By David Futrelle
A couple of months ago, Gillette infuriated Men’s Rights Activists and other terrible people with an ad challenging toxic masculinity and suggesting that maybe it wasn’t such a good thing for men and boys to go around bullying and harassing people.
Now Gillette has a new ad out that seems designed to enrage, well, pretty much the same exact mob that came after them then. The ad, promoting Gillette Venus razors for women, features Internet-famous model Anna O’Brian — a.k.a Glitter and Lasers — posing triumphantly on a beach in a two-piece swimsuit, arms raised to the sky.
This isn’t the first time a Gillette ad has featured a woman in a swimsuit. But this particular woman happens to be fat, and so a vast horde of angry men (mostly) have gone online to attack Gillette for “glorifying obesity” and surrendering to the cuck soyboy hairy feminist woke SJW overlords. These health-conscious gentlemen and ladies have also mocked the model herself, calling her a predictable assortment of names, suggesting that she smells, and predicting that she’ll die soon.
On Twitter, quite a few decided to play the role of a “concerned” doctor:
Never mind that fat does not automatically mean unhealthy. Never mind that thin people can be unhealthy. Never mind that diets can be so unhealthy as to be dangerous. And never mind that fat shaming is not only not an effective way to inspire people to lose weight — and often causes its targets to gain weight — it’s also a threat to their health, both mental and physical.
Of course, quite a few of the commenters didn’t even bother to pretend that their complaints had anything to do with health. Most were not terribly original with their insults.
Other commenters pulled out all their favorite right-wing buzzwords for the occasion:
Some thought that this new ad, like Gillette’s “toxic masculity” ad in January, was really just a sneaky way to attack … men.
Over on the always despicable Breitbart, which noted that in addition to Anna, Gillette has also used trans activist Jazz Jennings in recent ads, the commenters were a bit blunter.
Well, I guess Gillette has started another “conversation,” as they like to say whenever they do something they know will provoke an angry mob. So sad that all it takes is a picture of a fat woman unapologetically wearing a bikini to unleash a wave of hate.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
I like how that one guy specifically mentioned feminists with armpit hair, as if they’re the ones trying to sell razors to women
Also while I’m glad to see more bodies like mine being unapologetic, I can’t help but feel like gilette is using obese women to poke a hornet’s nest just for attention. It’s not gonna be helpful in humanizing us.
If a woman in a swimsuit who isn’t a size zero in an ad upsets them wait until they hear that Casimir Pulaski, Polish hero of the US Revolutionary War, was apparently not a cis man. I’m sure they’ll rant and rave about it being part of the plot to destroy masculinity.
I wish these douche bags would stop pretending their fatphobic attitudes have anything to do with health. They’re mad because Gillette hired a model who doesn’t fit their standard of beauty or get their dicks hard.
@phillyguy:
I … I …
Remarkable.
A giant megacorp spends on an advertisement in order to sell stuff, turn a profit, and make investors and shareholders filthy rich, and this is your response? Do you even know the meaning of the word “communist”?
Meanwhile, you’re playing right into the hands of the very corporation you hate. Obviously they’re saving on advertising dollars by making ads that will trigger right-wing snowflakes so that you lot will froth and foam all over the Internet generating tons of link traffic and extra publicity for their ad. So they get to spend on a small ad campaign but get the attention of a large ad campaign, saving a buttload of money and turning the lot of you into unpaid volunteer publicists for their brand. “There’s one born every minute”, according to the saying, and the right wing especially seems to be full of gullible easily-manipulated people.
Just out of curiosity, I looked up Gilette’s stock. I know very little about stocks logistically (haven’t thought about it much since an 8th grade social studies project), but fortunately Google is kind to people who don’t follow economics particularly well and has a variety of charts. The stock is going up and has been steadily for a while, with a few dips that look fairly normal for comparable stocks that soon go away again.
Not that Gilette suffering financially would make these guys right, but I do like fact checking these things periodically, just because they tend to assume they’re right about such numbers and proceed as though they were. That’s why we’re still hearing that the yucky girl Ghostbusters failed even though it did perfectly well for a goofy summer action movie.
@Surplus to Requirements
In a word, no. In the same way that most people in the US don’t seem to know what “socialism” means, beyond “I heard it was bad!” Hence why they’re willing to agree that all sorts of socialist ideas sound great, so long as they don’t have to hear the word.
