Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkey | Hacker News Reader

Believe it or not, fat people receive this kind of anecdotal lecture unprompted throughout their lives.

It is precisely these attitudes that the article addresses directly. If you assume the problem is simple and easy to solve, then anyone who hasn't solved it has a character defect. Needless to say, receiving this kind of pep-talk is annoying and unpleasant.

I'd encourage you to read the article or study directly and perhaps ponder what it might feel like to not have been able to eat endlessly from the moment you were born before telling someone else how best to handle a medication actively dis-regulating their metabolism.

View on HN

You seem to be reading a lot into what I wrote. I never said anything about a "character defect", or that the problem is easy to solve. I'm saying that easy or hard, we do have agency. In particular, I disagree with these two statements from GP:

> People who keep on gaining weight until they die must have a broken thermostat set on "high". It can't be psychological.

> Because conscious thought is not a replacement for automatic regulation.

I skimmed the article, but only because I've already read an entire book on the topic. I understand that there are hormonal effects on weight. That's no reason to throw your hands up and declare that you have no agency in the matter.

Are all people obese due to medication? The article from beginning tries to say it's not due to difference in total calorie taken and used. Is it really not the case? People always chose sugary food over fruits, veg and meat whenever they are hungry.

edit: Want to add that people also eat way too frequently, which makes us feel hungry (falsely) whenever not eating in that schedule. This can be averted by practice of eating less frequently few days. It does not mean starving, we just deviated from the normal and trying to go back.

There are things that have fundamentally changed in our bodies as a whole to make us have a different relationship with food and hunger. This change really started in the mid 19th and 20th century.

Food security can't be the only explanation for this because there were dozens of periods in human civilization where food security was just as good or better.

Not investigating this is causing lives lost and mental anguish. It's like we don't want to admit that fat people might have actually been fat because of other reasons other than being a failure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com