As always - if you’re saying a word is comparable to the n-word, and you are able to use your word in public as a non-black person, it’s not like the n-word
I couldn’t remember where the quote came from, thank you, I tried to search for it but it was surprisingly difficult
All quotes should be credited to Michael Scott if you dont know the original.
- Michael Scott
Frankly that’s something I do not understand. Why this single specific word? We have dozens of terrible offensive words. Why this specific one is considered so bad we cannot even talk about it directly, even when merely discussing it? I would think discussing it and not directing it at someone would be pretty reasonable. As with every single other word.
Is one of the other words associated with 200 years of chattel slavery?
Probably no, not in this specific form, that being said I don’t want to compare one tragedy to another. There are lots of disgusting parts of the human history, and that’s certainly one of them.
The only equivalent I can think of starts with k and is a slur for Jewish people, and it’s much less commonly heard.
Ironically enough, that word was coined by Jewish people who had been in the US for generations to describe newly-arrived Jews from Eastern Europe. Still offensive but somewhat different from the n-word.
What about something related to the indigenous peoples of the Americas?
We killed them and displaced the rest so damn fast that we forgot all the major slurs for them
“Savages”, "Redskins”, “Squaw”, and so on.
Some news headlines even refer to the second one as “the R-word”:
CNN: The terrible R-word that football needed to lose
Politico: The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think
These are extremely harmful words with hundreds of years of genocide behind them. I imagine the only reason they aren’t censored like the N-word is is because Native Americans make up a proportionally smaller population due to the effectiveness of the genocide, and because the reservation system is in contrast to racial integration as with American black people in so much as it limits interactions between them and racist whites who would overuse a dehumanizing phrase to the same extent.
Negro is pretty gosh darn close, but I guess it’s just not quite as derogatory.
It’s weird being told that a regular color in your native language could get you beat up to a pulp in another country.
To my non-American ears “negro” sounds far worse actually. Probably because of how rare it is in comparison.
To my Hispanic ears, “n—o” sounds like an Anglophone saying “black”. Even when used derogatorily, my immediate first thought is that they pronounced it incorrectly, then the rest of the associated matters kick in and I realize what they are really saying.
Imagine if in the Hispanosphere , the word “black” was almost synonymous with the n-word.
But yeah, don’t use n—o in English to refer to or describe anyone.
Call up the UNCF and let them know immediately!
(Yes, I know they mostly brand themselves as the United Fund now.)
It was used in place of black for a longer period, and wasn’t necessarily considered a slur in and of itself. But of course if you say it with a sneer, even “black” can be used as an insult.
For example a lot of books (even written by people of color) used “negro” and “coloured” etc. interchangeably up to the mid-late 20th century. But in modern context very few people use it in a manner that isn’t derogatory.
How about when people they don’t think they’re racist whisper it? I hate and love that.
I still have trouble referring to a person as ‘black’. It feels like a slur, or at least an inappropriate racial caricature (they’re not really black!) and it still surprises me that it’s become the acceptable and inoffensive term.
The n word almost seemed more mild, being about the same thing (an inappropriate way to describe race from skin colour), but linguistically removed (I’m not a native Latin speaker*) so I can feel it’s just a word, no need to be intrinsically good or bad.
- Or Spanish, whatever
From my experience, black people want to be called black. I’m a white kid, but was raised in a foster family with three black siblings and other black family, including some that lived in a ghetto in another city. It was the 90s and early 2000s, so we watched some BET, we watched the Boondocks, we listened to thug rap, we watched shows with black characters such as All That and Cousin Skeeter. Because it was all a part of my brothers’ culture, and they felt attached to it, and “black culture” was cool to all of us. And in anything we participated in I’ve never heard a single African-American who didn’t call themselves “black” and be fine being called that. Maybe there are some rich people like Obama or Tom of The Boondocks who wouldn’t call themselves “black”, but they seem to be of a different lifestyle and culture than that.
I’ve also sometimes made the argument in defense of “black”, that “African-American” is mildly politically-incorrect itself— not that I have a problem with the term, just the hyper-vigilant enforcing of it. Because it’s not synonymous with skin color itself, it’s a statement about where they came from. We don’t call white people “European-Americans”; and what do we call non-black African-Americans from, say, Egypt or South America? So… yeah.
I agree with you. But after studying Spanish I understand the origin of the word, so I’m somewhere in the middle on it.
And things even worse than slavery towards them. And that a lot of racists who would likely shoot black people still use that word on purpose. And that there’s still a lot of those people.
Non-American here. I also didn’t get this, thinking it’s just puritanical bullshit. Some Americans seem obsessed with auto-censorship.
Anyway, I finally understood while watching Django Unchained. It’s an extremely dehumanising word, meant to separate people (who have rights) from things which do not. It’s a tool to be able to do this distinction and then do unspeakable evil to specific people because they don’t count as people and so it’s alright.
Now remember that slavery was ended* only relatively recently, segregation was a thing during the lifetimes of many people and this mindset of black people not being even human is still prevalent…
The word is meant to be always used in hostility and it’s still being used like that today. That’s why you want to steer clear of it.
I think a lot of the conflict around the word is centered on the fact that many black people use it (obviously without the hard r) in casual reference to other people, often even people that aren’t black. It’s essentially become equivalent to “dude” or “brother”. So some people don’t see how it’s wrong to use it in that context even if you aren’t black.
I’m not saying I agree, mind you. I’m just making an observation
There’s an equivalent for homosexuals
In my opinion, the intellectually disabled too. Unfortunately, many people make all kinds of excuses why that word, which has been used to bully the disabled for decades, is an acceptable one.
