A Response to Nancy's comments

“” Does society make too much of obesity? Maybe.__Maybe? When there are people starving themselves to the point of permanent damage and sometimes death--a process which usually starts with the fear of being fat, I'd say there's a societal problem._

_Historically, anorexia is not a problem--it only shows up in societies where unusual thinness is part of the definition of beauty for women.””

I’d say it’s more of a psychological and familial problem. I often hear women complain that “men have this unrealistic desire for skinny women.” Haven’t they noticed that the really skinny women are in women’s magazines, not men’s magazines? The lists of “Most Beautiful Women” rarely includes skin-and-bones types: men like breasts and hips, and always have. Callista Flockheart or Nicole Richie are often talked about as “Role Models” but they are hardly typical of the poster-girls that MEN are attracted to. They are out at the extreme end, and mentioned so frequently because they ARE freakishly thin, because they ARE atypical of movie or television stars. Men like, crave, are driven crazy by secondary sexual characteristics. Strippers and porn stars have big butts and breasts. What I see is women competing with other women in a race to being Unattractive, and that makes me think there was something very, very wrong in the families of these poor girls. Again, if you want to see what men are attracted to, look at Playboy.
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“ __You've mentioned that fat women can be attractive. Oh movie buff, where are fat, attractive women in movies? “

Not many. Again, if a woman is heavy enough to obscure her secondary sexual characteristics (the “hourglass”), male interest declines. There is absolutely no doubt that there is a prejudice operating here. But the mistake would be to disconnect behavior from fat. Unlike race, where there are no distinct behavioral markers, fat DOES tell us something behaviorally: this person does not eat fewer calories than they burn up. What one makes of that data may vary, but this particular truth is undeniable. In any culture, evidences of disease are considered unattractive: pock marks, twisted spines, disease scars, boils, etc. What is happening is that fat is being labeled as a disease, and therefore triggering the same aversion. Is this fair? I don’t know—the list of problems obesity-related is pretty damning. Should there be social persecution? No.


“You don't really believe that it's just a cosmetic matter (or at least you don't think cosmetic matters are minor) or you wouldn't be so pleased when your daughter loses some weight.”

I said that I wasn’t interested in judging people for padding—I have no idea what’s going on in their lives. So up to about 80 pounds overweight, I give them the benefit of the doubt. My daughter is another matter.
I KNOW that her excess padding is due to lifestyle: all of her entertainments are sedentary. She loves her books, movies, and computer games. She loves carbs. She also wants to be an actress. Because she had trouble losing weight, she developed a mythology that she “couldn’t” do it. She ain’t leaving my home until she knows this for a lie. Then, if she WANTS to put the weight back on, that’s her business. But she’ll know how to lose it, any time she’s willing to exert the discipline.

I also know that she was damaged by her teen years in an (almost) all-white town, where she was discounted for skin color alone. And it was easier for her to accept rejection for being plump than black.

Is fat discrimination the same as racial? On the same continuum, but not the same, because it is possible to change body composition with behavior, but you cannot change race no matter how hard you try (ask Michael Jackson). My sympathies always lie with those who are prejudiced against who have NO way, no matter what they do, of changing the factor triggering the prejudice.

This is similar to the fact that I have more sympathy with someone who contracts, say, viral encephalitis than with someone who contracted a venereal disease through unprotected sex with a new partner. There was volition involved.

I don’t mind Nicki being plush. I DO mind her lying to herself about why she is, and feeling helpless to do anything about it. This distorts her reality map, and without an accurate map of reality, intelligence and education simply won’t take you as far.



No. My little girl is going to know when she is, and is not, putting it all on the line. There were three things that I wanted for her by the time she leaves my house:
1) A love of learning and research
2) Self-love that extends to others, to build healthy relationships and teams of people who can accomplish things she can’t accomplish by herself.
3) A love of her body as a toy, a tool, and a pet.

She has the straight-A’s, and the healthy relationships. A few more pounds and I’ll have her hands on the wheel of her life, with the ability to control all three aspects, that few people have. Then, what she does with it is up to her.
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“__Maybe you haven't seen the crazed element of prejudice against fat people because you've never hung out in the appropriate venues. Any sort of fat acceptance forum has to be seriously moderated, or trolls show up in force, and they never tire of ranting about how disgusting fat people are and how much they want fat people to die.”

Only a little. What I’ve seen is horrible. These people are projecting their own fear and self-loathing onto others. Fat people are, unfortunately, targets because they wear their problems publicly, as opposed, say, to alcoholics who can drink in private.

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“__Oddly enough, I've heard often enough from fat people who say that they feel weak, chilled, distracted, hungry, and generally just not as well when they get their weight down to socially acceptable levels. And that they've stopped gaining when they stop dieting. “

EVERYBODY knows that dieting doesn’t work. That is glaringly obvious to all. Lifestyle changes work. My theory is that the diet industry is so huge specifically BECAUSE it doesn’t work. In other words, people who really want to (and have internal permission to ) lose the weight change their lifestyles. People who are sick of being criticized by their friends and family go on “diets” so that they can say that they tried. And then fail and go back to their safe set-point. Note that people usually EITHER use diet or exercise. Almost never do they do both—until they’re actually ready to lose the weight.
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“I also know people who've kept weight off and presumably think it's worth it. I suspect there's a lot of individual variation, and it's not all about emotional issues. __One of my friends could keep her weight at "insurance chart levels" by exercising three hours a day and becoming a clock watcher, as she put it--waiting for the next meal. She decided this wasn't worth it “

