This last bit of the Omega’s Guide is taking more work than I thought. In honour of the end of #FatShamingWeek, here’s a repost from a year and a half ago. Still as relevant today.
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Fat acceptance seem to be going around the manosphere right now and derisive mockery seems to be the order of the day. It seems to have started with this guy’s (probably satirical) blog on fat game.
I’m going to avoid the derisive mockery, but instead I’m going to talk about shame and self-hatred.
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First, some theology. Being fat is generally a sign of sinfulness.
Sloth and gluttony, the two primary causes of obesity, are two of the cardinal sins. It is shameful to be fat, because it is shameful to sin.
Derisive mockery is not untoward to someone who advocates the acceptance and normalization of sinfulness.
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Theology aside, obesity is still something to be shamed.
I do not need to go into all the ways obesity is unhealthy for an individual, that’s common knowledge. By allowing yourself to be obese you are quite literally committing slow, likely painful, suicide.
By allowing your body to destroy itself you are showing that you do not love yourself or your life. You are also showing you do not love those who love you and will be devastated by your early death.
If you are married, by being fat you are showing your spouse through deed, if not word, that you do not love them enough to remain attractive enough to have a healthy sex life.
You should be ashamed of being fat.
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Fat acceptance is concerned with ending self-loathing fat people feel for themselves. That is wrong.
Self-loathing and self-disgust is generally a sign that something is wrong in your life. It is your body and subconscious telling you that something needs to change as your current actions, lifestyle,and choices are negatively impacting your body and its ability to reproduce itself.
It is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect you.
In the case of obesity, the shame and self-disgust you feel is your body telling you that you are killing yourself.
When your body and subconscious tells you something is wrong, the answer is not to get over it, the answer is not to drug it into submission, the answer is not to accept it, the correct answer is to figure out the reason your body and subconscious are screaming at you and to change yourself so they no longer have to scream.
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Your body evolved in an environment of scarcity. Food was scarce, you rarely gained the calories necessary for optimal health, so your body adapted to urge you to eat as much as possible, particularly of sugars and fats, which provided a large amount of calories.
Modern industrial agriculture has made food abundant; it is no longer scarce but your body still thinks it is, so it demands you eat, and it particularly loves its fats, sugars, and salts.
When you do not eat as much as you can your body screams at you that you are starving yourself; when you exercise, you are depleting your energy reserves and you body screams at you.
This is why it is much easier to gain weight than lose weight. Your old primal self is no made to handle the new modern world. You should not ignore this, but you should know why this pain exists.
The curse of being fat is: Your mind and body scream self-loathing at you for being fat, but your body screams pain at you if you diet and exercise. It is painful either way.
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So why do people participate in fat acceptance, when their own bodies and minds are screaming at them that they are killing themselves, when all the research says they are killing themselves, when obesity negatively impacts yourself and those you care about?
Easy: change is hard.
It is a lot easier to come to accept (and possibly overcome) your self-loathing mentally than it is to overcome the pain of diet and exercise. Self-loathing is vague and amorphous, pain is immediate and direct.
Self-loathing can be reasoned at, self-justified, denied, and overcome by other emotions. There is no reasoning with, denying, or ignoring pain: pain is.
Instead of facing the pain, it is easier to accept the self-loathing.
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Shame is used for societal control. It is used by society to prevent people from following their base urges to self-destruction.
Forgoing shaming obesity, gluttony, and sloth is not loving; it is apathetic. It is people to destroy themselves.
Fat acceptance is not something society should embrace, for the good of fat people.
This is not to say fat people shouldn’t be loved, they should, but their obesity and the behaviours contributing to it should be shamed out of love.
Fat acceptance is telling people it is okay to engage in self-destruction.
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If you are fat, realize it is not healthy. You are hurting yourself and showing you do not love yourself or those around you.
Realize that the pain may be unavoidable, but it is necessary.
Overcoming the pain and making yourself a better person will do much more for you, your self-respect, and your happiness than any amount of fat acceptance.
If you want to improve yourself, I would recommend the primal diet.
I tried the primal diet; while being strict on it I lost 10 lbs in 3 weeks. After that I became less strict, but I’ve still lost about 25 lbs (12% of my body weight) in 3 months. I’ve never been actually fat, maybe skinny-fat, but I did have a gut, it’s quite noticeably shrunk.