The OJ Simpson trial. No joke.
Wasn’t really all that long ago when non-black people very commonly used that word in public and probably still so in certain communities. Having said that, obese is a medical term and I don’t think it compares in anyway to the n-word.
Absolutely. I moved from urban Southeastern Wisconsin to the upper peninsula of Michigan in a rural area. I love visiting that spot, and I got a job offer five years ago while on vacation. I snatched the opportunity to move to my favorite place and uprooted my life in under two months. I didn’t last two years before coming back.
The amount of times I got into verbal altercations with strangers and acquaintances over their use of racial slurs, most often the N-word, made me become a homebody. I was a bartender, though, so you can’t exactly hide.
That’s not to say I haven’t heard it in public all throughout Wisconsin. The difference was how comfortable people felt using these words and sharing openly racist views and stories like they were bragging about it. It felt like an area where people breathed a sigh of relief and took their hoods off. I couldn’t stomach staying in a place where certain friends of mine couldn’t comfortably visit.
Still, all that is nothing compared to what I saw and heard living in Tennessee. It’s sad and frightening how many communities are like this.
it changed with the OJ trial
Definitely did not. I grew up in West Virginia and idiot rednecks used it before and after the OJ trial. Decent people did not before or after.
I mean like way before they did, but they weren’t decent then.
i thought it was meaning in media, like the news and other stuff. not everyday life
Wait, for real? Sauce?
She, as an obese person herself, proposed that “obese” is equivalent to the n-word. She didn’t censor her word the same way a black person doesn’t have to censor the n-word. That’s not a contradiction. It would be, if she wasn’t obese.
Not that I care about the actual point, just wanted to talk about the logic. My bad, if my assumption that she is obese, is wrong.
Obese is a medical term though and Dr … PhD should know that.
Not necessarily, a PhD isn’t a medical degree
Ok I looked her up, I had to know.
She’s a “fat-affirming” dietitian and her PhD is in “body positive medicine”
Her name is a blatant pun.
I don’t think I’m reaching when I say not only is the account fake, this person doesn’t exist, but that it was made to make fun of fat people.
Sooo you’re saying it’s understandable for someone with a PhD to not have basic common knowledge?
I mean, sure. As someone who recently went back to school and is around a bunch of PhD and PhD students, they’re really, really smart… about their specific area of study. But more than some of them are fucking stupid when it comes to other, normal things
I’ve got one, and there are many many thing I’m an idiot on
Oh yeah. A PhD means you hyperspecialized for years. You get one by being the expert and advancing your field in, usually, one tiny tiny area. For anything that isn’t that tiny area? Likely to be a stupid as anyone.
Also, I don’t agree with the OP and think it’s fucking dumb, but let’s not forget that “retard” used to be a medical term as well
That’s the way these things have always gone and probably always will. Retarded, imbecile, idiot, these were all effectively clinical terms (or whatever best approximated clinical practice in their eras) - they didn’t hold an insulting intention initially. People co-opted the terms to make fun of each other, as we do, and so professionals had to shift the clinical vocabulary so they weren’t using commonly hurled insults when discussing patients. And that means new words people can use to make fun of each other, yay! Which of course they did, necessitating another rotation. Pretty hilarious if you ask me.
The most recent example in my own life - my wife is in her mid 30s, and is pregnant - some medical professionals call this a “geriatric pregnancy”! But because some folks are getting offended by that term, they’re starting to use “advanced maternal age pregnancy”. Bit of a mouthful, I think they’ll get to keep that one.
Anyway. Carlin had a great bit on this phenomena, he’s the one who pointed it out to me.
I’ve heard this called the “euphemism treadmill”
I like it, very succinct way to get the point across.
As usual, George Carlin should be the go-to for matters of language
I see that someone wrote their thesis on it.
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Why does that upset/startle you? Pregnancy at age 35+ is associated with more risks than pregnancy in the 20s.
It is, though—women having children later in life are at higher risk for complications for both themselves and the baby. It also has a higher risk of birth defects.
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As was “negro” - and that’s kinda the point; just because a word is “official” doesn’t make it not discriminatory, just that the discrimination was backed by the power of institutions.
I don’t 100% buy the argument that the two words are equivalent, but I can see how “oh you can’t come here you are obese” could feel similarly arbitrary as “oh you can’t come here you are black”
That comparison is so bad that I’m not sure you are making it in good faith. Being mentally handicapped or belonging to a minority is not a choice, being obese is.
If you make the conscious choice to be obese you really can’t complain about the consequences the same way the former can. And you especially can’t complain about people referring to you by the medically correct term
Hello yes my name is Dr. PhD I have many college and come to bringun you the health. stat.
It’s quite literally the medical term… i… I am an obese man, I am an obese man mostly of my own doing, their might be some psychological or socioeconomic reasons, but it’s mostly the fact that food is good, exercise sucks, and impulse control. I wasn’t born this way, I wasn’t treated as nonhuman for something beyond my control, and obese is not used for the sole purpose of being derogatory.
Those two words are very, very different. Even if you are obese because of a thyroid, or injury, or whatever, a doctor can, and will call you obese in your medical reports. And if you can’t handle that because you can’t handle that slight uncomfortability, no wonder you are still obese.
I’ve been bedbound for five years. I have managed to stay a healthy weight by harassing my mother every time she buys unhealthy food. I ain’t got that kind of self-control!
Apparently you do?
Self control is a lot easier to exercise when you remove the immediacy. If a bag of chips are next to you not eating them can be really hard.
Not buying them in the first place? Usually much easier.
