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[–]OrneryStruggle 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

thanks for your patience in explaining this. the one thing you can rely upon with anti-HAES people is that they have absolutely no idea what HAES is or promotes. just another excuse to hate unfortunate people for something that is largely outside of their control and vilify them for actually pursuing an improved life. people getting angry about people following HAES reminds me of TRAs getting angry at detransitioners who have accepted what they cannot change and started making positive changes in their lives. "no, stay miserable and self hating forever!" most people don't even realize how deeply their concern trolling about fat people reflects a deep desire to feel superior to other people rather than any genuine concern for their health or well-being.

[–]jelliknight 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Cheers!

most people don't even realize how deeply their concern trolling about fat people reflects a deep desire to feel superior to other people rather than any genuine concern for their health or well-being.

Very true, I thought I'd educate rather than go straight to pointing that out but it's absolutely true. If you're slim and someone else is fat, it's very easy and appealing to scoff and feel superior, and assume they should just try harder. The reality is that almost no one really likes being fat, and there are plenty of fat people with PhDs, or running businesses, or even running marathons. We collectively spend unimaginable amounts of money every year trying to lose weight over and over. We aren't stupid or lazy or unmotivated. It's just WAAAAY not as simple as it's made out to be.

HAES was a real first step for me actually taking genuinely healthy action instead of repeated weight loss attempts. Many years later I've found that there was a causal chain in my life - I always struggled with cardio because it gave me migraines and I had no self control regarding chocolate. Turns out both of those were caused by an ongoing magnesium deficiency which I could temporarily control with massive (up to 9x RDI) doses of magnesium. Then I eventually went off hormonal birth control for unrelated reasons and my dependence on magnesium disappeared. In my case at least there's a straight line you can draw from hormonal and micronutrient imbalance to weight gain. I can now exercise and control my diet pretty easily so my weight is stable, but over about 4 months of exercising (lifting heavy and cardio) and calorie tracking every day i only lost 2 kilos, which I regained in just a few weeks falling off the wagon (not binging, just not tracking as consistently due to life issues). It's hard as fuck to lose weight the conventional way, even when I enjoy exercise and know how to manage my diet, and it comes back to your 'set point' the moment you stop eating at a deficit (there's science to back this up, for a healthy weight person, losing weight and then eating at "maintenance" calories will result in weight regain. Obese people just follow this same pattern.)

If only I could go back in time and tell myself "Hey, those people telling you "you just need self control" and "everyone hates jogging, you just push through it" don't have a clue what they're talking about. Just stop, try to figure out what the underlying issue making this so hard is, and be as healthy as you can in the meantime." It would've paid off so much more than trying to white knuckle through misery. These days I get on the treadmill and I honestly can't believe how easy it is compared to when hormonal birth control was quietly ruining my health. It FEELS GOOD! It used to make me feel physically sick every single time. I can't even explain to normal weight people how depressing it is to desperately want to be able to run a 5k, be absolutely dedicated to that goal, work on it every day for a year, but every single time you try to jog it's physical torture, everyone else just shrugs and tells you it's normal, and in the end you still can't achieve it. Absolutely crushing. And now I'm trying to make up for 10 years of not being able to do more than 10 minutes of moderate intensity cardio without being ill the entire next day, so progress is slow! But it is happening :)

I'm sort of post-HAES now. I do believe permanent weight loss is possible and can be healthfully attained, but that we as a society really have no idea how to do it. Gut biomes, hormones, the way we produce our food (from nutrient depleted soils and then sterilized) and the way we spend the majority of time sitting and stressed all definitely play big roles. We should take out focus off weight-loss and put it on these root causes. Weight gain is a symptom, not a personal flaw.

It should be obvious to everyone that weight gain is not a personal failing. If it's afflicting the majority of people in a society it's clearly a societal problem.

Thanks for reading my little rant :)

[–]OrneryStruggle 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Very true. I know how easy it is to scoff and feel superior to fat people as a thin person, because this used to be me. I was a fashion model and despite having a borderline eating disorder in an attempt to push myself below a 15 BMI, I had been 'naturally' thin my whole life after a brief stint with binge-eating in my preteens, up to and including my mid 20s. I always thought it would be IMPOSSIBLE to get that fat, all you have to do is eat in moderation and maybe be slightly active, how could people do this to themselves, etc.

