I want to start this article by mentioning just how long it took to find a picture of a genuinely 'fat' person where they weren't miserable, engaged in a gym workout, or standing on a set of scales.
There were almost no photos at all of full-bodied men.
Eating disorders are skyrocketing in the UK, including among children and teenagers.
A lot of commentators place the blame with social media, and heavily filtered, professional, fully employed, paid 'influencers' (many of whom are instructed by the media companies which pay their wages to present themselves as "ordinary homie done good" types, representing their regular, paid job, complete with purchased followers, paid-for likes, and a vast marketing budget available, as "a wild bit of absolute luck") presenting unrealistic beauty standards.
Others go back further, blaming catwalk supermodels, and routine print magazine airbrushing of women who were already very far from even well-nourished, let alone 'fat.'
But, even within the communities pointing fingers at industry, the undercurrent of diet culture thinking is very strong, and often not even concealed on the surface. It's there when unpopular, prominent people like Elon Musk, Diane Abbot, and Donald Trump are mocked for their size and appearance. It's there when celebrities, most often women, are criticised for what they're photographed eating, or how they look in a bikini. It's there when people gush about "how much healthier!" a performer who was already healthy - proven by their ability to sustain high-energy dance performances for 2+hrs on a stage show, their ability to sing powerfully and well, with a genuinely beautiful voice - looks "now they've lost all that weight!" It's there in the ads urging post-partum folk to "get back your pre-baby figure!", often while they're still nursing a very high-calorie-demand infant. It's there in the constant urging to "go plant based", to "choose healthy snacks".
It's there in workplace "wellbeing" practices and information.
At a time when mental health has broken down so completely that the functionality of society itself is beginning to be impacted, because so many people are out of the workforce, in burnout within the workforce, or having to fit their working day around medication, medication side effects, and medical appointments, and when one of the highest-impact mental health condition spectrums is eating disorders, people are willing to do "anything to promote positive mental health!" - apart from just...be okay with people who happen to have fat bodies existing in those bodies, working out in those bodies without any intent to change those bodies, eating whatever appeals to them in those bodies, going to work in those bodies, parenting their children in those bodies, going to the beach in those bodies.
People are coming round to the idea that it's not okay to mock, bully, or harass people - apart from when those people are fat. Because they "need to be motivated to lose weight." It's unacceptable to "glamourise obesity".
Except...'obesity', in its truest, most genuine sense, is that a body has become so large that routine daily functioning - being able to stand up easily, move fluidly and at a consistent, steady pace, being able to easily increase that pace, adjust to inclines, cope with carrying heavy loads, such as packed shopping bags, being able to regulate breathing and body temperature - is compromised.
BMI has long been recognised as being deeply flawed as a concept, since it doesn't distinguish between body fat and muscle, and more recently has come under fire for problematic aspects of bias which were inherent in its design and development. It has also been altered more than once since its inception. BMI's definition of "obesity" actually means nothing more than "triggers insurance company underwriters into fearing they may actually have to pay out."
Most people who are visibly 'fat' are able to manage very active lives without even feeling any strain or ill-effects. People are very quick to paint people living in poverty as "fat, and therefore obviously unhealthy", whilst blanking on the fact that many of the UK's fat poor people are able to climb multiple flights of stairs, multiple times a day, to enter and leave their high-rise council flats. They do their housework with an upright hoover, or a dustpan and brush if the hoover breaks down before pay day, rather than sitting down and enjoying a bit of television, or the Sunday papers, while the Roomba handles things. They're walking half a mile or more back with the week's groceries, because they can't afford a car, and the bus didn't turn up. The unreliability of buses, and the inaffordability of running a car, means many of them walk or cycle several miles to jobs where they're walking back and forth for much of the day. Their 'leisure' often features walking, because it's free. They're pushing prams, carrying children up and down stairs, walking heavy bags of laundry to laundrettes, because the washing machine's on the blink, and they can't afford to replace or repair it. They're kicking footballs in the back yard with their kids all summer, because they can't afford a holiday.
Fat poor people are probably some of the most active people out there, despite often not being able to afford gym memberships and fancy workout gear. They're expending huge amounts of calories, whilst being literally unable to afford a lot of food - and yet they're still fat, which suggests that, in the same way as some people can exist on junk food, with their 'exercise' limited to walking across the room to change the channel when the batteries on the TV remote give up the ghost, and never put on an ounce, some people are going to be fat, no matter how active they are, or what, and how little, they eat.
