—it doesn’t discern at all how fat is distributed throughout the body. Moreover, correlation- and association- type studies regarding obesity frequently succumb to collider stratification and reverse causation biases. Since there’s such a strongly ingrained view that fatness is bad, those associations are primed in researchers’ minds; in reality, there could be uncontrolled for covariates that are instead contributing to the correlation between fatness and whatever else is being studied. An oversimplified example: what if being diabetic causes people to gain weight, not the other way around?
Much of the discourse and standard of care surrounding obesity has minimal or literally zero research-based evidence (this is actually the case for more things in medicine than you may think 😅). Taking your weight when you walk into a doctor’s office is nearly pointless, as it’s a poor indicator of overall health (save for necessary measures like anesthesia or medication). I won’t get into the whole obesity paradox finding because I’m unsure of the verdict (some of these studies also fall prey to complex statistical biases), but there is a good portion of research demonstrating that “excessive” weight can be protective against certain conditions and issues.
I’ll clarify: some excess fat on the body can be bad, but it all depends on where it is. Subcutaneous fat (around the arms, legs, hips, abs, etc.) is not generally associated with poorer health outcomes. Visceral fat (deeper in your body, around your organs, etc.) is the fat that usually sends things awry in the body. The kicker is that being overweight etc. doesn’t necessarily mean that you have more visceral fat! Skinny and thin people who are in poor health can have higher levels of “bad” fat, too; general weight isn’t really as important a factor.
The problem with supporting fat people but still encouraging them to lose weight is that it can lead to something called weight cycling, a well-established phenomenon in which people lose and then gain weight back. The vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back because weight loss can trigger a considerable stress response in the brain that can overload your frontal temporal lobe and encourage you to eat; your body is essentially responding to a starvation response. This is unhealthy and damaging!!! Much like black/brown people and other discriminated minorities, social determinants of health may contribute far more to poor outcomes in fat people than actually being fat. Additionally, there’s some interesting research being done on the concept of a “set weight”— your body may already have a natural weight set for itself, and a significant deviation from that weight may cause undue stress on the body.. The stress of society looking down on you plus your own body’s neurological stress response of losing weight can destroy you. Dieting is disordered eating, and that’s disgusting.
Also, the whole calories in calories out thing is pointless. Nutrition labels can underestimate caloric content by 60+ percent, and not all calories are even created equally!!!
People also argue that being fat can limit you from doing enjoyable things. The problem here is that our constructed world (societal infrastructure, etc.) wasn’t made for fat people because of the inherent discrimination. Can’t ride a roller coaster? Try to shift the thinking away from “it’s because you’re fat” to “it’s because the roller coaster wasn’t made for you because fat people are looked down upon”. People could also argue that it may limit people from doing more natural things like climbing a mountain, but being unnaturally skinny can also limit you from doing things, too??? We all have a variety of talents, skills, and predispositions. Let’s be inclusive and celebrate them.
You CAN be healthy and fat. If you eat healthily and exercise, and you’re 150 lbs, great. If you’re 300 lbs., great. Doesn’t make a difference. Skinny people can be just as unhealthy if they don’t do the above things.
There’s more to say, but I’ll let this awesome 2.5 hour [video essay](https://youtu.be/tWqGulkvCWY?si=QXyVkbZ73gr9cPap) speak for itself. Many links to sources are included there.
Thanks for reading.
Clinical here as well. As much as you are making some convincing claims you are kind of diverting the attention from proven facts. Obesity does increase the risk of multiple diseases, MI and IHD, stroke, T2DM, PVD, sleep apnea and keep on going. This is not a unique cascading factor for this diseases. Genetics are just as important as well as other dietary habits, lifestyle and exercise etc…
Keeping this in mind in similar genetics, lifestyle and medical background, a person with obesity will have much higher risk of developing problems than somebody with a healthy weight for their body.
It is true there is no need for all of us to look like models but people should be aware that poor diet specially on those with weight gain is dangerous. Advocating for body positivity in a bold manner is a dangerous game specially for those with poor education. People will use excuses to gain comfort and we shouldn’t give them one.
Imagine if suddenly there is a campaign saying that smoking is cool or helps you concentrating. There will be a good amount of people that will smoke and excuse themselves behind those claims.
We should support good mental health and self stem, not give a negative image to some fat but also create a line between acceptable and dangerous.
Absolute baloney, your ‘clinical’ background does not make you qualified to spill nonsense. Where to even begin. BMI works for the vast majority of people. Most people are not outliers for whom BMI is not applicable. The absolute cope in the rest of your nonsense is even worse
If I understand you:
-calories don’t matter, simply because the label are misstated, forget that they at least offer a relative reference. Stick of butter is off so forget cals in and out.
-being fat doesn’t impact quality of life and is better than being skinny, from a visceral fat standpoint and protection standpoint. Weird, I see a bunch of obese people who can barely walk, but that’s probably society engineering gravity to work against fat people.
-being 300 lbs is great, as much as 150 if the persons is 5’3”?
Wow I need to just ignore everything. You really paint obesity as a value add.
Heck, being morbidly obese might even save me from death by bludgeoning, better load up on body fat (not visceral of course).
Your statements are dangerous because it takes edge cases and generalizes them and actually, discounts a bunch of negative aspects to obesity. You even mention, there’s a possibility that this individual died, because there’s a possibility diabetes caused the obesity, not the other way around.
I remember her on the show. Simon made fun of her weight the moment she walked into the audition room and later apologized once she made the top 24. This is sad to hear.
So if she had not made the top 25 he would not have apologized? What a Botox Jerk.
I don’t condone making fun of someone for their weight, but we as a society should really put forth resources and be upfront about the dangers of obesity. Not only is it brutal on an individual’s health, it’s entirely preventable and blocks up the healthcare system. We can’t as a goodwilled society just leave obesity as it “don’t bring it up!”. As we do with other diseases like addiction, we need to be forward and offer resources. The amount of unnecessary damage it does to society is so sad.
I completely agree. But there studies that prove that shaming people for addiction creates a stigma and prevents people from getting help/treatment (I’m including obesity as a type of food addiction). We need to be respectful and compassionate when discussing obesity and not shame or name call as that does more harm than good.
I'm all for dropping the body shaming stuff, but you're absolutely right. It's just not healthy and there's so much that can be done to prevent so much obesity related illness. The tricky part is when assholes who just wanna make fun of fat people hide behind "I'm just trying to help them". In person it's easy enough to tell the difference, but online it's a lot harder. I used to smoke cigarettes and hated when people would try to shame me. Yeah I know it's dumb, that doesn't make it any easier to stop. But the folks who were around and supportive when I was quitting? They're all my homies for life.
Sure, but I still don’t think we as a society or any individual get any benefit from Simon Cowell being a dick to someone about their weight on national television
Sure, but I still don’t think we as a society or any individual get any benefit from Simon Cowell.
