If someone chooses not to do something that I, personally, do, it's really not my place to get in their face about it.

Yeah, but then you get into issues of the cost to taxpayers.

If someone chooses not to do something that I, personally, do, it's really not my place to get in their face about it.

Hmm, so you don't think we should legislate those things? What about speed limits?

Yeah, my reaction to that statement was that it could be taken to mean that we shouldn't have any laws or rules about anything; everyone should be allowed to do what they want. I don't think Tep is an anarchist, but I don't know.

I'm finding this discussion interesting, by the by, even though I don't have useful thoughts.

I don't know, shame is just generally not useful. It doesn't really stop anyone from doing anything, it just makes us hide it. Aside from where you land in individual rights vs. community standards.

What about speed limits? I see a difference in personal choices, like how one spends one's time or what one eats, but once one gets out in public, it's different, for me at least.

I agree.

Heh. My first thought was That Would Make a Good Band Name.

That Would Make a Good Band Name would make a good band name.

I see a difference in personal choices, like how one spends one's time or what one eats, but once one gets out in public, it's different, for me at least.

i.e, being secular girl and live in Jerusalem. I don't dress flashy, but the looks I sometime get makes me feel really bad about myself, while I'm not trying to provoke any scene, just walking in the street. Because having old men spitting at the sidewalk when you walk near them is such a great greeting. I try to keep from those places as much as I can, but sometimes the banks I need are there.

Because having old men spitting at the sidewalk when you walk near them is such a great greeting.

Spit back! That will learn them (actually it won't at all but it may be emotionally satisfying)!

There are the rules that impinge other people--speed limits and whackaloons who can't control a grocery cart, much less a huge SUV--and rules that don't--bans on transfat etc.

Seat belts I can see as being required for children or anyone else who isn't legally responsible for themselves.

I think one of the problems is conflating health and virtue. While the seven deadly sins include gluttony, they are sins because they hurt others and turn people's focus away from god. Sloth as a sin is doesn't mean that you don't exercise; it means that you succumb to despair or don't live up to your potential. To see fitness as a sign of godliness is to make improvement of the self the goal, rather than helping others.

Considering how often science reverses itself on what is healthful, it seems ridiculous to judge people on BMI or cholesterol or whatever. It's becoming increasingly clear that cholesterol levels and blood pressure are far more influenced by genetics than diet and that genetics dictates who will benefit from changes in diet and who will not.

Current wisdom is that margarine may be worse for your than butter because of the free radicals created by hydrogenating oil so that it's solid at room temperature. Dietary cholesterol from things like eggs and shrimp doesn't raise blood cholesterol. People really can fail to lose weight on a 1,000-calorie-a-day diet. While reducing cholesterol levels may reduce the chance of heart attacks, it doesn't seem to make people live longer.

I have to say that for a fat person, there is no believable way to prove that you have healthy habits - believable to medical professionals, potential mates or employers, society in general. I once spent a month writing down everything I ate or drank, down to the last teaspoon of sugar free Coffee Mate. I brought it with me to a doctor's appointment, and the response I got was, "If that is all you are eating, you should be losing weight."

Said in a sympathetic tone, so that I expected the doc to order some tests to find out *why* I wasn't losing weight. For a brief few minutes I had some hope that there would be some answers. When she did not, I was so stunned that I simply let her dismiss me from the office without a word, puzzled as to what her plan of treatment was going to be. It actually took me a couple of years to realize that the reason she didn't bother to lift a finger to find out what was wrong, is that she left unspoken was, "Since you are not losing weight, plainly that is not all you are eating."

I'm fat. I get looked down on for that. If I eat healthy, I'm still fat. If I exercise, I'm still fat. I still get looked down on. When I beg for help because eating healthy and exercising leaves me fat, I get responses like "quit eating fast food and drinking pop". It's only in the last year or so that I have had the guts to respond, "Ok, so exactly how is it going to help for me to START eating fast food, and drinking pop, so that I can quit?" So far, that has gotten exactly zero answers.

Nobody will tell me how to force the healthy habits to actually produce the societal acceptance and approbation that skinny people get for having those habits.

Can you imagine a skinny person going to a doctor with a heart problem and having the doctor say, "Your heart is only functioning at 50% capacity, but that's ok." And offer no explanations, no treatment options? Then the skinny person gets all fiesty and demands the doc do *something*. So the doctor says, "Tell ya what, if you want, we can excise 70% of your skin. Now, that won't fix your heart, but the enforced restricted activity will make it less noticeable that your heart isn't working. This is a scientifically proven procedure, it works. Really. But your insurance company considers it a cosmetic procedure, so you get to go into bankruptsy to pay for it." That's what I feel gastric bypass surgery that has been offered to me is. The stomach is not the seat of metabolism. So how can operating on it fix mine?