As always - if you’re saying a word is comparable to the n-word, and you are able to use your word in public as a non-black person, it’s not like the n-word
I couldn’t remember where the quote came from, thank you, I tried to search for it but it was surprisingly difficult
All quotes should be credited to Michael Scott if you dont know the original.
- Michael Scott
Frankly that’s something I do not understand. Why this single specific word? We have dozens of terrible offensive words. Why this specific one is considered so bad we cannot even talk about it directly, even when merely discussing it? I would think discussing it and not directing it at someone would be pretty reasonable. As with every single other word.
Is one of the other words associated with 200 years of chattel slavery?
Probably no, not in this specific form, that being said I don’t want to compare one tragedy to another. There are lots of disgusting parts of the human history, and that’s certainly one of them.
The only equivalent I can think of starts with k and is a slur for Jewish people, and it’s much less commonly heard.
Ironically enough, that word was coined by Jewish people who had been in the US for generations to describe newly-arrived Jews from Eastern Europe. Still offensive but somewhat different from the n-word.
What about something related to the indigenous peoples of the Americas?
We killed them and displaced the rest so damn fast that we forgot all the major slurs for them
“Savages”, "Redskins”, “Squaw”, and so on.
Some news headlines even refer to the second one as “the R-word”:
CNN: The terrible R-word that football needed to lose
Politico: The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think
These are extremely harmful words with hundreds of years of genocide behind them. I imagine the only reason they aren’t censored like the N-word is is because Native Americans make up a proportionally smaller population due to the effectiveness of the genocide, and because the reservation system is in contrast to racial integration as with American black people in so much as it limits interactions between them and racist whites who would overuse a dehumanizing phrase to the same extent.
And things even worse than slavery towards them. And that a lot of racists who would likely shoot black people still use that word on purpose. And that there’s still a lot of those people.
Non-American here. I also didn’t get this, thinking it’s just puritanical bullshit. Some Americans seem obsessed with auto-censorship.
Anyway, I finally understood while watching Django Unchained. It’s an extremely dehumanising word, meant to separate people (who have rights) from things which do not. It’s a tool to be able to do this distinction and then do unspeakable evil to specific people because they don’t count as people and so it’s alright.
Now remember that slavery was ended* only relatively recently, segregation was a thing during the lifetimes of many people and this mindset of black people not being even human is still prevalent…
The word is meant to be always used in hostility and it’s still being used like that today. That’s why you want to steer clear of it.
I think a lot of the conflict around the word is centered on the fact that many black people use it (obviously without the hard r) in casual reference to other people, often even people that aren’t black. It’s essentially become equivalent to “dude” or “brother”. So some people don’t see how it’s wrong to use it in that context even if you aren’t black.
I’m not saying I agree, mind you. I’m just making an observation
Django Unchained
Isn’t it ironic that a movie with so many uses of that word helped you understand that word better?
To me it seems a very good reason to believe that people shouldn’t be afraid of the syntax of the word, but definitely oppose the use when the semantic is the despicable one.
There’s an equivalent for homosexuals
In my opinion, the intellectually disabled too. Unfortunately, many people make all kinds of excuses why that word, which has been used to bully the disabled for decades, is an acceptable one.
The OJ Simpson trial. No joke.
Wasn’t really all that long ago when non-black people very commonly used that word in public and probably still so in certain communities. Having said that, obese is a medical term and I don’t think it compares in anyway to the n-word.
Absolutely. I moved from urban Southeastern Wisconsin to the upper peninsula of Michigan in a rural area. I love visiting that spot, and I got a job offer five years ago while on vacation. I snatched the opportunity to move to my favorite place and uprooted my life in under two months. I didn’t last two years before coming back.
The amount of times I got into verbal altercations with strangers and acquaintances over their use of racial slurs, most often the N-word, made me become a homebody. I was a bartender, though, so you can’t exactly hide.
That’s not to say I haven’t heard it in public all throughout Wisconsin. The difference was how comfortable people felt using these words and sharing openly racist views and stories like they were bragging about it. It felt like an area where people breathed a sigh of relief and took their hoods off. I couldn’t stomach staying in a place where certain friends of mine couldn’t comfortably visit.
Still, all that is nothing compared to what I saw and heard living in Tennessee. It’s sad and frightening how many communities are like this.
it changed with the OJ trial
Definitely did not. I grew up in West Virginia and idiot rednecks used it before and after the OJ trial. Decent people did not before or after.
