The New Republic

I'm in Buenos Aires at the moment (not visiting Mark Sanford's mistress, or anyone's mistress for that matter!). I've only been here for a day, and I have seen people with a variety of builds, but I haven't seen a single American-style, very obese porker. Not everyone can be thin, but I think very few people are genetically predisposed to being very obese. At some level, we have to admit that the seriously obese have mostly done it to themselves. Even though it is true that our cultural preference for processed convenience foods is to blame for a lot of our bad eating habits, in the end people are responsible for what they put in their mouths. Not many Americans truly have such limited access to any kind of healthy food that they really don't have a choice. We should not stigmatize people who carry more fat on their bodies than models do. But if you are 50-100 pounds or more above the reasonably healthy weight range, it's probably your own doing.

- JEFF FREY

August 29, 2009 at 4:43pm

I don't see why people addicted to food should be any less stigmatized than other substance abusers. If they want to stop being looked down on then they should see a therapist and get help with whatever psychological block is keeping them from dieting and exercising consistently.

- Simon Greenwood

August 30, 2009 at 12:26am

Sure, I know that individuals are ultimately responsible for taking better care of their bodies. At the same time, I think there are a lot of institutional and cultural, class and other types of barriers that have resulted in this "epidemic" of obesity in this country. Since I am a larger (okay, I'm fat) woman, I often have strangers talk to me like I didn't get enough oxygen at birth. This situation is even more insulting because I am a University of Chicago alum, and I am currently paying for my master's degree with a merit-based scholarship. In fact, I have suffered so much discrimination because of my weight that I am ready to write a book entitled, "Fat Like Me." Still, while I think fat discrimination is bad and based a lot on ignorance, I still don't think it is right for ten year olds to be wearing plus size 22 jeans. Last year I traveled to Argentina and I made it a point to take some notes about the way folks in Buenos Aires eat. I heard that there weren't any fat people in Argentina, and was afraid that I would be arrested for appearing in public. Actually, I suffered none of the fat discrimination that I do here in the states, as people were routinely friendly, curious and polite to me when I was there. When I got back to the states, I made some changes in my life style. First of all, I quit working on weekends. True, I work long hours during the week, but I make it a point to take at least one day off of work. I walk everywhere, and for the most part, I avoid fast and junk food like the plague. After a year of eating mostly locally, and organic, junk food tastes rather awful, and I usually avoid it, (although nothing can compare to having an occassional hot dog and an orange soda from Super Dawg on Devon in Chicago!). I've also taken up the lost art of cooking from scratch, and have taken cooking classes to improve my techniques. Voila, a year later I have lost about 25 pounds seemingly without effort. I have a long way to go to reach my goal, which is to get to the smaller sizes in the plus size stores (there are more clothes available for sale at the size 14-16 range in Lane Bryant than in the 20-24 range) and where I will be in the acceptable weight range for my age. But the changes I made in my lifestyle to effectuate that goal were small ones and undertaken as a way of having fun and taking a different, more "continental" approach to eating. That being said, I don't think I will ever be thin, but I can be less fat. Personally, I think that a huge (no pun intended) part of the obesity problem in this country is that a lot of people do not manage stress well. In the olden days most people smoked and drank hard liquor to relieve their stress. Hasn't anyone made the connection with people substituting eating with smoking? One advantage to being fat is that one person's fat will not give another person cancer. And haven't you noticed that people are thinner in cultures where it is against the law NOT to take six weeks' vacation, and are allowed to smoke in the office? Hello? Why aren't we drawing those types of connections? And could the shrinking of the brain be the result of the chemical imbalances caused by repeated and unrelenting stress of having to work all of the time? My point is, that while there are a lot of things people can do to eat less and exercise more (a pretty standard way of losing weight, and those methods work quite well!), there exists a number of cultural, class and policy barriers that make it difficult, if not impossible to do just those things to actually implement a healthy life style. Thank you.

- mcpelvic

August 30, 2009 at 2:05am

Adding 5 pounds a year is roughly the equivalent of eating an extra 40 calories a day--a saltine cracker. After 10 years, you are 50 pounds overweight. Of course, our parents could have easily done this. Was it that they exercised more? 40 calories a day is just 4 minutes of walking up a steep hill or stairs, or perhaps 12 minutes of walking on flat ground. But even the fat people i know today exercise a pretty fair amount. I'd guess more than their counterparts in the 50's. I'm convinced the reason people are fat today is that it's easy to be fat. 50 years ago, once you hit a certain weight, you were destined for coveralls and moo-moos. The attire was cruel. One day you went to the clothing store, and they had nothing for you. And realized "holy crap, I'm going to be looking like a hillbilly farmer if I don't lose a few". So you lost a few, because there was no way you could go to work wearing what was available to you. It was very powerful feedback cycle. Today we see people purchasing clothing--even chic clothing--while weighing 500 pounds.

- SeattleEngineer

August 31, 2009 at 1:01am

"Adding 5 pounds a year is roughly the equivalent of eating an extra 40 calories a day--a saltine cracker. " I see these sorts of calculations often. Would that it were so simple. Putting fat onto your frame, or taking it off, is not a simple matter of counting nominal calories taken in vs calories burned from some table of exercise equivalents. The form those calories take, the form the exercise takes, and other factors affect metabolism and fat deposition. I personally have to eat like a pigeon to weigh less than 220 lbs (which, because I'm a tall, big framed man makes me overweight, but from from obese), but will stay at 220 almost precisely on a fairly wide range of "reasonable" diets. That's not to say that what we eat, and how much we exercise are unimportant - they clearly are. We eat too much, and too much of the wrong food, and we get far too little routine exercise, but the whole metabolic equation is a lot more complicated than "a saltine a day" less.

- sdemuth

August 31, 2009 at 8:15am