Why the growing animosity and outright hatred towards overweight people?

CptStern said:
"you're looking really good! did you lose weight or join a gym?"
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Actually I'm never quite sure how to take this, and I don't think it's the most tactful thing to say....there's both a compliment and a slur in it, when you think about it...usually though, I just accept the compliment :)
 
KiplingsCat said:
there's both a compliment and a slur in it
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I know, the second part basically implies that you usually look terrible, but you did something out of your way to change that.
 
Yeah, I've had it said to me in ways that definitely did not make me feel good at all. It depends on who's saying it and how they say it.
 
"Wow, you're looking good! Did you lose ugly?"

Haha, but nah, I try not to engage in anything mean spirited like that. I think you should be able to communicate to people that the habits they're engaging in are harmful to themselves, whether it be smoking or eating or whathaveyou, but it should come from a place of concern. Thing is, the overweight people I've known are rarely delusional about it. They know it's harmful, they don't think it's ideal, and they want to change. The problem is that it's not as simple as just saying "welp better start running and eating cabbage." Will power and motivation are very real factors, and I don't think it's fair to just put it down to "they're lazy." At least not in 100% of cases.

Also, ask yourself this question if you think insulting people is going to motivate them to change: how exactly are you helping them exercise by discouraging them to be seen in public? How much more likely are they to start jogging if they feel like they'll be judged merely for stepping out the door? Yeah.

Edit: Not to mention I've packed on a few pounds lately so I'm not one to judge tbh~
 
When I was losing weight people constantly asked me if I was working out. I didn't take any offense to it, made me feel good. I guess if I wasn't actually working out and wasn't actually losing weight that would have been a different story.
 
Bad^Hat said:
I think you should be able to communicate to people that the habits they're engaging in are harmful to themselves, whether it be smoking or eating or whathaveyou, but it should come from a place of concern.
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"Stop faping and looking at porn, or you'll go to hell."

- Mom
 
Ever wonder why your mum fed you so many carrots?

SHE KNEW.
 
Some of you really disappoint me. :(
 
What did you expect exactly? Being lazy and having bad lifestyle choices is fine? I think it goes without saying that those with serious causes are exceptional but they're a minority. Those trying to better themselves are also generally well received.
 
Why is it your concern what "lifestyle choices" that people have which are bad for themselves? Are you out there constantly lambasting the lifestyle choices of all other people that you disagree with? Or is it only the fat people or the smokers because you have a visible means for which to judge them?

Some people don't really appreciate the hold food has on some people, the studies that have shown similar serotonin releases and other addictive brain activity that is very similar to such drugs as cocaine. They're only ever all, "eat right and exercise" while harshly criticizing and shunning individuals from society and expecting the problem to just resolve itself. Or treating it as if the sole underlying reason of eating poorly is simply laziness and gluttony.

Done. Done with it all.
 
Raziaar said:
Why is it your concern what "lifestyle choices" that people have which are bad for themselves? Are you out there constantly lambasting the lifestyle choices of all other people that you disagree with? Or is it only the fat people or the smokers because you have a visible means for which to judge them?
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It's not my concern really. Is it really so bad if I think people could be bettering themselves? It's not like I even bash fat people ever, but you asked.
 
Raziaar said:
Some people don't really appreciate the hold food has on some people, the studies that have shown similar serotonin releases and other addictive brain activity that is very similar to such drugs as cocaine. They're only ever all, "eat right and exercise" while harshly criticizing and shunning individuals from society and expecting the problem to just resolve itself. Or treating it as if the sole underlying reason of eating poorly is simply laziness and gluttony.
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It's all too easy for people to sit back in the armchair of their own opinion and judge from the outside.
 
I have my own opinions on what causes the stigma against fat people. They simply reject that which does not fall into their category of what is "normal" and what is not. Like there's always "that one guy" who says and does things that put people off. That person might get made fun of simply because he creeps people out.

Being morbidly obese is just like any other physical or mental abnormality. If you don't like it, then you get it taken care of. If it's a mental thing, you see a doctor and take care of the root of the problem, be it stress or laziness, if it's a physical thing, you see a doctor and they give you meds to fix whatever glandular issue it might be.

You don't see people walking around with a cleft palate because "Surgery is just too much effort, and I don't want to deal with the pain of having my face cut up."
 
Raziaar said:
Why is it your concern what "lifestyle choices" that people have which are bad for themselves? Are you out there constantly lambasting the lifestyle choices of all other people that you disagree with? Or is it only the fat people or the smokers because you have a visible means for which to judge them?

