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.

Well, yet again, I give you the experiences of all the people on this thread. And no happy, overindulging morbidly obese people... Plus all the hundreds I have met. I would be fascinated if a morbidly obese person came on here and genuinely told me they just lack willpower and that is how they got so fat. Really. But none so far...

Yes, as I have said, addiction is very rife in the population. I do believe that wholeheartedly.

When people are saying weak willed and lack of control, I don't think they are using it as an insult. It's just part of being human. In some people it's with food, other things to other people. Think people have loads of issues that make us liable to be a bit self destructive when we have the means. For some, it's food, drink, cigarettes etc. I also think we are hard wired a bit to be greedy and want more (especially something as vital as food). Read somewhere that folk used to binge or load up for the times when food is scarce - well it's never scarce now except in poor third world countries where of then they don't have they same obesity problems but they have probably more pressing issues.

Just don't think it's surprising that folk overeat and use food the way they do. Obviously some folk have eating disorders - ai'm just not sure that we all aren't on the same scale here (or many of us) but just on a different spectrum of it.

I actually agree with the spectrum thing. I don't know many people who have an easy relationship with food. I am talking about people with (arbitrarily) a bmi of over 40. And not every single one of them, but most.

Great OP. Eating disorders really are the pits, and generally have some deep psychological cause which the sufferer finds impossible to overcome without help.

One point though: why has the number of obese people risen so dramatically in the past 20 years? It is unlikely that the whole population has changed psychologically and physiologically from the generation before them, so there must also be something in our environment that is causing some of this. If we could tackle that, then maybe lots of people would be helped. (? Sugar stuffed into processed foods? ?car use up dramatically? ? sale of school playing fields ? lack of cookery lessons at school? )

Powerful, important OP. Thanks for posting.

Probably a bit of everything - but mainly, I think, availability and cost (as well as sugar - I agree with that). Whilst I am not disagreeing with any of this, in my experience it is a real mistake to focus too much on the poison - the feelings of hopelessness,despair and low-self esteem are what we should be focussing on.

Communities are increasingly isolated and while poverty is nothing new, the isolation and lack of support networks are. I don't have all the answers I'm afraid.

The things that define addiction are lying, secretiveness, protection of supply, consequences outweighing the pleasure but still being unable to stop and the behaviour deteriorating over time.

I think a distinction needs to be made between emotional eating and food addiction. The first can most certainly lead to the other, compounding the problem, but they are different things. I believe food addiction has to be the issue for a large proportion of seriously obese people. Think about it, very few people would make the choice to be so big that they feel ostracised from society, not to mention physically uncomfortable and ill, risking life threatening conditions.

Make no mistake, food addiction is real. Tests have shown that sugar is more addictive than morphine or cocaine. Our bodies are designed to get a level of sweet pleasure from whole fruit, now that the sugar in fruit has been unwrapped, concentrated and put into pretty much every processed food available, we are getting a hit all the time (and starch can have the same effect once digested). This essentially desensitises the pleasure receptors in the brain, meaning we crave more and more of the food in an attempt to get the same hit of pleasure, and it's an ever decreasing circle as dopamine production lessens the more and more we eat the addictive substance. This won't be an issue for everyone, but if you have the 'addict gene' which I think we can all agree exists, or if you eat emotionally and constantly expose yourself to those pleasurable food, or if you are brought up from childhood on a high 'pleasure' diet, these can lead to addiction.

The addict has to have the wherewithal to identify and decide not to eat those particular foods (which depends on having a certain level of self esteem, care or motivation to do so, often a big issue in itself for very obese people). They then have to face those foods every day (unlike an alcoholic, you can't just 'stay away from the pub') and make the 'healthy choice' every day to not eat that food you know triggers the switch. Yes, it's willpower, but not the same as a 'non addict' deciding not to have that last glass of wine or a third biscuit....

It's such an interesting debate. My view, for what it's worth, is that psychology is only a part of this. I think that sugar is addictive, and that manufacturers have in the past 20 or 30 years massively increased the amount of sugar they put in ordinary foods, including so-called diet foods. I think sugar is easy to reach to for comfort, in the same way that cigarettes were an easily available solace for an earlier generation.

I think that, just as some people can drink one glass of wine, while others, once they've started, feel the need to drink the whole bottle, people's physiologies respond differently to sugar. It's not really about willpower - I never have the urge to drink a whole bottle of wine, just as I never have the urge to eat a whole packet of biscuits. I don't have superior willpower, it's just (I think) that my body works differently. Once you're addicted to sugar, it seems that the body loses the ability to tell your brain that you're full.

Thanks sleep. I think you understand what I am rather inarticulately trying to say

Saw "The Men Who Made Us Fat" on Tv a while back. Very interesting, depressing and downright infuriating how people have been manipulated for profit at the expense of their health and that of their children.

I just looked up that programme you mentioned Fancyashandy and read this "Peretti travels to America to investigate the story of high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener was championed in the US in the 1970s by Richard Nixon's agriculture secretary Earl Butz to make use of the excess corn grown by farmers. Cheaper and sweeter than sugar, it soon found its way into almost all processed foods and soft drinks. HFCS is not only sweeter than sugar, it also interferes with leptin, the hormone that controls appetite, so once you start eating or drinking it, you don't know when to stop.

Endocrinologist Robert Lustig was one of the first to recognise the dangers of HFCS but his findings were discredited at the time. Meanwhile a US Congress report blamed fat, not sugar, for the disturbing rise in cardio-vascular disease and the food industry responded with ranges of 'low fat', 'heart healthy' products in which the fat was removed - but the substitute was yet more sugar."

