Advice from the Formerly Fat
The website Reddit is a font of crowd-sourced wisdom, where many people pass along the lessons they learned the hard way. In the “fat people stories” sections, the obese refer to themselves by the ruefully humorous term “hamplanet,” and this tip comes from a page called “You might be a hamplanet if…” It advises careful self-scrutiny […]
The Anxiety of the Formerly Fat
Back in the old days before everyone carried some kind of visual recording device 24/7, people could re-invent themselves. Before the Internet, it was possible for a movie star to go through an entire career without anyone ever being able to locate a copy of their high school yearbook to see how geeky they looked […]
Paul Mason, Fat Kid
We continue discussing the life story of Paul Mason, the formerly The World’s Fattest Man.
When Fat-Shaming Works
Strangely, many people’s anecdotal accounts of weight loss include a remark to the effect that they would not have made the effort, if not for fat-shaming.
Fatlogic and Self-Deception
One of the most popular fatlogic tropes is the genetic theory. It is true that a certain amount of obesity is genetically determined. However, this is often seen as a poor excuse—not only by people who have no weight problem, but by formerly obese people who have “been there, done that” and no longer accept […]
Reddit Tackles Fat-Shaming
Recently, to the astonishment of some and the relief of others, the gigantic Reddit website permanently banned five forums, or subreddits, of which two were devoted to fat-shaming. One of them, r/HamPlanetHatred, had only about 3,000 members while the other, r/FatPeopleHate, boasted nearly 150,000. Caitlin Dewey described them for the Washington Post: r/HamPlanetHatred In their […]
The Fatlogic Mindset
Alex Brecher, who has successfully maintained a loss of more than 100 pounds for over a decade, vouches for the efficacy of lap-band surgery. Having come across them so often himself, Brecher is uniquely qualified to expose examples of fatlogic. He does so with a briskly humorous approach and offers very sensible suggestions on how […]
Fatlogic Can Be Weird
The Reddit website has a section called Fat People Stories, which features a special vocabulary. An obese person is a “hambeast” or “hamplanet,” and the obesity itself is referred to as a “condishun.” A state of mind known as the “hamentality” can include a skewed rationale called “fatlogic,” a fallacious sense of entitlement, downright rudeness, […]
Therapy and the Formerly Obese
![[boy looks askance at woman, with caption 'So you're telling me ... people pay people to tell them to eat less?]](https://childhoodobesitynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/so-youre-eat-less.jpg)
Depression can be caused by interpersonal difficulties, and can in turn can cause further difficulties in getting along with other people. For people prone to overeating, this can result in a vicious cycle where social malaise causes unhealthy eating patterns, which in turn lead to more problematic social interactions. Any childhood obesity intervention needs to take […]
Paul Mason, Addict 1
We trace the journey of the (previously) world’s fattest man from England to the USA and back to his homeland, and look at the roots of his food addiction.