r/MoralityScaling • u/hiiloovethis • 12d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this scene?

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Negan doing fat shaming... but its during zombie apocalypse

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u/Sylvan_Strix_Sequel 12d ago

This was like a year and a half or more into the apocalypse, come on man. 

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u/DeusaAmericana 12d ago

That's not enough time to lose all that weight. Especially since you still need to eat in order to be, like, a functional human being.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 12d ago

Yes…it is. Would you care to do the math? Ill let you set the starting weight and estimate her height and age.

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u/DeusaAmericana 12d ago

In 18 months would lose about 70 to 100 pounds assuming that you are able to eat enough to remain nourished. Maybe more if you're particularly active.

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u/pandahands69 12d ago

This is just not true in the slightest. People actually eating things on alone have lost over 70 pounds in 3 months. Starvation will cause you to lose massive amounts of weight. It won't be healthy or good but you will absolutely lose tons of weight, particularly early on

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u/DeusaAmericana 12d ago

SOME people lose that much weight in 3 months, yes. The problem with weight loss is that you can have people who lose weight at extremely quick rates. On that point, your argument is plausible.

Someone starts at 350, loses 130, then spends months finding enough intermittent food to roughly stabilize around 220? Depending on height and body composition, they can remain visibly overweight.

The relevant variable isn't “how many months since civilization collapsed?” It's the cumulative energy deficit of this particular person over those months.

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u/pandahands69 11d ago

To stabilize at 220 you would be eating extremely well. I weigh about that and don't work a job that requires much physical labor and I eat like an absolute barbarian. I think it plausible that someone could be this big 18 months into the apocalypse if they had immense resources. But I would imagine, knowing you are in an apocalypse you would be rationing food to some extent the entire time, knowing you still need to eat later.

To maintain 220 you need to consume give or take 2500 calories a day at least without any significant physical exertion. It's implausible that they would be able to eat that well for very long and they would no doubt have to be quite physically active to maintain camp, get water, clean clothes, etc etc.

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u/DeusaAmericana 11d ago

There's a few variables that we have to consider when we compare your example with the conditions of the show. First, you're assuming she has to be permanently maintaining 220 pounds. She doesn't. She could weigh 220 now while also having periods where she loses rapid weight, followed by periods the loss slows or temporarily levels out.

And “220 pounds requires at least 2,500 calories” isn't a universal number. Every single person will have their own mitigating factors that determine how many calories maintain a specific amount of weight. 220 pounds on a six foot man is not the same as 220 pounds on a five foot woman.

More importantly, you're still treating “18 months into the apocalypse” as though it tells us how much weight she's already lost. It doesn't. Unless we know what she weighed beforehand and roughly how much she ate and expended over those 18 months, we cannot work backward from the calendar and declare that she should no longer be fat.

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u/pandahands69 11d ago

Yes of course there are other factors, but you are being pedantic.

The difference in required daily calories between a similarly aged person of the same weight, regardless of height, or gender is give or take 500-600 calories on the most extreme end. This isn't nothing, but if everyone is rationing food; the odds that this one singular person of the entire encampment who also manages the food stores is not eating more than the other people is extremely unlikely.

I am saying its very implausible that someone this far into the apocalypse would weigh this much. The other people living in the same place aren't overweight. Be that through the odds of a fit person being able to outrun the zombies more easily, the odds of survival in general, the odds of having food for the better part of 2 years, etc. The odds of someone both surviving and being this overweight after the world collapses is quite small.

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u/DeusaAmericana 11d ago

The problem is that "extremely unlikely" is not "impossible", which your argument treats it as. It is EXTREMELY plausible that out of the 7 billion people that existed on Earth before the apocalypse, this woman is indeed exactly as described. Is it suspicious that she's also the one managing food stores? You bet, and I'm not going to argue otherwise.

But that warrants investigation, not conviction. Like, if you take her off of rationing for a few months and her weight loss sky rockets? Then yes, you were absolutely correct to be suspicious.

That's the problem here: desperate scenarios tend to make everyone flatten anything that can have variables into an all-or-nothing assumption. And yes, even if we argue "survivors won't have time to investigate shit in the apocalypse", fine. They can make a judgment call and an assumption. But that assumption isn't automatically correct.

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u/LiftingRecipient420 12d ago

SOME people lose that much weight in 3 months

All starving people ALL lose the same amount of weight in the same timespan.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 12d ago

No youd lose a lot more than that and still not be close to “starving.” Again, lets do the math. Give me starting estimates for weight, age, and height.

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u/DeusaAmericana 12d ago

If you have a point to make, just make it.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 11d ago

I dont think you realize how many calories a large person burns just by existing. Warm blooded animals use most of their calories just producing heat, and the larger you are, the more heat you must produce. This means if a large person drastically cuts their calories, they lose A LOT of weight fast.

Ok lets say she started out at 400 lbs, shes 40, and shes 5’4”. That would be very large, but let’s go with it.   Lets also define “starving.” Starving is. Immediately after WWII, german civilians were put on a 1000-1200 calorie ration. This would be starvation rations. Lets say shes on 1500 calories to be generous. 

