A Fat Rant

I say

AMEN

Other than the fact that might be off, her message is right. She's encouraging you to live life (even mentions exercising) no matter what your size... not to use fat as an excuse, or to get upset by it.

And I think she's beautiful anyhow. The confidence adds to it.

I agree...it's not about appearance or being thin, it's about being healthy and happy.

:-)

Brian

I enjoyed the video, even if I don't necessarily agree with the figure quoted, like you.

I LOVE this video...right on, Joy! Clothing shopping is very frustrating. I'm stuck in the weird world of the large end of the "regular" depts and the low end of the "fat" girl shops...add to it, I'm short and need the petite proportions...arrrgggh! It's like having a split personality!

Even still, she has a powerful message, one that we forget and need to be reminded of once and a while.

Joy's cute! She's young, attractive, articulate, expressive and has style.

How many buy her argument: the only way to have a "normal" weight is to have two skinny parents, and ideally have four skinny grandparents?

Quito said:
How many buy her argument: the only way to have a "normal" weight is to have two skinny parents, and ideally have four skinny grandparents?

She said the only way to ensure you'd be thin was that, not that that was the only way to be thin. I'd add to that: the only way to ensure you are thin is to have the thin parents and grandparents *that didn't need to diet to maintain their weight*.

Of course, there is always diet + exercise for the rest of us, and if that fails, diet + exercise + caloric restriction.

Hi Jan, thanks for the correction of the quote.

There's some proof that she's right: see here, here and here. But, it's only part of the story. My grandparents - all four - were thin yet my brother is obese and I need to watch what I eat. All the statistics about how many more calories we're eating change the rules.

Joy's 26. If she puts on 10 pounds per decade (not uncommon, even with people who stay active), then she'll weight over 250 when she's my age. So, while I completely agree with her point, I like her Richard Prior-esque way of attempting to defuse the word "fat", and I love her attitude, there's some denial in what she's saying.

Though the 95% figure may not be well-founded, it also sounds like there really isn't an accurate number to use instead--because nobody knows. Probably she'd have been better off saying "most," but I think it's a small quibble.

I thought it was a powerful message (so much so that I stole the idea and posted it at my blog as well) and did a good job conveying two points: you should eat sensibly and exercise; but don't disparage those who do and are still fat anyway.

My sister struggles with weight despite heroic efforts around diet and exercise. By all rights she should be extremely lean, but her metabolism just isn't designed that way. Yet people assume it's her fault. It really isn't fair.

Joy is awesome and as a 30 year old profession, I'd totally want to ask out someone that cool and with that much personality.

As for the 95% number... I've heard something similar before at an IEEE (Electrical Engineering Society) Biomedical Meeting at Stanford. It was during a talk on new weight loss surgeries. While I saw this some time ago so the details are a bit hazy, I believe the general point of the lecture was that a body's reaction to losing less than 25 lbs is very different than the same body's reaction to losing more than 25 lbs. This was not just an issue during weight loss, but remained an issue for the length of the study, 5 years I believe.

They were tracking ghrelin (a hormone produced by the stomach that makes a person hungry) and after about 25 lbs of weight loss, the ghrelin levels are constantly spiked, similar to what is found in starving people in developing nations.

This would explain why it is so hard to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. I say this as someone who has lost and gained 60 lbs through diet and exercise. At the bottom, I experienced hunger of a magnitude that I don't think many people can comprehend.

Of course the next part of the talk was about a gastric pacemaker and how it impacted ghrelin levels, but they're not sure why. It was an electrical engineering meeting and there had to be at least one nifty toy.

I believe that anyone can get thinner. But first, they do have to get over fear of being fat.

Joy's rant was WONDERFUL. Regardless of the fuzzy statistics, her overall message was right on target.

Live your life! Don't lie to yourself! Demand the respect you deserve!

Great. Thats just what the world needs, more pissed off fat people.

I'm glad to see that she's living life to the fullest, fat, skinny or in-between. That's what we all should be doing, not obsessing because we didn't lose 3 pounds this week.

I disagree with her comment that 95% of dieters gain back every single pound, but the flaw in that statement is "dieters". I didn't gain back my weight, but I wouldn't call myself a "dieter", either. I think most people who try to improve their weight using just a fad diet will eventually fail only because fad diets are usually way too restrictive for most people.

