Daily Discussion Thread: Mon 31 Jul 2023
Daily Discussion Thread: Mon 31 Jul 2023
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CW: Diet culture + medication
One of the things I hate about diet culture (amongst everything) is how there's medication and people go "oh you can also lose weight!". Like... it feels so gross. I was listening to my news thing with Google and I was listening to CNN and they were talking about Ozempic, and how America advertises medication on TV they played one of their ads and it's like "this is for people with diabetes, but it can also help you lose weight!" and it's like so gross. I feel like people with diabetes is trying to just survive the day and not worry about losing weight.
Similar to when I had my psychiatrist appointment to start taking Ritalin, and my psych is like "it's great for adults because you can lose weight, usually for kids we have to watch them just in case, but for adults it's great." And I'm like sitting there, a fat person, just like... ugh. Felt so gross. Like, I just want to be able to make it through the day and get my tasks done, and not procrastinate, I don't care if it makes me lose weight.
Our society has a very messed up view of weight. You get the same sorts of comments about being sick - someone is really sick and it causes them to use weight and you will have a ton of people piping up with "I could do with some of that" type comments. People with severe illnesses get comments about how great they look because they have lost weight.
The other ones that annoys me is that when talking about food we use "healthy" to mean low calorie, and we call a metabolism that uses lots of energy "efficient" (would you call your car efficient because it uses more fuel?). Yes obesity can be a problem, but thin is not inherently healthy, and losing weight can be a very bad medical sign.
The amount of positive comments I've got from certain people when I've been unintentionally losing weight over the last year from stress and inactivity and loss of appetite is really not cool. Nobody seems to believe me when I say it's not a good sign and I am not healthy
hugs
Yes yes yes.
It frustrates me that I can do an hour of workout and eat greens and stuff, but yet people will see me as "unhealthy" yet my mate who can eat like 10 dim sims and 2 large chips from KFC but are still hungry. I love my mate, but it is just... wild, that skinny = healthy and fat = unhealthy. Like yes, of course, being fat isn't always healthy. But you can be healthy at any size and you can be unhealthy at any size. It just makes me so mad and upset that to be considered "healthy" you need to be skinny.
The word diet gets me because that doesn't mean restricted food it means your overall food in take.
I think it's not so much the word itself which bothers me as that we push weight loss as an extreme, short-term endeavour which we do to become "healthy" and then stop. So when people think they need to lose weight they tend to go for extreme calorie reductions, meal replacement shakes, and a complete but short-term change in their eating. What people generally should be doing is making much smaller but permanent changes to their diet and lifestyle.
Which is probably when talking about myself I talk about "The Diet" somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because I am not really "dieting" in that regard, its really just a small part of a change towards a permanently healthier diet and lifestyle.
Yeah exactly. When I say my diet is a little out of whack lately I'm taking about my overall nutrition intake not a restricted "cant eat that" one diet.
Semiplegic tettany has the added benefit of making people shredded from constant barely controllable muscle spasm.
I hate the judgement people lump on us for not being some fucked up influencer / media ideal of beauty and that that pertains to health somehow.
That a psychiatrist passed judgement over your weight when he was treating a neurodivergence (I assume) I find fucking gross too honestly. "Here vunerable person, have my 2 cents worth about your appearance"
For all you people interested in "diet culture" and how society views weight, nutrition, health etc, I very strongly recommend the podcast "Maintenance Phase"
Thank you for that recommendation. I've just been reading some of the transcripts (which I'm happy to see they have, I'd rather read than listen) and it's really interesting.
I LOVE Maintenance Phase. Highly recommend it. I also recommend Fad Camp, similar idea as Maintenance Phase but it's Irish folks. They've covered some similar stuff but there's some interesting stuff in it.