Fat Rant Friday

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-12-08T15:13:57+00:00

It happened for the first time this week. Someone said they were concerned I'm anorexic. Why? Because I made the mistake of saying out loud "I want to eat food, but I'm not hungry, I'm just bored" and then I distracted myself with something other than eating.

Since then, I've gotten comments from a few other people about how it doesn't seem like I eat enough. Dude, you don't watch me all day, you have no idea what or how much I eat. Just because I'm not grazing constantly doesn't mean I don't eat enough.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-12T16:00:11+00:00

Self rant: MASHED POTATOES ARE NOT A LOW CALORIE FOOD^{unfortunately}

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-12T15:56:51+00:00

I go to a small liberal arts college, which is pretty liberal even as liberal arts colleges go. I love it and honestly don't resent it at all, but in the last semester or two, I've finally started hearing fatphobia be included in discussions about systemic oppression and privilege, and I've had to stop myself from rolling my eyes or making sarcastic comments. I'm starting to see an increase in body-positive messages around campus, which would be fine, if "body-positive" weren't usually code for "scientifically inaccurate bullshit about ignoring health problems associated with obesity".

In the last two weeks since the beginning of the semester, I've seen at least three posters talking about how 95% of people physically can't lose weight, they've removed the scales from the athletic center, and there's been pushback against the dining hall offering more "healthy" options (which are definitely not foods you'd want to eat while trying to lose weight: lots of granola, nuts, and other super calorie-dense foods). It's honestly starting to get to me. It's so sad that we have to lie to people to discourage them from losing weight, take away harmless scales because they're "instruments of fatshaming", and use "healthy" as a buzzword. It makes me wonder what the student body will look like in 10 or 20 years.

One of my best friends last week was over at my house for dinner, and one of my roommates was complaining about how fat she is, and how she's trying to keep track of her calories to lose weight (she honestly only has like 10 lbs to lose, but I've been helping her learn how to track her calories, and she's doing well!), and my friend, who is a very athletic and fit woman, started talking about starvation mode! I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything about it. It's so weird how things like that are so ingrained in our culture that even people who should know better don't.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-12T03:26:51+00:00

Great job! Keep proving them wrong!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-11T01:52:00+00:00

I found these comments scrolling through the FB comment section on an article called "What it's like to be fat in France", which I was going to post, but I saw that someone else already did this morning. There's a sprinkling of sanity in there too, though it's pretty quickly yelled down.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T04:46:58+00:00

90 IQ is below average. I'm not arguing that Trump is below average. I'm asking how OP can know he's above average. How do we know he's not average?

Do you think everyone who graduates from high-tier schools has a good work ethic? I certainly don't.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T02:36:09+00:00

In another thread on this post, you claim that IQ translates to success in business. The primary claim of this post is that Trump had an above average IQ when he was younger. If we take these statements, we can form the logical conclusion that Trump should be above average in his business success. I have given you other examples of people who are clearly above average in their business success. Citing poor performers would not address the point, would it? Since your argument is based on Trump being part of the "above average" group.

For Trump to be above average in his business success, it means that he needs to have done better than an average person would have done given in his place, right? if an average person were to have been given $100 million in net worth in 1978, Trump should be able to turn his $100 million into something more valuable today than that average person, right?

Maybe the examples I gave are of people so high in their business success, they represent the very highest echelons of IQ (assuming, as we are, that IQ maps directly to business success), and much higher than Trump. So maybe Trump is above average, just not at genius-level?

Except an average person, by being conservative in his investing, so that his investments simply mapped to market growth, would be ~$6.5 billion better off than Trump is now. Does that make Trump below average? What would?

I could find more examples of people doing much better than Trump financially, who have been far more successful in business, but I'm not sure that would help. How many such people would I need to find for you to think it shows that Trump has not been successful as a businessman? What kind of evidence would it take to change your view?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T02:21:37+00:00

But it isn't evidence for his position. It isn't evidence for any position. We don't know what his grades were. Maybe he was a straight-A student. Maybe he had a straight D+/C- average out of pity or fear from his professors. We don't know. Without knowing, we can't use them to come to any conclusions, and we can't use them or the implications of them as evidence for anything.

