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// Fat? Just start running! Never mind that you can’t afford a gym subscription and live in a car-centric hellscape that’s not even bikeable, let alone walkable

// Fat? Just start running! Never mind that you can’t afford a gym subscription and live in a car-centric hellscape that’s not even bikeable, let alone walkable So here's something that's true: you can only move forward from where you are and with what you have. So while it's surely easier to lose weight if you can hire a coach and a nutritionist - if you can't do those things you nevertheless have to find a way! So if you are "poor and fat" as in this scenario, the idea that you need a gym membership and perfect running streets is a trap. You don't have those things and therefore you are going to be fat forever. The reality is that plenty of poor people lost weight when they decided to. They found a way - whether by walking around the block or taking the bus to a highschool running track or whatever. It's not easy but it was the only way to do it. So how to avoid this mental trap? Rather than obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else, obsess about the fact that someone in your situation and even worse can do it and has done it. And then start.

boomerango 4y ago
I think the mistake is viewing the task as a dragon that must be slayed rather than 10,000 hamsters which need be stomped on in 10,000 days. If we can reframe our large problems into a sequence of small (and potentially even gratifying!) tasks, life becomes easier.
- vgatherps 4y ago
  Of all possible things to stomp you chose hamsters?
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    Hey, it could be anti-personnel mines...
  - boomerango 4y ago
    You made me laugh pretty hard. Re-reading this I’m more disturbed that I framed it as a potentially gratifying task.
etempleton 4y ago
This reminds me of a conclusion I have come to in life. You have been dealt the cards you have been dealt. Sometimes, usually, it isn’t fair. Now how best can you play your hand? You still might lose, but you can only do the best you can. Being upset, feeling sorry for yourself, whining, complaining, flipping the table over, really doesn’t change anything and is wasting time and energy that could be put towards improving your hand.
- bluetomcat 4y ago
  This is the harmful mantra that shifts all responsibility down at the individual level, overlooking any structural deficiencies at large. Multiply this behaviour over a large population of individuals, and you have atomised wheel-spinning hamsters without any abstract sense of the world they inhabit. Everyone tries to spin the wheel a bit faster, exacerbating the systemic issue even further.
  - twh270 4y ago
    No, this is about acceptance of the 'hand' you have and having an understanding of what you can control and influence. Which is pretty damn empowering, compared to blaming structural or systemic problems for your situation.
    - beecafe 4y ago
      The point is to change the structure and try to address systemic problems, rather than putting on your blinders.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        Most of us don't have any meaningful avenues to do so (although there's plenty of simulacrums if one just wants to feel like they're "doing something"). But, more importantly, it's generally not something that can be done on a timeframe that would actually benefit you and solve your immediate problem. Yes, we should be fixing systemic problems at proper scale, but meanwhile we still have to function within the current messy state of affairs.
goodpoint 4y ago
> Rather than obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else, obsess about the fact that someone in your situation and even worse can do it and has done it. And then start. AKA: "why don't you just have 10x more willpower?"
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I am sorry but your is a criminally bad take. What's the alternative, be stuck in the bad situation forever.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    No, the alternative requires a bit more thinking on you part instead of blaming individuals. For the record there's a whole subreddit dedicated to your "advice" https://www.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured/
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      The "blaming" is in your head, not in my comment So question to you - if you have a fat and poor friend who's getting unhealthier by the second - how do you help him? What will you actually do?
      - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
        Depends on why the friend is fat and poor. Could be they're disabled, in which case they're basically SOL. Wheelchairs are incredibly expensive, it's hard to cook in one unless one pays $$$ for home modifications, removes a wide range of exercise options...
        carlgreene 4y ago
        The friend is fat and poor because they eat unhealthy, spend most of their time sitting down watching YouTube or playing games, and work a low skill job because they do not have a skill that will pay them more. What do you do with said friend?
988747 4y ago
Fat people should not be running anyway. First, it's ineffective for weight loss, second, your extra body mass puts stress on your joints, resulting in injuries. To lose weight you need a diet, not exercise. And if you want to exercise anyway you should ride a bike, not run.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I am using the concept from the article to provide a counterexample. This isn't a conversation about how to lose weight, but about when to be "optimistic" ie apply yourself to the problem rather than giving up.
- lordfrito 4y ago
  Being fat is a problem with caloric intake, not caloric usage. I've found every time that I wanted to lose weight I needed to get my eating in order. That gave me more energy to work out, which of course helped even more. But it starts with eating less. Whenever I focused on just working out, I found I would just eat more and still have a caloric surplus. It never worked as a way to lose weight as I wasn't addressing the root of the problem, overeating.
bluetomcat 4y ago
And this is the problem with "generic" advice from self-help books. They are usually written by someone with privilege from a middle or an upper-middle socio-economic background. What works and is applicable in their situation might be irrelevant in another. For the author of the book, doing exercise means devoting one hour of their leisurely daily routine while not missing anything else. For an impoverished person, doing exercise means leaving their kids screaming and unfed after a long day at work. The real purpose of the media is to expose and raise the awareness about systemic issues affecting large portions of the population. Then society should attempt to address those issues through the political institutions, with the participation of both the affected and the unaffected group.
greatiscones 4y ago
I agree with you that the exercise example is a little soft, but my sense is it was meant to be one of many, and you might inadvertently be supporting their argument a bit. There's probably some term for this phenomenon in formal logic or argument, and if there isn't, there probably should be, but... It seems to me often with these kinds of things you can always say "if you want X enough, you can find a way," and that's logically true, but in practice the effort involved or the threading of the needle is exactly the problem. People have lives, and maybe taking the bus isn't feasible because you're working two jobs, have kids, and literally don't have the time without jeopardizing those things. It's some kind of logical trap, where you can provide all these examples of things to do, in some imaginary context where nothing else in life matters, or where success comes by making exactly the correct sequence of N steps of complicated decisions that is extremely implausible once uncertainty and normal levels of human error are taken into account. The authors also basically provided an example of the neighborhood not being walkable and then you offer walking around the neighborhood as a solution. I bring this up not to be antagonistic or hostile to you, but I think this is part of what they're talking about: someone has X obstacles, and then in the course of getting advice, those obstacles are ignored in part or in whole. Even if it's unintended, it creates a loss of credibility on the part of the person giving advice (whether or not that credibility loss is warranted or not): "if you're ignoring my problem X, do you really understand my situation? And if not, can I trust that what you're saying will work out?" Then they might even ignore good advice, which then makes the problem worse. I agree that you can still lose weight if by no other means than not eating as much, and I'm deeply skeptical of someone's inability to lose weight in the absence of some kind of internal physiological limitation. But as someone who's sympathetic to where you're coming from, I kind of read your comment and felt like you were just kind of illustrating the author's points. At what point at a population level do we start recognizing that these systemic factors are in fact causing problems for individuals, and that individuals cannot just bootstrap their way out of it completely? In the same way that you can come up with a complicated series of excuses for a person, you can also do the opposite, whatever that is termed -- you can come up with a complicated series of explanations of how they are culpable by not doing exactly the right series of things that would never be even discussed about a whole other subgroup of society. I guess it seems to me that dismissing "obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else," and asking them instead to obsess about their own situation, is basically the thing the authors are talking about.

