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
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.