I think in the US it’s come full circle. The right has called the slightest bit of regulation and any government program that helps people “socialism” for so many years that young people have positive associations with the word. For people too young to remember the cold war, red scares mean absolutely nothing. By hyping up the fear of “socialism” long after the USSR broke up, the right has inadvertently made socialism popular.
After the original toxic masculinity ad, one asshat threw his gillette razor down his toilet, took a picture of it, and posted it.
I really can’t wait to see what they’ll do to protest this time. Throwing themselves down the toilet would be a nice start.
@tim –
Thanks for sharing the article about Casimir Pulaski. I never knew this, and between Pulaski County smack in the middle and Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River I know a big swath of mid/south Georgia that won’t be happy about it.
those user names, oh my
“Autism Caliphate”
careful there, lad – you’ll cut yourself on all that edge
@fiercebadrabbit
On the topic of movies – you mean like the bad horrible terrible brie larson-lead captain marvel that they were crying about a few months back making an utterly surprising billion of dollars? Even though nobody in their right mind would want to see such feminist trash with its sjw-agenda! And clearly those super rational and not emotion-controlled men are the majority, so they constitute people in their “(alt)-right mind” and that’s why it hasn’t made any mon…. Wait. Oh.
They aren’t the majority? Most others people are actually somewhat decent at the very least?
Nah, can’t be right.
That being said – I like how one of the tweeters is so, so fucking close to the truth. “men – change, you’re a bad person, women – obese? You’re perfect”.
It’s almost like your body weight has nothing to so with being a good, worthy person with inherent value and instead it’s your personality that counts.
And it’s not like the last Gillette ad didn’t show men being kind. But of course they see it as behind “you’re bad”, because it’s their own behaviour that is being shown as bad.
Would a little bit of introspection be too much to ask?
@Zaunfink
I had similar thoughts on reading the Breitbart comment from “Chip”:
We know, Chip… that’s why we say toxic masculinity? Did you not notice this use of modifying adjective as you were typing?
You wanna bet Bezzi stole his line from That Mitchell and Webb Look?
Gah.
Intentional weight loss is impossible, not matter what you do.
Your body doesn’t know and doesn’t care that your calorie deficit is intentional and will do whatever it can to reduce energy expenditure.
And it’s known that there is a weight homoeostasis, and that each individual has a weight set point. And we have about as much control over this weight set point as our height. The weight we end up, barring disordered eating or metabolic diseases, is mostly genetic with a bit of environment thrown in.
The reason public policy is the way it is? The BILLION dollar weight loss industry. They do their damnedest to suppress the actual scientific findings in order to sell their products.
And they are killing people in the process.
Well I mean, depending on if a whale is someone who is obese, it’s 32% of the population. If a whale is someone who is merely overweight, the figure balloons (hah!) to 64%. Thems not bad demographic numbers to be targeting!
If we assume that soy boys do not overlap with whales, that just adds on even more, a full 22% of US men qualifying as soy boys. (source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/225074/conservative-lead-ideology-down-single-digits.aspx)
There may be some overlap between whales and soy boys, of course, but still, we are talking in the 100 – 200 million range for number of people in the core demographic. I’d take it, were I Gillette. 🙂
@ mish
Adjectives! How do they work?
So sweet of these fascists to be concerned about a woman’s health.
I’m sure they were just as concerned when the California wildfires were raging a few months ago and my lungs were suffering. No, they didn’t rage about my health on Twitter. But they sent me positive vibes and vitamin C, and texted me encouragement. Ha, ha.
@KnittingCatLady That’s so true, all this stuff is incredibly profitable. These guys tweeting about the Gilette ad, while believing they are so edgy and fighting against the times, think exactly how they have been told to think – but with perhaps a more extreme lack of basic human politeness.
I forget which huge corporation it is but one conglomerate owns both a major ice cream brand and Slimfast. “Enjoy food your evolution has defined as irresistible and then starve yourself in shame!!” It’s all so depressingly cynical.
Slightly off-topic, there is a group of street performers called “Ladies against Women”. They appear to be mostly men in drag, a la Monty Python’s “women” in their sketches. They satirize the anti-feminist rhetoric by taking it to its logical conclusion, organizing absurd “protests” “demanding” the repeal of votes for women, etc.
In Strang’s “High Weirdness by Mail” they are mentioned as a satirical group, and are now found on the internet. Like Stang’s own “church of the subgenius”, they are a joke – but they are not ONLY a joke. Their serious point is pro-feminist, of course.
