Excellent bit of writing—I take GLP1 drugs, they have radically improved my life—my health, but mostly my mental health because I do not spend time hating my body anymore. Dreading what to wear, dreading a photo being taken of me when I’m happy, and only seeing a fat person in the photo. But I also hate that thinness has made me happier. I have daughters, I don’t want them to seek thinness, I don’t want them to hate their bodies, and so taking the GLPs also makes me feel guilty.
100%. Ultimately the drug changed my life for the better. I try to focus on the positive like how it was the first time in my life weight loss wasn’t all consuming and i wasn’t thinking about it all the time. It really unburdened my brain which ultimately has led to more room for joy because it’s allowed room for other things in my life and was such a relief. I really love the way clothes fit on me, I enjoy shopping, my health is better, I have energy i didn’t know I had, and I move better. I’m all for fat joy and hate that we seem to be trending in the opposite direction but at the end of the day for me personally i realized it was something I was never going to be at peace with or find joy in for myself. I feel healthy for the first time in my life and I make better choices (nutrition, exercise) and my lipid panel is excellent now!
It really sucks doesn’t it? I haven’t taken GLP-1s but my mom did after years of being deeply ashamed of her weight and physical disabilities. I myself was fat and lost the weight during a major depressive episode. I am healthier now and my weight is creeping back up to almost fat. And I feel very weird and neurotic about it for a lot of what Ginsburg articulates here. Part of me is terrified of being fat again.
But I like your point about your daughters. The part of me that is holding out is the part that is not centered on “me” as an individual body and is more invested in “me” the social body. As in, yes it is a lot easier to navigate this world as a thin woman, but at the same time I reject the imperative and want better for us. If I have daughters I want them to be funny awesome beautiful fat girls like Meg Stalter and Drew Afuelo and Nicola Coughlin, not Ariana Grande. It’s hard to keep that up in the face of our cultural backslide, but maybe more important than ever. Fat joy as resistance.
I feel this way about my ADHD medication. Ideally society would be more accommodating to people with disabilities and being neurodivergent would be better understood by the general public. But it's not, and it makes my life much easier to take my medication and better be able to conform to what people expect of me.
But I sometime feel a bit conflicted about choosing to conform rather than pushing back against and questioning why certain norms are inforced, who that actually serves and how that punishes people who are outside those norms. But pushing back constantly is also exhausting and I'm just one individual who is not going to change the whole system, so I compromise.
I mean for me I focus on the fact that I had genuine health problems due to the weight, like high cholesterol, fatty liver, and gallbladder polyps. I really find it hard to believe that some people can be at an obese weight without it coming w some health problems. Even tho I subscribe to body positivity and still do, because I thought I was cute when I was fat too, what’s the point of staying fat just to prove some social point when it’s hurting me / my longevity? Isn’t that just living for some arbitrary social standard too?
This is a good point but I think ideally people should be able to weigh up the impacts on their health of staying fat vs weightloss or weight loss drugs without all the social shame around choosing to stay fat.
Like for some people just accepting being fat might be better for their health than constant yo-yo dieting and disorded eating and mental anguish. Or a foodie might prefer being slightly overweight rather than loosing the joy they get from eating that some people report on GLP-1 drugs. People do all sorts of things that are dangerous or not ideal for their health but have other benifits like skiing, drinking wine, smoking weed, tanning etc. and they aren't socially punished or shamed nearly to the same extent as fat people.
I also agree that there are negative health impacts to being fat but there are also some health impacts of being fat that are due to social discrimination against fat people rather than being fat itself.
Anyway basically my point is it would be nice if we could just weigh up what the risk/rewards or personal benifits were around weight loss for each individual without all the moralising.
Right, I mean I see what you’re saying, like it should be a morally neutral and personal decision. But it seems like OP and a lot these articles recently are fostering a kind of shame around this medicine, and posturing as if by choosing not to take it, they’re “rejecting the imperative and want better for all of us.” The article literally says they know better politically, not from a health perspective, and now they’ve gotten all twisted up and guilty about taking it lol. And I really don’t think that’s right either, like I’m somehow playing into diet culture and setting back all women and betraying actresses I love like Nicola Coughlin by choosing to prioritize my health and lose weight through this medicine. That’s super moralizing too. It should be a personal decision for each person.
(And also at the same time I did want to encourage OP to not think of that way, like not as a moralizing decision. That’s why I commented. She speaks almost as if she’s martyring herself by not taking this medicine, but that’s just like… not needed… if she wants to take it, she should. It’s not gonna make people think Nicola’s not beautiful or hate all fat people? Like if someone did, that’s because they had those ideas to begin with lol.)
I understand that it's hard for people who have struggled with their weight, diet culture and body shaming their whole lives to untangle all of that though. I think that's what this article is exploring albeit a bit clumsily. But hey it's starting some good discussion!
And yeah , I also see that in my entourage that some people have this negative kneejerk reaction to GLP-1s because they feel it's going to be used to justify more discrimination and shame against fat people. Which is fair tbh. There is kind of this thing around them like "well now you have no more excuses to be gross and fat because you can just take this drug". But the drug itself is just a tool and morally neutral imho.
I’d be curious what you think about how drew, Nicola, and Meg all seem to have lost weight since the first became famous? There don’t seem to be many famous “fat” girls anymore. They all ultimately lose weight.
