Fat Phobic?

[DaveC426913]

I'm not talking about cultural norms regarding weight or what is "ideal".

You can rationlize what you're talking about, but what you have said, several times now, is that overweight is (without qualification) unhealthy. And that is false.

At a certain point it's unhealthy. You can determine what that point is but it's not hard to determine when that point has been greatly exceeded.

As you have just demonstrated, it is indeed hard to determine where the threshold is. Several times now you have made a 1:1 correlation between being overweight and being unhealthy. Yet you don't define the parameters. Any amount greater than the mean is enough in your books to correlate to poor health. (You've had several chances to qualify your generalization and have chosen instead to reiterate it.)

Ask any doctor, excess weight isn't healthy.

Increasingly, you will find, doctors are saying the BMI is long out-dated, was never a good measure in the first place, and that having a higher weight than average is not in-and-of-itself unhealthy - that that there are far better indicators of health than weight (such as blood pressure).

I'm not a doctor. I'm not determining anything.

Remember where this started: you felt that someone who was overweight (without defining it further) had no business speaking out about bullying until and unless they 'fix' their 'poor health' - as diagnosed by you.

Don't do that.

 

[CptBork]

I'm 5'10", roughly 170lbs without clothes, I believe by BMI I'm either considered overweight or borderline, and yet I'm starting to see the last two bumps of an 8-pack popping up right above my hips, and I can see scores of veins running through virtually every single part of my body. Obviously BMI is stone age simplicity if you're trying to apply it as a one-size-fits-all rule (which is the only way I've ever seen it applied). Bodyfat percentage is a far more useful indicator of general health and even there it's dependent on a ton of variables.

If some average semi-fit Joe wants to preach that people above 15% bodyfat or whatever they're at are unhealthy, I'm going to raise them one and say that people with 10% bodyfat or higher are unhealthy, weak people who can't bench press more than their own weight full range from chest to lockout are unhealthy, sedentary people who can't run marathons in under 3 hours and 30 minutes are unhealthy, people who don't register perfectly normal function in their blood work and physical checkups are unhealthy, and by virtually any medical measure it will hold to be true. So let people be whatever they want to be and don't say nothing if they're not complaining or expecting any special treatment.

 

[Seattle]

You can rationlize what you're talking about, but what you have said, several times now, is that overweight is (without qualification) unhealthy. And that is false.



As you have just demonstrated, it is indeed hard to determine where the threshold is. Several times now you have made a 1:1 correlation between being overweight and being unhealthy. Yet you don't define the parameters. Any amount greater than the mean is enough in your books to correlate to poor health. (You've had several chances to qualify your generalization and have chosen instead to reiterate it.)


Increasingly, you will find, doctors are saying the BMI is long out-dated, was never a good measure in the first place, and that having a higher weight than average is not in-and-of-itself unhealthy - that that there are far better indicators of health than weight (such as blood pressure).


Remember where this started: you felt that someone who was overweight (without defining it further) had no business speaking out about bullying until and unless they 'fix' their 'poor health' - as diagnosed by you.

Don't do that.

You are the one who keeps defining anything over the mean as overweight and then you attack that as being wrong....straw man argument in other words.

I haven't implied that at all. The person I was referring to about about 100 lbs overweight. I'll stand by my comments that that is unhealthy.

Again, you bring up BMI and then knock that down but no one is suggesting that BMI is the standard. If you want to pick an arbitrary standard use morbidly obese (pick any standard for this). This isn't healthy.

 

[Seattle]

There is a lot of defensiveness going on here. No one is calling anyone here fat, worrying about what you weigh or anything else. I didn't start this thread.

The underlying complaint in this thread is that someone with a BMI above average resents being told that they are overweight when they don't think that they are overweight. Great. You're probably not overweight if you are muscular.

When people talk about the obesity epidemic in the U.S. they aren't talking about people who are muscular and slightly above their BMI or people who are slightly overweight in general.

No one is really concerned about that so there really is no one that is arguing with you. Walk down the street and you will see fat kids, moms, dads and I'm not talking about those who can only pinch an inch of belly fat.