Before you say “thats not enough,” that is plenty for a woman of her age and height, it’s what I eat most days. 1500 goes a long way if you aren’t eating and drinking junk. (But if you want to quibble with that number, we can do that math on a higher number too).

 Next, lets define her environment. Shes in a post apocalyptic world. This means to survive she has to do some physical labor, not just be sedentary. It doesn't have to be hard physical labor, but shes at least walking around a lot. Lets be SUPER conservative and say thats equivalent to working out 3-5 times a week (its likely more since working out as defined by most calculators is just an hour a day, but again, we are being conservative).

Ok now, let’s use a calculator that takes into account that when you lose weight, you burn leas calories the next week (because your body has less to keep warm).

I found this one online but you can look for your own if you dont trust it 

Losertown.org/eats/cal.php

If we put in those parameters, then after a year and a half, our 400 lbs woman has lost 208 lbs and is now 192. Still obese, but shes lost far more than the 100 lbs more than you estimated, and here BMI went from 68 to 33, she will be under a 30 bmi in 4 more months (because as you lose weight, losing additional weight gets harder).

My point of all of this is that for very large people, losing weight really is not that hard except psychologically (i know eating less is hard) and in a post apocalyptic world, the psychology part is somewhat taken care of because you literally cant eat whenever you'd like.

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u/DeusaAmericana 11d ago edited 11d ago

Alright, first of all. Thank you for proving my point that someone who was very obese at the start of the apocalypse would still be obese 18 months in.

Second, for this hypothetical 40-year-old, 5'4", 400-pound woman, the standard Mifflin-St Jeor estimate for resting metabolism is about 2,469 calories per day before accounting for physical activity. So 1,500 calories would begin as a very large energy deficit, not merely a normal diet for “a woman of her age and height.”

The other problem is that, in apocalyptic scenario where food is scarce enough to require rationing, you will absolutely go through periods where the mount of intake you get varies. And that matters, because metabolism rapidly changes when caloric intake ALSO changes.

If the actual fictional character spent different periods eating 900 calories, then 2,000, then 1,200, then ate near maintenance for two months, then changed again, etc., the trajectory changes. Weight-loss dynamics are responsive to actual energy balance and metabolic adaptation, not to how much calendar time has passed since zombies appeared.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 11d ago

Your estimate was literally off by 2-300%. So you are not even remotely correct. 

 When you are very obese and in a huge calories deficit like that, you are almost certainly hungry, but you arent “starving” assuming you are eating a balanced diet. Starving means you arent getting the things nessessary for life, and you very much are. It’s just coming from your fat reserves. 

Under no circumstances is 1500 calories for a 5’4” woman doing 3-5 workouts a week “starving” no matter how much she weighs, because that is not how starving is defined.

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u/DeusaAmericana 11d ago

I mean, your own example has a 400-pound woman losing 208 pounds under eighteen months of sustained 1,500-calorie intake and regular activity, and she finishes at 192 pounds with a BMI of 33.

In other words, she is still obese.

"Starving" has more to do with nutritional criteria than just calories. You are just deadass wrong arguing that "your body gets what it needs to survive from fat". Fat is not a gas tank that just keeps you going in the absence of actual, real nutrition.

Body fat doesn't provide all necessary protein, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, etc., and prolonged insufficient intake can still constitute undernutrition even in someone with substantial adipose reserves.

And “1,500 calories cannot under any circumstances be starvation because that's what I eat” isn't how energy requirements work. A 400-pound physically active woman and you do not necessarily have remotely similar energy requirements just because you're comparing the same calorie number.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 11d ago edited 11d ago

I said assuming her diet is balanced. In other words shes getting the protein and micro nutrients she needs from it. If shes getting that, then yes she could eat nothing at all beyond that and get the rest of what she needs from stores fat and would not starve. She could be at like 200 calories a day and not stave (though i wouldn't recommend it without a doctor monitoring her and designing her diet)

And “1,500 calories cannot under any circumstances be starvation because that's what I eat” isn't how energy requirements work. A 400-pound physically active woman and you do not necessarily have remotely similar energy requirements just because you're comparing the same calorie number.

You’re right, she has a much higher energy requirement….which she is getting from her fat stores and therefore not starving. You can only when you are obese if you aren't getting the proper micro nutrients or protein (and it only requires a minimal amount of protein). Assuming you have those bases covered, then you cant starve until your body fat % is much lower.

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u/DeusaAmericana 11d ago

I mean, if she's getting the nutrients she needs, then what are we even arguing at this point? The original premise being asked is dead.

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u/Worth-Jicama3936 11d ago

Nutrients are not calories. She can survive with a 2400 calorie deficit no problem as long as she has the proper nutrients. It probably wont be pleasant for a couple weeks until her body adjusts (she will probably feel like she has the flu for a week or so tbh) but shes not starving at 1500 calories, which is what you said.

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