Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KennyBlanken | Hacker News Reader

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"I'm big boned" - show them an MRI or cat scan of a morbidly obese person and you see a tiny little skeleton surrounded by what looks like a giant, puffed up cartoon balloon body.

"I have a low metabolism" - obese people actually have a high 'metabolism', because moving all that extra weight takes a lot of energy

"Being overweight is not unhealthy" - weird then that they are having trouble getting pregnant and/or miscarriage regularly, need a machine to breathe at night lest their brain not receive enough oxygen, their knees and hips and eyes are that of someone several decades older, they're likely dependent upon insulin injections to live, and substantially more likely to develop cancer, etc.

Yes, there are a lot of negative attitudes towards obese patients in the medical community. That is partly because obese people think they know better than medical science, and are more interested in screaming about how they're being discriminated against thanks to the patriarchy and unrealistic beauty standards....than actually doing something about their weight...like accepting a referral to a nutritionist and accepting the advice to engage in more activity and weight-bearing exercise.

When someone needs a machine to breathe, artificial joint replacements, hourly/daily insulin, and Star Trek levels of intervention to reproduce, maybe they just need to shut the fuck up and lose weight.

You know what's really infuriating? Maintaining a healthy weight, getting exercise, making an effort to eat a balanced diet that hits lots of nutrients....and seeing these people cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do.

>You know what's really infuriating? Maintaining a healthy weight, getting exercise, making an effort to eat a balanced diet that hits lots of nutrients....and seeing these people cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do.

Not to veer too far off topic but this is something that always bugs my mind when people talk about how they don't want "socialized" healthcare because they don't wanna pay for other people to live unhealthy lives. Like dude, healthcare is already socialized, where exactly do you think the money the insurance companies uses to pay for all of your health costs comes from? From....other members paying into it. Which means that they already adjust prices to account for all their unhealthy members. You're already paying for it, might as well cut out the part where the company's incentivized to put turning a profit over providing quality care.

> seeing these people cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do.

Most healthcare costs come from old age related costs and diseases. Cigarette smokers and obese people are actually cheaper to insure in the long run, because they're much more likely to die before becoming old enough to incur significant old age related healthcare costs.

> cost my insurance company several orders of magnitude more money to keep alive than I do

*Cost you several orders of magnitude more

Regardless of health, being overweight doesn't make someone a bad person.

I'm not sure about that. Being overweight is selfish and wasteful in a world where many people don't have enough food to eat.

Eating less candy isn't going to feed anyone in impoverished countries.

If any whole country gave up candy then they'd save a lot in direct cost and even more in related costs (diabetes, etc.) that they could certainly help feed many many people. Sure, the effect of one person not eating candy is easily lost, but I spend a few pounds a month myself on sweets (ie candy, I'm from the UK). I know that money could likely feed someone in a developing nation for a month.

It's so easy to tell ourselves that each small contribution adds to zero, but as someone noted elsewhere in this thread, calculus should tell us enough to be wary of dismissing little bits!

I don't know who needs to hear this, but being overweight doesn't make someone a bad person. Flying from New York to San Francisco a couple times a year also doesn't make someone a bad person.

Do you donate your uneaten calories to hungry people?

BEING overweight doesn't, I'll give you that. Failing to take responsibility for it and blaming other people instead of fixing it? We are in moral territory now.

Hi, being overweight is not a problem that requires fixing or taking responsibility either. It just is. It doesn't make someone a lesser person.

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