">Response to "Weighing the Scales":One of the things that pisses me off most about the way the U.S. (and many other places) obsess about weight and talk about the Obesity Epidemic (TM) and the Rising Cost of Caring for Big Fat Fatties is that these myths and rumors operate on ignorance, misunderstanding, rumor, suspicion, and tenuous scientific correlation dressed up as direct, concrete causation.
Here’s the thing, health and/or being healthy is a very individual, complex thing. It’s relative to each person. What marks good health in another person may mark bad health in another. This is why medical science, when rationally applied, has ranges rather than specific target numbers for things because human beings run the gamut.
To be very general, a true measure of health and well being involves taking stock of the following:
Stress
Eating habits
Exercise levels
Strength
Mobility
Pain level
Heart rate
Hormone Levels
Blood Sugar
Blood Pressure
Weight
A scale tells you the following:
Weight
Therefore, to say that weight can dictate, absolutely, those other factors is basically to say that a scale is as good as a blood pressure cuff, a blood sugar monitor, blood tests, hormone tests, a sample of weekly eating, and a physical fitness test all in one.
Which it isn’t. People who have diabetes do not go step on a scale when they need to know whether to take medication or insulin. People with high or low blood pressure do not step on a scale to know whether they need to go to the hospital. People with mobility issues do not step on a scale to see whether they’ll be able to get around somewhere or whether they’ll need an assistive device.
Why? Because a scale tells you how much you weigh, and that’s it. Weight is not the entire story of your health, and never can be. It has a role to play, sure, but it’s a far smaller role than current medical news scaremongering would have you believe.
Weight is useful for determining some things. For instance, if a person is gaining or losing weight very, very rapidly without doing anything to explain this change, that’s a VERY good sign that something is wrong. For instance, the onset of diabetes is often heralded by unexplained weight loss, as is hyperthyroidism. The onset of PCOS is often heralded by unexplained weight gain.
Weight can just as easily be a symptom of something as the cause. It can also be completely irrelevant, just like other processes and conditions in the body.
Furthermore, when the obesity epidemic fatphobes get to work, they trot out mortality statistic that are, if you apply simple logic, completely ridiculous. Because citing that 69% of obese people die or 53% of overweight people die - even of particular causes - leaves out that <i>EVERYONE DIES</i>. No matter what your weight, no matter how thin you are, eventually you will die. Everyone does. Everybody dies of something eventually.
Some causes of death are more preventable than others. Dying of, say, alcohol poisoning is completely preventable. Dying of old age or your heart eventually wearing out or an organ just not working anymore? You do some things to shore up that weakness, but eventually, no matter how healthy you keep yourself - something gives out. Heart, lungs, kidneys, a cancer grows in your body, you die in a car wreck, you fall off a ladder, you accidentally overdose, you commit suicide, someone murders you.
The mortality rate for being human is 100%. That’s what the news doesn’t tell you.
Obese people die. So do thin people. Everyone dies.
So that leaves causes and age of death. Those statistics rarely go into the details. Of the, say, 58% (made up number) of obese people who died of heart failure, what ages were they? How many of them were obese, but also, in their 70’s or 80’s? How many also had cancer at one point? How many were sick with some other disease - pneumonia or diabetes? How obese were they and was their obesity really the cause or just something coincidental?
How many of these people would’ve lived longer if not for stress, or bad working conditions, or urban living, or malnutrition from bouts of poverty and hunger in their lives?
I’m tired of this idea that weight can tell you the entire story of someone’s body, or their health. I’m tired of the faux-fat acceptance bullshit wherein people say, “Oh, it’s one thing to be 5-10 lbs overweight, but not 50-100.” I’m tired of there being a number that measures my worth that’s based solely upon how much force gravity exerts on my body.
