Your genes are no excuse for being fat

The Amish study involved 704 people; blood samples determined which of those had a variation in the FTO gene linked to obesity. Among those with the variant, those who got about three or four hours of moderate physical activity a day weighed up to about 15 pounds less on average than the least active people.

So you’re saying that all I have to do to have my doctor tell me to lose 35 lbs instead of 50 lbs is to exercise for a ridiculously unrealistic amount of time each day?

How about a slightly more accurate headline: exercising as much as 3-4 hours per day has very little effect on your weight.

Stop denying that you look bad!

I think I’ve written up a post on a certain topic at least two or three times, but I keep rereading it and not liking how it sounds. Maybe one day I’ll get it right.

In the meantime, I’d like to complain about a particular commercial advertising a treatment for hair loss that comes on about once every commercial break when I’m watching baseball. Usually I tune it out or change the channel in the first five seconds because it’s so annoying, but one time that it was on I happened to catch a single line:

Stop denying that your hair looks bad!

And I thought, jeez, this is like the whole “fat people should stop being self-confident and start feeling bad about themselves (for their health!)” thing, isn’t it?

The problem is that “be happy with the body you have” doesn’t sell anything. Convincing people that something’s wrong with their bodies so they’ll buy your product to “fix” it does.

Water Makes You Fat

Me: Why do I feel so hungry? [Rhetorical question; I had been sick the day before and hadn't eaten much, which explained the need to feed myself. I just felt like complaining.]

Mother: Sometimes when you feel hungry, you’re just thirsty.

Me: Sometimes, but that’s probably not true for me. I drink water all the time. [I have a chronic dry throat and I rarely drink non-water beverages; I just don't like them much.]

Mother: Maybe that’s why you’re hungry. You drink too much water and it stretches out your stomach.

Me: …

*sigh*

I am so submersed in the Fatosphere that sometimes I forget that most of the internet is solidly in the anti-fat camp. Sometimes it’s hard not to get into arguments that I know will just waste my time.

Having Fat Friends Makes You Fat

Fat friends ‘can boost your size’

Where to start on this?

They suggest choices about appearance – on which decisions such as job offers or being deemed attracted – are based are determined by the choices others around you make.

So, if people around you are fat, it is permissible for you to be fat too.

I’m going to start out with my God what is wrong with your grammar?

They suggest choices about appearance – on which decisions such as job offers or being deemed attractive are based – are determined by the choices others around you make.

There we go.

Now let’s start looking at all the disturbing things in those two sentences. First, the assumption that people choose to be fat. Second, the implication that OH MY GOD IF YOU HANG OUT WITH FAT FRIENDS YOU WILL START BEING DEEMED UNATTRACTIVE AND NOT GET JOB OFFERS! Why is fat the problem, then, and not society’s prejudice against fat people?

And how about looking at other factors at work here? If you’re going to acknowledge that on the whole, poor people are fatter than rich people, maybe who you hang out with (and what job opportunities you have, and whether people deem you “attractive”) is related to social class. Or maybe fat people choose to hang out with other fat people because it makes them feel more comfortable. Or maybe–God forbid–naturally fat people who have forced themselves to be skinny hang out with fat people and then become more confident and better able to accept their bodies as they are.

“If you are surrounded by people, whether that’s friends or within the family home, who are overweight, you are sharing the same environment where there is likely to be an abundance of the wrong kind of foods.”

But no, it’s all about “good” and “bad” food.

“You’re not fat!”

I got into an argument with someone once who told me that not only is Joy Nash not fat, but no one thinks she is. The argument went like this:

• Joy Nash “looks healthy.” [Whatever significance "looking healthy" has.]
• Obesity is always unhealthy.
• Therefore, Joy Nash is not obese.

There was also an unspoken assumption, I think, that goes on in most arguments of this type:

• Fat people are always ugly.
• Joy Nash is smoking hot.
• Therefore, Joy Nash is not fat.

Why don’t people ever use this evidence to change their opinions?

1. Fat people are always ugly.
2. These fat people are attractive.
3. Therefore, Point 1 is wrong, and fat people can be attractive OH SHIT MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED.

Do I hope too much of people?