Comments on: Quick hit: Dumbest thing ever, or second-dumbest thing ever?

By: Teressa

Teressa — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:35:59 +0000

I know I’m jumping into this terribly late, but I wanted to echo everyone else’s general “WTF?!” about this article and about the attitude of fat that people have.

It was interesting, however, that she blamed her inability to lose weight on the fact that the two muffins were higher in calorie count rather than the fact that expecting your body to function on the nutritional value of ***two muffins*** a day is actually likely to put your body into starvation mode…..geeeez. That’s a woman who should NOT be giving advice on health!!!

By: Peggy

Peggy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:49:44 +0000

Fat didn’t shield me from unsavory men when I was in grad school. The university was in the “combat zone”, a place with open prostitution. When I would leave at night for the subway, wearing a parka almost to my knees, scruffy pants, a wool cap and a backpack, cars would honk at me. Apparently, I looked both desirable and like a prostitute, without showing any skin or wearing any makeup. At least I think that was what was going on- I never turned around to look.

By: Jen Smith

Jen Smith — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:10:13 +0000

Remember that one time? There was that diet? And those authors? Who made millions? Remember?

Interesting trivia I just found OTM:

http://www.worldometers.info/ over $3 trillion dollars spent on dieting in the US this year… is that a calendar year???
Jen

By: Sarah J.

Sarah J. — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:41:59 +0000

It’s sad, because I STILL believe to this day that my fat shields me from unsavory men. Obviously, this woman is picking up clues from people like me.

However, my fat did not stop my best guy friend from hitting on me.

My fat did not stop the boy who signed in my year book, “To the prettiest girl in the school.”

My fat did not stop my sister’s boyfriend from saying I was one of the most attractive females he had seen in his life.

So, somebody tell Irene to STFU! As I get older, I have to keep telling myself that being fat does NOT automatically mean I am exempt from the human race. I have a right to make friends. I have a right to make and keep boyfriends!

By: Linda

Linda — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:23:36 +0000

She is in fantasy land with the idea that it is a biological mandate that people prefer thin sexual partners. I haven't heard that one trotted out in a long time. It's just so ridiculous on so many levels, as several people have pointed out already, such as the fact that fat is associated with fertility because *gasp* fat on the body is healthy, especially in pregnancy and birth (did you know that estrogen is stored in fat cells? And that estrogen intensifies the effects of oxytocin, which is a crucial hormone in the birth process? And speaking of estrogen, that it's theorized that heavier women have an easier time going through menopause because of the connection between estrogen and fat?) I'd like to know also what she'd make of the fact that my biological mandate was so strong that in spite of years of cultural conditioning to the contrary, I chose a fat partner (the fattest one of all my suitors, most of whom were not fat,) with crooked teeth, a receding hairline, and a weak chin. What's especially interesting is that whatever chemical exchanges were going on to draw me to him also overrode what I "knew" to be about his degree of visual attractiveness so that he was literally visually transformed in my eyes into a hunk. And? He turned out to have a hardy constitution and to be a natural athlete, which I never would have guessed by looking at him. And? We have made four stunningly beautiful children together. My body obviously knew something that our modern culture doesn't.

By: redblossom

redblossom — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:14:44 +0000

@Mandark – I totally did that with Cosmo’s “2317 ways to please a man” or “645 ways to be better in bed” articles that they keep on printing. It was a few years ago, in college, and was…disheartening, to say the least. I imagine that the diet articles would be much the same: repetitive, horribly sexist and utterly repugnant to anyone with a shred of self-worth.

But yeah, this article had me swallowing bile.

By: hlynn

hlynn — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:56:13 +0000

There’s so much stupid in this piece. And . . . if you’re angry and pissed at a person becuase they’re thin . . . you’re *shallow.* Personally, I was always pushed by people in my family to change my weight and lose weight when I was a pre-teen. No one wanted me to stay ‘good old’ me. They wanted me to be a thinner me.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:53:49 +0000

Linda, I think the idea is that people have a range of sizes that are natural for their body, but this range is bigger for some people than others. For instance, Sweet Machine can be two or three sizes smaller when she has a bike commute than when she has a bus commute, whereas it’s unlikely that a similar change in activity levels would even make my shirts fit differently. Most people can push themselves outside of their set range with concerted effort, including changing food intake, but the effects are temporary; the idea with the setpoint is that your body gravitates there comfortably and stays within that range when you leave it alone. But you might be at the top of your range when you’re not trying to gain weight but are tending to be less active, say, or at the bottom when you’re not trying to lose weight but are tending to eat less. For some people those points are much farther away from each other than they are for others. (Diets can affect this, too… for most people dieting seems to nudge the range upward, which is borne out by research.)

By: Mandark

Mandark — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:50:28 +0000

@stephanie: “I think there’s a closet somewhere labelled Old Retread Ideas, and when columnists have nothing to say, they go rummaging around in the back, shake off the dust, and retread it – thinking no one will notice.”

I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind for a few years to dig through the archives of various popular women’s magazines, look at the recommendations of all their diet articles (and the books they are based on), and see how many times the exact same advice is given under different names. Maybe I should have gone for a PhD in sociology or something instead.

By: Linda

Linda — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:45:50 +0000

“Linda, I’m only saying that some bodies vary only a couple pounds in their weight and others seem to vary more, without really changing their eating habits or activity. My husband varies by 30-50 pounds over time with very little to explain it.”

Okay, that makes sense. :) That sounds different that what you were talking about before though (varying food intake accounting for weight loss/gain.) I do get confused because different people seem to mean different things by it.