I'm NOT fat

[TheJollyPostmansWife]

Name change as about to give all details as too late to text friends for advice. Visiting DHs family today, out for lunch where I had a prawn salad. After I finished I reached over to nick a bit of my dds bread and as I did so My DHs grandmother piped up 'not watching your figure then?'. This is not the first time she has been rude about my weight and to be honest I am really pissed off. We see them very rarely and I don't think she has any right to make personal comments at all - last time she said something she suggested I would lose my looks and therefore my husband if I carried on the way I was. I don't think it's important as I don't think anyone should comment on others appearance but for context I go to the gym 3-5 times a week, walk the dog at least an hour every day and see a personal trainer weekly. I am five foot one, 9 stone 3 and size 8. I'm not normally so sensitive but I don't want to see the woman again, she is elderly and not in good health and adores my dds. Aibu to refuse to see her? I would never stop the dds but we live the other side of the country which is obviously limiting.

Laser whereas I agree with you I do think that it is somehow more socially acceptable to bash skinny women than it is to bash fat women. The number of times I see a photo of Victoria Beckham with comments such as "omg she needs a good meal" "she looks ill" etc etc whereas comments fat shaming say Adele are met with fury and anger. Then again as mentioned up thread maybe it's because we all secretly want to be as thin as Victoria Beckham but in reality we look more like Adele and therefore empathise with her more.
I agree with the poster who says she hates people commenting on her weight. I do too. I recently lost a lot of weight through being ill and didn't really appreciate the comments about my body - even if they were complimentary.

Simmi, all women get it in one way or another. I agree with you on your Posh/Adele example but equally, fat women are more likely to experience the shout of 'fat cunt' from the van window whilst they're walking down the street as detailed upthread. We've all given examples of how we've been shamed or attacked or insulted for our weight - from the thin to the fat. Obviously you see more of the thin-criticism if you're thin and more of the fat-criticism if you're fat (or not, as in the OP's case).

I said upthread how I hate people commenting on my weight, even in a positive way. It feels so intrusive. There is just so much judgement attached and 'you look great, how much weight have you lost?' often translates in one's head as 'you used to be repulsive! Just how fat were you, exactly?'

And, fitfatty, while the high street isn't making clothes to suit many people, it's nothing to show manufacturers! I'd love to put something on my feet that isn't cripplingly painful and impractical and I have very average sized feet - still, I'm currently recovering from surgery to correct the nerve damage I've sustained in my feet thanks to crappy (expensive) shoes!

*shoe manufacturers!

That mod cloth site looks amazing! My bank balance won't thank you for linking

Yes you're right Laser. The weight I lost recently through being ill was just excess baby weight that I lost quickly so I'm by no means skinny now but am average and back to where I was. Therefore I do interpret the comments as you looked awful before but you're ok now. In fact when I was heavily pregnant a non pregnant skinny friend (who does appear to be naturally skinny) commented on how big I was. I was mortified.
The only time I've ever been skinny was when I had an undiagnosed over active thyroid. My mum told me I looked skeletal and awful - I must admit that at that time I was secretly thrilled as I had always been the overweight one in our family.

That mod cloth site looks amazing! My bank balance won't thank you for linking

The shoes on it are amazing. Nice low, stylish heels. :D (Yes your bank account is really going to hate me).

I completely sympathise, when my colleague and I went back after maternity leave at the same time I remember everyone flocking to us and marvelling over her - 'you're so slim, you'd never know you'd had a baby' etc and then there was a horrible silence when they turned to me (I looked like I was still pregnant, someone actually asked me later if I was expecting again! I do not bounce back). It was a pretty painful moment. The thing was, I was struggling badly with PND due to extreme sleep deprivation because my baby had health problems. I hadn't exactly been laying back luxuriously enjoying a cream cake, but in that moment I felt like a greedy and repulsive pig.

