Humanities & Cultures

I'm not saying you're being hateful, I'm asking you to be nicer. You don't seem very receptive to being told by an admin or a mod to follow our only rule, so you're getting a 7 day ban to think things over. If you show up again and keep violating our only rule, you'll get a permanent ban.

Eating less is not that hard

There are always hundreds of excuses, but hardly any of them are reasonable.

but blaming everything on external factors is addict behavior.

Okay, I 'll give it a go too. Even though @storksforlegs@beehaw.org already mentioned what I am about to say, obviously to no effect.

You say you are speaking from experience. That you 've lost some weight. And then you make claims that go way beyond your experience, that are far tοo general. I won't go so far as to say that the position you support is ignorant. This won't be nice. I will assume you are more educated than I am. But I will point out, that your experience alone hardly constitutes solid ground to speak for everyone. There is room there for you to be mistaken.

Addictive behavior is not rational. People get addicted to stuff, whether there are inherent addictive qualities to whatever they get addicted to or not, not because they choose so, but because they are vulnerable to addictive behavior. This, more often than not, is something indicating other psychological issues that need to be addressed. It can be insane amounts of stress, it can be depression, it can be many other issues that need to be addressed in order for someone with addictive behavior to get to a place where that person no longer needs crutches to function. Attacking how an addict rationalizes the addiction, not only doesn't address the issues that lead to this behavior but it probably adds to to them.

So, since you can't know why someone is displaying addictive behavior, implying, for example, that a person with severe anxiety that turns to food for comfort is lazy, is actually neither nice nor helpful. It's not even speaking the truth as you said. It's just negative, probably adding to the problem causing the unhealthy relationship with food.

I won't bother with the rest of the generalizations you 've already made, but I will suggest this. If you want others to respect your experience when you speak about it, try to consider its limitations before you draw assumptions that include other people's lives.

I'm glad it was easier for you than for me but this feels diamissive. Other people don't have your life, they have theirs: social pressures, economic pressures, food access pressures, schedule pressures and a host of other things impact how well a person is able to change their habits. Advocacy that doesn't take these factors into account is less effective, because it won't address drivers of habit.

Actively losing one third of the weight I was carrying involved arguments with family and uncomfortable meals. It involved having to skip out on going to places with friends who just wanted dive bar grease food and drinks, and then explaining that we were still friends and why it was worth changing up the group's routine. It involved huge amounts of drama with my partner at the time, who felt that my weight loss was a judgement of them. Friends were dismissive when I voiced how I struggled with these challenges, saying I was making excuses and that it wasn't that hard if I was trying, which was incredibly demotivating.

There were just two people who acknowledged my feelings and experience, who understood that if I perceived something as a challenge for myself then it was. They would encourage me to continue overcoming it and offer suggestions and support. I encourage you to do what they did, because I think it will make you a more effective advocate. If we want people to achieve the kinds of successes we have, it has to be about them and not about us.