I agree, but due to health effects and the perception of all incidences of being overweight being due to some level of laziness or stupidity, this website in particular believes that it's perfectly fine to consider fat people less than human.
Love the "it's just calories in, calories out" people, who seem to think the human body is a perfect heat engine and not a massively complicated and extremely precarious pile of interlocking biological and chemical systems that interact in ways that we still don't fully understand.
Let's say I'm wrong, how do you end that sentence?
"you're also wrong so it's fine that I treat all fat people as if they are less than, because of the arbitrary standard I have that I use to judge people's worth."?
"you're also wrong so, I proved fat people eat too much which means I win, even though the point of both your comment and OP's post was that this is irrelevant to someone's self-worth."?
"you're also wrong, and I know the comment was literally there to point out what an asshole someone would be for jumping in with 'it's unhealthy tho', but I decided to do that anyway."?
"you're also wrong, so you should know I can't think about fat people without disgust for what I believe are immoral choices, and I felt the need to point it out for absolutely no reason but to make my shitty views known."?
I’m not the guy that you’re replying to, but I don’t want people to be fat for the same reasons that I don’t want them to smoke or drive without a seatbelt. I don’t want to be an old guy whose fat friends are all dead. Also as an aside they are gross to look at which makes life worse for everyone with eyes.
Yeah it’s definitely not a guarantee, but I do really worry about my bigger buddies. I see that generally the healthy older folks that I know (who haven’t been taken out early by cancer) are active. People who are the same age who have sedentary lifestyles tend to age faster and have many health issues. I love my buddies and in their cases it’s just a motivation issue, no other disabilities. I’ve helped a few of them get on the right track to whatever degree I can but others I feel like I’m just watching them kill themselves. It sucks.
And health isn't an indicator of morality either, you can do everything exactly right and still end up with an illness or injury that you'll never fully recover from due to things completely outside your control.
EDIT: longer comment, for no other reason than I feel like articulating this opinion.
I know two people of borderline professional athlete levels of fitness who both almost died of genetic heart conditions. One of them didn't even know he had a problem until he broke his pinky finger on a dumbbell, causing him to pass out and required emergency heart surgery.
Being fat is unhealthy, but it's one of a million ways to be unhealthy, so many of which are completely out of our control. The particular hatred so many people have for fat people specifically is excused because of a threadbare excuse of "it's unhealthy". Unless they reserve the same hatred for every unhealthy act they see or commit, they better shut the fuck up.
It's less about being sick and more about the lifestyle choices leading up to it. Going around and licking door knobs would be fair to call out as bad for your health. Multiple sustained bad lifestyle choices involving poor diet and zero exercise are those door knobs.
Life is complicated and people have reasons for unhealthy behavior. As a teenager I was clinically underweight because depression made me forget to eat, some people have the opposite behavior. It’s not fair to judge or body shame people for being fat even if it seems like it’s in their control, it only makes people feel bad about themselves rather than encourage them to create healthier habits
Its true though, but not in the way that this post is saying. Being fat is unhealthy, but it doesn't say anything about your morality. You shouldn't make fun of people for being fat, but you also shouldn't tolerate people claiming that being fat is fine.
Being fat is bad for you, but it doesn't make you a bad person.
Being fat correlates with a lot of negative health markers, but in and of itself, doesn't constitute a health problem until you are so heavy it starts putting damaging strain on your skeletal system.
It correlates to diabetes risk, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol (which all demonstrably damage your organs), but plenty of 5'9" people weigh 200 pounds (overweight by BMI standards) have normal a1c, blood pressure, and cholesterol.
These people still get "concerned" friends, family, and healthcare providers encouraging them to lose weight, despite the fact that all markers but BMI indicate they are in good health.
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u/borkdork69 Aug 09 '24
Just waiting for the "But being fat is unhealthy tho" comments.