So - why are we so triggered by fat people?
People paint the answer as "health concerns", and yet not a single doctor asks a thin patient what their diet and exercise lifestyle is like. (They probably should - it's actually medically relevant to know what people are eating, and how they choose to move their bodies, as that insight can legitimately inform diagnosis and treatment, in people of all sizes.)
If we were genuinely "worried about peoples' health", we'd stop talking loudly and aggressively about our preferred fad diet, our favourite exercise trend, and what particular people looked like, until the eating disorder epidemic was under control, with effective, accessible, person-centred support networks in place.
It's not health concerns, okay?
What it actually is is a lot more obvious.
We have simply never seen properly-nourished people before. The last 30-40yrs - the years in which diet culture has really ramped up its vitriol, the years in which the media has taken a laser-like focus on whether celebrities have put on weight, the years in which people have been increasingly encouraged to feel entitled to yell loudly, and very publicly, against anyone whose appearance, accent, mannerisms, or lifestyle makes them have feelings - are the first years in which we have been seeing people who didn't grow up either in actual poverty, without affordable healthcare, or in the shadow of the rationing that continued beyond the end of World War II into the 1950s. The 1980s was the beginning of the wider availability of personal credit, and the first time many families were able to afford what was genuinely 'enough' food for everyone in their household.
We didn't see "so many" fat people previously because most people we did see were chronically malnourished, and actually very unwell because of it. (Overreliance on tranquilisers, anyone? - anxiety is often an early sign of mild malnutrition, because central nervous system regulation itself requires a sufficient availability of quality nutrition calories...we burn calories regulating our minds and bodies, thinking, breathing, and just being, and, as starvation is a primal threat, even the possibility of the body not having enough calories to handle both core function regulation and non-core energy expenditure is something the brain gets very concerned about.)
We saw people who, even when they could afford sufficient food, were still in the mindset shadow of WWII rationing - someone who was in their 20s in the 1980s would have been born in the 1960s, to parents who were very conscious of, and very impacted by, rationing as they were growing up and coming to adulthood, and who were raised by people for whom rationing was a very real trauma.
The National Health Service in the UK was established in 1948 both to try and address the huge impact of combat-caused disabilities in men returning from the War, but also the malnutrition which had been starkly revealed as a systemic threat to the UK during both World Wars, with many men presenting for active service being in exceptionally poor physical condition - and very much not fat.
Schemes which were part of the emergent and vibrant welfare state, such as provision of milk to primary school age children, and the establishment of the Family Allowance in the UK (first outlined in a government white paper in 1942), were also centred on addressing the systemic malnutrition which was rife in the UK population.
We are only just seeing the completion of the purpose of the entire UK welfare state - and it includes seeing, for the first time, people who are not malnourished. For some people, their individual body being appropriately nourished will mean they are observably fat - but in good physical and mental health. And we need to become okay with that.
Size and strength
We don't challenge someone who is constantly eating, never seems to exercise, but doesn't gain weight when they say they're "just naturally skinny."
We can accept that some people will see better muscle mass development in the gym, because they are genetically better primed for muscle growth.
We're okay with the fact that people doing the same exercise regime can develop very different musculature quite naturally.
But we can't allow ourselves to believe that people who are eating sensibly for their needs, who are moving their bodies in ways which are most accessible and enjoyable for them, who can cope with the demands of 'necessary core functioning' without batting an eyelid, could just naturally be fat, in the same way as the pizza-guzzling couch-hugger can be naturally skinny.
Do some people make poor food choices? Yes - but that's not specific to body size; it's just that we only criticise fat people for their choices. Also, we don't always know what options were available to people at the time; recently, I spent almost £12 on fresh fruit and vegetables. It lasted 3 days (and was consumed, not that it went off in that time.) Buying "junk" food? I could have got a week's worth of meals for that money. Not everyone has £4 a day for fresh fruit and vegetables.