Not good!

Exactly Opal, the start of the rise in obesity coincided pretty much exactly with the 'low fat' message, when HFCS suddenly because used to make all those low fat products palatable (as well as being pumped in ever increasing quantities into everything else). Sugar really is today what tobacco was a few decades back.

my blood pressure was going through the roof when I watched it - very upsetting (if accurate) and definitely made you think about the food industry and people's relationship to that in a different way. It is not just about being able to know when to put the fork down.

Actually it's worse than tobacco...at least with tobacco you are clear about exactly when and how much you are consuming and we weren't ever bringing out kids up on it!

I really really don't understand fat shaming.

What do the fat shamers expect to happen?

I am slim. Always have been. Why on earth would I feel the need to tell off those who aint so lucky?

Similarly, I don't feel the need to shame the stupid, the ugly or the poor!!!

I think the issue of control is complicated - sometimes as you've said with people who've been abused or suffered the eating is a form of control, even though it doesn't make them happy it can make them feel safe. Even in less traumatic cases the same sort of thing is true. Eating numbs the pain or quells the anxiety. It is a short term fix so yes, it's not controlled in the same way as some may think but it is on some level a way of controlling what can feel like a chaotic existence.

Exactly Opal, the start of the rise in obesity coincided pretty much exactly with the 'low fat' message,

And the massive boom in the fast food industry.

My Dad still lives in the house I grew up in. On the busy high street in the 70's we had one Wimpy and one fish and chip shop.

I went to visit him last week and it's absolutely heaving with them. There's a McDonalds, numerous fried chicken shops, kebab shops, 2 fish and chip shops, 3 or 4 Indian takeaways, 1 Malaysian takeaway and a Chinese. All in a relatively small High Street.

And most do free delivery so you don't even have to leave the house.

Is high fat food to blame as well as HFCS though? Burgers and chips probably don't contain much sugar, but are fattening if eaten too much. Just interested in learning more about this.

agree with wordfactory and hackmum. I do have a bit of a problem with food and it is a constant battle for me to stay at a decent weight - I'm only now (very belatedly) realising it's a fight I have to have every single day of my life for ever. But somehow that realisation has made it easier for me. There isn't a magic bullet or a one off solution - it's every day all the time for ever. I'd love to be one of those people who never really have to think about it but I'm not and I have to deal with that. I'm not slim by any means but I am an acceptable weight now - I don't try to get down to what would be my "ideal" weight because the fight for me would be too much so I'm prepared to stay at this weight and battle to stay at this weight and forget the idea of ever being 9 stone (to be honest, I've never even dreamt of that - it just seems utterly out of reach).

The best analogy for me is drink. I hardly ever drink and when I do I drink one glass of wine and stop. I just don't have the urge or the need to drink more. It's not hard for me - it's easy. The question never enters my head. But I'm very aware of the difference for me between food and drink. One motivates me and one doesn't. And that's why I am very sympathetic to people who have a drink problem even though I've never had one and never will. I just don't have that problem - that doesn't mean it's not an awfully hard problem for some people.

I have been a size 6. I have been a size 20. Mostly I am size 10 -12.

My eating habits are directly related to my mental health. That can be from moment to moment. For example, yesterday when all the kids were whinging at the same time, I felt completely overwhelmed then felt an incredibly strong compulsion to eat something, anything, now, right now.

That's just me. I expect other emotional eaters have different triggers.

My mental health has improved dramatically in the last few years and thus my body is in good condition. This happened because of a few lightbulb moments / actions.

Here's what helped me, in no particular order. I hope it helps others, but hey, everyone's different.

1. Weight watchers, slimming world, etc. Bloody pointless for me. I know that eating 10 rounds of buttered cheese toast is too much. I know that a nice prawn stir fry is good for me. FFS, it is like treating an alcoholic by giving them a list of healthy drinks: cup of tea instead of whisky, problem solved, or a drug addict by suggesting they buy some nice perfume to stuff up their nose instead of coke.

1. Tiredness is an emotional killer for me. I must remind myself to Get. More. Sleep.

1. The symptoms of anaemia are very similar to the symptoms of depression. I take SpaTone every day.

1. Hunger is another emotional drain for me. Low carb / paleo helps keep this at bay.

1. ShrinkYourself.com. A bloody fucking revolution for me. The online course cost over £100 a few years back but it has changed my life. I would NEVER have gone to a therapist or support group, or even talked to close friends/DP about my food problems. But this, this worked.

1. The Happiness Trap. A self help book. The only one that has every truly helped me. God knows I've spent a fortune on self-help books that I read quickly. I always hide the books from other people.

That was a bit long. Hell of a delurk!

Seriously, to those emphasising 'control' and 'denial' as characteristic of people who eat healthily and maintain a healthy weight, do you not see that control and denial are something that compulsive eaters/bingers/purgers/starvers have in spades?

When I was bulimic, I controlled my environment to a scary degree. I needed to know how much food was in the house, when I could be alone to binge, when I could throw up without anyone realising. If I had assumed there was a four pack of Snickers and I got home to find two gone, I'd crack up, because my well-laid plans were ruined. I engineered these situations like military operations. And as for denial, I rejected the fact that I had a problem, or that I couldn't stop. I worked very hard at keeping people's questions at bay, and looking normal.

People with compulsion issues surrounding food aren't weak willed. Compulsions/addictions take time, hard work, planning, secrecy, initiative. Secret eaters probably work a shitload harder at their task than 5:2 dieters. So please don't judge.

Fancy ... just bought that book ... looked interesting and also the website too
Thank you