However, when I lost a lot of weight the same colleagues were flocking round me telling me how amazing I looked and instructing me 'you must gain it back! Now comes the hard part - maintaining it!' Not exactly encouraging! I was losing it in advance of my sister's wedding because I was fixated on not being the fattest bridesmaid (why did that matter so much to me?) so I was crash dieting and losing the weight very rapidly. I didn't eat or drink anything at the hen do. I remember being so cold and tired. Then at the wedding, I was indeed not the fattest bridesmaid but I had no energy and went home early with a headache because my alcohol tolerance was destroyed. I learned that I am much happier at a higher weight and I must balance my emotional wellbeing and enjoyment of life with looking after my body. Thin at all costs isn't worth the price.

(I also worsened the nerve damage in my feet with the exercise I did to lose that weight so that whole experience didn't do me much good overall!)

Hi laser, I'm still suffering the health problem that came on after the birth of my second baby 9 months ago although it's not so bad now and my weight has stabilised at my normal weight (9 st 6). I'd love to be 8st again (a weight I only achieved in my 20s with an over active thyroid and a bad bout of food poising) but I know this is not achievable for me. I feel sick when I'm hungry and become really irritable - it's just not worth it. Also suffering from bad health has made me realise how not being stick thin is really not the end of the world. I would gladly take an extra few pounds now if it meant I could have my health back and I'm angry at myself for spending years obsessing over every pound gained or lost even though I was otherwise healthy. What a waste of our precious lives!

Laser what I meant was that decent people don't seem to police larger people's food. Look at the outrage on this thread about the OP's relative. It's unanimous. But it's deemed acceptable to make the sort of comments that I mentioned (and which have also been in this thread - the one about 'actually eating' springs to mind) because people like me are supposed to suck it up because 'at least we aren't fat' as one poster said to me earlier in the thread (to basically minimise what I was saying).

I don't know who the high street are making clothes for either. Even taking the small size/ length problem out of it, they aren't cutting them for straight figures like mine, any more than they are cutting them for hour glass ones. They appear to be cutting them somewhere in between so they don't fit anyone.

Re the post birth comments, I went back v quickly, and I imagine the skin would have been helped because I was only 20 when I had dd. And while I realised even at the time it was a compliment, because most women don't ping effortlessly back, even if they haven't gained weight, I was really hacked off with comments about not looking like I'd had a baby, and one lady who assumed I'd not even given birth. Not because of the size thing, just because I was very proud of dd, and what my body had done.

Uhtred decent people don't police or judge other people's food, regardless of those people's sizes. And although things may not actually be said out loud in the same way as you get (because people often do genuinely think they aren't being offensive when referring to someone's slim body), a great deal of 'do you really think you should be eating that?' type reaction can be communicated with a look!

I spoke to a 'larger' friend of mine about general comments that are made about food others might or might not be consuming. She had recently been for a meal with friends and hadn't yet finished her meal... another person at the table announced that she couldn't eat any more of her food and, uninvited, pushed her plate of leftover food towards my friend - outrageous

Thefitfatty "I don't understand why the health at every size movement is so threatening to some people? HAES and seeing a greater variety of models in advertisements like Ashley Graham, etc. has made me stop engaging in very unhealthy binge/purge cycles and overexercising."

That's great that it's been beneficial to you personally, but as a broader movement, it has got very pathological.

For example - there is now a weird divide between those who identify themselves as 'smallfats' vs 'deathfats' - basically those who are somewhat overweight (up to about 400lbs!!!) vs those who are super morbidly obese.

There are loads of HAES blog posts out there where 'deathfats' complain that those who can still buy clothes (even in plus-size shops) have 'thin privilege' by contrast to themselves, or where those who are only a bit obese are told they're not fat enough.

There is also a fetishisation of extreme obesity e.g. Tess Halliday who is NOT a size 22 but several sizes bigger than that. HAES in practice often means a glorification of weight gain and extreme obesity, and denigration of everyone and anyone who doesn't fit that model.

HeavyHeidi "Proteus I understand why you might get resentful when you work hard and you feel people don't really appreciate your efforts, as fatter people are told they are just fine too. Does it make you feel better to know that I sacrifice quite a lot - barely eat and the photo was taken 6AM when I was just heading to the gym. And I'm still not slim. So I should be the one resentful really -all this work for 'borderline overweight'."

You are a better woman than me - gym at 6am is beyond me I went at 9.30 this morning and that was gruelling.

