Should we be more honest about weight?

[LockdownLoser]

A friend of mine has put weight on, she checked her BMI and is firmly in the overweight category.

Now in a large size 12, bordering on a 14 she is not huge by any stretch of the imagination and is probably the slim one at work, amongst her friends etc.

She posted on Facebook how much of a shock it is and how she has always been the skinny one.

Queue people falling over themselves to say how BMI is rubbish, how there's nothing of her, how she should ignore it as she is the size of one of their thighs and so on.

Now she does look great, and I have told her so whilst suggesting a few exercise classes we could do together IF she wants to lose the extra couple of pounds, but when does body positivity become dangerous?

BMI is not just made up figures? It's based on something and serves a purpose, being overweight does come with health risks.

So when do we be honest and say actually yes you could do with losing a couple of pounds for the sake of your health, let's do it together. Instead of saying oh the medical guidance is rubbish, you look fantastic.

All this, well you are smaller than me so have a biscuit seems like encouraging each other in the race to become unhealthy.

BMI isn't the best guide ever as it fails to account for many body types.

What kind of body types? This particular friend doesn't exercise so doesn't fall into the body builder category or athlete, she is average height and build.

I think for the vast majority of people BMI is actually a pretty good indicator, the healthy weight band is very broad to account for differences in frame size.

We should all be honest about weight and stop pretending it's something to keep quiet about. It's about the only thing good that's come from Covid.

I don't think this is about weight as such, it's about a certain kind of female group communication which operates (to me frustratingly) via public acts of self-deprecation, often to do with weight or appearance, which are in some cases consciously designed to elicit the kind of mass reassurance and compliments you describe.

That's not my world, but I remember being very struck by a baby group I went to when my DS was a toddler where the regulars' conversation went exactly like this every week when the cake came around.

'No, I can't, I'm such a heifer!'
'You are not, look at you, you're TINY!'
'Your upper arms are like my THIGHS!'
etc etc.

What I'm saying is that the person in question is generally not looking for medical advice. Weight and weight loss is often a female mass bonding lingua franca.

Though I do agree that it would be more helpful all round if weight was a less emotive topic, and firmly in the medical class rather than aesthetics. Ideally, talking about weight less should be no more emotive than having to avoid certain foods after a gall bladder removal or because of allergies.

I agree with it being a female bonding thing, which might be good for the ego but it really isn't healthy for the body.

This might be a little off topic but I guess its along the right lines.. I'm 5ft 10 and prior to lockdown I've gone up from a 10 to a 14. I've not blathered on about it but as I've caused this myself by eating crap and sitting on my arse I've mentioned to a few close friends that I'm hitting the gym now its open, and overhauling my diet. Everyone is falling over themselves to tell me that I don't need to lose any weight.
I'm getting quite cross. I can't do any clothes up. My abdomen looks like a melted candle and my knickers are uncomfortable because they are now too small . I feel sluggish and unhealthy.
I just wish my friends would say 'good for you, good luck'. At this point I have two choices. Buy bigger clothes and carry on stuffing my face or tackle it.

weight is such an emotive topic!! In an ideal world it wouldn't be, but just look at the language surrounding diet culture.

being 'good', 'cheating', 'naughty' etc. just because someone is overweight that doesn't make them any less of a good person.

The BMI calculation was made up by a mathmetician in 1830.

It's hardly cutting edge science and must be about as close to made up numbers as it can get...

We need a much better method of measuring health, including the impact of weight.

Being a good person doesn't protect against health issues unfortunately.

She is a lovely person and she looks fantastic she always has whatever size, it's just her post got me thinking in more general terms.

I was in the same position last year, everyone telling me I was fine when I was overweight. It just helped me stay in denial for longer. If someone had been honest with me I might have lost weight sooner.

Yes I think this is a huge problem. My boyfriend and I were discussing similar the other week. I think part of the huge problem we have in this country, and the West in general (we were discussing whether heat is a factor in appetite/weight whilst discussing HK and Singapore) is that group mentality dictates that we don’t want to be the “fat one” in our friendship group, therefore, we only notice there’s a problem with our weight if we become “the fat one” which is gradually causing an increase in weight due to portion sizes/eating out etc. and during lockdown I think losing this comparison factor has caused a lot of people to put on weight, as we don’t realise we have as we’re not comparing to our usual group. I think also unfortunately, subconsciously, this affects how we react when someone wants to lose weight, I think it subconsciously makes people fear their “own place” and their own weight, so try to convince them it’s not a problem, as a means of also convincing themselves. I think there’s a reason mainly slim ladies are friends and mainly larger ladies are friends, and it’s the group effect.

