Why “Put Down the Cheesburger” is BS
Warning - I’ll be talking about the point of view of nasty, trolly commenters…
So there’s this woman I was talking to last week.
She and I are pretty much the same height. I am probably 10, maybe 12 pounds heavier than her. We both exercise, I think, very similar amounts… although she does have a job where she is up and about more than my sedentary desk job.
So we have these two people who are both maintaining a similar lifestyle.
And I happened to be talking about what I would typically eat in a day, and her response was… “That would barely last me through lunch”.
Wait… two people of similar build don’t require the same food intake to maintain that similar weight?
Hmmmmm…. now this comes as no shock to me, because I know that different people have different metabolisms, and the fact that even though I am heavier than her, I have to eat about a third LESS than her to maintain my weight, well, it’s just one of those things that JUST IS.
But it got me to thinking about all those people in the comments that I refuse to read and how they are all always all “Put down the cheeseburger, fatty” and telling people how to live their lives.
And it occurs to me, that these people may, in fact, really think that significant, permanent weight loss could be achieved, if only the fat people would stop stuffing their faces… because obviously, the only reason someone would be fat is if they were eating ridiculous amounts of food every day.
And why would they think that?
I suspect it might have something to do with the fact they they, at whatever weight they are at, are able to maintain that weight with a fairly comfortable intake of food. They are not feeling restricted with their intake. They get to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. And sometimes “indulge” in “bad” foods, etc…
So if they can maintain their weight, with what they consider to be a perfectly satisfying amount of food, why couldn’t someone else just eat the same as them? Why, oh, why, would they be DESTROYING our country, just for the sake of being able to stuff their faces with baby flavored donuts?
And the answer, of course, is… “Hey, JackAss, how’d you like to live on what it would take someone else to maintain your weight?” **
Doing a little math here…
The Mayo Clinic handy online calorie calculator tells me that at my age, height and activity level, I should eat 2050 calories a day to maintain my weight.
To this I say… Ha! Ha Ha Ha Ha! and also, Ha!
Maintaining my weight requires only about 80% of that number - around 1600 to 1700 calories a day.*
But there are TONS AND TONS of people out there for whom the 2050 mark is correct, and they go around eating 2050 calories a day, which to me sounds like a pretty decent amount of food, and they maintain their weight with no trouble, and they wonder why other people are so fat, because they are maintaining their weight just fine on 2050 calories a day, so why would other people EAT MORE THAN THAT AND GET SO FAT?
And the answer to that question is… “Hey, Jackass, if I ate 2050 calories a day, I am not sure where my weight would end up, but I can guarantee you it’d be more than you, and you would look at me and wonder why I was so fat and assume it was because of all the cake, EVEN THOUGH I AM EATING EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOU!!”
So let’s just imagine one of these comment trolls for a moment. Let’s say this troll is, 6ft 2in. And, let’s put him in the “normal BMI range at 185 pounds. We’ll make him 35 years old, and, lightly active (the Mayo Clinic defines that as moderate exercise 2 or 3 times a week).***
So our hypothetical guy there, he needs 2550 calories a day to maintain his weight.
I have seen 2500 calorie meal plans… that’s a fair amount of food that guy gets to eat. I’d bet he’s pretty happy with that. Happy enough that he feels pretty justified in thinking that anyone who eats MORE than him is just a disgusting slob who is draining the economy and health care system with his unceasing demands!
But what if our guy suddenly woke up one day to find that he couldn’t maintain his weight any longer at that “normal” amount of intake. What if he, like me, could only eat 80% of that amount. EVERY DAY…. FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE… or else he would gain weight.
I wonder how he would feel about that? Would he be quite so smug and secure about “maintaining his weight”?
If he had been happy consuming 2500 calories a day, would he, I wonder… “Put down the cheeseburger?” or “Back away from the table?” in order to cut out the extra calories?
Or would he think that having to get by on around 2000 calories a day was somewhat unreasonable? Perhaps he would find himself being hungry, even after he got his “limit” of calories. Maybe he would eat a little more, here and there, to keep from feeling unpleasant, or restricted.
Maybe he would even just keep on eating his 2500 calories a day and gain some weight… and maybe he would think that it was, perhaps, nobody else’s damn business if he was gaining weight, because he’s just eating like every other person and for some reason, it’s just not doing the same thing to him as to everyone else.
Sigh.
The problem is, I think, that until that troll wakes up one day and suddenly finds himself having to live on a permanently restricted diet (and, let’s face it, that’s likely not going to happen because biology doesn’t quite work that way)… he is NEVER going to grasp or understand that there are people in the world who could follow him around all day, eat and do exactly what he does, AND WEIGH A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WEIGHT THAN HIM.