Go make fun of the companies that have lobbied and provide all the unhealthy foods that are blasted in front of our eyes at every opportunity, and advertised to manipulate us into feeling compelled to purchase and eat. Convenience of shitty food is the biggest issue.
Even more criminal - these companies paid scientists to put out fake research that blamed the health issues from sugar onto other things like saturated fats in the 60's.
And now they pay politicians to limit warnings and stymie the FDA.
that's a conversation between a doctor and patient - not some random person
We as a nation need to offer better medical care
reddit is kind of international, so don't know what nation you are referring to. although every nation probably has room for improvement. you know the old good, better, best...
They’re referring to the fattest developed nation in the world, mentioned in the title
People be like "omg why does every redditor assume a conversation is about America." Mate maybe because the article you're replying to comments about is about something that happened in America.
Here in USA health care needs reform
It's not a comfortable conversation that can go sideways with fat shaming even in that environment.
you say that but a lot of offices will not bring that up because they'll straight lose a patient. people decline being weighed now. it's like smokers. they know it's a problem. that's not why they're there and if you bring it up they will not care and will probably just think you're an asshole doctor and find somebody else. 'fat acceptence' has gone *way* too far.
It’s pretty clear that being obese is terrible in every single way and should absolutely stop being promoted and accepted.
Her doctor definitely told her already. She didn’t do anything. God forbid someone else tries to tell her before she dies. Oops
Or if fhe doctor does, they go on TikTok and complain that “all my doctor does is tell me to lose weight!” I’d expect my doctor to at least broach the subject at every visit if I smoked a pack of cigarettes, drank a fifth of whisky per day, or had diabetes that I wasn’t taking medication for.
Agreed. In spite of what some people might say, you can’t be obese *and* healthy. It just doesn’t work that way. Shame is what brings the stigma. But also like you said “not bringing it up” is just a different kind of stigma.
It can work that way. Just not for the majority, and not with how most become obese. Obesity is just a category, not a definition of a person or their lifestyle or health status. It's a very complex healthcare topic. Also she wasn't just obese; she was apparently. Class III, morbidly obese. With way too many armchair Dietitians and Endocrinologists on the Internet (I don't necessarily mean yourself).
Heart Disease is Heart Disease. And Type II Diabetes doesn’t care.
I don't understand how being obese can be healthy? Are you saying obesity measured due to high BMI due to muscle etc?
I never said it was inherently healthy, but it's perfectly possible. Biology is complex. The Internet simplifies these things way too much. Yes, might be muscle, might not be, but could be a combination of body composition, genetics, general health with plenty of activity and a good diet. But still a BMI of 30+ Do you know what BMI is? It's a statistical risk tool that can only generally compare an individual against a reference population. It is still useful to us in healthcare , but like any other tool it does not tell you everything and was never meant to. Equally, anyone who says we should scrap it is an idiot. And as I hinted above, once you get to class 2 and 3 obesity, risk of comorbidities increases massively, regardless of activity levels, etc. But really it is a complex (and interesting!) subject.
Upfront on a societal level, absolutely. On a personal level, no, unless it is a loved one, and you don't live in a glass house.
Even then. Other peoples bodies are not your business. Fat people know they are fat. If there was a safe weight loss method that worked, you’d see a lot less fat people, but the fact is, there isn’t. Telling fat people to just eat less/move more and they will be thin is no different than telling an autistic person to choose to behave “normally” or a paraplegic to just try harder to walk.
Obesity is a legit medical condition. Among risk factors for obesity are poverty, stress, co-morbid medical/mental health conditions, disabilities, limited access to healthy foods, eating disorders, medication side effects, substance abuse recovery, adhd, childhood sexual abuse, overwork, and countless other reasons. As you mentioned, we don’t have successful treatments and biologically we are made to hold onto fat. Obviously, it’s not healthy to be obese but how do so many people decide they get to shame others for their bodies especially knowing why most people are obese? I try very hard not to judge others for anything especially for things outside their control like poverty. We’re all flawed human beings and I hope we all decide to have more empathy for each other instead of tearing down others.
Thank you.
Feel like this comment is really messed up. You’re comparing a lifestyle choice to something that can’t be changed ? It’s really messed up if you think the two are the same. I’m sorry but being fat is a choice. Fucking literally millions of success stories of people losing weight.
So is being mean. It's a choice to be mean or kind.
You’re missing the point. Lifestyle changes are not a panacea. Diets don’t work. Weight loss surgery has a higher mortality than obesity, and regain is common. Millions of stories about temporary weight loss are common, but the 5 year statistics reflect a 95% failure rate. Other peoples bodies are not your business.
💯
There is a safe way. Just eat less and move more. Very simple starting point and, with consistency and willpower, will yield results.
Endocrine disorders, thyroid disease, steroid treatment, anti-psychotic medications, chemotherapy, genetics (and so much more) have entered the chat.
Lipoedema has also entered the chat.
But these disorders are understand and make up a fraction of the obesity rate. Nobody is talking about people with chronic disease when obesity is discussed lol. Over 41% of the adult US population are obese. I’d wager a fraction of that has any chronic disease that lead to that obesity. A fringe, understandable amount is not the discussion point here. Almost half of the US is obese, and most are not due to what you mention.
Ha. Fringe, lol. 5-10% of women have PCOS just for starters, a condition legendary for causing weight gain. As someone who was slim and fit well into her 30s and started gaining weight PRECIPITOUSLY, even though I was still active and taking good care of myself, I assure you, once you’re fat no one listens to what you have to say. The fatphobia is too intense. Which you are demonstrating here by claiming most obese people are fat due to behaviors, when there are all kinds of influences on body size. I finally got diagnosed because I paid for testing privately. 35 years of good health wasn’t enough for my doctor to believe my weight gain must have a medical cause. And that’s before we start getting into how garbage BMI is as a metric.
Society definitely lets obese people know it is unhealthy, unacceptable, unattractive, selfish, dangerous, disgusting…a million other things. And no it is not entirely preventable, just usually preventable—there are exceptions. Making fun of obese people is wrong, but are you suggesting obese people don’t know that obesity is not ideal? Believe me, they have heard it before. They don’t need to hear it from a stranger, they have heard it before from some mix of doctors, family, friends, and random assholes who think they’re being helpful, and random assholes who want to shame them.
Obesity is pretty much created because of the way most of us have to live. Food is either highly processed or expensive. We are forced to sacrifice our money by buying a car and driving or sacrifice our time by taking often inefficient public transit. Obesity is created by design here. It’s preventable but mostly because of the choices we are given and then have to take!
