The “Healthy at Any Size” Lie.

Yes, Science Shows Being Overweight is Definitely Unhealthy

No one should hate themselves because they don’t like their body, so the body positivity movement SHOULD BE a good thing. It is not. In part, that’s because it has turned into a celebration of being overweight that often goes along with a stubborn denial of the reality that being overweight is unhealthy. This sort of nonsense has been percolating on the Left for quite a while, but it has reached the point where New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, is publicly denying that there are any negative health effects of being overweight.

I don’t even want to get into the ludicrous law Adams made this comment in support of, which “makes it illegal for employers and landlords to discriminate against someone based on their weight or height when it comes to hiring them or securing housing.” I mean, is this a big problem? Are there people not renting out apartments to overweight people? Are businesses not hiring people for being tall? Does this mean there are going to be lots of new lawsuits against gyms and Hooters for not hiring people 100 pounds overweight? I’m just going to roll my eyes, chalk it up to New York City being run by idiots for the last few decades, and cut to the chase:

On Friday, New York City Eric Adams signed a bill that outlawed discrimination based on height and weight when it comes to "employment, housing, and public accommodations" and when asked by reporters about the law Adams said "science" has proven that being fat is not connected to being unhealthy.

Adams said, "I'm a person that believes in health, so when you talk about not discriminating against someone because of their body type, it's not fighting against obesity; it's just being fair. So, I think this is the right thing to do. We're going to continue to talk about our progressive health agenda. Science has shown body type is not a connection to if you're healthy or unhealthy, and I think that's a misnomer we are really dispelling."

That is not “science.” It’s not even remotely “science.” It’s like claiming science says that people gain weight because of Leprechauns casting spells. Science doesn’t say that at all. If anything, it basically says the opposite. Of course, Adams is far from alone in saying this. You will find article after article pushed out by liberals claiming being overweight isn’t unhealthy.

How do they justify such an obviously wrong idea? There are different tactics. Some focus on poorly done studies that have results that don’t line up with most other research. Others only look at young people who are extremely resilient, instead of older Americans who’ve had time to accumulate more damage from obesity. Of course, there are also genetic differences. Some small numbers of people really are just “built different” and can abuse their bodies in all sorts of ways without paying the price for it. A lot of it is also just wishful thinking. I have written about that before:

Put another way, in this particular case, it doesn’t feel good to be overweight.

It’s unhealthy. It makes people feel ashamed. It makes you less attractive to the opposite sex. People make judgments about you based on your being overweight that in many cases are untrue and unfair. Contrary to what you often hear, it’s not necessarily an easy puzzle to solve either. There are an awful lot of people that have spent years and sometimes even decades, earnestly trying to lose weight and failing. It’s also fair to note that when 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese, that seems like a powerful sign that the advice we give people about how to lose weight is failing on a systemic level more than an individual level. 

As I could tell you from personal experience, when you’re faced with all these facts and you are overweight, you have one of three choices in how you deal with it.

You can say, “The odds are against me, so I might have to work harder than other people to cut weight. No matter how many times I fail, I have to keep trying until I get there.”

The second choice is to say, “This is too hard. I give up.” Then you blow up and go downhill.

The third and wokest way to handle this is to say, “I don’t have a problem because the issue is THE WORLD, not me.”

Even if you’ve reached stage two or three and have given up and aren’t trying to lose weight, nobody wants to believe that they’re destroying their health and killing themselves at the same time that they’re dulling their pain with food. So, what happens when there’s a demand to be told what you want to hear in a place like America? That demand is met in the media or by influencers chasing clout – and yes, there are plenty of people who will tell you that being overweight isn’t unhealthy. However, all of them are completely full of sh*t.

How do you prove that?

You don’t do it by looking at maximally resilient twenty-year-olds. You do it by going to the point in the life cycle where the four horsemen of disease in America, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s start showing up. Maybe in the forties, but mostly in the 50s, 60s, 70s and up. Once you get to that point in the human life cycle, obesity is clearly tied to all of those killers with the possible exception of Alzheimer’s, which is best for us to leave off because there is so much controversy about what causes it in the first place.

This take is so non-controversial that even the CDC agrees with it:

Obesity affects 20% of children and 42% of adults, putting them at risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.

Why is this? There’s certainly debate about the exact causes among health experts, but there are three educated guesses we could make.

First, just about the best thing anyone can do for their health is to be active. That could mean exercise in the gym, taking walks or it could mean a job that keeps you hopping, gardening or regularly doing other things that lead to movement. When you’re overweight, it’s just plain old harder to move and it creates a lot more stress on your joints. If you have bad knees, hips, ankles, or feet, it’s more difficult to be active. This leads to a self-defeating cycle. The less you move, the less healthy you become and the more likely you are to gain weight. The more weight you gain, the less you move, the less healthy you become, and the more likely you are to gain weight. Over time, you keep repeating this cycle until you practically become immobile, end up in a hospital with something, and die.

Second, fat is not just an inert substance in your body, it’s inherently inflammatory. Many experts believe chronic inflammation is tied to a lot of the long-term health problems in America and there is a strong correlation between chronic inflammation and being overweight:

That's because the larger your waist size, the more abdominal fat you have. That belly fat comes in two forms: visceral and subcutaneous.

“Visceral fat is stored deep underneath the skin near your major organs. It secretes hormones and toxins, which can lead to inflammation that develops in your body,” Dr. Buchinsky says.

“Subcutaneous fat is stored just under the skin and is what people are talking about when they ‘pinch an inch’ of fat. It’s less dangerous than visceral fat.”

The problem with visceral fat is that it causes chronic inflammation. Researchers now believe this inflammation leads to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, some forms of cancer, and other chronic conditions.

Third, people with excess body fat often have a lot of trouble adequately disposing of glucose in their bodies. Not only does this obviously lead people towards type 2 diabetes, but again, it increasingly seems to be tied to a variety of health problems:

Prediabetes means that your blood glucose, or blood sugar, levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be called diabetes. Glucose comes from the foods you eat. Too much glucose in your blood can damage your body over time.

If you have prediabetes, you are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. But if you make some lifestyle changes now, you may be able to delay or prevent type 2 diabetes.

...Researchers think that being overweight and not getting regular physical activity are major factors in causing prediabetes.

Now, the point of this article is not to make anyone feel bad or shame anyone, it’s to alert everyone that the “healthy at any size” body positivity propaganda the Left is pushing will lead to people dying if they believe it – and apparently, many people do. There are clearly people who buy into the idea that being overweight isn’t a health problem in the body positivity community and it’s hard to miss the thousands of people liking “What I eat in a day as a fat girl that isn’t trying to lose weight” videos that seem to be cropping up everywhere these days (Yes, that’s really a thing. A POPULAR thing). Here’s an example:

So, does this woman even know how bad what she’s eating is for her health? Maybe yes, but also, maybe she doesn’t pay a lot of attention to health issues and has bought into the idea that what she’s eating isn’t really bad for her. Of course, even if that’s true for the moment at a young age, there’s a double whammy with all of this, as all of us that have gotten older can tell you. Your metabolism? It slows down as you get older. If all of us had the metabolisms of 20-year-olds, kale wouldn’t be a thing.

What it all comes down to is do what you want to do, eat what you want to eat, and live how you want to live, but you still need to understand the reality of the situation. The people that are telling you that you can be “healthy at any size” are telling you a lie.

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