You speak of the differences between the individual body and social body, which I think is really interesting, but to me only in the sense that we should reject the idea of a “social” body, which I think is they very thing that has been imposed on us by the patriarchal structure! Like we’re and should be politically active people, but our bodies themselves should not be politicized? We’re social but that means actions to and for one another, not how our bodies are viewed or structured. Our bodies belong to us. We must each make decisions the best according to our health and personal history. I mean how many times have we heard that, oh you’re setting all women back, when we choose to wear something revealing or put on heavy makeup? When we get or don’t get abortions? That’s a personal medical decision too but has frequently been framed as, do you want to affect the young women around you / your daughters into thinking abortions are okay? Do you think men consider how their bodies impacts on how all men are viewed or toxic masculinity when they go to the gym or take testosterone (which just like GLP can have a medical purpose or be severely abused)? I think we, when we’re a protected class / minority, often have a tendency to take on the idea that we represent and reflect upon ALL of our people when we do something, and that’s just not true and must be rejected! (Similar to the idea of the model minority.) We have to be free to live as individual people without that pressure! It is simply not fair to view other women that way or treat yourself this way.
I am fat now and have the experience of having a fat mother who had weight loss surgery when I was a child. I can’t speak for your daughters, but it had a huge impact on me.
Oh man this hit home, I had wls when my daughter was 3. Do you have any tips or advice on what I can do to help her have a good relationship with her body in the future?
I think it’s much worse to treat women’s bodies as inherently political or social than as just neutral lol. I was fat and I didn’t hate my body, I thought I was really cute and took a lot of photos lol, but I had to lose weight for my health and did it through this medicine. You can just literally teach your daughters to love their bodies whatever they look like at any point and treat any medical decision as just medical, and do NOT feel guilty about taking the medicine, because that’s also societal pressure just on the opposite direction? Like what, you’re gonna keep yourself unhealthy on purpose, just cause you’re worried about playing into societal pressure? How’s that different from fat shaming?
Her sister having 11% body fat while eating 3,600 calories a day seems really odd to me. First off how does she know how many calories her sister eats and second isn't 11% body fat like extremely lean like body builder preparing for competition lean and borderline no longer able to susstaionn ones menstrual cycle lean for most women? Unless her sister is really into body building or long distance running those numbers seem doubtful to me.
It's in the 4th paragraph down: "My sister, on the other hand, has always had extremely low (11 percent) body fat and eats 3,600 calories a day—1,200 of which are usually, say, Gushers—but instead of giving her the “eat less and slower” look in front of family friends at the dinner table, humiliating her as they did me, they would just laugh."
Yeah 11% on a woman has to be a misunderstanding of what that actually looks like. The Victoria’s Secret model look is around 15-20%, 11% is “loss of normal hormonal function” lean.
I’ve been fat my whole life. In 2019 I was on weight loss kick and lost about 60lbs. Pandemic happens, we do lock down, I hurt my ankle, and slowly but surely the weight starts to come back. That was when I noticed I started to vanish in people’s eyes. That realization that I was more or less being dehumanized as I gained weight was the worst thing I ever could’ve done for my mental health. Low key I wish I hadn’t lost it and went hard on feeling physically good versus chasing numbers on a scale. I say all this to say that I’ve told myself I’ll give Glp-1s an arms distance for a number of years because I want to see how it impacts people. I’ve heard great things re food noise and energy but I’m also hearing about pancreatitis and stomach problems. Plus with the rise of the current admin, I’d rather be fat and strong rather than smaller and weaker. I don’t blame anyone for using them, especially if they grew up in bigger bodies because the world does treat you different. I just want them to be okay if they end up gaining that weight back bc it seems inevitable if one stops taking the drug.
Life long fat person down to “overweight” thanks to glp1.
And like I agree with not being skinny and weak as fascism rises, buuuut… I can run now and I figure that’s better for my survival than swinging if we’re being honest.
I find it confusing that the author's ideology conflicts with her lived experience and she maintains her ideology.
When I was growing up and finding validation in certain ideologies, specifically feminism, it was because they helped me understand my lived experience. They validated thoughts and feelings I'd had.
This divorcing of ideology from reality is strange to me. I agree that feminism, for example, is an ideology but it is one that explains my reality.
If her ideology didn't validate her experience, her reality, isn't that a sign that it had a logical flaw?
We sometimes outgrow beliefs we had when young but she still persists in maintaining her cognitive dissonance in the end, which I find perplexing.
I don't really see how it's logically inconsistent? Ideological she agrees that we should accept fat bodies and there's nothing inherently wrong or unattractive about being fat. However society does punish people who are fat, so being skinny makes her life easier. She would like to be the type of person who can hold strong against social pressure when she believes something is right, but ultimately she caves and feels conflicted about it.
"I couldn’t think my way to feeling sexy the way all of the think pieces in women’s magazines told me I could or should be able to do"
She admits here that fat acceptance was never true for her personally. Why believe an ideology that isn't true for you?
"But the idea that thinness has improved my ability to get what I want from the world has been empirically reinforced not only by a pretty significant body of evidence, but also by my experience as a young woman—a conclusion too painful for any choice-feminist body positivity to override."
It's painful because she's experiencing cognitive dissonance. What she wants is different than what her ideology has told her to want.
"I do not currently have the power to resolve the fact that my intellectual understanding of what is good and right and available to me conflicts with what my lived emotional experience tells me about what I can and should want and have: to like myself, to feel desired, and to not have to worry about my weight, a freedom with which I had not been acquainted for my entire life"
Cognitive dissonance in a nutshell.
"Instead, I have internalized something of a cultural hierarchy...At the bottom are the people like me—who now number about one in eight Americans—who use these drugs to lose weight"
This is so sad. She hates herself, and others, for taking this drug.
"This discourse is complicated by the fact that opposing GLP-1s requires a kind of collective agreement to pretend that fatness has no bearing on how the world treats people, which of course isn’t true."
She admits that fat acceptance advocates are not being fully honest. Though, from what I have read, they do rail against how the world treats fat people so I think what she's actually referring to here is the argument that weight has no bearing on attraction, which is something I do see fat liberationists argue.
