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.