It just does not compute, because we have been told “calories in / calories out” for so long, that people forget that the calories out can actually vary, and “your results may not be similar”.
And I just don’t know how to convince people who have this idea. I really don’t.
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* I’m not complaining about this, mind you, it is what it is and I make it work for me.
** this does not include the “I lost weight and you can too” trolls - they are just angry that there are people out there who are not living their own miserable existence. If they were happy with their lifestyle they wouldn’t need to be so angry at other people. (yes, WILD overgeneralization!)
*** yes, I am making the troll male… I know there are female trolls out there too.
Okay, first things first.
Where can I get a baby flavored doughnut?
I found this post particularly relevant as I’ve been reading some weird ass articles/blogs over at HuffPost recently.
One was about a beautiful plus size model gracing the pages of a French fashion magazine and the trolls commenting were bat shit insane rambling on about how the gal could “lose some weight” etc. etc.
Now I have no doubt these posters are blindingly gorgeous and rail thin but the suggestions they had for this spectacular woman were not only incorrect but downright rude.
I tend to think that some of the venom comes from being a mouth breathing lunatic that spends endless hours cooped up in your mom’s basement typing away but I may be oversimplfying here.
Angry hate filled people tend to leave angry hate filled comments.
Dude, I know exactly what article you’re talking about. I have been battling asshats all week in the threads there. Here’s what REALLY pisses me off: HuffPo supposedly has a “no abusive language” comment policy. Yet this thread was CHOCK FULL of ignorant, degrading, abusive language toward the model. I collected a selection and posted them here.
Apparently, abusive language is just fine if it’s directed at fat women.
Peace,
Shannon
I cannot read comments anymore… it just makes me garble scrarlg.e=ajtwiwIOFGVNDFMMCXHGIFA’
UM - INCOHERENT WITH RAGE.
I ended up leaving an otherwise reasonable debate forum when the site owner and lead moderator flat out told me that it is ok to use derogatory or hateful language against fat people because unlike any other discriminated against group, fat people can change if they wanted to.
Yeah, well, short people and tall people can also “change” if they want to - they do surgery for that all the time in Japan, but I don’t hear people saying that it’s a good idea.
In fact, plastic surgery can change almost any group that is singled out for denigration into an “acceptable” specimen of societal beauty, but no one thinks it’s even remotely reasonable to ask people to darken / bleach / cut / snip their way out of the discrimination… no, they rightly insist that all people be treated with simple human dignity. The same goes for fat too.
“…no one thinks it’s even remotely reasonable to ask people to darken / bleach / cut / snip their way out of the discrimination…”
Actually, in some contexts, people do think that’s reasonable. *Sigh.*
But obviously, your point still holds. Western society, we treat weight loss very differently from the way we treat other forms of body modification.
Yes, thats why I left — I just didn’t have the mental stability to stay in a place where the majority of users were very supportive of equal rights for women, minorities, and different sexual orientations… but totally against even the suggestion that just maybe they don’t have the right to treat fat people the way they object to others treating women, minorities, and people who fall under the general umbrella of LGBT.
Seriously? You actually heard from the moderators and that’s what they said? Do you still have the email? Please say you do!
Peace,
Shannon
Was actually a PM on a phpBB based forum that purges inactive accounts after 90 days, and this was about 6 months ago. So even if I had saved it, it would have been purged by now since I never went back after hearing that BS.
Yeah, I’m really, really, REALLY tired of having to debate the whole calories in/calories out thing. Human beings are not machines. Our bodies can be incredibly consistent and efficient for ourselves, but to try and apply this logic across the board to all bodies, all sizes, all shapes is just ridiculous.
Gross analogy alert. It would be like expecting everyone who eats a cheeseburger to crap the same size, shape, color and consistency of a turd. Gross analogy alert ended.
Anyway, cool post.
Peace,
Shannon
Somebody’s ALWAYS gotta bring up poop…
Poop — The tie that binds.
Peace,
Shannon
You provide such a valuable perspective, nocelery. That was really interesting!
I think that this valid perspective is yet more information we need to keep in mind as we move forward towards making fat hatred be recognized for the hatred it is.
Often I think about how is someone went on a racist tirade, they are pretty much shunned by civil society ( mark furman, michael richards etc)
When someone goes on a fat hatred tirade, often there is a chorus of like minded haters that chime in.
So we will continue to marshall our forces for fat equality and I hope to see a major paradigm shift in my lifetime that expands the good and squashes the bad.
