To think I shouldn't be THIS heavy??

[Lotsofsausage]

So to start, I know I am no supermodel. Fairly tall at 5'8, size 14, smaller waist, medium bust. Fairly curvy arse/ thighs but toned. I am fit and strong and exercise 4-5x per week, including strength training.

Now I know measurements and photos are a better gauge than the scales, and muscle is meant to weigh more than fat (but I thought that was bullshit).....I am 14.5 stone! I have a friend with the same body measurements as me and same height and she is TWO STONE lighter.
Can some people just be 'heavy'???

Clearly, the picture of that poor woman in her bikini offended the sight of certain people. What they don’t get is these people don’t choose to be this size, that they would give anything to be average, that they have struggled desperately to lose weight and have tried so many times. But all anybody wants to do is to punish them further, to make them feel even more rotten then they are feeling already.

I don’t know how people can be so callous. The morbidly obese woman in the picture needs your support, not your judgement.

Sorry, I had to take a break from the thread because it was starting to mess with my head a little bit.

Kennehora and River, I think you and I both took very different things from that article. I don't see it as suggesting that fat people shouldn't try to lose weight. I see it as saying that badgering and shaming people into losing weight simply doesn't work, but people (including doctors) still seem to think that 'tough love' is the best approach. Yes, obesity increases your risk of cancer, but no, I don't think that mid-scan/biopsy is the moment to point out (to a woman already stressed about potentially having cancer) that she's fat and should lose weight.

You asked about the very thin woman in your photo. I don't think anyone should be able to badger her to 'eat a burger!' or bully her for her weight any more than they should be able to badger an obese woman to eat a salad or bully her about hers.

All I'm really trying to say is that fat people, just as much as anyone else, are entitled to a little human decency and compassion.And that shaming them and making them feel crap about themselves is about the best way to guarantee that they dive head-first into a tub of ice cream on the way home. I'm not obese, but I am overweight currently (although working on it!) and the times when I feel fat and disgusting are the times when I'm most likely to think 'fuck it' and binge.

I think the show Queer Eye is a good example. A lot of men that the Fab Five work with on that are overweight, but they work with them to make them feel good about themselves, boost their self esteem, learn to dress well as they are now, and learn how to groom themselves. And they also show them how to eat well and exercise. But it's all done with love and the message that they deserve to be happy now, not that they'll be happy once they lose the extra pounds, which I think is what ultimately leads to successful lifestyle changes and - yes - weight loss.

Excellent post LisaSimpson. I too, found that to have a sensible diet and to have the motivation to exercise, I need to be in a good place mentally, to feel happy in myself.

If I am down or feel disheartened/ashamed, I am more likely to want ‘to cheer myself up’ with some ice cream or a packet of doughnuts. Bullying fat people is NOT a good way to encourage them to lose weight. Does the opposite.

I am fat now...12 stone 5 ish at 5'3. However. I don't look too enormous - I'm a size 14 (look like i weigh about 11 stone)

My normal weight/body (pre babies and until I was late 30's) was 9 stone 7 ...yet at that weight I was a size 8 and literally nothing of me (ribs sticking out etc)..

I always found it fascinating that I had a friend at the time who was 8 stone 7 and completely flabby/not in good shape. If you stood us side by side you would 100% say I was the lighter one, yet she was a stone lighter.

So by all that, I would conclude that yes, it is possible to have heavy bones etc.

Bad things are always going to happen, people are always going to upset you. If you use food as a tool to cope, that's never going to get you to your goal. Blaming others for your choice to binge eat? Also only harming you yourself.

There's a book called Brain Over Binge that I found really empowering. You have the power to stop binge eating behaviour whenever you want. You just have to want to. I get the impression you haven't RTFT, so I'll reiterate: former bulimic, I get it, I have probably binged huger amounts than you in my time.

Was that directed at me Rivers? Yes I’ve read the entire thread, I was posting on it very early on.

I completely agree with you, by the way. Of course it’s up to the individual to ‘want’ to change. All I’m saying is that bullying, nagging and ‘tough love’ do nothing to help achieve that. In my opinion.

I don’t have anything else to say so I’ll bow out now. I have learned a lot (good and bad) reading this thread and it’s just about stayed civilised for the most part, so thank you all for an interesting discussion!

What evidence of bullying can you point to here?

Ugh the nastiness this has escalated to is gross. MY point was women can actually weigh a fair bit without being obese and unhealthy if they have a strong build.

That has now been transmuted to us saying its fine to eat yourself into oblivion along with lashings of scathing stuff about our willpower, defeatism and, after one too many episodes of 'secret eaters' clue is in the title , lying.

To answer kennehora's specific question - i wouldnt dream of jumping to conclusions about a very skinny woman in a photo. Perhaps she's trying her hardest to put on weight? The 7st 5ft11 friend i mentioned upthread ate mountains of junk food that i'd be a shut-in if i ate, to gain weight but never could; she was turned down for her dream job for being too light, just like ive been turned down for being over a size 12. I have an anorexic friend, she is trying but has been in the grip of it for years, like lisa says, am i going to badger her to 'just eat some food'? Should she not be allowed to be photographed? In a bikini? While she struggles? Should she be denied respect until she recovers? No i dont think so. If it went with an article that said 'anorexia is fine, try it!' Maybe not, but i do not believe that was the point of the article.