I mean like way before they did, but they weren’t decent then.
i thought it was meaning in media, like the news and other stuff. not everyday life
Wait, for real? Sauce?
She, as an obese person herself, proposed that “obese” is equivalent to the n-word. She didn’t censor her word the same way a black person doesn’t have to censor the n-word. That’s not a contradiction. It would be, if she wasn’t obese.
Not that I care about the actual point, just wanted to talk about the logic. My bad, if my assumption that she is obese, is wrong.
Obese is a medical term though and Dr … PhD should know that.
Not necessarily, a PhD isn’t a medical degree
Ok I looked her up, I had to know.
She’s a “fat-affirming” dietitian and her PhD is in “body positive medicine”
Her name is a blatant pun.
I don’t think I’m reaching when I say not only is the account fake, this person doesn’t exist, but that it was made to make fun of fat people.
Sooo you’re saying it’s understandable for someone with a PhD to not have basic common knowledge?
I mean, sure. As someone who recently went back to school and is around a bunch of PhD and PhD students, they’re really, really smart… about their specific area of study. But more than some of them are fucking stupid when it comes to other, normal things
I’ve got one, and there are many many thing I’m an idiot on
Oh yeah. A PhD means you hyperspecialized for years. You get one by being the expert and advancing your field in, usually, one tiny tiny area. For anything that isn’t that tiny area? Likely to be a stupid as anyone.
Also, I don’t agree with the OP and think it’s fucking dumb, but let’s not forget that “retard” used to be a medical term as well
That’s the way these things have always gone and probably always will. Retarded, imbecile, idiot, these were all effectively clinical terms (or whatever best approximated clinical practice in their eras) - they didn’t hold an insulting intention initially. People co-opted the terms to make fun of each other, as we do, and so professionals had to shift the clinical vocabulary so they weren’t using commonly hurled insults when discussing patients. And that means new words people can use to make fun of each other, yay! Which of course they did, necessitating another rotation. Pretty hilarious if you ask me.
The most recent example in my own life - my wife is in her mid 30s, and is pregnant - some medical professionals call this a “geriatric pregnancy”! But because some folks are getting offended by that term, they’re starting to use “advanced maternal age pregnancy”. Bit of a mouthful, I think they’ll get to keep that one.
Anyway. Carlin had a great bit on this phenomena, he’s the one who pointed it out to me.
I’ve heard this called the “euphemism treadmill”
I like it, very succinct way to get the point across.
As usual, George Carlin should be the go-to for matters of language
I see that someone wrote their thesis on it.
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Why does that upset/startle you? Pregnancy at age 35+ is associated with more risks than pregnancy in the 20s.
It is, though—women having children later in life are at higher risk for complications for both themselves and the baby. It also has a higher risk of birth defects.
As was “negro” - and that’s kinda the point; just because a word is “official” doesn’t make it not discriminatory, just that the discrimination was backed by the power of institutions.
I don’t 100% buy the argument that the two words are equivalent, but I can see how “oh you can’t come here you are obese” could feel similarly arbitrary as “oh you can’t come here you are black”
That comparison is so bad that I’m not sure you are making it in good faith. Being mentally handicapped or belonging to a minority is not a choice, being obese is.
If you make the conscious choice to be obese you really can’t complain about the consequences the same way the former can. And you especially can’t complain about people referring to you by the medically correct term
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Hello yes my name is Dr. PhD I have many college and come to bringun you the health. stat.
It’s quite literally the medical term… i… I am an obese man, I am an obese man mostly of my own doing, their might be some psychological or socioeconomic reasons, but it’s mostly the fact that food is good, exercise sucks, and impulse control. I wasn’t born this way, I wasn’t treated as nonhuman for something beyond my control, and obese is not used for the sole purpose of being derogatory.
Those two words are very, very different. Even if you are obese because of a thyroid, or injury, or whatever, a doctor can, and will call you obese in your medical reports. And if you can’t handle that because you can’t handle that slight uncomfortability, no wonder you are still obese.
I’ve been bedbound for five years. I have managed to stay a healthy weight by harassing my mother every time she buys unhealthy food. I ain’t got that kind of self-control!
Apparently you do?
Yeah, it’s a sterile medical term that unfortunately takes on other meanings that people dislike. For example, I had a friend who went off the deep end and started claiming that obesity was made up by doctors and began trying to convince me to think likewise. It was kind of eerie to see this otherwise rational person fall for this type of denial over something that made them uncomfortable.
