response 98 of 378:

Mar 7 17:24 UTC 2006

No.  Nor does that even make sense.

response 100 of 378:

Mar 7 17:30 UTC 2006

By the way:  The latest medical evidence spreads all sorts of doubt about
even moderately being beneficial rather than detrimental to your health.

Not that I'd get in the way of you having a few drinks!

response 102 of 378:

Mar 7 17:39 UTC 2006

Your mother.

response 104 of 378:

Mar 7 17:52 UTC 2006

jep is a vagina and todd (who is a penis) is fucking him.

response 106 of 378:

Mar 7 17:57 UTC 2006

re #104
Can I used that or did you copyright it?

response 108 of 378:

Mar 7 18:03 UTC 2006

resp:83 Perhaps fat people cost society money. But so what? Men (as a 
group) weigh more than women (as a group) but I dont see you bitching 
about men externalizing their jet fuel costs on to  women.. Why is that 
do you think? Is it because you are a man? Poor people probably cost 
society a lot of money, should we shame people for being poor?  There 
is no way that every group is going to cost the same as every other 
group. And there are people who save society money and people who cost 
society money. The truth is that you have no idea how much money fat 
people are costing you. You don t even know if there is a net cost. You 
give one example and it turns out to be a very small amount. For all 
you know, fat people might be saving you money in other ways. But even 
if it turned out that fat people cost thin people some money, so what? 
Do you really want to live in a world where people run around worrying 
about how much some other group is costing them? 

Resp:84 The main reason is that things like wearing seatbelts and 
wearing helmets and smoking, etc are all behaviors and not a state of 
being. Fat is a state of being. Eating a poor diet is a behavior. Now, 
granted most people who eat a poor diet end up being heavier than they 
otherwise would be. But that doesn t mean that every fat person eats a 
bad diet. There is natural size diversity in our species. If you take a 
group of people and feed them the exact same diet and make sure they 
get the exact same amount of exercise, there will still be a range of 
weights within that group. Now, if you are suggesting that we ban junk 
food, I might not agree with it but at least that is something similar 
to requiring someone to wear a seat belt. 

I think that a lot of people have a way of thinking about fat people 
that often is not based on fact. They think that fat people are lazy 
and weak and could be thin if they wanted to. All it takes is a little 
will power, right. I have yet to meet a person who says this who has 
any kind of facts to back it up other than anecdotal evidence  (Oprah 
did it, anyone can do it). I also have yet to meet a person who has 
actually lost a large amount of weight and kept it off who makes 
comments like  all it takes is a little will power  because those 
people know the effort that goes into sustained weight loss.  The same 
people who often believe that people are fat because of bad behavior 
usually seem to believe that obesity is a terminal illness and is 
costing everyone tons of money. Are there health risks associated with 
obesity? Yes. Are people s reactions to those probably out of 
proportion with the actual risks? Almost definitely.

The media feeds all of this by using scare terminology like  Obesity 
Epidemic  and writing articles like the one Cyklone linked to about how 
fat costs millions just in jet fuel alone. The article never mentions 
how much that cost is per airline ticket purchased because it simply 
wouldn t be as sensational. I get very frustrated with the media and 
their coverage on anything that has anything to do with obesity. They 
seldom include meaningful statistics. They use language designed to 
frame the issue in a way that scares people. 

Believe it or not, there is a lot of fat hatred in our culture. A lot 
of good people have a strong bias against fat people in the same way 
that a lot of good people are prejudiced against black people or gay 
people or whatever other group. I think that a lot of people use the 
health risks of obesity and any other costs they can dream up to 
justify discrimination against fat people in the same way that people 
use AIDS and the increased costs of that disease to justify 
discrimination against gay people.  

I am not saying that anyone on here is necessarily doing that but 
people do that all the time. I have read editorials that were published 
in major newspapers that said that things like having stores that sell 
fashionable clothes for fat people or having resorts that cater to fat 
people is wrong because it encourages people to be fat. Never mind the 
thousand comments a day that I hear just from people I know. Honestly, 
as a fat person, I am very thankful that I live in a city that bans 
discrimination against a person based on their weight and that I live 
in a state that considers weight a protected class of employment. 

response 110 of 378:

Mar 7 18:08 UTC 2006

Well, thank you scholar. 

response 112 of 378:

Mar 7 18:14 UTC 2006

re #108 the bias against fat people is because too many people just assume
that a person has gotten fat out of bad habits.  They don't take into account
that not everyone's metabolism works at the same rate and that fatness can
be tied into genetics.  Notice how many fat parents have fat kids.  Sometimes
there is nothing you can do about it

response 114 of 378:

Mar 7 18:21 UTC 2006

Watch a platoon of Marine recruits from beginning to end.  You won't see one
fatbody on graduation day yet many of them started off as such.  The behavior
change made all the difference.  Sleep, exercise, nutrition, the whole 9
yards play integral parts.  Its also a proven fat that being obese is bad for
mental health.  

response 116 of 378:

Mar 7 18:27 UTC 2006

I believe that some people have a tendency to be fatter than other people
(based on what foods they were fed as children, their metabolism, how strong
their urges to eat are, where they live, depression, anxiety, availability
of exercise, etc.), but that everyone knows how to lose weight and it's really
actually pretty simple, and so it's merely a battle of will-power and being
able to supress the possibly severe discomfort, but that due to the
environment in which we evolved, this can be very difficult and probably
impossible for some people.

response 118 of 378:

Mar 7 18:41 UTC 2006

re #116 it is not always simple to lose weight, because everyone's metabolisms
work at different rates.  

response 120 of 378:

Mar 7 19:09 UTC 2006

All I'm saying is that there were strong evolutionary advantages to people
eating as much food as possible, and that this was good when food would
sometimes be scarce but is a disadvantage now when we're producing food much
faster than we can eat it.

One thing that I think might happen:  Since people who are obese have less
healthy babies and fewer sexual partners (probably), will less voracious genes
become more plentiful?  I'm not sure how to go about analyzing that
scientifically, but it seems sort of plausible to me!

To sum up:  take up nicotine or cocaine for a few months to lose weight.