5:10pm December 24, 2013

“People can be obese but metabolically healthy and fit, with no greater risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer than normal weight people, according to the largest study ever to have investigated this seeming paradox”

—

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120904193052.htm

And there you go, any argument you have ever had in support of fat-shaming just flew out the window. TA TA

(via kingjoffreylannister)

Of course fat people have been saying the same thing for decades. But of course anything a fat person says about themselves or their own health is laughed off as “wishful thinking”. Our own experiences are constantly being denied as “head in the sand” “it will catch up to you eventually” mentality. Despite those of us that exercise regularly and eat healthy, we’re told that none of it matters because we’re still fat -and therefore couldn’t POSSIBLY be healthy.

The sad thing about it though, is that people should not have to be healthy in order to deserve to be treated with human decency and respect and not have to live their lives stigmatized, bullied, marginalized, and shamed. People are deserving of equality and respect reguadless of if they are healthy or not.

(via fatoutloud)

Delightfully, (according to the alumni magazine) my alma mater is apparently performing an extensive study of ‘metabolically healthy obesity’ in order to differentiate types and causes of obesity—in large part so that healthy-but-obese people are no longer harmed by mindless, uninformed weight loss campaigns but also to understand how/why various bodies process nutrition and produce energy differently.

According to the numbers quoted in the latest report, at least 30% of obese people (even ‘morbidly obese’ people) are metabolically healthy and would be harmed by restricted eating and not in any way benefited by weight loss. The school is studying the biochemical relationship that different metabolic types have with different food types over a long-term program. Their hope is that they’ll be able to better identify how each body processes food and that instead of focusing on weight and weight loss ultimately nutritionists and dieticians will be able to provide information on how to feed each body type in order to create a healthy and beneficial state for each person—not so that people will lose weight as a rule. They also hope to sever the relationship, in the public consciousness, between weight and health because it is endangering lives.

(via moniquill)

Reblogging it again for Moniquill’s delightful addition.

(via thisisthinprivilege)

And the last time I had a conversation where I tried to tell someone this was even possible sometimes, they said that by definition fat couldn’t be healthy and that “health isn’t just the absence of disease, you know” and that “the only reason fat people say these things is because they can’t seem to divorce self-esteem from health”. I also got accused of practicing “tobacco-industry science” when I said that type II diabetes (and pre-diabetes) can cause being fat rather than the other way around, and that maybe that happens a lot with diseases that cause fat being blamed on the fat itself.

Notes: