To think people do not know what a healthy weight looks like.

[reducingfootprint]

I am a healthy weight for my height and i constantly get comments on my weight like "gosh youre tiny" or "i could just pick you up" and "what do you eat to be small, just eat a burger" from people i work with etc. Do people really not know what a healthy weight is anymore? I just think "im not tiny i am a healthy weight and yes i do eat fucking burgers"
Im glad shops are more inclusive and plus size models are more common but i still think commenting on someones size is wrong no matter the size.

Unless you are genuinely concerned for a family member or friend and feel the need to broach the subject of weight in order to offer support etc, no one should comment on anyone's weight. I do feel though that it's actually more common to see someone who is overweight than someone who is a healthy weight.

You are unoriginal.

Have another try.

Here are a few more for you to add to your collection-

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It’s (almost) never acceptable to make an unasked-for comment on someone else’s body. (Unless you know them REALLY well, or you’re shagging them and/or a medical professional). Yet it’s amazing how often underweight people are meant to accept negative comments (serves you right, eat more pies you bitch), where overweight people are not (“fat shaming”).

Statistically we have all got heavier, and unhealthy weights are therefore seen as “the norm” by more people. Those are just facts, even if we don’t like them. But most people go by what they see around them, what they perceive as “the norm” rather than the science.

I think people know, but the part they cant get behind is eating little enough to have a healthy weight.

We all know now that the old messages of eat less move more are outdated, unhelpful, and obesity is a hormonal issue. Insulin, Leptin, Grehlin, cortisol, and a few others i can't pronounce

I work with an obese woman. My bmi is 22/23 and I’m over my comfort weight by 7lb. She’s constantly telling me I look ill, need to put some weight on. She says this while eating 4x buttered crumpets followed by 2 bars of chocolate. I’m eating a chicken salad with an apple and banana!

I don't think YABU about people commenting on weight or eating habits, it's rude whether 'complimentary' or negative. This society is over invested in dieting, pseudoscience and quackery dressed up as 'nutritional' fact. But that aside, as a matter of manners commenting on how someone looks is just rude.

Ha this used to be me.

I do find it's worse with men though. It was a bit more normal for me to be slim, but with dp it's omg he's so skinny! no, he's just not got a beer belly.

I think most people do, most of the time. There is quite a wide range of 'healthy' weights and sizes , ie. weights that in themselves do not reveal anything about a person's state of health. I think most people can recognise dangerously underweight and overweight bodies. But there is a tiny part of the spectrum just before thin becomes dangerously thin, and a slightly longer part of the spectrum where overweight becomes dangerously overweight, where some people get confused.

I would never assume that a very thin, even underweight person ate very little. But then I have known sisters who are both extremely thin, so is their father, and having spent days at their house they both eat a lot, a lot a lot, and often food not considered healthy. Many skinny young men particularly have awful diets. Especially as people get past their early twenties being 'skinny fat' is a thing. Being thin does not mean you are fit or internally healthy. You may or may not be. But it also does not mean you starve yourself or are frail in some way.

Similarly being a bit overweight does not say much about health. The extremes of overweight and underweight are obviously different. YANBU to resent being spoken to about your weight all the time, but you also may yourself overestimate what weight/size can say about health, and what a healthy range is.

Why does this anger people?

MN has repetitive threads about racism, health, politics, CF, neighbours, MIL, shitty DH, bridezillas, crappy step-parents, crappy parents, PFB, whatever the fuck else I've missed.

Why is it that weight discussions are taboo?

I forgot parking, apologies.

Because they're all slightly different situations @namesnames whereas these ones are all the same. They aren't about an individual situation,they're just a generalised smug fest.

What really is there to say?

@TheOrigBrave

I'm underweight and never get any comments about my size, weight, what I eat.

What do you think it is about the people or you which attracts such comments, OP?

Depends how underweight you are I think. I only had worried comments from close family at a BMI of 16, none from strangers. I have many comments from strangers at a BMI of 18, while family are telling me I look well.

Someone told me to "eat a fucking sandwich" once when I had postpartum depression and couldn't eat properly, I hated the way I looked but I thought people were trying to poison me.