I also don't agree with the whole "you have to have skinny relatives in order to ensure thinness". Heck, almost all of my relatives are fat (they don't exercise or diet) and so are most of my husband's. He doesn't have to watch what he eats at all to stay thin and I don't really have to watch what I eat, but I do stay active. I don't think your genetics matter so much as the fact that all people are designed to be active. There are very few people who can maintain a normal body weight by being very sedentary. Hence why we have an obesity epidemic happening here...life's too cushy for us ;)

Hmmm...I can't say I totally agree with Joy, butt hay...if she digs her fatness and can handle the medical side of that life, the "rah!".

Creative video, no doubt. I'm glad she's loving herself just as she is...right now...and...anyone who has spent years "going on a diet" and then gaining it all back, plus some, over and over, doesn't need to consult sociological statistics. They know that temporary diets can't replace creating permanent healthy edit and exercise habits. Back to the video. If she keeps eating ice cream (etc.) she might hit 300 pounds in another ten years. Then what will she do?

Yeah I actually think that 95% number isn't off-base, though I know reasonable people disagree on that. Particularly the folks at the weight loss registry. But claiming that's just based on a single 50 year old study, like they did in the NYT article, is a little disingenuous. There have been LOTS of studies on dieting almost all of them with atrocious results long-term.

I completely agree with Quito and Kirk - Joy is gorgeous and I love her message that you should live your life *now*. But while her weight hasn't affected her health - yet - will she be so relaxed about it when she's 40? Or 50?

That's what she's saying. That she does have healthy eating habits and does work out, and she's still fat, and it's none of anyone else's damn business. I think you missed the point a little bit.

Kirk VandenBerghe said:
Creative video, no doubt. I'm glad she's loving herself just as she is...right now...and...anyone who has spent years "going on a diet" and then gaining it all back, plus some, over and over, doesn't need to consult sociological statistics. They know that temporary diets can't replace creating permanent healthy edit and exercise habits. Back to the[...]

Remember the post Jim did on "but normal isn't normal anymore, is it?" I identified with her message because in our society, a person who is at BMI 24.7 like me is just as fat as someone who is around 35 like her (she said she was classed as "moderately obese"). If you are not a stick, you are fat, and invisible, and it doesn't really matter how "fat" you are.

And while everyone can weigh less - I do weigh less - for societal standards, a lot of us will remain fat forever. I can only get to an acceptable size, with all the exercise I do, and with eating healthy, if I also go hungry all the time. I'm not willing to do that. I know my BMI now is still technically acceptable, but I'm sure I'll gain 5-10lb over the years and I will be overweight technically, and that will be ok too. I don't want to starve for the rest of my life.

Jan wrote:

I identified with her message because in our society, a person who is at BMI 24.7 like me is just as fat as someone who is around 35 like her.

Well lets hang out the flags ... Lets face it if she did care about being fat she wouldn't be fat!

The biggest reason anyone is overweight is they quite frankly don't want to be thin.

Unless someone is force feeding them Burgers, Pizza's,Fast Food, Fatty Food,s , Soda etc everyone has a choice to NOT eat this junk.

Most people overweight choose to ignore the warnings is it just a coincidence that fat people always claim they are happy ... I suspect not?

Quito said:
When I had a BMI of 24.7, only my mother thought I was overweight.... I'm not saying that you're wrong, but if someone equates a BMI of 24.7 with one of 35, that someone is crazy.

Underweight is the new normal. 17.5-20 is normal, 20-22 is "thick" and 23 and over is fat. Over 35 or so, then it is obese. Visual perception of someone around 25, like Joy, is still not "she is obese", it is just "she is fat". So normal is now a crazy standard. It is stick thin for women and muscular with a six-pack for men - how is that "normal" exactly?

Graham Foster said:
Unless someone is force feeding them Burgers, Pizza's,Fast Food, Fatty Food,s , Soda etc everyone has a choice to NOT eat this junk.

Says who they are all eating fast food, exactly? You?