It doesn’t help that some doctors were shitty to him about his weight (a fair and very real complaint) so he insisted it was a systematic problem within the medical establishment to oppress. I don’t doubt it happens but it’s a bit extreme to think it’s solely used to that end and that it’s not a handy label for managing weight and conducting research.
I do agree that if you are obese and have unrelated medical issues the doctors will very much say “you need to lose weight”, and call it done. And that is x10 if you are a woman, for some reason. Yeah, these problems may not be so bad if I was not obese, and they may not have existed is I wasn’t (bulging disks my back, in my case etc.), but the truth is, I am fat, I still need my problems fixed, go ahead and do the surgery to trim the disk that is pinching my nerves to fix my back because otherwise I can’t move and I will just get fatter and my back will just get worse. Perpetually.
It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.
It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.
(Please take the following as pondering general discussions of obesity between doctors/patients and not specifically directed at you.)
This was a really thought-provoking summary for me, your belief that doctors are telling people to lose weight out of “laziness.” If a suggestion like this is lazy, are patients who don’t listen to their doctor somehow not lazy?
The idea that doctors make weight a scapegoat seems prevalent in American healthcare (probably because we’re generally obese, myself included). It feels a lot like projection of one’s “laziness” (mentally it’s much more complex than that) onto a doctor, even though that doctor has probably seen hundreds of cases with the same predictable outcomes and knows that appropriate weight management would head off more serious treatment.
Frankly, I think doctors are anything but lazy when they are “forced” to order and perform risky and invasive treatments on a patient who refused to meet them halfway before the treatment became necessary in the first place. I get it, nobody likes being told what to do, especially when it seems (and literally is) so personal. But doctors also don’t like to be told what to do (“fix me!”) when a patient deigns even the gentlest suggestion to take some control of their issues at hand.
I am 15lbs into the obese BMI category myself, but 30lbs below my highest weight. The severity of my issues (joint pain, lethargy, depression, etc.) has palpably lessened losing that 30lbs very inconsistently over the last four years. If anything, I think doctors need to better read the psychological resistance many people have with weight loss and then illustrate to, rather than tell, patients how to attain weight loss in ways that don’t seem restrictive.
That 30lbs of mine, could I have done that in 30 weeks or fewer? Sure, but I didn’t want to feel perpetually hungry. In fact, I never even set a goal weight. Instead of thinking “Idgaf about my weight” or “I must lose 20lbs by Christmas!!” I just made the tiniest changes, the biggest one being taking advantage of times I wasn’t hungry by (gasp) not eating.
… Shit, I guess lazy weight loss works, too!
I guess I work in the medical field and I know a lot of doctors are overwhelmed and are really only looking for the quickest way to get you back out the door. They aren’t “lazy” … I guess, just overworked. But also lazy. I live in a rural town, good doctors don’t come here.
I mean, they really are, it also happened to me, I’m not that big, I weight 115kg, almost fell down a hole on the sidewalk but my foot twisted high and I was able to keep my balance.
Now my foot was hurting real bad for days, went to a doctor and he said that I should lose weight to fix it, even though I told him what happened, so I just went to another one that actually gave me a solution via physiotherapy and now I’m good.
Despite popular believe, people doesn’t and can’t suddenly turn black as they pleased, while body weight is something you can at least control through dedication.
Until next time ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Yep, the same way people can take full control of their depression, alcoholism or other psycological issues. It’s all about just rolling up those sleeves and deciding not to have the issues. So we can safely assume that all heavier people are a result of them actively choosing to become heavy, so we should always treat them as such.
At the end of the day, alcoholism, depression, and obesity, they are unhealthy states of being.
They are not something people choose, and while there are treatments, it’s not something everyone can control.
That doesn’t mean we should simply accept this state of being. People living with depression deserve better, people living with alcoholism deserve better than for us to say “it’s out of their control, they can’t help it, so we shouldn’t judge, let them be” when what they need is better support and better treatment options.
Likewise, obese people deserve better than “eat less, move more, fatty!” but they also deserve more than “all bodies are beautiful, just let us be”
I say this as someone who was a fat kid, and a fat teen, and a fat adult. I had a BMI of 50 for a most of my life. In my mid 30s, I got it down to 28, and still going.
So I say all of this is as someone else who was fat, obese, and morbidly obese. Obesity should be viewed the same way we view depression and anxiety, though depression and anxiety also need some better PR.
