- 25 Mar 2017 17:25
#14790003
For those that don't know, HAES stands for health at any size.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size
The fat acceptance movement is the general term for anybody that believes what HAES believes, so it's not quite the same thing.
Fat shaming, on the other hand, I am completely against. People have the right to destroy their own bodies if they want you, without you intervening. I also don't think it's right to psychologically abuse/bully people into losing weight. It's especially tough when you're a kid and part of your weight is due to your parents' ignorance of what a healthy diet should look like. Kids can be really cruel, and I think it's important to encourage kids to have a high self-esteem no matter what they look like.
On the other hand, some people have the strange idea that doctors encouraging people to diet and exercise is a form of fat shaming. That's called being a responsible medical practitioner. Medically I think the benefits of not being overweight can't be denied.
I do recognize that it's really hard sometimes to lose weight when there is so much ignorance propagated by the media surrounding weight loss, a lot of it funded by large food corporations, farming interests, and lobbyists. The argument can definitely be made that the intentional or not misinformation campaign surrounding food has a lot to do with the rise in obesity, so I sympathize with the motivation behind HAES. The problem is that a lot of their specific views are just wrong.
So, what do you guys think of these ideas? This topic might be a little US-centric, but I know that there is high obesity rates in other Anglo countries as well.
Edit: added link to wiki.
Health at Every Size (HAES) is a movement that claims to "support people in adopting health habits for the sake of health and well-being (rather than weight control)."[1] Proponents aim to improve the standard of living for people who are overweight or obese by promoting healthy lifestyles and anti-discrimination efforts. Generally, these efforts do not include weight loss as a direct goal.
Despite scientific evidence to the contrary,[2] HAES advocates are highly skeptical that weight loss directly and controllably improves health.[3] The benefits of lifestyle interventions such as nutritious eating and exercise are presumed to be real, but independent of any weight loss they may cause. At the same time, HAES advocates espouse that sustained, large-scale weight loss is difficult to the point of effective impossibility for the majority of obese people. Evidence to support the view that some obese people eat little yet gain weight due to a slow metabolism is limited, and often false, as studies have shown that obese individuals incorrectly self-report calories consumed;[4] on average, obese people have a greater energy expenditure than their healthy-weight counterparts due to the energy required to maintain an increased body mass.[5][6] HAES proponents believe that health is a result of behaviors that are independent of body weight and that favouring being thin discriminates against the overweight and the obese.[7] Efforts towards such weight loss are instead held to cause rapid swings in size that inflict far worse physical and psychological damage than would fat itself.[8]
As part of the wider fat acceptance movement,[9][10] HAES includes also a significant social and psychological dimension. Proponents view the common wisdom that obesity is unhealthy as part of a general stigmatization of the obese, and especially of obese women; thus, the movement has furthermore strong connections with feminism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size
The fat acceptance movement is the general term for anybody that believes what HAES believes, so it's not quite the same thing.
Fat shaming, on the other hand, I am completely against. People have the right to destroy their own bodies if they want you, without you intervening. I also don't think it's right to psychologically abuse/bully people into losing weight. It's especially tough when you're a kid and part of your weight is due to your parents' ignorance of what a healthy diet should look like. Kids can be really cruel, and I think it's important to encourage kids to have a high self-esteem no matter what they look like.
On the other hand, some people have the strange idea that doctors encouraging people to diet and exercise is a form of fat shaming. That's called being a responsible medical practitioner. Medically I think the benefits of not being overweight can't be denied.
I do recognize that it's really hard sometimes to lose weight when there is so much ignorance propagated by the media surrounding weight loss, a lot of it funded by large food corporations, farming interests, and lobbyists. The argument can definitely be made that the intentional or not misinformation campaign surrounding food has a lot to do with the rise in obesity, so I sympathize with the motivation behind HAES. The problem is that a lot of their specific views are just wrong.
So, what do you guys think of these ideas? This topic might be a little US-centric, but I know that there is high obesity rates in other Anglo countries as well.
Edit: added link to wiki.
Last edited by LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX on 26 Mar 2017 11:26, edited 1 time in total.