That comment really hurt me and 8 years later I still remember it. I am a healthy weight now but if people say I look thin it brings back bad memories and actually annoys me because I try hard to keep at a good weight.

@rachelfrost

People have absolutely no idea what a healthy weight is. I get the mini intervention ‘are you eating enough’ type comments and I’ve a BMI of 23 so I’d have to loose a good few stone to actually be underweight.

There was a thread today which turned into people giving examples of their ‘disordered eating’ friends who ran in order to maintain a healthy weight.

I don’t like being pathologised.

All women, regardless of size seem to be too big or too small. Maybe the problem isn’t us.

If you read it again I think you’ll see it was people talking about their own running and food restrictions as a way to remain think with some mentioning friends did it too. It wasn’t people criticising others as you seem to think. The main message of that thread is that people are different, some have to work to maintain thinness and some people don’t.

At Xmas past I got, " have a nice Christmas, don't eat too much, second thoughts, maybe you should eat the whole turkey, you look like you could do with it".

I'm 5'5 and 8 stone 8. Normal weight for me.

And people who don’t have to work hard to stay thin shouldn’t sit in judgement on those who do have to work really hard to get/stay slim and don’t always succeed.

I can honestly say that I have never commented on anyone's body in my life, certainly not unsolicited. I would give an opinion if asked. Telling someone you like their dress/top/shoes is one thing, but commenting on their shape or size is just intrusive. I have had both positive and negative comments made about my body over the years and it is always very embarrassing thinking that people are scrutinising me to the point that they feel the need to vocalise it.

@Clymene

You've confirmed the point I made.

I think it’s weird to think about how much other people weigh and make comments about it, whether it’s in real life of starting a thread about it. I don’t take much notice of what random people say to me especially if it’s stuff that normal people wouldn’t comment on though.

I was a size 12 in my early 20s, which was in the late 1980s. I have stayed pretty much the same weight, but now I am almost always a size 10. Except that I know I've got a bit of a wider/flatter bum, and I know that because I have a couple of party dresses from back in the day that are a size 12 and I actually can't get them over my bum! A Boden size 10 these days is actually a bit on the large size for me though....

Oh, and I'm 5' 7" and about 9 stone 5.

I have, in the past, been accused of being bulimic because I ate a lot of chocolate and didn't put on weight, and also, once at work when I was eating a sandwich at my desk, a man asked if that was my 'weekly meal'.

I'm just an average size, as explained in the post above.

No one should comment on another’s appearance, unless asked.

I do think though people don’t have a clue about how much they should be eating, especially as they move out of their 20s. We’ve got used to takeaway:restaurant sized portions and replicate them at home. treats are no longer treats. Women of my grandmas generation would eat half a grapefruit for breakfast or a bowl of prunes maybe a small sandwich (which was often made with light bread like nimble/milk loaf/danish) for lunch and a couple of boiled potatoes, veg and maybe fish/small amount of meat for dinner. There might be the odd slice of cake at coffee mornings or a quarter of mint imperials to last the week.

I think part of it is the fact women now, at least on the surface, work on an equal footing with men (Obviously a good thing) and socialise with them more. Women will then eat and drink often on a level with men
So weight piles on.

More jobs are sedentary, socialising is drink and food. I think stress and hormones in food have a big effect.

All of this adds up to Many more people Being overweight makes being overweight the norm. It then becomes what people see as the standard as to whether you are overweight or underweight.

I agree, and the same with kids.

@imissmydad

You're not wrong op. I'm overweight and wear a size 12, id have been a 16 in the 90s I think. Vanity sizing plus being used to seeing overweight people as the norm play a part. My son is 90th centile for weight. My mum keeps saying he's perfectly slim and trying to over feed him. He is tall but he's still slightly too heavy for his height I think so I just quietly limit his intake of unhealthy foods.

i wore a 12 in the 1990s, and wear a 16 now (i am MUCH bigger now than i was in the 1990s)

I wish I was a healthy weight, but I would not be rude about people who are.