Incidentally, if you don’t know, the whole “women’s razors” thing is a scam. Women can use “men’s” razors just like they can use “men’s” pens or legal pads. “Women’s” razors wre regular razors, at three times the price of the already ridiculously overpriced men”/ razors.
AWWWWW!
Human Body!
Bhwaaa!
It is sad that there are so many people with nothing better to do than be enraged about a woman being fat in public.
@kat
The wildfires have already started up again. It’s going to be a hazy summer.
This is a great move by Gillette. Guess what guys, surprisingly they aren’t selling women’s razors to you paragons of masculinity. They are selling women’s razors to, gasp, women. Women, who because of social pressure like the kind you put out, are conditioned to think anything over a size 2 is monstrously overweight, so this would appeal to them even more. You caused this add to be extra effective, and your screaming about it means even more people will see it. Good job helping them out guys…
Pretty sure that’s a great big yes.
David, a bit off-topic, but Cracked has an article today by a former incel that I thought you and the folks here might find worth a look.
Here are the facts: being obese puts a strain on your body.
Thus, it is best not to be obese. Some bodies stand the strain of obesity better than others, but in a general way, it’s better for you to not be obese. There is nothing at all to be ashamed of if you are, but it would be better if you weren’t. Please note that I am obese myself.
If you are obese, you can lose weight, but if you try to do it through diet alone you will fail. Period.
If you do it by being conscious of what you are eating and choosing to not eat that piece of pie (or equivalent) a couple of times a week, and then add in some mild exercise like going for a short walk three or four times a week, you will lose weight. Slowly, the way you gained it. I mean at the rate of 10 – 20 pounds a year. And if you keep that up, you will keep the weight off. You just can’t do it quickly. I’ve lost 25 pounds in the past 3 years, without much in the way of dieting (just refraining from that piece of pie and going for short walks). This, of course, assumes there is nothing pathological happening with your metabolism. See your doctor.
BTW, I notice these guys never go after ultra skinny models for being unhealthy, which they usually are (some people are naturally slender, or even what we might call skinny—the rest have to do horrible things to themselves to stay that slender).
As for the model, anyone who looks that happy is beautiful. Her BMI has nothing to do with it.
I suspect that fully half of those being nasty about the “whale” are overweight or obese themselves. They think it’s different for men.
Hmm… interesting how the majority of people raging about this seem to be men, not women. Angry dudes on the internet, have you ever bought women’s razors or planned to do so in the future? If not, your opinion on this is pretty much irrelevant since you were never going to buy the razors anyway.
And a couple comments about the whole “health” thing:
1. If this really were about health and not judging women based on how they fit standards of sexual attractiveness, wouldn’t we expect to see just as many “concerned” women as men?
2. It’s typically much more dangerous to be underweight than overweight. You can put on a lot of extra weight and not experience any health problems, but you can’t be underweight to the same degree and not experience any health issues. I’m not saying all models are unhealthy or there aren’t any naturally thin people who’s weight naturally sits in the underweight range, but it’s not exactly a surprise that there’s massive pressure to be thin in the modeling industry and some models feel pressured into unhealthy eating behaviors in order to compete. So why are all these “health concerned” men only worried overweight women, not underweight women, when statistically they’re much more likely to see underweight models in ads than overweight models? (Side note: No one should be criticized for being thin. Industries and society should be criticized for pressuring people to be unhealthily thin. Anyone with an eating disorder deserves nothing but love and support.)
3. Why is any ad featuring an overweight women “glorifying obesity”? Obese women exist. The majority of Americans are overweight or obese. Are we as a society collectively supposed to pretend they don’t exist, wiping them from all commercials and print ads because acknowledging they’re there somehow makes other people want to be fat? And so what about ads that portray fat women as attractive? Should fat women never get to feel sexy or good about themselves until they lose the weight?
Seems like featuring an unapologetic woman would be enough to make their heads explode.
Heck, if nothing happened their heads would still explode.
I think there is somewhere an internet law that any post that mentions fat people has to attract an armchair nutritionist.
As is being tall, or stressed… I’ve yet to see people declare a war on tallness or stress, or concern troll people about these things.
Too bad it’s 75% or so heritable, and also correlates with not very mutable environmental factors like being poor.