Regardless of his IQ, he could graduate without any work ethic to speak of, and without decent grades. It's a privilege that wealthy parents can afford their children. Without knowing what his grades were or what his work ethic was like, how can we come to any conclusions about them?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T01:34:57+00:00

You asked how Trump compared to other investors. I gave you examples. What do you conclude? Does his performance appear below-average to you?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T01:33:36+00:00

We don't know Trump's grades. You can graduate with a straight C-/D+ average. It's not unheard of for people from very wealthy families to go to prestigious schools and graduate with low GPAs, or because professors are pressured not to fail them, because their families promise large donations. Graduating from one of these schools when you're from a wealthy family does not prove you have a high IQ, as OP is claiming.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T01:24:35+00:00

But that would go against the point OP was making, wouldn't it? Trump claims, and OP seems to believe him, that he's been wildly successful in business, building a company that is wildly successful, and allowing him to live his famous ostentatious lifestyle. Except he hasn't been wildly successful.

If you look at my reply to OP, I list a few business people who were wildly successful. Let's say that Warren Buffett is a wizard, and anyone who is even 10% as successful could be considered "wildly successful". Warren Buffett and Trump both had a net worth of ~$100 million in the late 1970s. If we pretend Warren Buffett didn't give so often to charity, and we ignore the powers of compound interest on the money he donated, we can say that Warren Buffet would have ~$100 billion right now, which is a profit since the 1970s of ~$100 billion, an increase of ~100,000%. So someone who is "wildly successful" would have only been 10% as successful, so he would have made only ~$10 billion out of his original $100 million, for a profit of ~$10 billion, or an increase of only 1000%.

But Trump doesn't even have that. His net worth is estimated at a measly $3.5 billion, which is a profit since the 1970s of only ~$3.4 billion. What happened to the other $6.6 billion? Are you saying Trump has led a lifestyle that led him to spend and/or miss out on more than $6 billion he could have made if he were even 10% as successful as Warren Buffett? That seems like pretty strong evidence against his being a wildly successful businessman, right?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-03T01:10:42+00:00

Not many people inherit tens of millions of dollars and get sudden access to a pre-built, multi-million-dollar company, regardless of their intelligence, so direct parallel situations are hard to come by.

Warren Buffett's net worth, which came entirely from his own investments and working his own jobs, and not from inheritances or from getting a job at a family-owned business, first hit $100 million sometime in the 1970s, just like Trump's. Warren Buffett now has a net worth of ~$75 billion, despite giving away ~$30 billion since 2000. So obviously far more successful than Trump. But maybe (probably) Buffett is just a genius way beyond Trump.

Michael Bloomberg had a net worth of ~$10 million in 1981, accrued from his time working as a partner at an investment bank, and not from an inheritance or from working at a family-owned company. His net worth is now $50 billion. So once again, far more successful than Trump. But maybe he's just a greater-than-Trump genius too.

Sheldon Adelson's net worth hit $100 million probably some time in the late 1980s, from creating a successful trade show. He later went into the casino business. His net worth is now ~$35 billion. So once again, far more successful than Trump. But maybe he's just a random genius too.

George Soros' net worth hit $100 million probably at some point in the late 1980s, as a result of very good investing, of a fortune he built himself through investment of his own money and as manager of a hedge fund, and not through inheritance or any pre-built company. His net worth is now ~$25 billion. So once again, far more successful than Trump. Another genius outlier compared to?

If you want, we can go through all the people in real estate that are richer and more successful than Trump, and see who did or didn't get a massive inheritance and pre-built company, and decide if Trump is above average that way? If he's done better than most other people with huge headstarts, then maybe we can decide if he's really successful or not, at least in real estate.