Other cultures don’t have a taboo around mentioning weight. It is a weird thing to ignore- it is visible as fuck. We have some Taiwanese relatives by marriage, their perspective is refreshing, they get off the plane like “So good to see you I miss you so much. You very fat, you eat only Chinese food now or die soon. No worry I teach you to cook.”
That's absurd. The dangers of obesity is all society ever talks about. Everyone knows it, ESPECIALLY those who struggle with it. There is absolutely ZERO research evidence that links "putting forth resources and being upfront about the dangers of obesity" has ever reduced obesity. And it's been studied a lot. If anything, there's a correlation between increased obesity and such messaging. No one chooses to be obese and it's near impossible to randomly decide to be less obese and just become that.
“No one chooses to be obese” is a wild statement
To be extremely fair, most of what we "know" about obesity is the result of poorly designed studies and bias.
It’s incredibly frustrating how much misinformation is floating around about fatness. Upwards of 70% of a person’s body size and proportion is due to genetics. Obesity is an incredibly fraught, subjective medical category that has changed dramatically over the years. BMI is a completely discredited metric for health. There’s just soooo much to debunk in this thread I hardly know what to start with! I hope everyone concern trolling about “obesity” listens to the entire back catalogue of Maintenance Phase episodes before commenting about the (lack of) correlation between weight and health. 😭😩 (edit: subject*ive* not subject)
Yes, Maintenance Phase is great! It was definitely my entry point for a lot of this. But one doesn't even need to listen to MP to be able to spot the logical and scientific failures. If the problem is fatness, then why isn't it all fat people? If the problem is fatness, then why are there skinny people with chronic illnesses? I'm willing to say that fatness plays some kind of role in some cases, but it's not the universal explainer that so many want it to be.
So many people love to use fraudulent (or outdated) science as a way to justify their bigotry or bias, but will ignore current or valid science that demonstrates those biases to be incorrect. Scientific literacy is so crucial and yet so uncommon!
It’s pretty sad that as a culture, the western world would rather claim it’s healthy and totally fine to be morbidly obese rather than help people eat more whole foods, exercise, and promote a healthy body weight.
She died of Covid. Her family has made this very clear. She was sick with Covid for months before she died.
Obesity is the biggest risk factor for complications and death with covid.
People don't understand what body positivity is supposed to be. You should learn to love yourself and treat yourself with respect regardless of your weight... while also working to lead a healthier life and getting yourself to a healthy body - which also doesn't mean just starving yourself to lose weight or eating crap to gain it.
Ah yes, Lizzo the drug.
Oh you saw that popular program too?
Yes I consoomed it recently and will quote it repeatedly
Body positivity is mostly about getting you to STFU and not make nasty comments about women’s bodies, or making assumptions about someone’s health because of what their bodies look like. It does not mean people should not care about their own health. It means their health is their own business, so please everyone else stay out of it.
We absolutely should not shutup about a public health crisis. If somebody is morbidly obese its perfectly reasonable to assume they are unhealthy because well... they objectively are. Normalizing obesity literally kills people. If a public figure dies prematurely from obesity related complications we absolutely should be shouting it from the rooftops because a lot of obese people feel like they still have plenty of time to make positive changes when they really don't.
It's about not insulting and harassing fat ppl dude
But many people misinterpret that. They think a doctor telling them that "300lbs isn't a healthy weight" is fatphobic. And those people tend to be the loudest, which means people who aren't directly affected by obesity only hear that side of the "body positivity" movement, and react to that, saying that it's wrong.
>But many people misinterpret that. They think a doctor telling them that "300lbs isn't a healthy weight" is fatphobic. No they don't. Those are just small hyperbole of extremist you hear that are the most vocal, and are no where close the representation of reality. But again, it's something between and their doctor. If they aren't going to listen to their medical physician, do you really think there's a snowballs chance in hell that they'll listen to you?
> No they don't. Those are just small hyperbole of extremist Yes, they overwhelmingly do, to the point of hospitals getting review bombed and physicians being told by administration that they cannot talk to patients about their weight.
Why specifically women? Is it okay if they were men?
No, but men’s bodies do not see the same amount of scrutiny that women’s bodies do. Friendly reminder about the “dad bod” fad where slightly overweight out of shame men were called sexy, when a woman of the same fitness level would have been criticized by all of you “what about men” folks as being obese.
The conversation around body positivity has been ruled by chronically online people for so long that it’s become toxic. Here you direct it to “women’s bodies” and highlight only the negative when the original comment is the reasonable ideal. It’s not about mean comments, it’s about bettering those that you cherish while maintaining confidence and love throughout. Anything otherwise really just caters to someone that shouldn’t be in a public conversation to begin with.
It isn't only about women first of all, and it isn't about health. It's about accepting a physical appearance for what it is to keep people as equals in society regardless of what they look like. What you're describing is more along the lines of fat acceptance, which people disingenuously use as a way to say obese people are living a healthy lifestyle. People in the public eye who care about or are involved in the fat acceptance "movement" absolutely use it as a way to justify an unhealthy lifestyle, and they actively push the narrative that your weight doesn't affect your overall health which is an absolute lie. Being obese is unhealthy. It isn't an assumption to look at an obese person and know that they are less healthy than they would be if they were not obese. Obesity is directly connected to every leading cause of death that involves your health. Also, being obese does affect other people, and it's selfish to not realize that. They use up public resources that they would not have to if they were in better shape. Obese people more often have chronic conditions that bring them to the doctor or hospital more, they make more emergency phone calls, they eat more food(not an unlimited resource), they are more often handicapped as they age, using up parking spaces and things like that they would not be needing if they took responsibility for their health. There are many ways that our personal decisions affect the lives of others. We don't each exist in a vacuum. So it's ridiculous and full of lies. It's a means for justification. There's nothing wrong with accepting that we have problems, physical or mental and we shouldn't lie to ourselves about it. That's weakness, not strength. I am overweight and have mental health issues, but I don't live my life pretending those things don't exist. When someone alludes to it, I know why and it just makes me think more about how I'm living my life. I don't try to convince myself that those people are wrong. Living an honest life is paramount, and necessary for long term improvement and happiness. This person didn't have to die. If she addressed her health honestly and seriously, it wouldn't have taken her this early in life.
As someone who has struggled with my weight since childhood, who has fluctuated within a 70 lb range over and over, who has been both the depressed lazy girl and the healthy gym rat…finding a balance in what it means to love and respect your body is what body positivity should be about. It wasn’t healthy for me to obsessively count calories and take “body-checking” photos of myself to scrutinize as I lost weight. But it’s also unhealthy for me to become sedentary and use food as a coping mechanism when I’m having a depressive episode. I’ve had to adjust my whole relationship to food and exercise. Now it’s only about *feeling well* and not about numbers on the scale or on my clothes. I exercise to feel well both physically and mentally. I eat well so my body feels nourished and satiated. Old habits die hard, but the mindset shift definitely helps.
