Active Low-Carber Forums
Atkins diet and low carb discussion provided free for information only, not as medical advice.
Home Plans Tips Recipes Tools Stories Studies Products
Active Low-Carber Forums
A sugar-free zone


Welcome to the Active Low-Carber Forums.
Support for Atkins diet, Protein Power, Neanderthin (Paleo Diet), CAD/CALP, Dr. Bernstein Diabetes Solution and any other healthy low-carb diet or plan, all are welcome in our lowcarb community. Forget starvation and fad diets -- join the healthy eating crowd! You may register by clicking here, it's free!

Go Back   Active Low-Carber Forums > Main Low-Carb Diets Forums & Support > Low-Carb Studies & Research / Media Watch > Low-Carb War Zone
User Name
Password
FAQ Members Calendar Mark Forums Read Search Gallery My P.L.A.N. Survey


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   ^
Old Sun, May-10-20, 06:12
Demi's Avatar
Demi Demi is offline
Posts: 26,664
 
Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: UK
Default Fat-shaming is a less heavy issue than dying of Covid-19

Fat-shaming is a less heavy issue than dying of Covid-19

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...id-19-xzjm9pn22

Quote:
The singer Adele posted pictures last week revealing she’d lost up to five stone in weight. She had previously been curvy/comfortable in her own skin/plus size/voluptuous/above average weight/queen size — the latter being a new American euphemism, playing on “king size”, designed to convey a regal insouciance about societal expectations. The only word you could not use in relation to Adele was fat. You could say “obese” if you wanted to get clinical, but not fat.

Fat, though, is what she was. She was a fat girl, unhealthily, unwisely and, it now seems, unhappily fat. Apparently she set about losing the weight after her marriage broke down. Some women get their hair cut; Adele got a personal trainer and a healthy new diet. “I used to cry,” she posted on Instagram last October, “now I sweat”. Living well, after all, is the best revenge.

Yet the reaction to her taking control of her health and adopting a sensible regime has been extraordinary. The majority of female commentators are barely able to conceal their outrage at her treachery: she has betrayed “normal women” by conforming to male standards of beauty and acceptability. She had made fat glamorous, being beautiful and not seeming to give a stuff when designer Karl Lagerfeld used the F word to explain why he’d never dress her — and now she’s gone and sold out by prioritising her health over others’ insecurities.

Some disguised their dismay in concern about her motivation — is this just the heartbreak diet, and is she really happy? Others worried for her prospects of keeping off the weight, with one female television presenter predicting she’d be back on the chocolate in no time. So much for the sisterhood.

The rest are terrified to commend her on an achievement of which she is clearly proud, for fear of appearing judgmental in the minefield that is body image. Patently delighting in the virtue-signallers’ confusion, Titania McGrath, the online satirist of all things PC, accused Adele of “fat-shaming her former self”.

If fat were just a fashion statement, or an unalterable condition like age or race, then the taboo on negative comment would be perfectly in order. But it is neither. It is a serious health issue, totally remediable by willpower, medical intervention or both. It is also a significant factor in the risk of dying from Covid-19. Some 16% of Irish patients have body mass indices of 40-plus. As the healthy range is 19-25, those people are grossly obese.

Medics have had no hesitation in warning that a condition we cannot address — age — puts people at risk, and in calling for severe restrictions on older folks’ freedoms. Recently we discovered another condition that cannot be altered by willpower or medication — race — is a risk factor. In the UK, black people are four times more likely to die from the virus, and the disparity is not explained by either health or economic factors.

So it’s fine to warn black people and old people that they need to take more care of themselves right now. But you daren’t warn fat people, even though our statistics suggest the obese are at eight times greater risk, lest you be accused of “fat-shaming”. This reticence isn’t just cowardly, it is dangerous.

There are grounds to suspect we may well be in the second wave of Covid-19. Being a famously open and transparent nation, the Chinese surely alerted the rest of the world the first moment the coronavirus emerged. If not, though, and if it were circulating earlier, as the taoiseach ventured last week, then lots of us have already survived it.

I was flattened by a weird, debilitating respiratory bug around Christmas, shortly after meeting a friend home from China for the holidays, and have lost count of the number of people with the same story. Even my normally sceptical GP says he saw many strange fevers and odd respiratory complaints in January.

If this proves true, it means we may be edging closer to herd immunity. If not, though, then a second wave may hit in the winter and, given the Spanish flu precedent, it could be far more virulent than the first.

That gives plus-size people several months to lose weight and, just as Adele did, reduce their risk of dying of the virus — assuming that somebody in authority has the guts to tell them so.
Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #2   ^
Old Sun, May-10-20, 06:34
Bob-a-rama's Avatar
Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,953
 
Plan: Keto (Atkins Induction)
Stats: 235/175/185 Male 5' 11"
BF:
Progress: 120%
Location: Florida
Default

IMO we spend too much time obsessing about the personal lives of people we deem to be idols.

She's a decent singer and her songs appeal to many. Everything else is just trivial.

I remember seeing this sign in a post office:

Small minds talk about other people

Median minds talk about events.

Great minds talk about ideas.

Let's strive for the higher minded end.

Bob
Reply With Quote
  #3   ^
Old Sun, May-10-20, 06:34
cotonpal's Avatar
cotonpal cotonpal is online now
Senior Member
Posts: 5,283
 
Plan: very low carb real food
Stats: 245/125/135 Female 62
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: Vermont
Default

Quote:
If fat were just a fashion statement, or an unalterable condition like age or race, then the taboo on negative comment would be perfectly in order. But it is neither. It is a serious health issue, totally remediable by willpower, medical intervention or both. It is also a significant factor in the risk of dying from Covid-19. Some 16% of Irish patients have body mass indices of 40-plus. As the healthy range is 19-25, those people are grossly obese.