I've recently been advised my blood pressure is high - I work out at least 5 times a week, both cardio and weights (I'm more active outside of summer - summer is not my season, so in a couple of weeks, my cardio will get heavier, and I'll be adding in more exercise, as the crowds clear and the weather cools.) I looked into the DASH diet; I already mostly follow it, though often not to the levels of wholegrains suggested (I typically have 2-3 servings of wholegrains per day; DASH recommends 7-8), and while DASH recommends 4-5 servings each of fruit and vegetables separately, I tend to manage 5 servings combined of fruit and vegetables. I do sometimes have processed food. I added up, from Iceland (a fairly reasonably priced supermarket) what it would cost, per week, to actually meet all of the strictures of DASH: £80. I'm not in a position, currently, to afford £80 a week just on my food (my wife's nutrition needs are very different to mine, and she is unable to work owing to disability; currently, I'm unemployed, having lost my last job because of the impacts of my own disability - I found out in 2021 that I'm going blind - and trying to build up a business, The Productive Pessimist Ltd from scratch, on basic Universal Credit , with no practical or financial support on the business building front.) My sight loss makes it difficult for me to exercise more than I already am - I don't have a large house, so space is limited, I can't afford a gym membership, and, not being able to drive, I can't get to quieter outdoor spaces with more varied terrain, where I could potentially do more without having to be on edge around how to navigate crowds and obstacles safely. I do what I can, but I live in a society which tells people who have "medical conditions that are related to obesity" (high blood pressure actually isn't -athletes in peak performance condition have tested with high blood pressure...), or who are visibly 'fat', that nothing we do is ever enough - unless we become thin people, we're clearly just "not putting the required effort in."
Food is expensive.
Exercising is expensive, especially when you don't have a car, or a large home.
And you know what? No one would even believe me if I took them through how much and in what ways I exercise, and what and when I eat. (Fun fact; calculating my base metabolic rate, based on height, weight, gender, and activity level, where I've opted for 'moderately' active, even though I'm probably more 'active', shows I should be eating around 3,340 calories a day. My typical calorie count? Between 1,650-1,900 per day. I'm very much a fan of fruit, pitta bread, fresh fish, chicken, I can cook nutritionally complex meat-free meals. I don't smoke, or drink much alcohol. I might have chocolate 2-3 times a week. I snack on fruit, and I've never been a "dessert person.")
I've been eating disordered - at one point, I was eating one apple and one yoghurt per day, and working out 2-3 times a day, every single day; even with that, I only got down to 10.5stone (I was fixated on 9stone, for some reason - at 6ft, and with a broad build, that...probably wouldn't have been ideal.) I felt cold all the time, I had no energy, my mood was swinging from the chandeliers like an orangutan on speed... but no one was concerned. Everyone was full of praise for how "disciplined" I was being. I was miserable, but my body was smaller, and that's all people cared about.
Some of those thought processes - panicking if I feel hungrier than usual, judging what other people are putting in their shopping baskets, judging people who are eating 'unhealthy' snacks in public, becoming enraged by people who have the nerve to eat breakfast, feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety about meeting people for the first time, a hatred of having my photo taken - remain. I become aggressive and resentful if I can't exercise as much, or in the ways, I want to. Again... no one cares. There's not even any point in me talking to a doctor or anyone about what's going on with me, because they'll just fixate on my BMI, and my blood pressure, and tell me that it would be a good idea for me to lose weight.
What is a 'good idea' is to make it genuinely affordable, accessible, and easy for people to exercise safely and comfortably, and for people to access fresh fruit and veg, whole grains, fresh meat and fish, and other minimally-processed and raw foods which they will enjoy, and which don't cause gastrointestinal distress for them. (My wife's body will not tolerate unprocessed meat, or vegetables... my body has a low tolerance for carbs, including vegetables and things like rice and pasta.)
There were almost no photos at all of full-bodied men.
Eating disorders are skyrocketing in the UK, including among children and teenagers.
A lot of commentators place the blame with social media, and heavily filtered, professional, fully employed, paid 'influencers' (many of whom are instructed by the media companies which pay their wages to present themselves as "ordinary homie done good" types, representing their regular, paid job, complete with purchased followers, paid-for likes, and a vast marketing budget available, as "a wild bit of absolute luck") presenting unrealistic beauty standards.
Others go back further, blaming catwalk supermodels, and routine print magazine airbrushing of women who were already very far from even well-nourished, let alone 'fat.'
But, even within the communities pointing fingers at industry, the undercurrent of diet culture thinking is very strong, and often not even concealed on the surface. It's there when unpopular, prominent people like Elon Musk, Diane Abbot, and Donald Trump are mocked for their size and appearance. It's there when celebrities, most often women, are criticised for what they're photographed eating, or how they look in a bikini. It's there when people gush about "how much healthier!" a performer who was already healthy - proven by their ability to sustain high-energy dance performances for 2+hrs on a stage show, their ability to sing powerfully and well, with a genuinely beautiful voice - looks "now they've lost all that weight!" It's there in the ads urging post-partum folk to "get back your pre-baby figure!", often while they're still nursing a very high-calorie-demand infant. It's there in the constant urging to "go plant based", to "choose healthy snacks".