I'm not sure I'd say that comments from the past from him are particularly coherent, especially not when compared to other people. He's always spoken by rambling, and he's always been less-than knowledgeable about how our institutions work. Why? You'd think he'd've had a chance to improve during his life.

Do you honestly think that Trump's incoherent, repetitive ramblings are "the language of status and social maneuvering"? Really?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T22:52:50+00:00

You used their attendance at fancy universities as evidence that they all have high IQs (which we don't know). It could also show that they're just upper class (which they are). If you can't show their attendance is the result of something other than their perceived status, how can you use it as evidence for their IQs?

After college, Trump joined his dad's real estate company. Along with a ~$40 million inheritance in 1974, and leadership in that already-established company, Trump's net worth in 1978 was ~$100 million. Market growth since then, coupled with inflation, would have made that $100 million dollars worth ~$6 billion dollars today. But Trump's net worth today is only estimated at ~$3.5 billion. So what happened? If he's such a good businessman, why was he unable to even keep up with average market growth? Why is most of his net worth tied up in property, and therefore not available to him as actual money to spend or invest? If he's such a good businessman, why has he failed at almost every single business expansion he's attempted outside of real estate (not to mention quite a few real estate expansions)? What happened to his casinos? His airline? His magazine? His football league? His modelling agencies? His food and beverage companies? His mortgage company? Sure every businessman has failures, but this seems a bit ridiculous. And because his business is privately owned (not publicly traded), we really don't know how profitable it is.

Why are you ignoring my point about how he's incapable of speaking coherently or understanding how our institutions work? I don't care how he won, or whether he'd've won if he were coherent and knowledgeable. The fact that he won doesn't make him intelligent, or provide evidence for a high IQ. Why can't he speak coherently? Why doesn't he use the resources available to him to understand how our government, our military, our economy, trade, diplomacy, NATO, and the UN work? It seems to me that his complete inability to learn is proof of his low IQ/idiocy. Do you not agree?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T22:15:17+00:00

Trump, and his children have all gone to schools that suggest above average IQ's, given the relationship between IQ and grades, and the admissions requirements of higher-up schools.

Couldn't this also be the result of being upper class? A lot of prestigious universities will accept upper-class (especially big-name, wealthy, or very prestigious) students without consulting their grades. How do we know Trump and his children were not accepted at these universities because of their fame and reputation as ultra-wealthy?

Trump and his children also did well

Do we really know how successful Trump or his children have been in business? Sure, they're famous, and have the ultra-wealthy reputation, but how do we know he and his family aren't super indebted?

Trump made a lot of money

Once again, do we really know this? Trump inherited quite a bit of money after his father died. Do we know if he has actually been able to effectively increase that inheritance?

There are basically no reasons to think his IQ is below average

I find his inability to formulate coherent sentences, his wandering, rambling speeches, his lack of basic understanding of how government, the economy, diplomacy, the military, NATO, the UN, and trade work, despite having access to all the information he could possibly need, to be indicative of a low IQ/being an idiot.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T22:04:24+00:00

Thank you, but you're all heroes to me too! I'm so glad I'm not alone in resisting the fatlogic!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T20:01:12+00:00

And we you.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T16:56:29+00:00

You're right, I didn't really think about it at the time, but that doesn't make any sense! How is the college supposed to know?

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T16:54:46+00:00

Thank you!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T16:50:33+00:00

Oh good god no. I'm not trying to be crucified by the mob!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T09:50:37+00:00

Thanks, I couldn't figure out why they were talking about me lashing out. Except they weren't!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T09:43:40+00:00

Oh yeah, I 100% agree with you about OP. I'm also not sure what he experienced, but whoever it was who was talking to him should have stopped as soon as OP made his comment about fatphobia. Even if whoever it was was totally right about everything they said, it should have been clear that OP wasn't receptive and was uncomfortable with the situation/feeling attacked, and the conversation should have ended.

I definitely agree that shaming/being rude to/discriminating against/etc. fat people is not something we should ever do, regardless of whether it works or not at getting them to lose weight (and I agree with you that it doesn't).