Some people don't really appreciate the hold food has on some people, the studies that have shown similar serotonin releases and other addictive brain activity that is very similar to such drugs as cocaine. They're only ever all, "eat right and exercise" while harshly criticizing and shunning individuals from society and expecting the problem to just resolve itself. Or treating it as if the sole underlying reason of eating poorly is simply laziness and gluttony.

Done. Done with it all.
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You are absolutely right about it being a form of addiction. But why do you think this perticular additiction should get special treatment? When you see a tweaker that is clearly damaged from the drug do you think to yourself "oh, that's not something that is in anyway off and I won't in anyway judge"? I doubt that very much, I would guess that you would think to yourself "that ****ing tweaker needs to get off the drug before he ends up dead or in prison, he looks like total shit".

You might take offense to a comparison between obesity and drug addiction or you might not. But I think it is a valid one.

Also, you can't pretend that laziness doesn't have something to do with it. Even if you are addicted to food getting out to the gym has nothing to do with that. Unless you are also addicted to not working out.

Again, all this might sound like animosity and I understand why it can be taken that way. But it's not. I am still fairly overweight eventhough I have lost alot of weight from a few years back (280lbs a few years back to 215lbs today), but instead of feeling sorry for myself I actually do try and make an effort to change that. And when I fail I really have only myself to blame. Just as if I succeed I only have myself to thank. And when I hear people making fat jokes I really don't take any offense to it and I certainly don't see it as animosity or hate.
 
No Limit said:
When you see a tweaker that is clearly damaged from the drug do you think to yourself "oh, that's not something that is in anyway off and I won't in anyway judge"? I doubt that very much, I would guess that you would think to yourself "that ****ing tweaker needs to get off the drug before he ends up dead or in prison, he looks like total shit".
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I wouldn't think that, I would just think "how sad" and mind my own business. Even if I did think that, I wouldn't say anything. It's fine to have opinions of your own but you will find that people often have no interest in them or need for them.
 
KiplingsCat said:
I wouldn't think that, I would just think "how sad" and mind my own business. Even if I did think that, I wouldn't say anything. It's fine to have opinions of your own but you will find that people often have no interest in them or need for them.
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I'm not saying you should go up to the person and tell them what you are thinking, but you would still be judging the person in your head.
 
why are you smoking?

you know you shouldnt smoke

smokers make baby jesus cry


much like the terminally obese smokers are just as jumped on as the obese. probably because much like the obese it's so visible. yet no one says you should be sensitive to smokers because their addiction is more addictive than pretty much anything else known to man

also morbidly obese as a trend is a recent phenomenom. there werent as many morbidly obese people as there was even 20 years ago
 
CptStern said:
also morbidly obese as a trend is a recent phenomenom. there werent as many morbidly obese people as there was even 20 years ago
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I saw this yesterday:

il_fullxfull.232067450.jpg


The guy was considered so obese at the time he could be in a circus freak show. Today he doesn't look that fat.
 
he wouldnt even qualify for a complimentary scooter at walmart. up until a few years ago I didnt know it was possible to have boobs ON YOUR BACK

not eye safe

Back-Fat-WalMart.jpg
 
CptStern said:
much like the terminally obese smokers are just as jumped on as the obese. probably because much like the obese it's so visible. yet no one says you should be sensitive to smokers because their addiction is more addictive than pretty much anything else known to man
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The reason smokers are jumped on is because they can harm others around them as well as themselves on a greater level than obese people.

I don't mind people smoking as long as they don't f*cking do it near me because I don't want to inhale the disgusting by-product of their habit. If a fat person is near me, eating, it doesn't affect me.

Granted passing eating habits on to children can harm them and there are ways obesity can affect people close to the obese person but I'd consider it on a lesser scale than smoking.
 
CptStern said:
much like the terminally obese smokers are just as jumped on as the obese.
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What? Not even close. Smokers are looked down upon by people yeah, but the obese get all kinds of shit. When was the last time you saw a smoker being made fun of? Or getting picked on or bullied? Of course this applies more to younger people, but really I don't think smokers get it as bad as the obese do.

And please keep posting pictures of fat people they are hilarious!
 
Stylo said:
The reason smokers are jumped on is because they can harm others around them as well as themselves on a greater level than obese people.

I don't mind people smoking as long as they don't f*cking do it near me because I don't want to inhale the disgusting by-product of their habit. If a fat person is near me, eating, it doesn't affect me.

Granted passing eating habits on to children can harm them and there are ways obesity can affect people close to the obese person but I'd consider it on a lesser scale than smoking.
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for every obese person there is an enabler and obesity can be hereditary

also dont completely rule out suffocation due to rolling fatty. it's the #1 cause of death of spouses of fat people
 
Fat people have yet to be widely banned from being fat in public places.
 