It's there in workplace "wellbeing" practices and information.
At a time when mental health has broken down so completely that the functionality of society itself is beginning to be impacted, because so many people are out of the workforce, in burnout within the workforce, or having to fit their working day around medication, medication side effects, and medical appointments, and when one of the highest-impact mental health condition spectrums is eating disorders, people are willing to do "anything to promote positive mental health!" - apart from just...be okay with people who happen to have fat bodies existing in those bodies, working out in those bodies without any intent to change those bodies, eating whatever appeals to them in those bodies, going to work in those bodies, parenting their children in those bodies, going to the beach in those bodies.
People are coming round to the idea that it's not okay to mock, bully, or harass people - apart from when those people are fat. Because they "need to be motivated to lose weight." It's unacceptable to "glamourise obesity".
Except...'obesity', in its truest, most genuine sense, is that a body has become so large that routine daily functioning - being able to stand up easily, move fluidly and at a consistent, steady pace, being able to easily increase that pace, adjust to inclines, cope with carrying heavy loads, such as packed shopping bags, being able to regulate breathing and body temperature - is compromised.
BMI has long been recognised as being deeply flawed as a concept, since it doesn't distinguish between body fat and muscle, and more recently has come under fire for problematic aspects of bias which were inherent in its design and development. It has also been altered more than once since its inception. BMI's definition of "obesity" actually means nothing more than "triggers insurance company underwriters into fearing they may actually have to pay out."
Most people who are visibly 'fat' are able to manage very active lives without even feeling any strain or ill-effects. People are very quick to paint people living in poverty as "fat, and therefore obviously unhealthy", whilst blanking on the fact that many of the UK's fat poor people are able to climb multiple flights of stairs, multiple times a day, to enter and leave their high-rise council flats. They do their housework with an upright hoover, or a dustpan and brush if the hoover breaks down before pay day, rather than sitting down and enjoying a bit of television, or the Sunday papers, while the Roomba handles things. They're walking half a mile or more back with the week's groceries, because they can't afford a car, and the bus didn't turn up. The unreliability of buses, and the inaffordability of running a car, means many of them walk or cycle several miles to jobs where they're walking back and forth for much of the day. Their 'leisure' often features walking, because it's free. They're pushing prams, carrying children up and down stairs, walking heavy bags of laundry to laundrettes, because the washing machine's on the blink, and they can't afford to replace or repair it. They're kicking footballs in the back yard with their kids all summer, because they can't afford a holiday.
Fat poor people are probably some of the most active people out there, despite often not being able to afford gym memberships and fancy workout gear. They're expending huge amounts of calories, whilst being literally unable to afford a lot of food - and yet they're still fat, which suggests that, in the same way as some people can exist on junk food, with their 'exercise' limited to walking across the room to change the channel when the batteries on the TV remote give up the ghost, and never put on an ounce, some people are going to be fat, no matter how active they are, or what, and how little, they eat.
So - why are we so triggered by fat people?
People paint the answer as "health concerns", and yet not a single doctor asks a thin patient what their diet and exercise lifestyle is like. (They probably should - it's actually medically relevant to know what people are eating, and how they choose to move their bodies, as that insight can legitimately inform diagnosis and treatment, in people of all sizes.)
If we were genuinely "worried about peoples' health", we'd stop talking loudly and aggressively about our preferred fad diet, our favourite exercise trend, and what particular people looked like, until the eating disorder epidemic was under control, with effective, accessible, person-centred support networks in place.
It's not health concerns, okay?
What it actually is is a lot more obvious.
We have simply never seen properly-nourished people before. The last 30-40yrs - the years in which diet culture has really ramped up its vitriol, the years in which the media has taken a laser-like focus on whether celebrities have put on weight, the years in which people have been increasingly encouraged to feel entitled to yell loudly, and very publicly, against anyone whose appearance, accent, mannerisms, or lifestyle makes them have feelings - are the first years in which we have been seeing people who didn't grow up either in actual poverty, without affordable healthcare, or in the shadow of the rationing that continued beyond the end of World War II into the 1950s. The 1980s was the beginning of the wider availability of personal credit, and the first time many families were able to afford what was genuinely 'enough' food for everyone in their household.
