Title: 9 Facts Shatter the Biggest Stereotypes About People Who Are Fat
Headings: 9 Facts Shatter the Biggest Stereotypes About People Who Are Fat
9 Facts Shatter the Biggest Stereotypes About People Who Are Fat
1. BMI is BS.
2. Fat people don't all have poor eating and exercise habits.
3. Fat itself isn't unhealthy.
4. Being fat doesn't signify a lack of willpower.
5. Size discrimination is real.
6. Fat shaming isn't helpful.
7. Fat people are not desperate for dates.
8. Not everyone wants to be skinny.
9. The word fat is not an insult.

Content: Even if being fat were actually a major health crisis, research shows that most diets just don't work in the long run — debunking the myth that being fat is simply due to being lazy. The rise in the number of people considered overweight cannot be written off as an individual lack of conviction. Indeed, International Journal of Obesity editor Richard L. Atkinson wrote in 2005 that the belief that "obesity is simply the result of a lack of willpower and an inability to discipline eating habits is no longer defensible." As neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt points out in her recent TedTalk, individuals have unique weight "set points." Losing weight outside of this range is really, really hard, and to chalk up the failure to do so to willpower is both disrespectful and ignorant. To put it in perspective, 95-98% of dieters regain any weight lost, and sometimes more, within three years. This makes sense: UCLA's A. Janet Tomiyama told the university that if "dieting worked, it wouldn't be a $60 billion-dollar industry," and that our genes' power over our weight "is about the same" as their power over our height. The truth is that we still don't know exactly how to healthfully lose weight and keep it off. As Paul F. Campos writes in the LA Times, " [T]he human body is a vastly more complex mechanism than a car engine, and the simple logic behind the idea that people will lose weight by eating less and exercising more isn't simple as much as it's hopelessly simplistic."