"The truth is that I do like myself more now."
This is her truth at the end of the day. I suppose if she feels like she's succumbing to society's pressure, I could see her being conflicted. Is it analogous to getting a nose job to fit in? But another possibility is that she just likes how she looks and feels at a "healthier" weight and there is nothing wrong or surprising about that, imo.
Hmm I think she gets two ideas kind of mixed up to be honest.
One is that fatness is not inherently bad or ugly. She believes that. The other it's that being fat doesn't make your life harder. She wants to believe that and thinks that's what the body positive movement is trying to say (I don't think it is). The second part is the thing she's having trouble squaring with her lived experience.
I think it's correct that it would be silly of her to keep trying to convince herself that she could have just thought her way into accepting herself fat person and thereby not experienced the negative social and emotional impacts of being a fat person in our current society. I think that's what she's trying to work through and she feels bad that she's not able to push back against social stigma against fat people by being a happy fat person.
However, it's possible to both believe that there's nothing wrong or ugly about being fat, while also knowing life is harder when you're a fat person and choosing to lose weight because of that.
In the comment you're replying to I don't take any stance on whether it's true or not. I'm just stating that it's not contradictory to believe that there isn't anything inherently wrong or unattractive about being fat and wanting to lose weight because it makes your life easier.
If you want my personal opinion I think that we're way too moralistic and judgmental about people being fat, and there isn't anything morally wrong with being fat. I also think many people being over weight is more of a social and structural issue than an individual choice one.
But I also think that being over weight does have negative health impacts and that most people who are overweight could benefit from losing weight if they can do it in a safe and healthy way. Medication can help with that.
Is there anything inherently unattractive about being overweight? I don't know. I personality think there are some broad general things that make someone attractive or not (i.e. having a more symmetrical face, looking youthful) but those are generalisations and outside of that attractiveness is extremely subjective.
If the vast majority of people find something unattractive it is, for all practical purposes. She's experiencing that reality and still rejecting it because of ideology.
That's certainly one way of looking at it. 99 people out of 100 find someone unattractive but for 1 person that person is exactly their type and they're extremely into them, is that person "objectively" unattractive. Hmm..
Also, It just seems odd to me to base how attractive someone is on majority consensus. I think given the option between dating someone who is their type and dating someone that a larger majority of people find attractive, most people would prefer to go into with the person who is more their type.
I know that at least in my friendship group nobody ever agrees about who we find attractive and a lot of the time when I point out someone I think is objectively attractive, my friends disagree with me or are confused.
Are you conflicted over who finds the morbidly obese blob person attractive, or are you conflicted over who likes red hair and who prefers Asian women? The difference is about how universal the reaction is. It's way beyond simple preference.
Well the author of this article was never morbidly obese to begin with and were talking about her experience. I think is pretty within normal range of preference to prefer chubby or fat women.
Maybe and so what? Most women like taller men. I prefer my partner to be the same height as me, so I don't care that taller men are "objectively" more attractive or whatever. Is my partner less "objectively" attractive because he's shorter than other men? It doesn't matter to me and I don't think it should matter to him either.
I just think attractiveness is mostly subjective and plenty of people find fat people attractive. The author even says plenty of men still went after her when she was fat.
You think it's mostly objective and fat people are inherently less attractive, I don't think I'm going to convince you otherwise. I am happy to agree to disagree.
Ignoring large population level truths in what is attractive is just ignoring reality. You can find some weirdo who's into anything. That's meaningless.
Thank you for sharing. I personally don’t find the author’s perspective perplexing because to me, it is possible to know and accept something on an intellectual level, but still struggle to accept it on an emotional level.
As an example, someone can be a intersectional feminist and still have internalized misogyny, ableism and/or fatphobia.
Seriously. Ideologies are just frameworks that explain the world in concrete terms. Reality can't be wrong, so if it conflicts with your ideology, then your ideology is wrong and needs to change. It's not morally inconsistent to update your beliefs when new information comes to light. It's disappointing to see that happening here.
The people I know who are on GLP-1s are so much happier than they were before. Weight loss is good, but less food noise just sounds like an incredible boost to their mental health. They're not fighting their bodies all the time, and they're more aware of how the quantity of what they're eating is affecting them. Fuck body size, I want that mental peace for them.
So often the most stressful time of the day was leaving work, picking up kids, cooking dinner and bedtime. Chaotic for most families, right?
But I suddenly felt calm during this time. I wasn’t starving. Sure I was hungry but it wasn’t like I was a hangry animal barely stuffed in an executive function human suit. That is until a cup is spilled or a tantrum over veggies happened and some fangs would be bared.
I could calmly get through the routine and kids to get to bed and wait to make a separate adult dinner where foods touch and/or have a sauce. 😅
The negative self talk I used to struggle with is fully gone. When I exercise, I actually enjoy it and no longer see it as “punishment” for eating too much. No more shame spirals after eating. No more hanger or sugar dumps. Aches and pains are gone. Sleep quality has improved, along with my blood pressure. I haven’t even lost that much weight compared to others, and I literally don’t care. I used to think about my weight CONSTANTLY. I feel so much better regardless.
I've lost 70 lbs without medication or surgery, and I think I'm at the weight my body wants to be at. When I restrict calories further than I am at the moment I start feeling weak and tired, which tells me I'm probably not eating too much on the whole. My understanding is GLP1s mostly help reduce the desire to eat, which if that's the case won't I just feel not hungry and like death warmed over all the time?
I think I also have a touch of ARFID where I literally will starve rather than eat something I don't want to eat, the desire part is really important to getting enough calories. Its scary to think about messing with that.