We didn't see "so many" fat people previously because most people we did see were chronically malnourished, and actually very unwell because of it. (Overreliance on tranquilisers, anyone? - anxiety is often an early sign of mild malnutrition, because central nervous system regulation itself requires a sufficient availability of quality nutrition calories...we burn calories regulating our minds and bodies, thinking, breathing, and just being, and, as starvation is a primal threat, even the possibility of the body not having enough calories to handle both core function regulation and non-core energy expenditure is something the brain gets very concerned about.)
We saw people who, even when they could afford sufficient food, were still in the mindset shadow of WWII rationing - someone who was in their 20s in the 1980s would have been born in the 1960s, to parents who were very conscious of, and very impacted by, rationing as they were growing up and coming to adulthood, and who were raised by people for whom rationing was a very real trauma.
The National Health Service in the UK was established in 1948 both to try and address the huge impact of combat-caused disabilities in men returning from the War, but also the malnutrition which had been starkly revealed as a systemic threat to the UK during both World Wars, with many men presenting for active service being in exceptionally poor physical condition - and very much not fat.
Schemes which were part of the emergent and vibrant welfare state, such as provision of milk to primary school age children, and the establishment of the Family Allowance in the UK (first outlined in a government white paper in 1942), were also centred on addressing the systemic malnutrition which was rife in the UK population.
We are only just seeing the completion of the purpose of the entire UK welfare state - and it includes seeing, for the first time, people who are not malnourished. For some people, their individual body being appropriately nourished will mean they are observably fat - but in good physical and mental health. And we need to become okay with that.
Size and strength
We don't challenge someone who is constantly eating, never seems to exercise, but doesn't gain weight when they say they're "just naturally skinny."
We can accept that some people will see better muscle mass development in the gym, because they are genetically better primed for muscle growth.
We're okay with the fact that people doing the same exercise regime can develop very different musculature quite naturally.
But we can't allow ourselves to believe that people who are eating sensibly for their needs, who are moving their bodies in ways which are most accessible and enjoyable for them, who can cope with the demands of 'necessary core functioning' without batting an eyelid, could just naturally be fat, in the same way as the pizza-guzzling couch-hugger can be naturally skinny.
Do some people make poor food choices? Yes - but that's not specific to body size; it's just that we only criticise fat people for their choices. Also, we don't always know what options were available to people at the time; recently, I spent almost £12 on fresh fruit and vegetables. It lasted 3 days (and was consumed, not that it went off in that time.) Buying "junk" food? I could have got a week's worth of meals for that money. Not everyone has £4 a day for fresh fruit and vegetables.
I've recently been advised my blood pressure is high - I work out at least 5 times a week, both cardio and weights (I'm more active outside of summer - summer is not my season, so in a couple of weeks, my cardio will get heavier, and I'll be adding in more exercise, as the crowds clear and the weather cools.) I looked into the DASH diet; I already mostly follow it, though often not to the levels of wholegrains suggested (I typically have 2-3 servings of wholegrains per day; DASH recommends 7-8), and while DASH recommends 4-5 servings each of fruit and vegetables separately, I tend to manage 5 servings combined of fruit and vegetables. I do sometimes have processed food. I added up, from Iceland (a fairly reasonably priced supermarket) what it would cost, per week, to actually meet all of the strictures of DASH: £80. I'm not in a position, currently, to afford £80 a week just on my food (my wife's nutrition needs are very different to mine, and she is unable to work owing to disability; currently, I'm unemployed, having lost my last job because of the impacts of my own disability - I found out in 2021 that I'm going blind - and trying to build up a business, The Productive Pessimist Ltd from scratch, on basic Universal Credit , with no practical or financial support on the business building front.) My sight loss makes it difficult for me to exercise more than I already am - I don't have a large house, so space is limited, I can't afford a gym membership, and, not being able to drive, I can't get to quieter outdoor spaces with more varied terrain, where I could potentially do more without having to be on edge around how to navigate crowds and obstacles safely. I do what I can, but I live in a society which tells people who have "medical conditions that are related to obesity" (high blood pressure actually isn't -athletes in peak performance condition have tested with high blood pressure...), or who are visibly 'fat', that nothing we do is ever enough - unless we become thin people, we're clearly just "not putting the required effort in."
Food is expensive.
Exercising is expensive, especially when you don't have a car, or a large home.
