This is a good article, as it doesn’t engage in the scientifically-dubious “healthy-at-any-weight” schlock, but is also compassionate to the obese. Also, I think I read a shorter version of this somewhere.
Questions of aesthetics aside, obesity is bad because it causes disease by, for instance, raising blood pressure and cholesterol levels, stuffing your liver full of fat, blocking your throat so you can’t breathe at night, crushing your joints. Fat people are more likely to get blood clots, gallstones, gout and some cancers – as well as type 2 diabetes, which leads to all manner of medical mayhem. Fat men and women make less money, marry less often and are less educated than the lean. They are more often depressed. In the Framingham Heart Study, which has examined the causes of cardiovascular disease across generations, the very fat lived on average six to seven years less than the lean. The moderately fat lived three years less. If you quit smoking and get fat, you may as well have kept on smoking. These dire facts are not my opinion. They are based on empirical data extracted from large international trials and studies. I wish it were not so. I wish you could get really fat and stay healthy.
Personal experience here. I lost around 25% of my body weight and I feel vastly better. I went from being dead-tired after walking 4-5 miles to walking 6-7 and feeling like I’d done about nothing.
I don’t feel like I am 18 again, but I went from feeling like I was 60 to feeling 30. So fucking worth it.
I know and understand why it’s a reviled phrase, but it worked for me so I like it: that piece of pizza doesn’t taste nearly as good as being skinny feels.
If you make a fat person thin, you are sentencing them to a lifetime of hunger.
So what? Life isn’t fair, as my father frequently reminded me when I was a kid. Everything you want is traded for something else. That is the deal in this universe, and always will be. Crying about it won’t help one little bit.
I know that everyone just can’t buck up and make their body do what they want, but there must be some reason that obesity is so high these days that doesn’t involve the genetic virus conspiracy theory explanation. We should look into the real reasons and do something about those, as I realize most people won’t be able to do what I did.