Weighing heavy on my mind.
Nothing seems to get a rise out of me lately like the continuing “obesity wars.” This has been at the top of my mind for a couple of reasons, the foremost being that I’m dieting at the moment in a rather desperate attempt to drop my blood pressure and avoid additional medication and the problems that can cause. I’m probably doomed either way, since diets and blood pressure pills both make you fat, but I’ve decided to go down fighting. The other reason is simply that things have gotten more and more absurd, and there has been another burst of stories on the topic, so I’ve been seeing more and more about it lately, which neatly feeds my own obsession.
This sort of thing--Lawmaker Wants Teachers Weighed For Obesity--is completely unacceptable. It shouldn’t even be on the table in a civilized society. I’m not the fan of slippery slope arguments, but I don’t think that Kasey is making one here:
Because you know where this will go ... give them a foot, and they’ll take a mile, then five, then fifty ...
...given that if it were not a metaphor, it would be a statement of fact. Smoking and obesity are not, in fact, exactly the same problem, but the success of the anti-smoking movement has emboldened the folks who, for whatever reason, care so deeply about what you put in your body. I was wondering how in the world they’d come up with the obesity equivalent to second-hand smoke, and thought the trend would be slowed somewhat by the relative weakness of the “you have no right to be fat because it might (and this is by no means clear) cost us all money” argument. But now that we can assume that exposure to fat people is harmful to kids’ health, well, that opens it right up, doesn’t it?
Because I’m sure that your average nine year old thinks to himself, well, I’m not sure if I should eat this twinkie, but it must be ok because Mrs. Smith is fat and she’s my teacher. Uh-huh.
Sadly enough, I’m not particularly surprised to see this, considering that just yesterday I was reminded again that we do live in a post-reductio world. Over at Asymmetrical Information, Jane made quite a nice argument about the absurdity of pouring money and energy into ineffective anti-obesity campaigns, which was, in part, an examination of how the anti-smoking model breaks down when we’re talking about weight. For some reason, that seems to have induced many commenters to propose strategies of their own, many of which illustrate her point rather well. I would find this funny in a different mood, I suspect, but for the moment, it just strikes me as sad.
One of the things that seems to come up again and again in these conversations is the absolute conviction that many people seem to have that all one has to do is eat “right” and exercise a bit and that extra weight will just fall right off. The problem with this is that human metabolism is a rather complicated thing, as Jane discusses in a follow-up post:
I’d also point out, to all those superior skinnies, that it’s a lot easier to stay skinny than to get that way. For one thing, to stay skinny, you have to eat 1800-2000 calories a day; to get that way, you have to eat, like, 1200 calories a day, which would certainly make me grumpy. For another, fat has weird effects on the endocrine system, pumping out hormones that tell your body to produce more fat. Also, your body has what’s called a “set point” that tells it how much it wants to weigh; this controls appetite and so forth. It only takes 6 months of being overweight for most people to reset their set point upward; it takes more than three years of weighing less to reset it downwards again. And of course, the more you diet, the more aggressively your body, which thinks you’re in the middle of a famine, tries to hold onto calories. So lecturing someone on how they’d be just fine if they’d just eat less and excercise more is a little bit rich.
Why people can’t accept that it is at least this complicated is beyond me. I rather suspect that a good portion of the problem is that we’ve turned weight into a moral issue. Being fat is regarded as prima facie proof that one is somehow morally deficient. I suspect that this arises in part out of a weird sort of superstition: if we are just thin enough, nothing bad can happen to us. We’ve confused the association between some disease states and weight with proof that heaviness is the single cause of these illnesses, then inverted that assumption and hold being thin tightly in our fists as a talisman against the evils of high blood pressure and diabetes. The cult of health is no doubt based in a fear of death; having given up religion, we count carbohydrates instead. Illness has become an obsession, and it seems that the only thing we like better than obsessing over our own health is obsessing over the health of others. Obesity is our current outlet for the all-too-human compulsion to stick our noses into other people’s business, and all the better if we can feel morally superior while we’re at it.
Of course, our short-sightedness in these matters is potentially dangerous, as we are so focused on fat as the cause of disease that we forget that it can be the result of such as well. Any number of hormone imbalances can make it next to impossible to lose weight. In my case part of my struggle is due to an old injury that limits my ability to exercise. Though rare, there are also more exotic causes for overweight, as demonstrated on this week’s episode of House, where they very nearly allowed a young girl to die because they couldn’t see that her obesity was the result of a disease rather than the cause of it (more here). Tumors are not a frequent cause of obesity, of course, but the interaction between disease, treatment for it, and one’s weight is more complicated than “if you got off your fat ass your high blood pressure would disappear.” In fact, I would venture to say that it is more complicated than that pretty close to 100 percent of the time.
I worry sometimes that this “moralization” of fat will keep us from being able to take advantage of the inevitable technological advances that should make it easier for us to control our weight in the future. After all, as additced as we are to taking pills to solve our lives, we are equally addicted to the notion that other people should do things the hard way. Luckily, greed is a factor here, and work toward pharmacuetical solutions continues apace. As Randall Parker points out:
...in the medium run we will have drugs to control appetite and prevent obesity. In the longer run we will have gene therapies that will reprogram our bodies to adapt us to the unnatural environments that we have created for ourselves.
And that is as it should be. Maybe we can even dream of a time where one’s health is not presumed to be everyone’s business, but I’m certain that a cure for busybody disease is much further off.
Thanks Deb for reading my mind yet again.
What gets me is that in the “moralization” of metabolism, people seem to forget that for some people fat is not really unhealthy.