And you know what? No one would even believe me if I took them through how much and in what ways I exercise, and what and when I eat. (Fun fact; calculating my base metabolic rate, based on height, weight, gender, and activity level, where I've opted for 'moderately' active, even though I'm probably more 'active', shows I should be eating around 3,340 calories a day. My typical calorie count? Between 1,650-1,900 per day. I'm very much a fan of fruit, pitta bread, fresh fish, chicken, I can cook nutritionally complex meat-free meals. I don't smoke, or drink much alcohol. I might have chocolate 2-3 times a week. I snack on fruit, and I've never been a "dessert person.")
I've been eating disordered - at one point, I was eating one apple and one yoghurt per day, and working out 2-3 times a day, every single day; even with that, I only got down to 10.5stone (I was fixated on 9stone, for some reason - at 6ft, and with a broad build, that...probably wouldn't have been ideal.) I felt cold all the time, I had no energy, my mood was swinging from the chandeliers like an orangutan on speed... but no one was concerned. Everyone was full of praise for how "disciplined" I was being. I was miserable, but my body was smaller, and that's all people cared about.
Some of those thought processes - panicking if I feel hungrier than usual, judging what other people are putting in their shopping baskets, judging people who are eating 'unhealthy' snacks in public, becoming enraged by people who have the nerve to eat breakfast, feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety about meeting people for the first time, a hatred of having my photo taken - remain. I become aggressive and resentful if I can't exercise as much, or in the ways, I want to. Again... no one cares. There's not even any point in me talking to a doctor or anyone about what's going on with me, because they'll just fixate on my BMI, and my blood pressure, and tell me that it would be a good idea for me to lose weight.
What is a 'good idea' is to make it genuinely affordable, accessible, and easy for people to exercise safely and comfortably, and for people to access fresh fruit and veg, whole grains, fresh meat and fish, and other minimally-processed and raw foods which they will enjoy, and which don't cause gastrointestinal distress for them. (My wife's body will not tolerate unprocessed meat, or vegetables... my body has a low tolerance for carbs, including vegetables and things like rice and pasta.)
What is a 'good idea' is for people to be able to easily explore a range of physical activities, which are fully flexible with even the busiest lifestyle. It would be great, for example, to have points throughout every day where, for 1-2hrs at a time, public parks and beaches were ONLY open to people exercising in some way - for example, 5am-7am, 1pm-3pm, and 7pm-9pm, to accommodate a broad range of working patterns. That still leaves 8hrs for everyone else, and would limit the harassment women face, would stop kids and bored adults shouting abuse or deliberately interfering with peoples' workouts, and would allow people with no money, living in limited space, to exercise more fully.
A cautionary tale
I was honestly shocked by the results of my base metabolic rate calculations - I actually can't see how I can eat over 3000 calories in a day; I struggle with the <2000 I'm currently managing.
But it made me stop and think: how many of the health issues that the government is currently wringing its hands over, which are taking people out of the workforce - mental health issues, chronic fatigue, chronic pain conditions, IBS - are being caused, or at least significantly exacerbated, by people not actually getting the calories their bodies actually need?
It's simply unbelievable that the varied types and healthy sizes of bodies that exist all 'only' need 2000 calories a day. (The UK government 'recommendation.') How can someone who is working a physically demanding manual labour job, who has to do all their household chores by hand, who has to cycle 5miles each way to work, 'only' need the same amount of calories as someone with all the labour saving domestic devices they could want, who works an office job, and drives everywhere?
Diet culture is big business, and big business is always terrified that people might stop giving it money. If we made fresh food choices widely available, and affordable to someone on basic State welfare, if we made it safe, accessible to people, including disabled people, and free for people to exercise in a wide variety of ways, if we gave everyone secure, private, outside space, and large rooms in their homes, so they could work out at home if they didn't feel like going out, if we stopped bullying and harassing people because the size of their bodies offended us, how much would our collective health improve?
It's not even really a risk or a gamble to 'f--k around and find out'; we're claiming people are fat and unhealthy now. We're deluged with documentaries about people who are "too fat to work." The NHS is already howling about the cost of treating "obesity" (which, remember, in most cases isn't actually 'obesity' in its genuine-medical-impact sense). Apparently, people being fat is already causing intolerable difficulties for society as a whole.
We're not going to make it worse if we decentre diet culture, and stop being a-holes to people whose bodies we don't care for.
But we might just find we make everything better.
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