Yeah, it’s a sterile medical term that unfortunately takes on other meanings that people dislike. For example, I had a friend who went off the deep end and started claiming that obesity was made up by doctors and began trying to convince me to think likewise. It was kind of eerie to see this otherwise rational person fall for this type of denial over something that made them uncomfortable.
It doesn’t help that some doctors were shitty to him about his weight (a fair and very real complaint) so he insisted it was a systematic problem within the medical establishment to oppress. I don’t doubt it happens but it’s a bit extreme to think it’s solely used to that end and that it’s not a handy label for managing weight and conducting research.
I do agree that if you are obese and have unrelated medical issues the doctors will very much say “you need to lose weight”, and call it done. And that is x10 if you are a woman, for some reason. Yeah, these problems may not be so bad if I was not obese, and they may not have existed is I wasn’t (bulging disks my back, in my case etc.), but the truth is, I am fat, I still need my problems fixed, go ahead and do the surgery to trim the disk that is pinching my nerves to fix my back because otherwise I can’t move and I will just get fatter and my back will just get worse. Perpetually.
It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.
It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.
(Please take the following as pondering general discussions of obesity between doctors/patients and not specifically directed at you.)
This was a really thought-provoking summary for me, your belief that doctors are telling people to lose weight out of “laziness.” If a suggestion like this is lazy, are patients who don’t listen to their doctor somehow not lazy?
The idea that doctors make weight a scapegoat seems prevalent in American healthcare (probably because we’re generally obese). It feels a lot like projection of one’s “laziness” (mentally it’s much more complex than that) onto a doctor, even though that doctor has probably seen hundreds of cases with the same predictable outcomes and knows that appropriate weight management would head off more serious treatment.
Frankly, I think doctors are anything but lazy when they are “forced” to order and perform risky and invasive treatments on a patient who refused to meet them halfway before the treatment became necessary in the first place. I get it, nobody likes being told what to do, especially when it seems (and literally is) so personal. But doctors also don’t like to be told what to do (“fix me!”) when a patient deigns even the gentlest suggestion to take some control of their issues at hand.
I am now 30lbs below my highest weight. The severity of my issues (joint pain, lethargy, depression, etc.) has palpably lessened losing that 30lbs very inconsistently over the last four years. If anything, I think doctors need to better read the psychological resistance many people have with weight loss and then illustrate to, rather than tell, patients how to attain weight loss in ways that don’t seem restrictive.
That 30lbs of mine, could I have done that in 30 weeks or fewer? Sure, but I didn’t want to feel perpetually hungry. In fact, I never even set a goal weight. Instead of thinking “Idgaf about my weight” or “I must lose 20lbs by Christmas!!” I just made the tiniest changes, the biggest one being taking advantage of times I wasn’t hungry by (gasp) not eating.
… Shit, I guess lazy weight loss works, too!
I guess I work in the medical field and I know a lot of doctors are overwhelmed and are really only looking for the quickest way to get you back out the door. They aren’t “lazy” … I guess, just overworked. But also lazy. I live in a rural town, good doctors don’t come here.
I mean, they really are, it also happened to me, I’m not that big, I weight 115kg, almost fell down a hole on the sidewalk but my foot twisted high and I was able to keep my balance.
Now my foot was hurting real bad for days, went to a doctor and he said that I should lose weight to fix it, even though I told him what happened, so I just went to another one that actually gave me a solution via physiotherapy and now I’m good.
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Your medical status is not a racial slur.
But neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin. It becomes a slur based on how and when it’s used.
I agree with feeling ‘obese’ is a neutral, objective term for the physical/medical fact. But then, coming from a non-Anerican context, I used to have no sense of the N word being so offensive, any more than any other random insulting (or even affectionate!) term.
In the wrong context, ‘obese’ can certainly be hurtful and inappropriate. I can imagine, for some people, it’s a trigger word of years of pain and mockery.
Look I’m a fat American and here at least nobody I’ve ever heard has used “obese” as a slur. You hear actual insults, “fatass” comes immediately to mind but there’s plenty of others; I’ve heard plenty of them personally. The OP in the pic is a fucking doctor according to her obscured user name and needs to be far more responsible. Obesity is party of a medical status - being called a land whale is an insult.
Further, the N-word has centuries of racist cultural weight behind it. The word “obese” is far more recent and isn’t used as part of the systematic oppression of an entire ethnic to group - one that makes up an enormous amount of American population.
This isn’t even apples and oranges. This is cantaloupes and blueberries. Not watermelons though, that has racist baggage too.
She’s off her rocker to compare the two, but I do want to say people are policing medical terms as being offense, so maybe she was trying to express (very poorly) that obese should be considered offensive like using the terms retarded, idiot, or what not that started as a medical diagnosis/meaning, and now can be viewed as hurtful. I don’t agree with it because the reasonsaying the term retard is insulting is because the person you are calling it isn’t actually fitting the medical diagnosis, and therefore using a medical term to put other people down. (Doubt it is used by doctors today, they likely have found different ways of expressing a person’s mental growth in terms of comparing to average growth, growth within science and all that). So if we were calling people who were not obese obese to put them down, maybe it would start to make sense, but it hasn’t occured around me much. That said, I have seen jokes made around belimic people calling themself a fat ass for eating say a slice of pizza, but even most movies have moved away from joking about such anymore.
But neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin.
Niger is Latin… Nigger is not.
While I’m generally not sensitive to these things, claiming something that’s factually not true as a defense of the word is just not okay. Use the word if you really want to use it. If you use it in any other way other than academically (such as discussing the word in of itself)… don’t surprise pikachu when people shun you for it.
Nigger is a diminutive (or at least derivative) of negro, is it not?