But religious calorie-logging will work, if you can be arsed with it. I often feel like I've barely eaten but when I actually count everything I eat (and drink) and don't take exercise calories into account, I always lose weight.

fitfatty "And I believe HeavyHeidi has just hit the crux of the issue. It must be infuriating when people you view as "inferior" or "lazy" are complimented when you aren't (or don't think you're being complimented enough)."

That isn't what Heidi said, and it's an extremely unfair twisting of my words too.

I do NOT view heavier people as 'inferior' or 'lazy' - that's really nasty. And I am not desperate for 'compliments'.

My point was that many people, like me, are only slim through a huge effort of will and hard work and self-sacrifice.

It's not that I want people to fall over themselves to compliment me for that - but it would be nice to have that hard work and willpower acknowledged in some way, rather than just to be put down for being slim, and to have everyone commiserating with people who are a few pounds heavier than they'd like to be - who are literally getting to have their cake and eat it.

TheStoic you spent the first few pages of this thread responding to every post i made to tell me I was 'dull as ditchwater' and 'incredibly boring'. You're now suggesting that MN should ban me from posting on the thread altogether. I am still not going to engage with you, so for your own sake you may as well stop trying to denigrate me, silence me, and hound me off the thread.

Again Proteus you seem over invested in this. The HAES movement does not promote becoming overweight, obese or morbidly obese (the clue is in the title Health At Every Size? . The websites using such terms as 'death fats' are surely the flip side to pro-Ana websites? Hardly mainstream?

sleep you are wrong about HAES, the promotion of obesity is quite a mainstream part of it.

I mentioned upthread my friend who was somewhat overweight (she has other mental health issues), got involved with HAES, and ended up 22 stone. She then lost 8 stone and ended up a spokesperson for overeaters anonymous!

The promotion of Tess Holliday (she is just an example, but a prominent one) as something to aspire to - that's not healthy any more than a teenage model with a BMI of 14 is healthy.

That's not HEALTH at every size - that's pro-fat.

(as for your tangent, what is the point of calling someone 'overinvested'? It's a discussion. I'm interested in it, so are lots of other people, so we are reading each other's posts and responding. What do you hope to gain from calling another poster 'overinvested' other than to have a personal dig and try to undermine the content of their posts? It's a bit hypocritical too as you seem to be reading and posting yourself.)

My point was that many people, like me, are only slim through a huge effort of will and hard work and self-sacrifice.

I think this is the point though, it becomes a case of 'person beating weight problem v person losing against weight problem.

I am slim, no self sacrifice or hard work at all. I also couldn't give a rats ass what anyone else weighs and am highly cynical about its relationship with 'health'

I'm catching up every so often and posting occasionally Proteus. I cba to scroll through your posts but they vastly outnumber mine I promise .

I don't believe that the 'obesity epidemic' is caused in any way by HAES or the 'promotion of obesity'. I'm very sure that the majority of overweight/obese people in the uk have attempted diets repeatedly and/or live in a state of hating their body. Those who genuinely set out to gain weight are outliers, possibly even more so than people with anorexia. I'm sorry for your friend but I don't believe she adopted the way of life HAES encourages, she selected what she wanted to hear (just like you keep doing on this thread). She sounds as if she has an eating disorder .

HAES encourages healthy lifestyle choices, regardless of weight. And the evidence shows that even if you are overweight or even obese, if you have a healthy diet, drink little alcohol, exercise regularly and do not smoke, then your mortality is barely any different to that of someone with a 'healthy' BMI. In other words, you are better off accepting your weight and addressing those things consistently than putting all the focus on losing weight through depriving yourself of calories on an unsustainable restrictive diet (rather than focusing on feeding yourself well), enduring exercise you hate (rather than finding some form of movement that you enjoy and therefore do consistently) and yo yo cycling through sizes, falling in and off the diet wagon. Doing this, you may not lose weight (although you might), but significant weight gain is pretty unlikely.

I'd be more convinced of your argument if there was any sign whatsoever of mainstream advertising featuring morbidly obese people, or of the massive diet industry faltering. It definitely isn't

I hate people commenting on my weight, even in a positive way. It feels so intrusive.

