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The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to

The bias isn't against obese people, it is against morbidly obese people who don't want to accept it. There is a whole collection of groups that sprouted up to fight the "discrimination" against fat people, HAES (Health At Every Size) is the most know, but fat acceptance gets airtime simply because it is so much easier to get a message out. Obesity is an issue, we simply have way too much opportunity to indulge and little reason to move to entertain ourselves. Go out and play seems to have fallen on deaf ears, why should kids do that when adults don't? lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. if anything exercise contributes because it changes your lifestyle, you get out more or you spend less time eating and sitting

danielbarla 11y ago
> lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at these times. Of course, sometimes we don't have time to eat well, but I find that it takes a lot less time (per calorie) to eat well, than it is to work it off. Another point I'd make is that small differences add up scarily quickly over time, as someone else pointed out. When I was just out of university, I started putting on 1 - 1.5 kgs of weight per year, nice and slow that it was hardly noticeable. Then, just a handful of years later, I was 10 kgs overweight - it creeps up on you. The opposite is also true, a nice steady decline is easy to arrange, and gives your body all the more time to adjust to your new eating habits, without it breaking your willpower.
- gozo 11y ago
  Yes, but it also a losing proposition for most people. Do we really think that people who are overweight, especially in a body focused society as the US, haven't tried to "just eat better"?
  - danielbarla 11y ago
    Interesting point, though I do think people tend to do it the hard way. By that, I mean that most people have probably tried some form of extreme calorie deficit diet, which typically doesn't work in the long run. It's exceptionally hard to conform to these for any period of time. Even if it's successful once or twice, I suspect people will have a negative perception of the experience, perhaps feeding a bit into denial in the future. I'm advocating a much slower approach, based on a little bit of knowledge about what you're eating, plus some convenience tricks like swapping out your heavy staple meals for something a bit healthier (that's still easy to make). My guess is that most people want to see rapid, drastic changes, and are demotivated when that doesn't happen (or takes too much effort), hence the failure.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Most of them, yes. Or they tried and failed.
- linkydinkandyou 11y ago
  You can't outrun your fork! And exercise just makes you hungry. Fat people should eat less until they're a healthy weight (BMI of < 24.9). Then think about exercise.
- JPKab 11y ago
  Just want to emphasize something here: Exercise, when thrown in with the typical "calories-in calories-out" context, is absurdly terrible for fat loss. It makes people hungrier, and then they eat more. However, when viewed in the context of many people who are struggling with losing fat, it can be an excellent complement to dietary changes. Why? Because obesity and fat storage in general are extremely metabolically driven, and metabolism is itself driven by numerous endocrine system factors. The effects of exercise on the body can cause someone who is already eating a healthy (minimal sugar/refined carbs) diet to have even better results due to the increase in insulin sensitivity for a 16 hour period after exercise.
RyanMcGreal 11y ago
> exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. Anecdote here, but I've found that for me the key to weight loss has been exercise-first. I decided that I'd never be very good at reducing my dietary input (I really enjoy food) so I focused instead on increasing my energy output by incorporating progressively more physical activity into my lifestyle. Over the past few years I have steadily and gradually ramped up my activity through walking, running, cycling, body-weight exercises, plyometrics, stand-up desk, and so on, and I've been progressively losing weight and feeling better physically, mentally and emotionally. As a result, other complementary aspects of health - sleeping, eating - have also tended to fall into healthier patterns in a positive feedback loop. It's hard to believe that exercise isn't the key to weight loss when I burn 2,000 calories on my Saturday morning run.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- dwc 11y ago
  Like so many things, there is no single correct answer. For myself, if I focus on diet and not worry about exercise I find that I have to eat very little if I want to lose more than a few pounds. So little that I'm miserable all the time. Forever. On the flip side, if I exercise[1] I not only burn calories but increase muscle mass which burns more calories. Other people seem to do well with a focus on diet and not so much exercise. Weight loss should be about losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way, however that works out for the individual. To continue doing something that's not working because it's supposed to be The Right Way is counterproductive and demotivating. I think most people can find some balance between eating healthier/less and exercising more, in a way they can keep up. 1. I've only had two effective exercise regimens: resistance training (weight lifting) and martial arts. If I try to jog, walk, or whatever I will become more and more irregular and eventually quit. Other people love to run. Whatever works.
  - RyanMcGreal 11y ago
    I'm not suggesting diet doesn't matter; of course it does. But for me, every attempt to eat less failed. When I decided to focus on exercise instead, a subsequent effect was that the pattern of my approach to food started to change in positive ways.
raverbashing 11y ago
> Go out and play seems to have fallen on deaf ears Well, to be honest it's a non-solution. It's just something adults say to relieve themselves of the problem Easier when most parents weren't helicopter parents, litigation happy to sue for every scratch their kids had.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ZoFreX 11y ago
It's interesting that the highest comment isn't really discussing the article but segues from a little aside at the end of it to debunk "Health At Every Size" - a notion that is not mentioned at all in the article! The bias against obese people that the article refers to is very, very real: It's all of the assumptions people make about obese people, e.g. it's all their fault, they are lazy, they are to blame, and so on. The information raised in this article is one way amongst many in which obesity is not as simple as that. In this case it rather reminds me of the meme where the older generation judges my generation as lazy because we rent instead of owning houses: as well as individual responsibility, it has gotten harder in real terms to earn enough to own a house. Likewise, someone eating the same things and exercising the same amount now, compared to 30 years ago, would be fatter. That's extremely interesting, and needs to be factored in to any efforts to fight the obesity crisis.