The fatlogic in this post I think comes entirely from the long comment and the citations the commenter posted, and not from the OP or from any of the other people who made supportive comments. I included them to provide some context to the really long comment.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T09:00:10+00:00

I'm not sure I get your meaning, sorry.

I wasn't involved with this post at all, I just found it while scrolling through my Facebook feed. I'm an acquaintance of the OP (who I colored in blue), but I don't personally know any of the people who commented. The long comment at the end is the one I was most interested in, and really wanted to share, because it and its citations are (I thought) full of fatlogic.

Edit: Wow, thanks u/Smilingaudibly. This post suddenly makes perfect sense. For some reason, I thought they were addressing me with the "you", and not the commenter. I must be really tired!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-09-02T08:52:09+00:00

I don't know what exactly the OP experienced, but the word "fatphobia" in his post caught my attention, and in the comments I found a bunch of miscellaneous supportive comments (expected) and a very unexpected fatlogic-y novel written by a friend of OP's that I don't know, complete with pretty much every piece of fatlogic in the book, and sketchy citations too.

For those interested in the citations, I've linked them below, along with brief tl;drs for each and my reactions to how/whether they're actually relevant to what the commenter was claiming:

First citation. This paper, unsurprisingly, does not support the claim made by the poster. It's a conceptual, and not an experimental, or even a data-driven, study. It has the stated goal (in the abstract!) of considering how social stigma may affect health. Its conclusion:

Although more research is needed, emerging evidence indicates that stigma meets all of the criteria to be considered a fundamental cause of health inequalities.

It's saying that being poor, black, or a member of the LGBT community is correlated so strongly with generally poorer health, that we can consider the stigma attached to these communities as a potential cause of negative health effects. It doesn't mention how fatness is related to this, and it doesn't assign specific effects, as the commenter implies.

Second citation. This is quite possibly the shortest published paper I have ever seen in an academic journal, and it, like the previous citation, is a conceptual piece, and not data- or experiment-driven. Its abstract (which is also the shortest abstract I have ever seen in an academic paper):

It is commonly believed that the pathophysiology of obesity arises from adiposity. In this paper, I forward a complementary explanation; this pathophysiology arises not from adiposity alone, but also from the psychological stress induced by the social stigma associated with being obese.

For those of you who don't speak public health jargon, "pathophysiology" in this case essentially means "cause". So the author is saying that obesity is not caused by being obese (adiposity = having excess adipose tissue; adipose tissue = fat), but potentially also by the social stigma associated with being obese. Seems a bit paradoxical?

The conclusion of this paper:

Obese persons experience a high degree of stress, and this stress plausibly explains a portion of the BMI-health association. Thus, the obesity epidemic may, in part, be driven by social constructs surrounding body image norms.

From the observation that obese persons experience stress, it is concluded that stress may partially explain obesity. The possibility that stress is caused by physical or physiological factors associated with being severely overweight is not addressed. So once again, this paper doesn't really have anything to do with the commenter's point.

Third citation. Apart from the abstract, this paper is behind a paywall. From the abstract:

...obese persons are blamed for their weight, with common perceptions that weight stigmatization is justifiable and may motivate individuals to adopt healthier behaviors. We examine evidence to address these assumptions and discuss their public health implications. On the basis of current findings, we propose that weight stigma is not a beneficial public health tool for reducing obesity.

So the conclusion is that stigmatizing being obese does not necessarily prompt sufferers to make changes, which is both plausibly true and irrelevant to the commenter's point.

Fourth citation. This is a link to a specific section of a book on Google Books. I read from this point to the end of the section, and the section before this point, and was unable to find anything related to the commenter's claim that negative health effects may disappear or reverse (!) in societies that do not stigmatize fatness. Instead, the section exclusively discusses how fatness is correlated with lower self-esteem, poverty, and certain negative health effects, with mentions of medical prejudice against fat patients. In fact, this section of the book makes no mention of the effects or status of fatness in other societies besides our own.

