To want to offer up to all the fat shamers...

[WichitaLineman]

... On mumsnet who peddle the old "fat people are lazy and lack will -power" or proffer their simplistic formula of "eat less, move more" an incredibly succinct description of food addiction by Marcus Brigstocke. I will admit that that sentence isn't quite so succinct

"Eating is different [from drug addiction]; it's dirty, it's horrible - you do it on your own and you wear it. [With] alcohol and drugs, you have moments of sobriety, [but] you don't stop being fat. You wear it; everyone can see it - it is a brand… an overcoat of shame for everyone to see.

"You despise yourself, you make promises to yourself, you say 'I had a bad day, that was bad but that means this is baseline and I can start', then you go and break those promises and do it again, and worse.

"Eating disorders are more pervasive and subtle [than alcohol and drugs] and availability and acceptability are much higher... the ”high“ comes from the totally full-up feeling ”It is an anaesthetic. You lie like a python digesting what you have, it slows your brain down and you are physically inert. Numb and dull, that is the feeling you get."

Whilst I am not saying that every obese person is a compulsive overeater, I wold wager that most are, including myself. This has resonated with me and is the best description I have read of the self-loathing involved in compulsive overeating. It is a faulty mechanism to deal with emotional pain and the fat shamers can't cause any more shame than we already feel for ourselves.

Whilst there are many people on mn who are understanding, I am always appalled by those who aren't. Please think on this when those threads come up. Thank you.

Wichita That is interesting as there are great similarities to me in your post.

My parents did their best and, although my issues began in childhood, I suspect my issues are mine and in no way their fault. I am also aware that blaming them would only deflect responsibility from me.

Addiction runs through my family so, I agree, there are possibly genetic links between those pathways

sleepwhenidie
I hope they and their children never have any MH, medical or weight gain issues that force them to look at it differently sad

Oh really?

Well I am a MH patient and I have had serious health issues including cancer. (And apparently I am a body fascist and disablist now too).
I have had problems with my weight all of my life staring in puberty ... and body dysmorphia. Worst was major weight gain and food dependency following a violent assault in my 20s so I really don't need lectures on comfort eating etc.

Some of you are so stuck in your mindset that anyone who dares to suggest that your weight is something that you CAN control is immediately the enemy. You demonise anyone who isn't going to prop up your right to be fat. And that is just like any substance abuser. I have lived with alcoholics all my life and know how they react. The throwing up of straw man arguments to avoid really staring the truth in the face is fairly standard behaviour.

I hope people find the courage in themselves to get well and fit - mentally and physically.
And the NHS message really isn't trite - after all the blaming and avoidance and excuses and soul searching it all eventually comes down to one thing - eat less and move more.

superstar We are not talking about people a few pounds overweight who enjoy their food. If you read the thread you will see it is women who are very overweight with real issues around food and addiction

I'd love to be a size 12/14 and love food.

Try being a size 24 and in the grip of a compulsion to eat anything and everything. It becomes the enemy.

In the old days of wiring jaws shut people used to strain butter through the wire sometimes. That is how fucked up it can be. It also shows that very often greed has very little to do with it - nobody can enjoy drinking butter.

Well you ain't showing much empathy for someone who has been through all of that suskia.

If the nhs advice is so fucking great then why is there an obesity crisis. FFs.

This is a very thought provoking thread with good points on both sides of the argument. But it does seem that unless a poster agrees 100% with the OP they are responded to aggressively which doesn't do much for the discussion.

Not true at all. I am so totally exhausted from exposing my innermost issues and having people still trot out fat shaming bollocks. This has only happened tonight - the rest of the stuff on this thread has been very useful for me to digest and I thank all but 4 people posting on this thread.

I have given over more than 24 hours to this. It means a great great deal to me.

Day to day I never talk about it, so thank you mn for giving me the space to here.

I also don't think there is anything to agree with me about? I am not speaking for every fat person in the world.

I just get very frustrated and angry when people try to deny me my experience by stating that actually, all it takes is exercise and willpower. That is categorically not true for me.