I haven’t been alive long enough to actually have first hand knowledge of these things, but according to my parents back when civil rights were just being talked about and just starting out, if a local political or media figure went on a racial tirade the equally hateful types in the community crawled out of the woodwork to loudly support and agree with him
So, a racist tirade didn’t always result in the hateful one being shunned in any way… which gives me hope that as time passes, maybe eventually it won’t be ok to hate anyone for any reason.
exactly!!! we in this community have hope that we can change to status quo. We have hope that we can show the lack of logic, the lack of justice, the lack of facts that support the fat hatred.
it is not going to be easy, but it is not impossible.
Brilliant and so simply put. Everyone on the planet should have to read this.
I had a commenter recently tell me that having to eat 15-20% less than someone else was perfectly normal within any weight range, basically writing it off as a negligible difference. When you weigh 120lbs and that 15% amounts to basically one snack, sure, it seems manageable. But I had to struggle and exercise like mad to maintain 175lbs. If it became diet along at that point, I don’t even know how much less I could have eaten (in the end, I couldn’t maintain). It’s the old, “Well, it’s this way for me, so it must be universal” issue. Egocentric, myopic behavior.
*if it became diet alone (not along)
“When you weigh 120lbs and that 15% amounts to basically one snack, sure, it seems manageable”
It seems manageable - until you realize that it’s also for the rest of your entire life. You can NEVER have that snack again, if you want to live up to the dictates of thediet trolls.
It irritates the crap out of me that people who don’t have to live a “lifestyle change” can so easily prescribe one for others… you are quite right - egocentric and myopic.
Good post. The whole “you must be fat because you eat more then I do” and calories in/calories out crap drives me nuts. As said, people aren’t machines. I know people who are thin as rails who could out eat a linebacker and not gain a pound, yet no one would tell them they should stop overeating!
I eat what I want (usually, the budget may say I can’t have pizza this week, so I have to figure something else out instead) and when, some days I may eat a lot and the next day I would hardly eat anything. I pretty much listen to my body and we get along just fine
I figure in the long run I am nourishing my bod with what it needs and not worry about how many calories I am getting on a daily basis.
I pretty much refuse to read the comments on other sites when there is anything published regarding weight, the migraines a lot of them trigger are not worth the effort
Not sure where you can get actual baby flavored donuts, but I have some items with a baby flavored donut design on them:
http://www.zazzle.com/jeanc_purpleducky*/gifts?cg=196861157701539761
This troll does live on a restricted calorie diet in perpetuity.
I lost 32% of my body weight. If I had stayed at 155 my whole life I would probably be able to sustain a higher calorie diet than I do now. I won’t give it a number because self reporting calorie consumption is inherently problematic, but it is certainly low.
So I guess I can continue to judge?
No. No you can’t.
See, Tom, the issue with your trolling is that we all know now that you aren’t a REAL concern troll - you just like making people mad for fun, and find FA to be a button pushing issue.
So when you judge, it’s not like real judgment - you are just trying to rile us up… do you also poke bees nests with pointy sticks?
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To your point about living on a permanently calorie restricted diet… yes, you do, and I’ve seen a list (I think on the Z chicks blog) of what you typically eat in a day. And I can tell you - even though I ALSO do live on a low cal regimen, I would go slowly crazy and probably kill myself or someone else if I had to live on what you eat - I CERTAINLY would not be capable of sticking to it for as long as you have - which is kinda my point. Just because one person is wired to be able to do something, doesn’t mean that everyone is - or should be required to.
I have a friend who’s husband, while he wouldn’t actively troll like some of the douchebags out there, had absolutely no respect for anyone who was above a “normal” weight range. From the mildly overweight to the Super fat, he subscribed to the “put down the cheeseburger fatty” doctrine.
Then he turned 40, and surprise surprise, his body metabolism changed somewhat at the same time. He went from being a man who could eat a very hearty diet (one that would have me physically sick because it’s too much for me) and not exercise any more than the occasional swim at the beach with his kids without gaining any weight, to a man who gains weight very easily and despite trying to diet and exercise it away, is overweight.
Mr “Put Down the Cheeseburger” has changed his damn tune in a big way over the past few years, let me tell you that. He actually apologised to me for any asshattery he may have subjected me to over the years, because finally he now understands that it’s not about dieting and exercise to be thin.
I have to admit, there has been some smugness on my behalf, because he was always offensive with his bigoted attitudes.
I wish that on all of the “Put down the cheeseburger and ride a bike” brigade.
For the record I don’t think fat people eat cheeseburgers.
I just think they eat X amount of calories of whatever they eat, X being a number physiologically sufficient to maintain their weight.
I suppose it’s possible to eat celery all day and be fat.
