People with underlying health issues more likely to run into health problems. Amazing journalism.
this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Well, with respect to everyone, there's a group of folks who believe in "health at any weight". That's an issue
So the movement you’re referring to is “health at every size” and various studies have shown that following it leads to overall better physical health outcomes compared to “traditional” weight loss/dieting. Here’s a short article with links to various studies: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/health-every-size/#
The movement isn’t promoting that everyone is healthy at every size but that weight and health may not be causal as people seem to believe (research shows they can be correlated but the methods behind it have also been quite flawed and do not consider a vast majority of covariates that have been previously identifed as having negative relationships with health). Unfortunately, we live in a society (mostly US but also all Western nations) that pushes the idea that only one body type is “healthy” and that our body shape/type is largely within out control and neither of those are previous statements are true. In fact, these ideals have been shown to be negatively correlated with physical and mental health and can be a major contribution to disordered eating and associated symptoms/behaviors.
Obesity is a serious risk factor for many, many conditions. It is not always the cause, but it never helps.
Folks with obesity need better healthcare, which is massively underserved in the west (and everywhere, for everyone).
Nothing beats CI/CO ever, no excuses, nowhere in the universe. It's thermodynamics.
The primary issue is mental health, and it is a very serious issue Indeed.
Obesity can be a risk factor for certain individuals but more research has been pointing towards family history, genetic, and even environmental effects to explain more of the variance for health outcomes over obesity as a standalone variable. It can definitely makes things more complicated but isn’t the single point of health as we’ve made it out to be.
As for the CI/CO, that has also been disproven quite some time ago and continues to perpetuate because it is a simple way to try and understand weight. Here’s another short (non-scientific) article to dive into that: https://immattersacp.org/archives/2021/06/understand-obesity-before-treating-it.htm#:~:text=Treating%2520obesity%2520isn't,be%2520OK%252C%E2%80%9D%2520she%2520said. In short, individuals vary in how their bodies store and utilize calories and calories themselves vary depending on the source. Some bodies do fall under the fairly simple ci/co addage but the majority do not and continuing to understand it from that lens maintains weight stigma, which we also see as a major contributer to negative health outcomes in individuals living in larger bodies.
While I agree that mental health is a primary issue (it is literally my field of study, practice, and research), I also like to try and share some of the more recent findings and understanding in our field, especially as we continue to learn and correct old findings. I apologize that you’re getting so many long messages but I just find it important to try and speak out where I can, especially after working with and treating folks with eating disorders.
How has cico been disproven? The mental health component is the real issue. As in, for very legitimate reasons, humans can't maintain the diet, due to failing to maintain discipline. Disproving cico would mean humans create perpetual energy.
If you lock someone in a room and give them only water, they will lose weight. (Set aside vitamins)
Then try a single spoonful of rice a day. Still lose weight.
Continue to increase food, you'll find eventually they maintain a consistent weight.
Continue to increase food and eventually they will gain weight, as they will be consuming more calories than they burn.
Ci/co as a thermodynamic rule hasn’t been disproven but it works in a vaccum with no other factors considered. Humans are complex and vary in their biological processes that change how calories are utilized, processed, stored, etc. Two people can be put on the exact same diet and exercise plan and have completely different outcomes, that’s where the simplified idea of ci/co has been “disproven” as far as it is commonly understood.
As far as the mental health piece, it is one part of the puzzle but its not necessarily the main component, and also cannot be simplifed to maintaining discipline. Basically, all I’m trying to say is people are complex and just saying an individual needs more discipline or needs to lose weight really reduces the nuances between the relationship of weight and overall health.
Discipline is mental health. Mental health is the real issue.
Edit discipline is not the only relevant mental health topic here, just replying to that in particular.
Am I misunderstanding something or is that article saying "it's not CI/CO, it's actually CI/CO"? The incorrect assumption people make is that somehow the only change to energy intake and expenditure is food and exercise (which we have known for very long to not be the case and it's insane to me that people believe that), not that the law of conservation of energy somehow doesn't apply. If you expend more energy than you take in, you will lose weight. But measuring either of these things properly is close to impossible and certainly not as simple as "put your height and weight and what you eat and how much you exercise into a calculator".
No, that’s the correct interpretation, essentially we’ve simplified the “formula” to be easily digested (ci/co) and people have a tendency to understand it as an easy cut calories or expend more. But as you’ve noted, it’s extremely complex and doesn’t take into account individual needs or variability which makes the generalized health advice of “just lose weight/diet/exercise” pretty unhelpful. Especially as we have no true recommended options that contribute to weight loss with long term maintenance.
Also encouraging fat folks to improve their health where they can is far better than chanting cico and attempting to shame them. Shame is bad at motivating people. Except to eat, shame is great at getting people attempting to lose weight to eat an entire pizza in a sitting. But instead by encouraging a healthier diet and to increase movement you help them lose weight, and more than that you help them keep it off.
Like spam emails, it worked. People have likely clicked, and here we are talking about it. As long as it continues to work, they will remain in business... :-(
What bugs me about it is that it's The Guardian, from which I tend to expect better. Therefore, I went ahead and clicked it, and am tremendously relieved to see that mostly it's just an overly simplistic title - it would have read much better as something along the lines of "measuring the economic impacts of obesity" imho - though the article itself is still somewhat slim.
Globally the costs of overweight and obesity are expected to soar from $1.96tn in 2020 to $4.32tn by 2035, according to the World Obesity Atlas published last year.
The way I see it, us non-overweight people need to get a better work life balance and take more sick leave!
Because the obesity and their bad health likely has a single cause. Whether it's neglect, bad mental health or something else, it all increases the likelihood of obesity and being otherwise unhealthy. This headline seems to paint the fat people as leeches of the system, while they are often already sick and obesity just one of their symptoms.
Conflating fat people with bad people is pretty standard fare unfortunately.
I’ve struggled with my weight my entire life; I have a long history of being physically active while also being overweight. For example: I have a black belt in martial arts, which means I spent a decade of my life in a dojo three to five times a week exercising… while still fat. I don’t eat terribly either. My body just holds onto every fucking calorie.
But many many people have made shitty assumptions about me based entirely on my weight. The “personal responsibility” people are particularly obnoxious.
I was a kid in the 90s when every TV show had a stupid lazy fat guy as a cheap joke factory. That was super cool for my self esteem.
Taking BMI as gospel is another problem, to be considered in an ideal weight, I'd have to weigh as much as when I was 17 and that was when I was the most active in my whole life (walking to and from school, PE at school, going outside with friends daily, etc.) No chance I can cut to that weight at 35 in a healthy way.
It is my opinion this article is a symptom of the current culture that being fat is some sort of moral failing. The fact that they can tie it to some vaguely tangible monetary cost is the justification.