From Twitter.
is it weird that as i got through the tweet my understanding of it lessens?
If you had a recent ancestor who went through starvation it actually altered their genetics and may have passed down genes to you that make you hold on to fat. So this tweet is more accurate than youād think.
More on that.
Seriously, my body is expecting the next ice age.
OH MY FUCKING GOD.
MY FUCKING GREAT GRANDFATHER LITERALLY FLED LEBANON DUE TO A FUCKING FAMINE AND MY GRANDMOTHER AND DAD AND I ARE ALL FAT AS FUCKING HELL.
FUCK ME RUNNING I DID NOT KNOW THIS.
ā¦Thatās going to apply also to anyone whose recent ancestors voluntarily dieted a lot, isnāt it. Diet culture long-term causes more obesity. Sure, it takes decades to show up, but anything youād hear today about childhood obesity would reflect that. Exercising is still very good for most people, but trying to lose weight shouldnāt be the goal for most people, because a) it usually doesnāt work very well or it comes back and b) your kids or grandkids could end up with extra wonky metabolisms. (And while fat itself is actually not that much of a problem if you keep your fitness up, it can be hard on your joints. Thatās actually the biggest health risk if youāre āsmall end of fat,ā under 40, and activeājoint problems.)
THAT MOTHERFUCKING ARTIFICIAL FAMINE THATāS IT IāM GONNA FIGHT THE ENGLISHĀ
Honestly, āIām gonna fight the Englishā is a good reaction to a lot of things.
the āobesity epidemicā in america is probably due to a combo of our grandparents living through the great depression and our parents being teens and young adults during the days of twiggy and heroin chic and the rise of diet culture.
combine that with the fact that gen x was the last generation allowed to play outside, pretty much, and the fact that everybody nowdays is working service jobs that exhaust them without working their muscles, and there is basically no way on earth youāre going to get a fit and healthy population without changing the basic structure of our society.
donāt fall for the hype. donāt focus on weight. itās actually far more dangerous to be underweight than overweight. even with what is clinically defined as āmorbid obesityā itās possible to be healthy as a horse, if your bone structure and metabolism are set up for it and youāve got lots of muscle to support it.
on top of that, the charts for ideal weight are at least a generation out of date. they were compiled based on a population that didnāt regularly get enough dairy and fresh produce, at a time when girls didnāt do athletics in school. young women in the 1960ā²s were measurably smaller than young women today. their bones were thinner, they had less muscle mass, their shoulders were more sloped, they had a smaller lung capacity ā society discouraged them from being physically active past the age of ten or twelve, and they finished their physical development in a sedentary setting.
boys were plenty active, but just like the girls, they were eating just about nothing but red meat and starch and some mushy greens with the vitamins boiled out. the thing where the poor get fat because sugar and fat are cheap wasnāt really happening yet, especially in rural areas; a farm kidās diet was beef and wheat in the north, pork and corn in the south. āeat your vegetablesā was such a hard sell because everything else was expensive and bland and overcooked. youāve seen the godawful cookbook excerpts from that time. mushy green beans and fried spam on a bed of mashed potatoes, seasoned with nothing but a pinch of white pepper.
sorry, that was kind of a tangent. i guess my point is, even the people who ate well by the standards of the time were malnourished compared to the standard of today. your lunch of a matcha cucumber smoothie and a cobb salad with one ounce of ham, one ounce of turkey, and 15 kinds of fresh vegetable, would give them the explosive shits because theyāve never had that much fiber in one place before. thereās more vitamins and antioxidants in your black bean fajita dinner than they saw in a week.
so first of all, the idea of trying to be the same size and shape they were is absurd.
and second, if malnourishment in one generation primes the next two for protective fat retention, the combination of that and the incredible wealth of nutrition we have available to us today is obviously going to make us HYUGE.
instead of fighting it, we should embrace it. we could all be HUMAN BOULDERS OF MIGHT.
I know a number of gen z kids who are active, regularly exercise / do sports, and are mindful or careful about what they eat but who are considered overweight. Theyāre healthy kids. Theyāre strong and have energy. But theyāre repeatedly criticized by parents and doctors alike for being āfatā. You wonder why so many kids have anxiety disorders? When youāre trying your best and are still told at every checkup that you need to stop eating junk food and sugar and lying on the couch watching tv because the doctor assumes that a kid living healthily couldnāt possibly be fat so that must be what youāre doing, it hurts. You feel like something is wrong with you. You internalize what youāre being told and it turns to feeling shameful, guilty, not good enough, messed up. I wish parents and doctors could wrap their brains around the fact that fat children can be healthy
I am 5'9", and for a solid portion of the last decade I was also 125lbs. Itās only in the last couple years that Iāve managed to put on a reasonable amount of weight. Iām between 180 and 190lbs right now, and very happy about it
When I was 125, not a single doctor was ever worried. I was constantly cold, stressed, and exhausted. I was literally always eating, and still could not gain anything. I was hungry all the time, but at the same time I would have given anything to just go to bed and sleep for days, because being chronically underweight does screwy things to your entire system
Now, a couple years into being an actual reasonable weight for my height, Iāve had a doctor, on our first visit, include āhealthy eating and weight lossā tips in my visit notes without even asking if I was happy at my weight. I am still mad about this. But also, I have so much more energy, I sleep better, I can actually regulate my own damn temperature, and I just over-all feel better
Eat the food, guys. The alternative isnāt worth it
Also, women who were pregnant in the 50ā²s and 60ā²s were ruthlessly exhorted to minimize weight gain during pregnancy, with doctors often demanding they gain only 15 pounds.Ā In fact, if they were overweight before getting pregnant, their doctors might urge them to actually lose weight in early pregnancy.Ā This led to a whole generation of babies who were undernourished during development, which studies have shown can lead to overweight in adults for two or three generations.
