Ask Lemmy

Dude, I am skinny and all I want is for anyone who wants it, to have the experience I have. I have biases, surely, but none against the drugs that let people with disordered eating finally experience a normal appetite, to lose the constant food noise. To enjoy eating in a healthy way, get full and forget about it until physically hungry again. I absolutely do not think most fat people are just lacking willpower or whatever - I don't need willpower to eat normally, just need to pay attention to how I feel.

Maybe because I got here from anorexic and food obsessed in the other direction, getting healthy to the point eating did not make me anxious perhaps gives some perspective. Willpower did not avail me, it just harmed my body.

I do know some people who worry about the side effects of GLPs, whether that is disguised judgemental attitude I don't know. And more who think they are just so expensive it's unequally available and bad for that reason. But not many anymore who think it's just lifestyle alone that is an acceptable way to get to a healthy weight, not after seeing people's results on those drugs.

ETA nevermind on that last paragraph - I see there is someone in this very comment thread saying it's just lifestyle.

Can you guys remove the negative filter and consider not everyone wants to belittle you hurt you or take something from you?
Have you considered the question can come empathy, interest in solutions, basic curiosity?

There is something to this but I might have described it differently.

Being obese is seen as a moral failure, and struggling to lose it is a virtue. Drugs are seen as a cheat because you haven't atoned for the moral failure by suffering, therefore you have not earned the right to be treated differently.

Nothing can be easier or improved as long as other people had to have it worse.

That's a great summary, very pithy.

I blame the church.

Yes, tho I think there's also a bit of the commerce zero-sum thinking to blame too. Like: "if my competitor gets a free advantage, that puts me at a relative disadvantage."

other than starving yourself and exercising 24/7 is unacceptable.

That’s not how losing weight works. You don’t need to starve yourself, you need to stay in calorie deficit (doesn’t equal starving and you may actually feel less starved than usually if you start adding better filling food to your diet). You don’t need to workout 24/7 (generally working out is not neccessary at all), doing proper strength training will help with losing weight (because building new muscles requires a lot on energy which increases BMR) and with looking better overall. But proper strength training doesn’t require you to workout 24/7, you just need like 50 minutes 4 times a week in order to hit most of the muscle groups twice (i.e. doing upper/lower split) to keep stimulus going (which start the building of new muscle fibers which increases BMR). And strength training is nothing like weightloss show nonsense — which is «doing a gazillion reps of light weights while sweating a pool and being out of breath with pain in your muscles and having to deal with devastating recovery» — you need to lift weights with consistent techique in 3-6 rep range, 2 sets and just be close to failure during last rep of each set. It will get you needed levels of muscle stimulus, you will not experience pain while working out, it will not make you uncomfortably wet from sweating and recovery will be fast and fine.

most fat people have lost and regained weight tons of times

Because they tried to lose weight like it’s goalpost via starving and working out 24/7 rather than building sustainable habits in eating and working out that will make you lose weight and stay in healthy weight range as an effect. When you don’t have those habits, you get fat.

when they see someone losing weight without starving themselves and hitting the gym, they get jealous.

Maybe they do. But that doesn’t really matter. A huge percent of people that lost weight with drugs like Ozempic also regain their weight in a span of two years after they stop taking it. Because none of these people actually builded healthy habits that lead to weightloss, they just took a drug that mimics a hormone of “feeling full”. And as they don’t have those habits but still remember the eating habits that they had before GLP-1 (and while taking the drug, there is no conscious change happening, so habits don’t really change, you just stop overeating due to GLP-1), they are likely to get fat again.

Weightloss is really not that hard if you don’t fall into social media bullshit and keep things rational and somewhat up to current science. People often fall for keto/carnivore/vegan¹/highreps/highcardio and other unreasonable ways to lose weight. imo the hard part is to stay consistent in calorie tracking but only for some time, after that it’s just starts being some sort of second nature and you start to eyeball stuff for calories without thinking about it.

¹Being vegan is reasonable from moral standpoint but doesn’t mean much in weightloss.