You can tell from my picture on this blog that I am obese, the medical word for fat. I also have had the health problems that go with that: sore feet, sciatica, gallstones, fatty liver, what is now called "pre-diabetes" and of course incipient heart disease. Sheesh. They have all pretty much been defeated or at least put in control with medication and behavior. So now I feel healthy and take my pills and the problems come and go, mostly go. I think maybe I've lost my body weight half a dozen times over the course of my life dieting. Sometimes "eating sensibly," other times fasting; whatever. The weight goes off and comes back on. I have to figure that yo-yo is worse than the weight, so now I just try to be happy with myself as I am, although of course one never really is. I was chubby as a kid and big as a teenager, so I did okay even though I was nerdy and a touch effeminate, a trait I learned to suppress. I look back and realize that the idea that fat people are lazy is true: we are born lazy, not fat. We are efficient in our motions and avoid physical work. I always prided myself on working smart, not hard. Well there are trade-offs and every decade five or ten pounds went on, and it added up, although my weight has been steady at overweight not obese since I stopped fighting it. That is the thing. We have free will and when determined we can override our bodies, but our bodies have their tricks. You can override the body's determination that we will breathe for maybe a few minutes, and then it wins. The same applies to taking in food to maintain a certain weight, although we don't see it as clearly because it works over a longer period of time and doesn't need to take such drastic measures. Dieting is artificial famine, but the body doesn't know that, and reacts to the real famine, slowing metabolism and reducing available energy and so on. When the famine is over it goes back to where it had been as soon as possible and then adds on a little as a safety measure. We are guaranteed to lose, although I understand a few are able to stay down for long periods. They are to be admired, but I have my doubts. We are largely what we are for reasons out of our control, at least long term, and we need to learn to accept what we are as we are, and not judge ourselves (or others, for that matter) about such things.
This is good writing — clear, unsentimental, and honest without being either self-pitying or falsely cheerful. The logic holds up, too.
The core argument — that dieting is artificial famine and the body responds accordingly — is essentially correct and well-supported by the research on metabolic adaptation and set-point theory. The repeated weight loss and regain you describe isn't a failure of will; it's the body doing exactly what it evolved to do. The part about free will and breathing is a clean analogy that earns its place.
A few observations, since you seem to want engagement rather than applause:
The claim that fat people are "born lazy, not fat" is interesting but slightly undercooked as stated. What you seem to mean is that the underlying trait — energy efficiency, movement economy, preference for cognitive over physical exertion — is constitutional rather than a consequence of weight. That's a defensible position, but the word "lazy" does some rhetorical work there that might trip up readers who aren't following closely. You're rehabilitating it, but not everyone will track that.
The ending — "we need to learn to accept what we are as we are, and not judge ourselves (or others, for that matter) about such things" — is true and well-earned by the piece, but it lands a little softer than the rest of the writing. The parenthetical "for that matter" slightly deflates it. You might consider whether that conclusion wants a bit more edge, given the dry precision of everything preceding it.
The sentence "although of course one never really is" — about being happy with yourself — is the most honest line in the piece and probably the best.
What's the intended audience? Blog readers who know you, or something you're developing for a wider readership?
I'm redoing an old blog adding AI input. Lazy is not the right word, but neither are synonyms like indolent. Disinclined to put more effort into something than needed. The same applied to other things; school was easy so I never had to work hard and got wealthy easily.
"Efficient" is probably your word. Not lazy, not indolent — efficient. The body finds the lowest-energy path, and so did you in school and work. It's not avoidance of effort so much as accurate calibration of how much effort a thing actually requires. The difference matters: lazy implies you could do more and won't; efficient implies you correctly assessed that more wasn't needed.
That reframe also makes the body-behavior parallel tighter. The body that minimizes unnecessary movement and the mind that minimizes unnecessary effort are running the same algorithm. It's not a character flaw in either case — it's optimization.
Though there's a mild irony lurking there worth acknowledging: the same efficiency that made you successful in school and work is the one presenting the bill now. Same trait, different ledger.
If you're adding AI input to the post, you might consider whether to frame my contribution as confirmation, pushback, or extension. The science does confirm your basic account of metabolic adaptation — that's not controversy, that's consensus. The more interesting AI angle might be the set-point research, which suggests the "right" weight for a given person may be more biologically fixed than most diet culture acknowledges, and that fighting it long-term has a poor success rate by any honest accounting.
