You're too fat to live

I believe in personal responsibility and think that if you're fat it's your fault. At the same time though, where do you draw the line on what you will treat and what you won't? If someone does extreme sports and injures him/herself should they not be treated because it's their fault that it happened?

That's a huge issue with national health care, you don't get to pick and choose plans that cover what you think should be covered and don't cover what you think shouldn't. Society shouldn't have to pay for your fatness, people who purchased the same coverage as you should.

 

I'm a fat ass. I have no one to blame but myself. In college my diet was pizza and beer. But that was ok, because I did a manual labor job where I lifted boxes for 8 straight hours a day in a hot warehouse. When I graduated college, I got a desk job and didn't adjust my eating/booze habits, and I put on about 80 pounds in two years. I didn't continue to work out because I hated all working out due to association with the warehouse job.

Now things are different. I quit drinking last month. I never eat fast food unless it is an absolute must (this happens about once a month) and I exercise at least once a day.

The side effects are astounding. I'm loosing weight. I sleep better, my relationship is better, and my wallet has an abundance of resources. I still hang out with my friends and have a good time. I just don't have to stay at the bar until 2am every night. At first I thought I would miss all kinds of shit. But after talking to them the next day, I really don't miss much. David took a slut home like he always does, someone fell down, everyone laughed, etc.

I'm not going to allow myself to drink again until I reach a weight loss goal, as well as a financial goal.

I also found working out isn't that bad if there is a goal or an activity. I play in a couple of sports leagues. I also found that I really enjoy running in events that pair running with obstacle courses. So I train to make my time better at that. It makes the gym that much more tolerable.

Next months goal is to quit nicotine for the third time in my life. This time hopefully forever.

If you are a fat ass chances are you have no one to blame but yourself. That is coming from a fat ass. One question on this topic comes to mind- Why is it that every fat girl I've ever met blames being fat on having a thyroid problem? Does the thyroid problem force you to eat at the pizza buffet and eat chocolate by the wheelbarrow full?

 

Focus: The article seems to be more of a complaint against the state of the public healthcare system than against the funding for this particular procedure. That being said, the most cogent and insightful article I have ever read on the subject was published in the New York Times in 2009, Why Health Care Will Never Be Equal:

Because the Canadian government has promised to pay for everything, more people have signed up for it than otherwise would have. If it wasn't even an option for her (ala USA), what do you think she would do instead? Resign herself to her fate, or make more positive lifestyle choices?

I honestly believe that every single fat person out there, is just a lazy skinny person. Big-boned/hormonal/glandular problem my ass!

 

Alt-focus:

I'm not entirely sure if this counts as the type of outlandish experience you were hoping for, but this was by far the most outlandish experience I have ever had at the doctor:

I was at a new (female) ob/gyn's office to get my birth control shot, and she insisted on giving me a quick exam before she gave me the prescription to run and get the shot even though I had just gotten my yearly one and everything had been fine. That was bad enough, because it takes a good day or two to mentally prepare for one of those, so I was already thrown off guard.

It's going normally, and she's doing the regular narrating of what she's doing. Then, she alerts me she's going to put her fingers in, and she feels around for a moment and then goes

"Oh yeah. Nice and tight."

Thank you? Had she previously been worried that I may have a gaping vagina, or something? Never heard that one before, at least not from a doctor. After the shock, though, I took it as a pretty big compliment.

 

Last year I made this Ravt:

Then there's this "woman" who is TRYING to be the fattest person on earth.

That article just... fuck it. I got nothing. My soul actually hurts reading that bullshit.

Picture not-related:

 

I pm-ed you about this, but lets play Devil's Advocate for a second. (You get the rattle snake, I'll head to the truck and get my shotgun).

From the top, I'm against the moralistic way people approach body weight. I don't think the overwhelming assumption that fat people are lazy and/or lack self-control has much of a basis in fact; while I do think people have some control over their weight, a lot the fluctuations within that band are almost as heritable as height. This article sort of explains it:

<a class="postlink" href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2009/07/heritability-of-height-vs-weight/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/ ... vs-weight/</a>

To the best of my knowledge, the majority of our weight gain as a society, and to a large extent the increased weight of individuals, is a result of large-scale cultural adaptation. Sort of the way we as a society have gotten taller over the past hundred or so years, including a narrow gap between rich heights and poor heights. This isn't true in other communities with different community-wide eating habits.

I think people should eat healthily and exercise, but weight itself is a poor proxy for somebody's nutritional or health background. It seems that fat people receive disproportionate criticism for their eating habits, even if they're the exact same as a thinner person; this leads me to believe that while a people might use the language of health, a lot of them just have a problem with it because they don't like the way it looks. Which is kind of a shitty reason to shame someone.

 

I may not be able to type anything coherently because I'm so enraged. Forgive me.

She's a fatass because she refuses to try EVERYTHING before resorting to surgery. She keeps shoving food into that gaping maw she calls a gullet and makes excuses for all of it.

