Feeling uncomfortable after sharing a seat with a very obese passenger

14 hours? That sounds hellish!

When I was a very skinny, very timid 13-year-old I got completely squished up against the window in the bus by an older teenage girl who didn't want her friends to know she couldn't fit into the seat next to me.
A) Ouch 🤕
B) Eeew! I got covered in her sweat.
C) She wasn't fooling anybody.

Her friends looked at me with pity but apparently it was more important that her feelings didn't get hurt than preventing her from hurting me. My back was hurting for a least a week after the incident. The limp went away after a day or so.

She was friends with one of my friends and I later found out she did that all the time but ( pun intended) I was supposed to be the bigger person.

Well, exactly.

YANBU!

No but you infer the sweating is due to the obesity.

I didn’t say only obese people sweat.

Hardly fair on you

With kindness I really hope that you are under the care of a dietician and that you have received expert advice before reducing your calorie intake to such a deficit. 3500 kcal a week is not sustainable and you are running the risk of starving your body and losing muscle mass as well as bone density. This is an extreme approach to weight loss and doing it without professional input is dangerous. 6 stone weight loss is an achievement and I’m sorry to p*ss on your parade but this is concerning.

That is not necessarily true. My partner is skinny, 28inch waist and sweats profusely.

Thankfully he also showers very very regularly!

Agree 100% I’m 65 and have been obese for years. Something’clicked’ in my head a year ago and I have finally managed to lose six stone. I wrote down every single thing I ate (still do) and stuck to 3500 calories a week. Being obese is horrible, uncomfortable, unhealthy. If it was easy to lose weight, nobody would choose to stay fat.
What we don’t need is people saying or posting negative comments, as if we are mentally deficient and don’t know we’re big.

Some of economy seats in BAs longhaul fleet, certainly some 787s are "tight" but believe it or not they don't have the worse configuration available on the type.

"They just want to maximise profits not comfort"...

That's a commonly held opinion but there's a lot more to it than that....it's not really a case of just maximising profits, it's a case of tweaking seating to make your fares attractive to price sensitive customers but also make enough profit to keep the airline going long term.

Given the horribly cyclical nature of the industry it's very easy to go from the black into the red, so a bit of profit when you can make it is a good thing, the thing not to do is maximise profit to the point it scares customers off.

I had this once on a national express coach from London to Newcastle. It was hideous.
The lady said ‘ oh at least you’re little!’ as she took up st least 60% of my seat.
i have no judgement about people’s size or how they got there as it’s non of my business but they should book two seats.
i have an autistic child who needs a lot of space for his various needs and id never expect other people to accommodate that. In the cinema and in trains I always pay for two seats

No theory required...of course they want to sell tickets, although it's possible PE doesn't actually yield higher profit per seat than economy, I don't know. Pricing is always a very complicated issue. Nothing about pricing works in silos.

It is known that companies make better sales if they lure people in with the lowest price and then offer add ons on top of that (checked luggage, seat selection etc) rather than starting with a higher price and reducing it as people ditch the extras. I can understand that; it's much nicer to start at a low price and add things on than start at a high one and feel like you're "losing" stuff to get it down.

Plane seats are getting smaller, not bigger. I flew BA economy for 9 hours and it was horrendously uncomfortable because I had to squash my shoulders together to fit in the seat. I'm size 12 and 5 foot 2 so god knows how big people bear it. They just want to maximise profits not comfort. My theory is they are trying to get people to pay for premium economy.

@ThatCyanCat I understand.
I know a lot of binge eating is due to past or current trauma, it isn’t a simple fix.
Thankfully the WLI seems to be a big help for people.

*take accountability

Some aspects of obesity can be because of depression and because terrible things have happened to the obese person in the past. There can also be physical reasons. However, you are implying that no blame can be placed on the obese person - they are victims who will never recover. This is ingenuous and incorrect, as you very well know. Counselling is often a good idea but in the end we all have to acc accountability for our own actions. We are the only ones putting the excess food in our mouths. Have you ever watched My 600lb Life? It is eye-opening in many ways. Dr. Now is sympathetic and compassionate but he also spells out exactly what the problem is and how to address it. He is also a big advocate of psychiatric help. Not everyone succeeds, of course, but those who do turn their lives around and are able to enjoy normal life.

I appreciate that, but I'm explaining why I don't think people attend OA as much as AA. And while I realise you can live without bingeing, it must be very very hard to need to take a controlled amount of your addictive substance several times a day to survive and not binge on it. Harder than simply swerving it conpletely. I can see why people would think addiction treatment wouldn't work when you have to take the substance.

Additionally, there are zillions of diet plans and groups that people are probably going to try instead that all promise you won't feel deprived and can stick to forever yadda yadda. As food isn't actually a drug like alcohol, people are less likely to view overeating as an actual addiction even though I understand that it really can be.

It deals with the reasons why people over eat. You cannot live without eating but you can live without bingeing. You can live without drinking alcohol but you have to lose friendships, relationships, unless you can resist the temptation, if you cannot then you can no longer socialise with loved ones when alcohol is involved, it’s definitely not as simple as never drinking alcohol again vs but needing to eat.
It’s a lifestyle overhaul learning the skills to resist the urge to make yourself ill. The constant guilty cycle. Food addiction causes damage to other family members, not as much as alcohol or drugs but definitely restricts life.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to feel uncomfortable when a stranger’s body is pressing close to them, into their private space, for whatever reason. I imagine you wouldn’t like it either. And some victims of assault find it very triggering to be touched without their consent.

I think because many people don't see it as a matter of addiction (although I know it can be) and even if they do, they don't think the usual steps for addiction recovery will work, since you can live without smoking, alcohol or other drugs (and in fact recovery generally does mean giving them up completely), but you can't live without eating.

i have been battling weight issues for most of my adult life. I also have a couple of medical conditions that affect it and my bottom and hips are the worst affected areas. I am aware of this and make sure l am not imposing on others. I understand the problems of weight and that it is far more complex than it was originally thought. That said, I believe we should all be aware of our surroundings and how our bodies and actions can affect others. If l were ever in the position of needing a seatbelt extension and spilling into the next seat I would have to pay for an extra seat. I feel @Bayleaftree63 has had a lot of criticism and perhaps the wording of her post was a little unfortunate but how many of us want to be squashed by a stranger, particularly in the weather we have been experiencing this week?

You have to wonder why more overweight people don’t try the same rehabilitation programs that drug and alcohol addicts use. There is many overeating anonymous groups who can offer help and has preformed miracles in NA and AA yet OA isn’t popular.
Going though the 12 steps helps evaluate your downfalls and triggers. The healing on the inside eliminates the outside addiction.

...and then having posted that link re Southwest then saw this:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/southwest-overweight-passenger-policy-seat-change/

Which highlights a change in the way the scheme is administered.

It’s a mental illness, you know you sre being ignorant