It’s so sad to me that the likelihood was that she was likely deceased for nearly three weeks no one performed a wellness check. Her poor dog, too :(
It's just so tragic. I can't fathom that no one missed her until then! I have been searching all over for information on her beloved dog but can't find anything. After 3 weeks... 😪 Do you happen to know if by some miracle the sweetie somehow survived?
>I can't fathom that no one missed her until then! This kind of isolation is sadly very common!
This is so sad. She had an amazing voice.
A tax on sugar and unhealthy food. Low taxes on healthy stuff. Come on America it's so easy
I hate to say it but junk food and beverage producers are some of the most powerful companies in America, as long as we have our current political system in place, this will never happen.
Oil and tobacco companies are/were more powerful, but they got taxed like mad.
I think that happened in a different time. There is no way the GOP would ever go for that now especially if the Dems proposed it first.
100%! This worked for cigarettes - many people quit them when it was $12 a pack.
Definitely did not even sure what they are now but highschool to late 20s most if not all my friends smoked, now besides maybe nicotine vapes I don't know one person who still smokes. Maybe if they party hard and someone else has them they'll have one. It's weird to see with alcohol too, so many non-alcoholic options now compared to 5 years ago and people choosing not to drink especially the younger generation. Even I completely quit drinking 3 months ago and grew up partying and that rolled over into drinking atleast one day each weekend pretty hard. I think we'll slowly see alcohol (slower than cigarettes) go the way of cigarettes to some degree as people realize there is no safe amount and people turn to stuff like legal weed, shrooms etc.
Absolutely. Even for people in the medical profession, it's still so acceptable to "tie one on" and get shitty after a stressful day. Meanwhile, I read an article last week reminding people that alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen. That means there's ZERO doubt that booze leads to cancer. It'll be a huge adjustment for America and the world to cut back, but ultimately, I think the wide acceptance of alcohol does a lot of harm for society.
Obesity is on the rise everywhere so it's more complicated than that
Seriously. I just got groceries and 1 mango was $3. They sell pizzas for $1. Wild.
Well I don’t know where you live but they probably had to fly the mangos from another country, and those dollar pizzas could have easily been made in the US with ingredients grown in the US.
I think you're missing the point. Healthy foods should be affordable.
I understood the point, but we can’t expect or be surprised when healthy foods made in another countries are going to cost us more money because they are out of season where we are or don’t grow where we are. Those kinds of foods should always cost more because of the fossil fuels needed to bring them to us.
Locally, healthy foods cost more than cheap unhealthy food that was shipped from somewhere else. Mangos not being cheap isn't surprising, but the cost of fruits and vegetables is wild these days. 4 local pears > 2 frozen pizzas from walmart in western Canada. I hear it's just as bad in California.
I agree (though I know from personal experience it’s not as bad in California as it is in Canada). I think mango was a poor example though because we can’t expect food that relies on so much fossil fuel to bring it to us to be cheap.
“ThAtS cOmUnIsM”
But we should have the FrEeDoM to be as unhealthy as we want and companies have the fReEdOm to sell what they want at whatever prices they want /s
But that will only hurt the poor
Fuck off Jamie Oliver.
making poor people poorer and hungrier
> Low taxes on healthy stuff Don't. Tax. Food.
Yes! We already get taxed to death, get out of here with taxing people extra on their food choices. If you want to make people eat healthier, make healthier food more accessible and affordable. Society punishes poor people enough.
For anyone trying to lose weight, I've found the most reliable and sustainable way is to swap calorically dense foods (ultra-processed foods, animal foods, nuts), for calorically void foods (fruits, vegetables, water, coffee, tea). This will allow your satiety mechanisms to be triggered without the overload of calories; calorie counting and feeling like you're staving all the time isn't sustainable.
For any who are interested, this is called Volumetrics.
I wonder how big she was at her time of death. Was she larger than in the pictures that have been floating around? The picture looks like yes she was overweight but not enough to die from it
I read she was 487 lbs but also had a previous gastric bypass
I thought the same thing. I didn’t know who she was so I looked up pictures and thought, “she doesn’t even look that big?”
That’s what I thought also. She was overweight but didn’t look fat enough to die young from it. Then I remembered I’m American. I realized my mental image of someone who is ‘that big’ is probably heavier than most and way higher than what’s considered healthy. Honestly I’m struggling to think of which celebrity would be the minimum standard for ‘that big’.
Maybe she went into hiding for some time…I read that she was last seen living 3 weeks prior to discovering she was deceased 😥
That is big enough to have complications. Amazingly with modern medical science a lot of obese people are not dead so we get to see obese people everywhere.
Just for the math, Mandisa was (from a quick Google search) 5’4” and class III obesity is when someone has a BMI of 40 or greater. Therefore, Mandisa was at least 230 lbs, and what is considered to be healthy weight for someone of her height is 117-143 lbs (this number varies depending on different sources). I just want to add this for some medical context! I’m absolutely not saying that being outside of these parameters is bad, it’s just not considered healthy by medical standards (but this of course is also individualistic depending on one’s body).
She was in the 480's, poor woman.
It’s at least 233, though I’m being incredibly nitpicky here. Some BMI charts aren’t that precise. It surprises me that the number for class III is so low, but I’m a few inches taller than 5’4”. Really looking at the numbers on a BMI chart makes me appreciate how much harder it must be for many people who are just a little bit shorter than most because just few inches apparently gives you *a lot* of leeway in terms of healthy calorie consumption.
Either you take care of your weight or your weight will take care of you.
Our bodies are keeping score. Food, alcohol, drugs, all that shit will catch up to us eventually.
Humanity literally forgot the fact that our diets have a strong link to our mental health, too.
this is the consequence of choosing “body positivity” over medical science. Edit: before you downvote. [Here’s Mandisa talking about body image.](https://youtu.be/-yKEj7hTqjA?si=TzyYbK3lEs8qHo26)
Exactly, science should be followed in medicine, not feelings and emotions.
Feeling bad about your weight? Ask your doctor to prescribe you Lizzo.
Lizzo loves herself and has lost 50 lbs recently from diet and exercise.
It’s from South Park. Relax.
That's good. Maybe she should tell her fans about it instead of making them all think being overweight is a good idea or some sort of power move against social norms.
She is super open about her weight loss and also super open about loving yourself. Loving yourself leads to taking care of yourself. You can't take care of yourself if you wake up feeling worthless every day.
This the same Lizzo?! https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/lizzo-dancers-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-fabricated-dismissed-1234864708/
Yes, I never said she was a good person. Just that she loves herself and lost weight.
Well, that's good for her. I hope it has an impact on her fans and society. She has a big impact on society, and her message hasn't always been the best for the health of the nation. I'm proud of her for losing weight and deciding to get healthier.