Thank you LaserShark, you've put in words my similar feelings of unease. (Well, a word, 'intrusive'.)

After I had my first child I lost weight really quickly and people would comment. In a positive manner but I still felt uneasy and uncomfortable. Very much so. I didn't say this though as I knew the intent was to be complimentary, they weren't trying to make me feel uncomfortable. 'Intrusive' is a very apt word. Like your body and how many square millimetres you take up on the planet is in the public domain, for all and sundry to comment on.

Good post sleep

It's made me wonder whether proteus's views are health related or looks related.

I think looks related most definitely.

And it piles on the pressure Spunny - when they say you look great having lost the weight, do you hear an implicit warning in there of 'make sure you don't gain it back'? As though people are monitoring you and right now you are doing well, but it leaves you in no doubt that they'll be judging you if you slip.

I had never heard of the death fat/pro obesity idea and it sounds like a very extreme niche, similar to the pro anorexia community. It sounds incredibly disturbing and obviously deeply unhealthy. I remember seeing a programme on 'feeders' once as well which was absolutely terrifying and focused on men deliberately encouraging obesity in their partners in order to make them totally dependent. So there will always be a small and frightening community on the fringes damaging themselves compulsively. I think of them as a danger in the same way as the pro ana stuff, that it's very bad if it gets its claws into you but it is a long way from mainstream and the appeal is limited - though clearly it will draw in vulnerable people.

Overall though, the dominant narrative equated female beauty with being thin - and not just beauty but also qualities such as moral rectitude, discipline, decency etc whilst fat people, particularly women, are still considered greedy, lazy and disgusting. Oh, and reckless and ignorant with regards to their own health.

I can sympathise greatly with the struggle to maintain a slim and healthy body when that involves constant monitoring and effort. That is not a realistic way for everyone to live and it's not how I'd want my daughters to feel about food - that every calorie must be counted, that every day you must feel deprived. It may decrease your risks in some ways but I think it increases many other risks in terms of emotional health, wellbeing and the danger of damaging eating disorders if it become an obsession. Personally, I would prefer to be a less ideal BMI and feel more at peace with myself, managing a sustainable and more enjoyable way of eating.

None of that is to say that I believe all thin people are depriving themselves because it's clear that there are plenty of slim people who eat what they want to eat and don't have to work hard to maintain their figure at all. It would be ignorant of me to dismiss them as calorie-counting salad miseries, just as I think it's a little bit ignorant to decide that fat people are 'having their cake and eating it' which really dismisses all the stories on this thread about how people have tried to control their weight but struggled, suffered, failed repeatedly and been scorned and humiliated for it. It's not anymore of a carefree existence of eating lovely cake and being surrounded by support for every overweight person as it is true that every thin person is only that way because they starve themselves. It will be true of some, but not representative of all.

Totally agree laser. I can stay at 9 and a half stone without going hungry but at the same time not giving in to all cravings - I still need to be careful but can afford the odd treat. To get to 8 stone (my ideal) I would need to starve and I'm not prepared to live like that.
I have gone on holidays etc with very naturally slim women and observed how they ate and noted that if I ate half that amount I'd be huge. I do believe metabolism is genetic to a large degree.
In fact I was reading an article on poo transplants being used to cure a number of quite serious health conditions. Doctors have also observed that people who take a transplant from a naturally thin person will lose weight and vice versa. The same has been shown in mice - fat mice became lean and lean mice became fat on changing their gut bacteria via stool transplant.
I wonder whether in 10/20 yrs time poo transplants will be common for weight loss - lol!

Simmi "I have gone on holidays etc with very naturally slim women and observed how they ate and noted that if I ate half that amount I'd be huge. I do believe metabolism is genetic to a large degree."

Oh my god, this is one of the most ridiculous and bandied-about myths of fatlogic.

Did you stay with those 'very naturally slim women' 24 hours a day, every day, for weeks on end, and log the exact amount of food they ate at every meal? I'm guessing not

You saw them eat a lot at some meals. They probably then didn't eat again for 24 hours (whether that's because they have naturally small appetites, or are deliberately watching their food intake). If they eat a lot one day, they don't eat much the next day - again either from natural lack of hunger, or deliberate calorie-counting. They didn't have dessert. They didn't have alcohol. They didn't have sugary coffees. Etc.