Being obese may not not always be a choice, but the the ultimate end goal of how we view obesity as a state of being is to find ways we can all manage our weight. Because obesity is not healthy, for those who can’t easily control their weight, life sucks, they are patients in need of treatment, not morally failing people, but also not “perfect plus sized activists who are healthy at every size”
Because while bodies and sizes vary and we can do healthy things at every size. Obesity is inherently unhealthy. Obviously being bullied won’t solve anything, but neither will society politely ignoring how hard it is to live a full life while suffering from obesity.
Being black isn’t an inherent health issue. It genuinely is just a different state of being. 99% of problems unique to black people are social issues, not medical issues… So the comparison between obesity and substance abuse issues is more helpful than trying to compare being obese to being BIPOC.
Congrats on your weight loss journey! May I ask if there was a specific thing that motivated you to start and keep going? And how did you turn your mindset around?
Not him, but I found my will to lose weight when a close family member was told their liver was failing and they had a few months to live, due to cirrhosis from their obesity. I knew I was on a similar trajectory and my bloodwork showed a hit to my liver function.
Good news is that my relative also found the will to get healthy and their liver improved more than the doctors thought could happen and so we both are doing much better. I’m even under 25 BMI now after losing 40 lbs. Also amazing to be able to move around like I used to as a teenager again.
As to how, not very helpful but just using that fear to drive willpower to just suck it up and eat less and exercise even when I really want to be doing something else. It means to some extent just living with usually being a little hungry and almost never filling full for me. Changed the food for less calorie dense stuff and avoiding refined sugars of course, but still have to reduce food intake.
For me it was understanding the idea of equilibrium. The way I use it is to mean the state of something given enough time that highs and lows have evened out.
A practical example is with common diet mentality of dieting until reaching a goal, and then stopping the diet. The diet is a peak, not dieting is a valley, over time youll end up back at the same weight or more. Basically the problem is that modern diets give people high expectations when studies show the most likely scenario is that the weight is lost, and gained back plus some.
So what will work. If we think of this long term equilibrium, the dieting doesnt work because they aren’t permanent changes. So if we agree the only way to stay healthy long term is to make permanent changes, we can agree that making cumulative small permanent changes that affect diet will ultimately result in lost weight.
Sugar is the easiest to target IMO. Dairy, meat, and fish also are good things to target too as they cause other health problems besides weight gain. Switching to mainly water is another thing. Even taking on a new hobby or exercising a slight bit more will result in a net loss as less time is able to be spent on eating and more energy is spent physically.
Plant based whole food diets usually result in weight loss because they are less calorie dense, so you will feel full with a fraction of the calories in your stomach. Alternatively you can lose weight with calorie dense foods, but you will likely have to deal with hunger more.
Once I started thinking more like this, it was easier to come up with my own changes rather than shopping around diets with absurd restrictions. You know yourself best, make small changes and keep trending in a good direction, and if you make a “mistake” do your best to forget about it and immediately get back to it.
Are you claiming that depression, alcoholism, and other psychological issue cannot be treated? Are you saying that to someone who went through severe depression period twice in his life and on his path to recovery for the second period only recently? Or are you saying people will become severely obese even when eating the same healthy amount of healthy food as other non-obese people?
Just because something is hard doesn’t mean your out of control. And I know hard - nothing comes easy…
There are a variety of reasons, and of course there exists people who are in full control of their weight, but decide to not do anything about it. What I’m hinting at is that there are also a lot of people who suffer with deeper psycological issues. We don’t really tease depressed people with nick names and expect them to just snap out of it at any time. Hence I feel like we should generally treat heavier people with respect instead of assuming that it’s their active choice.
I don’t really think there is anyone with full control of their weight.
I wouldn’t call obese a nickname - fat would be the equivelent of the n-word
You can’t be 300-400 lbs and not call it an active choice…
I mean medical intervention is a common way to try mitigate mental health issues. For many people it can never truly go away, but the effects can be lessened. Similarly, there are avenues to help with obesity, whether it be the psychological or physiological aspect.
Didn’t MJ turn into a white lady though?
MJ turning white is because of Vitiligo, he use makeup to cover up the skin condition.
Also he’s black by birth, not a choice he made either.
And even on his level, he had to deal with systemic racism. It took two years for MTV to start broadcasting videos with black people in them, including videos already made by Michael Jackson (although it’s not true that Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist on MTV. That honor went a couple of weeks earlier to Pass the Dutchie by Musical Youth).
