Does the age of Ozempic and MJ jabs expose what a load of bollocks the ‘Body Positivity’ and ‘Health at any Size’ movements were

I’m fat and my partner is an attractive, gym going, muscular man in uniform - he just fancies curvy, soft women and always has. Plenty of people find larger bodies as attractive (or more attractive) than slimmer bodies.

I’m very body positive, and I’ve just started WLI as I’m pushing 40 and I know my chances of long term health in older age are higher if I lose some weight. But I consider myself
beautiful and worthy of respect and love at any size or shape. I love my body whether it’s fat, thin, sick, well, tired, energised etc - why wouldn’t i?

I think you are bang on correct - many gravitate and are more than happy to play up certain things if there is cash/fanbase to be made . Let’s put it this way , there are categories in porn for ‘‘pregnant women’ - all I can say is WTF ! And what kind of woman wants to be part of that -

I agree OP, I think it shows that a lot of those people were full of it.

I think this thread shows that a lot of people hadn't really been exposed to the body positivity movement, they think it's just about not being an asshole and healthy self-esteem, and taking a view of health that isn't only about weight but also fitness, quality of food being eaten, and so on.

But it stopped being that a while ago and had become bizarre and dangerous. I think a combination of people trying to justify their own bad health; people trying to grift by making money as influencers and being able to claim being an oppressed group; a particularly nasty element of people using their own bodies to create a kind of freakshow tiktok space in order to make money; and much of it seemed to be related to online health woo and health conspiracy theories. There was also a weird sexual element for some that seemed to attract certain fetish motivated men. People may find this all unpalatable, but it's the reality.

So basically picking up and incorporating other elements of toxic online culture. But there is really nothing like seeing a massively obese woman struggling to walk, on oxygen, claiming that her weight is not part of her serious health problems and that those who say it is are fatphobic haters who push fake medical advice - all while telling their followers that if they stop eating whatever they want or try exercise for health they too are bowing to fatphobic pressure - to realise that it is nothing to do with healthy self-esteem.

What is unfortunate to me is that I think that drugs like ozempic are going to drive some massively unhealthy behaviour in the other direction. We've already seen some of it in Hollywood, that will spread, and being rail think is likely to become a strong pressure again and associated with success and wealth.

It was always hypocritical bollocks.

There is nothing, repeat nothing, body positive about Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis or being at increased risk of strokes and high blood pressure.

I’ll be frank as someone who was on the cusp of morbid obesity after my DC were born in quick succession - about 7 stone overweight, BMI was very very close to 40. I think it just helped fat people feel better about themselves and justify their lifestyle.

I don’t think any obese person is happy and satisfied not just with the way they look but also how they feel. God did my joints hurt all of the fucking time, my knees were even creaking and I was in my early 20s. Also suffered from plantar fasciitis which was constant agony. I could barely fit in a standard sized bath and it was just super embarrassing all of the time, I barely left the house.

So yeah I think those fat ‘influencers’ felt shit about themselves but fed other fat people a lie that they were happy and felt great. You do feel momentarily nice when you eat junk, that is true but it’s like any addiction, later you feel terrible.

WLI didn’t exist when I lost the weight. I lost 7 stone in a year through sheer willpower, determination and hard work. I started running which to begin with was literally laps around my small back garden because I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’d also do workout YouTube videos.

I think the jabs have created a whole other monster now in that people are using them and not working out so their bodies lack any tone and they look skeletal.

You would be right as a positive campaign but that isnt what the words mean in the hands of the masses who picked it up and ran with it

I think my understanding of body positivity and 'health at any size' are a bit different to a lot of posters. I always understood 'health at any size' to mean that whatever size you are you can take steps to improve your health eg by eating veg, going for a walk, cutting out the fags etc- and that these things would be valuable even if they didn't contribute to weight loss.

Body positivity was essentially a movement to blur the lines of any reasonable discussion around size and its health impacts. Most likely funded and pushed by large food/dairy/sugar conglomerates who have a vested interest in keeping their customers plump and addicted for as long as possible.