The best part, after the initial three weeks it’s required almost no willpower on my part. I rarely feel hungry and I never feel like I’m missing anything; it requires very little discipline. Once you get over the initial hump, it’s easy. It causes minimal pain, while still getting results.
So, do yourself a favour. Try the primal diet.
Reblogged this on oogenhand.
says the guy who’s been skinny his whole life. I did it all, played sports, constantly active, watched my diet, ate healthy, strength training, and even mild doses of anorexia. The only thing I havent tried is surgery, and yes I am looking at that seriously because a lifetime of shame and social awkwardness is no picnic.
I would suggest this “fat is an indicator of sinfulness” is unnecessarily harsh. Given the modern lifestyle of office work (freaking food days), processed food, automobiles, constant advertising and artificially low prices for food due to government subsidies, it’s almost a wonder people aren’t even fatter. Well probably not, people are pretty fat. It’s akin to the idea that general ugliness is the result of an ugly spirit and conversely a beautiful person has a beautiful spirit, neither of which is born out in reality.
The reality is over long periods, weight loss of 2-3 pounds is about the best most can do without risking large relapses. I consider the chore I have of losing the 20 pounds I gained over the summer from injuries and debauchery and I look at women 100+ pounds overweight and I can’t see them ever exhibiting the discipline and strength needed to sustain the weight loss, women are weak after all. (can I not have a few rum and cokes and not be cast into hell? I drink the mexican cokes to avoid the high fructose corn syrup after all)
You also seem to have genuinely bizarre ideas about self loathing. I have no idea who you are or where you come from really but most of us develop our self loathing from abusive childhoods and jerks who tell us to just shake it off. I guess the treatment for the guy who’s dealt with depression his entire life is to just turn that frown upside down.
None of all that is to suggest being overweight should be normalized or self loathing just be lived with. It is to suggest that compassion and encouragement are the appropriate responses, and that includes the ones who seek to normalize obesity. Judgementalism and condemnation are hardly appropriate and frankly an embarrassment to the Faith.
Amen baby.
Please, beenfatforlife, there are no fat anorexics. And no, limiting yourself to only 1 dozen donuts is not “mild anorexia”. That said, losing weight is harder than not gaining, so continual blame for what might have been an adverse food supply or temporary negligence might be somewhat unfair
@ Beenfat: Until about 5 years ago I was skinny; I began to gain wait fairly rapidly, 50+ lbs in 3 years, so I dealt with the problem.
I can’t speak to yours, because I don’t know you, but, as Wilson said, it is simply physically impossible to keep/gain weight if your calories are below your usage.
That being said, I admit it’s not easy to lose weight and be healthy, and I believe I recognized how hard it is in the post.
@ McCoy: An indicator does not have to necessarily have to be a perfect one. It’s possible to be fat while not being gluttonous or slothful, but in many, maybe most, one, or both, of those two is the likely culprit.
I agree that losing weight is a long, hard process.
As for self-loathing; I gained weight because I cared so little about myself that I didn’t care to take care of myself. I knew was being shitty to myself, but I didn’t care. When I I realized though, that the reason I hated myself was because I failing to be what I could be, The more I improve the more I like myself.
My condemnation is for those who try to normalize sin and self-loathing.
My sympathies are for those who are genuinely struggling with these troubles.
beenfatforlife: “I did it all, played sports, constantly active, watched my diet, ate healthy”
What do you mean by “watched my diet, ate healthy”? I ask because so-called experts have been feeding us false information with regard to proper diet and healthy eating. I’ve found that when I cut carbohydrates and instead eat protein and fat, I lose weight, even without exercise.
I was not reared with money or family connections. I started on the air before I could drive though I was shy. As a kid, I was the most obese guy in my class of nearly 500 people. Becoming obese again as an adult was like a nightmare. I had worked my whole life to have opportunities here in Los Angeles, and the obesity was putting my future at risk.
@beenfatforlife I CHOSE to lose 86 pounds for the show. Being obese was like misery. It IS sad that people judge us by the appearance of high body fat percentage (or low BFP). So, when the studios gave me knowledge that’s been PROVEN to help others lose the body fat quickly while IMPROVING my health – I did it! It required no medical procedures, no harmful ‘diets’ or alterations, most of the information is free to anyone that has the resources to do some simple Google searches.
