The bias against overweight people is evil. I know. I was the fat kid growing up, and it got worse for years. And I'm a guy. It was worse for the girls. The unfairness and meanness is destructive and disheartening. The thin kids in school weren't ridiculed in gym class by the coach or weighed in class to jeers from the class clowns. Even teachers and doctors used the words "fat slob." These insults continued into adulthood, and it was often assumed I was stupid or lazy because of my weight and that I didn't care enough about myself to do something about it. These things weren't true. The ignorance, bias and meanness hurt.
An excellent article posted by The Obesity Society, an association of professionals in the field, outlines the evidence of bias and stigma researchers have documented, including discrimination in college acceptance, job opportunity, wages and health care provision, as well as the hate, ridicule and insults I referred to.
However, the obesity bias is far nastier for women than men -- overwhelmingly so. They suffer all the insults and discrimination I described, and more. It is insidious and needs to be pointed out and stopped.
After 25 years of obesity and weight loss failure, I became an obesity and weight loss expert and lost 140 pounds permanently when I formed the unique program of behavioral medicine, The Anderson Method, Therapeutic Psychogenics as a behavioral therapist. I've maintained that success for more than 25 years, and I've been teaching others ever since. In the years of study and discovery about obesity, its causes and the solution, I have become painfully aware of how much more difficult things are for women and how much better men have it. It's incredibly unfair. Here's why:
Women gain weight much more easily than men and have to work much harder to lose it.
My average female client, at 5'4", has a metabolic rate (MR) of approximately 1,800 calories per day. The average male client, at 6 feet tall, has a metabolic rate of 2,700 calories per day. That means that a man gets to eat 2,700 calories of food per day without gaining weight, while a woman gets only 1,800. If you eat more than your metabolic rate, you gain weight. These facts are not up for debate. The numbers are approximates, but the principles are scientifically valid.
If the woman eats 2,200 calories a day, 400 over her MR but still 500 fewer than the man, she can gain 40-50 pounds a year while he stays the same! Talk about unfair! He has a drink and she has a drink. He has desert, she has desert. She gets fat, he doesn't.
Lunch at Burger King of a Whopper, fries and a Coke is 1,200 calories. One of Ruby Tuesday's salads is 1,700 calories. A breakfast at Denny's can easily exceed 1,200 calories. Many of Starbucks' drinks are 400-600 calories. Think about it. It's unbelievably easy for a woman to gain weight in our culture, much easier than a man. Restaurants make it easy for men to get overweight. For women, it's a disaster. There is a huge bias against women here. It's not just with paychecks.
Think a doctor's 1500-calorie/day diet will fix things? Think again.
Before coming to me, it's not unusual for a female client to have been put on a 1,500-calorie/day diet by a doctor or nutritionist, yet gained weight. Then, when they went back to their doctor weeks later, they got blamed and shamed, told they must have not followed the diet. When my clients protested, they were essentially called liars.
Here are the facts: A 6-foot man following a 1,500-calorie-per-day diet will often lose two pounds a week, even when they "cheat." A 5-foot woman will lose nothing and may even gain! I have had clients coming to me for years telling me about being prescribed 1,500-calorie diets and then being blamed and insulted by doctors, husbands and others when they "failed" while the guys "won." What an ugly example of ignorance and gender bias.
It's OK for a man to be fat. For a woman, it's a shame.
When a man is obese, it can be OK, and he can even portray it as an admirable thing. Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, hero of the Gulf War, was quite obese. Being overweight was a part of being the "Big Man," something to be admired. Football stars are huge, some not only obese, but morbidly obese. They are not ridiculed for it. Fat men can be admired for their size and maybe even feared -- certainly not universally scorned. Obese men can present themselves in a manner so that their obesity can be admired for its form, not reviled. They can take on a role they can feel good about and then feel good about themselves.
Women have no such archetypes or models that can be admired for being obese. They don't have heroines where their large size is one of the things for which they are admired. Obese girls hear "such a pretty face," which is saying the opposite about her body. "It's such a shame" is a common comment. You don't hear these things about men. This really hurts overweight women, because we must all like ourselves and feel we are OK in order to become healthy and whole. Without that, it is much harder to generate the self-esteem needed for us to take care of ourselves.
I've heard fat men make fun of overweight women as if the men were fine just the way they were. I've had beautiful women come to me who, in my opinion, really weren't very overweight, yet wanted to change their body because their partners didn't approve. It's disgusting. I've never heard a man report that his partner complained about his too-big butt or thighs.
