Asking about some stuff I've seen here before. Gonna start off by saying, to those that don't know what I'm talking about, don't even bother commenting in this thread. Last time this topic came up, a bunch of people on here showed their ass as being fatphobic. I didn't leave any comments in that thread, but if I had commented before reading that thread, my comments would have been sucked just like everybody else's.
A while ago, we had a struggle session over fat acceptance/fat health. Now I'm very open about how I've always found fat people very beautiful and there's never been any weirdness to that. But until that struggle session happened, I believed the common narrative that fat equals unhealthy. I actually know a lot of fat people in this mental spot, where they accept themselves aesthetically but still believe that their weight is inherently unhealthy. I haven't read this struggle session in so long, when my fat friends start being mean to themselves in this way, I don't remember the information well enough to be able to counter their cruelty to themselves and I really wanna fix that. I'm the friend that will use science to shut down my friend's self hatred. Whether it's explaining neurodivergence, drug addiction, or the queer experience, I try to make objective and undeniable observations that create contradictions in their self-hate thought paths they have to deal with somehow. I may make a few suggestions for thought paths, but ultimately I just give information and let people make their own decisions. This is my path to helping my friends liberate themselves from western brain worms, it works quite well.
Well, a while ago someone here made a comment in that struggle session that tore apart the idea that being fat is inherently unhealthy. It pretty much argued that everybody's ideal weight is different, some people are at their healthiest when they're fat and some when they're skinny, but it's individual to every given person. And this was backed up by a shit ton of pubmed links, it was very much not vibe based. Anybody that read that comment and didn't change their minds on fat being inherently unhealthy is probably a shitty person I didn't want on the site anyways.
My girlfriend is 6'3 and on the heavier side. She actually lives a pretty healthy life, definitely the healthiest person I've dated. If she wants to lose weight, I'll support her in it, but I don't realistically know what she could change in her lifestyle that would be good health wise and cause her to lose weight. She already does portion control, doesn't eat junk food, does cardio and such. Like logically speaking, based off of what I know about her lifestyle and body, losing weight sounds like it'd be unhealthy. Like she's already light headed and spacey often from doing too much portion control (not eating enough, not drinking sports drinks during our 120f heat wave because "sugar and sodium" like gurl it's literally fucking 120f outside, you need those things) I don't really think eating less and then sweating/exercising more is going to be good for her.
I do cardio with her because I know the exercise is healthy, but I think she's starting to push calorie counting territory on food. Kinda wanna help her start viewing her health past numbers on the scale or BMI index
Eeeehhhhh I really don't want to start an argument but a medically accurate way of putting this is that thinness does not guarantee health. Weight loss does not guarantee an improvement in health. But health isn't a binary state, where you're either healthy or unhealthy. You can have aspects of your body state which are healthy and others which are unhealthy at the same time. It's also important to factor in quality of life.
Fat acceptance is still trying to counter public opinion, but in the last 5 years alone we have had unbelievable breakthroughs in medical science and knowledge that have almost completely invalidated the previous 50 years of professional understanding of obesity.
The BMI math is just wrong and not universal. That doesn't at all mean that someone who is morbidly obese is at a healthy weight, though. The "healthy at any size" concept is absolutely, positively wrong beyond any of a shadow of a doubt. While it may not affect someone's lungs or current cardiovascular health as a young(ish) person, that doesn't mean that their joints aren't taking unsafe weight or that their cardiovascular health won't be profoundly affected by their weight 20 years from now.
Obesity isn't a moral failing, nor is it someone's choice. It's a metabolic disorder. It's most important for people to acknowledge that weight/body fat percentage is not the be all and end all of health, it's just one component of it. Obesity is detrimental to your individual health outcomes over time in much the same way that Long Covid is detrimental.
Just because you can live a long and fulfilling life with Long Covid doesn't mean you should stop masking, right? The same is true with managing obesity.
If someone is like 15 lbs overweight, they're well within the margin of error on this stuff. If they're 150 lbs overweight and morbidly obese like I was a year and a half ago, they are absolutely going to be dealing with health issues which are massively exacerbated by their weight.
I lost about 60 lbs through lifestyle changes and with therapy for binge eating disorder, but most of my health issues just didn't change noticeably at all. I could barely function and was in a really bad place.
