There is no permanent and safe way to intentionally lose weight. This is true.
And that means that if you want to truly live a fulfilling and meaningful life, you will need to let go of the fantasy of being thin. You will need to do the difficult self-work needed to unlearn your internalized fat phobia. You may also need to learn how to eat normally without restriction and shame. All of this is difficult. But a lifetime of self-hate, restriction, repeated cycles of weight gains and weight losses, and declining health from the damage caused by under-nourishing your body is far far worse.
And I know you are in pain right now, so I am being gentle with you, but I need you to think about what you said in your ask, and think about who you said it to. I am fat and my life is not a cursed existence. It is never okay to say such hateful things about fat people, including yourself. Don’t do it anymore.
What is the evidence supporting my conclusion that there is no permanent and safe way to intentionally lose weight?
Over fifty years of research conclusively demonstrates that virtually everyone who intentionally loses weight by manipulating their eating and exercise habits will regain the weight they lost within three to five years. And the vast majority will actually regain more weight than they lost. [sources]
In fact, the results of a 10-year study of over 275000 people revealed that the annual odds of a fat person attaining a so-called “normal” weight and maintaining that for five years is approximately 1 in 1000. [source]
And those very few people who do maintain a significant weight-loss for more than five years do so by engaging in unhealthy, disordered eating and exercise. Consuming just 1300 calories per day, recording everything you eat, and exercising for one hour per day is not healthy, and in another context, would be considered evidence of an eating disorder rather than behavior worth emulating. [source]
[source]
“Well I lost weight so anyone can!”
Nope. One individual’s experiences do not negate 50 years of scientific research with thousands and thousands of people.
“Just change your *lifestyle* by doing blah blah blah and then anyone can lose weight!”
Nope. Any attempts to intentionally lose weight by manipulating food intake and exercise have the same result. Scientists have tried it all! The result it always the same. Weight regain.
(PS: As stated in my FAQ, weight loss tips and pro-dieting talk are not welcome on my posts. There are many other spaces where such talk it welcome. Post there instead.)
“Actually, 1300 calories per day is totally enough!”
No. A systematic review of research using the doubly-labeled water method to assess people’s energy needs revealed that healthy adults over age 25 need between 2500 and 3000 kilocalories per day on average. People under the age of 25 need about 500 calories more per day than their adult counterparts. People who are bigger than average (including fat people) also need more energy than average to thrive, as do people who are very physically active. [source] [source]
“Buuuut the nutrition guidelines say we only need 2000 kilocalories per day!”
Those guidelines are wrong. They were developed on the basis of faulty science that used self-reports to assess people’s energy intake. And it turns out people habitually underestimate their energy intake by about 25%, most likely to bring their intakes in line with the perceived norms. When energy needs are assessed objectively, the results I described above emerge. [source]
Objective assessment using the doubly-labeled water method demonstrates that adult women with a BMI in the “normal” range require about 2400 kcal per day on average, whereas women with a BMI in the “overweight” range require about 2750 kcal per day on average. However, individual needs also vary by about 400 kcal in either direction depending on height, age, and activity level. So if you are a young, tall, fat, active women, this study suggests that you may require well over 3000 kcals per day to meet your energy needs.
For the Anon asking for sources to support my statement that healthy, weight stable, non-restrictive eaters regularly consume, and need, between 2500 and 3500 calories per day to support their health and well-being.
So the subplot of Holes is that Kate Barlow deals with the politically-sanctioned execution of her black boyfriend—who unlawfully kissed a white woman who was in love with him!!!—by becoming a serial killer who targets racist/sexist white dudes who harassed her, were rejected, then went after her boyfriend as revenge from the depths of the “friend zone”.
“Americans are largely unaware that Mexicans were frequently the targets of lynch mobs, from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, second only to African-Americans in the scale and scope of the crimes. One case, largely overlooked or ignored by American journalists but not by the Mexican government, was that of seven Mexican shepherds hanged by white vigilantes near Corpus Christi, Tex., in late November 1873. […] From 1848 to 1928, mobs murdered thousands of Mexicans, though surviving records allowed us to clearly document only about 547 cases. These lynchings occurred not only in the southwestern states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, but also in states far from the border, like Nebraska and Wyoming.”
“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which — in addition to its nutritional deficits — is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor — especially with children to support and care for — is a perpetual high-wire act.”
““Race is just a social construct” is a retort… from white people who don’t want to talk about black issues anymore. A lot of things in our society are social constructs — money, for example — but the impact they have on our lives, and the rules by which they operate, are very real. I cannot undo the evils of capitalism simply by pretending to be a millionaire.”
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The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black | The Stranger
A better world is on the horizon. Forging it means knowing to fight back. It means finding the point where we surpass our threshold for complacency and realize the world can no longer work as it does, that we must change it and we must act now, for no time greater than now exists to become individuals and communities of action. And though there will be setbacks, the waves of change are ever persistent—not even time can withstand the ebbing past.
