Here's Something Worth Saying.  
Generally fat people are shown as a collection of negative stereotypes. 

Fat people are shown as miserable unless they are succeeding at weight loss. Voices of fat people are promoted only if they have succeeded at weight loss. Voices of fat people who speak out against the idea that the only positive fat identity is a self-loathing dieter are actively silenced. 

Any media outlet, television show, movie etc. which shows fat people being successful at anything other than weight loss is immediately criticized for normalizing obesity.

The theory is that fat people will become motivated toward weight-loss if they are never shown in a positive light until, or unless, they get thin. 

Even though it turns out that most people aren’t motivated by seeing everyone who looks like them portrayed as a tired and worn out stereotype, anyone who sets up a fat role model gets accused of the crime of “promoting obesity“ or “normalizing obesity”.

Let's not kid ourselves, this isn't really about Health. So what IS it about?  Here's a clue. Maybe if society stopped shaming fat people then fat people might stop pouring money into the diet industry for a solution that almost never works.  If that happened, it would lose their sixty billion dollars a year.

I don’t buy the idea that showing fat people in a positive light will make other people want to be fat; I don’t think that a ceaseless stream of shame is doing anything good for fat people; and oppression for profit is not ok.

Let’s try a new experiment. Let’s normalize bodies of all sizes. Can you imagine if size was not an issue?  Movies with fat leading ladies, magazines filled with people of all sizes, billboards with fat people selling dish soap, a world without fat jokes, a world without articles about how Santa Claus promotes an unhealthy body image.

Take a minute to realize that everything fat people accomplish today – starting with finding the courage to step outside their homes in fat bodies -  is done in spite of the fact that fat people live under the crushing weight of constant social stigma. Imagine what fat people could do if they didn’t have to live with a ceaseless stream of societal stigma and shame -- like the government waging war on them and even enlisting their friends, families, and employers as soldiers in that "cause".

We don’t have to just imagine. We can just admit that the current plan of making fat people feel like crap about themselves isn't working. We can stop shaming and stigmatizing fat people. Let's normalize obesity, and see what happens! 

NOTE:
The article above contains paraphrased excerpts from Ragen Chastain @ www. danceswithfat

 Here at DietHobby there are many articles about my weight-loss and maintenance of that weight-loss.

For more details see ABOUT ME in the Resources section, and various Status Updates etc. in the ARCHIVES.

I've consistently recorded all my food into a computer food journal every day for more than NINE years.

I've also recorded my weight daily or weekly during that time. Those detailed records show a large weight loss, followed by a couple of years holding pattern, followed by about five years of gradual weight-gain while eating a calorie average of around 1050 calories daily.

Despite my careful adherence to calorie budgets, and detailed documentation, people tend to disbelieve this truth. I'm tired of being considered a liar. In fact, involving myself further in discussions on the issue is becoming too exhausting to even contemplate. My records are helpful to me personally, but are generally discounted by others as inaccurate, mistaken, or faulty in some way because … what these records show "simply cannot be true".

This is a common phenomenon.
 
Medical personnel and weight loss gurus get to openly doubt the claims of any and all failed dieters because their fat bodies are the visible proof that they are lying.

Former dieters who claim diets don’t work were probably just doing it wrong all along, or else they didn’t try Guru X, Y or Z, who would have set them straight right away.

However, the bottom line is, diets don’t fail because failed dieters are liars, but because the only diets that yield substantial, noticeable weight loss in a statistically significant portion of the population are the same diets that are largely unsustainable for many, many reasons.

The problem isn’t lying dieters, it’s that the expectations surrounding diets and weight loss are built on lies, half-truths, insinuations, flawed research and cults of personality.

It is important to realize and understand that people regain lost weight due to biological reasons which are totally out of their control.

When a person engages in the kind of severe caloric restriction necessary to lose significant amounts of weight, it triggers hormonal changes in their body that pushes back against that caloric deficit, both physically and emotionally.

The body's response to caloric restriction involves issues involving leptin, ghrelin and adaptive thermogenesis. In a nutshell, one's body does everything it can to preserve what few calories it is taking in. This is the semi-starvation neurosis that is most noticeable in the infamous Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Those continual, ongoing, unpleasant symptoms are the body’s way of trying to urge a person to find more calories. Most people find that kind of lifestyle unsustainable.

The 3500 kcal per pound Theory was derived by estimating ...

Remember... when we encounter others
who feel entitled to judge what is "right" or "wrong" 
about our body size or our eating behaviors,
and who feel entitled to express those opinions,...
we can set personal boundaries.

People have the right
to free speech,
but not the right
to an audience.

Who Cares if 3,500 Calories Don't Make a Real Life Pound?
                      by Dr. Yoni Fredhoff, M.D. 12/12/13 @weightymatters

If there's a more painful discussion in nutrition and obesity these days beyond the one that circles the question, "Do 3,500 calories really make up a pound?", I don't know what it is.

So here are some truths.

• People are not walking math formulas whereby if they have 3,500 more or less calories than they burn they'll gain or lose a pound.
  
• 3,500 calories of one food or type of food will likely have a different impact on health, hunger, thermic effect, and weight than 3,500 calories of another food or type of food.
  
• Different people have different caloric efficiencies whereby they are seemingly able to extract more calories from food or reserves than others and lose weight with more difficulty (and gain with greater ease).
  
• And yet here's the only truth that matters.

From a weight management perspective, the currency of weight is calories. While exchange rates undoubtedly do vary between foods and between individuals, you'll always need your own personal deficit to lose, and surplus to gain.

All other discussion, while certainly academically interesting, given that there are No Other Alternate Measures Available to track, or tests to determine individual responses to different calorie sources, serves to foment confusion.

If weight's your concern, more important than anything else is finding a life that you enjoy that contains fewer calories than before. Getting stuck in the minutia of what type of calories may lead to an every so slightly faster or greater loss, rather than truly crafting a life that's enjoyable (and hence sustainable), might help in the short run, but will almost certainly defeat you in the long.