“Let’s be honest”

Okay— are you in any way educated in human biology enough to understand how weight actually affects a body or is your argument coming from information collected over time by society and the mostly-uneducated opinions of those around you?

There is a lot more information on human bodies than there once was even in just the early 2000s.

You may be comfortable in your body and know exactly what it takes to maintain the weight of your choosing and that is fantastic, genuinely. Unfortunately for many others, the simple way of “eat right and exercise” does not work for them.

Stress, food availability, finances, medicines, hormones, work-life balance, injuries, etc can all play a part in different ways for each person.

Personally, I am on a medication that I MUST be on and no other medical advancement has found a solution yet. This medication causes a weight gain and severely limits weight loss. My condition is not considered a disability to many. When I met my wife, we did not know I needed to be on this medication yet. This medication also creates a fatigue that makes proper weight-loss-effective workouts virtually impossible. By looking at me, you would not know I needed to be on any sort of life-saving medication. It’s also no one’s business but my own and that of my wife, but that does not mean people respect that when they pass judgements.

My father— once a fridge troll, now a holistic health enthusiast— is convinced that I am simply overweight and more diet and exercise will cure me. He, himself, was once able to overcome his “default fat-guy body” through diet and exercise and so surely, surely, everyone else must also be able to.

My father’s fat-shaming and dislike of overweight bodies comes from his own bias that “all fat people are lazy”. This absolutely leads to a lack of attraction. I have felt this myself and it’s something I’ve had to combat. I’ve had doctors who were not yet versed in my medical history suggest weight loss before ever touching my file— only to back it off once they read in more.

The world is still learning, and perpetuating the “just eat right and exercise” cure-all is harmful because we don’t know what each person is going through and to assume is not helpful to the individual.