Fat doesn’t mean lazy or stupid or out of control.
Posted by caltechgirl on 04/01 at 08:34 PMcheck out the new weightwatchers.
where you live all you can do is order boat drinks and put the hockey game on six months a year.
for all the alleged health problems life expectency goes up every year dosen’t it, eh?Posted by on 04/01 at 09:53 PMIn today’s NYT there’s an article how the drug companies are scrambling to come up with a pill for the huge market on obesity.
I used to be a lardbutt at one time, working at a cafe and receiving gratis day-old donuts. Fat pills. The stuff’s deadly.
I quickly recovered when I decided being 38+ inches round the waist wasn’t my bag by exercising and skipping dinner.
It takes some will power, but not as much as one would think. Just 10 or 15 minutes of tangy hungerpains before dozing off. Good sleeping conditions, though.
And, boy, those breakfasts sure tasted good.
People are fat because they don’t walk enough. Period.
I eat a lot, but I exercise even more. ‘Nuff said.
Posted by Brent Anderson on 04/03 at 10:02 AMWhile I don’t think “obesity” is a moral issue, I sort of agree with Brent that losing weight isn’t all that difficult, but one has to be dedicated.
I have lost 15 lbs in the last four months without changing my eating habits at all. The method? I excersize four times a week, every week, which is 3-4 times more than I used to do. I also found a way to excersize which was fun for me, which was martial arts. Having a little Korean guy who is 30 lbs lighter and 4 inches shorter than me yelling at me to work harder is a great motivator.
My other comment is that I think a lot of the statistical measures of “obesity” are BS. The whole height/weight thing does not take into consideration build or musculature and there are lots of articles talking about how these charts count a lot of perfectly healthy people as “obese”.
Posted by Director Mitch on 04/03 at 10:12 AMDirector Mitch, if you’re a woman you’re probably beautiful. I think full-figured women are much more attractive than the twiggy hippointers. I mean, that’s the traditional view of feminine beauty, isn’t it? Rubens and all that?
Also, your great description of having the Korean workout drill instructor immediately made me recall the great scene in Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full. In it a wealthy fiftysomething lady gets yelled at at the health club, this time by a Turk.
Posted by Brent Anderson on 04/03 at 11:04 AMDirector Mitch, I think you’ve hit a large part of the problem on the head. I can lose 15 pounds, sure. Have lost half of that already. 15 pounds isn’t going to get me anywhere near the chart, unfortunately. But even when I was in the Navy and worked out several hours a day (and had my access to food severely restricted, OCS, doncha know) I was still overweight on the charts. The only time I’ve managed a CDC-approved weight was when I was working retail. Being on my feet eight hours a day and too poor to buy much food will control even my weight. Being ten years younger didn’t hurt, either.
Brent, I’m jealous. I’m hungry a lot more than that to take anything off. I don’t start losing until I’m hungry enough of the time that I’m cranky and miserable, and I quit losing before too long. I suspect that some of us have more paranoid metabolisms than others. Mine seems to think that I’m in immediate danger of freezing to death somewhere in Norway.
I’m a big fan of the “obesity pill” idea, though I suspect that the mechanism is complex enough that we don’t have to worry about one actually being produced anytime soon. I find it amusing that a lot of folks (and I don’t mean you, Brent and Mitch, you guys are sane) want to have it both ways: it’s a huge health problem and if you’re part of it you have to solve it through self-flagellation. If it’s that much a danger to the public good, trying to solve it with drugs is liable to be a lot more productive than trying to take everyone’s twinkies away. And such a thing would be a godsend for people who can’t exercise much for one reason or another. In any case, I know for damn sure telling people that they’re stupid and lazy isn’t going to make anyone any thinner, and I really don’t think it’s anybody’s business anyway. But now I’m repeating myself.
Posted by Deb on 04/03 at 11:44 AMYeah, the government definitions for obesity are way whacked.
Here’s a link: http://www.consumerfreedom.com/pressRelease_detail.cfm/release/79
Posted by Brent Anderson on 04/03 at 12:17 PMGreat post! I thought I understood weight and obesity… through most of my 20s, I was normal weight (though constantly warned to “avoid gaining ‘more’ weight.” At 140, I was near the top of my healthy range. As a teen, I got into a bad dieting habit after being told too many times that I would get fat if I kept eating the way I ate (you know, like a normal person.) So I dieted, even though I was 120 pounds and 5’4”. I haven’t had healthy eating habits since I was 15.
It was about three years after having my son that I became obese. Despite successfully losing the baby weight, exercising 5-7 days a week, and watching what I ate, I started gaining about 15 pounds a year. I know how to lose weight. I’ve done it before. But each time, the stakes get higher. Skipping one meal a day will take off about two pounds. Total. Workouts will take off about another pound or two. Total.
Right now, I’m trying a plan that restricts sugar, snacks, and seconds on days that don’t begin with S. (http://www.nosdiet.com). I really hope it works, because I’m feeling bad health effects from the weight. I don’t look as fat as I am… if you saw me, you would guess I was overweight, but you’d probably guess I was about 25 pounds lighter than I am.
Sometimes, all the morality about excess weight makes me feel like going the opposite direction, like the rebellious teen I am deep inside. If I’m offensive at 160, check me out at 180! Hah! Take that!
Posted by Jenne on 04/04 at 07:12 AMI know that feeling! If not eating is still going to leave me fat and being moralized at, then why bother, anyway? At that point I’d rather be a few pounds heavier and *full*.
Posted by Deb on 04/04 at 10:22 AM
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