Yes! You can totally bootstraps yourself out of those outside factors, and you can even change your genetics by following these easy steps: /s
See?! Just listen to these baseless assumptions about your lifestyle, and follow standards that’ll never be applied to the thin! /s
It literally also assumes that no metabolically healthy fat people exist. Just as you previously assumed that all fat people are lazy and overeat… And that they can’t have restrictive eating disorders. Or that they can’t have other societal complications or illnesses that make your weightloss tips impossible to follow exist.
I’m just saying you assume a whole lot.
Yes. And the metabolically healthy fat people would need to do the same horrible things to their body to be “regular size”. And again: There are fat people with EDs like anorexia.
Yes. This is why you wrote a whole wall of text regurgitating normalized fatphobic nonsense! Wait…
If they knew that they’re just as unhealthy and if they followed your easy (and baseless) lifestyle advice they would be so much more healthy! /s
Wow, Otrame, thanks for reinforcing the message that we’re fatty-fat fatsos because we just can’t stop cramming all that pie in our faces. And that of course, we never, ever do even the mildest exercise, let alone work out regularly.
One day, you will just have to accept the fact that there are people who eat what you would determine to be reasonable food in reasonable amounts, and do a reasonable amount of exercise AND ARE STILL FUCKING FAT. Because that’s reality, no matter how much you try to deny it.
ETA: also, everything Malitia said.
I know you’ve been told this before, so it’s really starting look like you’re not so different from the assholes described in the op, getting pleasure out of feeling superior & trying to shame those of us whom you despise into living in constant suffering from both the emotional distress of perpetually trying & failing to reach an impossible goal, and the simple physical deprivation of never being able to eat enough or enjoy food.
“Get woke, go broke.”
They keep saying that, but Black Panther and Captain Marvel have raked in the money, and Magic: The Gathering has been doing amazingly well lately.
It’s… It’s almost like these people don’t have the numbers they think they do.
@Otrame:
The body has a weight set point. That is largely genetic. We have about as much influence on that set point as we have on our height.
Environmental factors that predispose you to weight gain:
-Stress (from being poor, bullying at work, etc.)
-Disturbed sleep (shift work, young children, disrupted breathing,…)
-Long term energy deficit (Dieting, over exercising, food insecurity…)
There are certain metabolic diseases that make you fat, like thyroid conditions.
Things that make fat people unhealthy?
-Weight cycling due to chronic dieting
-Stress
-Eating disorders
Fat people are not, a priori, more unhealthy than thing people. And even if they were? That’s nobody’s business but theirs.
So called ‘fat’ diseases like Type 2 Diabetes or heart disease?
Science tentatively points in the direction that an underlying condition causes BOTH diabetes and fatness.
And heart disease is a direct result of weight cycling. Science knows that.
On average, fat people get diagnosed for the same disease a lot later than thin people, increasing morbidity for that disease. Because most of the time a doctor’s visit goes like this:
Patient: Doctor, my arm fell off!
Doctor: Have you tried losing weight?
Being fat doesn’t kill fat people.
Medical neglect DOES.
Fatness is not a moral failure.
Fat people at stable weight do not ‘over eat’.
Very very few people are fat from ‘over eating’.
There is no way to safely lose weight long term.
Intentional weight loss attempts will only increase your weight in the long term. And destroy your heart.
Your weight is determined by genetics and environment.
This is why rich people tend to be way thinner than poor people.
The diet industry is trying to suppress this knowledge. It makes billions of dollars a year selling products that kill.
ED rates among young people are higher than ever.
And anorexia kills more people than acted upon suicidal ideation.
Yes, trying to kill yourself is less deadly than anorexia.
To all the fat people out there:
Don’t try to lose weight. It’ll only do harm.
You’re perfect the way you are.
@Knitting Cat Lady
I just want to add that heart disease also correlates with stress (so fat shaming, weight discrimination, poverty, etc. that society also does to fat people).
So since when does “Gee, this population seem susceptible to X that also correlates with Y. I know! Put them through more Y! That will totes make X rates go down!” make any logical sense?
Or to go with my favorite analogy:
“Gee, white people statistically get a lot more skin cancer. I know! Let’s strap them to the most unsafe (causes skin cancer) tanning beds until they become brown! That will make the skin cancer rates go down!”
Shouldn’t these people be praising her for “being active (by going to the beach)” instead of whining about it if they are so concerned for her health? 😒 Serious side-eye here…
Yeah, funny how the people that concern troll about how fat people need to put down the cake and get same exercise are the same people who abuse fat people for going swimming, jogging at the park or going to the same gym as the thin people.