You know I hate to bring this thread up, because of the ridicule involved, but I found this study. Not exactly new, but kind of supporting what I was saying earlier.

http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/20100329.html

There's a lot more there, I'm only posting snippets.

Scripps Research Study Shows Compulsive Eating Shares Same Addictive Biochemical Mechanism with Cocaine, Heroin Abuse
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The study's startling findings received widespread publicity after a preliminary abstract was presented at a Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago last October. Articles heralding the new discovery appeared in news publications around the world, focusing on the point obese patients have been making for years – that, like addiction to other substances, junk food binging is extremely difficult to stop.

The study goes significantly further than the abstract, however, demonstrating clearly that in rat models the development of obesity coincides with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuitries. As these pleasure centers in the brain become less and less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese. The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that overconsume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.
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The scientists fed the rats a diet modeled after the type that contributes to human obesity—easy-to-obtain high-calorie, high-fat foods like sausage, bacon, and cheesecake. Soon after the experiments began, the animals began to bulk up dramatically.

"They always went for the worst types of food," Kenny said, "and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats. When we removed the junk food and tried to put them on a nutritious diet – what we called the 'salad bar option' – they simply refused to eat. The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food. It was the animals that showed the "crash" in brain reward circuitries that had the most profound shift in food preference to the palatable, unhealthy diet. These same rats were also those that kept on eating even when they anticipated being shocked."
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After showing that obese rats had clear addiction-like food seeking behaviors, Johnson and Kenny next investigated the underlying molecular mechanisms that may explain these changes. They focused on a particular receptor in the brain known to play an important role in vulnerability to drug addiction and obesity—the dopamine D2 receptor. The D2 receptor responds to dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is released in the brain by pleasurable experiences like food or sex or drugs like cocaine. In cocaine abuse, for example, the drug alter the flow of dopamine by blocking its retrieval, flooding the brain and overstimulating the receptors, something that eventually leads to physical changes in the way the brain responds to the drug.

The new study shows that the same thing happens in junk food addiction.
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People just continuously mock people who are obese and overweight blaming it on laziness and just plain gluttony. Honestly, do people ****ing believe that such a huge chunk of the population is suddenly enormously lazy with a "fatty" mentality just sprung up out of nowhere? It's not like you see such a large percentage of the population back in earlier times experiencing things like obesity. It's our culture of food, and more importantly the quality of the food and the way it interacts with the brain.

I'm not a ****ing lazy person and I don't have a gluttonous mentality. I am plagued with compulsive overeating disorder and I've tried countless times to stop it. I live in two sorts of worlds. I'm a compulsive overeater who becomes more and more ravenously hungry as I eat until the point of completely being stuffed(yes, the more I eat, the hungrier I get until there's this hard lined stopping point). On the other hand, I'm a health nut who is very knowledgeable about how one can eat healthy and lose weight and maintain weight. I have extremely logical conversations with myself on how my eating is harming my body and my mind, and I take steps to change it. Sometimes I go for a long time sticking to a healthy way of eating, and exercising. I feel enormously amazing and in my mind I don't see how I could possibly stop living this way because the exercise feels great and the food is incredibly satisfying and guilt free. That is... until I get together for a family event or there is an office pizza party or some other sort of food trigger that brings me to eat "junk" food. It's completely like a Dr Jekyll Mr Hyde moment. A flip gets thrown and I lose control and I'm right back to compulsively overeating and feeling absolutely terrible mentally and physically because of the food I eat which sends me spiraling down into depression and further eating.

And yet... people chalk it up to laziness and a real lack of desire and willpower to change oneself. A fatty who just loves food and grease and salt and sugar.

The thing with drug addicts is drugs are illegal. They're relatively difficult to get. If an addict goes into rehab and gets clean and doesn't hang around the people he used to the temptations are practically never there and he doesn't ever have to do drugs again.

Food on the other hand... you HAVE to eat. We have to eat to survive. And we're surrounded by terrible food choices that are societal norm and nobody looks down upon you for eating(except when you're fat) because they're doing the exact same thing. It's an addiction that is rooted in something you do every day of your life.
 
This was probably mentioned but...perhaps it's also something like the ridicule of gay people? It's just unattractive for some people to look at so they vent it with ridicule because they're assholes. I don't like watching gay people make out or look at fat people 'jiggling' but I'm one who just looks away.
 