BMI doesn’t work for the elite super muscles but tends to work for everyone else. Size is bollocks isn’t it - different in every shop. Tape measures don’t lie - mine says I am fat, it’s correct. It is more a whole style of communication, ‘stunning hun’ which is largely fake and meaningless. I am a twig in comparison to many of the teen girls coming out of the local high school, they have micro skirts, lashings of slap and look confident enough but health wise this is a disaster.

I think part of it is that if you are bigger than the person in question, admitting they are overweight means admitting that you too are overweight?

Again this isn't a personal attack on being overweight or not, I am talking purely from a health point of view.

If someone needed glasses you wouldn't reassure them that actually their eyes are fine whilst they were walking into doors.

Everyone is falling over themselves to tell me that I don't need to lose any weight.

Absolutely, because they (mistakenly) hear you as asking for reassurance that you still look nice/are valuable etc, and their replies are automatic cries of reassurance, rather than based on any kind of objective criteria about your weight gain.

I personally don't participate in self-deprecation and reassurance-as-female-bonding stuff, and some women (like at the baby group I mentioned up the thread) clearly found it very rude and exclusionary that I didn't jump in with my own self-deprecating tales to do with weight etc.

We should be more comfortable supporting our friends and family into losing weight and saving their health. It should be no more awkward than supporting someone to stop smoking as the health benefits are very similar!

BMI doesn’t work for the elite super muscles but tends to work for everyone else.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2886596/

Summary: BMI failed to correctly 'diagnose' obesity in less than 50% of women

It's interesting because both DH and I are dieting at the moment. We both have about the same amount to lose in proportion to get to a BMI of around 22 or 23 - he wants to go from 100kg to 83kg (at 6'2"), I want to go from 75kg to 65kg (at 5'6").

Friends have said to him "good luck" or "fair play to you" or " good on you". The SAME friends will say to me "oh you don't have to lose weight", "don't feel you need to lose anything", "you look so good" etc.

We are also trying a low-FODMAP diet for his IBS. People have told ME that it's unhealthy to cut things out, why be so extreme, etc. When I point out it's actually a medical diet for DH then suddenly, oh that's fine if it's for him. If it was for me it would be weird and controlling!

It’s such an emotive topic and there’s always going to be someone who gets offended whatever you say. I don’t think we all need to be going around looking like size 8 toned supermodels, but as long as people take some responsibility for their health by doing 3-4 workouts a week and eating nutritious foods at least 70% of the time then I think things like BMI and dress size don’t matter too much. When I was a size 14 I would say I was healthier than my friend who was a size 8 who just lived on chocolate and fags. I ate too much but it was all healthy stuff (just huge portions and lots of snacks) and I did loads of walking whereas she never did anything.

I agree with you OP that if someone is overweight, telling them they aren’t isn’t helpful.

However it’s hard to know how to respond to the kind of comment your friend posted tbh! Agreeing she is overweight would be unkind. Denying she is overweight is untrue and unhelpful healthwise. Catch 22

People in the overweight category actually live longer according to studies! I do think mn is quite hysterical about people who are a bit overweight. Sure, let's not encourage morbid obesity but there's no need to be so judgemental concerned about a few extra lbs.

I'm desperately trying to lose 4lbs to start with to get into my healthy BMI (at the top end). Then lose some more. However, I have once been at the lowest of my BMI due to a break up and someone asked if I was a drug user and when I looked back on a photo I looked awful.

I have gone from squeezing into an 18 at the start of this year to 14's being a little too big. I still need to lose 1.5st to be a healthy weight. I started as obese and I am now overweight.

Over the last few weeks, so many people have given me compliments on my weightloss, swiftly followed by a warning to not go too far I appreciate that I look slimmer than I was but I am only 5ft2 so I can't look 'too thin' or like I'm 'wasting away' as has been said. Perhaps things have become this distorted with regards to people recognising healthy sizes. The comments have come from people of all sizes.

I really do think we need to learn to be more honest about weight and the link to health issues.

It would be great if we could strip out the emotion and ego from Discussing weight

But we can’t which is why there’s a weight issue in the first place..... for so many, me included, weight and emotion are
Inextricable

DH and I have just finished a conversation about us both going on a diet. We both need to lose quite a bit, and the discussion around Covid and the fact that it appears to affect overweight people more has cemented our resolve! There is a difference between fat shaming and recognising that being very overweight is unhealthy.

What your friend did was really attention-seeking (quite embarrassingly so) and it would have been very clear that she wanted reassurance rather than honesty, so I'm not surprised that's what people gave her (but I bet a lot more rolled their eyes and posted nothing!). If she'd spoken one-on-one to a close friend she probably would have got a more equivocal response where they might have been able to broach more of a 'have you thought about doing more walking, let's do it together' etc approach, but starting the conversation in public was never going to be conducive to that, and I strongly suspect she knew what response she'd get and wanted that.