Just how Fat are we going to get!

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Meemuh:
Quote from: CheesyRider on May 08, 2012, 10:27:46 AM

I actually have a full head of hair and sometimes go "bald by choice" during the summer.

Ok, back on topic. I am a formerly very fat person, but am now just a little bit fat. I have lost 60 pounds since January 1st and have 15 pounds to go. For me, it is will power that is helping me lose weight. My biggest hurdle was to convince myself that I had the will power in the first place. It helped greatly that there are some people I personally know who lost weight and kept it off. Ridiculing fat people as not having will power does absolutely nothing to inspire them to lose weight. It only serves to make those who do the ridiculing feel superior.

Ridiculing myself certainly doesn't help me either...been saying that I gotta slim down for ever & all I do is keep using the next bigger hole in the belt. :crazy:

misanthropist:
Pretending their failure to lose weight is NOT a product of their failure of will doesn't help, either.

And in fact, I believe that while individuals ridiculing fat people (which incidentally has not happened in this thread, and if the extremely mild language it has contained is sufficient to reduce overweight readers to sobbing, self pitying wrecks, I have news for you...they were never going to make it off square one anyway) probably does not help, if society at large ridicules fat people, that probably does help. The stronger the social pressure to stay slim, the more likely people are to remain that way, even if they don't really want to lose weight on their own.

Drinking and driving was at one time fairly accepted behaviour...drunk drivers are now absolute social pariahs.

If fat people were regarded with the same extreme intolerance as drunk drivers, I suspect there would be far fewer - note that I am not advocating making the fat in to social pariahs, simply commenting on the effects of social pressures.

So while ridiculing fat people for a lack of willpower MAY not help, it potentially could.

But pretending that they have all the willpower in the world and the reason they are fat is because of obscure medical disorders beyond their control, or because the food sources they have access to guarantee they will be overweight, will DEFINITELY not help.

The bottom line is this: if you are fat, and you don't want to be fat, there is ONE way to fix it: reduce your calorie intake to a level below your calorie expenditure.

That's not ridicule, it's reality. If you want to be thin, that is a BULLETPROOF blueprint for making it happen. If you don't do it, that's up to you. It's not about anybody feeling superior, inferior, fulfilled, embarrassed, or anything else. If you want to lose weight, do it. Eat much less than you currently do.

Anybody who is out there playing Mother Teresa with the feelings of fat people by mollycoddling them along, telling them it's not their fault, taking their focus off of reducing their food intake, is ROYALLY SCREWING the fat.

I am a member of a couple of gun forums. One is primarily professional shooters; one is just random Canadian gun owners. My involvement with the firearms industry and my training background and my contacts at fairly high levels of firearms end-user organizations mean that I often know about issues with guns that most people will never encounter. Hardly any casual shooter burns 100,000 rounds through their guns on a regular basis...most not even in a lifetime. Few users are privy to the information gleaned from organizational testing by the FBI, say, or the ATF or FAM. But those who are, know the failings of guns that many consider desirable.

As a result, I occasionally get accused of being a jerk to recent buyers of gun X, Y, or Z after they ask if anyone knows about any issues with that gun. I usually do, and I can often tell a person what fails, why, and when. So people buy themselves a $1500 gun, ask if it has any issues, I tell them it does and why it failed out of the FBI tests, and when they ask what to do, I say, "if you want a seriously reliable pistol, sell it, and buy gun Y".

A bunch of other casual users freak out and claim that I am a gun snob, or a "hater". No, I am a guy who knows a lot about that particular subject. If asked, I will tell an owner why their gun has been rejected for serious organization use.

I could be "kind" as some would like, and tell them, "hey, it's a great gun. Shoot it and love it." Their feelings would not be hurt. I also would have completely failed to give them accurate information about their gun, and if they ever need to use it for REAL, not just for playing at the range, they have a substandard weapon, possibly in part because everybody just recited ad copy to them.

Who is being kind? The people who nurse your feelings or the people who tell you how to fix your fucked up life?

To quote a good friend of mine who went from being, in his words, "a tubby gun store nerd" to, in my words, a high-speed motherfucker employed by my government to do bad things to people who deserve it, "Fix your shit. Get your head straight. Nobody cares why you failed. Stop failing. Get your head straight. Fix your shit."

Abdication of personal responsibility, abandonment of social responsibility, and mollycoddling. These three ills have absolutely ruined western civilization.

cbsnbiker:
Quote from: misanthropist on May 08, 2012, 09:14:28 PM

Pretending their failure to lose weight is NOT a product of their failure of will doesn't help, either.

Mr. Whippy:
Quote from: cbsnbiker on May 08, 2012, 09:20:21 PM

I haven't actually seen any cogent argument from you--other than "How do you know" and "maybe it's not their fault" Those aren't theories, they're politically correct mechanisms akin to hand wringing.

*meme fail. :thumbsdown:

cbsnbiker:
No, it's a meme success. You and many others fail to recognize or accept my cogent arguments, and try to conceal this -- wittingly or unwittingly -- with straw men.

People also distort what I wrote. Just one example:

Quote from: misanthropist on May 08, 2012, 09:14:28 PM

Pretending their failure to lose weight is NOT a product of their failure of will doesn't help, either.

Is that what I wrote? Let's see.

Hmmm, how about:

Quote from: cbsnbiker on May 02, 2012, 08:32:54 AM

It's fascinating to see how many people jump to the automatic conclusion that it's always someone's moral failing when someone else is fat/poor/unhealthy/whatever. Some even are gleeful about their schadenfreude.

Yes, that can be the case, and often is.

(emphasis mine)

and:

Quote from: cbsnbiker on May 02, 2012, 08:43:42 AM

I actually agree that people should do this (edit: eat less, move more). But merely saying so does not make it happen on a national level, and solves nothing.

(emphasis mine)

and:

Quote from: cbsnbiker on May 02, 2012, 06:48:05 PM

That is the flaw in automatically assuming that people who pump gas -- or who are obese -- are automatically at fault.

Often it is the case. But the assumption that it always -- or even 95 or 99% of the time, as others have suggested -- is the case is flawed and counterproductive.

And even if it is the case, what else is there to the story? And what can be done to help the country-wide problem?

(emphasis mine)

Etc.

Nope, that's not what I wrote. My position has been misrepresented.

And this is before touching on anything substantiative.

People are putting up straw men to hide their prejudices, whether it's against fat people (this thread), or poor people (also relevant to this thread), or other people.

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