Jan, you'll have to stop standing next to Nicole Ritchie. ;-)

Yeah, when my BMI was 23 or so, I definitely got "fat" comments. I think it's different for men, actually. Guys can be pretty big and a lot of people just think "Oh, he's a big strong guy, like a football player or something". It's not quite the same for women. A woman who's even slightly large is seen as, well, huge.

Not to say that this is only a problem for women...I've just noticed that the standards seem to be pretty different.

Jan said:
Underweight is the new normal. 17.5-20 is normal, 20-22 is "thick" and 23 and over is fat. Over 35 or so, then it is obese. Visual perception of someone around 25, like Joy, is still not "she is obese", it is just "she is fat". So normal is now a crazy standard. It is stick thin for women and muscular with a six-pack for men - how is that "normal" [...]

RedPanda said:
Jan, you'll have to stop standing next to Nicole Ritchie. ;-)[...]

Haha! Thanks for the laugh, I spilt milk on my keyboard. Anyway, no, BMI 15-17.49 is "anorexic". "Normal" is a tiny window of opportunity these days.

Nic, I've experienced the same thing. I'm not built to be tiny, when my BMI was 22.5, my face looked gaunt and scary, so I am always around on the high end of the HWR. I get the same treatment from sales people as I did when I was fat, for example. I'm still the fat girl trying to squeeze into stuff as far as they are concerned. I don't get mean comments from strangers, but as someone who has been as high as BMI 40, that is all that changed. I still get acquaintances talking about what I eat, my size, and all the rest that comes with being "fat".

Janwrote:

Underweight is the new normal. 17.5-20 is normal, 20-22 is "thick" and 23 and over is fat.

My BMI is 22.7. It's down a bit because I've been training for a set of races - I'm trying to pick up my speed by dropping a few pounds. My colleagues and students have been all saying that I'm skinny - and definitely not in a flattering way (of course, when you're in your fifties and lose weight, people start wondering if you have cancer - I'm not kidding). The only people in the department who look thinner than me qualify for the Boston marathon.

Maybe it's different in Brazil (although the Brazilian students we have here, while thin, are not gaunt).

Quito said:
Maybe it's different in Brazil (although the Brazilian students we have here, while thin, are not gaunt).

It is different, even from city to city. When I was "skinny" for my body type, I moved to a city where the culture is more African influence, and I'd get negative comments from being *thin*. Strangers would call me by the name of a little skinny fish, "chicharro". So depending on where you are, it also works the other way around. But overall, with a few cities as exceptions, we are closer to Japan than to the US in this skinniness thing. People are just expected to be skinny at least until they are 60. I don't see people calling skinny women "skinny bitches" like I see American people doing, they say "you are so skinny" with awe and almost religious reverence in their voices.

Graham Foster said:
experienced the same thing. I'm not built to be tiny, when my BMI was 22.5, my face looked gaunt and scary, so I am always around on the high end of the HWR. I get the same treatment from sales people as I did when I was fat, for example. I'm still the fat girl trying to squeeze into stuff as far as they are concerned. I don't get mean comments from strangers, but as someone who has been as high as BMI 40, that is all that changed. I still get acquaintances talking about what I eat, my size, and all the rest that comes with being "fat".[...]

Wow, you've figured it all out... Everyone overweight is sitting on their asses eating twinkies.
You're a friggin genius.

Graham Foster said:
Well lets hang out the flags ... Lets face it if she did care about being fat she wouldn't be fat![...]

That's true, in a sense. Maybe she doesn't want to be fat, but she's deriving more benefit from not getting in shape (i.e. not experiencing the necessary rigors of dietary and exercise discipline)

I can be a millionaire too, but I derive more benefit from not doing so (i.e. more free time or not engaging in unsavory activities)

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1080542

One person can be fatter and look fatter at the same BMI as another. For instance, my BMI is 32.9. You might think I'm a tub o' lard, right? But I'm only 17% body fat. Someone else could have the same BMI but be 30% body fat. Now who do you think is truly obese?

We're both clinically obese, according to the NIH statistics. But body fat is hard to calculate, they do the best they can, for the largely non-muscular population. It's a sociological statistic, and shouldn't be applied individually!!

