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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to be sick of the way some women talk about diets..?

172 replies

IvantaOuiOui · 23/03/2012 19:39

as part of my job (CM) I take children to playgroups, have been doing this for years. Every woman I meet seems to be on a diet and they all talk about "being good" and "being naughty", how many syns/sins are in everything and what they've eaten in the last 24 hours. Is this normal? I am no stranger to trying to lose weight but I don't want to talk about it all the time when I'm on a diet.

OP posts:
OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere · 24/03/2012 17:42

Lucky you Cup.

I have seen it and heard it dozens of time and it never ceases to amaze me.

This isnt about people not caring about women getting fit.

Its about the tyranny of the dieting industry. Magazines, clubs, ready meals, milk shakes, biscuits, slimmer of the year blah blah blah.

They dont give a fuck if women get fit. If their diets were about getting women fit and staying fit they would go out of business.

Lets not make this about personal battles to lose weight. Its about how crap women are made to feel if they are not thin or trying to lose weight.

Should we really be celebrating dieting? No thanks.

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 18:12

Rubbish, Mrs DeVere, we should be celebrating women taking control of their life/weight/self esteem and certain parts of the diet industry are all about doing just that.

I'm not including cabbage soup or any "faddy" diets in that btw...

TheBigJessie · 24/03/2012 18:44

Feeling like you are failing society and the outer world, i.e. "naughty" for eating anything you happen to like, is not empowering, though.

A toddler throwing biscuits all over the floor is "naughty". A grown adult woman is not being naughty if she decides to have a biscuit at lunchtime.

noblegiraffe · 24/03/2012 18:49

If it's empowering, how come men don't do it?

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 18:52

I would feel like I was being "naughty" because I was failing myself though TheBigJessie, if I was on a diet but had too many biscuits... society need not necessarily come into it.

Although of course the influence of "society" on women's self esteem can hardly be disputed.

But you have to admit that not being overweight (or underweight) IS healthier even so.

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 18:53

Men DO do it, they just don't obsess over it!!

Lots of men also seem to have hollow legs Envy

TheBigJessie · 24/03/2012 18:59

If one just thinks they're letting themselves down, they don't apologise to everyone. I sometimes try and eat more healthily. If i eat something unhealthy, I don't think of myself as "naughty". I don't guiltily declare it to everyone, as if I've broken the office photocopier.

Because I haven't been naughty. I've just changed my mind about something.

noblegiraffe · 24/03/2012 18:59

Isn't it the obsessing that this thread is about? The banging on about calories and being 'naughty' if you have a Jaffa cake?

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 19:06

I read that as "dieting is empowering", "men don't do it", so I meant that men DO diet...

there's nothing empowering about obsessing imo, no.

And yes, the person who bores for Britain about dieting is annoying, but so is the person who yaks on about the weather/their boring hobby/whatever. Just leave them to it and go and talk to someone else....

HalfSpamHalfBrisket · 24/03/2012 19:06

Ah... try being a teacher with the healthy eating agenda in school!
I try very hard to tell the children that there are no 'good' foods and no 'bad' foods, but there are some we should eat lots of and some we should have less often, but lots of the resources we have include chocolate and cakes marked red with a big cross and fruit with a big green tick.
We are already conveying value judgments to very young children. No wonder some adults have the attitudes highlighted by the OP.

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 19:14

I'm a teacher too HalfSpam, and yesterday (whilst surveying all the Easter chocolate I'd been given from my class) one of my 6 years old's said "Miss you'll have to do lots of exercise to work off all the energy in those chocolates won't you?!"

I do try to be very careful with the way I teach our "healthy eating" syllabus.

Flightty · 24/03/2012 19:16

Weight is such an emotive subject.

No one I know talks about their weight in this way, or their diet or what they have eaten. The only way is whensomeone genuinely feels bad about themselves and people step in to try and make them feel better, or it's laughed about in the sense of 'I have just eaten twelve mini donuts. Shall I finish the box' sort of statuses on facebook (which I don't use any more) which to me is more about having a bit of a thing about donuts than any sort of issue about weight.