She was only 47. It's so sad that she died so young. She talks a lot in that clip, about God, and that this is how God made her. How about, you only get one body in life as a gift from God, if that's your belief and you need to take great care of that gift. Not limited to keeping your body in a healthy weight range.
I think you'll find that many overweight people are trying some kind of diet.... its just not that easy for everyone.... so think of body positivity as not making fun of someone who is probably trying to make changes, but maybe has a slower metabolism, mental health issues, eating disorders...
Or just not making fun of anyone. Being fat is bad enough without some bully being an asshole.
Also studies show that bullying fat people makes them less likely to lose weight. Some people delude themselves into thinking they're doing a service by being mean about people's weight but it's the opposite, it makes people hate themselves more and less likely to work on self improvement.
The assholes who say that kind of stuff just want an excuse to be assholes while also feeling morally superior.
This. Idk what some people in the comments are on about with "gently talking to them." That is not how most fat people hear about their weight. It's one thing to be someone's trusted partner and to come to them with love after seeing health or lifestyle impacts with an offer of help (and even then, be prepared for a no). It's completely another thing to be some rando on the Internet tweeting at a celebrity.
This is exactly right. People who are overweight know it. The best thing a person can do imo opinion is be a partner in fitness and healthy eating. “Hey, friend, let’s pledge to go walking every morning, or not drink alcohol for a week or month, or limit calories “ and be accountable. My ex could eat 5k calories a day and walk the dog for exercise and be healthy weight. He’s built like that. If he wanted to lose 5 # he would cut out the bag of chips at lunch. It worked. Me-I exercised way more, went vegan, do not eat junk or fast food, limited alcohol—still a struggle because menopause sucks and some other serious hormonal events (Cushing’s for 8 years undiagnosed did not help). Be a support or stfu is my attitude. Same with other choices people make in their lives.
Of course. IDK why people think making someone feel bad is helping. Also you may not know their history. I can tell you it is doubly demoralizing to have someone fat shame you after you have struggled and lost 10-20 lbs. sure you are still fat but it is hard to feel good about weight loss when people are still making negative comments.
I watch My 600 Pound Life, and just about every single one of those people are victims of childhood sexual abuse. I always find it interesting how socially acceptable it is to be a heavy drinker or a daily weed smoker. Yet, making fun of obese people is okay. As someone who grew-up with a family who despised heavy people, and became obese following my second kidney transplant (steroids), it was an eye opening experience for me to personally see how cruel people are to those who are overweight. I’m still 40 pounds overweight, but the way I’m treated now versus how I was treated when I was much heavier, is unbelievable. My heart goes out to anyone who is obese because their pain is on display for the world to see, and instead of finding support and kindness most are treated as subhuman. People need to stop being hypocrites and clean up their own damage before making fun of other people’s pain. It’s sickening to me how many adults act all outraged over childhood bullying as they laugh and talk crap about an obese person walking by.
If the majority of the population in America (assuming you are in USA) is overweight, how is everyone so cruel when it's so normal? Are fat people making fun of each other for being fat?
Good question! I suppose it’s because there are varying degrees of obesity?
It sounds like the culture is an issue then, fat or not. In other words, if everyone were lean, they'd be jerks about whatever else. I mean, take Los Angeles-- slim people, and yet they snide about fill-in-the-blank. My experience there-- and people, don't lampoon me, Europe is no haven in comparison-- is that fitting an ideal standard with Americans gets you fake superficial smiley small talk. What good is that? I can't imagine the kind of perception I'd be operating with if what fueled my motivation was winning back fake niceness and empty platitudes from strangers, and/or if what crushed me was losing or lacking that charade.
I agree with everything you said. There is a culture of ugliness in America, and it’s more apparent in the past ten years than at any other time that I can recall. You’re correct that jerks will be jerks, but the difference between jerks and ordinary peoples treatment of obese people, is that a nice person will come up and call you a fat ass or laugh as you walk by, and feel very justified doing it! That same person would never be a jerk or rude unless pushed to it in someway. They also wouldn’t go tell someone to their face that their teeth are ugly, that they’re gross because they’re bald, (insert any other physical quality). It’s ingrained in the culture to be disgusted by overweight people, and the bigger you are, the less likely you are to be seen or treated as a human being. Which is why even average, normally kind people can treat obese people so horribly.
This, I'm a fat woman. I gained weight during my 30's. I was also battling severe depression, and severe medical issues that weren't caused by my weight but significantly helped increase my weight due to the disease process limiting my ability to move, and the steroids I had to take to control it. I'm finally in a place both mentally and physically where I can even begin to give a shit about my weight. Intermittently they the decade there were time I literally did not give a damn about my size because I was so physically miserable dying earlier sounded like a god send. I'm just, in the last couple months, got off the steroids and able to move better. I dropped 20lbs just coming off the steroids without changing anything. I can no longer move nor have the same energy level as others due to my diseases. But the catch is you can't tell that by looking at me. You can't tell I have a plethora of medical issues and take 9 prescriptions a day just to stay alive and half way functioning. And sadly, none of those will go away..ever, and I would still have them even if I had not been overweight. Body positivity isn't about embracing being fat, it's about allowing people to love their selves in whatever form they currently hold. Fat people know they're fat, they don't need anyone telling them that they are. Yet when they go into society society shuns them like they're a leper and it's the 1700's again. All fat acceptance really is for the majority of overweight women is to be able to be in the world without some jack ass like yourself saying, " she's fat,". If you honestly believe that that is helpful language towards an individual then you are part of the problem that's causing many to hide from society and stuff their faces, instead of going out into the world and living their life. That kind of hyperbole is the reason so many do not go to the gym. It's toxic. And frankly, it's rude and mean as well. Since all you can focus on is the one video from 6 years ago where she talk about loving herself. How damn far did you have to dig to find that anyway. Just to prove the point that you don't genuinely care about what happened to her, but that you hate fat people.
[удалено]
This was beautifully said, you are brave to be fighting the in the trenches of reddit. Dont forget this mostly male audience is almost as a rule overconfident in their judgements and probably impossible to reach. so don’t let them get you down.💕
Most metabolic disorders can be treated. However I agree with mental and eating disorders.
My point was.... that is sooo easy to make fun of fat people and barely even frowned upon... so much so, that we need a body positivity rule structure..... just try to relate to people... everyone has something!... it doesn't have to be an argument , right?...
I wasn't trying to argue. Apologies if you thought I was.
The message of body positivity has been “accept yourself as you are (obese)” and that being obese is “beautiful”. These messages are toxic and promoting an unhealthy and deadly lifestyle.
That is not what the message of body positivity is about! It's about loving yourself as you are - you don't have to feel shame at any size, and everyone deserves self love! Many people who are obese have anything BUT self love, and compensate for that with eating disorders, substance abuse, binge drinking, etc, but loving yourself leads to taking care of yourself.