This shows the ignorance of the person who wrote this article. I reversed my obesity without willpower and without medical intervention. I reversed it through gaining knowledge and the experience that knowledge allowed me to have. This article has very much a blame the victim vibe. This is a complex and important issue, the relationship of weight to health, and now especially Covid-19, but to fall back on blaming a lack of will power or what medical intervention, perhaps it is bariatric surgery or a low fat diet that are the medical interventions alluded to, is to fall back on a discredited way of viewing obesity. This is an important subject and it needs a more carefully thought out and nuanced discussion, not this rush to judgment blame the victim approach. This article seems just another example of fat shaming couched in the usual "it's their health I am worried about" justification with the added justification of "and the health of other people with whom they come in contact."
Reply With Quote
  #4   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 08:41
bkloots's Avatar
bkloots bkloots is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 10,147
 
Plan: LC--Atkins
Stats: 195/162/150 Female 62in
BF:
Progress: 73%
Location: Kansas City, MO
Default

Quote:
IMO we spend too much time obsessing about the personal lives of people we deem to be idols.
I imagine they live exhausting and inhumane lives.
Quote:
I reversed my obesity without willpower
I think I know what you mean, in terms of LC discoveries, strategies, and advantages. "Willpower" used to mean the ability to endure starvation--never a good long-term solution to weight management.

Now I view "willpower" as the ability to consistently make positive and healthy choices. This is the willpower to sustain a long marriage (even through the rocky bits), to keep up an exercise routine (more about that in a minute), or, in quarantine times, to refrain from murdering one or more of your young children at home.

Willpower can wear out unless force of habit is firmly established. These days, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I do my BTN workout ("Better than nothing") Only knowing that I don't have to kill myself with exercise helps me sustain a habit that reaches back forty years. On many Mondays (that would be today) willpower alone does that. Good habits are so easily abandoned.

The pressure is on right now to dive into so-called comfort foods. I mean, we're facing something like life and death every single day if we should so much as step out the door. Wouldn't chocolate brownies help a little??

Willpower.
Reply With Quote
  #5   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 10:06
deirdra's Avatar
deirdra deirdra is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,324
 
Plan: vLC/GF,CF,SF
Stats: 197/136/150 Female 66 inches
BF:
Progress: 130%
Location: Alberta
Default

It is not willpower, but satiety and good health, that keeps me eating vLC for life. The only "willpower" I need is to keep junk out of the house.

The government & mainstream doctors' low-cal low-fat diets required white-knuckle willpower to resist the massive cravings for carbs (even just the healthywholegrains that they recommended) that these diets triggered, for 35 years! Atkins & the Eades got me started on my journey to health w/satiety. I did have success on Atkins in the early 1970s, but with mainstream doctors, nutritionists & the US Senate slamming such "fad" diets deterred me. Now I don't follow the mainstream.
Reply With Quote
  #6   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 11:58
Merpig's Avatar
Merpig Merpig is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 7,582
 
Plan: EF/Fung IDM/keto
Stats: 375/225.4/175 Female 66.5 inches
BF:
Progress: 75%
Location: NE Florida
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by cotonpal
This shows the ignorance of the person who wrote this article. I reversed my obesity without willpower and without medical intervention. I reversed it through gaining knowledge and the experience that knowledge allowed me to have. This article has very much a blame the victim vibe. This is a complex and important issue, the relationship of weight to health, and now especially Covid-19, but to fall back on blaming a lack of will power or what medical intervention, perhaps it is bariatric surgery or a low fat diet that are the medical interventions alluded to, is to fall back on a discredited way of viewing obesity.
Yeah, I hate those " It is a serious health issue, totally remediable by willpower" kind of comments! It that's all it took everyone would be slim. I have willpower for all sorts of things in my life, but the best willpower on earth never let me successfully lose weight long-term.

As an friend from the old asdlc days put it, "It's like trying to hold a beachball underwater. You can hold it underwater for a while, but eventually you'll get too tired and the beachball will shoot up into the air. We definitely need a better paradigm than "clearly you just don't have enough willpower" to address this situation!
Reply With Quote
  #7   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 13:00
WereBear's Avatar
WereBear WereBear is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 14,606
 
Plan: EpiPaleo/Primal/LowOx
Stats: 220/125/150 Female 67
BF:
Progress: 136%
Location: USA
Default

The article sums up how viciously some movements can turn on their own. People shouldn't be treated badly because of their size. At the same time, metabolic issues are serious health risks, and one of the symptoms is excess weight. Sometimes.
Reply With Quote
  #8   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 13:45
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
Senior Member
Posts: 19,177
 
Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
BF:
Progress: -30%
Location: Massachusetts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob-a-rama
IMO we spend too much time obsessing about the personal lives of people we deem to be idols.

She's a decent singer and her songs appeal to many. Everything else is just trivial.

I remember seeing this sign in a post office:

Small minds talk about other people

Median minds talk about events.

Great minds talk about ideas.

Let's strive for the higher minded end.

Bob



Love it!!
Reply With Quote
  #9   ^
Old Mon, May-11-20, 18:32
thud123's Avatar
thud123 thud123 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 7,422
 
Plan: P:E=>1 (Q3-22)
Stats: 168/100/82 Male 182cm
BF:
Progress: 79%
Default

What in the hell did I just read? I feel dumber for doing it.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 19:22.


Copyright © 2000-2024 Active Low-Carber Forums @ forum.lowcarber.org
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.