I've tried to lose weight, and had a very serious eating disorder, and recovered and now I tend to eat what I want when I want it, though I struggle to cook or make anything healthy for myself, so often I just have a slice of bread for lunch or some crisps or something.

That's an inward refusal to take care of myself. It's not about being thin though I do prefer to be thin.

I dislike any sort of commercial dieting company like WW that profits from people who try over andover to lose weight. It's all so formulaic, it's not appropriate for a lot of people but do these companies care? No. It's all money.

shreddedmum · 24/03/2012 19:17

CupOfBrownJoy

"Unless you have been in the situation where you are dieting and SUCCEEDING you have no idea how empowering, energising and all round fantastic it feels."

Like many others who've posted, I've "succeeded" with WW in the past! I got to goal and stayed there, oh I THOUGHT I was empowered and energised and fantastic - I felt POWERFUL! as if I won against food! I felt a rush when I stepped on the scales

That is not sucess or being empowered or really energised, not like really respecting your body and seeing food as fuel and even medicine not a "game"(yes looking at you WW Hmm) or a battle ground! - its dangerously close to obsessive control

I have been in the situation you describe.. and then had a lot of distance from it.. and looking back I vow to never do WW/SW/Similar again!

KenDoddsDadsDog · 24/03/2012 19:24

My whole office is like this. Makes me want to scream.

CupOfBrownJoy · 24/03/2012 19:24

Fair enough Shredded, but I have lost weight (and kept it off) with SW and found nothing but sensible advice and help.

I believe I have a healthy relationship with food, and I do diet (I pick up SW again) if I can feel my trousers getting a bit tight - to me that is having a healthy approach towards food. I don't want to be overweight, neither do I want to be obsessed with what I eat.

What I liked about SW is it wasn't all obsessive points counting, you can actually eat lots of healthy things without all that annoying counting and weighing.

Each to their own....

Echocave · 24/03/2012 19:31

I agree with the OP. My sister in law often says 'ooh shall I have a chocolate?' (just one) as though she's talking about a naughty noseful of cocaine. A single chocolate.
What's really wrong with this is that it's my brother who's unintentionally made her this way. He is afraid of putting on too much weight and jokes self deprecatingly about being 'porky' round the middle (he's never been obese). She has never been obese either. My Mum fought with a weight problem all her life although she never once ever told any of us to watch our weight.
My sister is also not fat but thinks she is. I put on weight when pregnant which I'm not doing much about at the moment. But I just don't subscribe to 'naughty/not naughty' food. It just infantilises us to do that.

shreddedmum · 24/03/2012 19:32

well great if you've done it healthily good for you

but most SW fans I know have fridges full of muller lights and most WW fans have curly wurleys in their freezers. In general there's a lot of processed crap on both diets - yes I am aware you have a choice.

If you put your health first the lbs will look after themselves, at the heart of all the big diet companies, weight loss is prioritied over health

flipflop77 · 24/03/2012 19:34

Fantastic thread. We owe it to our daughters to ensure this stops.

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere · 24/03/2012 20:04

It is NOT rubbish and the diet industry has fuck all to do with empowering women.

Its about making money off the back of women's insecurities.

I went to SW a couple of times. I was 9 stn. I am 5'7". They asked me what my goal weight was and I said 7stn.

I wanted to see what they would say. Did they say 'you are not oveweight, you are perfectly within healthy limits and your BMI is fine'

Didnt they my arse. They said 'Lovely, do you want to pay weekly or monthly?'

A group of women taking their cardis off and going to the toilet before weigh in then sitting around learning what slice of bread has the least 'syns' (syns ffs) and that fruit 'whole from the bowl' is ok but fruit juice was a no no.

What is empowering about that?

No talk of exercise, no talk of body image just hard sell on ceral bars and magazines.

shreddedmum · 24/03/2012 20:15

YY my WW leader set goal was FAR too low for me, it was JUST above underweight on the BMI and I already felt I looked too thin with about 7lb to go, friends and family were starting to tell me not to loose any more

I told my leader I wanted to adjust my goal to my current weight - she implied (on front of the weigh in que and her assistant) that I was just trying to get out of paying for my last few meetings. I stopped going, about 4 weeks later I got a hand written letter from her with my gold keychain whatsit saying I'ld done so wel SO FAR! Shock and it would be a shame for me to leave the meetings so I was allowed to come back as a gold member for free weigh ins Hmm

I looked around and felt the other gold members didn't look healthy, a lot of them looked a bit too far on the thin side!