boomerango 4y ago

I think the mistake is viewing the task as a dragon that must be slayed rather than 10,000 hamsters which need be stomped on in 10,000 days. If we can reframe our large problems into a sequence of small (and potentially even gratifying!) tasks, life becomes easier.

vgatherps 4y ago
Of all possible things to stomp you chose hamsters?
- yetihehe 4y ago
  Hey, it could be anti-personnel mines...
- boomerango 4y ago
  You made me laugh pretty hard. Re-reading this I’m more disturbed that I framed it as a potentially gratifying task.

etempleton 4y ago

This reminds me of a conclusion I have come to in life. You have been dealt the cards you have been dealt. Sometimes, usually, it isn’t fair. Now how best can you play your hand? You still might lose, but you can only do the best you can. Being upset, feeling sorry for yourself, whining, complaining, flipping the table over, really doesn’t change anything and is wasting time and energy that could be put towards improving your hand.

bluetomcat 4y ago
This is the harmful mantra that shifts all responsibility down at the individual level, overlooking any structural deficiencies at large. Multiply this behaviour over a large population of individuals, and you have atomised wheel-spinning hamsters without any abstract sense of the world they inhabit. Everyone tries to spin the wheel a bit faster, exacerbating the systemic issue even further.
- twh270 4y ago
  No, this is about acceptance of the 'hand' you have and having an understanding of what you can control and influence. Which is pretty damn empowering, compared to blaming structural or systemic problems for your situation.
  - beecafe 4y ago
    The point is to change the structure and try to address systemic problems, rather than putting on your blinders.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Most of us don't have any meaningful avenues to do so (although there's plenty of simulacrums if one just wants to feel like they're "doing something"). But, more importantly, it's generally not something that can be done on a timeframe that would actually benefit you and solve your immediate problem. Yes, we should be fixing systemic problems at proper scale, but meanwhile we still have to function within the current messy state of affairs.