You picked an all-celery diet just to make me gag, didn’t you
Honestly guys, why don’t you ban tombrokaw? Just because he doesn’t use insulting phrases doesn’t mean he isn’t insulting us constantly. He comes here to say over and over “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong” “You are wrong”. It does not matter what we say or what we are discussing. He has no interest in learning anything new. Just because he doesn’t actually crap in the punch bowl doesn’t mean he adds anything good to the party.
Obviously, your site your rules, but really, what good do you get out of him?
Hi Trabb’s,
I’m proud of the fact that I have yet to drop the ban hammer on anyone or moderate any comments besides removing Big Liberty’s real name from a comment by Fat Acceptance (another troll, IMO). Other than that, I think it’s important not to intervene in the comments as a matter of trust. My comment policy for FFFs is the same as it is for Atchka! If it’s a pain in the ass for you, just convince four other people to call asshole on him and I’ll strike his comment. If this happens three times, then you get the ban hammer.
I don’t want people to get banned for being irritating. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to comment. So, it’s definitely self-preservation.
Peace,
Shannon
“I don’t want people to get banned for being irritating. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to comment. So, it’s definitely self-preservation.”
haha, I love it Shannon. Freakin hilarious.
Always remember the rule “Do not feed the troll.” They’re the ones that grow with food, not us!
BWAHAHAHAH! Omg, I want “Do Not Feed The Troll” on a t-shirt!!!
Don’t feed them after midnight (hmm…eating at certain times - another fad diet? lol), and don’t get them wet because you’ll trigger their fat hate and insecurities so they transform from a cute little normal person into a fatphobe spewing toxins.
Huh, now that I think of it - Gizmo was a little chubby and those Gremlins were skinny weren’t they? Interesting…Ok I *know* skinny isn’t bad just like fat isn’t bad, but trolls are trolls no matter their size…
I never know what to say in these discussions. Metabolism does have some inexplicable variation, but is also predictable to a large degree. Predictive equations for bmr aren’t perfect, but in studies they are fairly accurate. I absolutely believe that changes in weight come down to energy balance (calories in/calories out), but I don’t believe that means anyone who gains weight or is fat is ‘overeating’ because hunger is very complex and does not correlate perfectly to metabolism. Not to mention that some parts of calories out are either beyond our control (bmr) or not conscious decisions (NEAT.)
But I don’t believe people can be relied on to accurately report their food intake - and that’s anyone of any weight. And I’ve seen so many claims wrt to food intake and weight both in FA and dieting spaces that would require about 90% of the internet to be extreme outliers in how their body processes food - this isn’t you, nocelery, there is a fair amount of evidence that people who’ve lost weight will have a lower metabolism than people of the same weight who were never heavier.* For the most part I try to stay away because I end up sounding like a bunghole.
So on one hand, I feel like a troll. OTOH, I feel like FA needs to get away from its historical insistence that fat people don’t eat more than thinner people…as if eating more is in and of itself wrong or bad. Fat people are using more energy so we need more energy. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.
*Although there has been some interesting research in the past few years that might suggest the problem is at least partially because people who lose weight tend to slightly under eat even after reaching a goal weight and this depressing metabolism somewhat. But I think on the whole the evidence is still that weight loss causes a slowing of metabolism that is more than can be attributed to the loss of body weight.
I’ve also heard that how many calories you burn is related to what your calories come from, what kind of exercise you do (not just duration and intensity, but type), and a host of other bizarro factors.
You seem to know your stuff, so…is it true? If so, that would make it seem extra specially ridiculous to judge whether a person’s behavior was healthy just by one variable: the number of calories they ingest.
Also, you seem like the opposite of a troll to me personally, though obviously it doesn’t really matter, since I am not a mod. I feel like there are a lot of common FA platitudes that don’t really add up. Each of them make sense individually, but there seems to be some inconsistency in the narrative. For example, we hear that fat people don’t, on average, eat more than thin people. (Plausible). But then we also hear that the risks of being fat are dramatically reduced if you control for lifestyle, which implies hat fatties, on average, have less healthful lifestyles. I’m open to the possibility that there’s some statistical magic which makes this all make sense, but I’d really like to see a comprehensive analysis of how it fits together.
Still and all, it’s a whole lot more consistent than the “eat less and exercise more, so you’ll be skinny and boys will like you” narrative that I bought into before finding FA.
Check this out… even if you buy into the “eat a cheeseburger” BS, there’s an interesting new study that says eating a high fat breakfast can actually prevent obesity.
Study compliments of Dr. Sharma: http://www.drsharma.ca/high-fat-breakfast-reduces-obesity-risk.html
Peace,
Shannon
I read this the other day! And then I cried for all the times I skipped breakfast.