I think the very low goals is all part of the setting you up to fail so you go on a life long viscious cycle of getting to goal then gaining and going back to weekly meetings etc

IT DOESN'T WORK IF IT WORKED IT WOULD HAVE GONE BANKRUPT BECAUSE EVERYONE WOULD ONLY HAVE TO DO IT ONCE THEN THEY'LD BE SET UP WITH HEALTHY HABITS FOR LIFE!!!! they do not want this! they want you to "slip up" and come crawling back for another hit of satisfaction and smugness!

JasperJohns · 24/03/2012 20:15

Mrs DV that is shocking.

treadwarily · 24/03/2012 20:21

Totally agree Mrs DV. I used to write for women's magazines and the entire content was weight-based. We'd have a slimmer's success story next to a diet followed by a story about anorexia then a health page about the rise of obesity.

It was actually a hate-women magazine...

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere · 24/03/2012 20:36

I have lots of friends to whom WW/SW is a rolling programme.
They do it every year.
They join up. They talk about it constantly. They sometimes stick to the programme but mostly they dont. When they dont stick to it they talk about everything they are eating and drinking and how many points/syns it is.
As if doing that somehow counts as dieting.

I dont hate them or think they are stupid. I hate what drives them to it.

If you are going to eat crap do it without paying someone to weigh you once a week.

Apart from the screwed up way women are made to feel about themselves, the thing I hate most about these diet factories is I think they are an alternative to healthly living.

They pretend to have an answer so complicated that you need 'expert' help to explain it to you. Its so complex that you need log books and rule books and passwords and special cookery books.

They sell a lie. Its a multimillion pound industry that exploits women.

It tells us that to be thin is the most important thing in life. It sells us the idea that if you are thin everything else will fall into place.

I am thin, always have been. Being thin did not stop me losing my DD, it did not prevent my OH getting a horrible disease, it hasnt made me rich or beautiful.

It just means I am thin. It doesnt even mean I am particularly healthy (although I am now doing something about that).

I will tell you what else it doesnt mean. It doesnt mean I despise overwieight people, that I starve myself, that I am vain or that I have an easy life.

As an outsider looking in, I do feel strongly about it. The majority of my female friends, since I was a young teen, have been overly concerned about their weight.
That is 30 years of listening to women complain, moan and sob about how ugly they are because they are not a size 8.

OhDoAdmitMrsDeVere · 24/03/2012 20:41

tread I have often been Hmm about women's mags that have pages of:
Diet recipies
Slag off article about a female pop star whose weight has 'balloned' to 7st
Fashion article about slimming clothes
Fashion article featuring size 0 models
Article extolling the virtues of 'real women' i.e. those who have 'curves'
Fad diet
True life story of someone who is 38 st and has been refused a gastic band.
Bikini shots of celeb mommy holding 2 week old baby.

Etc etc etc etc.

lottielou39 · 24/03/2012 20:49

Oooh you've got me on my favourite pet subject. I could rant for hours!
Needless to say:
women who talk about diets, weight, fat grams and calories ARE fucking boring. FACT.
the diet industry encourages and feeds off (ironic) the insecurities of women.
Fat IS a feminist issue. Men are allowed skin and flesh. Look at some leading Hollywood men, like George Clooney, Matt Damon etc. who've both been fleshy round the middle. Do they worry about fat? Do they fuck.
I was stunned when I was waiting for a musical toddler group next to a group of slimmers world women. The vast majority were no larger than size 14. Most of them did NOT need to lose weight.
The diet industry is bollocks. Almost all women who go on a silly idiotic diet put ALL the weight back on and MORE besides.
It makes me LIVID.
Oh and I'm a very average sized 12-14. I eat bread and I eat chocolate and what's more, I eat chocolate too! And I don't fucking count or weigh anything.
Bollocks to the lot of it.
They can all bore right off.