Not only is obesity easier to develop for a woman and harder to solve, it can be much harder on them physically, socially and emotionally. The gender bias of obesity is insidious. It's evil. What do we do about it? I'll address that next week.
Reference:
(1) Fairburn, C.G. & Brownell, K.D. (2002) Eating Disorders and Obesity, 2nd Edition.
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This is what we are: animals. Animals of different genders have different gender roles in their own societies in the wild. Just because we have this nice pretty little civilization surrounding our animalistic society doesn’t mean that we can “out think” and reason past our basic instincts of gender roles. Just because the media, eateries, job market, and every other facet of human society also discriminates based on male dominated status quo, doesn’t mean they are causing it. They may simply be REFLECTING the innate, primal desires of humans at their core and historical male dominated world we have lived in since the hunter-gatherer days. Welcome to being a human. I hope you enjoy your stay.
As to your commentary on sociological implications and ramifications of obesity, you again fall short of making any progress. Lets all hold hands and cry about how human society... continues to act like a human society. Obsession with female bodies and an apparent lack of discrimination towards men's, really? Have you grown up in human civilization? Have you realized that for over 6000 years we have judged women on their physical features (i.e. waist to hip ratio as a sign of child bearing age/viability) and men on their ability to provide for women and children? Now, all of a sudden we need to deny our history and innate desires to judge based on age-old criteria because someone got their feelings hurt? I’m not saying you’re incorrect, but I am saying it isn’t as simple as “This is bad, we need to stop it.”
This is an Obesity article right? And yet you make absolutely NO mention of daily activity level and the American sedentary lifestyle... Oh? That sounds like a very advantageous omission to place the blame on society's hatred of women rather than its slothful nature in general. Now, if you mentioned how society encourages male physical activity and disregards or looks down upon female physical activity... That would be a much more interesting and objectively neutral stance to take on gender discrimination within obesity. I.e. Male bonding events are typically physical or action oriented (sports, video games, events, etc) while Female bonding activities tend to be psychosocial and empathetic in nature? Do Phys Ed classes still let the males take charge and run the sports while girls sit on the sidelines? How about a role reversal? Sounds fun to me.
Evil Society Gender Bias? Society is mean to fat people? Society is mean to fat women more than fat men? Oh I’m sorry. I was too busy being concerned about the mentally handicapped, the genetically diseased, the deformed, the impoverished through no fault of their own, and rape victims being stripped of their right to abort a parasite spawned of a physically menacing perpetrator... All of whom are witnessing the evil of human society similar to the obese EXCEPT THEY CAN’T CHANGE THEIR SITUATION. Oh, is it hard to lose fat? Is the deck is stacked against you because of all the calorie dense food choices? Sorry, but you can do it… Through the well-established and readily available means of diet, exercise, therapeutic psychogenics, etc. People born with only one kidney or only one eye, or the down trodden, racially-discriminated-against poor have fewer options (if any) in dealing with their issues. Perhaps you should ask them about the “evil” and “unfairness” of society.
Now if you wanted to make a motion that some obese people can be considered genetically diseased through abnormally small mitochondria or lack of ability to utilize sugar and strong preference to store it, well that sounds a whole lot better than the sob-fest you put in the article. Please, check your sentimental hypersensitivity at the door when using words like “evil”, “destructive”, “disheartening”, and “unfair” by saving them for the situations that actually call for such accusations of society.
Great topic for an article; extremely poor execution. Your attempts to produce scientifically sound logic fall far short of making any sense whatsoever... Comparing the calorie intakes of a 5'4" female to a 6' male is utterly absurd. Yes, lets compare Hannah Montanna to Taylor Lautner and how upset she should be that her Basal Metabolic Rate isn’t as high. If it never occurred to a 5'4" girl that she cannot eat the same diet as a 6' tall man, then she has far greater problems than unsightly fat.
1500 calorie diets gaining weight? Did you honestly go there? If Miss 5'4" starts a 1500 calorie diet cold turkey, what little physical activity she had will most likely go down the tubes (see: diet induced fatigue) and her physiology will adjust accordingly (i.e. save up energy because we now have less food). Mr. 6' on a 1500 calorie diet is near starving himself and if he has any sort of muscle mass he will start to atrophy thus losing the "weight" described.