If you had the knowledge of HOW to do it… the REALISTIC way to do it while IMPROVING health – Why not lose body fat and build functional health? These resources did not exist then: http://wp.me/p3P5mL-b – The studios gave me similar instructions. That’s how I lost 86 pounds in less than six months in 2009. If anyone is a supposed “genetically predestined to be obese” person… I would be that. Such beliefs, for MOST people… are simply inaccurate beliefs. Like most of my family, I struggled with obesity most of my life. But… no longer.
@S_McCoy The ultimate encouragement is learning that there is greater pleasure in the benefits of living fit than the alternatives. Everything I consume is a CHOICE. Body building would seem to be less fun than watching TV or being online, but once I exchanged body fat for lean, firm, toned muscle, everything changed. Clarity exists.
The ‘enjoyment’ of what ‘entertains’ most people, the ‘pleasure’ of food, drink, etc that is ‘bad’ for the human body… it is simply unnecessary. Sure, it’s takes some effort, but it’s a simple matter of creating (and living) new habits.
They say, “Well I can’t afford to eat the way you do.” Um, that’s hilarious… I spend LESS on food that I did before my habits changed. It is now common knowledge that most of the common foods, at least those served in a typical restaurant or popular grocery store in the U S, might not be the best for human health. Television implies otherwise, but that’s another story. I create stuff that influences through radio, TV and the screen you’re reading this on, but there’s an intentionally positive angle NOT subservient to funding sources, and we all have a choice to consume other programming… or not.
It’s a ‘vain’ world, and I did not make those rules. Popular culture women’s magazines are filled with people with super low body fat percentages. The women editors, for whatever reasons, usually choose the super thin models. It’s sad, but just complaining about it changes nothing. I can fight against this and defend my former body fat percentage… Or, I can continue to focus on living life pursuing the best possible health. This makes me more effective in doing the purposes I know I’m on the planet at this time to do.
It was kind of ‘ok’ to keep the former eating/fitness habits before the knowledge existed. Now, however, HOW to lose body fat and gain drastically improved health… this HOW is available for anyone that wants to do it. I put some links here to resources I have learned from THAT WORK for me. HABITS listed in these resources are habits I now LIVE. It’s had countless positive effects on every aspect of my life. The expansion of influence – doing the dreams I’m most passionate about – made possible because of the improvements that my new health and fitness level have brought to my life.
One last thought… when the studios gave me knowledge that’s now available to anyone that can do a search, I decided to start connecting with people that had actually accomplished what I was accomplishing on my journey to maximum functional health. You would be surprised to know that the people you most wish to contact that seem too far separated from your circle of friends… these people are usually the most accessible. Why? It’s lonely at the top. Everyone is competing to communicate with those that are not ‘the best in the world’ at whatever it is they do.
Find the ones that have DONE what you wanna do. Men like @Equinox ‘s Lucas Varela, Mike Fitch and Matt Berenc LOOK ‘the part’ of ultimate functional health. They’re not so difficult to contact, and they enjoy sharing the TRUTH about how to build the best health! Ya just gotta reach out. For women, let Cassie Shortsleeve teach you about Sally Fitzgibbons. Contact Sarah Robb O’Hagan – she fixed Gatorade as its President, and now she’s living proof of the body fat loss transition in her new role. Then there’s Ray Cronise, the stuff he’s figured out makes it easy for me to maintain low body fat % with one little 15-minute thing I do. When you connect with them by twitter, email or their blogs, tell ’em I told you about ’em. Questions? I’m easy to find.
I played sports regularly throughout highschool–5 days a week of intense practices–to no avail. After highschool, my anorexia was not merely cutting a donut out of my gluttonous intake, like some asshole said, but going for months with very little food. There were days I didn’t eat anything, and only drank coffee, and when I did eat, it was one small meal for the day. I lost weight yes, but I still was quite flabby and had a gut. Later, I tried the low-carb diet. It helped me lose weight sure, but I still had that oversized gut.
Perhaps I need a lifestyle change, but you know what, I go hiking, running, and lift weights. I am basically a fat athlete. I have been fat as far back as I remember. The struggle is starting to tire me. Shame me all you want, but it’s nothing compared to what I say to myself.
My condemnation is for those who try to normalize sin and self-loathing.
Co-sign. I can support someone in his or her struggle with sin, no problem, it happens to all of us, but let’s not pretend we don’t all know the consequences of – well – swallowing it.
I was grateful you linked to the woman who “ducked” in the last lightening round. Filed that one away in my stash of Potentially Important Reference Materials. Thanks.