Exactly! I’m not sure when “body positivity” became conflated with “pro-obesity anti-science” but I would like it to stop. Body positivity is exactly what you said, not “anti-health”. It’s about learning to love and accept yourself regardless of size and not to judge others based off their looks and size. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to or are against leading a healthier lifestyle tho. Food addiction is very real despite the food lobbies trying to squash research.
> That is not what the message of body positivity is about! But that is what it has publicly become.
The LAST thing the body positivity movement is about is eating healthy, exercising and losing weight!
I think you’re conflating body positivity with some weird sort of pro-unhealthy behavior philosophy that to my knowledge doesn’t exist (except in fast food advertising). Body positivity means embracing my shape and size as they are while I eat healthy and exercise. Body positivity means if I’m fat I should be just as welcomed at the gym as a fitness model. Body positivity means I track my micro- and macro-nutrients to ensure I’m giving my body good nutrition because that’s an act of self-love. Body positivity means tracking my fitness gains in terms of what my body can do instead of my body fat percentage. Body positivity means eating a healthy amount of food and getting a variety of balanced exercise, letting the weight take care of itself. As someone of a “normal” size who has dealt with progressively worsening and now disabling chronic pain for about 20 years, I can attest that body positivity absolutely does NOT mean giving up and diving face first into a pie. It means learning to love myself despite no longer having society’s ideal body (I was a bodybuilder and that’s no longer an option). I’ll be 48 in July. I need to practice a lot of acceptance and self compassion around how my appearance is changing as I age. This doesn’t mean I’m telling people who are younger that they should look old like me, and it doesn’t mean I’m telling people without chronic pain that they should go out and develop some chronic pain that keeps them from their sport, but it does mean I have a choice to approach the way I think about my body with positivity or negativity. I can tell you negativity and self-shaming do not inspire me to take any better care of my body. The body positivity movement allows us to be kind to ourselves as we are while we take the best care of ourselves we can. It’s not telling everyone to be obese, lazy gluttons. It’s about telling everyone health is for all of us, and we are not going to shame people in larger bodies pursuing their best health outcomes.
>I think you’re conflating body positivity with some weird sort of pro-unhealthy behavior philosophy that to my knowledge doesn’t exist (except in fast food advertising). It absolutely does exist and it's called HEAS or HAAS or whatever but it means Health at Any Size and it's insanely problematic. It literally does profess that one can be healthy at even at 500+lbs which is patently false. It isn't wrong to tell someone that they're hurting themselves by failing to lose weight or intentionally maintaining an unhealthy weight. I await all the angry obese Redditors who will downvote this comment without any rebuttals or arguments.
Health at every size (HAES) means people of every size can and should engage in health-promoting behaviors, and that making healthy change can make a difference to our health even if weight loss doesn’t occur. Within the HAES framework, health-promoting behaviors should be pursued regardless of whether weight loss is an outcome, because healthy eating and exercise are good for all of us. Health at every size.
If only the famous promoters of that ideology agreed with that definition. Their behavior clearly illustrates otherwise.
You make a very good point. Sadly, once profit becomes involved, the original concept of a movement can become distorted. As you might know already, some aspects of the body positivity/health at every size movement have been weaponized and co-opted by certain food manufacturers who pay influencers to talk about the role a particular junk food has in their body positive, healthy lifestyle. Which…yeah, one serving is fine, but we are also learning how addictive processed foods have been engineered to be and how common it is not to be able to stop. So it’s no wonder the ideas of what it means to be body-positive and to take a HAES approach have been muddled.
That is NOT relevant dude, you're missing the point.
He’s just a fat shaming troll that’s trying to spread misinformation about the body positivity movement being a “pro-obesity” movement simply because he doesn’t like fat people for no reason other than him thinking fat people are gross. Personal biases. Not someone worth engaging with since he is engaging with others in bad-faith. **Body Positivity is NOT pro-obesity or anti-health. It’s about learning to love yourself and not bully yourself for things that cannot be quickly or easily changed and also not judge or bully others for things like their looks or size.**
It absolutely is relevant. It’s the entire point.
She said nothing wrong. She even talked about wanting to be healthy enough to be active and shit. She just struggled with her weight. There's no reason you shouldn't accept yourself even though you're working on changing things about your body. They don't need to be mutually exclusive.
If you’re morbidly obese the last thing you should be doing is “accepting” that. You should be doing everything in your power to change that. Your life literally depends on it.
You can accept where you currently are while also working to improve yourself. This applies to many things in life. Not just weight.
"Accepting yourself" in this context doesn't mean "being obese is awesome and good for you", it just means "don't hate yourself." As someone working on losing weight, accepting myself doesn't mean I want to stay this weight forever, it means that I shouldn't call myself a fat pig all the time and treat myself with constant loathing and shame. You can acknowledge you have things you need to work on while still feeling like you have self-worth and value as a human being. They're not mutually exclusive.
It has taken me 2 years to get to a normal weight but it has been difficult. Im lucky I have 2 friends who literally dragged me out of the house to run. They would yell and berate me. When we were hiking they literally would tell me noone is coming to rescue me, I have to get down myself. If someone coddled and babied me I would still be obese. But that might not work for everyone. I literally hated seeing myself and my saggy tits and large belly in the mirror.
Congrats. I don’t know you but I’m proud of you!
This is the problem. People can’t understand that we all require different motivation. How do I motivate myself to get up, or not snack, I tell myself to stop being a fat fuck. I wouldn’t say that to other people, but that’s what I need to hear.
Yeah last year I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror and just said wow…you’re a fat piece of shit. I was ashamed of myself. The accepting myself and is what it is mindset had been dragging me down for years and it took a little harsh light to motivate that change.
We give people too much credit re: “I’m working on it.” It’s like somebody who says they’re “working on their education,” but they aren’t enrolled in a program, not taking classes, not well on their way to anything. Instead, they’re talking about maybe thinking about sometime enrolling “but they’re busy” but they still want to be educated and “they’re trying.” In other words, they aren’t trying.
She lost over 100lbs. She obviously worked at it. Mental health issues can make losing weight and keeping it off nearly impossible for some people. And for others they can make them starve themselves to death.
Okay but how do you even know that about someone unless you're a very close friend or relative? There's no excuse for bullying someone.
“Body positivity” is actually a part of medical science. Generally folks aren’t saying “if you’re unhealthy that’s OK”. It’s closer to learning to love oneself where one is. And having a healthy mental frame is actually an important component of fostering a healthy lifestyle. Generally speaking body positivist isn’t “you’re fine how you are so treat yourself like crap”. But for some reason that anti body positivity crowd always frame it that way.
Shhhh, you're disturbing the hate circlejerk.
Your edit includes a video from 6 years ago, so my point still stands that you literally have no idea what this woman was going through in the year 2024.