Agree 💯

@waytooearlythisAM yep - I’m doing it without WLI as did 6 weeks and hated the side effects- but I think this is really individual - I’ve also got really good will power that was never my issue - I just liked too much of the nice healthy home cooked stuff -oh and wine ! And I ate far too much carb

i am very interested in this thread as I am currently doing my dissertation on this very subject. So it is interesting to hear other views. (I will not be quoting anyone for ethical reasons if anyone is worried)

Yes, this! Losing significant amounts of weight and keeping it off feels utterly impossible. Prior to WLI, I’d started to genuinely wonder if there was something wrong with me. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t stick long term to a calorie deficit - I was just constantly craving food. A 1200 calorie diet left me permanently hungry and it was all consuming. I skipped birthday parties, weddings and family occasions because for me it was a choice between starving myself or feasting (and no in-between). My first thought in the morning was what I was having for breakfast and my lunchtime thought was what was I going to have for dinner. No relief, just constant thoughts about controlling my weight, feeling guilty about eating an extra biscuit or deciding if this was a day where I could be ‘off’ and eat whatever I wanted. Utterly exhausting. And then WLI came along and within a day, it just all stopped. No more torturous thoughts about food or weight or guilt or ‘days off’, just zero thoughts or emotions about food. Utterly incredible!

But influencers would do better if they were just honest about it. Admit you hated being fat but you were exhausted by the mental battle and decided to embrace it. But then WLI came along and changed everything. I actually think they’d get more views by being honest about it.

I'm still fat but I too find it hard to find clothes that actually fit. I have assumed the current fashion is very much a commercial decision. I've been trying on clothes and apparently I can fit in many of them from a size small to a large - they just hang differently. I think they are trying to make them fit as many people as possible rather than have them better fitting and limit their buyers. At the other end of the scale with a petite frame it's driving me crazy and I did say to my husband that I wondered where it left women with bodies smaller than mine.

That said shops do seem to be pulling back on their extended ranges. I think in the end it's all about money.

That’s a great post and you put it better than myself - I do think if you are a bigger woman then get out and about, wear that nice dress, get your hair nice etc and enjoy yourself, don’t hide away and no people shouldn’t be making ‘who ate all the pies’ comments- but there’s no denying it’s shit for your health long term and very much so post menopause - - it all caught up with me post covid at 60 and I started getting unpleasant health stuff .

Great post and very true.

I recently had to give my own head a wobble when a colleague (who is tall and very athletic) brought his wife to the Christmas do and I was really surprised to see she’s a very large woman. They’re in their 30s and have been married for around 18 months. She’s probably around a size 26-28 and in my head, I started wondering if she’d always been that size, why didn’t she try WLI and all sorts of other thoughts. I was quite advanced down that path until I suddenly realised exactly what I was doing. Her weight is absolutely NONE of my business and yet here was my brain telling me it was. Felt quite embarrassed for myself when I realised that I too have absorbed some of the culture that seems to think the shape and size of other people is mine to judge. It’s not.

I hope that I never do that again but whether we like it or not, our ways of thinking are shaped by the culture around us.

I am not massively familiar with the Health At any size slogan, but for me HAES means you should value movement and a healthy diet at any size. Trying to be as healthy as you can at whatever size you are.

However, I think the idea that you can be healthy at ANY size is questionable because being very fat at 25 is so different from being very fat at say 45. And also it depends on how fat. Are you 5ft 3 and 11 stone or 5ft 3 and 20 stone?

I think once you get to a certain age carrying a significant amount of excess weight, often its only a matter of time before the health issues show. There are always exceptions of course.

That said, I simply don’t believe most people involved in criticising or focusing on fat women are bothered about their health. I spent most of my adult life under 60Kg, size 8 and chucking back the cakes, chocolate and huge plates of pasta and no one was bothered. People would actually applaud it! I got a lot of admiring “ You lucky so and so - where does all the food go?”type of comment.

When I started getting past 70kg was when the snide comments from colleagues or even friends started. Was I sure I wanted to eat that calorie laden snack or have such a big slice of the cake?

Another example is I have a friend who lost 4 stone which is great and I am proud of her, but she seems to think that’s her health journey sorted, despite the fact she’s still a regular smoker and has been since her teen years.

Personally for me that wouldn’t make sense, my weight loss journey was driven by both health and “vanity” concerns - and mostly the former.

I don’t drink or smoke to begin with but my thing was sugar. I just consumed too much of it. It was a major goal of mine to reduce my sugar intake (and not substitute it with artificial sweeteners) even if it was within my calorie allowance, because it wasn’t just about losing the weight. I focused on overhauling my whole diet and eating more wholefoods, reducing UPFs and controlling my portions. I was also concerned with improving my fitness levels and now have a smartwatch to monitor my steps and heart rate. I got myself a body analysis machine and still do regularly check my body fat, visceral fat, body water, protein levels etc

I am so much more proud of the process and what it took for me to lose weight than the fact that I am significantly thinner now.

