Re: fat shaming, this is horribly misunderstood by people who have never struggled with obesity. When you are obese, you are fat shamed by yourself, every day

Re: fat shaming, this is horribly misunderstood by people who have never struggled with obesity. When you are obese, you are fat shamed by yourself, every day of your life, every time you look in the mirror and what you see doesn’t reflect who you think you are. There is an incredible amount of societal baggage in being fat - the stereotype is that fat people are lazy, stupid, and incompetent. I know better, but even I have to catch myself to avoid unfair bias against fat people (e.g. in hiring decisions) - and I know the stereotype is bullshit because I myself used to be morbidly obese. Fat acceptance is bullshit, being fat is unhealthy. And because so many people are fat, many folks don’t even know what a healthy weight looks like. I’m not advocating for fat is good or fat is beautiful thinking, because that is counterproductive. But fat shaming is far worse than saying nothing. Binge eating/food addiction is driven by cycles of shame and hating yourself for being fat is a big part of that. I couldn’t have lost 120+ lbs without first getting over shame and embarrassment. In my first-hand experience with obesity fat-shaming is a great way to push people harder into a shame->self hate->binge eating-> shame-> self hate cycle, which just makes things worth. This is clearly a societal problem, we shouldn’t shame people for succumbing to it, but instead work to help people recover. P.S. it is sometimes hard for naturally skinny people to empathize with obesity. Obesity makes all of the steps to lose weight harder - exercise, nonstop hunger (due to broken hormone regulation). Struggling with dieting long term causes metabolism slowdown which makes the problem harder. I gain weight on 1300 calories, and that’s with an active lifestyle with 16.000 steps of walking daily. American culture at least makes it really difficult to participate in society and stay under 1300 cal/day. I imagine it’s even worse if you’re not a 6ft male.