When it comes to hunger cues, those who take GLP-1s will generally tell you that they mostly reduce “food noise”, not hunger itself. Food noise is a sort of compulsive, ever-present thought about food that rarely goes away, even when you’re full and have no desire to actually eat anything else. You could be completely stuffed from the best meal of your life, and your brain will still say “okay, now what are we eating later? And then what are we getting for groceries this weekend? Oh, did we ever try that new Thai place?”
They can certainly suppress hunger, too, especially when adjusting to higher doses — but that tends to go away. Most users will tell you that your dose is too high if your natural hunger cures go away for more than a week or two.
Huh, I could be wrong but for me that really only happens when I'm like actually hungry - stomach rumbling. Otherwise I'm like meh I could eat something but I am pretty disinterested.
No, GLP1s are so, so much more than just reducing desire to eat. They change metabolic pathways on a cellular level. There are studies of patients who didn’t change calorie intake and still lost weight
You shouldn’t use the GLP-1’s to just not feel hungry and not eat. Some people do and develop terrible side effects. It reduces food noise more than appetite, for me I use it so I can pause and make the healthy choice not just rush to the first thing I crave. I work with a nutritionist and I’m losing very slowly to do so in a healthy way and so I reduce the chances of loose skin.
ETA: I had concerns about losing the joy in eating something good before I started. I want to enjoy what I eat and I didn’t want food aversion. Happy to say that’s never happened to me in 7 months of using my GLP-1
Reading comprehension: They said reducing food intake makes them feel like death, and thus they’re concerned the appetite loss from a GLP-1 would just make them feel that bad all the time.
I think the recent uptick in these weird, angst filled narratives surrounding GLP-1s by content contributors are causing more harm than good. The theme that there is something shameful about it does a great disservice to the seemingly näive and impressionable readers. Nobody should be influenced by someone else’s internal dialogue-particularly some of these misguided ones. The drugs help a lot of people in various different ways-only one of which is weight loss.
There is zero shame around using medication to improve your health and losing unnecessary weight is beneficial to most overweight peoples well-being. It’s a conversation to be held with your doctor who unsurprisingly, has “ done the research and understands the actual science and studies” and can give accurate medical advice.
That’s what you pay them for.
This idea that weight loss meds are as shameful is absurd. We don’t say that someone with cancer is shameful for using chemotherapy or amputees are weak for needing pain management or diabetes are using up the supply of GLP-1s that fat people need when they can use plain old cheap insulin.
Whatever tool is used to better ones health should be celebrated.
TL:DR. There is no shame. Have some critical thinking. Lose the weight for your health. Stop weaponizing politics and stop fearmongering. Then touch grass.
Nobody shames cancer patients or yells at them on the street. Nobody glares at cancer patients on airplanes. Nobody refuses to treat cancer patients on the basis of them having cancer.
Obesity is a result of complex medical and societal conditions. What we classify as obese is based wholly on outdated measures designed only on white male bodies. Treating obesity as only a medical condition without taking into account the real harm of shame and stigma associated with fatness is a shortsighted and harmful approach. GLP-1 drugs DO NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE. Unlearning hatred of fat people is equally if not more important than pharmaceutical remedies.
That’s why this is so shocking to me. Tbh Metformin is helpful but it’s still used for T2 diabetes. They hand that out to so many PCOS/PMOS women. It’s weird that women with insulin resistance cannot get this drug and so many other women are on it.
I am definitely in the boat where a GLP-1 could help me since I have PCOS/PMOS and endometriosis since it helps with inflammation. I am overweight but not obese, I’m probably 30-40lbs above my ideal weight but I am happy with how I look. I’ve been trying to get pregnant for years so I can’t take a GLP-1 so my life is on hold.
tikitay27 | 15 hours ago
Excellent bit of writing—I take GLP1 drugs, they have radically improved my life—my health, but mostly my mental health because I do not spend time hating my body anymore. Dreading what to wear, dreading a photo being taken of me when I’m happy, and only seeing a fat person in the photo. But I also hate that thinness has made me happier. I have daughters, I don’t want them to seek thinness, I don’t want them to hate their bodies, and so taking the GLPs also makes me feel guilty.
myggdddd | 9 hours ago
100%. Ultimately the drug changed my life for the better. I try to focus on the positive like how it was the first time in my life weight loss wasn’t all consuming and i wasn’t thinking about it all the time. It really unburdened my brain which ultimately has led to more room for joy because it’s allowed room for other things in my life and was such a relief. I really love the way clothes fit on me, I enjoy shopping, my health is better, I have energy i didn’t know I had, and I move better. I’m all for fat joy and hate that we seem to be trending in the opposite direction but at the end of the day for me personally i realized it was something I was never going to be at peace with or find joy in for myself. I feel healthy for the first time in my life and I make better choices (nutrition, exercise) and my lipid panel is excellent now!
[OP] boomballoonmachine | 14 hours ago
It really sucks doesn’t it? I haven’t taken GLP-1s but my mom did after years of being deeply ashamed of her weight and physical disabilities. I myself was fat and lost the weight during a major depressive episode. I am healthier now and my weight is creeping back up to almost fat. And I feel very weird and neurotic about it for a lot of what Ginsburg articulates here. Part of me is terrified of being fat again.
But I like your point about your daughters. The part of me that is holding out is the part that is not centered on “me” as an individual body and is more invested in “me” the social body. As in, yes it is a lot easier to navigate this world as a thin woman, but at the same time I reject the imperative and want better for us. If I have daughters I want them to be funny awesome beautiful fat girls like Meg Stalter and Drew Afuelo and Nicola Coughlin, not Ariana Grande. It’s hard to keep that up in the face of our cultural backslide, but maybe more important than ever. Fat joy as resistance.
luvbutts | 8 hours ago
I feel this way about my ADHD medication. Ideally society would be more accommodating to people with disabilities and being neurodivergent would be better understood by the general public. But it's not, and it makes my life much easier to take my medication and better be able to conform to what people expect of me.
