to think that all the fat bashing threads should have their own topic so that i can hide them?

[gymboywalton]

how many hand wringing threads do we need?

how did we get so fat? oh i can't believe how many fat people there are! fat people should pay more tax and it goes on and on and on and on......

it's dull ffs!!! find something else to be shocked by!

It's too emotional an issue for some people, so every comment about health is taken personally and seen as 'fat bashing' rather than seeing that some posters really are concerned about obesity from a health point of view.

Tbh, I would rather be me - fat but empathetic, kind, generous, caring - than someone well-toned but without an ounce of compassion or empathy in them.

So would anybody worth being SDTG

What guidelines would they be I wonder The same guidelines used to prevent racist and homophobic posts.

Or the more lax ones like it seems to be with disabilism.

Sadly I have a nasty feeling it would be the latter.

But it would never work. Chat and Aibu are where people start topics if they don't want to be ignored. Obesity could be a factor on almost any subject listed on here, it doesn't fit neatly into one box.

Most posters ignore the topics, for right or wrong. I guess that's why this thread is in Aibu and not site stuff or health.

I tried arguing in site stuff about fattism being added to the talk guidelines Darkest. It was a complete bunfight.

Yes ive read it Have you taken a look there lately

No

It's not just the 'fat bashing' though, it's the good food/ bad food, being good, competitive eating less, eating less is healthier. Well not for all of us it isn't. It's everywhere and it's as if everyone is expected to lose weight. I've seen threads about children coming home from school saying they've been told this or that food is bad, being afraid to eat cos miss said it would make them obese.

Good work Darkest I'll join you

I agree with you Hope That sounds like a breeding ground for eating disorders.

IMO the diet industry needs to be more strictly regulated. You wouldn't get drug or alcohol counsellors just setting up a practice but all diet consultants have to do is pass a small test set by SW or WW. We are often asked at class whether we want to become consultants. I just couldn't bring myself to do it Even the SW magazine has gone to the "body shape" emphasis in recent years rather than health. My answer to being asked whether I want to become a consultant is a. I don't want to. b. im not qualified. Losing a significant amount of weight does not/should not qualify you to become a consultant Not just this alone. After all kicking a drug or alcohol habit doesn't qualify you to become an addiction counsellor.

So even the medical and diet/nutrition professions treat it differently to other medical problems and until they stop treating this like the "poor medical relation" not much will change.

I would actually like to have a constructive debate about obesity. I don't want to make personal comments on other people's bodies, nor do I want to revert to lazy stereotypes that fat=happy or skinny=bitch, both deeply insulting. However I do care that poor people die younger, that they are more likely to be overweight and that the processes our food goes through contribute greatly to these unhealthy weights we collectively achieve.

I don't want to see this thread moved just because it looks at a difficult or sensitive issue.

I don't know that the obese woman I saw yesterday had a serious disease or not, but I did overhear her in the physio suite where I was, saying she had diabetes and had had two toes removed making exercise more difficult. I DO know that not every single person who is seriously obese has serious health issues causing that obesity though.

I didn't point, stare, make fun of her or hurt her feelings, I smiled at her when we were both waiting for physio and mentioned how hot it was as I drank two cups of,water rather messily. Smokers should be given the red carpet treatment actually, given the amount of tax they pay if you're going to be that pedantic, they pay for their own healthcare a good few times over and also don't cost as much- they don't require industrial sized beds, theatre tables, ambulances, or get £8000 stomach stapling surgeries then complain to the media because their skin has stretched so much they now need skin removal surgery.

I think we lost a lot of ground when schools started considering cutting up a baguette, putting cheese and tomato sauce on it, home economics, and therefore cooking. Portion control is going the same way as the USA ie. ridiculous- my husband was there recently and ordered a chicken and pasta dish at a restaurant. He was given FOUR chicken breasts. FOUR. That wasn't a request, just their normal serving. That should serve a family, that kind of portion.

And I a, sorry but I don't believe for one moment someone at thirty stone is happy with their size- carrying an extra two stone is uncomfortable enough.