danielbarla 11y ago

> lastly, exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. This is very true in my personal experience, too. I can quite easily binge-eat an extra 500 calories for dinner because I'm feeling a bit too hungry, but to work that back off with exercise might take 30 - 45 minutes of cardio. With hectic work schedules, it's also very easy to skip exercise sessions, but good eating habits are "working" even at these times. Of course, sometimes we don't have time to eat well, but I find that it takes a lot less time (per calorie) to eat well, than it is to work it off. Another point I'd make is that small differences add up scarily quickly over time, as someone else pointed out. When I was just out of university, I started putting on 1 - 1.5 kgs of weight per year, nice and slow that it was hardly noticeable. Then, just a handful of years later, I was 10 kgs overweight - it creeps up on you. The opposite is also true, a nice steady decline is easy to arrange, and gives your body all the more time to adjust to your new eating habits, without it breaking your willpower.

gozo 11y ago
Yes, but it also a losing proposition for most people. Do we really think that people who are overweight, especially in a body focused society as the US, haven't tried to "just eat better"?
- danielbarla 11y ago
  Interesting point, though I do think people tend to do it the hard way. By that, I mean that most people have probably tried some form of extreme calorie deficit diet, which typically doesn't work in the long run. It's exceptionally hard to conform to these for any period of time. Even if it's successful once or twice, I suspect people will have a negative perception of the experience, perhaps feeding a bit into denial in the future. I'm advocating a much slower approach, based on a little bit of knowledge about what you're eating, plus some convenience tricks like swapping out your heavy staple meals for something a bit healthier (that's still easy to make). My guess is that most people want to see rapid, drastic changes, and are demotivated when that doesn't happen (or takes too much effort), hence the failure.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Most of them, yes. Or they tried and failed.
linkydinkandyou 11y ago
You can't outrun your fork! And exercise just makes you hungry. Fat people should eat less until they're a healthy weight (BMI of < 24.9). Then think about exercise.
JPKab 11y ago
Just want to emphasize something here: Exercise, when thrown in with the typical "calories-in calories-out" context, is absurdly terrible for fat loss. It makes people hungrier, and then they eat more. However, when viewed in the context of many people who are struggling with losing fat, it can be an excellent complement to dietary changes. Why? Because obesity and fat storage in general are extremely metabolically driven, and metabolism is itself driven by numerous endocrine system factors. The effects of exercise on the body can cause someone who is already eating a healthy (minimal sugar/refined carbs) diet to have even better results due to the increase in insulin sensitivity for a 16 hour period after exercise.

RyanMcGreal 11y ago

> exercise is not they key to weight loss, proper eating is. Anecdote here, but I've found that for me the key to weight loss has been exercise-first. I decided that I'd never be very good at reducing my dietary input (I really enjoy food) so I focused instead on increasing my energy output by incorporating progressively more physical activity into my lifestyle. Over the past few years I have steadily and gradually ramped up my activity through walking, running, cycling, body-weight exercises, plyometrics, stand-up desk, and so on, and I've been progressively losing weight and feeling better physically, mentally and emotionally. As a result, other complementary aspects of health - sleeping, eating - have also tended to fall into healthier patterns in a positive feedback loop. It's hard to believe that exercise isn't the key to weight loss when I burn 2,000 calories on my Saturday morning run.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dwc 11y ago
Like so many things, there is no single correct answer. For myself, if I focus on diet and not worry about exercise I find that I have to eat very little if I want to lose more than a few pounds. So little that I'm miserable all the time. Forever. On the flip side, if I exercise[1] I not only burn calories but increase muscle mass which burns more calories. Other people seem to do well with a focus on diet and not so much exercise. Weight loss should be about losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way, however that works out for the individual. To continue doing something that's not working because it's supposed to be The Right Way is counterproductive and demotivating. I think most people can find some balance between eating healthier/less and exercising more, in a way they can keep up. 1. I've only had two effective exercise regimens: resistance training (weight lifting) and martial arts. If I try to jog, walk, or whatever I will become more and more irregular and eventually quit. Other people love to run. Whatever works.
- RyanMcGreal 11y ago
  I'm not suggesting diet doesn't matter; of course it does. But for me, every attempt to eat less failed. When I decided to focus on exercise instead, a subsequent effect was that the pattern of my approach to food started to change in positive ways.

raverbashing 11y ago

> Go out and play seems to have fallen on deaf ears Well, to be honest it's a non-solution. It's just something adults say to relieve themselves of the problem Easier when most parents weren't helicopter parents, litigation happy to sue for every scratch their kids had.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ZoFreX 11y ago

It's interesting that the highest comment isn't really discussing the article but segues from a little aside at the end of it to debunk "Health At Every Size" - a notion that is not mentioned at all in the article! The bias against obese people that the article refers to is very, very real: It's all of the assumptions people make about obese people, e.g. it's all their fault, they are lazy, they are to blame, and so on. The information raised in this article is one way amongst many in which obesity is not as simple as that. In this case it rather reminds me of the meme where the older generation judges my generation as lazy because we rent instead of owning houses: as well as individual responsibility, it has gotten harder in real terms to earn enough to own a house. Likewise, someone eating the same things and exercising the same amount now, compared to 30 years ago, would be fatter. That's extremely interesting, and needs to be factored in to any efforts to fight the obesity crisis.