Tiers of the Morality of Fat:
1) Being fat does not always mean you’re unhealthy.
2) Being healthy is not always ethical.
People use their physical and mental stamina in order to oppress others, and the pleasure that they can experience can make them apathetic and ignorant to the ills of the world and other people in it.
3) Being ethical is not just about being prosocial; it’s also about living the good life.
4) Being prosocial is not always possible.
Claims that fat people over-consume at the expense of lower income people across the world, or at the expense of the environment, may have some validity. But on the whole, everybody in the middle class who live in developed nations use a great deal of energy in their daily lives, such that any additional costs from eating more food and requirements of supplementary healthcare are unlikely to be proportionally significant. More importantly, most middle and lower class people in developed nations face systemic barriers to having affordable healthy food and time for exercise, as well as mental healthcare for disorders like addiction and anxiety. Asking people to simply put in more effort toward eliminating their need for consumption cannot be enough.
5) Living the good life is subjective.
For some people, living a longer life or having lots of physically demanding experiences is important. But they’re not the only keys to a happy life, and some goods that come from being alive actually come at the expense of a longer life or being able to have lots of physical experiences, irrespective of how fat you are or how much you eat. You can’t have it all. It’s important to some people spend a majority of their time making art, solving puzzles, or enjoying lots of food. You can’t just assume that these things are less valuable. Though it can be argued that changing your diet and activity level can boost your performance and enjoyment of these experiences as well, that is true only to a point. Specializing in anything you enjoy still requires some sacrifice, and being human is about more than just being in tune with your biology.
6) Living the life you want is not always possible.
The majority of people who go on some kind of diet program do not experience sustainable weight loss. Exercise burns significantly fewer calories than people think. Fat loss may be possible in the near future for significant segments of the population, but not unless there are substantial changes in food access, job security, healthcare access, education, and media advertising. For now at least, most of us will have to accept the fact that we are going to get fatter, or stay fat, for a while. Exercise is still beneficial in a lot of ways other than simply losing fat, but it’s also something that is difficult for many people to do consistently. Moreover, people are naturally unlucky about all sorts of things, not just in the realm of fat. Some people respond to calorie restriction better than others; some people have more resources to support them than others. Some people grow up with physical activities and healthy eating as positive and reliable parts of their lives. Many do not. People have impairments, deformities, or injuries that they are born with or acquire later in life – cancers, blindness, missing limbs – that carve out life paths with very different outcomes. For these people, joy and achievement cannot look the same as it does for average people. That’s not necessarily a negative thing, but oftentimes people with disabilities have to be more creative and tenacious when society does not give them a simple blueprint for what experiences will make them happy, much less what actions they can take to make them happen.
Worst of all, depression can make this entire journey not seem worth it. Life is inherently full of suffering, confusion, grief, and regret. Sometimes this is downright intolerable. Everyone deserves the opportunity to change their circumstances so they can have new experiences and respond differently to life’s challenges, and even when people have depression… a new job, a new friend, or a new home may be all it takes to begin to make that happen. You could be like me, a person whose anxiety is frequently so bad that I overestimate the risks of physical harm and social embarrassment for trying new things, and I underestimate my worth, my capabilities, and my capacity to handle setbacks, such that I rarely enjoy the benefits of change. But there are those people for whom these resources are out of sight or out of reach for a long, long time. And there are also people who may never respond positively to these changes even when they occur. Human life is messy, and in this very fundamental way people can have vastly different inner worlds, and some people are more different than others. I can only offer this: you can never be fully sure that you are one of the people that can never benefit from a change in your life. But I would not harass even a loved one to stay alive and look for new possibilities no matter what. To do such a thing is not only presumptuous; it is selfish. And above all, it is cruel.
Already Ridiculous 