Unfortunately, what you eat, and what you weigh, your blood pressure, your BMI, your glucose levels, and so on, if you are a part of my employer partially funded, health insurance does affect me! It affects the premium my family pays! This comes out of our paycheck! Let's just say, for the sake of math, 75% of the group if overweight/obese, high blood pressure, diabetic, etc. and 25% of the group, eats, healthy, works out, etc. 25% of the group, is helping to pay for the 75%, that is not practicing a healthy life style!

Talk about judging! Thanks for throwing my healthy lifestyle under the bus!:?:

It sounds like you have a crappy deal at work. That's not my fault and that doesn't affect the rest of us in the same way. I wasn't saying that a healthy lifestyle is not necessary, I was saying that looking at someone eat pasta is a not even remotely an indication of whether or not they are healthy. Health is complex, there are many thin people who are terribly terribly unhealthy and judging someone on how they LOOK and how they EAT is not a good indication of what their internal health is. Unfortunately you've been put in a position where you have to pit yourself against the people you work with which in time will affect your psychological health which does inevitably manifest itself in physical ailments imo. Over time you may grow more and more resentful of those who you think are causing your insurance to go up. This will create a hostile working environment which will only worsen everyone's psychological health further. All in all that's a pretty crappy deal but ultimately I don't think that's peoples' fault, management is causing this.

I made the mistake of questioning whether real men have curves. And then did a Google image search to find out.

I still don't know.

But maybe?

It would appear that they most possibly have beards.

In my family (Polish, German, Italian), curves + facial hair could be the older men or the older women.

You can always tell the difference though, because only the men have hair growing out of their ears.

So this was brought up like three pages ago... But is eating healthy really that expensive??? I feel like maybe I've been living in a delusion bubble, because I've never found it to be more espensive. Mind you, I don't buy anything organic... I personally think it's a waste of money cause I've heard too many stories about people forking out the extra cash for the organic label, only to find out that it wasn't as "organic" as advertised. But that's another issue...

But fresh veggies are really cheap, as long as you aren't buying pounds and pounds of the more exotic fruits like dragon fruit and star fruit instead of apples and oranges. Fish is expensive, but it depends also on what you are buying. Salmon and tuna canned or fresh costs, but there are plenty of other cheaper fish. Meat can be expensive, but it depends on what you buy. I'm picky and really like chicken breast... So yeah, I pay more for it. But there is other parts of the chicken that is cheaper. Pork is cheap, not the fatty hams and bacon, but the leaner parts like the chops. Lamb is always expensive, sadly, as it is a favourite of mine, but I don't know how heslthy it is anyway. Premium cut steaks are expensive, but there are ways around that if you buy the tougher, cheaper steaks and work them (marinate or pound them out a bit) so they aren't so tough. I also don't know which cuts of steak are healthier... I always trim the fat off mine cause I dont like to eat it. Growing up, my family always had healthy food in the house, and we didn't have lots of money. We never had chips, or pop or that in the house because that junk was too expensive. We didn't eat too much cheese because it was expensive. But we had potatoes, veggies and rice, lots of pork chops and chicken. We had pasta too, and sausages a lot... But they weren't cheaper than any of the other stuff. My dad just liked to eat them. I guess we had pecessed cheese for sandwiches, but dad was the only one who used it cause we all disliked the tatse. We has cheap cuts of meat for school sandwiches too, so I don't know, were the bologne pieces really unhealthy? We had toast with peanut butter and jam for breakfast (our peanut butter was the "just peanuts" kind with no sugar). But we mostly had cereal and milk for breakfast, and never the sugar cereals cause they were expensive.

I really don't mean to start an argument or anything, I just read that a few pages back and was surprised... Maybe the things I classified as healthy and cheaper aren't so healthy after all. Because I personally find the less junk I buy the better my grocery bill. The less I go out to eat, the less money I spend. Maybe its because I don't buy the quinoa and other stuff like that though.

It's funny, but my medical costs have gone up by a huge amount since I lost weight. Obviously that's anecdote, but in my case, exercise-induced injuries, including one permanent one, have made me an exceptionally poor risk for my insurance provider for my age. Chronic pain is EXPENSIVE.

It really depends on the area you live in, what is available locally, what you have to cook with, what resources you have to learn to cook, and that type of stuff. When I've been at my most poor, living paycheck to paycheck and juggling which bills were going to be past due, I quite literally lived on ramen. Ramen is pretty dang bad for you, and it is rarely filling. I remember eating two packs for a meal just to feel full, and that feeling didn't last. The apartment I lived in did not have a lot of fridge space (think mini-fridge), pretty much zero freezer space, the grocery store was miles away and I didn't have a car. So any foods that expired quickly were problematic. I also didn't know how to cook, and at the time did not have internet access. So purchasing a whole chicken or something like that in order to get meat cheaper, which I didn't have the knives to take apart, nor the know-how, was just not happening.

Money isn't a problem now, but I know for around a 2 week supply of meat (chicken breasts) we spend around $45. That's from the butcher dept at Harris Teeter. That's with me using a pound to a pound and a half in recipes 3-4 times per week. A lot of times my entire food budget for the month was around $45 when I was on hard times. I've never been on food stamps, nor have I received welfare checks.. though I imagine I did qualify. So I probably could have gotten help to eat healthier.. but at that time in my life I also didn't know what resources were available to me and my upbringing was such that I had an extremely negative connotation with any type of government "hand out". Not only did I not know where to look, but I felt that trying to find help would be an extreme personal failing on my part. That's not excusing the behavior, just some insight into what was behind it.

Now, I will say that we spend less now than we use to for food while having money. We use to eat out a lot, and order a lot of food. Getting groceries is much cheaper than that. Our bill will be more if we get chips or candy. That's a little different from the "junk" that I ate while poor though, which mainly consisted of ramen, with mac and cheese being a special splurge for when I had some extra money to pay for milk and butter.