Not according to the etymology. https://www.etymonline.com/word/nigger
1786, earlier neger (1568, Scottish and northern England dialect), negar, negur, from French nègre, from Spanish negro (see Negro).
All of these languages are latin-based languages… So there must be a latin root. If you dig further you find
from Latin nigrum (nominative niger) “black, dark, sable, dusky” (applied to the night sky, a storm, the complexion), figuratively “gloomy, unlucky, bad, wicked,”
So yes negro exists in the middle but not as the source necessarily… It would have evolved (if I read the etymology correctly) as Nigrum -> Niger -> Negro/neger/negar/negur -> Nigger.
Good thing the N word is being censored here, otherwise we might actually learn something.
I fucking hate indiscriminate censorship. In some context the word is important in order to learn and educate
It’s your own .world instance that’s doing the censorship.
Oh that’s good to know and also fucked up, I thought they stopped that censoring bullshit. Thank you for letting me know.
How would I go about to see this post outsife ot my .world? I can’t even click the link because it removes it from the URL, this is so fucking stupid.
Yeah… While admittedly discussions like this one are far outweighed by the negative uses of the term; when discussion is happening where clarity is more relevant than appeasing the euphemism treadmill censorship sucks.
https://lemmy.saik0.com/comment/3423797 should get you to the original version. My instance doesn’t censor.
Negro. Jeez, you really out here saying those words huh?
Jeez, you’re really out here word policing when it’s clear we’re simply talking about the word… You know… not actually attributing it.
You act like just saying “Negro” with no context is any better.
Just like your namesake, you’ve added nothing to the discussion except a bit of toxicity.
I never used or seen used ‘obese’ as a slur.
Fatty, yes. Absolutely, all the time. Obese, no.
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
Now that’s a bad take.
We shouldn’t mock people for things they struggle with, even if we think they could just stop.
Struggling with actual problems, sure.
Struggling with being unable to stop shoving burgers in your mouth is not an actual problem.
And saying things like that is exactly why obese people have so much trouble having the confidence to start losing weight. And no, it is not as easy as you are suggesting. We live in an era of processed foods and food deserts where people are so overworked and often with such long commutes that they don’t have the energy or the time to cook a healthy meal when they get home.
Telling those people to stop shoving burgers in their mouth doesn’t help anything.
Also, and I can’t believe this is the second time I’ve had to say this to someone today- have you ever been insulted into making a lifestyle change? I sure haven’t.
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Shut up.
Despite popular believe, people doesn’t and can’t suddenly turn black as they pleased, while body weight is something you can at least control through dedication.
Until next time ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Also known as the “obesity is a personal moral failing” hypothesis.
I think there’s a danger in oversimplifying.
On the one end, some people do have a hard time or maybe even actually impossible time to fight their obesity.
On the other end, a lot of people are dismissive of trying to lose weight and hide behind “body positivity” and “obese people can’t help it” when they could really get a lot of results if they actually took it seriously. A relative of mine has been obese for decades, even as the diabetes came on the general take away they had was “apply medicine, keep living how I like”. Then when their liver started failing due to the fat and got the prognosis that they were probably going to die in a matter of months, they found the motivation to lose 40 pounds, in the goal of extending their life a little. Now they have what is, by all appearances, a healthy liver again. They also have much better mobility, reduced joint pain, blood sugar that doesn’t need medication anymore. Though they are still stuck with a lot of the damage already done, losing weight has been a great boon to their life, and something they always had dismissed as being something other people could do but they were just stuck that way.
Keyword: some. The number of people that actually have a dysfuncional thyroid gland is extremely low to the percentage of obesity in a population, like your example, the majority needs a push since it’s more of a mental thing, even therapy can help it.
Well we’ve had fat hate for much much longer and most attitude about fat by most people is still hate, especially by fat people themselves and that has never helped decreasing obesity.
In your example, it took clear evidence of imminent death to find the motivation to lose the weight.
I would posit that the public hate and self hate about being fat is not helping. And whenever I hear complaints about body posivity around fatness, what I think I’m hearing is the fat hate enforcers being upset at being denied. I imagine they quite like being able to hate freely and feel superior “for a good cause”.
I suspect that fat hate has never helped anyone, and probably made things worse.
I think framework of being is a personal moral failing, just doesn’t work and perpetuates the problem. Like many other “forever problems” like drug use and homelessness.
I think it’s safe to assume that problem that persist through entire lifetimes simply are bno ever going to spontaneously resolve themselves through sheer will power, especially not today where it is being sapped away by commercial interests.
We don’t have to abolish the word ‘Obese’ to avoid ‘hateful’. This started with someone being offended at the mere word ‘Obese’ and elevating it to a racial slur, then a comment saying a lot (likely the vast majority) of obese people can improve their situation.
We shouldn’t be mocking and laughing at someone because they are fat, or harping endlessly on it, but it’s sufficiently bad that when my doctor saw me being obese, he never directly said anything, just said things like “make sure to eat plenty of vegetables” and “being active really helps people be fit”. When Rebel Wilson decided to lose weight, people acted like she somehow betrayed obese people, that she abandoned her role as a model of body positivity.
The pendulum has swung too far to the point where people get too offended at the plain statement of being obese means health issues.
The pendulum hasn’t even stopped swinging toward the “more fat hate camp”. What you perceive as"too far in the anti hate direction" is merely the begin of slowing down in the more hate direction.
This entire discussion is a ad absurdum attack by the “more hate” camp to counter this slowing down. It is the endlessly repeated clip of the angry blue hair girl of the antisjw craze.
And it’s going to take way way more than that to smoke out the hate mongers out of their last refuge.
On the one end, some people do have a hard time or maybe even actually impossible time to fight their obesity.
