this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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Medical articles on fat people's health? (Looking for an old struggle session post) (hexbear.net)
submitted 10 hours ago by LeylaLove@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
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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

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[โ€“] EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net 18 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

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.

[โ€“] LeylaLove@hexbear.net 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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 ๐Ÿ˜ญ" 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

[โ€“] EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net 5 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

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/

[โ€“] 30_to_50_Feral_PAWGs@hexbear.net 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

They reduce alcohol cravings, too. Something to bear in mind if you happen to start semaglutide a week after stocking the liquor cabinet.

[โ€“] robot_dog_with_gun@hexbear.net 3 points 3 hours ago

bloody miracle drug

[โ€“] Omegamint@hexbear.net 2 points 2 hours ago

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.