I have had the PRIVILEGE of training a man who started his journey with us weighing over 300 lbs. Apnea, morbidly obese, joint problems, mobility problems, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, he had it all. He came here, and we got him moving. Slowly. Very slowly. He couldn't do more than a 1/3 squat...he couldn't run...but he could walk. He couldn't do pushups - he had to do cobras. He changed his diet. He changed his habits. He started getting exertion headaches because he had to adapt to working out. But he adapted.

He's lost almost 100 lbs since then. He can do a full squat. He can run. He can do pushups.
He lost the weight by changing his lifestyle. He stopped eating breads, pastas, grains of any kinds. He stopped eating processed foods. He stopped eating sugar. If it occurs naturally in the food, it's okay...if it's added...he doesn't eat it.

he was morbidly obese. He was a candidate for bariatric surgery. He instead chose to get off his ass and change his life.


Taxpayer money should NOT be spent on these surgeries.
Food stamp moneys should not be used for processed foods - plastic wrapped, pre-packaged foods. No. NO NO NO NO.

Goddamn this makes me angry. I see this every day. It ties into the rioter thread. "What you want me to do is too hard so just give me a solution..."

 

I believe it is the responsibility of the individual. Society should take the step in the sense that we need to stop making so many fast food joints and have more fresh markets. But all in all, you decide what to put in your body and Americans in general are lazy and don't want to put the effort into keeping bodies in healthy shape. I recently got back from Rome and unless it was a tourist, I saw not one obese person. There were people that were overweight or chubby. I saw 2 McDonalds and 2 Burger Kings-that's it. You walk everywhere or you just stay active and eat better food in Italy. I was discussing fast food joints with some of my Roman friends while I was there and basically these fast food places are like a special treat you get once in awhile-not at least 3 times a week. People just need to get their act together-eat better and exercise. There are a thousand and one ways an individual can go about to lose weight. Just need to put that effort into it because not every person is born with a fast metabolism.

 

Technically, society is already paying for some people's fatness. If you walk into your local public hospital, you'll see a large percentage of people who are morbidly obese and seeking care for health issues that are directly linked to their weight. Many of those people are on Medicaid or without insurance.

I think it's definitely the responsibility of the individual. I love the movement Jamie Oliver called attention to: creating healthier school lunches and educating kids. I think that's probably the most effective way society can (relatively cheaply) help the epidemic of unhealthy fatties. That, and encouraging everyday exercise.

 

As far as being fat goes, it's not a black & white issue. A large part of it has to do with diet and physical activity as a child, before you're old enough to make the conscious choice to live healthier. A large part of it has to do with genetics—from bone structure, to natural body fat percentages, to metabolism, hell even binge eating can be genetic.

At the same time, of course our personal choices play a role.

And that's not to say that being fat is even a bad thing. Being a huge fatass who can't take care of themselves is shitty, but being a bit overweight and deciding that 1) this isn't impacting your quality of life, and 2) the effort to lose that weight can be better placed elsewhere is a totally legitimate choice.

What I'm trying to say is I hate the broad generalizing opinions people make about this issue.

Focus: The focus is biased because it's implying that being fat is a condition, and not a symptom. If you are fat because you have a disease, then yes probably the healthcare system should help you take care of that. Obviously, better institutions should be in place to help promote healthier lifestyles also.

Alt-Focus: This didn't happen in a doctor's office, but ER. I was, uh, dying from a slow-onset but severe anaphylaxis and sitting on a bed waiting for the nurse to administer epinephrine. The weirdness of it was that my body was freaking out, but I had literally learned the EMS info about anaphylaxis a few days earlier and had all that information fresh in my mind. I was managing the mental stress pretty well despite my physical urge to bolt out of the room. I watched the nurse fuck around with the IV bag for a couple minutes before I finally said, "By the way, you have about 30 seconds before my throat closes up and I stop breathing. Also, I'm about to pass out." That got her moving a little faster.

 

Have you actually done any research into this ?

(I don't mean that combatatively, I'm actually really interested in this subject, and it's impossible to find even-handed information).

Most studies I've found suggest that the all weight loss diets -- including those billed as "lifestyle changes" -- eventually lead to MORE weight gained over a 5 year period. Any sort of sustained weight loss is both rare and highly atypical, which I realized by the end of this sentence mean basically the same thing in this context but I've come too far now.

Also, I don't think that body chemistry is so simple as "EAT A FUCKING SALAD." I've heard people talk about how nobody's fat in Europe, without considering that the populations are largely different and this sort of thing can develop over a couple generations without the individual being at fault. I suspect that ultimately it's both an interplay between society and the individual, but to say that it's just one or the other is just wishful and unsound thinking.

Also, there are a lot of health problems associated with being underweight, and rarely do we hear about people being blamed for that, or suggestions that we shouldn't give the underweight healthcare. Again, I think people are couching "ew I don't like this" with medical shaming.