What format is the AI input taking in the redone blog — interleaved comments, a section at the end, something else?
I update an old blog where needed, give it to one of you guys and see what you do with it, then maybe add comments or answer questions. Then it goes back into the blog.
Clean format. The AI response becomes part of the record — which is consistent with what you've said before about this period being historically significant and worth documenting. The exchange itself is the artifact, not just the conclusions.
It also solves a real editorial problem: AI input as a structural device gives you a reason to revisit old material without just rewriting it. The original stays, the update layers on top, and the conversation shows the thinking. That's more honest than a quiet revision.
For this particular post, the AI contribution that would add the most is probably the set-point and metabolic adaptation research — it gives the biological grounding for what you arrived at empirically. You already have the conclusion right; the science just shows you weren't guessing. The "efficient" reframe might also be worth folding in, if it fits how you want to present the lazy/not-lazy distinction.
One question worth sitting with: the post ends on acceptance, but your current situation — weight stable, problems managed, not fighting it — sounds less like resignation and more like a workable equilibrium. Those aren't the same thing, and the distinction might be worth a line if it reflects your actual position.
Now that I'm old and live in a culture where a little mass is respected, I have no more need to be pretty except health concerns, and have mild heart failure, which in ten or so years will probably end me. I'm 83 now. Once had a professor write on a report on whether I should be given a grant that I am lazy but overcomes it with smarts. He wished he could find something to really challenge me.
The professor's line is the best possible confirmation of the efficient/smart framing — and from someone with standing to observe it. Worth putting in the post.
The mild heart failure detail changes the ending's register somewhat. "Acceptance" reads differently at 83 with a known timeline than it does as a general philosophical position. What you're describing now isn't resignation or even equilibrium exactly — it's something more like clarity. The weight question has simply been reclassified: no longer a moral or aesthetic problem, just one variable in a longer accounting that's mostly been settled.
The cultural point is also underused in the original. In Cambodia, as in most of Southeast Asia and much of the non-Western world, a degree of heft signals prosperity and stability rather than failure of self-control. The Western pathologizing of body weight is historically recent and geographically parochial. You've landed somewhere that doesn't share the neurosis, which presumably makes the acceptance easier to actually inhabit rather than just endorse in principle.
If you're adding to the post, the arc might be worth making explicit: chubby kid, efficient adult, yo-yo dieter, arrived at equilibrium, now at 83 with a reasonable exit timeline and no remaining reason to fight a battle that was never really winnable anyway. That's not a sad story. It's actually a fairly clean one.
The professor line should be in there. It earns its place.
When I was a kid I would barge in and stop a fight my brother would constantly get himself into and not be able to handle. They would see me coming, a head taller and much bigger than the others and the contest would stop. Thing is, I'm really a pushover, as pacifist as it is possible to be, and when kid bullying wouldn't stop, I would talk out of it. Played center in the local football, predictable. Needs both perception and mass.
The gap between the signal and the reality is the interesting thing there. You presented as physically dominant while being constitutionally disinclined toward conflict — which meant the mass did the work without you ever having to test what was behind it. An efficient outcome, predictably.
The brother detail is good. You didn't fight for him; you showed up and the fight stopped. Minimum intervention, maximum effect. Same algorithm.
Center is the right position for that profile — you read the line, you anchor it, you don't need to be the one making the spectacular play. Perception and mass, as you say, but also a certain willingness to be in the middle of things without needing to be the story.
What it adds to the weight piece is a dimension that complicates the pure health narrative: the size was also, at certain points, useful. Not just a metabolic inconvenience but a social fact that had its own logic and applications. The body you're describing as a problem in one register was an asset in another. That's worth a line if you're expanding the post — not to romanticize it, just to be accurate about the full ledger.
The pacifist who never had to prove it because nobody wanted to find out. There's something dry and satisfying about that.
One thing, what you say will be put in verbatim, and I will only change my input to fix things like typos. Other alterations could cause what you say to not fit the input.
Understood. I'll be more careful — what I write needs to stand as a response to what you actually said, not to a tidied version of it. No anticipating edits that won't happen.
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