Only now that I am pregnant do I realise how much – and how routinely - women are discouraged to eat!

Yes, there is a great bit in Caitlin Moran's How To Be a Woman where she points out that carers who have issues tend to go for overeating rather than destructive addictions for the reason Basil mentions.

I actually despair at how the vocabulary of sin/bad behaviour has become recast around eating sweet things rather than genuine bad behaviour, eg cheating, dishonesty and nastiness. Even the concept of 'cheating' seems to have been recast in dieting terms - 'I'm supposed to be on a diet but I cheated on Monday by buying a Twix bar'. How on earth is that cheating?? Cheating implies dishonesty in a wider context, e.g. copying exam answers from the person next to you or fiddling your expenses. Aargh!

I hate this whole language of morality around women's eating, as well. You never get men's eating talked about so judgementally - the man who wants to 'get fit' isn't told he's been 'naughty'.

There's also the undercurrent that a woman who makes her own choices WRT food is being selfish ie she is considering her self rather than others, whether it's that she should control her eating so that her appearance is attractive to others, or that she should eat less so more food is available to other people, it's all part of the same thing: that women should never consider their own needs or wishes.

Makes you wonder what their plans are for you Samandi.

I think there may have been a thread on here at some point in which this thing of eating treats, over eating etc., was discussed. Or I may be imagining it, maybe it was a discussion somewhere else.

But anyway the gist of it, was that alcoholism, drug addiction, other self-destructive addictions, damage all the people around the person engaging in that behaviour. And they require some extra time and money to pursue.

Obsessive over eating, only damages the person who does it and costs no more than healthy eating (if you live in a food desert, it costs less). So you can carry on functioning as a good mother, wife, daughter, worker, if you binge eat. Sooner or later with most other addictions, you can't. Which may be one of the reasons, women choose the over-eating route to self-medication, rather than some of the other routes.

What also gets my goat is women (especially older ones it seems) talking about how "good" they've been to stick to their diet or how "naughty" it would be to have a pudding. It's not a moral issue FFS! It sounds very infantile.

Urgh, I know, that's ridiculous language.

Can't say I've ever had people telling me to eat less, quite the contrary. For some reason people have always seemed to think I needed "fattening up" as though I was the Christmas turkey.

Ah, x-posted with Basil. I was referring to twatting your work colleagues. I feel your pain about the low-fat meals - every time we go to stay with my parents we get the cottage cheese, macaroni and sweetcorn frittata at least once. She sees it as one of her culinary triumphs (weeps).

It's no wonder that women are hardwired to see high-calorie food (or ), cough cough) as the answer to all life's problems is it?

Basil I admire your self-control in not twatting these people.

Kim - that 90% figure is after 5 years or something I think, can't remember exactly. Lots of people get really good results on Fat Fighter type clubs or whatever, and lose lots of weight initially. Then when they stop going to the club and eat normally again, they gradually (or in some cases suddenly) put back on all the weight they lost. So they then have to join up again.

It's a win win situation for the dieting clubs. I could rant about them for hours, they're a real bug bear of mine because I think they are horribly exploitative of women and encourage them to obsess about food. (This may also have something to do with the fact that I have a friend who goes who makes their special low fat recipes which she then serves when you go round for dinner and it's generally horrible and you have to pretend it's nice.)

Oh god I cringe when my workmates tell me I'm being naughty (which they do regularly because I don't do faddy shite, I eat real food).

And that bloody club which incorporates Syns into its diet plans -it's not weightwatchers, it's another one, I don't know which - Syns FGS. They even use the language of morality. (Syns, for those of you blissfully untroubled by the knowledge of diet clubs, are high calorie treats which you are allowed to eat on your low fat/ low calorie/ low taste/ low joy diet to "reward" you for being "virtuous" for the rest of the week when you do one of these diets.

I think being forced to eat is just as common as being discouraged from eating. It seems that it's ok to voice an opinion about the way a woman looks and what you think she should be eating, regardless of whether you think she should be eating more or less. It's not ok to do the same to a man.

I don't eat lunch. I'm at uni 9-3 and I'm busy, I eat when I get home. Almost every day someone comments on my eating habits, says I need fattening up (I'm not skinny), offers me food and refuses to accept a polite refusal. These are not always people I know particularly well. Sometimes I have to be quite rude to get them to stop trying to feed me!

My dad also feels the need to comment on how much I eat- even when I was breastfeeding a 4wk old DS. I had to be quite strident to get him to shut up. And, now that I'm an adult, I also notice how much he comments on my mum's food intake. She is permanently on a diet- except when she "falls off the wagon" and eats LOADS to compensate. I've also called him on referring to an obese woman in our neighbourhood as "scary". Well, that's one man who certainly has issues around women and weight, anyway!

What also gets my goat is women (especially older ones it seems) talking about how "good" they've been to stick to their diet or how "naughty" it would be to have a pudding. It's not a moral issue FFS! It sounds very infantile.

I only restrict food if my mum is doing a big family meal so i can fit in 2/3 puds :o otherwise I just refuse the extra round of sandwiches etc.

I think the car convo would have driven me mad. One of my brothers is a gym bunny and does stuff like food diaries. But it makes him happy and he doesn't do steroids etc.

Ariel, that's because you live in a lovely palace beneath the sea.

It's the only place you can get away from it....

THing is, the message is wrong and unhealthy. All this 'diet food' shit makes people fatter, yet the cultural pressure, mainly on women, not just to be thin but to percieve fatness as a moral failure, means they eat badly, in a way that not only makes them hungry and miserable, but actually makes them gain more wieght.

Skatergrrl, on the one hand, know what you mean about being encouraged to eat more, but on the other hand, you will get an equal amount of 'You mustn't eat that, you mustn't have so much as a sip of a spritzer', no matter what your own feelings of risk awareness are.

kim you sound like you have a very healthy relationship with food.

That's quite unusual and it's not in capitalism's interests - if you're happy with your body and your relationship with food is normal, that means you're not going to spend loads of money on faddy diets, bizarre foods, supplements, disgusting tasting shakes, dieting club subscriptions, meal plans, diet books, etc. etc.

Weightwatchers - FFS, they have a failure rate of over 90%. Over 90% FFS! Most people go back and back and back, year after year after year, paying their subscriptions, buying the recipe cards, trying out the menu plans, spending loads of money on this astonishingly ineffective programme. Makes me want to throw cream cakes at the directors of that bloody company.

I have never felt this pressure.

Not that I'm suggesting that fighting the patriarchy isn't fun btw.

It is, of course.

Yes agree Wotmania. I had a lover last year who damaged his back forever, by over-weight-training in the gym. He was very vulnerable to the "men should have a six pack and lots of muscles" message. But it never occurred to him to restrict his eating - just to damage his body in a different way.

I agree Basil. The diet industry also mainly targets women. Men go to the gym and bulk up but women musn't because it isn't 'feminine' to have muscles and be strong, no, women must starve themselves to acheive the 'ideal' unrealistic body shape

Doctors are now starting to tell underweight women, to restrict their calorie intake for a couple of weeks, then eat normally, then restrict calorie intake again, in order to put on weight.

In other words, to yo-yo diet.

A massive percentage of women in this country, do that all the time, as a norm. In order to try and be slim.

And in fact, it makes you fat. Which is why doctors tell women who need to put on weight, to do it.

It's massively simplistic to assert that because lots of women are fat, that means they're not listening to the "don't eat" messages.

It's also unempathetic and cruel actually. Masses of women feel really shit about being fat and spend wasted hours obsessing about it when they could be doing something fun and enjoying themselves, or fighting the patriarchy.