It's O.K. to judge fat people

Reviews, Videos, and Everything Else The Finer Things
21

My knee did some twitching, but careful reading is my friend. The list of possible factors is actually pretty good. If anyone’s interested in further reading on the psychological issues of food, the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab is your new best friend. Their research is solid as Hell, and tends to be very insightful.

The main reason that the author of the review (and the literature review, if it appears there) is liable to attract derision is this:

the reasons for these […] behaviors may be out of our control

If they mean that several classes of stimuli for overeating are intrinsically related to being human, I’ll buy that. If they mean to imply that said stimuli can’t be manipulated, managed and counterbalanced with other stimuli, then they’re full of shit.

22

We live in a country that at least half of the known population is considered obese based on numbers published. I, like everyone else has seen those numbers and have seen and and have interaction with people that are overweight/obese. I see kids and adults that fall in this catergory. Adults being overweight, I can understand why even if I don’t agree with the reasons they say they are overweight. What burns me is allowing your kids to get in that condition BEFORE they even get to a chance in life knowing what possible problems they can face. THat, to me is inexcusable behavior. Barring any medical conditions that the kids may have, there is no reason except uncaring and stupidity to allow any normal child to get overweight in their early teens or even before then.
Everyone knows ( or should ) about good nutrition and exercise and taking care of yourself. Some people go to extremes in either case, being fat or skinny but bottom line is if you take care of your body it will take care of you. The human body has all the necessary built in mechanisms to function properly, all we have to do is our part to keep that going.
garbage in…garbage out …rant rant rant rant

23

I generally try not to judge fatties until they do something more judgeworthy. IE: a tremendous fat lady with basketball sized blubbers hanging off the bottom of her arms ordering the super long sub with double meat and extra mayo.

I actually did make comments then. Not really to her, but not really quietly either.

On the other hand there are fat people that recognize they have a problem and work to change that problem. That wins of respect.

Then there are people who are just fat and you don’t know their story, so unless I see them doing something fat (walking into a buffetet) it’s whatever.

Anyways, I know that it’s easy to kind of let yourself go.

I think I got up to like 185~ at one point and didn’t even realize that I was starting to get edge towards being a fatty.

Now it’s like 4 years later and I was down to 136 a couple days ago.

Edit: actually what I hate most is fat people that try and excuse their fatness or say that being fat is normal or ok or say shit like “well…we can’t all be models” or whine about how guys don’t like the “big girls” and only want “sticks”.

Edit x2: And Shar, she’s fat and I hate her, too.

24

Anna, you didn’t hate Shar because of her weight. You hated Shar because she was … Shar.

She makes Toby look sane.

All the rest of these posts come down to this: People are fat for a lot of different reasons. The ones you hate are people you’d hate anyways, no matter what their size.

I have a lot of respect for people who get serious about their weight and do something about it. It’s a tough thing to do, and anyone who hasn’t tried to drop weight permanently doesn’t realize how hard it is to change those patterns.

And just for the record, no I am not talking about myself.

25

Budo, I have ranted about this so many times and been called a Nazi, etc.

Now, I disagree slightly, because I don’t necesarily think they’re more selfish or rude than anyone else. I think we just tend to notice it more because there’s more of them. If a fat person jumps in line ahead of you, your initial reaction is “Hey, that fat bitch jumped ahead of me in line!” because it’s the first thing about their appearance you tend to notice and identify them by.

So fat people are people, and all people have good and bad qualities. That being said, if you’re fat (unless you are that 1% with serious gland issues that 65% of fat people like to claim to be) it IS a symptom of lacking self-control/discipline which is a character flaw. You might be an awesome person in many other ways, and if we tally things up a better person than me overall, but regardless, you lack self-control.

I’ve seen guys on Bullshido mention stuff like, “Well, I’m in passable shape, but I’ve got a belly, but when it comes down to it, if it’s a choice between a gut and giving up coca colas, I’ll have a gut”. That’s okay with me (not for me, but with me)…it’s realistic and accepting responsibility. People, however, who do not have just a little gut and, rather, are pushing 300+ lbs…there’s just something seriously mentally wrong with them. When you close in on 300 (unless you’re a 6’8" body builder) a warning alarm should go off in any normal person’s brain that says, “Whoa, I’ve got a problem, I need to take care of this ASAP.”