I’ve lost 3 stone on WLI and have about another 2 stone to go. For several years I felt ‘less than’ and cloaked in shame because of the extra weight. I dressed in black ‘tents’ and disqualified myself from doing a lot of things because of the fear of people thinking I was too fat to be there.

To me, the body positive movement was more about encouraging women to accept who they are and live full lives anyway. Feeling totally trapped in my weight situation and the endless yo yo of one diet after another, I did actually like this way of thinking. But if any of the influencers tried to suggest they were actually happy being fat, I knew that was extremely unlikely. They were probably (like me) just tired of the constant ‘less than’ feelings so tried to smash it on the head by embracing it. At least that’s how I saw it.

Would have been far better to have been honest from the start and say ‘I find it really hard to lose weight so I’m going to make the most of who I am right now’ instead of pretending they actually loved the flab!

Losing weight and (so far) keeping it off has been incredibly eye opening for me. People DO treat me differently and are far nicer, more engaging. No, it’s not fair and we should accept people at all body sizes but that’s not how it works.

Has nobody else considered that there is far too much time and energy spent telling people (mainly women) whether they should be comfortable in their bodies or not?

Tbh
It's more about finances
It's a slim pool of people who are helped by the NHS with their weight .
The rest of us are left with body positivity or paying for jabs
All the recent thinness just highlights who has spare cash for jabs and who doesn't.
I really don't think it's any more complicated than that

I can see it from different angles, a few years ago my BMI was 32. I’m 5ft 1 and was over 80Kg during the pandemic after stress eating multiple takeaways daily. Yes. More than one takeaway on the same day! 😣

I struggle to notice my weight so I didn’t realise until I weighed myself in summer 2021 and suddenly saw myself as huge. I didn’t want to leave the house, which I already had anxiety doing since the pandemic had started and felt miserable about it so the poor eating choices continued.
There was a gym in my apartment complex but I felt so self conscious going. I also noticed people around me treated me differently than from when I was a size 8. This made me feel worse and probably helped contribute to the low mood and then sugar binges.

Body positivity content creators helped me to have the confidence to go for walks, to go to the gym and to just approach weight loss from a place of “hey let’s feed my body nourishing food as an act of love”. They also spoke out against fatphobia in society and pointed out the hypocrisy of those who celebrate thinness even if it’s achieved or maintained by unhealthy habits. And reminded us there’s more to life than being consumed by your weight.

As a result I became less stressed, my sleep improved my cortisol levels probably went down, my blood pressure certainly did and so did my weight. Obviously all this wasn’t because of body positivity but it helped.

The other day I had a look at my NHS medical records, and I was so chuffed to update the 2022 weight reading of 80kg to my current weight which is 63Kg.

However I do realise there are some influencers who categorically stated if there was a magic pill they could take to lose weight they wouldn’t . And now they’re on WLI, so it was clearly a cope and does make them look a bit disingenuous now.

And in some online communities losing weight was frowned upon and would lead to accusations by others that they didn’t in fact love their bodies. I see that as the more fringe elements of the BP movement though. Most - that I came across - were not that militant.

I agree with you @Lardychops.

I had to Google lizzo and Megan trainer.

They both lost loads of weight. Obviously WLI.

I guess no one does want to be fat after all.

I think a lot of people simply haven't engaged with body positive accounts. They've seen some obnoxious rage-baity stuff like someone posting that only a dog likes a bone or whatever and think that's body positivity. It isn't - it's just someone being obnoxious online for attention. You get that in every sphere; it is not a body positivity thing. It's an irritating online thing. If you go and look at the actual body positive community, you see it's about support and encouragement to fat people to have self worth and feel that they're allowed to exist and be seen and do normal things without shame and self-hatred. That just is not a problematic thing.

Any movement will have its fringe weirdos and nutters who distort it. You can't them be emblematic of the rest of the group.

The problem is that if your algorithm doesn't bring you into contact with the wider body positive community then all you've seen is the clickbait extremism, and you think that's all there is to it. Which simply isn't the case!

I think some may have been like that. I used to really the ones who were encouraging women to just live even if they were fat, go to a yoga class, treat yourself nicely. Losing weight is pretty hard and for some people just embracing where they were and living well regardless was the point. How many women are constantly on a diet, feel the need to tweak their appearance to be “acceptable”. I very much admired the women who went “fuck it, imma put these shorts on and do a pole dancing exercise class”.