 

I see what you are saying, I really do. Some people can skip a dessert and lose 10 pounds while others have to work a little bit harder. However, there is a huge difference between carrying a few extra pounds and being morbidly obese like the woman in the article. You bring up the example that the fat person's eating habits maybe the same as the thinner person due to genetic makeup. That may account for much smaller variations, but it doesn't explain the person who weighs almost 400 fucking pounds.

 

The European diet doesn't have nearly the same quantities of processed and prepackaged food the American diet contains. By and large Americans eat from wrappers. This has a huge impact on their health. The chemicals, created fats, preservatives, etc. wreak havoc on our bodies.


"Paleo Nutrition" as advised by Robb Wolf or Whole9 isn't a diet. It's an active lifestyle change to avoid certain foods, without restricting calories, etc.

 

I think it accounts for most of the variation.

Don't get me wrong, if somebody eats terribly and never exercises, and opts for an easy surgery rather than a harder lifestyle change, that person is lazy and unmotivated, and it sucks that they'll burden the healthcare system. However, that person's weight, in and of itself, isn't a reliable indicator of any of those things.

"People who don't exercise and eat terribly are burdensome!" =/= "Fat people are burdensome!"

Fat has become a convenient shorthand for a lot of things which it isn't, and I don't think it has much to do with health. Everybody should make a concerted effort to be healthy, but to turn it into a fat debate is obscuring the issue in a way that I don't think is helpful.

Thin is a terrible proxy for healthy.

 

LAZY people are burdensome.
People looking for the short road and the quick fix are burdensome.

It's not necessarily fat people, it's people who are fat and unwilling to do a goddamn thing to change it except drink diet soda with their snickers.

 

I am a fat fuck (bmi just under 38). I don't eat super unhealthy, but I could do way better; I don't work out nearly enough, and until I more or less quit drinking I certainly wasn't doing my liver any favours. I get winded walking briskly uphill. I can traverse stairs no problem but that doesn't mean I like it. Any assessment I give here has at least a bit of self-interest in it

1: Let's acknowledge weight loss is very fucking challenging. If you think it's easy to rewrite your entire lifestyle and drop, say, 120 lbs (my goal), then you're being a condescending douchebag. That said, at least make sure they're putting in some effort.
2: I have no problem with doctors / taxpayers footing the bill for any ancillary aspects of obesity. If we need more cardiologists and liver specialists because we have a glut of fatasses, I still don't mind the entire population footing the bill for the 20% who are obese (In Canada it's 1 in 5 adults). At the very least, we're attracting medical talent, and it's not like skinny people never have liver or heart problems.
3: Weight loss surgery I'm honestly not sure where I stand on it. I think if it's a "last option" (someone so fat their mobility is completely impaired) then they might get priority to have it just simply so we don't need to tractor someone into a crematorium (besides, fat people in crematoriums are scary according to Reddit). It also depends on if it serves as a wakeup call or not - similar to a smoker who recieves a lung transplant - will that get him to quit? And they are fairly similar situations. I don't think I'd have a problem with taxpayers rerouting people to physiotherapists to help them regain mobility either, just to get them started. I won't do stupid scaremongering like "obesity is a disease", but I'm fine with my money being spent to help a quarter of Canada become healthier so we don't need to invest in corpse-lifts, and we don't continue downhill.

 

Gym Jones: They know what they are; talking about, they trained the actors for the movie "300".

 

Remember that morbidly obese, and arguably obese, are ADDICTS. The only thing an addict does better than feeding an addiction is lying about it. Crackheads don't do crack every day, they don't rob their parents to score, no way. Just like the fatty only eats sweets maybe once a week. It means they're doing it every night, the whole fucking ice cream carton. Shame is a horrible thing and people will go to psychotic lengths to avoid shame, to avoid blame.

My cousin is morbidly obese. She does have a genetic proclivity to be fat. She will never be 120lbs, but she got up to 450lbs. NO WAY is an obese person relatively as healthy as a non-obese person no matter the internal chemistry. That argument is complete bullshit and any real doctor or nutritionist will argue that. Her heart was at risk, her liver was going into cirrhosis, her ankles LITERALLY BROKE under her weight. She dropped almost 100 pounds on her own just from changing her diet. People gain more weight after a failed diet because they go gung-ho with the bullshit because they didn't ween themselves off that garbage. they feel even worse because they failed so they go back to that old comfort. Bad food was the only thing that gave them comfort. It's a safe place. Cold Turkey doesn't work on everyone. Hardly anyone in fact. Why do you think recidivism rates in detox programs are so damn high?

It's not society's business to legislate what a person does with their body. It's not Mcdonald's place to tell you the obvious. PEOPLE are society. They dictate culture and norms. They have to want farmer's markets and clean food and everything frozen not to contain carcinogenic preservatives. Point is we got complacent. You have to make people want to better themselves instead of relying on lame quick fixes. It's a personality change as well as a behavior change.

Having said that I hoped this thread would be just funny pictures of fat people.