P.S. Ironically, this one fat guy I know always argues about everything with me from a Fox News POV (I can’t even call it “conservative”, because conservative makes it actually sound like he’s thought his views through), how everyone needs to take responsibility for themselves, how we don’t need health care reform, etc. etc. but he gets all insulted when I tell him that I shouldn’t have to pay higher healthcare rates because of all the fatasses in America driving up the premiums and how there should be a lower rate for in-shape people and a second, higher, rate for people over a certain body fat %.

26

As my fitness and general body conditioning and size increases and I realise more and more how fucking hard it is to look after yourself properly, I can’t help but think what disgusting and lazy c**ts fat people are.

I was a fat kid myself and it left me with some emotional baggage but it came to a point when I decided enough was enough. I started running, watched what I ate, took up Wing Chun (don’t laugh) and generally changed my lifestyle.

Are they really happy with how they look? Of course not but they’d rather convince themselves they are than put the family sized kilo bar of Dairy Milk down and do some fucking exercise. FFS at least switch to Diet Coke you walking diabetic coma!

There was a front page story last week of a 15 year old girl who weighs 33 stones (x14 for pounds) / 264 kilos. She consumes 13,500 calories a day. A FUCKING DAY! How the fuck did her mum let her get this way? The girl is now at a fat camp in the US and has been told that she could die at any time. It disgusts me that people have such little respect for themselves.

I accept that there are those who are genetically predisposed to being chubby but, and I can’t remember who i’m quoting here "no fat people came out of the concentration camps! Saying “it’s glandular” just means you can’t be fucking bothered.

Good subject Budo, I’m all ranted out for now.

27

I was underweight my whole damn life. Then I had a bunch of surgeries and got all hooked on the pain meds. Well when I finally was no longer in chronic pain and I weened off those suckers my whole world was turned upside down. The agonizing process of getting off the pain meds basically made any physical exertion other than working total hell(work or anything really was hell too, but you gotta pay the rent).
Long story short, I ballooned up to being 38 pounds over weight. Was bloody awful. My friends started clowning on me. I kept getting the “wow you look different,” line from people I had not seen in a long time. It was horrible and humiliating. So horrible I decided my fat ass was going to invest in a new pair of running shoes. fastforward to the present day and subtract 35 lbs and factor in the fact I’m not having a withdrawal scene from “Trainspotting” and life is much better. I got about 10 pounds left to go and I will be very happy. Won’t be an insecure stick figure like I once was, nor a hambeast like I was for a good 7 months. I sympathies for overweight people but if you don’t have a legitimate medical condition hindering you from physical exertion you pretty much fucked yourself. Have fun with your diabetes, realize you sound like a tree being sawed in half when you wear corduroy pants and familiarize yourself with the term “frontbutt.”

28

Oh man, I don’t want to derail the thread into fatty stories, but holy shit, I just have to tell this story, it seriously scarred me for life.

My girlfriend back when was a skinny little chick (did pro-ballet until she fucked up her feet, was in amazing shape) who told me the reason she, back when, wound up with all the typical starving teenage female eating disorders was because of her father disgusting her by being a huge gross fatass and watching him eat at the dinner table.

Now, I probably rolled my eyes and thought “Puh-lease”. I had never met her father (they lived in upstate NY in some godforskaen little town by the Canadian border; we were both in the city), but one day she had to visit and asked me to come. So, I’m sort-of curious to meet her father that I’ve heard all these crazy things about, particularly about his weight. She keeps telling me he’s almost 400 lbs and her height (5’4?) and I’m like, “There’s no fucking way he’s 400 lbs and your height he wouldn’t even be able to walk.”

So I meet this guy. Hoooo leeee shit. She was not exaggerating. I don’t know how this guy could walk (well, waddle very very slowly) without a cane. He was indeed about 5’4 and, almost literally, a fucking SPHERE. Dude looked like Tweddle Dee, except Tweedle Dee is thinner. Anyways, that was not the part that grossed me out…

Okay, so we’re about to have dinner with the family. I’ve heard nightmare stories about his eating, which I’ve never believed, but I’m starting to wonder now, after seeing him in the flesh. We sit down and her mom serves everyone, breaded chicken cutlets, mac & cheese, etc. but…not her husband. All he gets is a big plate of plain white rice because “he’s on a diet”.

