I visit family in other states and I get comments like “I can’t believe you are so thin.” For context I am a healthy weight and I eat what I consider a reasonable diet. I sit and smile while I watch them drink soda and eat pure sugar and salt. I don’t care about your life choices but don’t act surprised by someone that’s a normal weight.
I’m a pretty healthy person. I work out regularly, this summer biked up to 8 very hilly miles every day and I’ve been actively reducing sugar in my diet. It’s nice to let loose for holidays and indulge in more sugary and savory foods than you normally would. It’s part of the fun of holidays.
Also stop fat shaming. There’s a million and one reasons for people to be fat and there’s a million and one reasons for people to be thin. Would you judge less if you knew your super skinny cousin was only skinny because he starves himself and purges after the pendulum swing back and he binges? Or that your fat aunt was fighting with an idiot rhumotologist who insists the tests he ran that indicate an autoimmune disease which also causes weight gain don’t indicate that same autoimmune disease? Or how about a fat uncle who only eats one meal a day, tons of salads, walks multiple miles but never sees his weight change no matter what? Or your grandmother who periodically goes into an expensive commercial starvation diet so close to the edge you aren’t allowed to excercise in order to lose weight?
These are all real experiences of people I know, and I know these experiences because I stopped to listen instead of jumping to judgment. Of all of the people I know who struggle with either gaining or losing weight I only know 2 people who found changing their diet actually affected their weight
As much as I agree with the rest of what you said, I’m literally an example of how diet can affect your weight. I had a terrible childhood growing up and was >250# all through high school because I ate shit food and drank a ton of soda. When I went to college I couldn’t afford that shit and actually had to change my diet and I dropped 70-80# within a year, and my now mother in law discreetly asked my wife if I was OK because here parents were seriously concerned for my health.
There is definitely a middle ground here where there are a lot of extenuating circumstances that lead to obesity, but there’s also a ton of terrible food packed with empty calories that are specifically formulated to keep you addicted to the dopamine hits, and its superficially cheaper to eat shit food than to buy whole foods and make real food. Especially if you have no equipment/spices or no knowledge of what to do.
No, the reason people are fat is diet and lack of physical activity, they just don’t want to give up their lifestyle. Nothing changes “calories in vs calories out”. Saying it is “glandular” and such is a way of defending your drug of choice, food. If you keep a food diary you quickly realize how many more calories you are eating than you admit. Now changing that is tough because every fiber in your being is fighting you and it requires a multipronged approach. I know people who have lost weight and kept it off through diet and changing their attitude towards food (i.e. not treating it like a reward).
Fuck off. My favorite meal of the day is breakfast. I’ve been doing without it in an attempt to lose weight for 2 years now. Also making it a point to walk on a treadmill at work twice a day. It is measurable fact I eat less now than I did 2 years ago, and am more active, and yet my weight continues to hover around 300 pounds. 5 years ago I quit smoking cold turkey after 20 years, so it’s not like I lack willpower. But go ahead, tell me all about it.
Calories in/calories out would have a couple of my friends looking like skeletons. I’ve seen their lifestyles up close and theyre healthier than I am. There’s simply more to the story than just diet and exercise. Many autoimmune diseases, and other incurable and/or chronic health conditions directly cause weight gain/prevent weight loss.
Or put another way, I’ve weighed about 120lbs the entire time I’ve been an adult, whether my diet was 90% poptarts and candy (I wish that was an exaggeration) while doing no exercise at all or a super whole dairy and veggie heavy diet combined with regular varied excercise. If I can be entirely incable of gaining weight while doing everything that should make me a balloon, why isn’t the inverse possible?
Nobody ever worries about the health of the skinny person because they’re skinny and therefore healthy. Nobody ever worries about a fat person who’s gotten skinny because obviously they’re getting healthier (never mind if they’ve got an eating disorder and are on the verge of suicide. They’re skinny now so theyre totally healthy!)
Stop trying to educate fat people about their moral failing and maybe listen instead to what their lived experiences are