But I sometime feel a bit conflicted about choosing to conform rather than pushing back against and questioning why certain norms are inforced, who that actually serves and how that punishes people who are outside those norms. But pushing back constantly is also exhausting and I'm just one individual who is not going to change the whole system, so I compromise.
zh_13 | 7 hours ago
I mean for me I focus on the fact that I had genuine health problems due to the weight, like high cholesterol, fatty liver, and gallbladder polyps. I really find it hard to believe that some people can be at an obese weight without it coming w some health problems. Even tho I subscribe to body positivity and still do, because I thought I was cute when I was fat too, what’s the point of staying fat just to prove some social point when it’s hurting me / my longevity? Isn’t that just living for some arbitrary social standard too?
luvbutts | 7 hours ago
This is a good point but I think ideally people should be able to weigh up the impacts on their health of staying fat vs weightloss or weight loss drugs without all the social shame around choosing to stay fat.
Like for some people just accepting being fat might be better for their health than constant yo-yo dieting and disorded eating and mental anguish. Or a foodie might prefer being slightly overweight rather than loosing the joy they get from eating that some people report on GLP-1 drugs. People do all sorts of things that are dangerous or not ideal for their health but have other benifits like skiing, drinking wine, smoking weed, tanning etc. and they aren't socially punished or shamed nearly to the same extent as fat people.
I also agree that there are negative health impacts to being fat but there are also some health impacts of being fat that are due to social discrimination against fat people rather than being fat itself.
Anyway basically my point is it would be nice if we could just weigh up what the risk/rewards or personal benifits were around weight loss for each individual without all the moralising.
zh_13 | 6 hours ago
Right, I mean I see what you’re saying, like it should be a morally neutral and personal decision. But it seems like OP and a lot these articles recently are fostering a kind of shame around this medicine, and posturing as if by choosing not to take it, they’re “rejecting the imperative and want better for all of us.” The article literally says they know better politically, not from a health perspective, and now they’ve gotten all twisted up and guilty about taking it lol. And I really don’t think that’s right either, like I’m somehow playing into diet culture and setting back all women and betraying actresses I love like Nicola Coughlin by choosing to prioritize my health and lose weight through this medicine. That’s super moralizing too. It should be a personal decision for each person.
(And also at the same time I did want to encourage OP to not think of that way, like not as a moralizing decision. That’s why I commented. She speaks almost as if she’s martyring herself by not taking this medicine, but that’s just like… not needed… if she wants to take it, she should. It’s not gonna make people think Nicola’s not beautiful or hate all fat people? Like if someone did, that’s because they had those ideas to begin with lol.)
luvbutts | 5 hours ago
I think we agree then!
I understand that it's hard for people who have struggled with their weight, diet culture and body shaming their whole lives to untangle all of that though. I think that's what this article is exploring albeit a bit clumsily. But hey it's starting some good discussion!
And yeah , I also see that in my entourage that some people have this negative kneejerk reaction to GLP-1s because they feel it's going to be used to justify more discrimination and shame against fat people. Which is fair tbh. There is kind of this thing around them like "well now you have no more excuses to be gross and fat because you can just take this drug". But the drug itself is just a tool and morally neutral imho.
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
Yes and I think a lot of the authors perspective is due to being 24.
I felt that way fat at 24.
My knees, my lab work, my fatigue at age 40 did not.
Narwhals4Lyf | 13 hours ago
This comment resonated with me so much. Fat joy is resistance and that’s something I need to remind myself.
myggdddd | 9 hours ago
I’d be curious what you think about how drew, Nicola, and Meg all seem to have lost weight since the first became famous? There don’t seem to be many famous “fat” girls anymore. They all ultimately lose weight.
zh_13 | 5 hours ago
You speak of the differences between the individual body and social body, which I think is really interesting, but to me only in the sense that we should reject the idea of a “social” body, which I think is they very thing that has been imposed on us by the patriarchal structure! Like we’re and should be politically active people, but our bodies themselves should not be politicized? We’re social but that means actions to and for one another, not how our bodies are viewed or structured. Our bodies belong to us. We must each make decisions the best according to our health and personal history. I mean how many times have we heard that, oh you’re setting all women back, when we choose to wear something revealing or put on heavy makeup? When we get or don’t get abortions? That’s a personal medical decision too but has frequently been framed as, do you want to affect the young women around you / your daughters into thinking abortions are okay? Do you think men consider how their bodies impacts on how all men are viewed or toxic masculinity when they go to the gym or take testosterone (which just like GLP can have a medical purpose or be severely abused)? I think we, when we’re a protected class / minority, often have a tendency to take on the idea that we represent and reflect upon ALL of our people when we do something, and that’s just not true and must be rejected! (Similar to the idea of the model minority.) We have to be free to live as individual people without that pressure! It is simply not fair to view other women that way or treat yourself this way.
salomeomelas | 12 hours ago
I am fat now and have the experience of having a fat mother who had weight loss surgery when I was a child. I can’t speak for your daughters, but it had a huge impact on me.
_KingMoonracer | 12 hours ago
Oh man this hit home, I had wls when my daughter was 3. Do you have any tips or advice on what I can do to help her have a good relationship with her body in the future?
zh_13 | 6 hours ago
I think it’s much worse to treat women’s bodies as inherently political or social than as just neutral lol. I was fat and I didn’t hate my body, I thought I was really cute and took a lot of photos lol, but I had to lose weight for my health and did it through this medicine. You can just literally teach your daughters to love their bodies whatever they look like at any point and treat any medical decision as just medical, and do NOT feel guilty about taking the medicine, because that’s also societal pressure just on the opposite direction? Like what, you’re gonna keep yourself unhealthy on purpose, just cause you’re worried about playing into societal pressure? How’s that different from fat shaming?
marcnerd | 5 hours ago
Wow, I could’ve written this myself. Every word. ❤️
partyorca | 4 hours ago
Your daughters aren’t seeing thinness. They’re seeing a happier parent, and that’s all that matters.