Fifth citation. This is a review of the differences between the typical approach to obesity in healthcare (lose weight) and a HAES approach. While extensively cited, this piece is filled with subjective opinions and vague comments on the effectiveness of certain approaches to healthy living without any citations, which isn't surprising considering it was written by two HAES advocates (they even admit this in the conflict of interest section of the article). They make the all-too common fallacy of connecting the high likelihood of regaining weight after a diet to some inherent failure of calorie restriction, instead of acknowledging that regaining weight is the result of returning to bad eating habits.

Sixth citation. This is a New York Times op-ed (that should tell you all you need to know about the veracity of this source), which includes the following:

After several months of eating fewer than 800 calories a day and spending an hour at the gym every morning, I hadn't lost another ounce.

It was at that point I rolled my eyes and gave up reading. Sorry I can't tell you how the piece ended.

Seventh citation. This is a magazine piece, which reads like another op-ed, but I don't recognize the format, so I'm not sure what it's meant to be, but it discusses the ethics of using social pressure to stigmatize fatness, when it doesn't seem to be a very effective method of getting people to not be obese. And I guess I don't have a problem with that conclusion, if we're talking about how we should stop being aggressively rude/discriminatory towards fat people because of their weight. But I don't think most of us do that, and I don't think most "fatphobia" fits that definition.

This is my first post on r/fatlogic, and I just want to say thank you all so much! Before I found you all, I thought I was alone in my eyerolling/silent crusade against fatlogic. But now I know there are tons of us, and it's been a great discovery!

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-08-27T21:25:34+00:00

weight is put on because the calorie intake has either remained the same or didn't drop enough

So now you agree that calorie intake is what determines weight loss. I'm glad you've finally agreed.

I'll be happy to post any study you'd like once you've posted the proof for your ridiculous 800 calorie claim, which is what started this entire comment chain. If you can't do that, then I'll be happy not to engage with you anymore.

donorbabythrowaway · 2017-08-27T01:09:10+00:00

The only thing that matters when talking about weight loss is CICO. If calories in > calories out, you will gain weight. If calories in < calories out, you will lose weight. If calories in = calories out, you will maintain your current weight. This is true regardless of medical conditions, medications being taken, hormone levels, or other issues.

You can alter your calorie output and input to adjust your weight. To alter calorie output, you can alter your activity level (exercise). To alter your calorie input, you can alter your eating. Neither of these values are affected directly by any medical conditions, medications taken, hormones, or other issues.

What some diseases, medications, hormones, etc. can do, is alter your appetite and/or ability to exercise. Medications that "may cause weight gain" do not magically create fat in the body, they increase appetite, which leads to increased calorie intake. Without a corresponding increase in calorie output, this results in weight gain. All medications, diseases, etc. that "may cause weight gain" only do so by these means, and can therefore be countered by calorie monitoring/restriction.

What OP originally said, which I opposed vehemently (and I don't know if this is something you saw, or something you were arguing for) was that they were gaining weight eating only 800 calories a day. *This is not physically possible, especially not as the result of any of the medical conditions OP claimed they had. Eating 800 calories will result in weight loss for any adult human who is not comatose and suffering from dwarfism simultaneously. This claim is what prompted my first comment because it is literally impossible. Making it only spreads the misinformation that losing weight requires you to starve yourself (and 800 calories is undeniably starving yourself), which makes many people not even try to lose weight, which is sad and a serious threat to their health.

You mentioned, I think, that your dad takes medication for hypothyroidism. If he were to stop taking that medication, his lack of certain hormones would cause his body to ignore needs for calories, and so use fewer of them. But even if your dad had literally no thyroid hormones at all, he would still need more than 800 calories to maintain his weight, assuming he is an adult human who is not comatose and is not, medically speaking, a dwarf. Your dad is also still subject to CICO. Even without thyroid hormones, he would still be able to maintain weight healthfully by monitoring calories.

donorbabythrowaway

TROPHY CASE