Now, okay, a big plate of starch isn’t the best food to eat if you’re on a diet, but still, I started thinking, “Dang, this guy is at least trying. Here he is, sitting around a table in front of all these people eating tasty (well…tastier) food right in front of him, and he’s just going to eat a big plate of plain white rice, good for him.” So yeah, I started to relax and like him more.

Then he goes, “Honey, where’s the butter.”

Now, I had never seen anyone put butter on their rice before, but apparently it’s not all that uncommon…but…not like this. She hands him a full, unopened stick of butter and he cuts a pat off and into his rice…then another…and another…and another…and another…and another…until the whole stick is gone. Then he takes ANOTHER stick of butter and repeats the process until THAT stick of butter is completely used up, then grabs a fucking THIRD stick of butter, cuts up only half of it into his rice (presumably because he’s on a diet). He starts stirring, and I’m starring, but I can’t look away. His former big plate of white rice is now a big yellow broth with some rice grains floating in it and he digs in…after consuming it all he lifts the plate to his lips to guzzle down any remaining butter. I just starred at him, horrified, but luckily he was too into eating to notice me.

I seriously could not eat anything for the next 48 hours we spent there. This was 7-8 years ago, and just typing this now and remembering my stomach is churning. Anyways, if any of you are ever feeling weak and about to go for a 2nd slice of pie or something when you know you shouldn’t, just visualize my ex-gf’s father eating his rice.

29

[socialist mode]Most fat people are poor folks who are victimized by crappy, high-calorie food due to corporate agribusiness and corn subsidies[/socialist mode]

AND…

[fascist mode]Weakness and the kind of lacking self-discipline that can only exist in an affluent, materialistic, overconsumptive society like ours[/fascist mode]

30

This post is the counterpoint to BudoMonkey’s initial one. Good show.

Judging people without knowing them or understanding their reasons is always silly. I myself was a fat motherfucker in my youth. Chicks used to say I was “too fat” and all that other shit. I also couldn’t run very fast and was awful at sports. This fucked with my head, so I went on a extreme starvation diet and lost 15 pounds. This may not seem like much, but I was 14 at the time, and was growing like a motherfucker. In a very short space of time, I was 3 inches taller and 15 pounds lighter.

This led to an obsession with personal physical fitness. Now I weigh 200lbs and have very low body fat because I spent the last 5 years either lifting heavy weights or training llike a motherfucker. But I still have a small eating disorder, where if for some reason I can’t train or work out, I’ll stop eating all together, or do stupid diet tricks like take sugar shots to kill my apetite. It’s kind of unhealthy.

Right, that’s not so bad. But what about my friend who was once fat, and because of all the judging and shit she had to endure, she stopped eating, now looks like a rake, is malnourished and has serious health risks?

I think it’s also important to recognize the pressure and shit you can put on people by expressing your opinion too strongly. But still, a fat motherfucker is a fat motherfucker, and that shit needs to be changed. Because being a fat motherfucker is not cool. It really doesn’t matter what the reasons are on a certain level, if you’re fat, you’re unhealthy and if you want to live, you should get right on jettisoning the extra empty fuel tanks before your shit crashes in the mountains or something.

31

It’s just about the worst possible choice, actually. Add the butter and it is the worst possible choice. That man is in desperate need of a dietitian so he can stop killing himself with “diets”.

32

Are there any “diets” that really work? I’ve never gotten the point of fad diets, or diet pills. It’s so much simpler and easier to just eat right and exercise. Eat whatever you want, just keep the unhealthy things to a minimum, eat in moderation and only when you’re hungry, and exercise an hour or so a day several days a week.

I guess that exercise is pretty boring for most people. I would think so too, if my main options were only lifting and feeling like an overgrown hamster on a treadmill or elliptical. Thank God for martial arts.

33

I eat all the same crappy high calorie shit foods that all the fatties eat, I just eat less of it. The problem is that everyone has “eat everything on your plate” mentality. Or at the very least they eat themselves completely full.