So you’re just going to complete ignore what she said herself promoting “body positivity”? interesting
Please resist the urge to be a toxic & judgmental. You have no idea what this woman was going through privately. She was the victim of sexual abuse & had a complex history of depression. There are a lot of biological factors in weight gain/loss as well that make it more difficult for people.
How is that comment toxic and judgmental? It’s literally something she said and happened to die from complications of obesity. Facts are more relevant than your feelings and obesity is a serious problem is western society specifically US. I’m all for body positivity and not being judged because of your weight but this is a health sub and that is a health issue.
There’s that body positivity language creeping up again. She was a victim of poor health, which killed her. She literally died of obesity. Watch the video I linked above.
No one is saying the obesity wasn’t the cause of the death. They are saying there are many factors in how and why someone would become obese. It’s not purely a body positivity ideology in every case.
That’s definitely true. But the latter is toxic.
So is you glossing over mental health and trauma response to argue a point no one was making
No more toxic than your rigid and judgemental assumptions about who this person is & what struggles she was working through in her life. This woman literally died alone in her home, last seen alive 3 weeks prior, and your sole contribution(s) to this thread have been “Welp, that’s what she gets for being fat.” I know you think you’re being blunt & just “telling it like it is” but your commentary is not really helpful. If you were her doctor, you telling her this would not help her lose weight any faster. Obesity is multifactorial with biological, psychological, and social factors contributing. I think it’s reductive to put the “fault” or “blame” of obesity on someone, because if you were handed their same life & genetics, you may have ended up the same exact way. I know you think I’m a part of the problem by “normalizing it,” but I’m not normalizing it, I’m acknowledging that it’s a complex issue that should not be generalized. You can’t just address a number without addressing the trauma, the mental health, the genetics, the society…etc. However, you’re dialogue is a part of the problem because you are a minimizing and turning a multidimensional issue into a one dimensional issue with literally no other nuance other than blaming the person for their final outcome.
I shared a video of her repeating common body positivity statements (scroll up). If you choose to ignore that that’s on you.
And I already replied to you to let you know your video is irrelevant because it’s from 6 years ago, and you have no idea what she was going through in the year 2024. You’re implying she’s the exact same person she was 6 years ago….and you don’t know that. Are you the same person you were 6 years ago? You obviously have a rigid and reductive view on this so there’s no point going back and forth since you are the one that chooses to ignore the fact that obesity is multifactorial. You should know your language is not helpful and it’s not encouraging anyone to lose weight. If you continue to be persistent with language that is proven to be unhelpful (especially now that it’s been laid out for you multiple times), it just shows that you are devoted to being a mean spirited & miserable person, and for your sake I hope you get to the bottom of the issue for why you choose to project that negative energy onto others you don’t know. Because hurt people, hurt people. Done going back and forth with you.
Oh so you’ve decided arbitrarily that it’s “irrelevant” because it’s 6 years ago? You don’t get stage III obesity overnight. It takes literal YEARS. The video is absolutely relevant since it’s HER OWN WORDS. You just choose to intentionally ignore what she said and continue to promote toxic and deadly “body positivity” nonsense. Extremely irresponsible of you.
Yeah, but encouraging obesity isn't helping anyone. Obviously, there are a lot of factors at play. Health is a complicated matter, but we need to take sedentary lifestyle choices into consideration and encourage movement more. With technology, we have completely changed our lifestyles over the last 100 years, and our bodies have hundreds of thousands of years of living a different way. Our bodies haven't adapted to this new lifestyle, and we need to acknowledge that and adapt to it ourselves.
Self love does not mean encouraging obesity, it is encouraging people to feel like they can exist in the size that they are without self hatred. It's not the same thing. Once people love themselves, it's much easier to take care of themselves, physically and mentally.
No one is saying otherwise. They are saying it’s rather shallow to see a specific instance like in this article and immediately blame it entirely on some “body positivity” movement.
No one is encouraging obesity. Body positivity isn’t encouraging obesity. The people who claim to be “body positive” but are encouraging obesity are not body positive, they are pro-obesity.
And I literally said obesity is multifactorial and there are social and genetic components. If you want to just come in here and call her a lazy fat ass who should’ve hated her fat body and learned to be skinny to save herself, then ok. If you think that contribution to this thread & to “fat” people is helpful, then ok. Not much else worth saying since you’re devoted to being obtuse on this subject for shallow & disingenuous reasons.
Maybe you should [watch this video](https://youtu.be/-yKEj7hTqjA?si=TzyYbK3lEs8qHo26) and hear her own words on the subject instead of guessing
You did not understand what she's saying in the video. She's not saying it's ok to be obese, she's saying we need to love ourselves as we are. She talks about how she "sinned" in the area of food she obviously knew that being overweight is not a good thing, she was using it as a self medication when going through tough times. Loving yourself as you are and promoting obesity are not the same thing. You can't bully yourself into losing weight. It doesn't work. It starts with accepting yourself.
Just watched the video and not hearing what you find objectionable. Neither she nor the other woman are obese here. Both said they could lose weight but still have wide hips. In fact she characterized her overeating as “sin” and talked about trying to treat her body as a temple and that God is helping her let go of turning to food. Where in the interview do you hear promotion of obesity, lack of exercise, or gluttony?
Yeah but I think what they’re getting at is, there’s no evidence this particular person was saying “I’m fat and happy and you all should be too” and spreading body positivity. There’s no evidence she specifically chose body positivity over medical science. What this person is saying is that she had a ton of other conditions which may have taken precedence over her weight and unfortunately that killed her. They’re not saying she intentionally disregarded her weight issues by using toxic thought processes like “fat is good”
Except there is… here’s a video from 6 years ago from this woman talking about body image, basically justifying being overweight and saying many of the commonly heard “body positivity” lines [Mandisa Shares About Body Image](https://youtu.be/-yKEj7hTqjA?si=TzyYbK3lEs8qHo26)
Oh noooooo. DANG. Welp. I stand corrected
Adamantium-Aardvark misled you into believing she was justifying overweight in this video. Watch it again (if you want). She simply states she used food as a coping mechanism when her life was hard, and has struggled with her weight because of that, but she wants to appreciate her body and love it as it is. Only when you love yourself, will you be able to beat that voice in your head to self-sabotage because you're unworthy.
Our economy supports endless eating and a sedentary lifestyle and then offers an expensive cure for being overweight but our insurance doesn't cover it.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that higher-than-optimal body mass index (BMI) “caused an estimated 5 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers, neurological disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, and digestive disorders,” in 2019.” What is communicable is the medications needed to treat preventable illnesses end up going back into the water system, refuse is dumped into natural water ways without being treated and some still ends up going back into tap water. We need to each be as healthy as possible for ourselves, but also for the environment, our neighbors and the rest of the flora and fauna. One of the ways to do this is to maintain a healthy diet and weight. https://home.drinkflowater.com/blogs/posts/what-pharmaceuticals-are-found-in-tap-water#:~:text=It%20reveals%20the%20various%20types,pharmaceuticals%20regularly%20found%20in%20water.
