Again, my irritation stems from people who are so "comfortable" being obese that they encourage others to become or stay obese, no matter what the medical community (family doctors, surgeons, etc.) has to say.
Family is not the criteria that most people use, or should use, to decide what's best for their health. My mother starved me from the time I was 8 until 14, telling me that at 90 lbs and 5'2" I was obese and unhealthy. A lot of doctors are prejudiced against the overweight (much less the obese). I've already pointed out how flawed the so-called data is that the doctors are using to scare people into losing weight... Headlines that read that OMG TEH FATTIES are causing global warming, world economies to go down, etc, that didn't have one piece of datum that came from an actual living human being. And surgeons will take one look at a person who is overweight or obese and tell them that their issues are all due to their obesity and if they just lost x amount of weight, they'd feel so much better. (Go here to read first hand accounts of doctors who've done just that: http://fathealth.wordpress.com/)
I've never heard anybody who is overweight encourage anybody else to be overweight. The FA (Fat Acceptance) and HAES (Health At Every Size) movements are not about getting everybody to be obese. It's about 1) acccepting yourself for who you are, at the size you are, to stop trying to starve yourself to hit a societal ideal that you may never fit into (because different bodies come in different sizes or because (general) your obesity is actually caused by a health problem), and 2) to promote the idea that just because I'm fat, that doesn't make me unhealthy. Nobody can tell by looking at me if I'm healthy or not, yet, everybody thinks they can. If cholesterol and blood pressure check okay, and stress tests have been done, and I work out 6 hours a week as well as lead an active life besides that, and am STILL fat, how can I still be unhealthy?
hate the way the BMI works, as it has so many flaws. Biggest one: what about the weight of muscles? I like the waist to hip ratio more, but it has its flaws as well. If we use the latter, I would (loosely - based on a picture in my head) consider obese to be 1.4 in women (healthy considered to be .8). I'm not sure about men, since their waist and hips are a bit different... (healthy is .9 - 1?).
We agree on the BMI. But I brought that up to show how the standards changed. In 1997 as much as 33 million people were not overweight (by today's standards). In 1998, overnight, those same people became overweight. The people who in 1997 were merely overweight became obese in 1998. There isn't an "Obesity epidemic" going on. What is going on is a scewing of the data that's out there, including redefining what is even the criteria to consider somebody obese. There is something very wrong with this.
And can you please tell me how a hip to waist ration defines "health"? Again, assuming that there are measures of health which require doctors visits to check (blood pressure, cholesterol, stress tests, glucose tests, etc all come out normal or good), which one cannot see. So, how is that person with a 1.8 or 2 ratio unhealthy if every medical indicator says shi isn't unhealthy?
This is what is going on in the world today. Straw man arguements (well, the obese want everybody to be obese), diagnosis determined by size, governments trying to marginalize us. Then when the obese people stand up and say, "Um, no, we're not taking the bs anymore" we get accused and ridiculed even more.
Re: Forgive my harshness part 2
Family is not the criteria that most people use, or should use, to decide what's best for their health. My mother starved me from the time I was 8 until 14, telling me that at 90 lbs and 5'2" I was obese and unhealthy. A lot of doctors are prejudiced against the overweight (much less the obese). I've already pointed out how flawed the so-called data is that the doctors are using to scare people into losing weight... Headlines that read that OMG TEH FATTIES are causing global warming, world economies to go down, etc, that didn't have one piece of datum that came from an actual living human being. And surgeons will take one look at a person who is overweight or obese and tell them that their issues are all due to their obesity and if they just lost x amount of weight, they'd feel so much better. (Go here to read first hand accounts of doctors who've done just that: http://fathealth.wordpress.com/)
I've never heard anybody who is overweight encourage anybody else to be overweight. The FA (Fat Acceptance) and HAES (Health At Every Size) movements are not about getting everybody to be obese. It's about 1) acccepting yourself for who you are, at the size you are, to stop trying to starve yourself to hit a societal ideal that you may never fit into (because different bodies come in different sizes or because (general) your obesity is actually caused by a health problem), and 2) to promote the idea that just because I'm fat, that doesn't make me unhealthy. Nobody can tell by looking at me if I'm healthy or not, yet, everybody thinks they can. If cholesterol and blood pressure check okay, and stress tests have been done, and I work out 6 hours a week as well as lead an active life besides that, and am STILL fat, how can I still be unhealthy?
hate the way the BMI works, as it has so many flaws. Biggest one: what about the weight of muscles? I like the waist to hip ratio more, but it has its flaws as well. If we use the latter, I would (loosely - based on a picture in my head) consider obese to be 1.4 in women (healthy considered to be .8). I'm not sure about men, since their waist and hips are a bit different... (healthy is .9 - 1?).
We agree on the BMI. But I brought that up to show how the standards changed. In 1997 as much as 33 million people were not overweight (by today's standards). In 1998, overnight, those same people became overweight. The people who in 1997 were merely overweight became obese in 1998. There isn't an "Obesity epidemic" going on. What is going on is a scewing of the data that's out there, including redefining what is even the criteria to consider somebody obese. There is something very wrong with this.
And can you please tell me how a hip to waist ration defines "health"? Again, assuming that there are measures of health which require doctors visits to check (blood pressure, cholesterol, stress tests, glucose tests, etc all come out normal or good), which one cannot see. So, how is that person with a 1.8 or 2 ratio unhealthy if every medical indicator says shi isn't unhealthy?
This is what is going on in the world today. Straw man arguements (well, the obese want everybody to be obese), diagnosis determined by size, governments trying to marginalize us. Then when the obese people stand up and say, "Um, no, we're not taking the bs anymore" we get accused and ridiculed even more.