Correct, so unless you know for a fact you’re not talking to one of these people it’s probably best to keep your mouth shut.
Yep, the same way people can take full control of their depression, alcoholism or other psycological issues. It’s all about just rolling up those sleeves and deciding not to have the issues. So we can safely assume that all heavier people are a result of them actively choosing to become heavy, so we should always treat them as such.
At the end of the day, alcoholism, depression, and obesity, they are unhealthy states of being.
They are not something people choose, and while there are treatments, it’s not something everyone can control.
That doesn’t mean we should simply accept this state of being. People living with depression deserve better, people living with alcoholism deserve better than for us to say “it’s out of their control, they can’t help it, so we shouldn’t judge, let them be” when what they need is better support and better treatment options.
Likewise, obese people deserve better than “eat less, move more, fatty!” but they also deserve more than “all bodies are beautiful, just let us be”
I say this as someone who was a fat kid, and a fat teen, and a fat adult. I had a BMI of 50 for a most of my life. In my mid 30s, I got it down to 28, and still going.
So I say all of this is as someone else who was fat, obese, and morbidly obese. Obesity should be viewed the same way we view depression and anxiety, though depression and anxiety also need some better PR.
Being obese may not not always be a choice, but the the ultimate end goal of how we view obesity as a state of being is to find ways we can all manage our weight. Because obesity is not healthy, for those who can’t easily control their weight, life sucks, they are patients in need of treatment, not morally failing people, but also not “perfect plus sized activists who are healthy at every size”
Because while bodies and sizes vary and we can do healthy things at every size. Obesity is inherently unhealthy. Obviously being bullied won’t solve anything, but neither will society politely ignoring how hard it is to live a full life while suffering from obesity.
Being black isn’t an inherent health issue. It genuinely is just a different state of being. 99% of problems unique to black people are social issues, not medical issues… So the comparison between obesity and substance abuse issues is more helpful than trying to compare being obese to being BIPOC.
Congrats on your weight loss journey! May I ask if there was a specific thing that motivated you to start and keep going? And how did you turn your mindset around?
For me it was understanding the idea of equilibrium. The way I use it is to mean the state of something given enough time that highs and lows have evened out.
A practical example is with common diet mentality of dieting until reaching a goal, and then stopping the diet. The diet is a peak, not dieting is a valley, over time youll end up back at the same weight or more. Basically the problem is that modern diets give people high expectations when studies show the most likely scenario is that the weight is lost, and gained back plus some.
So what will work. If we think of this long term equilibrium, the dieting doesnt work because they aren’t permanent changes. So if we agree the only way to stay healthy long term is to make permanent changes, we can agree that making cumulative small permanent changes that affect diet will ultimately result in lost weight.
Sugar is the easiest to target IMO. Dairy, meat, and fish also are good things to target too as they cause other health problems besides weight gain. Switching to mainly water is another thing. Even taking on a new hobby or exercising a slight bit more will result in a net loss as less time is able to be spent on eating and more energy is spent physically.
Plant based whole food diets usually result in weight loss because they are less calorie dense, so you will feel full with a fraction of the calories in your stomach. Alternatively you can lose weight with calorie dense foods, but you will likely have to deal with hunger more.
Once I started thinking more like this, it was easier to come up with my own changes rather than shopping around diets with absurd restrictions. You know yourself best, make small changes and keep trending in a good direction, and if you make a “mistake” do your best to forget about it and immediately get back to it.
Not him, but I found my will to lose weight when a close family member was told their liver was failing and they had a few months to live, due to cirrhosis from their obesity. I knew I was on a similar trajectory and my bloodwork showed a hit to my liver function.
Good news is that my relative also found the will to get healthy and their liver improved more than the doctors thought could happen and so we both are doing much better. I’m even under 25 BMI now after losing 40 lbs. Also amazing to be able to move around like I used to as a teenager again.
As to how, not very helpful but just using that fear to drive willpower to just suck it up and eat less and exercise even when I really want to be doing something else. It means to some extent just living with usually being a little hungry and almost never filling full for me. Changed the food for less calorie dense stuff and avoiding refined sugars of course, but still have to reduce food intake.
Are you claiming that depression, alcoholism, and other psychological issue cannot be treated? Are you saying that to someone who went through severe depression period twice in his life and on his path to recovery for the second period only recently? Or are you saying people will become severely obese even when eating the same healthy amount of healthy food as other non-obese people?
Just because something is hard doesn’t mean your out of control. And I know hard - nothing comes easy…
There are a variety of reasons, and of course there exists people who are in full control of their weight, but decide to not do anything about it. What I’m hinting at is that there are also a lot of people who suffer with deeper psycological issues. We don’t really tease depressed people with nick names and expect them to just snap out of it at any time. Hence I feel like we should generally treat heavier people with respect instead of assuming that it’s their active choice.
I don’t really think there is anyone with full control of their weight.
I wouldn’t call obese a nickname - fat would be the equivelent of the n-word
You can’t be 300-400 lbs and not call it an active choice…
I mean medical intervention is a common way to try mitigate mental health issues. For many people it can never truly go away, but the effects can be lessened. Similarly, there are avenues to help with obesity, whether it be the psychological or physiological aspect.
Didn’t MJ turn into a white lady though?
MJ turning white is because of Vitiligo, he use makeup to cover up the skin condition.
Also he’s black by birth, not a choice he made either.
And even on his level, he had to deal with systemic racism. It took two years for MTV to start broadcasting videos with black people in them, including videos already made by Michael Jackson (although it’s not true that Billie Jean was the first video by a black artist on MTV. That honor went a couple of weeks earlier to Pass the Dutchie by Musical Youth).