In the ad business, the challenge is to get people to notice you, to get a reaction out of them, and to get them not to forget your name.
Gillette appears to have it handled, no?
There have been some responses already, but I wrote this in a direct response, so I think I’ll go with that.
@Knitting Cat Lady
Umm, I think you’re going a bit far, there. As someone who dropped two sizes in pants over a year, I think I can testify that it is in fact possible to intentionally affect your weight. On the other hand…
There is a point there, as well. Your body does try to maintain a certain homeostasis, so once you’re settled at a higher weight, it’s going to take some work to change that. As you say, your body doesn’t understand “diet”. it only understands “starving”. So, it’ll fight you.
I’m not going to speculate on how difficult it is for other people. I imagine that this sort of thing is quite individual, mixing genetic, social, and psychological factors. I’m not trying to crap on anyone. However, saying that it’s impossible is simply false and I don’t think it’s helpful to send that message.
This is separate from the question of cultural beauty standards and what exactly constitutes a healthy weight for any given person. I simply object to the notion of telling people they’re powerless, when they might, in fact, not be.
Over 95% of people do not retain weight loss 5+ years out. Your anecdotal evidence doesn’t disprove a damn thing.
Pushing the diet industry’s agenda that permanent weight loss is healthy, safe, and possible is dangerous and harmful, so maybe you should consider what is and is not “helpful.”
Okay, someone needs to say it:
What Otrame said was perfectly reasonable, and non -fat phobic.
It is also true genetics plays a part, but so does urban planning and American debendence on the automobile.
If we had European style communities even people genetically pron to being larger would not be that much larger.
But go ahead and castigate someone posting in good faith and misrepresent the entire tone of what they said.
This jumping the gun garbage is why I left for Wonkette.
Apologies for the content below being rambly. It’s extremely damaging to my mental health to be in this headspace right now, so I cannot re-read it for clarity.
@C4t
Even if it were true that you can lose weight permanently through diet and exercise (it’s not, and science backs me up here), do you think there’s a single fat person reading these comments who hasn’t heard about it and needs to be told? Why can’t there be one thing that shows us in a positive light where people just let us enjoy that for like five minutes? Why the need to police our bodies and remind us, in a dehumanizing, patronizing way, about which activities are deemed acceptable for us to participate in? We’re not allowed to eat, because people will come remind us that eating is what supposedly made us fat. We’re not allowed to not eat, either, because someone will remind us that it’s okay to just eat a little in moderation (usually because they want to feel like they have more willpower than us, so if we’re not eating it makes them uncomfortable). We aren’t allowed to rest, because then we’re just being lazy, but we’re also not allowed to exercise, either, because that apparently invites comments about our bodies. We’re not allowed to stand up for ourselves when fatphobes demean and dehumanize us and demand that we perform health for them in the way they deem acceptable. We’re just plain not allowed to exist. But I’m sure you think it’s very feminist of you to exclude certain bodies for not meeting your definition of health and to further stigmatize us for our bodies not conforming to your standards.
@C4t: On the side of Knitting Cat Lady, Malitia, & Kupo, there are mountains of data and the repeated statements of scientists & doctors who for decades havd studied obesity and the efficacy of different methods of weight loss.
What have you got to back up your side? “Stuff everybody knows”? Otrame’s comment, with its condescending assumptions that fat people are automatically eating wrong and too much while lying around all day, is both ignorant and incorrect. As is their blithe assertion that stowing the pie & moving more will result in weight loss.
As much as you don’t want to hear it, those things aren’t true. And insisting they are true is in fact fat- phobic because they justify the perception that fat people are all greedy, lazy pigs with no self-control who could sort themselves out if they really wanted to.
Dieting is bad for you: it fucks with your metabolism and puts pressure on your organs. It also causes psychological damage by forcing dieters to function mentally on too little food and also because nearly all of them will fail.
Stop putting pressure on people to do something that is virtually guaranteed to harm them.
@kupo
Lukas’ reality/experience is no less valid than yours. He’s not prescribing to you. He is simply saying that something worked for him, ergo it is NOT impossible. Also, I concur. I’ve been at different weight at different times in my life due to changing environment and aging metabolism, and body resists being moved away from the weight point that it has settled on, so changing it has to be done slowly and it should be given time to settle at the new normal and it won’t really move too far from its preferred weight, so no one should be hating on themselves for what is healthy weight for them. The other posters are correct in their assertion that environmental and genetic factors also play as great a role as exercise and self-control. It’s irresponsible to sit on the net and say so-and-so should lose weight, but that’s not the same as saying it’s not impossible.