A quarter of the population could probably lose 50 lbs and still not be skinny. Do you disagree that there is a problem now that didn't exist 50 years ago to this extent?

I've never told anyone that they were fat or that they should lose any weight in this thread or any real life. That doesn't mean that I don't see fat people every day and you do as well. So why the thread and what is your real issue?

 

[DaveC426913]

The person I was referring to about about 100 lbs overweight. I'll stand by my comments that that is unhealthy.

You had a half-dozen opportunities to modify your multiple unqualified assertions that "overweight is unhealthy". That statement is simply not true.

It took me 22 posts to get you to cajole you toward an assertion that is not false.

 

[DaveC426913]

Dupe.

 

[DaveC426913]

So why the thread and what is your real issue?

Perhaps that "fatism" is the last socially-acceptable form of persecution.

You can't parodize an nerdy Asian guy or a ditzy woman, but the pudgy, food-obsessed "Chubbs" is still alive and well in stories and on the street.

 

[billvon]

You can rationlize what you're talking about, but what you have said, several times now, is that overweight is (without qualification) unhealthy. And that is false.

Being overweight is unhealthy. That's pretty much the definition of the term. That doesn't mean that someone can't be overweight and RELATIVELY healthy, but they would benefit from losing weight.

 

[Seattle]

You had a half-dozen opportunities to modify your multiple unqualified assertions that "overweight is unhealthy". That statement is simply not true.

It took me 22 posts to get you to cajole you toward an assertion that is not false.

You haven't done anything actually other than attempt (unsuccessfully) to put words in my mouth. Why do you insist that being overweight is healthy? Is drinking too much alcohol healthy as well? How about having too little sleep?

Do you think a fat person looks healthy compared to someone who isn't fat? Is it good for your heart to carry around excess weight. What is it about eating too much that is healthy?

 

[wegs]

I'm against discriminating against over weight people or shaming them, definitely. But, celebrating an unhealthy way of living, or worse...encouraging it - is not compassionate. The sum total of a person's worth of course, isn't what they look like, but who they are as a person...his/her character. But, people shouldn't be afraid to make suggestions to people that will help them make healthy changes. Coddling people might make them feel temporarily comfortable, but it won't really help them.

 

[CptBork]

I'm not personally offended when someone argues that lower body fat makes them "healthy", only pointing out that it's a very relative term, and relative to well-trained athletes one can easily argue that the average Joe is both incapable of significant physical performance and highly susceptible to numerous diseases and health conditions as they age. Do you do regular isolation work for your rotator cuffs? If not, your rotator cuffs will atrophy and tear with age and render your shoulders less and less functional, so that's not healthy at all.

If 30% of cases relating to some condition are cured and alleviated by weight or fat loss down to some defined level, then I see no problems with a doctor recommending it. Refusing to systematically investigate and rule out all other possible causes until the patient complies with the recommended weight loss, however, would probably be suitable grounds for claiming discrimination.

What pisses me off personally are those who want to argue that overweight people have some sort of inferior genetics without any direct supporting evidence and without ruling out the nurture/development side of the equation. Bad, scientifically unsubstantiated dietary advice that can potentially lead people to become obese is also rather unwelcome; if eating a pound of cabbage every day works for someone then great, but they shouldn't try to market it as a miracle cure for anyone else without being able to cite statistically validated supporting evidence on demand.

In any case, I think reasonable people should all be able to agree that insulting and humiliating someone based on their weight, or judging them on this basis when it's not directly relevant to the situation, can be just as harmful and unacceptable as attacking people for their sexual, religious and racial identities. If you don't want to be friends or associate with overweight people it's entirely your personal choice, but there are certain standards by which all human beings should be treated equally in public places and situations irregardless, and it should never be assumed that an average weight person is automatically healthier than an overweight person with higher bodyfat content.

 

[Seattle]

I think most would agree with most of what you have posted. Most people don't insult those who are overweight. Certainly a slender person with cancer is more unhealthy than an overweight person without cancer.

However no one is really arguing about that or about crazy cabbage diets or about weightlifting although most who are weightlifting aren't doing it to improve the longevity of their rotator cuffs.