Sure, but I see it (also?) as a societal failure.
I forget what comedian said it, but if you’re discussing two words and you cannot even say anything except the first letter of one of the words, that’s the worse word.
John Mulaney
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It’s a clinical term, and being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in.
Nobody picks their race. You cannot change your race.
What I’m saying is, no, those terms are not remotely the same.
being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in
A big part of an individual’s build is genetic. Saying you “choose to be obese” is akin to saying you “choose to be tan”. Truer for some people than others, and often more a question of degree than state. But telling a Samoan to just stop being big is about as practical as insisting a Swede needs to stop being so fucking tall.
Nobody picks their race.
Race is a social construct. You’ve got significantly more control over your perceived race than your perceived weight, as even adjustments to your outfit and accent can cause people to place you in radically different ethnic groups.
My sicilian mother was regularly mistaken as hispanic, simply because she was shorter, slightly tanner, knew more spanish than her Mayo-American neighbors. I’ve got a Philippian friend who regularly code-switches between East Asian, Polynesian, and White depending on who is around. And even generic whiteness becomes extremely relative when you’re in Europe. Being from anywhere east of Germany might as well make you a filthy mudblood (nevermind the beef between English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian folks). A bit of accent work and a certain haircut can put you on the other side of the continent.
Diet determines someone’s body weight. If you don’t eat, you don’t gain. Once you gain it’s incredibly hard to lose. Once you lose it’s incredibly easy to gain.
I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months from calorie counting. I gained 60 pounds in 3 years by ordering a ton of delivery. I yoyo’d many times in the past 2 years trying to lose the weight using various programs before finding a routine that works for me. All weight gain was due to me making choices that increased calorie intake. No one forced me to eat anything, I did it to myself.
Genetic factors may make weight loss more difficult but it is never impossible. There is no possible way that if you do not eat you will gain weight. Unless you have a handful of extremely rare conditions it’s going to be the things you choose to eat and how much of them you eat that determine weight gain, alongside exercise. Some people swear that they do everything right with calorie counting but still gain weight but the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.
Mental health challenges make it hard to stick with a routine diet for some but it’s still technically possible to lose weight even if your brain won’t let you stop eating. If someone gave you an appropriate balanced diet and there were no other possible source of calories for you, you’re gonna lose weight. You might go crazy because you can’t have dressing on your salad and perhaps even wish you were dead instead of eating less, but you would lose weight.
Beyond weight
In terms of height, diet can influence height somewhat (especially in terms of deficits causing stunted growth) but your maximum height is almost entirely due to genetics. You get very little choice in that. You can’t choose to drink more milk and gain a foot of height. Once your body stops producing the right growth hormone you just stop getting taller.
In terms of skin color, there’s very little you can do about that beyond genetics. You can paint your body with fake tan or sit in the sun to get darker or hide indoors out of sunlight to be “lighter” than if you went outdoors but there’s no way to will your body to stop producing melanin.
In terms of “cultural behaviors” that you seem to call race based on how you describe it, you can choose to behave like someone from any walk of life if you learn how to do so. You can learn other languages, social norms, customs and beliefs and act on them. You are not born any more “white”, “italian”, “irish”, “kenyan” or “thai” culturally than anybody else. You learn the local culture from your experiences. Switching between the cultures has nothing to do with genetics. We’re just most likely to be born into cultural groups that have the same genetics as us, the exceptions tend to be when you’re adopted or your parents happen to already be a different culture than their genetic heritage’s or your parents have different cultures.
I can’t believe I had to write any of this out. I’ll probably get downvoted because no one wants to hear the absolute truth of whatever thing they can’t do that they want to blame something else to feel better for their lack of discipline, but we can choose to behave however we really want to. I don’t give a shit how fat or skinny someone is, I care about the content of their character, their beliefs and their actions. I’m not going to point this shit out in polite company because it’s not my business and I believe everyone should be able to choose to do to their bodies and their lives however they wish. Doesn’t change the facts though.
Diet determines someone’s body weight.
Dietary needs vary by individual need. You need more calories to feed an adult than a child. You need more calories to feed a professional athlete than an office schlub. And that’s before you get into food availability by region or the opportunity cost of accessing nutritious foods in a given neighborhood radius.
I can’t believe I had to write any of this out.
You’re overly simplistic and reductive, just like every other high minded bigot.
