this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Every time people talk about this, they always envision the most morbidly obese example that they can think of, when we're really just talking about the average slightly overweight/obese people. Those people often have their actual medical needs ignored by doctors and are given "lose weight" as a cure all. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who experience this.
Because in a lot of ways “lose weight” really is a cure all, and it’s not some grand mystery as to why people gain weight.
It isn’t a doctors job to drug the people up so they don’t have to live a healthy lifestyle. Most people aren’t told too lose weight because they go to the doctor to lose weight, they’re told to lose weight when they go to the doctors for the litany of health affects surrounding obesity.
Lose weight often IS the cure-all as obesity is clearly linked to a litany of health issues.
Do you want to treat the symptom or the cause? Folks can take pain killers for their knees, but the issue here is often that the knees are overloaded with too much weight.
Idk much about ozempic, but before that, "Lose weight" was rough to hear because a doctor can't wave a magic wand to fix the patients problems - the patient had to work to fix things. And if you're honestly putting in the work, eating a healthy diet and exercising and you're still struggling with weight, then I feel for you, because that suggests there's a hormonal or other medical cause for the obesity, that the doc needs to go over. However I am certain that the majority of the hundreds of millions of people you cite don't.
Studies show there isn't an actual diet people can go on to lose weight and keep it off. The diet just doesn't exist for the vast majority of people. People gain the weight back almost 100% of the time. The only thing you can do is prevent the weight gain in the first place, which isn't that simple given our lack of walkable cities, cheap food being the least healthy etc
Given how seriously bad doctors say obesity is, I don't understand why people are mad at fat people for taking ozempic.
Another thing to be mad about: the most expensive component of the ozempic shots is the plastic container it comes in.
I'd appreciate it if you can link some examples of those studies.
When I say "eat a healthy diet", I don't mean go on keto. I mean have some fruits and vegetables, and try to limit processed food intake.
EDIT: like I said, I don't know much about ozempic so I have nothing to contribute to that end of the conversation, sorry.
Two studies (each reviewing a number of other studies) and an article putting it in lay terms:
"He and others have estimated that for every two pounds of weight you lose, your metabolism slows by about 25 calories per day, and your appetite increases by about 95 calories per day. So in other words, if you lose 20 pounds, your body will burn roughly 250 calories less each day while craving about 950 calories more.
To maintain your weight loss through dieting over time, you’ll have to continue eating less while resisting a rising appetite and slower metabolism, which is “increasingly difficult,” Dr. Schur said.
The drive to eat more is so strong because our brains “sense that our energy stores are being depleted,” she added, and “that’s a threat to our survival.”"
So diets mostly all work in the short term, but people just return to their top weight over time. Your body is always trying to get you back to your top weight.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32238384/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/obr.12949
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/well/eat/dieting-weight-loss.html
Such a diet exists. It's called eating less meat and sugar.
And don't get me started on only unhealthy junk being cheap. Not only have all fast food chains hiked up their prices to near uncompetitive levels, but even fruit and veggies are dirt cheap in America. Europeans pay far more, especially when comparing PPP, than Americans, when it comes to healthy eating. Yet they manage.
I’m interested that you suggested “less meat and sugar”. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone claim protein to be a major contributor to obesity in the last 40 years. I usually see sugars and carbs as the main culprits. Is there some new info I should read about?
I (luckily) have always had my weight and nutrition under good control, so I’m more interested for the sake of knowledge.
Meat is just so calorie dense that even switching to carbs is a massive upgrade.
The carbs they talk about are simple carbs, with high glycemic indexes. Something like whole wheat is going to be a lot healthier for your health than white rice.
Meat may also promote consumption of alcohol, which isn't great for weight loss.
Your last point, that's not true at all. I can very easily drink alcohol with zero meat, just any other food will do.
Some meat is good for your health tbh, turkey york slices are pretty fucking healthy proteinwise and don't have much calories. If you want to lose weight fat and cereal are the first two that have to go. You can use some oil and eat some pasta once in a while, but given how caloric intense it is if you eat pasta you will just end up hungry, it fills the caloric budget way too fast. Whole cereals are indeed healthier than white rice and couscous mostly due to the river they have, but the calories per 100g will vary from 300 to 350 or so, it's still pretty expensive on the budget.
Are we though?
I think the discussions here are mostly coming down to what you think you're arguing about. Because there certainly are some crazy claims made by the body positivity movement as well. Even if the core message ("your dignity as a human is not bound to your body shape") is something basically everyone can agree on.
So the big majorities on both sides argue against the other side based on some fringe opinions. And since one rarely explains their position in detail on the Internet neither side is aware that they actually have a lot of common ground.
My position is literally:
-A person loses no humanity or respectibility by being overweight. Overweight people are still people.
Overweight people deserve to have their concerns actually heard. Doctors often literally will not investigate some problems that overweight people ask about beyond "oh you should lose weight." For some concerns, that may be a reasonable diagnosis, but there are plenty of actual medical concerns that are ignored by doctors in fat people.
Shame largely does not work to get people to lose weight. For the people where it does work, it definitely doesn't do it in a healthy way, and for most people it just makes losing weight harder. (I've seen a lot of people justify being shitty to overweight people because they think they need to feel shame all the time to change).
That's it. It's literally "treat people like people and actually listen to their concerns."
Honestly, I'm pretty surprised that Lemmy already seems to have a bit of the "fat people hate" energy. People have a very specific image of a "fat person" in their head that they imagine when this stuff comes up, but all I'm saying is that people who are overweight sometimes have concerns that aren't addressed by just losing weight, and those concerns are often dismissed because we value and respect fat people much less than skinny people.