I think that eating issues should be dealt with by everyone in a kind manner. If you are too fat or too thin because of your relationship with food you could have a an eating disorder. It's all so easy to just see the too thin people as being the ones with a disorder or the extremely obese. I yoyo from a size 18 to a 12 - often. I am now at the heavy end and although overweight I don't look obese. However I do have a disordered relationship with food. If I didn't I wouldn't be so up and down with my weight. We need to get away from the good food/bad food idea. Labelling food as bad doesn't help. You can eat chocolate, crisps, chips etc - just not all the time. It doesn't mean they are 'bad'. It's just advisable to not eat them all the time.

I would like to see the diet industry abolished and have nutrionists, where you are referred by your gp to help people instead of ww or slimming world, fasting, low carb. You only have to look at the weight loss threads to see the same thing over and over im stating x again. last time I did y it worked. If it worked we wouldn't be going back to it time and time again as we wouldn't need to.

You can eat chocolate, crisps, chips etc - just not all the time. It doesn't mean they are 'bad'. It's just advisable to not eat them all the time.

They're not bad if you agree that demonising food is wrong.

But let's face it, they're not great either. Especially if you are significantly overweight.

I know people who eat them every single day and moan about their weight.

I have yet to see balaclava'd henchmen in the supermarket forcing people to buy this stuff at gunpoint.

Don't have it in the house. That's a start. It's a choice that I believe everyone can make.

and now i have to hide this thread

Even having those foods "every single day" will not make someone overweight if they're in small amounts and part of an overall healthy diet. It's all about portion size.

Shonajay - you are spot on with your criticism of how cooking is taught in schools. There seems to be more emphasis on designing the packaging than actually learning the basic skills and vocabulary of cooking.

My therapist has recommended a book to me - 'The mindful approach to over-eating', which I am slowly working through. The author makes the point that it is only in the last 50 years maximum that we in the west have had general access to such plenty, in terms of food - huge amounts of choice, huge amounts of processed food, and an emphasis on making it all as cheap as possible.

But for the vast majority of humankind's existence, we haven't lived in times of plenty - if we were lucky, we had enough, but for most of our existence as a species, we have lived hand-to-mouth. We have been programmed to eat when food was available, to eat as much as we could, because tomorrow the hunt might be unsuccessful or someone else might get to the fruit and nuts before we did.

We now need to learn a whole set of new skills - moderation, eating what we need and leaving whatever is left, because there will be food tomorrow, and some of us are finding this harder than others.

Except that they are empty calories and full if sugar which I turn will kick off cravings and continue the vicious cycle.

I agree totally about portion size but I don't think many overweight people eat the correct portion size or even know what it is.

I also totally agree about the tragedy if no longer teaching cooking and nutrition at school. We have done generations a terrible disservice.

Sorry your thread was hijacked OP

Actually I don't particularly want my daughters' time wasted at school with cooking lessons. I would like them to learn about eating and nutrition, but I'd rather they were learning Proper Science not Domestic Science. And fwiw I think the hand-wringing about 'losing cooking skills' is often a convenient short hand for 'all these women who are out in the workplace not cooking a Proper Tea' - most of the men I know have dramatically better cooking skills than their fathers did.

What I also do not want my daughters to do is to internalise the self-dislike and body hatred my mother passed on to her daughters. I would rather they carried a few pounds extra and were joyous about it.

(They don't, btw. DD1 is a slender child and DD2 is officially underweight. Just in case you were wondering.)

Thinking about it, my daughters do in fact know a lot more about nutrition than I did at their age. But I'd still rather they were being encouraged to read rather than putting their pinnies on.

Mother, surely it'd be useful for boys and girls to learn about cooking skills at school? I'd certainly not advocate just girls siting through those classes, but it's an incredibly important skill-one that you develop and build upon for the rest of your life.

YANBU. Ditto smoking threads.

Nope. Or not over the age of 14 maximum. School has a lot more to offer than cookery classes. There's only so many lessons in the week.