SubatomicFarticles | 3 hours ago
Thinness isn’t inherently bad, either. There’s a difference between being relatively thin and being extremely skinny.
bokehtoast | 7 hours ago
Your body knows that your love is conditional too
Athrynne | 8 hours ago
Archive link: https://archive.is/PMJqB
luvbutts | 8 hours ago
Her sister having 11% body fat while eating 3,600 calories a day seems really odd to me. First off how does she know how many calories her sister eats and second isn't 11% body fat like extremely lean like body builder preparing for competition lean and borderline no longer able to susstaionn ones menstrual cycle lean for most women? Unless her sister is really into body building or long distance running those numbers seem doubtful to me.
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
I read the archive version and these specific details weren’t mentioned?
dr_sassypants | 35 minutes ago
It's in the 4th paragraph down: "My sister, on the other hand, has always had extremely low (11 percent) body fat and eats 3,600 calories a day—1,200 of which are usually, say, Gushers—but instead of giving her the “eat less and slower” look in front of family friends at the dinner table, humiliating her as they did me, they would just laugh."
omglollerskates | 57 minutes ago
Yeah 11% on a woman has to be a misunderstanding of what that actually looks like. The Victoria’s Secret model look is around 15-20%, 11% is “loss of normal hormonal function” lean.
mzdameaner | 5 hours ago
I’ve been fat my whole life. In 2019 I was on weight loss kick and lost about 60lbs. Pandemic happens, we do lock down, I hurt my ankle, and slowly but surely the weight starts to come back. That was when I noticed I started to vanish in people’s eyes. That realization that I was more or less being dehumanized as I gained weight was the worst thing I ever could’ve done for my mental health. Low key I wish I hadn’t lost it and went hard on feeling physically good versus chasing numbers on a scale. I say all this to say that I’ve told myself I’ll give Glp-1s an arms distance for a number of years because I want to see how it impacts people. I’ve heard great things re food noise and energy but I’m also hearing about pancreatitis and stomach problems. Plus with the rise of the current admin, I’d rather be fat and strong rather than smaller and weaker. I don’t blame anyone for using them, especially if they grew up in bigger bodies because the world does treat you different. I just want them to be okay if they end up gaining that weight back bc it seems inevitable if one stops taking the drug.
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
Life long fat person down to “overweight” thanks to glp1.
And like I agree with not being skinny and weak as fascism rises, buuuut… I can run now and I figure that’s better for my survival than swinging if we’re being honest.
Armlegx218 | 4 hours ago
Try beans. They can be delicious and they're dirt cheap. They fill you up and are protein rich.
BlairClemens3 | 12 hours ago
I find it confusing that the author's ideology conflicts with her lived experience and she maintains her ideology.
When I was growing up and finding validation in certain ideologies, specifically feminism, it was because they helped me understand my lived experience. They validated thoughts and feelings I'd had.
This divorcing of ideology from reality is strange to me. I agree that feminism, for example, is an ideology but it is one that explains my reality.
If her ideology didn't validate her experience, her reality, isn't that a sign that it had a logical flaw?
We sometimes outgrow beliefs we had when young but she still persists in maintaining her cognitive dissonance in the end, which I find perplexing.
luvbutts | 7 hours ago
I don't really see how it's logically inconsistent? Ideological she agrees that we should accept fat bodies and there's nothing inherently wrong or unattractive about being fat. However society does punish people who are fat, so being skinny makes her life easier. She would like to be the type of person who can hold strong against social pressure when she believes something is right, but ultimately she caves and feels conflicted about it.
BlairClemens3 | 6 hours ago
"I couldn’t think my way to feeling sexy the way all of the think pieces in women’s magazines told me I could or should be able to do"
She admits here that fat acceptance was never true for her personally. Why believe an ideology that isn't true for you?
"But the idea that thinness has improved my ability to get what I want from the world has been empirically reinforced not only by a pretty significant body of evidence, but also by my experience as a young woman—a conclusion too painful for any choice-feminist body positivity to override."
It's painful because she's experiencing cognitive dissonance. What she wants is different than what her ideology has told her to want.
"I do not currently have the power to resolve the fact that my intellectual understanding of what is good and right and available to me conflicts with what my lived emotional experience tells me about what I can and should want and have: to like myself, to feel desired, and to not have to worry about my weight, a freedom with which I had not been acquainted for my entire life"
Cognitive dissonance in a nutshell.
"Instead, I have internalized something of a cultural hierarchy...At the bottom are the people like me—who now number about one in eight Americans—who use these drugs to lose weight"
This is so sad. She hates herself, and others, for taking this drug.
"This discourse is complicated by the fact that opposing GLP-1s requires a kind of collective agreement to pretend that fatness has no bearing on how the world treats people, which of course isn’t true."
She admits that fat acceptance advocates are not being fully honest. Though, from what I have read, they do rail against how the world treats fat people so I think what she's actually referring to here is the argument that weight has no bearing on attraction, which is something I do see fat liberationists argue.
"The truth is that I do like myself more now."
This is her truth at the end of the day. I suppose if she feels like she's succumbing to society's pressure, I could see her being conflicted. Is it analogous to getting a nose job to fit in? But another possibility is that she just likes how she looks and feels at a "healthier" weight and there is nothing wrong or surprising about that, imo.
luvbutts | 6 hours ago
Hmm I think she gets two ideas kind of mixed up to be honest.