Not removing my body hair, no matter how the adverts change.
But yes, I appreciate that this signifies a challenge to the status quo.
PS I am a fat woman and whilst healthy am totally accepting that I would be better off not being. It IS much more physically uncomfortable esp in the summer. I do not consider myself self hating at all, just realistic.
@dashapants kupo said his weight loss success was “anecdotal,” not impossible. Because the fact is that for decades we’ve known that about 90% of all people who manage to lose some weight gain it all back (usually plus a bit more) within 3-5 years. No matter what sort of diet or maintenance they’re doing.
Those are the facts. Sorry if you find them inconvenient.
Better urban planning that encourages more walking and public transportation would result in people getting more exercise and being healthier, at any weight. I walk and bus everywhere and live near a creek where I take long walks with my dog in warm weather months. And I’m still a size 12-14 and would probably be considered pudgy by most people. Living a European lifestyle in terms of transportation has shockingly, not made me skinny. Although I am (besides some moderate chronic back pain) healthy. But I’m approaching middle age and fucked up my metabolism with an eating disorder in my younger days. I don’t think I’m going to be thin without an ED relapse until I’m a senior.
Although Otrame talked about individual lifestyle choices. Not the policy changes regarding health care, urban planning and infrastructure, labor rights and agriculture that we need to make the populous more healthy.
Plus, it’s not actually true that Europeans are so much thinner than Americans
http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/noncommunicable-diseases/obesity/data-and-statistics
Americans are heavier than Europeans, but not by as much as the fat shamer set would have us believe.
@Crys T
I don’t think they are inconvenient. I am aware of the statistic, I am also aware of where it came from. It is talking about people who lost quite a significant amount of weight over a relatively short period of time using some combination of diet and exercise.
I have never tried to contradict it. I am talking about something modest, like maybe 10-15 lbs loss over the course of say a year. That is possible and sustainable for an average person. Not every single person on the planet, but a lot of them, sure.
Also, I am not saying everyone who thinks that they’re overweight should be out there losing weight, and especially not because some persons on the internet said so. In fact, I live with a person who was used to being a thin person and has steadily gained weight due to aging and work stress and they are practically fat-shaming themselves right now, and it’s all I can do to try to talk them off the ledge by saying that this is actually their perfectly normal weight for their age bracket and situation, and if they are so hell bent on trying to lose weight, then dieting and running themselves ragged is NOT the way at all as it is only going to make them hungry and miserable and more stressed and unhappy, and it is MORE important to be happy and healthy than feeling thin.
Which, by the way, kupo’s last rant at C4t has a lot of truth to it. It IS very frustrating when the same people who say “oh you’re so thin” turn right around to say “oh did you gain a bit too much over holidays.”
@dashapants No, you’re wrong: it’s about combining the data from many, many studies done over decades that looked at many different weight-loss methods. And none of them – not one – has ever resulted in more than a small minority of people (usually those who had the least amount to lose) ever keeping weight off long-term.
Pushing people to lose weight makes their lives miserable, and for all but a handful results in failure.
Your choice now is to continue to push your incorrect line, thereby contributing to the narrative that results in damaging people’s lives, or you can stop pushing it, and let us get on with living.
So, not going to add too much to this conversation. But, I do like data driven stuff and this might be interesting for some of you.
One of the things we hear a LOT (and came up a little above) is the whole notion that “the reason folks are so fat today is because we evolved as hunter gatherers and we burned so many more calories back then and we’re too sedentary now!”
…which isn’t actually the case. An interesting paper showed up in PLoS way back in 2012 which looked at the metabolic rates for a current group of hunter-gatherers and compared it to western folks. While they were more active, their actual metabolic rates (i.e. calories burned per day) really weren’t all that different from westerners when you correct for body size.
So, while exercising can be great for you and some activities can be a lot of fun, it is okay to be mildly skeptical of the idea that being super active will automatically help everyone, because our bodies are super cool and complex and your metabolism might be doing sneaky-sneaky things.
That said, the paper didn’t actually impose any food/exercise regimens on anyone, so maybe bumping up activity levels might help.
Paper can be found at this nifty link!
Have an abstract:
…. comments are being super weird. Sorry if that all double posted or disappeared, or shows up way out of order.
I’m going to cross my fingers that everything will work out for the best, and take my leave for now!