I think this fits in with the phenomenon of 'fat talk'
If you're not familiar with it, basically it is the convention of reciprocally making negative or critical comments about one's own body (and diet) when in conversation with other females.
Research indicates that women mirror each other's body / diet talk conventions i.e. if someone is talking about how they dislike their stomach, the other woman is likely to join in too. If someone is positive about their body, this can be mirrored too.
Interestingly, women who are negative about their bodies are rated as more likeable and approachable by other women than those that express body confidence.
Anyhow, the reason it interests me is that the subject of my PhD thesis was the development of dietary conventions, eating attitudes and body image in children, in relation to their BMI.
Talking about food and weight with children, I heard time and again from girls of 7 and 8 about good days, naughty days, sins, Slimfast, sins, points, treats, binges, and the fear/obsession of seeing what the scales show ... it's amazing how much they pick up. It has certainly made me particularly conscious of the way I talk about these things with my daughters.
Interestingly, the girls who - at 7 or 8 - were more concerned about their body and their eating patterns, and who expressed more of a desire to diet, actually gained more weight relative to their height over the next two years than the girls that didn't have these concerns.
In other words, girls who thought more about dieting and wanted to diet gained more weight over the next two years than those who had no such thoughts.
Now, this might be more understandable if the girls with these concerns were overweight, or even comparatively overweight i.e. the urge to diet might be felt more keenly by those with a higher BMI. But girls with high expressed dietary restraint were no more overweight than those without it.
Sadly, dietary restraint i.e. the urge and intention to eat less, eat differently, hold back, take control etc. is also a predictor of weight gain in adults. In some ways this makes Slimming World, Weight Watchers etc. and similar particularly impressive because, of the people that actually stick with their plans, they do actually seem to work. On the other hand, most women / men don't follow these programs although a high proportion of both genders are, at any one time, actively dieting or planning to diet.
Do I have a point? Two, I think. Firstly, losing weight is HARD. One of the hardest things a human being can make themselves do in a country where food is plentiful and safe, and where almost everything in the built and social environment conspires to make us want to burn fewer calories and eat more of them. Anybody who thinks overweight people should be mocked or simply 'eat less' has never thought seriously about how difficult even small behavioural changes are for everyone, and how much stigma they are contributing to by buying into the stereotype. Secondly, we need to try to achieve positive relationships with food and our bodies somehow, for the sake of ourselves and our children.
Right, I expect no-one's going to read that because it's a novel 
It's just something that really fascinates me ...