Yeah We FIGURED Exercise Can’t Completely Stop Fat From Making You Sick. Your Point??

Just a quick rage post, everyone. This week you may have found some punchy, alarming news headlines pop up such as “FAT BUT FIT IS A MYTH”. Scary news. Scary fat news. It’s that kind of thing when “journalists” are desperate for material so they dig into recent academic research to pull out a claim out of context that gets everyone’s attention. Bravo. These news stories are alluding to a study out of a Spanish university that concluded people in “overweight” and “obese” BMI categories remained at high risk of cardiometabolic diseases like high cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes. But in both the articles I read – one from CNN and one from U.S. News & World Report (see below for links) – the study authors reiterate that their findings also show that regular physical exercise lowered everyone’s risk of these diseases regardless of their BMI, corroborating other studies. I’ve written about this before. CNN interviewed a Duke University administrator who cautioned that this is a correlative – not causative – cross-sectional study (one of the easiest ones to conduct). He mentioned that it could be that some “obese” participants started exercising regularly BECAUSE they learned they had new health issues. You can’t know from a study like this.

This brings me to my biggest beef here…. wh- what… who are these articles for? What do you hope to accomplish? They’re setting up a straw man of well you know, you can’t stay FAT and expect exercise to fix any issues your fat may be causing. Wh- who the hell is saying this? The study authors admit exercise still helps. Besides, again, there still is not scientific consensus about what exactly makes people get fatter and how fat influences disease. And, again,

WE DO NOT YET KNOW HOW TO SHRINK FAT AND MAINTAIN LEANNESS AT A POPULATION LEVEL

Both the articles (both of them?) have a wrap-up with some authority claiming that it’s important to be physically active and get or stay lean. Ok, but HOW? Get out of here with this shit. And shame on the writers and editors for including good news somewhere in the text while having misleading titles and introductions that imply the opposite. Save it for the Daily Mail.

Exercise Doesn’t Boost Health If You Stay Obese, Study Finds | Health News | US News

‘Fat but fit’ is a myth when it comes to heart health, new study shows – CNN

The Word “Overweight” Really Doesn’t Mean Anything

We’re back again with a hard-to-search query, and lo and behold it’s still about fat stigma. This time I’m trying to investigate the use of the term “overweight”, looking for nuanced analyses of its multiple uses and their consequences. But I have come back empty-handed. And whenever that happens, I BLOG.

THIS…. this is that blog.

I was attempting to watch a film analysis on YouTube and when this guy referred to the main character as “overweight”, I couldn’t watch anymore. Would people please, please stop using this word?! It’s not just offensive, it’s stupid. It’s a stupid word. I know what he meant. He meant fat. But fat in a “kind” way, in a way that suggests… not that fat, just fat enough for it to be noticeable. First off, you’re not granting anyone a kindness when you use this euphemism. The reason you’re using it is because you want to indicate that you can see a difference in someone’s body proportions, shape, or composition that qualifies them as “fat”, but that they are not REALLY fat, like, the real fat people over there that are actually the ones who are ill or weird or subhuman. It’s not “fat” – it’s “fat lite”. “Fat-ish”. But by doing so, you’re reinforcing the notion that there is a level of fat that is too far gone, too different, too inexcusable. You’re reinforcing the belief that there is any amount of fat that someone has that could make them chiefly responsible, and that we know exactly the point when someone is so fat that it amounts to an illness. But more importantly, when we say the word “overweight” we really mean 3 things, and we use them interchangeably:

Having so much fat that your physical or mental* health is worse than ideal**
Having a particular body shape – some proportion of fat that is intermediate between the proportions commonly seen in the media and the fattest person you can think of
Having a proportion of fat that you think is greater than average

And by “average” I again mean consistent with common media depictions. In reality, many people are fatter than what you see on social networking apps and TV. According to the CDC , the average (mean) height for a female in the United States is about 5 feet, 4 inches (162 cm) and the average weight is about 170 pounds (77 kg). A rough estimate for the resulting average BMI is around 29, which is considered “overweight” by medical authorities. Will a female with a BMI of 29 LOOK fat? It depends, both on the proportions of the person and the schema of the observer. Are they so fat that their health is suffering? Perhaps, but it would still be difficult to know that with any certainty just by looking at them. Are they TYPICAL? Yes, yes they are typical.

I hope people will see that the criteria I listed above are, for the most part, mutually exclusive. People who look “chubby” are likely not over-weight in the sense that they are fatter than average. They probably are average. There are many people who have physical and mental disorders that we associate with being fat, but we don’t suspect it, because they aren’t fat. And besides, at least 80% of American adults may be “overfat”, which is largely to do with visceral fat depots (surrounding your guts); this figure includes a significant proportion of people whose BMI would classify them as having “normal weight”. Where’s our “concern” for them?

So please, let’s stop saying “overweight”. What should we use instead? Oh hell I don’t have ALL the answers. …. Let’s just say FAT for now and I dunno… use modifiers? I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading.

For more on fat stigma, I like this blog post from Scientific American:

Fat is Not the Problem – Fat Stigma Is

*Being “obese” is associated with a greater likelihood of suffering from mental illnesses. Currently, the direction of causation constitutes a chicken-or-egg debate, but it seems that at least in the case of major depression, there is some evidence that both are likely to lead to each other. The mechanisms are not yet well understood. We do know that fat stigma causes increased risks for mental and physiological illnesses irrespective of BMI. Mental health may also suffer from the neurochemical and endocrine disruption that can occur with a diet of high-processed foods and a lack of regular exercise, but these conditions hold true for everybody.

**”Ideal” is, of course, subjective.

The Morality of Fat – Levels of Misconception

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.