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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Amazing post, thanks for sharing your experience.

This last point often gets overlooked in out culture. Many people absolutely hate fat people. They despise them with a vitriol usually reserved for heretics or murderers. They keep it under wraps as its not socially acceptable to express these opinions in our present culture safely, but will pounce on any opportunity to lash out at the hated other, who they are superior too. Maybe there is some evolutionary advantage to this.

I used to be one of these people. I lived in the gym and the dojo. I reveled in defeating my opponents in competition. I had a lifetime of good diet and exercise habits, until I didn't. This is the opportunity these drugs offer, a break in the dysfunctional cycle of poor diet to give the body time to be re-trained. Even this is too much for some people though. Fat people, being morally inferior, deserve nothing but suffering forever until they die in misery apparently.

I share the perspective you describe. I know I have an absolutely ravenous appetite but at 6'2" 220lbs with half-assed diet scrutiny but lots of weightlifting and HIIT cardio I'm pretty happy with how I look and what I'm physically capable of at my age. But I also know (and often forget) how easy it is to fall off the wagon. I dislocated a kneecap while giving someone a lapdance (I wish I could say it was worth it but no it fucking wasn't) but it took several months of ineffective physical therapy to find out that I had a complete ACL tear.

Just finding out the news led me to completely give up on all my habits because given how long ACL surgery recovery takes, why bother? My weight ballooned by 15lbs just in the month leading up to the surgery. After the surgery I was stuck on crutches for several weeks and because I was also unemployed at the time, I also had absolutely nothing to do except eat a lot, so I gained another 15lbs on top of that. My surgery recovery took far longer than it needed to, because I'd constantly oscillate between "oh fuck me I don't fit in my clothes anymore, I gotta start cutting NOW" and "oh fuck me I am too fucking exhausted from cutting calories to do any of my physical rehab, and still too debilitated to have the option to go HAM at the gym like I used to. That tension was agonizing to deal with in the moment and eventually resolved with time, but I forget how lucky I am that I have the health and enough positive life circumstances that allow me to turn things around if I need to.

This reminds me of an experience I had. I was on a cycling trip. We were riding all day, every day. I was eating approximately all of the calories, and I saw that it was good. Then one day, I banged up my knee enough that I was going to have to stop riding, potentially for the remainder of the trip. I realized quickly, "Uhhh, damn, my appetite is still yuge, but I just ain't burning that much anymore." Thankfully, I had a pretty deep experience with counting my calories in the past, so I just forced myself to cut back, basically immediately, all the way to where I would have been without all the activity. Also thankfully, I was still spending all my time with a really positive group that I really liked, so my mood was still good, and I was able to just make the switch without too much agony. I'm exceedingly grateful that I wasn't stuck at home by myself or something, because I can imagine the psychological effects wouldn't have been nearly as pleasant.

I think this is perhaps one of the biggest divides between the people who say, "We're not morally judging; we're just saying that this is reality and that you have to find ways to make plans, enforce those plans, and have a proper support system to succeed," and those who think that the first category is simply morally condemning them. Like, no, I feel like most of us genuinely understand that there are strong psychological factors at play. There are strong psychological factors at play when people like, become alcoholics, too. Lots of people can tell stories of how this or that setback led them to the bottle spiral. I get that. But that it doesn't mean there isn't a path out. It doesn't mean that you have zero agency or ability to climb out of the spiral. Nor does it deny the real physiological damage of alcoholism/obesity or the physical effects that can contribute to the spiral. We just want people to succeed. We want them to win. We want them to learn and to overcome. We don't want them to believe the lie that they are totally and completely helpless in the face of some magical force that like, causes some bodies to consume 500cal/day, feel the physical/psychological effects of being in a deep cut, and yet still somehow gain weight. The more that people tell that lie, the more hopeless they will feel, and the worse the psychological spiral will be.

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