You bring football players into the equation with absolutely no stated knowledge or expression of the damn metric used (BMI) to determine them as "obese" and morbidly obese. Nor do you acknowledge the inherent shortcomings of that metric in relation to heavily muscled, extremely active individuals. Bravo. For a science expert, you truly have no regard for the very scientific postulates that you are claim to utilize.
Really? About fourteen years ago, my wife told me flat out I was getting fat. I started watching what I eat and lifting weights. I am in pretty good shape.
And, IMO, you have it exactly backward. A woman can simply tell a man he is getting fat. A man has to be far more delicate in how he discusses this with a woman.
It is to your credit that you think a man needs to be sensitive in how he speaks to a woman. Many men do not. Unfortunately, many are insensitive selfish jerks, which reflects poorly on the rest of us.
Thanks for your comment.
I don't see it. IMO, boys learn pretty early on in their dating experience that there are things that women are highly sensitive about, and you don't say those things.
However, we know that stress is a troublemaker for a variety of reasons. Not only obesity, but heart disease, diabetes and cancer are some of disease states exacerbated by stress. We don't need to even think about cortisol to come to the conclusion that stress needs to be addressed and properly treated.
For overeaters, stress is probably the main troublemaker that triggers overeating and relapse to overeating behavior, so it is one of the most important issues addressed with my clients. In therapist-led training in The Anderson Method, clients are educated in the the basics about stress, techniques of stress management, and trained in relaxation methods so that they enjoy less stress in their lives and are not dependent on food as their primary stress management technique. Knowing about the problems related to cortisol is good, but the most important thing is to master the stress so that cortisol is not a problem.
"I have had clients coming to me for years telling me about being prescribed 1,500-calorie diets and then being blamed and insulted by doctors, husbands and others when they "failed" while the guys "won." What an ugly example of ignorance and gender bias."
The reason is that despite what we're constantly told on the internet, we REALLY don't need that many calories. Even 1200. So many women think that 1200 is this magic number, and when you eat less than 1200 your body flips a switch and "won't lose." Umm, no, it doesn't work like that.
Actually, you probably need more than 1200. A true answer to your question is too lengthy and complex to state completely here. You are right though; many people believe essentially kooky folklore, like the "won't lose" switch. Thank goodness the science is known. There is no mystery to the thermodynamics of weight control, but getting people to listen to the science and respect it is not easily accomplished.
I'm a writer. SOMETIMES I sit on my butt anywhere from 6 to 14 hours per day for close to a month or two. I am smallish- short and thin.
When I'm not pushing out these exhausting projects, I'm a runner- 5ks, halfs, and I do believe that that keeps my metabolism up, EVEN WHEN I need to turn off that hobby and concentrate for a month or two.
I rarely eat 1200 calories a day, unless I'm not busy and on a running kick....
What do you think?
Once I reached 40yo my metabolism seemed to come to a screeching halt. I became a SAHM and after all those years of being lean, I gradually put on 80 lbs. Interestingly, my husband, an Air Force Officer topped out at 400lbs, but was always considered strong and manly by his troops and other women. I, on the other hand, at 185lbs. was repeatedly mistaken for his mother by other women. Nice.
So I agree with you Doc, life is harder on overweight women--physically and emotionally. And I find it sad that those who have found success with a particular way of living would stand in judgement of those who struggle. Life is a toss up--you have no say in the genes you're dealt, or the emotional family dynamic you're raise in or the lessons taught in your life. But you do have a say in how you work on yourself within that construct.
BTW, I dropped the 80 and then some. I worked on my insides first and then the outside followed. :)
I am 63 and weigh the same as high school. Why? Because I eat 1200 calories a day, don't drink, and make sure I do something active every day. Why? Because I do not want my kids to have to take care of me like I had to care for my parents. If I cheat with dessert, I know I will pay a price of extra pounds. I know I will eat lite at dinner. I grieve too at the fattening food I simply cannot eat.
Fat people think thin people are thin just because. Maybe when young -- but our MBR slows down with age too. A "diet" is not a diet -- it is what you eat everyday f o r e v e r. I will get fat too if I eat too much of anything even good food.
So sorry -- I have no patience with overweight people, and I do think they are mentally lazy and self-centered. Typical of our culture -- give it to me now. Buy the designer bag -- stick it on the credit card. Pay the price later or better yet let someone else pay the price. And yes -- when I see a fat person, I assume "lower socio-economic class, not too bright, and poor." And this stereotype is proving true. So get ready to be judged.