I guess what I'm saying is that eating healthy could potentially be cheaper if you knew how to cook what you were purchasing, had the tools to cook with, and had the storage to keep things unspoiled. Most the folks I've met while poor, whom were also poor, lacked a lot in the education department as far as how to cook (not lacking education in general, just lack of culinary knowledge), what they'd need to cook with, and basic utensils like good pots/pans or knives.

This. It's less about the actual cost of ingredients (although that can be prohibitive, depending on what you buy), but about infrastructure (food storage, cooking utensils, transportation to get to grocery stores that sell fresh foods if you're in an urban area with few fresh foods), knowledge, and time.

We just got Netflix and my fiancee and I watched Food Inc, It went into detail how the US government heavily subsides certain foods which let the fast food industry sell fully processed foods soo cheap YET buying a simple apple is more expensive.

I live in Australia and I am not sure how it works here comparative but in the US its kind of scary. So yes at least from the US point of view a healthy lunch can cost more yet a fast food hamburger can be cheaper.

Fat Acceptance, is mainly just a bad title for what is generally a good concept, in my opinion. Obviously, there are extremists who turn to skinny shaming, but there are extremist for every belief system. I think the real goal is self-acceptance.

I accept myself and love myself in spite of my short comings physically, mentally, emotionally, and in loving and accepting all aspects of myself, I am able to identify the areas that I want to work on and work on them in a manner that doesn't include shaming myself or falling down the low self esteem spiral (most of the time -- I still have some issues accepting my post-baby body, but I am working on it).

I have been on both sides of the fat shaming and skinny shaming issue. My lightest weight that I am aware of was 94 lbs and caused people to think that it was okay to call me skeletor, a skinny *****, accuse me of being promiscuous, shallow, stupid, incompetent. It somehow caused men to think it was okay to randomly pick me up -- seriously lift me off of the ground-- because I was "so light", to buy me excessive alcoholic beverages even when I told them "no thanks" because "I was so tiny, they wanted to see how many drinks it would take to get me wasted".

My highest weight was while I was pregnant and I was just short of the 200 lb mark. I was one of those pregnant women that gained weight everywhere, and by those who knew I was pregnant, I was told that I was gaining too much weight and was going to give my baby diabetes, or miscarry, or that I should be ashamed of myself now that I was "eating for two" I should be eating healthier, or that women who gain more than X amount of weight while pregnant are selfish etc.

To those who didn't know I was pregnant, I was suddenly a ugly, sloppy, lazy, dumb, promiscuous (again... apparently women in general are promiscuous? :?:) pathetic, that my husband could "do better" etc.

Both were humiliating, both made me feel bad about myself, both were harmful.

To those that said Fat Acceptance should be about self acceptance, but is really about telling others that they have to accept you: I agree that it isn't just about self-acceptance. It is about wanting others to stop bullying and start respecting (or even just stop addressing) others, and I think that is a valid request.

Seize the day- You are correct, men will find something bad to say about a woman no matter what. It's the default setting for what seems like the majority of men. Especially if you say no to them about anything. There was an article I read awhile back where a woman ran an experiment. When men would compliment her via her dating profile online she would respond affirmatively, for example: The man sends a message saying "You're beautiful." And she would reply "Yes I am" rather than just saying thank you or something. In 100% of the cases the man replied negatively immediately after. They would reply "You're not that beautiful" (right after calling her beautiful) or say "You're a stuck up B**** aren't you?" merely because she accepted and agreed with the compliment they gave her.

I found the article: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarr...ent#.jgQ1wJ6KQ

seize the day, I could have written your post. My lowest weight was 96 pounds; after giving birth to 2 children, I settled at 108 for the longest time. -- I did feel like that I did not fit in;, also people were saying things like "well it is easy for you to be skinny"; I was starving myself and the people who said that were eating like I am eating today. No, it is NOT easy to be thin!!!-- I was very hurt of all the skinny comments. I think, in order to "fit in", I gained weight. In a way, I was felt to feel like a freak. -- A sad thing. Now I regret it.

I feel, in a way, sad about the fat acceptance.... I think it is perfectly ok to love one's body; skinny or fat... but people really think they can talk about someone's skinniness like they are not in a same room, but god forbid someone calling us fat...ugh!

Yes, I am fat... about 20 pounds above healthy BMI. and yes, noone EVER says that, but when I was skinny, I had to take all sorts of comments.

So next time you meet a fit and trim person, don't say... it is easy for you... because it is NOT! They work their butt off to stay tHaht way...say kudos to you for such dedication, and mean it; no jealousy!

MauiKai: That's really interesting. It's sad that we perpetuate a culture where men are taught that it's okay to put women down. It makes me feel lucky that the men in my life (My father and husband) are pro-women, and actively work to avoid falling into these negative behaviors and mindsets.

Sum38: I think people also discount that being thin CAN be someone's natural form, and that they shouldn't be faulted or chided for that. Who cares if it's "easy" for someone to be thin, that doesn't make it okay to treat them poorly -- often very thin people are actively trying to gain weight, or are still trying to improve upon their health, the same way that we work to lose weight or improve upon our own health. Everyone has struggles, it's ignorant to try and compete over who has the "harder" struggle.

That said, it certainly wasn't easy or healthy for me to be 94 lbs, I worked constantly to stay thin and it was miserable, and I certainly resented the people who acted like I was "lucky" and it was "easy". Believe me, there was nothing or lucky about that situation.

Interesting thread.

Just like IanG I also googled "real men have curves" then also clicked on images... the results are... interesting... they border on homo-erotic, creepy and hilarious...