A month and change ago, I started dual treatment on Zepbound (tirzepatide) and Spravato (esketamine). I lost like 6 lbs, but I have had dramatic improvement in chronic pain and fatigue, even the rate at which injuries heal is improving. Serum levels of just about everything are way more normal. I don't have migraines anymore. Essentially every quantifiable measurement for my body's systems has improved, and it's had nothing to do with changes in body fat or weight.
Your reply is great. Thank you for voicing all this. I am pretty sure I was in the original thread mentioned and that is why I took a night to think about what I should say as this is indeed so extremely nuanced, from medical fat phobia and stigma to what actually is meant by health.
mention of disordered eating, calories, intentional weight loss
Extreme dieting is one of the reasons I personally eventually broke my metabolism pretty hard, I was put on a diet age 12 or so and then got gestational diabetes at age 24 and the medical treatment was so traumatizing I developed an eating disorder postpartum. After that I went through life eating under 1000kcal/day and hard core exercising daily and was still gaining or just maintaining my weight. All I wanted to do was fit in, be "girl" and not get diabetes.
In 2022 or so I swore I will never restrict food again, I was exhausted. I was trying to maintain being smaller by eating only every other day and just could not do it anymore. I had made this lifestyle into my entire personality, even my work was in the field of fitness grifting.
Techically however I have been a so called healthy fat person for most of my life, but as my story reveals, the reason I got fatter every decade wasn't a choice my body got to make. Then after I got longcovid and realized I was perimenopausal the health markers that matter to me started to escape me, and joint pains and such became an everyday occurance.
I started ozempic last summer mostly to fight the longcovid stuff and I too don't lose weight on it, but feel so much better. It made me realize that I've probably had undiagnosed PMOS all my life that has resulted in all sorts of gender dysphoria, body image issues and also insulin resistance that used to stay in check with weight lifting. Added HRT to my life a year ago and that too was a revelation on how what I though and was told is completely healthy probably always could have used some help. Had someone even mentioned the PMOS in the past, I could have avoided doing so much harm.
The new metabolic drugs address something much deeper than just weight, my skin for example has completely changed to this soft girl skin that I just never had before. And it stopped my hirsutism, which never was severe, but it was there. My joint pains are just gone, HRT already got rid of most, but this did the rest. I sleep better, my partner told me that I've stopped snoring which started after covid. My IBS symptoms are gone, my mind feels clearer. I could go on.
But it isn't really about the fat/weight. That tends to be a sign, not a cause. But it isn't for everyone and not always. For most of my life I was fine being bigger, due to muscle mass I always will be as BMI is bs. What is a cause and what is an effect is hard to know, but it matters as most of this stuff is framed as personal individual failing, even the word obese means "to overeat" or something, I never did nor do most who really struggle with these things.
Edit. Oh and sorry that I forgot to mention the science bit around this, don't have much at hand and also could not find the old thread.
But I do have a recommendation of sorts. Been listening to a podcast called Fat Science lately and it's been pretty great. There's an episode about a woman training for iron man and gaining weight and that is literally me. It is a bit hyperbolic at times and I find the stanning of the doctor by the two co-hosts extremely annoying, but the information on metabolic health and the complexity seems pretty good and is aligned with how I personally want to approach taking care of myself.