They may also be much more active and burn off far more calories - again either throuh natural 'fidgety-ness' or through mindful exercise.

It's absolutely fine to weigh whatever you want and eat whatever you choose to. As you say yourself, you'd rather maintain your current weight of 9.5 stone rather than starve to achieve 8 - a perfectly reasonable and sensible attitude, imho. I maintain at around 9 st 3 with some effort. I've previously maintained at 8 stone - I'm 5 ft 8 - and that was far too difficult. If I ate everything I wanted to, all the time, I'd probably weigh more like 10.5 - 11 stone.

But not one study, ever, has found that people don't gain, lose or maintain weight according to the amount they eat. Calories in, calories out.

The myth that 'genetics blah blah metabolism -- blah blah' and that it's not how many calories you use up, vs how many calories you take in, is just dangerous nonsense to push. Like 'starvation mode' and all that other nonsense.

Promote good health, promote a sensible balanced attitude to eating, promote choosing to eat and live well rather than starving or dieting or counting calories, promote loving your body and treating yourself well - ALL of that I can understand and see the sense of.

But not this myth that calories in vs calories out doesn't work.

Proteus out of interest, did you read the reports on the metabolisms of former 'Biggest Loser' contestants, of how their bodies effectively became much more efficient at reserving energy (fat), so a ten stone (say) person who had lost a significant amount of weight, required substantially fewer calories per day to maintain that weight than a ten stone person who had never been overweight and lost the weight? Of course people's metabolisms differ, as do the speed at which they adapt to calorie restriction, as do their gut flora. Food too - a 250g rare steak for example would provide fewer calories to your body than that same steak minced and well cooked. And the way your body uses different food with the same number of calories will differ (300 calories of chicken will be very different from 300 calories of pizza base). Calories in/calories out holds true only up to a point (yes, if you consume more calories than your body requires to maintain homeostasis then you will gain weight), it is deeply flawed insofar as relying on it for working out what your body actually needs.

Laser
I can sympathise greatly with the struggle to maintain a slim and healthy body when that involves constant monitoring and effort. That is not a realistic way for everyone to live and it's not how I'd want my daughters to feel about food - that every calorie must be counted, that every day you must feel deprived. It may decrease your risks in some ways but I think it increases many other risks in terms of emotional health, wellbeing and the danger of damaging eating disorders if it become an obsession. Personally, I would prefer to be a less ideal BMI and feel more at peace with myself, managing a sustainable and more enjoyable way of eating.

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm not saying it's right for everyone - I don't want my daughter to grow up counting calories so I'm hoping to avoid her ever getting overweight in the first place (no I am not controlling about her eating, and yes she does eat a wide range of foods including occasional 'treat' foods and whatever she likes at school, before anyone accuses me of that).

It's a personal choice for me - I've been anorexic and severely bulimic, I've also been overweight, and neither of those were OK. my current plan of maintaining a low healthy BMI (19-20) and eating a reasonably calorie-controlled diet, along with a lot of exercise and treats when I want them, seems to be my personal happy medium. Happy-ish.

None of that is to say that I believe all thin people are depriving themselves because it's clear that there are plenty of slim people who eat what they want to eat and don't have to work hard to maintain their figure at all. It would be ignorant of me to dismiss them as calorie-counting salad miseries, just as I think it's a little bit ignorant to decide that fat people are 'having their cake and eating it' which really dismisses all the stories on this thread about how people have tried to control their weight but struggled, suffered, failed repeatedly and been scorned and humiliated for it. It's not anymore of a carefree existence of eating lovely cake and being surrounded by support for every overweight person as it is true that every thin person is only that way because they starve themselves. It will be true of some, but not representative of all.

Yes, there are thin people who are that way with no effort at all. My best friend at school was one. She would genuinely forget to eat and would leave half of her food on her plate, etc. Food just wasn't important to her.

I am not 'ignorant' of the difficulties of being overweight but at the same time, what I see around me is that the majority of my female friends, relatives, and colleagues are slightly overweight - I think most women I know probably have BMIs around 24-26 (at a guess).