goodpoint 4y ago

> Rather than obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else, obsess about the fact that someone in your situation and even worse can do it and has done it. And then start. AKA: "why don't you just have 10x more willpower?"

xyzelement 4y ago
I am sorry but your is a criminally bad take. What's the alternative, be stuck in the bad situation forever.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  No, the alternative requires a bit more thinking on you part instead of blaming individuals. For the record there's a whole subreddit dedicated to your "advice" https://www.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thanksimcured/
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    The "blaming" is in your head, not in my comment So question to you - if you have a fat and poor friend who's getting unhealthier by the second - how do you help him? What will you actually do?
    - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      Depends on why the friend is fat and poor. Could be they're disabled, in which case they're basically SOL. Wheelchairs are incredibly expensive, it's hard to cook in one unless one pays $$$ for home modifications, removes a wide range of exercise options...
      - carlgreene 4y ago
        The friend is fat and poor because they eat unhealthy, spend most of their time sitting down watching YouTube or playing games, and work a low skill job because they do not have a skill that will pay them more. What do you do with said friend?

988747 4y ago

Fat people should not be running anyway. First, it's ineffective for weight loss, second, your extra body mass puts stress on your joints, resulting in injuries. To lose weight you need a diet, not exercise. And if you want to exercise anyway you should ride a bike, not run.

xyzelement 4y ago
I am using the concept from the article to provide a counterexample. This isn't a conversation about how to lose weight, but about when to be "optimistic" ie apply yourself to the problem rather than giving up.
lordfrito 4y ago
Being fat is a problem with caloric intake, not caloric usage. I've found every time that I wanted to lose weight I needed to get my eating in order. That gave me more energy to work out, which of course helped even more. But it starts with eating less. Whenever I focused on just working out, I found I would just eat more and still have a caloric surplus. It never worked as a way to lose weight as I wasn't addressing the root of the problem, overeating.

bluetomcat 4y ago

And this is the problem with "generic" advice from self-help books. They are usually written by someone with privilege from a middle or an upper-middle socio-economic background. What works and is applicable in their situation might be irrelevant in another. For the author of the book, doing exercise means devoting one hour of their leisurely daily routine while not missing anything else. For an impoverished person, doing exercise means leaving their kids screaming and unfed after a long day at work. The real purpose of the media is to expose and raise the awareness about systemic issues affecting large portions of the population. Then society should attempt to address those issues through the political institutions, with the participation of both the affected and the unaffected group.

greatiscones 4y ago

I agree with you that the exercise example is a little soft, but my sense is it was meant to be one of many, and you might inadvertently be supporting their argument a bit. There's probably some term for this phenomenon in formal logic or argument, and if there isn't, there probably should be, but... It seems to me often with these kinds of things you can always say "if you want X enough, you can find a way," and that's logically true, but in practice the effort involved or the threading of the needle is exactly the problem. People have lives, and maybe taking the bus isn't feasible because you're working two jobs, have kids, and literally don't have the time without jeopardizing those things. It's some kind of logical trap, where you can provide all these examples of things to do, in some imaginary context where nothing else in life matters, or where success comes by making exactly the correct sequence of N steps of complicated decisions that is extremely implausible once uncertainty and normal levels of human error are taken into account. The authors also basically provided an example of the neighborhood not being walkable and then you offer walking around the neighborhood as a solution. I bring this up not to be antagonistic or hostile to you, but I think this is part of what they're talking about: someone has X obstacles, and then in the course of getting advice, those obstacles are ignored in part or in whole. Even if it's unintended, it creates a loss of credibility on the part of the person giving advice (whether or not that credibility loss is warranted or not): "if you're ignoring my problem X, do you really understand my situation? And if not, can I trust that what you're saying will work out?" Then they might even ignore good advice, which then makes the problem worse. I agree that you can still lose weight if by no other means than not eating as much, and I'm deeply skeptical of someone's inability to lose weight in the absence of some kind of internal physiological limitation. But as someone who's sympathetic to where you're coming from, I kind of read your comment and felt like you were just kind of illustrating the author's points. At what point at a population level do we start recognizing that these systemic factors are in fact causing problems for individuals, and that individuals cannot just bootstrap their way out of it completely? In the same way that you can come up with a complicated series of excuses for a person, you can also do the opposite, whatever that is termed -- you can come up with a complicated series of explanations of how they are culpable by not doing exactly the right series of things that would never be even discussed about a whole other subgroup of society. I guess it seems to me that dismissing "obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else," and asking them instead to obsess about their own situation, is basically the thing the authors are talking about.