Sure, but I see it (also?) as a societal failure.
while body weight is something you can at least control through dedication.
Generally not.
There are quite a lot of disorders affecting eating habits, and there are quite a lot of conditions that mean that even on something like a keto diet you’ll get obese (or extremely thin).
So no, if you are not obese, you most likely are not more “dedicated” than some person you know who is. You are just healthier. Most likely since birth, and there’s nothing they’ve done wrong.
Obviously it’s still bad to be obese.
Try staying fat while eating nothing.
Try staying thin while eating a whole cow each day and injecting fat into your veins.
If both are impossible, then you can control your weight.
What your will allows you is too defined by health.
Just wanted to give some input as someone who dealt with lifelong obesity. As a fat person, some people just don’t like to face the music or give themselves an honest look in the mirror. They don’t want to call a spade a spade. Changing around words to describe things in more complex and softer language doesn’t change the situation any, it just helps you psychologically cope.
The same with playing the blame game on outside factors like genetics and disability. Blaming everything you can but yourself and your own choices and failures and unaddressed mental insecurities. Thats not a fat person thing though, thats a general human being thing I tend to see in most groups of people one way or another. Its easier to convince yourself that you never had a choice, than it is to acknowledge the bad personal choices that lead to the consequences of your failures.
When you have fat rolls, and stretch marks litter your stomach, and you look more like a slug than a human being, and you need help wiping your own ass or a bigger toilet to support the weight, when you have to go shopping at specialty close stores (before amazon) just to find a size that fits, and you have no self control or desire to change your habits to stop the self destructive spiral as your stomach swells like a balloon, thats obesity. Regardless of arguments on BMI or CICO or genetics or whatever else, you’ve got a serious problem that needs addressing or it will destroy you slowly but surely.
“At least I’ll die happy!” my type 2 diabetic father would always gleefully tell me as he shoved another tasty cake in his mouth before jabbing himself with an insulin pen. I don’t think the junk food ever did make him happy though. He had mental health issues he never worked through in life. Instead, he relied on the temporary relief of junk food for pleasure, eventually having his addiction dominate and guide his existence.
As for me? I’ve gone through cycles of gaining and loosing 100 pounds. Right now im on a downward trend, lost 40 pounds this year. Hope to loose another 40 by this time next year. I gain the pounds during cycles of extreme depression, and loose them during cycles of great determination and self-agency. Our physical well-being is tied to our emotional and spiritual well-being. Self destructive cycles are much easier to enter when you feel nihilistic and out of control of your own life.
How do I loose weight? I don’t eat. CICO, Simple as. I eat one meal a day, if that. Maybe snack on some dried preserved nuts and fruits once or twice.I drink water and lemon juice. I am a 6’1 man the calorie calculators tell me I should have around 2000 calories daily and cut down by 500 to loose a pound every once in awhile. Fuck that, I have maybe 500-1000 calories daily.
Im a little hungry a lot of the time, but I see the results of my conviction when I step on the scale expecting it to raise 5 lbs and seeing it drop 10 lbs. I look at myself in the mirror, examining my fading stretch marks and receding folds, I examine my skin tightening around the muscles and notice my face not quite as round as it once was. Thats the reward physical evidence of improvement. That my efforts aren’t for nothing. It helps to remind myself of what im doing it for, and the price ive already had to pay for my insecurities and failures to control myself.
The physical act of loosing weight is hard and requires self-control over a very long time often multiple years. The mental act of introspection and reflecting on what lead to your obesity often requires analyzing the roots of your negative aspects while confronting those past traumas. That requires a mental strength and intelligence many people lack. At the end of the day, its easier and feels nicer to twist words and point fingers than fix your own problems.
Wow thank you for sharing your personal experience and thoughts. I think you hit the nail on the head. To add to that, I have noticed with a family member of mine (who has been trying to loose weight for 20 years, unsuccessfully) that mental wellbeing = willpower. If something get you down, the weight usually goes up. It’s hugely complected of course. My heart goes out to all.
Where do you set the weight loose
I forget what comedian said it, but if you’re discussing two words and you cannot even say anything except the first letter of one of the words, that’s the worse word.
John Mulaney
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It’s a clinical term, and being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in.
Nobody picks their race. You cannot change your race.
What I’m saying is, no, those terms are not remotely the same.
Retard was a clinical term as well, so was mongoloid idiot and imbecile.
I don’t agree with the fatty in the post at all, just saying.
Retard isn’t the same as the n word either.
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I’m a little disappointed that it was a medical term at all. It’s a very functional word, like in flame retardant, or an engine retarder.
I think it would have been much more applicable to methods of thinking and epistemology, like thought stopping techniques and special pleading, as these also severly restrict one’s critical thought yet can be overcome socially. There’s no sense having a social label for a medical condition, so don’t use such a punchy easy to use word for it if it’s not a choice.
Neither of those things are something you can choose to be. Similar to race, its something you’re generally born with. (Or a tragic accident could cause brain issues as well)
They are not the same as obesity. Some people don’t have a choice, and it can be genetics, but the VAST majority it is a life style “choice”.
being obese is something that 90%+ of the time, you have a choice in
A big part of an individual’s build is genetic. Saying you “choose to be obese” is akin to saying you “choose to be tan”. Truer for some people than others, and often more a question of degree than state. But telling a Samoan to just stop being big is about as practical as insisting a Swede needs to stop being so fucking tall.
Nobody picks their race.
Race is a social construct. You’ve got significantly more control over your perceived race than your perceived weight, as even adjustments to your outfit and accent can cause people to place you in radically different ethnic groups.