This thread was supposed to have died a month ago. Also, fat people are repulsive.
 
toaster leigh said:
Hope you don't mind random unsolicited advice, but have you tried incorporating 'unhealthy' foods into your normal diet in small portions? Like, once a week having a small pizza and eating two slices with a salad and a mug of soup, something like that? The thing is, unhealthy foods aren't even necessarily that different from any other part of your diet -- your body won't know the difference in protein from a cheeseburger and protein from tofu -- the only distinction that can be made is a psychological one. It seems to me what's happening is that you have 'junk food' sectioned off in your mind as an entirely different species from other healthy foods, and so having even just a little of it is crossing a threshold in your mind that triggers a load of guilty badtimes feelings in you. And at that point (really, I hope you don't mind this impromptu internet psychoanalysis), the easiest and nearest consolation is more food; so you have more, which makes you feel worse, which increases your desire for said consolation, & so on until you reach your hard lined stopping point.

I'm just wagering a guess, anyway. If any of that sounds relevant to you, I'd recommend 1. before & while eating, assess your emotional state and learn to differentiate emotional hunger from physical hunger, 2. find an easy, go-to emotional pick-me-up that isn't food (video gam are good for this), 3. as mentioned above, allow yourself to eat junk food in limited portions to make it more normal and less intimidating, and 4. if you do **** up (which you will, at some point, everyone does) don't let it get you down; remind yourself that it'll be gone and out of your system in a day's time and by that point, you can be eating well and healthy again.
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Like I said, those foods are triggers for me. Doesn't matter if I've been deprived of them for a while or not. It's like a a switch being flipped in my head. I act irrationally and I eat irrationally.

Fast foods are generally vastly different from other parts of a healthy diet. Your body is starving for adequate nutrition on a fast food diet. You're getting lots of calories but you're not getting the vitamins and minerals your body needs and they're very heavy on the system. On the same calorie level, the body responds sluggishly compared to a sensible diet of healthier protein and other sources of carbs and fats. A cheeseburger and tofu... the simplest forms of nutrients aren't what matters so much, it's the quality of the nutrition they contain. That cheeseburger is going to make your body feel terrible because of all the other shit it's loaded with.

I've operated basically on the mentality that you've proposed. Occasionally eating those foods on a regualr basis, but trying to eat them in smaller amounts. Time and time again I've proved to myself that it doesn't work for me. It's like a crack addict trying to live normally while just getting a small high fairly infrequently but still doing it. Or an alcoholic who has a small drink with friends but then quickly falls off the wagon. I think honestly I have to give myself a long, long time to change the way my body and mind reacts to those foods. They taste like shit when I eat them and they give me no emotional satisfaction and I feel terrible, but there's this sort of high when you eat them. It's not an "Oh my god this is the most amazing thing." experience. It's more like, "this food is tiresome and isn't all that thrilling but my body feels good for this short period of time".

The thing is toaster, what I've been trying to say and sort of what that study shows... is that it's not just case of unhealthy emotional attachment to food. It operates on a much lower level with regards to your body chemistry, or at least the studies are showing and I feel.

I just wish people could understand that it's not simply a matter of someone being lazy and gluttonous. Those people haven't experienced the addiction. They weren't raised being fed all these awful foods and have become hooked on them. They just occasionally some unhealthy food but it doesn't affect them because the addiction isn't formed so easily.

Maestro said:
This thread was supposed to have died a month ago. Also, fat people are repulsive.
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Then you better get the **** away from me, and you're living in the wrong god damn city. Why are you even in this thread?
 
my belly is fat now and it's disgusting i encourage everyone to mock me for it, especially considering it is only due to eating poorly and being a lazy sack of shit :)
 
I don't have huge issues with fat people. However, I worked at a grocery store for the better part of 4 years and I would see overweight people all day, and overall, I didn't care. But when the trio of ladies so over-weight their shirts don't fit over the stomachs walk in, which is gross to see any way, they load their cart full of jelly filled doughnuts, keebler shit, and other assortments of shitty foods once a week, I cease to feel bad for them. Then, there is the lady so big she can't walk or breath without assistance, filling her cart with the same shit as the three previous ladies, and then having her 200 pound 10 year old get stuff off the higher shelves because she cant stand. That is when I start to get angry. On the flip side, when I see overweight people at the gym, I don't have a second thought about it. I would so much rather see someones fat jiggle at the gym while they run on the treadmill, then see it jiggle while the walk down the soda isle at the store.
 
I always find it really depressing when I see overweight people eating alone in fast food places.

I only ever go to places like BK/KFC/McD's etc. with friends on odd occasions.

It's kinda sad. :/
 
I got bitched at today by a fat woman because I didn't express sufficient concern that the vending machine ate her money (where I was working). She just complained in general but didn't ask for her money back or anything, so I said yeah whatever and got her a refund later when I wasn't busy. I feel like it was the kind of attitude that you only ever get from fat people. Skinny people can be self-concerned assholes too, but not in that special fat bitch way.
 
Off to send Veggie's mum some twinkies.
 
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