And what I also see is that there's a huge amount of lip service paid to the idea of dieting, 'watching what you eat', calorie control, etc. but actually very little in the way of really bothering to control what you put in your mouth.

For example, friends who will order 'a salad' in a restaurant - never mind that it's a Caesar salad, drenched in high fat dressing and covered with cheese and croutons. Or a colleague who will eat her way through a whole large family-sized bar of Green & Blacks during a long meeting and then complain when she goes clothes shopping. Or friends who will always choose to drink wine or fruit juice in the pub, not low calorie drinks or spirits. Or family members picking at the bread in the basket at the beginning of a restaurant meal until every last bit has gone.

None of those are people 'struggling and failing'. They are people who claim to care about their weight, and claim to want to be slimmer, but don't really, honestly, give much of a shit.

Which is fine, and their prerogative, but what fucks me off is that they then complain about how hard it is to go clothes shopping, or make nasty comments to me (e.g. me "I need to buy some new jeans" MIL "size zero, I suppose?") or tell me how "lucky" I am -

I'm not sodding "lucky", I make DIFFERENT CHOICES and prioritise differently. I prioritise buying the jeans at the weekend over eating the cupcakes now. So I lose out on that pleasure, but get a different pleasure.

It's a choice. But people make a different choice and then expect sympathy and "Oh yes, it's so hard for you isn't it" when I have SEEN them enjoying all of that food while I sat there with a sodding Diet Coke or a black coffee.

sleep "Proteus out of interest, did you read the reports on the metabolisms of former 'Biggest Loser' contestants, of how their bodies effectively became much more efficient at reserving energy (fat), so a ten stone (say) person who had lost a significant amount of weight, required substantially fewer calories per day to maintain that weight than a ten stone person who had never been overweight and lost the weight?"

Yes I did, and there have been some really brilliant demolishings of this on the Reddit fatlogic sub, including from scientists who explain it far better than I could. I'm going to post the links to their posts, rather than trying to paraphrase myself
www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/4hq425/a_look_at_whats_wrong_with_the_biggest_loser_study/
www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/4i0m8i/the_glaring_problem_with_the_biggest_loser_study/
www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/4iajtd/biggest_loser_study_actually_proves_that/

In a nutshell though

1. The calculator they used for metabolic rate was crap.
2. The model is completely unfit for purpose and is just prediction and uses the simplest possible linear model to fit the data.
3. "A very important takeaway is that if it is completely correct and it is possible to cause "metabolic damage", then it's ONLY for fat. Meaning that your body can adapt to using less energy to maintain your fat reserves but not your lean mass."
4. The weight loss program the show uses indeed results in clinically significant, long-term weight loss on average.

If you are really interested in knowing everything wrong with the study, I urge you to read those links above.

"Of course people's metabolisms differ, as do the speed at which they adapt to calorie restriction, as do their gut flora."

Yes gut flora varies, and yes calorie bioavailability differs - but this is insignificant compared to the myths people spread - that their 'naturally skinny friend' who eats like a pig and somehow stays a size 6.

That's not because of gut flora, or how well your body can use calories - that's because she doesn't eat anything like as much as you think she does, and she moves far more.

"people's metabolisms differ" No, not really. Not in a meaningful way. People who 'have fast metabolisms' are people who move a lot and burn a lot of calories. People who 'have slow metabolisms', ditto. Thyroid problems and hormone problems exist but affect a TINY minority of people and in any case can't cause weight gain more than about 7-10 lbs.

"Calories in/calories out holds true only up to a point (yes, if you consume more calories than your body requires to maintain homeostasis then you will gain weight), it is deeply flawed insofar as relying on it for working out what your body actually needs."

You can work out what your body actually needs, exactly, through trial and error - track your calories and see if you gain, lose or maintain.

CICO is not really 'deeply flawed' - I think I'm hyper-aware of calories but actually if I find myself gaining a few pounds, I start tracking everything and I always discover that I'm taking in more than I'm really aware of - finshing the kids' yoghurts or fruit, a couple more nightcaps than I meant to have, that sort of thing.

It's not magic.