My sicilian mother was regularly mistaken as hispanic, simply because she was shorter, slightly tanner, knew more spanish than her Mayo-American neighbors. I’ve got a Philippian friend who regularly code-switches between East Asian, Polynesian, and White depending on who is around. And even generic whiteness becomes extremely relative when you’re in Europe. Being from anywhere east of Germany might as well make you a filthy mudblood (nevermind the beef between English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian folks). A bit of accent work and a certain haircut can put you on the other side of the continent.
Diet determines someone’s body weight. If you don’t eat, you don’t gain. Once you gain it’s incredibly hard to lose. Once you lose it’s incredibly easy to gain.
I have lost 21 pounds in 2 months from calorie counting. I gained 60 pounds in 3 years by ordering a ton of delivery. I yoyo’d many times in the past 2 years trying to lose the weight using various programs before finding a routine that works for me. All weight gain was due to me making choices that increased calorie intake. No one forced me to eat anything, I did it to myself.
Genetic factors may make weight loss more difficult but it is never impossible. There is no possible way that if you do not eat you will gain weight. Unless you have a handful of extremely rare conditions it’s going to be the things you choose to eat and how much of them you eat that determine weight gain, alongside exercise. Some people swear that they do everything right with calorie counting but still gain weight but the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.
Mental health challenges make it hard to stick with a routine diet for some but it’s still technically possible to lose weight even if your brain won’t let you stop eating. If someone gave you an appropriate balanced diet and there were no other possible source of calories for you, you’re gonna lose weight. You might go crazy because you can’t have dressing on your salad and perhaps even wish you were dead instead of eating less, but you would lose weight.
Beyond weight
In terms of height, diet can influence height somewhat (especially in terms of deficits causing stunted growth) but your maximum height is almost entirely due to genetics. You get very little choice in that. You can’t choose to drink more milk and gain a foot of height. Once your body stops producing the right growth hormone you just stop getting taller.
In terms of skin color, there’s very little you can do about that beyond genetics. You can paint your body with fake tan or sit in the sun to get darker or hide indoors out of sunlight to be “lighter” than if you went outdoors but there’s no way to will your body to stop producing melanin.
In terms of “cultural behaviors” that you seem to call race based on how you describe it, you can choose to behave like someone from any walk of life if you learn how to do so. You can learn other languages, social norms, customs and beliefs and act on them. You are not born any more “white”, “italian”, “irish”, “kenyan” or “thai” culturally than anybody else. You learn the local culture from your experiences. Switching between the cultures has nothing to do with genetics. We’re just most likely to be born into cultural groups that have the same genetics as us, the exceptions tend to be when you’re adopted or your parents happen to already be a different culture than their genetic heritage’s or your parents have different cultures.
I can’t believe I had to write any of this out. I’ll probably get downvoted because no one wants to hear the absolute truth of whatever thing they can’t do that they want to blame something else to feel better for their lack of discipline, but we can choose to behave however we really want to. I don’t give a shit how fat or skinny someone is, I care about the content of their character, their beliefs and their actions. I’m not going to point this shit out in polite company because it’s not my business and I believe everyone should be able to choose to do to their bodies and their lives however they wish. Doesn’t change the facts though.
Diet determines someone’s body weight.
Dietary needs vary by individual need. You need more calories to feed an adult than a child. You need more calories to feed a professional athlete than an office schlub. And that’s before you get into food availability by region or the opportunity cost of accessing nutritious foods in a given neighborhood radius.
I can’t believe I had to write any of this out.
You’re overly simplistic and reductive, just like every other high minded bigot.
I love how you glossed over what I said to pick up a strawman argument which is aligned with what I said. e.g. everyone’s needs are different. My exact quote from the post you replied to:
the reality is that if the average XXX pound person needs 1800 calories to maintain and you eat 1600 and still gain, perhaps your unique body really needs 1400 or 1200 to lose. Or maybe you’re blessed with a great metabolism and 2500 calories will be burnt for you so you can eat up to that without any issues.
You can believe whatever you want but assuming i’m bigoted means you probably didn’t read everything I wrote. It’s a really, really long post for social media. The irony is your complaints of it being reductive though. If you want scientific papers perhaps you should be looking at nature instead.
You can believe whatever you want
This isn’t a question of belief but of established nutritional practice. “Just eat fewer calories” isn’t a panacea, because people don’t respond in the same way to calorie deficits. Composition of diet, opportunity for exercise, age, physical health… you almost seem to hit on it when you talk about metabolism, but then you skitter right past when you conclude “Just eat more/less”.
It’s a rudimentary understanding of how people gain and lose weight, and it inevitably leads people towards crash diets and weight loss drugs that ruin your body in pursuit of a certain popular aesthetic.
Fun Fact:
A northern German youth-slang word for “Bro” is “Digga”, which is a friendly way to say “Fatty”, from “Dicker - dick” (lit.: Fatty, fat/thick), but with the implication of being very dear friends, “dicke Freunde” (lit.: thick friends) just has the meaning “close friends” with no implication of being fat and “dick miteinander sein” (lit.: being thick together) is also an expression of closeness, not of weight.
Interestingly, Digga is being used in exactly the same way as black people in the US use the soft n-word with each other. “Mein Digga!” (lit: my thicky) is 1:1 analogous to “My n-word!”. It’s common for tourists to do a double take when they hear some very German and very white youths yell at one another “Ey Digga!” and many German rappers definitely use it as a stand in for the soft n-word, but It’s use and etymology is rooted in the old dock workers culture of Hamburg and has absolutely nothing to do with the n-word.
I’m from the USA, and when I first heard “digga,” I was certainly confused! It seems the youth say it even more than the generation that invented the phrase now.