Whenever my girlfriend and I go out to eat we almost always split everything in half. Restaurant portions are pretty much always tremendous. I’ll go out and eat half a dinner and feel completely stuffed. Actually it’s not even uncommon for my gf and I to split a meal and STILL wind up taking home left overs.

Makes me wonder how I ever ate anything off a restaurant menu all by myself but I did, and I see people continue to do it because they have to eat everything on their plate even if it means feeling unpleasantly bloated afterwards.

34

And although fat people (most?) are the way they are because they lack self discipline, I agree with those that say you shouldn’t judge someone strictly because of their physical appearance.

That being said, it does annoy the crap out of me when I see people in the motorized handicapped carts in grocery stores who are using them strictly because they’re too fat/lazy to walk around.

That and Mo’Nique. God, I can’t stand Mo’Nique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSmT1Fve-BY

35

I never thought of this, but its a definite advantage of your lifestyle!

Question: which one of you says “I want xyz” and which one says “I’m not that hungry. I’ll just pick off yours”?

36

Neither really, I tend to eat a little more then her but I’m also 20 pounds heavier so it’s understandable.

All in all, even on a bit of a pig out day I probably come in at around or under 1,500Cals a day.

I used to eat a…lot. Like about 5,000 cals a day lot. (and wondered why I wasn’t losing weight even though I was working out like 5+ hours a day.)

I’ve just kind of slowly whittled down my in-take over the course of the past 3~ years. It was especially easy to do once I started splitting meals (with the other upside being able to go out to niceish dinners for 2 for the price of 1)

37

I’ve never been there but my bother spent 2 years in LA and says this pic is mostly correct.

BTW, I’m lazy too: 4 lbs overweight.

38

No, it’s really just a combination of laziness, lack of portion control due to the “finish everything on your plate” mentality (my grandma crammed this into me as a kid), and a susceptibility to all the television commercials people watch. Though being a single mother and having to work three jobs to support your 5 kids does make the laziness bit understandable.

Really, if you have a family to feed like probably most of these people do, it’s much much cheaper to make food at home then to go out and eat fast food. Think about it. If you’re buying a $6 super sized extra value meal for yourself and a $3 happy meal for each of your kids, that is an expensive ass lunch/dinner/whatever.

Honestly I don’t cook as much as I should (my girlfriend is hard to cook for) but when I do I can easily make a meal for the both of us for under $5 that we will probably have at least one day’s worth of left overs from. This doesn’t even require the ability to make stuff from scratch. There’s a lot of easy out of the box stuff that will feed you family for like $3-4… as long as they’re not cows that have to eat a pound of food for every meal.

39

no food tastes as good as thin feels

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“Obesity is a serious international health problem that increases the risk of several common diseases. The genetic factors predisposing to obesity are poorly understood. A genome-wide search for type 2 diabetes-susceptibility genes identified a common variant in the FTO (fat mass and obesity associated) gene that predisposes to diabetes through an effect on body mass index (BMI). An additive association of the variant with BMI was replicated in 13 cohorts with 38,759 participants. The 16% of adults who are homozygous for the risk allele weighed about 3 kilograms more and had 1.67-fold increased odds of obesity when compared with those not inheriting a risk allele. This association was observed from age 7 years upward and reflects a specific increase in fat mass.”, taken from [U]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17434869.[/U]

“Considerable attention has focused on deciphering the hypothalamic pathways that mediate the behavioral and metabolic effects of leptin. We and others have identified several single gene defects that disrupt the molecules in the leptin-melanocortin pathway causing severe obesity in humans. In this review, we consider these human monogenic obesity syndromes and discuss how far the characterization of these patients has informed our understanding of the physiological role of leptin and the melanocortins in the regulation of human body weight and neuroendocrine function.”, taken from [U]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17122358[/U].

These quotes don’t show the total percentage Americans who are obese because of genetics, because that’s hard to measure and is too cut-and-dry of a distinction, because you can blame weight on caloric intake and genetics to varying degrees. Notice I never said that the majority of obese Americans could blame their weight on genetics. I just said that it’s worth mentioning. Obviously we don’t eat healthy enough in America and we really need to change, but that’s not the only reason people are fat.