I’m tired of people saying they’re concerned about my weight, that they’re just looking out for me, when they’re really concerned that I might be fat and getting away with it. Because nothing is more terrifying to society than a person who breaks the rules and doesn’t suffer for it.
you are absolutely right that NUMBERS ON A SCALE do not tell you the whole story at all. but there is no disputing that obesity correlates with many many many many many diseases and ailments, and is a public health concern in the united states right now.
whenever i hear girls who are healthy/look good/whatever complain that the number on their scale is too high, i get a little irritated because that has nothing to do with anything most of the time. your weight does not assess your BMI or your heart rate or blood pressure.
the important thing is to be healthy, and to remember that a whole lot of health problems can be prevented by maintaining a healthy weight and lifestyle-whatever that means for you personally.
you are absolutely right that NUMBERS ON A SCALE do not tell you the whole story at all. but there is no disputing that obesity correlates with many many many many many diseases and ailments, and is a public health concern in the united states right now.
whenever i hear girls who are healthy/look good/whatever complain that the number on their scale is too high, i get a little irritated because that has nothing to do with anything most of the time. your weight does not assess your BMI or your heart rate or blood pressure.
the important thing is to be healthy, and to remember that a whole lot of health problems can be prevented by maintaining a healthy weight and lifestyle-whatever that means for you personally.
Fuck you, random Tumblr person. FUCK YOU.
Are you kidding me? Really? “There is no disputing”? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME? There’s actually a lot of disputing, as far as the both the rates, causes, and consequences of obesity go, not to mention that most of the statistics in the news citing the costs of “obesity-related disease” are murky on what constitutes “obesity-related” and how much scientific proof has gone into proving that obesity was the cause rather than a symptom of another disease process going on.
So, yes, there’s plenty of disputing. Go Google “Paul Campos” and get back to me. Whether you buy his arguments are not, the fact remains, that’s a dispute. Then go read The Fat Nutritionist and http://living400lbs.wordpress.com/about-fat-acceptance/”>this page here on Living 400lbs.
So, you read my entire post and you come back me talking about “girls who are healthy/look good/whatever” How the FUCK do you know their health just by looking at them. What precisely does “looking healthy” mean? Besides that you take a few visual, physical attributes and turn them into indicators of internal health and well being, which is precisely the damn point of me writing this.
I’m tired of this bullshit as though health is something easy that just happens to you as long as you don’t sit around on the couch and eat bon-bons all day or something, as though it isn’t a lot of fucking work, as if we all start out with equal advantages and some of us are just lazy or careless or stupid and end up being fat, sick, or whatever.
I’m sick of people acting like they’re allies or friends or they understand fat acceptance when all their statements seem to add up to, “Oh, that’s nice dear, BUT…” and then spell out the reasons why they think that nope, fat is still automatically unhealthy and weight loss is so easy and weight gain is always a matter of personal choice and bad decisions.
Fuck YOU.
Fuck you for so blithely talking about “girls who look good” (so if a “girl” looks bad to you, then she’s not healthy?) and that problems can be prevented if we all just keep at a healthy weight. Fuck you for being annoyed when those “girls” talk about the pressures they’re under and how they feel living in a society that attaches personal worth that’s inversely proportional to a NUMBER ON A SCALE.
FUCK YOU. Fuck you for every fat person who’s gone into a doctor’s office and can’t get basic medical care without a fat-shaming, degrading lecture telling us that everything from a heart condition to seasonal allergies (yes, this has happened to me personally) would be improved if we’d just lose weight, because getting decent, non-shaming medical care, decent pain management, and a doctor more concerned about our health than just the number on the scale and whether it’s within range is out of the question.
Fuck you for all the people who struggle daily with their health and get shit thrown at them, because obviously being healthy is soooooo easy, isn’t it? Fuck you for all the people with disabilities I know, for this kind of ablist bullshit.
Healthy is not just about choices. Sometimes being really healthy is also about luck. Being lucky enough to live somewhere and have the money to afford and access good food and places to exercise (or food at all!), being lucky enough that your genetics don’t completely fuck you over, being lucky enough that something doesn’t happen to you or your environment doesn’t poison you, being lucky enough that you can, that you know how.
But shaming people? Saying things that amount to “well, sure I could accept you BUT your fat ass is going to make you sick” and “if you don’t get fat, you won’t get sick” is just ass haberdashery in the first goddamn degree.
Just fuck you. Don’t reblog my shit if you’re going to do things like this, really. Please, stop being on my side, because you actually aren’t.
“I’M ON YOUR SIDE OK BUT I AM STILL BIGOTED” allies should go away. Especially far, far away from madamethursday as she is far too excellent for you. Shoo!