That said, women should be 18-22% body fat. That means no abs showing, and certainly some paunch around the stomach and hips. Fat is necessary for a woman's normal hormonal levels. Men should not be much more than 15% body fat, but can go down to 8-10%. Any lower than that and their hormonal levels are no longer optimal.

Those the biological guidelines for healthy body fat levels. Women should be fatter than men. But men should be more massive. Almost all men are attracted to a woman smaller than them, and almost all women are attracted to a larger man. But this doesn't give a man an excuse to be fat. He should be more massive by virtue of muscle!

Society has failed in not considering composition, but only size, and has allowed men to be flabby. Meanwhile, women are encouraged to be bony. The obese man has available more women who are less massive than him, and the skeletal woman has available more men who are massive compared to her.

But these are only visual cues, and fall apart upon embrace. A muscular man will feel more massive, when embraced, than the "flabalanche" of a fatty. And a fit woman will feel more compact than the skinny-fat Annie Rexic. So it's all tied into, as well, society's shallowness and lack of education.

Give me a new world.

Oh my god, again with the ignorance. Did you even watch the damn movie? She's saying that she DOES work out, she DOES eat well, and she IS in shape. Her shape is just bigger than the "ideal". She's deriving benefit from not starving herself or throwing up her dinner every day, and from not hating herself because she's fat.

Kailash said:
That's true, in a sense. Maybe she doesn't want to be fat, but she's deriving more benefit from not getting in shape (i.e. not experiencing the necessary rigors of dietary and exercise discipline)[...]

Different Nic said:
Oh my god, again with the ignorance. Did you even watch the damn movie? She's saying that she DOES work out, she DOES eat well, and she IS in shape. Her shape is just bigger than the "ideal". She's deriving benefit from not starving herself or throwing up her dinner every day, and from not hating herself because she's fat.[...]

I did watch the video, including the part where she mentioned eating ice cream and peanut butter. Calorically dense foods. Perhaps you're the one who needs to do more research. You can start with the Laws of Thermodynamics.

"Eating well" "working out" and "being in shape" are relative terms. And perhaps her standards are lower than that which is biologically healthful, you think?

Another thing: Nobody just wakes up one day fat. At some point during the process, they should realize they are putting on the pounds. Many at this point start with the negative self-talk and head down the road to hopeless obesity. I believe Joy had that experience, or she wouldn't be so adamant today about self-acceptance.

This video probably represents a turning point in her life. I'd like to know if she later has or is getting into better shape.

Bottom line though, getting fat is a process. Getting thin is a process. Anyone who loses weight has had to give up some things that others enjoy, such as ice cream or sedentary living. Obviously those who stay thin with an unhealthy lifestyle have some other factor that doesn't cause them to become overweight. Let them indulge then, because they will have other life challenges to face. Ice cream is not a birthright, nor happiness itself.

We have to create the conditions for our own enjoyment. And quite often: "No pain, no gain."

It is key to maturity, that one has to forgo immediate enjoyment for a greater reward to come later. And even then, if the reward does not come, you must try again!

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html

The 95% figure may be a myth, but the generalisation is right.

There has been a recent study that showed that up to 2/3 of people not only regain the lost weight but end up weighing more. In fact yo yo dieting, or losing and then regaining weight is more dangerous than remaining overweight.

As usual, people that should know better, don't. Joy is happy with her weight, it's HER weight and HER body yet some of you seem to not only have the ability to forecast her future weight but are able to magically tell that her health must not be good just by the way she looks. And somehow that is OUR problem. OK. Arrogance galore.

I love the way some of you (like Kailash) are so SELECTIVE about the data that they choose to support their opinions masked as facts. There is a lot of evidence on the clear connection between genetics and fatness, data that keeps surfacing and which can not be easily ignored. (Check the NY Times for recent examples). Clear evidence that losing weight is temporary for many people, that the bodies of many fat people are in fact wired differently than those of thin ones. Findings that have been known (but not promoted by interests groups, for obvious reasons) for years. But of course, it's best to ignore such data, choose rehashed and questionable data instead, and get some sort of false licence to keep discriminating against people with big and plentiful fat cells.

Yeah, enough already. The hysteria is just that...

it's easy to have confidence when you're beautiful. how about putting an ugly fat chick up there making the same video, and seeing how many people respond favorably.