Wichita -

Sometimes you need someone to fuck up your pity party to help you to think - unless you just want people to tell you that they feel the same way? Making enemies of anyone who doesn't concur with you really is self defeating.

There are lots of ways to learn and sometimes confrontation can provide impetus for change.

The biological fact of weight loss is that healthy eating and exercise will do it BUT the psychological stuff behind the overeating is a whole different ball game - and losing weight won't make that problem go away.
My ex is an alcoholic. He kicked the booze by going cold turkey and stayed off for 8 years then fell off the wagon in a massive way because the underlying problems weren't deal with. It is the same with food.

Obviously this thread is not a reflection of my everyday life suskia. In my life I have 3 beautiful kids who I feed healthily from first principles. They exercise. My husband is slim. I have a beautiful home and am grateful every day for my life. I know what is involved in eating healthily.

No pity party here. But to internalise my anger will make me worse. So i refuse to beat myself up about this all the time. However I am taking this opportunity to verbalise how compulsive eating makes me feel.

Wichita, I absolutely respect your experiences but it does come across, from the outside, as if you are projecting your personal experiences on to all overweight people. I have no doubt that some overweight people are overweight for a variety of very complex and difficult issues....but I also think that many people are overweight simply because they choose to bury their heads in the sand about what they eat, what exercise they do, what the health risks are etc. I see it in my own family and it doesn't undermine your version of events to acknowledge that there may be other reasons for other people's weight issues.

I also know what helps me. And it is the identification of fellow addicts both in recovery and not. Not patronising suggestions from well meaning folk who have never been through this.

I'm going to go with what helps me if that's ok with you - not the people you think I am making "enemies" of. I've said enough and am leaving this thread now, but I can't thank those posters who have shown genuine warmth and caring on this thread enough.

Johncusack - agree, it just too easy to put on weight in this day and age. Really wonder what percentage of people constantly battle to contain their weight to a fairly reasonable level - I know that I do.

OP I've just finished reading the thread. I don't know if you'll come back or not but if you do I just wanted to say that it's been very enlightening for me and helped me to understand something I didn't before, so I appreciate you posting it. I hope you find the peace you're looking for.

You do need willpower to stop eating compulsively though. . That's the nature of overcoming an addiction. It doesn't make a difference whether you tell yourself that you are a person with willpower and are not lazy (which I am sure in other areas of your life you do have and are not respectively) I certainly don't think doctors or nurses with a weight problem are going to be bad ones -I'd really only expect a fitness instructor to be currently fit. If they weren't at some point, that's inspiring. In this one area of your life you do need willpower if you want things to change. Saying that you simply can't control yourself when it comes to food as a valid excuse and writing off all those who state otherwise as 'denying your experience' is very sad and will only make you feel worse in the long run.

My physically stunning grandmother used to get similarly defensive about her failure to quit smoking. She said that they relaxed her and people who didn't smoke just couldn't understand - this would be after announcing numerous times that she was going to embark on this or that program to quit- I can't remember someone giving her unsolicited advice, not even my mum. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and died within months. She was only 57.

Earlier quote You start by challenging this negative comment first of all, and reply "well actually I am worth it because I (here you insert all the good things about you and yes, you will have to sit down and have a good think about these good things

I have great difficulty with this, having been brought up very much with the idea of bragging being the worst thing you can do. You never even admit to competence, because it would make you big-headed. I find it very, very difficult, even now, to say I'm particularly good at anything. I makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

MadasFish Yes, this was my difficulty at first too. I began by looking at people I knew who respected me (friends, husband, work colleagues). Even though I had no idea why they respected me a complete and utter failure and visibly so, I realised that their judgement was sound and that there must be something ok about me. Focusing on each person one by one I began to see me through their eyes and slowly but surely my list began.

Shouting down the 'voices' gets easier, finding the good stuff about me gets easier and I practice it every day.

The aim is to restore self esteem not lose weight. Once we can feel comfortable in our body, accept ourselves whatever size we are, then we are in a position to make any changes we want. I don't diet any more diets don't work, there is a lot of evidence around nowadays to support this statement and feel so much more relaxed around food.

