I feel as though I'm too jaded to participate in social discussions about obesity. Fat people hurt my nurses. Lift teams are becoming mandatory on every inpatient floor because bariatrics has been over-capacity since it was opened. Obese, frequent flyer CHF patients who just can't stay away from the ham and salty snack foods overburden cardiac care teams and emergency facilities across the board with issues that are entirely, 100% preventable. I know that they are entirely, 100% preventable because I have to take the same measures. If a person has got so much visceral fat that it's intruding into their organs, can't sleep properly because fat is obstructing their neck and airways, then regardless of what else is going on with them physically, those issues have to be addressed because they affect everything else so drastically. Big people need more medication and more and more frequently anesthesiologists are refusing to do surgery on obese people because the line between 'adequate sedation' and 'overdose' is hair thin, if it exists at all. I am currently heavier than I want to be. I have a complicated relationship with food and exercise. Simultaneously there is no better example of personal responsibility than your own body. I can't run the miles for anyone else. I can't daily eat the veggie dish instead of the fried chicken and waffles for anyone else. I do also want to say that there is a significant issue of classism involved in access to affordable, nutritious food. I say nutritious food and not calories because calories in all sorts of non-nutritious forms are abundant. Nutrition is harder to come by than raw kcal and is stratified by class to some degree.
I'm obese, 5' 9", 220 pounds. I eat oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. Flour tortilla with cheese and egg for lunch. Fish and salad typical for supper. From 0 to 2 glasses of red wine. If I do start losing weight I tend to start snacking ... granola bar and small glass of milk. I play tennis, still pretty good, one to two times a week, walk a couple a times a week, typically a mile, sometimes as much as three. Swim some weeks. Cut weeds, work in yard. I have been this weight, plus or minus 10, usually plus or minus 5, for two plus decades. Should I mention, I am 71. Not diabetic. 150 total cholesterol, all blood work great. Doctors used to talk to me about my weight, but they never say anything anymore. They say I look better than most of their patients who are 50 years old. They used to send me have my blood work redone, but they have accepted that it is real. BP is controlled by meds. I used to try to diet all the time and I can lose weight easily, almost as easily as I return to my old habits and put weight back on. Although I eat healthier than 90% of the people I know. Avoid all sugars and carbs. Stomach is the main fat area, legs are still reasonably muscular and firm. So, I have just resigned myself to being this weight until I get sick someday and lose weight. So, I am wondering how usual it is to be my age, obese and apparently still in good health. I know, it's going to catch up with me.
Do you think they intend to? Do you think society has made it radically more acceptable to be fat? Or has something larger than individual behavior changed?Fat people hurt my nurses.
Lift teams are becoming mandatory on every inpatient floor because bariatrics has been over-capacity since it was opened.
Shockingly I'm not that dense or heartless. Intention has nothing to do with it. It's a thing that happens. It's a preventable thing that happens. Can everybody be a swimsuit model? No. Are there things that can be done to stop this particular problem from killing so many people, and making life living hell for so many others? Definitely. And there is a small but tenacious group of people who use the same kind of science denialism as the anti-vaxx crowd to say that obesity isn't dangerous or unhealthy. That kind of shit has to be stamped out with a vengeance. I was bullied for being fat until I was an adult, and even then didn't escape it fully until very recently. I'm allowed to feel strongly about the issue. Weightloss is hard enough without blatant false information being pushed. Significantly. It sort of has to because so many more people are fat. It was almost inevitable really. That said, it's not a good thing. Somebody is going to leave a serious illness untreated because they saw a Tess Holliday or similar figure as inspirational. That someone is going to suffer serious, life altering consequences that will also cause their friends and loved ones pain. If this happens once because someone decided it would make a loud-mouth blogger feel good to be on the cover of a magazine, that's once too many times. We've already had the problem of unhealthy images of women (and men!) in media promoting things like bulimia, anorexia, damaging amounts of exercise in pursuit of one extreme. Let's not try to correct that by pulling the wheel hard into oncoming traffic! If an individual had poor impulse control with regard to food in the 1400's it wasn't really an issue because the spare and accessible kcals just weren't around. These days it requires an effort of will and careful vigilance to NOT buy dogshit food CONSTANTLY. It's not even as simple as making the healthy choice over the unhealthy choice, salad over burgers because guess what, Mickey D's salad will fuck you up worse than a Big Mac so you can't just make a good choice, you have to have the time and energy to make sure that you are executing that good choice. Yes it's hard. It's fucking terribly hard. And the poorer and more stressed, and more crunched for time you are, the harder it is. My parents are both obese on the downslope of fifty and it takes a toll on them DAILY and it absolutely destroys me to watch it happen.Do you think they intend to?
Do you think society has made it radically more acceptable to be fat?
Intention has everything to do with it. Out of one side of your mouth you're compassionate for those poor people who can't eat properly but out of the other you justify your righteous dudgeon with the splinter faction that can't walk a mile and feels okay with it. Yeah, you're allowed to feel strongly about it but don't for a minute think that the one's your compassionate for don't see themselves as Tess Holliday in your eyes. As for acceptance, France had to pass a law to stop models from dropping dead. Here's Victoire Dauxerre. She was discovered at 123lb but wasn't allowed to walk the runway until she hit 103. Here's Isabelle Caro. She was under 100lb in this picture (at Milan fashion week). She died under 60. Meanwhile, you know what TLC's top ratings earner is?
"Do you think they intend to?" I can see his deeper point, and you honestly should have too instead of passive aggressively implying something disingenuous.
Come at me, bro. I'm not going to speak for Ben, but I know for damn sure that the judgemental tone in that post has kept two of my relatives from seeking any medical care for a dozen years each. And if you wanna scold me for calling him on it, I will take you the fuck apart.Obese, frequent flyer CHF patients who just can't stay away from the ham and salty snack foods overburden cardiac care teams and emergency facilities across the board with issues that are entirely, 100% preventable.
Nah this has been a legitamite healthcare issue for quite some time now. The enormous healthcare costs that come from obesity and its complications are mindbogglingly steep, especially when you consider that the simple solution of a caloric deficit and exercise would take care of the vast majority and dramatically improve quality of life. There's a reason why family med docs joke that half of their job is trying to make their patients shove some damn vegetables in their mouths
Naw, I'll just leave you to swing wildly. If you want to die on this hill, that's your choice.