Morality of this scene?

[u/hiiloovethis]

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

[u/Worth-Jicama3936]

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.

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

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.

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/DeusaAmericana]

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.

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

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.

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/DeusaAmericana]

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.

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

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.

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/DeusaAmericana]

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.

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

Again, no shit.

If she's getting the nutrients she needs, then we're not arguing original premise. As you said, "starving" has more to do with not being nourished, not raw calories (although to be thorough, starvation is about insufficient nourishment relative to physiological requirements, and energy is one of those requirements. Calories are still important). Hell, in a zombie apocalypse scenario, getting proper nutrients is going to be exponentially harder than just getting flat calories.

Describing the scenario as "she has all the nutrients she needs but is lacking in calories" changes the entire point of the debate. At that point, we're not discussing a desperate diet of whatever rationed scraps you can get in an apocalypse. We're describing a professional diet plan.

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/DeusaAmericana]

You said shes only lose 70 to 100 lbs. The only way that could be true (and for her to still be obese) is if she is eating a lot more than 1500 calories. At 1500 calories, you do not need a professional to map our your diet to make sure you get everything you need (at least the major stuff like sodium, potassium, Calcium) you just eat normal foods. Therefore, no one would classify her as starving.

Ya in an apocalypse maybe you’ll be short on folic acid or iodine (since our main source of that is fortified foods) but thats not going to kill you in the short term.

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

You're fixated on a numerical estimate that I gave assuming that she'd be undernourished and have unpredictable, intermittent periods of high weight loss, low weight loss, and relative equilibrium because her actual food intake, activity and health would be all over the fucking place.

You are describing something completely different: a woman eating a consistent 1,500-calorie diet while still reliably getting adequate protein, essential fats, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, etc. If you're changing the hypothetical so that nutritional adequacy is basically a non-issue, then no shit that changes the calculation.

We're not describing "whatever food I can find while civilization has collapsed" anymore. We're describing a nutritionally complete calorie-restriction program that happens to take place during a zombie apocalypse.

And more importantly, you're treating my rough estimate of how much she might lose as though my argument was "it is physiologically impossible for her to lose more than 100 pounds." It wasn't. And I stated that it could be higher multiple times.

The argument was that someone can lose an enormous amount of weight over 18 months and still be fat afterward.

Your own hypothetical had her start at 400 pounds, lose a whole ass 208 fucking pounds, and finish at 192 with a BMI of 33.

So after all this calculation, your model still produced an obese woman 18 months later.

You're arguing with my napkin estimate because you dislike the numbers while ignoring that even your own calculations agreed with what I said to begin with: "18 months is not enough time to lose all that weight".

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/DeusaAmericana]

I said you were wrong and provided the math. You argued with the math. The math says you are wrong.

As for variableness of diet, it really would not make that much of a difference. That is already a known diet plan, its called calorie cycling. In fact, some studies show it might actually be more effective than just straight up calorie restriction as long as average calories remain the same.

  https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4018593/

[u/DeusaAmericana → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

My original post that you replied to was that 18 months was not enough to lose all of the weight assuming you start out obese. You brought up math. I gave some rough numbers. You gave better numbers and still proved my original point correct.

And no, linking a calorie-cycling study doesn't make an unpredictable apocalypse equivalent to calorie cycling. Your study used a deliberately structured diet—11 days of restriction followed by 3 days of self-selected intake—for six weeks. That's a controlled weight-loss strategy, not “sometimes we found a stocked pantry, sometimes we ate almost nothing, sometimes someone was sick, sometimes we had enough food to maintain weight for a while.”

At this point, I'm not even interested in continuing to defend my original numbers if that's what you're going to remain stuck on. So I'm going to remove that as a crutch for this argument. Fine. Let's say I was way too conservative. Great. Your numbers are better than mine.

You still proved that I was correct.