Then I got raped and my lean PCOS turned into non-lean PCOS as the trauma triggered my cortisol and insulin to insane levels. I couldn't eat almost at all for years but my bodyweight tripled in a short time. I begged doctors for help but they kept telling me I 'seemed fine' and 'looked fine' and refused to test my hormones, until I was morbidly obese. Due to my endometriosis I was also essentially forced onto low estrogen birth control, which made me gain 50lbs in 2 months when I was already struggling with my weight. Only after I reached cat 3 obesity did they start telling me to eat less and starve myself, which I was already doing, but I did it more resulting in a couple of near-death experiences and further weight gain.

I have a graduate degree in a biomedical field and am a professional research scientist. It's not like I'm stupid. I also have a long history of tolerating near-starvation extremely well and have never had any issues with self control or appetite. I haven't had a sugary drink in decades and I'll eat sweets maybe once a year. But I was devoting every minute of every day to trying to lose weight. I sometimes went 1-2 weeks without eating ANYTHING at all and only drinking water, but at the end of such a fast would lose very little weight which was almost immediately regained after eating one meal. Finally I decided to deal with the root causes of my weight gain - a hormonal illness, PTSD trauma, a shot immune system from years of borderline-anorexia to maintain fashion model measurements into my 20s, and an obsession with losing weight that was making my completely neglect my ACTUAL HEALTH. Sure, I was going to the gym and weightlifting 6-7x a week, and I was eating "healthy" foods, but I wasn't paying any attention at all to my actual well-being and when I coughed up blood routinely from starvation and spit it out while walking down the street to my workplace I actually felt proud of myself that I had enough self control to get to that point.

I have finally lost a significant amount of weight basically effortlessly, without starving myself or ever being hungry, after I've started to address my hormonal issues and my out of control trauma and stress. I doubt I will ever go back to being thin but I am starting to feel like a real living person again, not a walking corpse. Ironically none of my self-hatred relating to my weight had anything to do with being 'entitled to feeling attractive' or angry at people for not being attracted to me - I had plenty of people still openly attracted to me including people who I had dated when I was still model-thin, my close friends didn't make a big deal out of anything, etc. What did make me feel awful was the people constantly implying I was lazy, didn't care about my health, was just too stupid or low on self-control to make changes, etc. It was the torture and stress of family members calling me disgusting names and side-eyeing me if I ever put a single morsel of food into my mouth in their presence. It was knowing that people didn't believe me about the debilitating symptoms of my multiple chronic illnesses and assumed an unhealthy lifestyle was to blame. It was relatives forcing me to push through hikes with a sprained ankle because it would 'make me stronger.' Attractiveness never was the issue for me, people's inhumanity was.

For me the most crushing thing was also that as a lifelong athlete I had to give up the 4 sports I had been doing intensely for years. I had to give up hobbies and fun. Not because I was fat (sure, being fat makes athletics harder but I can do them now and I'm still fat) but because I was ignoring my ACTUAL HEALTH and hoping starving myself would solve the problem.

I agree with you that I don't completely buy permanent weight loss is impossible - I think it is impossible on the modern recommended diet for a lot of people, since we are ignoring real medical science about diet, exercise and obesity in order to keep promoting certain subsidized industries and of course the possibility for the lucky 'naturally thin' to feel smug and sanctimonious. The beauty industry is a racket and so are the diet and food industries, to a large degree. I'm not on board with absolutely everything about the HAES methodology and permanent weight loss is still a goal for me but I needed to put my health REGARDLESS OF SIZE first in order to see any improvement in either health OR weight. Imo it's a big step forward from 'fat people just eat less ha ha.'

[–]jelliknight 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I totally hear everything you're saying. I'm sorry you went through all that. And I just think, how much easier would life have been for you if people had simply acknowledged that weight is complicated? It's the result of a bunch of things, including calories in and out, but also including hormones, sleep, mental health, gut health, micro-nutrient balance and probably a bunch of things we don't even know about yet. The concern trolls delude themselves into thinking they're helping when they're deeply harming people. People being dicks doesn't bother me so much. My main frustrations is that I want something and I can't seem to achieve it. Mumma didn't raise a quitter and goddamn it I want to be athletic, but the gods have deemed i should have the body of the venus of willendorf instead. It's frustrating because everything else I want I work hard and think i through, make a plan and achieve it, but going on 16 years straight of trying and still no success. Luckily, I'm making huge gains in my health and fitness outside of weight so that's something.

permanent weight loss is still a goal for me but I needed to put my health REGARDLESS OF SIZE first in order to see any improvement in either health OR weight.

Yes! Love this!