One is that fatness is not inherently bad or ugly. She believes that. The other it's that being fat doesn't make your life harder. She wants to believe that and thinks that's what the body positive movement is trying to say (I don't think it is). The second part is the thing she's having trouble squaring with her lived experience.
I think it's correct that it would be silly of her to keep trying to convince herself that she could have just thought her way into accepting herself fat person and thereby not experienced the negative social and emotional impacts of being a fat person in our current society. I think that's what she's trying to work through and she feels bad that she's not able to push back against social stigma against fat people by being a happy fat person.
However, it's possible to both believe that there's nothing wrong or ugly about being fat, while also knowing life is harder when you're a fat person and choosing to lose weight because of that.
BlairClemens3 | 6 hours ago
I copied and pasted a bunch of quotes below but maybe I should just respond to this.
"there's nothing inherently wrong or unattractive about being fat"
But is that true? It's not true for her and it's not true for many people. So maybe that part of the ideology is not based in reality?
luvbutts | 6 hours ago
In the comment you're replying to I don't take any stance on whether it's true or not. I'm just stating that it's not contradictory to believe that there isn't anything inherently wrong or unattractive about being fat and wanting to lose weight because it makes your life easier.
If you want my personal opinion I think that we're way too moralistic and judgmental about people being fat, and there isn't anything morally wrong with being fat. I also think many people being over weight is more of a social and structural issue than an individual choice one.
But I also think that being over weight does have negative health impacts and that most people who are overweight could benefit from losing weight if they can do it in a safe and healthy way. Medication can help with that.
Is there anything inherently unattractive about being overweight? I don't know. I personality think there are some broad general things that make someone attractive or not (i.e. having a more symmetrical face, looking youthful) but those are generalisations and outside of that attractiveness is extremely subjective.
Edited because I made some word soup.
CunninghamsLawmaker | 7 hours ago
If the vast majority of people find something unattractive it is, for all practical purposes. She's experiencing that reality and still rejecting it because of ideology.
luvbutts | 7 hours ago
That's certainly one way of looking at it. 99 people out of 100 find someone unattractive but for 1 person that person is exactly their type and they're extremely into them, is that person "objectively" unattractive. Hmm..
CunninghamsLawmaker | 7 hours ago
That called a fetish. Like specifically being into amputees or lederhosen, that's something other than simple attraction.
luvbutts | 7 hours ago
What makes something a fetish rather than just a preference?
luvbutts | 7 hours ago
Also, It just seems odd to me to base how attractive someone is on majority consensus. I think given the option between dating someone who is their type and dating someone that a larger majority of people find attractive, most people would prefer to go into with the person who is more their type.
I know that at least in my friendship group nobody ever agrees about who we find attractive and a lot of the time when I point out someone I think is objectively attractive, my friends disagree with me or are confused.
CunninghamsLawmaker | 6 hours ago
Are you conflicted over who finds the morbidly obese blob person attractive, or are you conflicted over who likes red hair and who prefers Asian women? The difference is about how universal the reaction is. It's way beyond simple preference.
luvbutts | 6 hours ago
Well the author of this article was never morbidly obese to begin with and were talking about her experience. I think is pretty within normal range of preference to prefer chubby or fat women.
CunninghamsLawmaker | 6 hours ago
She was on the edge of it and definitely well into obese by her own description.
It's a scale. The fatter you are the fewer people will find you attractive. It's a direct correlation.
luvbutts | 5 hours ago
Maybe and so what? Most women like taller men. I prefer my partner to be the same height as me, so I don't care that taller men are "objectively" more attractive or whatever. Is my partner less "objectively" attractive because he's shorter than other men? It doesn't matter to me and I don't think it should matter to him either.
I just think attractiveness is mostly subjective and plenty of people find fat people attractive. The author even says plenty of men still went after her when she was fat.
You think it's mostly objective and fat people are inherently less attractive, I don't think I'm going to convince you otherwise. I am happy to agree to disagree.
CunninghamsLawmaker | 5 hours ago
Ignoring large population level truths in what is attractive is just ignoring reality. You can find some weirdo who's into anything. That's meaningless.
Many_Replacement369 | 3 hours ago
Thank you for sharing. I personally don’t find the author’s perspective perplexing because to me, it is possible to know and accept something on an intellectual level, but still struggle to accept it on an emotional level.
As an example, someone can be a intersectional feminist and still have internalized misogyny, ableism and/or fatphobia.
Quagga_Resurrection | 11 hours ago
Seriously. Ideologies are just frameworks that explain the world in concrete terms. Reality can't be wrong, so if it conflicts with your ideology, then your ideology is wrong and needs to change. It's not morally inconsistent to update your beliefs when new information comes to light. It's disappointing to see that happening here.
BlairClemens3 | 7 hours ago
Exactly.
MarbleMimic | 3 hours ago
The people I know who are on GLP-1s are so much happier than they were before. Weight loss is good, but less food noise just sounds like an incredible boost to their mental health. They're not fighting their bodies all the time, and they're more aware of how the quantity of what they're eating is affecting them. Fuck body size, I want that mental peace for them.
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
So often the most stressful time of the day was leaving work, picking up kids, cooking dinner and bedtime. Chaotic for most families, right?
But I suddenly felt calm during this time. I wasn’t starving. Sure I was hungry but it wasn’t like I was a hangry animal barely stuffed in an executive function human suit. That is until a cup is spilled or a tantrum over veggies happened and some fangs would be bared.