Anyway, English speakers have an old phrase that is similar and might help some understand the usage of the word “thick” here. The phrase is “thick as thieves” - meaning thieves stick together.
all medical terms get turned into hateful insults–moron, idiot, imbecile, r*tarded which is approaching but will never achieve n-word status-- all used to be actual medical diagnoses. “obese” will go the same route and be replaced by something else, which will also eventually become derogatory and be replaced
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
So much so that there’s a song about it!
STEP ONE, INSTEAD OF ASS, SAY BUNS
LIKE ‘KISS MY BUNS’ OR ‘YOU’RE A BUNS-HOLE’
Buns-hole gets me every time
Singing Family Reunion at their concert is a memory I will never let go
And now apparently autism. Why us? Autism doesn’t cause you to be useless or stupid, most of us aren’t recognised in public and a high percentage isn’t even diagnosed, there is no reason to shit on us.
The reason is bigotry. If you really want to get into it, a big reason for the stigma against autism is the damage done by Autism Speaks.
what did autism speaks do, or still doing?
They’re behind just about every negative stigma surrounding autism. Mainly that it’s a debilitating disease that ruins the lives of everyone around them and needs to be cured, as well as that autism is caused by vaccines.
We’re taking it back at !autismplace@lemmy.autism.place
I wonder if those prior medical terms had precise definitions. Obese is BMI >= 30 and morbidly obese is >= 40. BMI itself has some issues but works ok as a general assessment for most people.
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Comparing a health condition to ethnicity is peak whiteness.
Nevermind the fact that melanin is a very practical and healthy trait.
Her tongue also moves, omg
If you hadn’t said anything I’d still be thinking this was a still image. Thanks for ruining my day
Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese. It’s vile to discriminate against someone for their height, race, sexual orientation, and other factors because they have no control or choice over those things. But if someone makes a bad choice that negatively affects their own health and others around them, it’s acceptable to tell that person it’s unsafe. Shaming them is ineffective, but just pretending being obese is normal and healthy isn’t ok either. These folks need help.
Don’t even start with me on thyroid disorders, those are a small fraction of people who are obese and even they do not defy basic laws of thermodynamics. Eat less than you burn, it’s basic math. You may not be able to control the disorder but you are in control of how you respond to it.
Obese people acting like they can’t control it is precisely why they’re obese.
Body Mass Index doesn’t do a good job of scaling by height. Its much easier to qualify as “obese” when you’re 6’ tall, simply because your frame is so much larger. And quite a few people really are just larger. Samoans are large folks, which is why they produce so many football linemen. South Americans tend to be a lot smaller and leaner by their nature.
You can change your diet to cut out the excess sugars and limit your carbs, but a person whose body demands 5000 calories a day is simply not going to be the same size as someone who can get by perfectly fine on less than 1500.
I hope you also saying it to smokers, drinkers, etc.!
Maybe bring back the “slow suicide” and “brain damage” jokes for them, or at least call them “self harm”, that will be totally not counterproductive or anything!
It might be acceptable but is it effective? Thyroid disorders are not common, but food addiction is extremely common. The same way you couldn’t understand what drug or alcohol dependency feels like if you’ve never felt like that before, you couldn’t understand what food addiction is like if you don’t have that experience with food.
It’s clear that there is a spectrum of how people respond to food, from “always hungry and literally never not wanting to eat” to “forgets to eat for days and barely notices until they pass out”. I personally know people on both ends of that spectrum and every place in between.
So I think your response is a little insensitive, or at least lacks empathy. To boil it down to the classic “stop stuffing your face” or “basic math” assumes your level of willpower required to not overeat is applicable to all people and it can’t possibly be different or harder than it is for you, so the only explanation is that everyone else must have less willpower than you.
Either that, or they feel like they are starving all the time and are literally addicted to food. Most science shows that it’s that one, but feel free to believe whatever you wish.
I went from a perfect healthy BMI to gaining 50lbs over the course of a year (lockdown wasn’t great for my mental health). I’m obese now, and I need to stop stuffing my face. There’s explanations for every behavior, especially addiction, but there’s no “cause” or solution for something like skin color or other genetic features.
Yeah just to be clear, I never said there was. Obesity is not race, I am in no way trying to defend the tweet itself. Although I would say that I think with near 100% certainty that how you respond to food and how addicted to it you can be is absolutely something in your genes. People have wildly different reactions to things like stress or depression, some don’t eat at all and can get very sick and waste away, others get ravenous.
So I wouldn’t be so quick to put everyone in the same bucket, even if the end result is the same that they need to consume a healthy amount of calories. That may be much harder for them, in both directions.
I understand the level of willpower is different, I have an eating disorder myself. But the fact remains it is something that can be willed. Changing myself to be a different race or sexual orientation isn’t a willpower issue, it’s simply impossible. Hence why the comparison in this tweet is ridiculous.
Agreed, I’m not defending the tweet or saying it’s the same as things you literally cannot change. It’s stupid. I just take issue with your characterization of it just being math, feels oversimplified to me.
Weight is a technical problem. Eat less than you need and you lose weight. Eat more than you need and you gain weight. Simple.
Willpower to follow through with the technical steps to lose weight is a mental health issue. That is way more nuanced, complicated and ultimately why so many people can’t lose weight. I think you consider them holistically, whereas those who disagree with you keep those concepts separate. There is a logical argument for both and neither argument is wrong.
Makes sense, enjoy your day
Oh my god. Get off the cross, we need the wood. Also you’re causing stress fractures.
Bigga please, I got my mind on much bigger things to say the least
My latest beat just sound like they was released by David East
