Comment on Overweight people more likely to take sick leave, European study finds
GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 months agoWell, I want people to get good mental health, but I also am aware of the risk obesity causes.
So 2 topics, which both matter. Obesity is a dangerous condition.
exocrinous@startrek.website 8 months ago
You started this conversation saying Health At Every Size is bogus and harmful. Now you’re saying both topics are important. I agree. I’m going to assume you’ve changed your mind and now understand the benefits of Health At Every Size at improving people’s health regardless of weight, and also that HAES makes it easier to lose weight if that’s what they also want.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 months ago
No, I’ll be quite clear: being obese and lacking mental healthcare are both harmful. I’ve been consistent on that.
There is not “health at every size”.
What I can extract and appreciate about that movement is that it champions the need to holistically address the many needs of folks with obesity, beyond simple calorie management. I’ve been consistent about that too. I believe every CICO content I’ve made mentioned mental healthcare.
Obesity is a very dangerous condition that should be removed with great urgency. But I acknowledge that CICO alone will likely not result in long term success.
exocrinous@startrek.website 8 months ago
Health is relative. Health isn’t an absolute boundary between healthy and unhealthy, that’s silly. Health is a polydimensional spectrum. If you want to categorise health “objectively”, well then seeing as men live shorter than women, we’d be forced to classify maleness as an illness and put every man in the world on estrogen pills. And that’s ridiculous. No, health isn’t a single standard that’s the same for everyone.
Health isn’t a point, it’s a direction. Like South. South is a direction. I see Americans say all the time that they’re from the south. They mean Texas. But I live in Australia. From my point of view, they’re from the north. But it’s not like they’re lying. In terms of America, they’re from the south. It’s true.
Health is like South. If you’ve lived your entire life overweight with poor health, then getting healthy can mean a lot of different things. If you start jogging once a week and get healthier, well congratulations, you got healthy. It’s relative. It’s unreasonable for you to demand somebody in that situation meet the ideal of human health. If you do that, if you belittle their progress and say the best they’ve done in their life isn’t good enough, you’ll kill their motivation and ruin what little health they’ve achieved.
And if you go around saying there’s no such thing as health at every size, well then I’ll tell you there’s no such thing as men’s health, because being a man is unhealthy. The two statements are equally ridiculous.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Being obese is a version of being without health. Getting rid of excess weight is a critical need.
Acknowledging mental health as a critical component of achieving a health body weight is not accepting being overweight as “ok”. Identifying being overweight as “not ok” does not mean devaluing those with that condition, or making light of their needs.