No, no, no. This woman was completely misinformed about exercise—or subconsciously deleted information contrary to the internal need to stay heavy. The data is out there, and anyone who expends an hour a week researching it will find it swiftly. Exercising LSD (long slow distance) burns calories while you’re walking—but how many? A pound of fat is 3500 calories. That would take about 5 hours of walking to burn a single pound! But HIIT (interval training) is about 9 times as efficient, and burns calories all day from a single 15 minute workout! This lady was sadly, deeply betrayed by her coaches and doctors. Type “short fat burning workout” into a search engine, and you’ll start accessing the correct data. Spend an hour a week researching this, and you’ll be an expert in three months. Your friend was certainly intelligent enough to do this. Chances are that if her child was sick she’d do her own research. I submit to you that, without further evidence, yep, I’d assume that she had an internal battle going on.
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“This doesn't sound like an irrational emotional issue to me.”

Let me ask you a question. You were in this lady’s house. How many books did she have on the subject of exercise physiology? Considering that we know “diets don’t work” wouldn’t the natural question be, “well then, what does?” And don’t we rather naturally look for people who have accomplished the things we want to do, and ask them what they did, and model them?

Nancy, I assume that this lady is highly intelligent (she’s your friend, after all). If this was a problem in the arena of business, say, where there was no emotional charge, don’t you think she would have researched it differently? Gone to people who had taken weight off and KEPT IT OFF? Become a pocket expert on metabolism, physiology, and so forth? I’ll bet she has bunches of dense, concise and challenging books in whatever her field of primary interest might be.

When I see this in any other arena—when people say they want result X, and are highly intelligent and knowledgeable on a variety of subjects but misinformed about X, I ask myself why they aren’t speaking to people who know. And if they exhibit such acumen in other arenas of their lives but not this one, I assume that they have fear of failure, or fear of success. And when/if they ever actually solve that problem, in a disproportunate number of cases they have told me that what stopped them was insecurity or sheer raving terror.

For a lot of people, the definition of victory in life is to try very very hard and fail so that people will leave you the hell alone and you can say “I tried!”

Yes, I think our emotions screw us up big time. I think fear stops people more than anything else, and results in otherwise quite intelligent people being ignorant of the very things they need to succeed in careers, relationships and physical health. Fear is a killer.

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“__One of my other friends has lost a fair amount of weight and kept it off by staying on a low carb diet.

Does this mean he had unaddressed emotional issues before he found the diet?”

I think almost EVERYONE has unaddressed emotional issues. And that they manifest in different ways, and that one of those CAN be weight. I’d have to know your friend to make a guess.
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“__I believe that it isn't just set-points, but that people's bodies do calorie budgeting. When you consume a bunch of calories, your body decides how they get divided between heat, easy movement, high effort movement, thought, fat storage, and the immune system. This isn't a matter of will power and it means that some people's general quality of life deteriorates a lot if they aren't fat--and it may go above your 80 pound limit.__I don't think IF (or any other diet) can be adequately evaluated in three months. “

No, it isn’t just will power. And there are doubtless many people who literally can’t lose weight without horrific effort. But I don’t believe that that is a statistically significant proportion of the people who are overweight. I think those people are fat because society has changed incredibly, and a single hour’s work can buy a day’s worth of food. A gram of protein is probably easier to obtain than at any point in human history. Combine this with sedentary work patterns, and the natural, human tendency to avoid unnecessary effort, and you have an epidemic.

I see obesity as a disease indicative of the fact that human beings have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and what used to be a survival trait has now become a threat to health. One of the saddest things is a belief I’ve heard again and again (hopefully not serious): that if there was a famine, their excess fat would make them the last to survive. Hah hah. No, in a famine, civilization breaks down, starving mobs roam the streets resorting to cannibalism, and they’d be the first to be killed and eaten. There’s just no survival value there in the modern world.

For what it’s worth, I took the prejudice test Dan Moran suggested
(https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/__Click on Demonstration, "Go to the demonstration tests," "I wish to proceed," and pick a test.)
And I came out having a slight preference for fat people! If this is accurate, I’d say that it was a matter of empathy. And I speak about this so often because of the three major arenas (finances, relationship, fitness) fitness is the one where a solitary individual has the most control. You simply cannot heal a relationship by yourself, no matter how much you try. You cannot heal your finances without cooperation from employers, customers, etc. But you could lose weight without talking to another human being or enrolling anyone in your efforts, alone in a cabin in the woods. True, there are social and family pressures, but if you were determined enough, you could close your heart to them and go forward. More than any other arena of life, there is the possibility of taking control in the physical arena.
And if you think I’m saying its easy, you’re not reading me carefully. I’m saying it is less complex than the other two arenas, because you have the POSSIBILITY of control. And I’m convinced that if your body is the place where your demons have nested, and you can flip over that flat rock with something like I.F., you will access core wiring, the basic stuff of your life, down below conscious thought, social programming, emotional pain, anything. You are dealing with core survival, and that trumps EVERYTHING. This issue is powerful as hell. If it weren’t, all of the good, strong, hard-working intelligent fat people wouldn’t have that particular problem, now would they?
I believe in the human spirit, that we can build lives in integrity with our dreams. That we don’t have to compromise a fraction as much as we usually do. I look out at the world and see perfect spirits living a variety of human experiences. And when I see them in pain, and see a way out, I speak my opinions on it.
I just don’t think there’s a lot of truth around this issue. I don’t label my opinions as truth, but I’m willing to take a stand. I don’t care if I hurt some feelings, if I can save some lives.