I used to be a Top Model fan and although some girls were painfully thin i did cringe at the way eating disorders were called out and used against them by the other girls.

So no, after my own experiences only being a bit podgy, i wouldnt dream of poking my nose in at the other end of the scale either.

This thread has been interesting, but I'm hiding it now as it's turning into a bun fight.

I said I wasn't going to come back and I'm getting exhausted now, but OK. It’s only fair to answer your points Kennehora before I check out.

I do know that wasn't your actual question about the very thin woman in the photo, but I can't actually answer that question since I don't believe the photo of Corissa (if we're still using her as an example) is meant to be 'aspirational, attractive and desirable'. I just see a fat woman being allowed to pose for a fun photo and feel OK about herself, accompanying an article talking about the best ways to encourage and support weight-loss. You don't agree though, and that's fine. I'm not asking you to agree with me on that, I'm just explaining that it's why I can't answer your question in a way that would probably satisfy you that I'd answered it properly, because it you're starting from a point that I don't agree with. I hope that makes sense.

I don't think a photo of a very thin woman is inherently aspirational either, but in certain contexts (as OnlineAlienator says) that photo would of course be very problematic. Similarly, if Corissa's photo accompanied an article saying 'being obese is great and not at all bad for your health YAY!' then I'd agree with you, but that's not the message I take from the photo in this specific context. I do think it's very complicated and there's a fine line between representation and aspiration.

I do find it quite interesting that when I posted the link to that article, you immediated zero-ed in on the photo of Corissa and rushed to critique it. There's something about images of fat people that seems to spark a certain reaction in ways that I've never seen happen with anything else. I don't get it. But I also don't get the appeal of the 'fatlogic' subreddit either, so I think we're just on very different wavelengths.

I actually do agree with you, Kennehora, about the way that we visualise 'obesity' as an extreme thing, and assume that it doesn't apply to people of a 'normal' size. I could post a picture of myself now and some people would probably say 'you're not overweight!' because I don't look huge, but the point is I am overweight (by about 1.5 stone) and I know I'll feel better when I shift it. You can't decide that someone's weight isn't a problem just because you think they look OK. I think part of the problem is that people see 'obese' as such a loaded, judgmental word that they can't believe it doesn't apply to them. My partner's BMI right now makes him obese (again, he's working on it) but I would never want to describe him as such because it just sounds so horrible. I know you didn't like the article I posted, but that was touched on in there too - about how even when people are obese, they use very negative, othering language to talk about 'obese people' in general.

Please forgive me if I don't come back to this thread but I really don't have anything else to say. I feel like if I met any of you in person we'd probably get on great, and arguing on the internet is not something I typically like to do. So thank you and that's going to be it from me (for real this time!)

Basically, it comes back to the 'its all right in practise but will never work in theory' thing. You can quote studies, but they are just that, and i repeat, i will not be gping back to poor health to please others' numver obsession. I do manual work that would make most women beg for mercy. My health has improved since i stopped obsessing over calories, eating less, and obtaining a 'healthy' bmi. Low carb has helped me kick BED, at least for 2yrs so far. My weight has stabilised and although the scales dont register loss yet, my clothes are. So, you can dismiss it as pseudoscience as much as you like but you're just making me laugh!

The article posted does not say obesity is fine and no one should work on it so its laughable to accuse us of extreme language and appropriation.

I do think anorexics could be pictured in happy situations - to promote anorexia? No. To say 'life is more than the scales'? Yes!!!

Here's to happiness - fuck BMI evangelicals. Fistbump to my vikingesque sistas :)

vikingesque

So overweight then. The things we do to deceive ourselves Jesus Christ.

vikingesque

So overweight then. The things we do to deceive ourselves Jesus Christ.

That’s it, you cannot rest until the figure on your scales cheques the box. At that point, presumably, you have stopped deceiving yourself and achieved nirvana. Amen to that.

checks not cheques!

No, i mean strong, well built and healthy.

this thread proves BMI is an ideology quite neatly actually.

We ARE talking about people like me, i think we actually agree about morbid obesity and anorexia, only someone truly out of their mind wouldnt. So, let's stop muddying the waters here - i believe you can be perfectly happy, healthy, functional and normal for an adult human female above NHS bmi guidance.

For viking - I read tall/broad

My friend is petite, maybe 5ft 3 but her frame is tiny. I stand next to her and feel like an awkward lump because I'm 5ft 10, and broad. I'm built like a power lifter, gain muscle easily and have big shoulders. She's built like a teeny ballerina. I could shed 8 stone and still be broader than her, my handspan is probably twice hers

Starve a mastiff and you don't get a greyhound

Starve a mastiff and you don't get a greyhound

Alienator, you had me in stitches 😂

Pretty much. Except she's a chihuahua x whippet and I'm a St. Bernard...