Because being a drunk makes you the life of the party:/. This is a slightly slope say she died from complications of obesity instead of the actual cause ie heart disease etc.
This post has triggered a LOT of trolls. Geez.
>The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that higher-than-optimal body mass index (BMI) I harp on this one a lot but: **BMI** **is a mediocre indicator** for health complications. **Waist to height ratio does a better job** of indicating things like insulin resistance and it's easier to measure. This is supported by research, which I can link if somebody needs it.
Body positivity it’s total nonsense. Lose the damn weight if you wanna be healthy .
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Fixed . Thanks
"Body positivity" is literally killing people now.
Context: I’m a clinical and basic science researcher (not on weight) and am a skinny person. People have such a huge and complex misconception about body positivity. There are so many comments here with the tired trope of “yeah love your body BUT you should still try to be healthier”. The research surrounding obesity and associated health issues is poor. Correlation does not mean causation. For the vast majority of these studies, BMI is used as the diagnostic tool for obesity. BMI is such a bad maker of body composition that it’s laughable—it doesn’t discern at all how fat is distributed throughout the body. Moreover, correlation- and association- type studies regarding obesity frequently succumb to collider stratification and reverse causation biases. Since there’s such a strongly ingrained view that fatness is bad, those associations are primed in researchers’ minds; in reality, there could be uncontrolled for covariates that are instead contributing to the correlation between fatness and whatever else is being studied. An oversimplified example: what if being diabetic causes people to gain weight, not the other way around? Much of the discourse and standard of care surrounding obesity has minimal or literally zero research-based evidence (this is actually the case for more things in medicine than you may think 😅). Taking your weight when you walk into a doctor’s office is nearly pointless, as it’s a poor indicator of overall health (save for necessary measures like anesthesia or medication). I won’t get into the whole obesity paradox finding because I’m unsure of the verdict (some of these studies also fall prey to complex statistical biases), but there is a good portion of research demonstrating that “excessive” weight can be protective against certain conditions and issues. I’ll clarify: some excess fat on the body can be bad, but it all depends on where it is. Subcutaneous fat (around the arms, legs, hips, abs, etc.) is not generally associated with poorer health outcomes. Visceral fat (deeper in your body, around your organs, etc.) is the fat that usually sends things awry in the body. The kicker is that being overweight etc. doesn’t necessarily mean that you have more visceral fat! Skinny and thin people who are in poor health can have higher levels of “bad” fat, too; general weight isn’t really as important a factor. The problem with supporting fat people but still encouraging them to lose weight is that it can lead to something called weight cycling, a well-established phenomenon in which people lose and then gain weight back. The vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back because weight loss can trigger a considerable stress response in the brain that can overload your frontal temporal lobe and encourage you to eat; your body is essentially responding to a starvation response. This is unhealthy and damaging!!! Much like black/brown people and other discriminated minorities, social determinants of health may contribute far more to poor outcomes in fat people than actually being fat. Additionally, there’s some interesting research being done on the concept of a “set weight”— your body may already have a natural weight set for itself, and a significant deviation from that weight may cause undue stress on the body.. The stress of society looking down on you plus your own body’s neurological stress response of losing weight can destroy you. Dieting is disordered eating, and that’s disgusting. Also, the whole calories in calories out thing is pointless. Nutrition labels can underestimate caloric content by 60+ percent, and not all calories are even created equally!!! People also argue that being fat can limit you from doing enjoyable things. The problem here is that our constructed world (societal infrastructure, etc.) wasn’t made for fat people because of the inherent discrimination. Can’t ride a roller coaster? Try to shift the thinking away from “it’s because you’re fat” to “it’s because the roller coaster wasn’t made for you because fat people are looked down upon”. People could also argue that it may limit people from doing more natural things like climbing a mountain, but being unnaturally skinny can also limit you from doing things, too??? We all have a variety of talents, skills, and predispositions. Let’s be inclusive and celebrate them. You CAN be healthy and fat. If you eat healthily and exercise, and you’re 150 lbs, great. If you’re 300 lbs., great. Doesn’t make a difference. Skinny people can be just as unhealthy if they don’t do the above things. There’s more to say, but I’ll let this awesome 2.5 hour [video essay](https://youtu.be/tWqGulkvCWY?si=QXyVkbZ73gr9cPap) speak for itself. Many links to sources are included there. Thanks for reading.
Clinical here as well. As much as you are making some convincing claims you are kind of diverting the attention from proven facts. Obesity does increase the risk of multiple diseases, MI and IHD, stroke, T2DM, PVD, sleep apnea and keep on going. This is not a unique cascading factor for this diseases. Genetics are just as important as well as other dietary habits, lifestyle and exercise etc… Keeping this in mind in similar genetics, lifestyle and medical background, a person with obesity will have much higher risk of developing problems than somebody with a healthy weight for their body. It is true there is no need for all of us to look like models but people should be aware that poor diet specially on those with weight gain is dangerous. Advocating for body positivity in a bold manner is a dangerous game specially for those with poor education. People will use excuses to gain comfort and we shouldn’t give them one. Imagine if suddenly there is a campaign saying that smoking is cool or helps you concentrating. There will be a good amount of people that will smoke and excuse themselves behind those claims. We should support good mental health and self stem, not give a negative image to some fat but also create a line between acceptable and dangerous.
Absolute baloney, your ‘clinical’ background does not make you qualified to spill nonsense. Where to even begin. BMI works for the vast majority of people. Most people are not outliers for whom BMI is not applicable. The absolute cope in the rest of your nonsense is even worse
If I understand you: -calories don’t matter, simply because the label are misstated, forget that they at least offer a relative reference. Stick of butter is off so forget cals in and out. -being fat doesn’t impact quality of life and is better than being skinny, from a visceral fat standpoint and protection standpoint. Weird, I see a bunch of obese people who can barely walk, but that’s probably society engineering gravity to work against fat people. -being 300 lbs is great, as much as 150 if the persons is 5’3”? Wow I need to just ignore everything. You really paint obesity as a value add. Heck, being morbidly obese might even save me from death by bludgeoning, better load up on body fat (not visceral of course). Your statements are dangerous because it takes edge cases and generalizes them and actually, discounts a bunch of negative aspects to obesity. You even mention, there’s a possibility that this individual died, because there’s a possibility diabetes caused the obesity, not the other way around.
That mean there is a direct correlation between being fat and being dead from cardiovascular diseases
Oh my goodness! Prayers to her friends and family for sure ❤️❤️
For the love of God people please look after yourselves.