I'm going to start this with two things, because I've been manic the past week or two and am very wordy right now. I know normally when people on this site see comments as long as my manic comments, they don't assume it says anything good. Want to start off by saying I agree with your whole comment. This comment isn't me trying to argue with you, just explaining the situation more and why I don't really think she should aim to lose more weight. I'm not saying she can't, or that if it were to happen as a side effect from other things she did, that that would be bad. She's not going to be underweight if she were to lose more weight. But her issues with blood pressure don't feel related to the food she eats. I'm more just saying she's using it as metric in a way that isn't good for her
I've dated morbidly obese people, I know about this sort of thing. I dated my abusive ex I was with when I made this account, she was a half a foot shorter and 120lbs heavier than my current partner. I didn't try to have this conversation with my ex, I saw her life and she lived extraordinarily unhealthily. When she said she wanted to lose weight, there was no part of me that questioned if it was a good idea, but her life was mixing opiates and alcohol, nodding out most of the time she was home, coming out of that nod after I put the kids to bed, and asking a former chef (me) to make her the most American four course meals imaginable. Obviously not in those terms, but the go to meal was
Triple smashburger with American cheese
Fries, extremely buttery mash, twice baked potato, just unhealthy potato of some sort. I would bake 25 baking potatoes every week to convert them into other things, and she'd eat like 2-3 of them a night. If I ate one everyday, we'd run out before the end of the week
Brusselsprouts roasted in butter (she actually preferred them fried, roasting was a compromise because I didn't want to have to clean it up)
Milkshake of some sort (usually a vanilla milkshake made with whiskey in it)
I read the struggle session I'm talking about while I was with my abusive ex. I'm saying all this to say that I'm not just blindly thinking "Healthy at any weight!". Y'all know how much I loved enabling my ex's shitty behavior, especially a behavior that I found hot. But despite me thinking she looked the best at her heaviest (I love the way fat people look), I never even hinted at that. If she told me she wanted to lose weight, I'd hold her accountable on the stuff she asked me to make her and make other suggestions. She'd be able to override me, like I'd still make her that meal if she said "I don't give a fuck about weight right now" or something like that, the only thing I ever held my ground with her over was stuff involving the kids.
My main priority is pretty much always my partner(s) in every relationship I've had in my adult life. If I met my girlfriend like 50lbs ago, I wouldn't question this. I'm not selfish about this sort of thing, I'm not just thinking "Oh no! But you're soooo sexy when you eat 😭" I've put a lot of thought into my girlfriend's habits and history, and I think that with where she currently is in life and the health struggles she currently has, it's probably not healthy for her to make weight loss her metric for her health like it used to be. As of the past couple weeks, she's been light headed and easily confused from undereating throughout the week.
My current girlfriend was morbidly obese 2 years ago, and also used to drink as much as I did at my worst. She's already lost HUNDREDS of pounds since quitting drinking and starting HRT. If her and I had this conversation 100lbs ago, I wouldn't have this reaction. This is also a judgement I'm making because of how close I am with my girlfriend, if her and I weren't so close I wouldn't question this at all.
The one health issue she really has is high blood pressure, but she was drinking 6 shots of espresso in a single Americano up until a couple months ago and smoking a pack and a half of cigs in the course of the 6 hours a day she allows herself to smoke. She's cut down on caffeine, but still only smokes cigs at night. I have no moral judgement I'm making on her only smoking at night, but from my understanding of how nicotine works, it seems like it wouldn't be as bad for her blood pressure if she smoked that amount throughout the day instead of getting that much nicotine within the course of a few hours. She does plan on quitting when she turns 40 though. I told her if she decides to quit sooner, I'll switch over to nicotine pouches again so I'm not smoking in front of her.
But I've seen her lifestyle, the only life style changes I can think of that would significantly improve herself (I'm pretty well informed, but I'm not a doctor) would be to quit smoking. And quitting nicotine usually causes people to gain weight
Interestingly, it looks like GLP-1 meds can help with smoking cessation without the associated weight gain. It's genuinely crazy what these things can do.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12959817/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13417961/
I do love GLP-1s, they are miracle drugs. I'm really glad they exist. I view it kinda like drug addiction, because shitty unhealthy food can be mentally addictive. If there was a drug that completely cured addiction, I would support it, there's no reason I wouldn't support GLP-1s. All the people on here that say GLP-1s are "cheating" are reactionary assholes.
However, this is the same girlfriend who refuses to take ibuprofen or basic OTCs for anything. And she's already not really eating enough for her body and the activities she does, that's my main concern. Like I live somewhere that it got up to 120 degrees a few weeks ago. She was starting to get seriously sick from the heat and was coming close to collapsing and wouldn't take any of my Powerade because "sugar".
Like I said, I wouldn't question her wanting to lose more weight if it weren't for me seeing how well her current lifestyle is working. She's almost fainted from the heat, especially when she's performing with her band. And she's already eating healthy food and reasonable portions of it. Her diet is mostly salads, chicken, and rice. As far as portion goes, if she ever takes me out to eat, she always gets the half size of whatever she gets. If there's no option for her to get a half portion, we're splitting it. She's also a very active person, between her band and being in the service industry. We probably walk about 3 miles minimum every time we're with each other, and we see each other multiple times a week
That's kinda what I'm getting at. Like I see what she does already, how she eats and exercises and all her other lifestyle choices. She's gained 5 pounds over the course of the year we've been together, and I really think that's all titty weight from the HRT. The post I'm looking for has a bunch of articles going into more modern health science and describing better metrics to track health than weight. Like I said, if she loses weight as a side effect to other stuff she does, that's not a big deal. However, I don't think it's the thing she should be targeting due to where she's at in life
Hmm, if her portion control is like that, I would actually really recommend that she start doing calorie counting and figure out what her TDEE is. Do you live together?