I could calmly get through the routine and kids to get to bed and wait to make a separate adult dinner where foods touch and/or have a sauce. 😅
Ouiser_Boudreaux_ | 45 minutes ago
The negative self talk I used to struggle with is fully gone. When I exercise, I actually enjoy it and no longer see it as “punishment” for eating too much. No more shame spirals after eating. No more hanger or sugar dumps. Aches and pains are gone. Sleep quality has improved, along with my blood pressure. I haven’t even lost that much weight compared to others, and I literally don’t care. I used to think about my weight CONSTANTLY. I feel so much better regardless.
karpaediem | 13 hours ago
I've lost 70 lbs without medication or surgery, and I think I'm at the weight my body wants to be at. When I restrict calories further than I am at the moment I start feeling weak and tired, which tells me I'm probably not eating too much on the whole. My understanding is GLP1s mostly help reduce the desire to eat, which if that's the case won't I just feel not hungry and like death warmed over all the time?
I think I also have a touch of ARFID where I literally will starve rather than eat something I don't want to eat, the desire part is really important to getting enough calories. Its scary to think about messing with that.
stvr-seed | 12 hours ago
When it comes to hunger cues, those who take GLP-1s will generally tell you that they mostly reduce “food noise”, not hunger itself. Food noise is a sort of compulsive, ever-present thought about food that rarely goes away, even when you’re full and have no desire to actually eat anything else. You could be completely stuffed from the best meal of your life, and your brain will still say “okay, now what are we eating later? And then what are we getting for groceries this weekend? Oh, did we ever try that new Thai place?”
They can certainly suppress hunger, too, especially when adjusting to higher doses — but that tends to go away. Most users will tell you that your dose is too high if your natural hunger cures go away for more than a week or two.
karpaediem | an hour ago
Huh, I could be wrong but for me that really only happens when I'm like actually hungry - stomach rumbling. Otherwise I'm like meh I could eat something but I am pretty disinterested.
hce692 | 12 hours ago
No, GLP1s are so, so much more than just reducing desire to eat. They change metabolic pathways on a cellular level. There are studies of patients who didn’t change calorie intake and still lost weight
karpaediem | an hour ago
It's fascinating and scary to me, I just don't remember seeing long term use studies about these medications
glasswindbreaker | 8 hours ago
You shouldn’t use the GLP-1’s to just not feel hungry and not eat. Some people do and develop terrible side effects. It reduces food noise more than appetite, for me I use it so I can pause and make the healthy choice not just rush to the first thing I crave. I work with a nutritionist and I’m losing very slowly to do so in a healthy way and so I reduce the chances of loose skin.
ETA: I had concerns about losing the joy in eating something good before I started. I want to enjoy what I eat and I didn’t want food aversion. Happy to say that’s never happened to me in 7 months of using my GLP-1
Vegetable_Block9793 | 9 hours ago
Not feeling like death all the time seems like a fantastic reason to take a medication
LadyLassitude | 3 hours ago
Reading comprehension: They said reducing food intake makes them feel like death, and thus they’re concerned the appetite loss from a GLP-1 would just make them feel that bad all the time.
karpaediem | an hour ago
Ty
livingoncrazy2 | 4 hours ago
I think the recent uptick in these weird, angst filled narratives surrounding GLP-1s by content contributors are causing more harm than good. The theme that there is something shameful about it does a great disservice to the seemingly näive and impressionable readers. Nobody should be influenced by someone else’s internal dialogue-particularly some of these misguided ones. The drugs help a lot of people in various different ways-only one of which is weight loss.
There is zero shame around using medication to improve your health and losing unnecessary weight is beneficial to most overweight peoples well-being. It’s a conversation to be held with your doctor who unsurprisingly, has “ done the research and understands the actual science and studies” and can give accurate medical advice.
That’s what you pay them for.
This idea that weight loss meds are as shameful is absurd. We don’t say that someone with cancer is shameful for using chemotherapy or amputees are weak for needing pain management or diabetes are using up the supply of GLP-1s that fat people need when they can use plain old cheap insulin.
Whatever tool is used to better ones health should be celebrated.
TL:DR. There is no shame. Have some critical thinking. Lose the weight for your health. Stop weaponizing politics and stop fearmongering. Then touch grass.
AnyElephant7218 | 3 hours ago
The very fact that you conflate weight loss with cancer treatment…
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
And why is that bad?
Is obesity a moral failing, not a medical condition?
Is a life long smokers lung cancer a moral failing? A failure of society or capitalism?
Moralizing should have little to do with science or health care.
AnyElephant7218 | an hour ago
Nobody shames cancer patients or yells at them on the street. Nobody glares at cancer patients on airplanes. Nobody refuses to treat cancer patients on the basis of them having cancer.
Obesity is a result of complex medical and societal conditions. What we classify as obese is based wholly on outdated measures designed only on white male bodies. Treating obesity as only a medical condition without taking into account the real harm of shame and stigma associated with fatness is a shortsighted and harmful approach. GLP-1 drugs DO NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE. Unlearning hatred of fat people is equally if not more important than pharmaceutical remedies.
seiryuu-abi | 14 hours ago
Women in my family have PCOS (now called PMOS) and watching GLP1s become mainstream is so weird?
yo-ovaries | an hour ago
Why is that? GLP1s are not yet an approved treatment for PMOS/PCOS.
They should be! But aren’t yet.
seiryuu-abi | 14 minutes ago
That’s why this is so shocking to me. Tbh Metformin is helpful but it’s still used for T2 diabetes. They hand that out to so many PCOS/PMOS women. It’s weird that women with insulin resistance cannot get this drug and so many other women are on it.
Shitp0st_Supreme | an hour ago
I am definitely in the boat where a GLP-1 could help me since I have PCOS/PMOS and endometriosis since it helps with inflammation. I am overweight but not obese, I’m probably 30-40lbs above my ideal weight but I am happy with how I look. I’ve been trying to get pregnant for years so I can’t take a GLP-1 so my life is on hold.