I love how you glossed over what I said to pick up a strawman argument which is aligned with what I said. e.g. everyone’s needs are different. My exact quote from the post you replied to:
the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.
You can believe whatever you want but assuming i’m bigoted means you probably didn’t read everything I wrote. It’s a really, really long post for social media. The irony is your complaints of it being reductive though. If you want scientific papers perhaps you should be looking at nature instead.
You can believe whatever you want
This isn’t a question of belief but of established nutritional practice. “Just eat fewer calories” isn’t a panacea, because people don’t respond in the same way to calorie deficits. Composition of diet, opportunity for exercise, age, physical health… you almost seem to hit on it when you talk about metabolism, but then you skitter right past when you conclude “Just eat more/less”.
It’s a rudimentary understanding of how people gain and lose weight, and it inevitably leads people towards crash diets and weight loss drugs that ruin your body in pursuit of a certain popular aesthetic.
Retard was a clinical term as well, so was mongoloid idiot and imbecile.
I don’t agree with the fatty in the post at all, just saying.
Neither of those things are something you can choose to be. Similar to race, its something you’re generally born with. (Or a tragic accident could cause brain issues as well)
They are not the same as obesity. Some people don’t have a choice, and it can be genetics, but the VAST majority it is a life style “choice”.
Fun Fact:
A northern German youth-slang word for “Bro” is “Digga”, which is a friendly way to say “Fatty”, from “Dicker - dick” (lit.: Fatty, fat/thick), but with the implication of being very dear friends, “dicke Freunde” (lit.: thick friends) just has the meaning “close friends” with no implication of being fat and “dick miteinander sein” (lit.: being thick together) is also an expression of closeness, not of weight.
Interestingly, Digga is being used in exactly the same way as black people in the US use the soft n-word with each other. “Mein Digga!” (lit: my thicky) is 1:1 analogous to “My n-word!”. It’s common for tourists to do a double take when they hear some very German and very white youths yell at one another “Ey Digga!” and many German rappers definitely use it as a stand in for the soft n-word, but It’s use and etymology is rooted in the old dock workers culture of Hamburg and has absolutely nothing to do with the n-word.
I’m from the USA, and when I first heard “digga,” I was certainly confused! It seems the youth say it even more than the generation that invented the phrase now.
Anyway, English speakers have an old phrase that is similar and might help some understand the usage of the word “thick” here. The phrase is “thick as thieves” - meaning thieves stick together.
Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese. It’s vile to discriminate against someone for their height, race, sexual orientation, and other factors because they have no control or choice over those things. But if someone makes a bad choice that negatively affects their own health and others around them, it’s acceptable to tell that person it’s unsafe. Shaming them is ineffective, but just pretending being obese is normal and healthy isn’t ok either. These folks need help.
Don’t even start with me on thyroid disorders, those are a small fraction of people who are obese and even they do not defy basic laws of thermodynamics. Eat less than you burn, it’s basic math. You may not be able to control the disorder but you are in control of how you respond to it.
Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese.
Body Mass Index doesn’t do a good job of scaling by height. Its much easier to qualify as “obese” when you’re 6’ tall, simply because your frame is so much larger. And quite a few people really are just larger. Samoans are large folks, which is why they produce so many football linemen. South Americans tend to be a lot smaller and leaner by their nature.
You can change your diet to cut out the excess sugars and limit your carbs, but a person whose body demands 5000 calories a day is simply not going to be the same size as someone who can get by perfectly fine on less than 1500.
It might be acceptable but is it effective? Thyroid disorders are not common, but food addiction is extremely common. The same way you couldn’t understand what drug or alcohol dependency feels like if you’ve never felt like that before, you couldn’t understand what food addiction is like if you don’t have that experience with food.
It’s clear that there is a spectrum of how people respond to food, from “always hungry and literally never not wanting to eat” to “forgets to eat for days and barely notices until they pass out”. I personally know people on both ends of that spectrum and every place in between.
So I think your response is a little insensitive, or at least lacks empathy. To boil it down to the classic “stop stuffing your face” or “basic math” assumes your level of willpower required to not overeat is applicable to all people and it can’t possibly be different or harder than it is for you, so the only explanation is that everyone else must have less willpower than you.
Either that, or they feel like they are starving all the time and are literally addicted to food. Most science shows that it’s that one, but feel free to believe whatever you wish.