There might be a health issue that's behind the apparent discrepancy between caloric intake and body composition. Things like hypothyroidism or insulin resistance can cause these discrepancies and are definitely worth investigating because they cause a lot of other issues too.
We don't live together right now, but when I was homeless for a couple months I did live with her so I saw the lifestyle up close then. Now we spend like 2-3 nights a week together.
I also don't even think she's fat, she's 6'3 and just generally a large person. Like her hand spread all the way out is the size of my entire torso, she wears size 14 shoes. This is one of the other reasons I question if weight is a good metric for her, BMI wasn't written around outliers like her
She's even slimmed over the time we've been together, although she has gained 5lbs in ghe year we've been together. The only way she's gotten bigger since we've been together is her titties, and well she's on HRT so that's pretty normal. I really think extra weight she's putting on is due to HRT. Not saying this in a sexual way, saying it in the trans way, her titties have gotten WAY bigger since we've been together.
I can suggest her bringing it up to her doctor, but I don't know if there's really a point. Her endo is also her GP, she gets advanced blood work, beyond just hormones, every 3 months. I feel like if there were a thyroid issue, it would have been found already. And I was also at her appointment, her doctor never mentioned losing weight, just said blood pressure was a tad high
If they weren't testing for TSH, they might not know.
Basically I just think it's a good idea to double check that nothing has fallen through the cracks and then sanity check her calorie intake and macros to make sure she's getting enough nutrition.
Being lightheaded and declining things for sodium intake is a little concerning (especially if she's on Spiro which makes you pee all your sodium out really dramatically)
That is true, I will definitely bring this up to her then.
Like I haven't been doing too much research/math, kinda just applying the knowledge all my crunchy calorie counting friends have given me over the years, doing some head math in the moment. But from that information, and seeing her lifestyle, I really think she's an outlier on what healthy weight is. I think for her health, she should probably be eating more, especially with the fact that she isn't just eating garbage as it stands
Another problem is I know a lot more about nutrition and such than her, she kinda does things based off the vibes of what popular culture says is and isn't healthy. I had to talk her out of going keto at the start of our relationship.
Like I said, I wanna make it abundantly clear that I would not have this reaction if anybody else in my life wanted to lose weight. The only reason I'm concerned here is because I've seen her lifestyle up close, there's no way in hell cutting down on her current food intake is healthy for her current amount of activity. I'm already seeing the side effects of her not getting enough nutrients. I love this woman a lot and want her to feel her best
Can't stand that shit being misused, it's an anti-seizure diet for god's sake. It's actually more buckwild than how so many completely don't understand what gluten is or what having a sensitivity to it actually is.
You definitely seem to have a good understanding of where she's at health-wise. Since she seems to be concerned about sugar w/r/t electrolyte drinks, you could maybe check out some sugar free options for those. I recently started using Ultima, but I've also heard good things about Liquid IV so those are a good starting place for comparing ingredients lists.
They reduce alcohol cravings, too. Something to bear in mind if you happen to start semaglutide a week after stocking the liquor cabinet.
bloody miracle drug
Beyond the weight loss, tirzepatide helped my sciatica a lot. There's a good anti inflammatory effect from it. The Chinese sourced stuff is so cheap, too. One of the better decisions I've ever made.
It comes as a powder, right? I have some laying around that I got almost a year ago that I haven't touched since I'm scared lol. I got the right water and some diabetes needles, is that what you're doing?
Yeah, it comes lypophilized (sp?) in vials that have to be reconstituted using bacteriostatic water (preferably the stuff Pfizer makes). In that state you can store it in your freezer for a very very long time and it will remain stable.
And I too don't want to start anything, but will push back a bit on what HAES is.
Stole it from here, sorry about the Reddit link, but this subreddit isn't all that bad and has been very helpful for me personally when navigating a glp-1 after becoming very much anti-diet.
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