To find it upsetting how differently I’m treated with weight on me

A lot of women on the thread have shared their experience. Is it in all of their heads? While you don't actually seem to have read and understood the opening post, so not sure why you're so confident in dismissing what others have to say about their own lives.

Really don't tell me what my experience is. I was slim my entire adult life until a year ago when I started these meds

The UK and US are mostly obese. So I doubt any sort of treatment like that is purely based on your weight.

Sounds like it's your insecurities attributing perceivably negative exchanges to your weight. Just cause it exists in your mind doesn't make it real sorry.

She mentions her parents treating her differently in her opening post. What does gawking have to do with it? Does anyone actually want to be gawked at??

Exactly.

Yet I am the same person I was when I was slim.

Says it all that you actually have to articulate it. As though you’re not really a human at all but this weird incomprehensible species.

Oh and to not get unsolicited diet /health advice from people who know nothing about my rare condition or treatment

To be treated with the same respect as when I was slim. To not be treated as stupid or inferior

What sort of treatment do you expect?

This isn't about people fancying us, it's about how we are treated generally.

I actually find the lack of unwanted male attention a huge silver lining. I hated the wolf whistles. /groping etc (even when conservatively dressed)

Its not like women are gawking at overweight men either tbh.

YABU

Same here OP. It is definitely a thing.

I couldn't believe how large I got and how rapidly on steroids, it was such a shock. My moonface was out of this world as well.

Now I am tapering down it is gradually going (1.5 stone down on the 2 months since I started dropping my dose). It has been such a lesson though, I was slim my whole life until I had to take steroids. I thought I was fat when anti depressants meant I gradually went from a size 8 to a size 10. Little did I know

Got it! Sorry, that was me being dim. It's just on a thread where people are actually arguing they can't help being mean to fatties cos evolution I really thought someone might be popping up to say fat people = stupid (I think someone actually did earlier on) and they know because they used to be fat and stupid but then got brainy and thin so that proves it. It's been that kind of thread!

've been over-weight before. I was over-weight because I lacked self control at the time, ate too much and was lazy. So someone being overweight is a sign that they are potentially lazy, greedy and have no self control, hence people probably see and treat them differently. It's just the way it is.

Tbis excuse is always trotted out but when I was size 6-10 for most of my adult life I was constantly eating pastries and Starbucks high calorie cakes and coffees and gorging all the cakes in the office and I’d have colleagues and even some strangers cheering me on saying they love my appetite etc. I had no self control but because I was thin and 20s/ 30s with a very young face it was acceptable and cute and amusing to people. At size 14/16 I didn’t get the same kind laughter and amused smiles if I told people I ordered takeaway twice in a row or ate a whole cake etc. it’s not about the lack of self control or greed it’s simply because people often don’t like the way fat bodies look for the most part. Especially if you don’t have any other “redeeming features” as I listed in my post above.

There’s an online dating show I watch sometimes and I just cringe when I hear men talk about they like “fit” women. The truth is they usually don’t care about someone’s fitness as long as they’re size 8, with a small waist and pert butt but they’re trying to pretend to be super deep so they just bang on about liking healthy and fit women . There are fat women in the gym and running marathons but I suspect it’s not those women they’re referring to! People should just be honest with themselves.

I was just thinking that most on MN would get the idea that the reactions from my classmates,
were different depending on what size I was! Same professors, same study area (MPA, MS, PhD), same brain, but my fellow students seem to think I was smarter the thinner I got.

I had developed an inflammatory syndrome that required me to use prednisone. Prednisone causes massive weight gain. Weight gain cannot be tackled until you are no longer on the medication. It took 5 years for me to get back to normal.

ah well there you go! My theory has been (very unscientifically) proven 😄

I could have written this. I've been very slim and attractive and I'm now a size 18 and do not carry weight well.
People were so nice to me when I was slim, not just men but people in general. I have found as someone that is very overweight, that people think it's ok to give you backhanded compliments or be tactless and it's as if it's ok because if you are fat then you must be used to feeling like crap.
I couldn't feel more different to how I did when I was slim.

Its absolutely true that people treat you differently. As a student, I gained two stone in my first year. A bloke I fancied at the time (although, with hindsight, he wasn't anything special), didn't give me the time of day. Later, I lost all the weight and more, and he suddenly became all flirty and attentive. I didn't encourage him - as far as I was concerned, he'd had his chance and blown it. So there!

Yes me ☹️ especially after having my third baby and I went up to a size 16
Im a 14 now and like you I have to go and train 3-4 times a week (mui Thai for me instead of the gym)
Its hard, even at the gym one of my PTs will treat the prettier girls differently than they do me and that affects how I perform then when I see that

@Letsgetouttahere2023
'It's evolution in action. Being obese is super super bad news for your health and subconsciously all humans recognise this.'

Actually this isn't correct. Most size 16 people are far from obese, and the perception you refer to is largely cultural.
In many societies, men would avoid thin women like the plague, on the basis that they look so I'll and undernourished they are unlikely to nurture their offspring successfully.

You think the rise in obesity is because it's celebrated @feralunderclass so you think people want to be obese? It's just not the case.

The country where you couldn't buy trousers is a poorer country with less obesity, but in the UK obesity is more correlated with being poor. Is this because the poor in this country celebrate obesity? Or is it because of cheap processed food or lack of resources or lack of time caused by shift patterns or some other cause?

I see the phrase 'glorifying obesity' and I wonder if the people using it have ever met a fat person who would prefer to be fat than thin. I wonder if we'll ever see women's magazines with weight-gain tips like we would if being obese really was celebrated. If people will start to post on MN about how to get a rounder belly or more rolls.

Body positivity might make some people feel more confident in their own skin, but it hasn't made fatness aspirational and it never will.

Do you think that us fat people should swelter in layers of clothing in the summer for fear of offending your sensibilities?

@ElectricTouch I did read the OP, but we are now 10 pages in I'm not by any means saying that fat people (of whom I'm one of) should be banished to the attic, never to be seen again, but I do feel the body posivity movement has caused obesity to be celebrated, rather than an undesirable medical disorder which should be addressed. I've tried so many things, including Saxenda and am contemplating Ozempic. I think we need to ask why are there so many obese people in the UK. The country where I couldn't find trousers is much poorer than the UK, and nowhere near as many overweight people.
My own mother is horrified by my weight, I literally can't put a bite in my mouth without her scolding me, so I'm no stranger to being fat shamed. No one should be made to feel bad about their appearance, but unfortunately it happens.

Please reread the opening post @feralunderclass . The OP is not glorifying or celebrating obesity; she has a painful chronic condition that makes it hard for her to maintain a healthy weight. She feels very bad about this because she feels universally condemned - even her own parents and people in her professional life treat her differently because of her weight. And your answer is that obesity is 'glorified' because obese people are able to buy trousers that fit?

Moving through life in a fat body (I have been both slim and fat due to thirty years of eating disorders) means a woman is made to feel ugly, inadequate, ashamed, both invisible and horribly noticeable. People still shout abuse from their car windows at fat women in the street.

Being able to buy plus-size clothes and follow body positivity accounts on social media does not equate to 'celebrating obesity'. Obesity is still not a desirable state. The diet industry is thriving, MN weight loss threads are full of people trying be and stay thinner, there is an Ozempic shortage meaning diabetics can't get their medication because the demand for it as a slimming drug is vast. People on the whole do not want to be or to stay obese. If it was a glorified state, they would. Allowing fat people to buy clothes or go out in public does not encourage anyone to gain weight.