Because nothing is denied me, I can eat what I want now and guess what, I am a smaller dress size, a size 20 so still obese. Maybe in the future I will continue to reduce dress sizes, who knows? Most important to me is that I am at last at peace with myself, and after 37 years of yoyo dieting, it's about bloody time.

OP, I wish you the best of luck and hope you can resolve your issues, and to everyone else too. This is a wonderful thread, even posters who have said things that rankle with others, their input is important.

Everlong what do you mean when you say it's not 'ok' to be that weight? Is it a morality judgement? I don't see other people weight as any of my business so I wouldn't say if their weight is ok or not, it's simply their body.

Everlong, your comments have been quite bizarre on this thread and nothing to do with what has been discussed. Really don't know what point you are trying to make in relation to this thread. No-on has said that it is great to be obese.

The ideal, from a health perspective, is to consistently be a healthy weight.
The worst situation, from a health perspective, is to yoyo diet up and down.
The not ideal, but better than yoyoing is to be obese.
It is better to be obese than to be yoyoing, until you can make your peace with food mentally then you're better to stay big than to diet/put it all back on/diet again. Once you're 'better' then you can slowly adjust your weight until it is healthy and stable.

Jennifer I do as your husband does. If my weight is creeping up I watch what I eat for some months then go back to my normal eating pattern. To be fair I do not go up a dress size but I see the weight gain. I have promised myself that I will not go beyond a size 12.

My dm was a size 20 when I was a teenager and could only shop in Evans clothes which I found shapeless. As a young woman she was a size 12. I wondered how she allowed herself to get so big. Dm said she just enjoyed food. She is now a size 14 and looks more fashionable better now than she did then.

Littleen, your post:

Sometimes I eat loads until I feel quite sick because then I focus on that feeling rather than depression.

When I had anorexia, the feeling you get when beyond hungry is a powerful drug that puts you on a high.

I'd go back to being anorexic any day, much due to the difference in social acceptance (being overweight = worth less than a skinny person)
Unfortunately it's not a choice I can make, though it's two sides of the same coin. Currently doing really well on controlling it and eating a good diet, though I have a few days of not eating, and a few days of overeating randomly chucked in. And no, it's not bulimia.

....has exactly summed up my past (and present) relationship with food too! (especially your first 2 sentences). Really good to hear you're managing well. Most days I'm okay but then I come off the rails in a big way. I love exercise and keeping to a more or less healthy diet I've been averaging 8.5 stone for a good few years now, which is a good weight for me as I'm small-framed and not that tall! Recent events have triggered a number of binges though so I'm having to work really hard not to go down that road again.

On addiction and willpower, a five second google will provide lots of evidence that it is nothing to do with willpower:

"By now, the research is clear: Addiction is a chronic brain disease, not a matter of willpower. This means that, contrary to old stereotypes, people who become addicted to drugs or alcohol are not weak, immoral or tragically flawed." Dr David Sack, m.d

"(CBS/AP) Are addicts to blame for the woes? Not if you believe a new definition of addiction just issued by addiction specialists. It says addiction is a chronic brain disease and not the result of poor willpower.

"Addiction is about a lot more than people behaving badly," says Dr. Michael M. Miller of the American Society for Addiction Medicine."

"Here is a difficult idea for many people to understand and believe:
if you have developed an addiction, you aren’t really doing things as a result of free will, but as an uncontrollable response to the compelling drives that have hi-jacked your brain. It is definitely not a lack of willpower that is forcing you to continue feeding your addiction.
Once an addiction has developed, scientific research has shown visible proof of changes in how your brain now works. You now find that instead of being driven by the feelings of pleasure you used to get from your drug or behaviour, you experience intense psychological or even physical pain if you try to stop supplying your addiction with what it craves.
Your reasons for continuing with the problem behaviour have totally changed around."

Just some good for thought...

I believe there's actually quite a strong link between anorexia and later disorders such as binge eating and/or bulimia. I heard it on the tellybox but I can't remember where!

But it makes total sense to me. Years spent denying (and hungry) in order to cope with things, then the floodgates open and overeating comes in to try and perform the same function.