I guess even if I’m being overly sensitive about how the show treats fats and women, my problem with it is just that it grates on my own sensibilities. Almost every character is deplorable in one way or another. (Yes, even Jim and Pam…I find their “harmless” needling of Dwight and Michael cruel at times). I think it goes beyond just humanly flawed characters. In fact, people like Creed and Meredith have never been shown to have anything but negative qualities (as much as I can remember off the top of my head).

I should have added to my post that the Oscar/Kevin incident was disturbing, too, because the fatism wasn’t coming from the established fools — Dwight and Michael. It was coming from a character who is usually a voice of reason. So mistaken or not, I took that as a statement from the show itself, not a statement from a fool/therefore the show was making fun of how foolish the fool was.

Well, the only (again admittedly naive) theory I’ve come up with is that weight loss is not a biological plus as weight gain can be. Storing fat is an effort to guard against starvation. I can’t imagine a purely biological benefit to weight loss. AFAICR, any physical advantage attributed to weight loss can actually be achieved through moderate exercise, regardless of weight loss (such as reducing blood sugar levels, bringing down blood pressure).

When you talk of people at the top end of the scale, do you mean those that are disgustingly referred to as “super obese”? Because I have another theory about that :) I don’t think they are just really, really fat. I think they have a genetic disorder that caused their metabolism to break even worse than, say, an inbetweenie’s did because of dieting. I remember reading that many (or was it all?) extremely fat people had been put on diets as infants or toddlers. So maybe it’s not a genetic disorder but rather messing with a kid’s metabolism in a crucial stage of development.

To be picky, I do agree that the way they write Kevin is inconsistent; sometimes he’s dim but sweet, sometimes just a complete buffoon. I’m not sure the writers know what to do with him.

I did get what you aunt was saying, but what I thought was ironic was from a different angle, the idea has occured to me. Why shouldn’t we consider how to change weight/manipulate our metabolism, through some model other than that of starvation?

That would so shame the useless obesity science field the thought is too delicious.

This may sound naive, but if we trust how bodies work, I think it’s very telling that set point seems to only be able to be reset in an upward direction.

Our knowledge is incomplete, it’s impossible to believe that weight can only be reset upward. Surely that would be unprecidented in science? A force that only goes one way?

As for weight loss being intrinsically painful, it isn’t, dieting is though and that’s the key for me. Ditto weight gain, it is rarely painful in itself, so theoretically, there must be a way of shedding weight, that isn’t painful, we just don’t know what it is. And they don’t seem to be looking for it, they’re more looking for pills, because they won’t be satisfied until we are all junkies, for obvious reasons.

Dieting is a form of weight loss, so is the daily fluctuations that occur as our body’s supply us energy throughout the day, so is the indirect weight loss that occurs as a result of another change, positive or negative, in your life.

I don’t hate myself for being fat either, I really do believe FA’s for everyone. But at the risk of alienating people, I just can’t abandon those people at the top of the scale to their fate. They didn’t ask to be there anymore than I asked not to, so what’s for them? Nothing, certainly not ‘obesity science’, if we don’t help, who else is going to?

So I don’t know. The point I was trying to make is that if fat is a natural variation like short/tall and different hair/eye colors, then “obesity” doesn’t exist. In fact, I would think the only thing that comes close to “obesity” is dieting your way above your set point, i.e. “that has dieted itself fat.”

This may sound naive, but if we trust how bodies work, I think it’s very telling that set point seems to only be able to be reset in an upward direction. And if that’s caused by starving, then an overly simple theory to try resetting set point downwards would be overeating, right? But overeating doesn’t cause a lowered set point.

That might sound contrary to FA, but I don’t see why it should be.

Finding out how to change or reset our metabolism in an upward or downward direction seems to me not only to be perfectly legitimate, but really interesting. And natural, the body itself does it, it has to.

The potential ramifications of bringing this under some kind of conscious control are formidable and go far beyond mere weight.

If we could reset or change weight, naturally and with ease, we could either use that same model/pattern in other areas, the knowledge itself could itself provide other leads and so on.

I just can’t accept that we have to let the abominations that are weight loss dieting and ‘obesity science’, put us off learning more about how our bodies work, it seems to me, that’s what they really exist for.

It’s a strange statement if all we’re supposed to do is hate the bigoted characters. Also, it’s an odd thing for a show to make the lead character and his second banana the main ones we are supposed to hate.