We need to start seriously treating the concepts of "obesity" and "weight loss" as a dangerous pseudoscience and I'm not kidding.
It's some shit that everyone thinks they can understand based on vibes but science just doesn't work that way. Real scientists have proved time and time again that it doesn't work how people assume. Many medical conditions where it's assumed weight is a "cause", something to blame the patient for, it's often actually a symptom.
Body size is based on so many individual possibilities. genetics, upbringing, wealth, what type of food you eat, what type of work you do, where you live, etc etc etc. it is impossible to control for all of these.
I was a child born to fat, impoverished, labourer parents, and I grew up doing farm labour, gaining muscle - I will never ever be thin. It's just how my body developed. And no matter how much weight I were to hypothetically lose, doctors would still push me to lose more. Family would push me to lose more. Society would push me to lose more. It will never ever ever be enough. You will never be thin enough, there is no bmi low enough to satisfy them, there is no "progress" that won't just make them pity or shame you even more. Your personal circumstances aren't important to a pseudo-scientific practice, the variables don't matter that much, it must be a one-size-fits-all solution.
Every weight loss pill, every low calorie shake or meal replacement, every weight watchers frozen meal, it all contributes to the pseudo-scientific cult of thinness. Every ad that says you're not good enough, it pushes you to drop your critical thinking skills. We have created a world where people think shitting themselves into thinness using potions with untested ingredients is healthier than having some fat on their bodies. But it's not! That's absurd! You're sending your body into a constant state of gastric shock!! And one day, when you get bored of eating tasteless nutrient paste and decide to eat something with some flavour in it, your body will react with a starvation response and store every little bit of fat that it can, because it's so used to being fucking starved. Which sends people into a panic response, buying up more pills and trying to crash-diet and lose their meagre protective layers.
Your body stores fat because that's your reserve energy. Fat is protective. I thank my body every day for storing so much energy for me, fuck knows I need it! That's your blubber!! You are a large mammal. Your body is designed to keep energy in reserve so you can sleep and stay warm and keep your brain alive. You should research the human metabolic process. You should research the cow metabolic process. You should research bear metabolic process. YOU NEED FAT!
And just like so many other pseudosciences, fatphobia and all that it entails is deeply rooted in racism and specifically antiblackness. It is not a mistake that the ozempic-chic era is coinciding with one of the biggest waves of open, globalised white supremacy we've seen in decades. Whiteness needs to perform & police whiteness constantly, maintaining appearances is THE way to stay part of the ingroup.
You must commit to removing yourself from that ingroup. Do not allow it a single toe in the door. A pseudoscience, no matter how comforting and easy to digest it may be, is not your friend. It is feeding you lie upon lie upon lie.
I suspected I was getting some bad medical advice, because everything my doctors told me to do was putting weight on me, not taking it off. Then I ran into two genius-level podcasts:
Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes, Maintenance Phase, and ...
Jen Baum and Matt Priven, Nutrition for Mortals.
I learned a lot more from Gordon and Hobbes, but I'm especially indebted, for my clarity on this, to a deep-dive into the hundred-year history of diet fads that was on Baum and Priven's show. So let me only slightly simplify this, because that's what I'm good at. Once you have put the weight on, there are only two "reliable" ways to lose weight:
Anorexia. And ...
Laxative abuse.
... and every weight loss medication that isn't a powerful laxative is an attempt to medicate away the symptoms of anorexia. All of them. And since neither anorexia, nor laxative abuse, are sustainable, because both of them cause even bigger health problems than being fat does, within 18-36 months 95% or more of the anorexics and the laxative abusers gain it all back plus another 5-15 pounds.
Also, nobody has ever shown any positive health outcomes, beyond the margin of error, for losing weight. But weight does sometimes come off if you do a better job of managing other health problems. Popular culture has he cause and effect backwards.
There are some mostly-reliable ways to keep from putting the weight on in the first place, and to keep from gaining more weight. The most important of which is never, ever, ever engage in anorexic behavior or abuse laxatives. Manage any depression, stress, or boredom in your life in better ways. Most of all, sleep more.
But those add up to "don't live under late stage capitalism." So if you've gained weight, or are still gaining weight, hate it if you must, but hate the game, not the players.