I understand the level of willpower is different, I have an eating disorder myself. But the fact remains it is something that can be willed. Changing myself to be a different race or sexual orientation isn’t a willpower issue, it’s simply impossible. Hence why the comparison in this tweet is ridiculous.
Agreed, I’m not defending the tweet or saying it’s the same as things you literally cannot change. It’s stupid. I just take issue with your characterization of it just being math, feels oversimplified to me.
Makes sense, enjoy your day
Weight is a technical problem. Eat less than you need and you lose weight. Eat more than you need and you gain weight. Simple.
Willpower to follow through with the technical steps to lose weight is a mental health issue. That is way more nuanced, complicated and ultimately why so many people can’t lose weight. I think you consider them holistically, whereas those who disagree with you keep those concepts separate. There is a logical argument for both and neither argument is wrong.
I hope you also saying it to smokers, drinkers, etc.!
Maybe bring back the “slow suicide” and “brain damage” jokes for them, or at least call them “self harm”, that will be totally not counterproductive or anything!
all medical terms get turned into hateful insults–moron, idiot, imbecile, r*tarded which is approaching but will never achieve n-word status-- all used to be actual medical diagnoses. “obese” will go the same route and be replaced by something else, which will also eventually become derogatory and be replaced
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
So much so that there’s a song about it!
STEP ONE, INSTEAD OF ASS, SAY BUNS
LIKE ‘KISS MY BUNS’ OR ‘YOU’RE A BUNS-HOLE’
Buns-hole gets me every time
Singing Family Reunion at their concert is a memory I will never let go
And now apparently autism. Why us? Autism doesn’t cause you to be useless or stupid, most of us aren’t recognised in public and a high percentage isn’t even diagnosed, there is no reason to shit on us.
The reason is bigotry. If you really want to get into it, a big reason for the stigma against autism is the damage done by Autism Speaks.
what did autism speaks do, or still doing?
They’re behind just about every negative stigma surrounding autism. Mainly that it’s a debilitating disease that ruins the lives of everyone around them and needs to be cured, as well as that autism is caused by vaccines.
We’re taking it back at !autismplace@lemmy.autism.place
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I wonder if those prior medical terms had precise definitions. Obese is BMI >= 30 and morbidly obese is >= 40. BMI itself has some issues but works ok as a general assessment for most people.
Oh my god. Get off the cross, we need the wood. Also you’re causing stress fractures.
Bigga please, I got my mind on much bigger things to say the least
My latest beat just sound like they was released by David East
If you can write one word but not the other, it’s the other that’s worse.
That being said, fat people do face systemic issues which are often intersectional with race, class, gender, etc., but this is a shitpost, so don’t think too hard about it.
I thought it was"fat". It almost seems like she’d be mad at any term that describes her as she is, like as if she is ashamed to be something thats completely within her control not to be.
Not saying that the person in the post is correct in conflating those words, I don’t think that’s accurate at all.
However, it is disheartening to see so many ill-informed comments about fatness here… It’s way, way more complicated than just “calories in/calories out”. Even the extent to which it’s unhealthy is more complicated; obesity is linked to higher risk of heart disease, but also linked to higher probability of surviving strokes/etc. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that BMI is a nearly useless metric.
Human beings are subject to the laws of physics. If you eat more calories than you consume and do not otherwise eliminate from the body, they will still be in the body. The body stores them as fat. This is simply the mechanics of biology. If it weren’t, things like Ozempic would not spur massive weight loss.
We have more obese people now than have ever existed. Countries that do not have US/Mexico levels of easy access to heavily processed, calorie-dense foods do not have obesity problems like we have. Clearly, calling people names and making them feel bad is not a good way to get them to adopt healthier habits. However, there are plain, uncomplicated things that people can do to lose weight that will work, but they will ONLY work if the people want to change, are honest with themselves and truly stick to the changes they need to make.
Losing weight is absolutely within reach of 99% of obese people, but comments like this reinforce the absolutely incorrect notion that getting healthy is some big mystery that’s for a different class of people to solve. It’s defeatist and makes it seem like a problem that a person can’t solve on their own, which is straight up wrong.
The plain, uncomplicated things you can do? Find out how many calories a body of the weight you want to weigh uses in a day. Limit yourself to those calories. Given time, you will be that weight if and only if you stick to the plan. It may shock some people how many calories they actually consume in a day, especially if they drink soda or juice with any regularity.
Yeah, CICO is a subtraction problem, but it’s just one part of a massive system of nonlinear equations when it comes to health.
Nobese then ?
