To think why this is one of the reasons we have an obesity problem.

[Delamalama]

Friend on facebook has put about 2 stone on this past year. She posted a selfie the other day with a statement saying how she's finally learning to love herself, she may not be perfect but it's her body and she loves it!!! She's on the verge of being obese and suffers with chronic backache. Of course she had comments saying 'looking good hun' 'you beauty!' Etc.

I've noticed quite a lot of younger ones doing this 'be fat and proud' crap.

Am I wrong to think that this along with many other things is why we have an obesity problem.

I think it's obvious online calculators are not 100%.

If someone cannot eat over 600 cal to not put on weight that is a medical issue. Or they are the tiniest thing ever👀

If someone cannot eat over 600 cal to not put on weight that is a medical issue.

Yes, either that or they're three feet tall and totally immobile.

"If I were to post my food diary under a name change and without giving any indication of my size I strongly suspect if anything I'd be told I was anorexic!"

"No on mn... I've seen people claiming they need to be on max 600 cal or they put on weight"

This was a bit of an unnecessarily mean remark. How do you know the circumstances of any strangers on a forum? Plus remarking about how you have to hold yourself back. Not very nice either. It's an open forum it's not like you're just have a nice chat about people behind their backs - it's all out in the open.

If some people aren't truthful with themselves about cal counts so what? Sneering at that is pretty mean. And if it's the truth it's also pretty mean.

At the end of the day taking the sneering and judgement out of the equation is the most useful thing. People feel ashamed. It's so obvious. It's not a moral failing. It's just practical. When my dog puts on weight it's not a failing in his character! I had one dog who did and one who didn't. One of them wasn't better or more disciplined. And the one likely to eat more and put it on was a very lovely temperament too! If we could just take a lot of the stigma and shame away I think it would help so many. And sarcastic remarks like yours which just seem clever clever or trying to catch people out for some reason - what are they actually actually achieving?

Fat shaming worked for me

A stern word from a well meaning doctor made me re evaluate and I lost 24lb.

That and not being able to buy a t shirt I really wanted as it was too small

Plus remarking about how you have to hold yourself back. Not very nice either.

I hold myself back so I wouldn't make their issue worse by trying to give advice which would be wring for them... I thought that was clear from not wanting to make their issues worse unintentionally.

Not ALL foods containing refined carbs are "bad" not ALL foods containing animal based fats are "bad" it's far more complex and nuanced than that

Nobody on this thread has claimed either of those things.

But yes we need experts to understand the science and present it in a way that's easily understood and that's where we really seem to be struggling

We have them. There's lists of them earlier in the thread. They can't get their voices heard because their voices threaten many of the big food companies. They get silenced. But you can find their lectures on YouTube quite easily. Not just 'YouTube' videos, but detailed biochemical analyses. Zoe Harcombe is a good place to start. She didn't even want to believe half the stuff herself, but her relentless analyses of meta studies left her with nowhere else to turn! She's very easy to listen to and understand.

@whenwillthemadnessend it's working for me too but health advice from a health professional is not fat shaming.

You don’t have to hate yourself to inspire change

All these words and this sums it up best, for me. Change is most successful when someone believes they are worth the effort.

Plus, FB is never going to be the place for home truths.

@gwenneh

My TDEE is about 900 kcal, so I do need to eat about 600 max or I put on weight

How do you get to the 600kcal? I don't understand.

@Eckhart

First, let me preface this with the fact that I have several interlinked metabolic disorders. My TDEE as determined by my metabolic specialist is about 900 kcal on days I don't exercise (and crests slightly over 1100 on days I do) so in order to create a calorie deficit, I have to stick with a very low calorie diet to lose any weight. This is on top of a small chemists' worth of medications.

As you might imagine, this is quite a difficult situation to maintain, even if you LOVE vegetables and salad -- which I patently do not.

@Hadtocomment

Delamalama - I think being juxtaposed with Eckhart didn't do your observation much favours there! :)

But seriously - you say there are lots of bitchy comments - maybe quote them and deal with them as individuals rather than talking of them as a "camp". Am I in that camp? And others who don't agree with the OP? I don't think lots of people have made any bitchy comments. Eckhert's comment is extremely personal and rude though.

I'm a bit lost to be honest. I noticed a comment saying I'm jealous, loads saying I'm fat shaming. I'm the devil incarnate to some for bringing this up. I really.dont have the time or the inclination to answer all those comments individually.

I don't always put across very well what I'm trying to say as others do. Quite a lot have understood what I was saying though.

That seems very drastic, gwenneh, to have to cut it by a third, when your requirement is so low anyway. And if you're exercising, your average daily requirement will be higher than 900, so it's even more than a third really.

OP is not suggesting fat shaming at all. She's questioning whether it's the best thing for her FB friend to get the thumbs up, and therefore encouragement, to continue being overweight when its causing her chronic back pain, never mind all the other health risks that can unfortunately accompany obesity. Agree the positive comments are great for mental health but physical health is just as important. If someone posted on FB they were happily smoking 80 fags a day and drinking a litre of vodka a night, would friends say yay girl, looking good, go for it? I'm not a goady, skinny at all, but I can see the point OP is making.

@Hadtocomment

The PP had stated that overweight doctors clearly didn't know what they were talking about re weight loss. I stated that the PP's own metric could be applied to her too. If it's rude, it's the PP being rude to herself.

If you think I was being rude and personal about the PP's weight, I wasn't. I don't judge people based on their weight.

@Eckhart Perhaps it does seem drastic, but thermodynamics still applies -- a 3,500 kcal deficit is still needed to drop 1 lb., no matter what my body decides it wants to do in the meantime.

On the days I do exercise, my TDEE does jump very slightly, but not by enough to make a real difference in what I can and can't eat. I'm getting other benefits out of the exercise that aren't weight loss -- my V02 max is great, I'm reasonably strong, I'm not trending towards diabetic and my cholesterol is great.

On good days, I'm eating to maintain and it's not too much of an issue, I'm used to it by now. Unfortunately I have a lot of weight to lose!

*.

So that includes people who drive? Ride buses and trains? Do DIY? Took a tumble on a fell run? Overdid it on the cross trainer? Developed an eating/exercise disorder? Anything that could have been avoided if they spent their lives on the sofa, except that that actually makes you fat and you wouldn't treat that either?*

No I explained this before. What i said was where the risk outweighs the benefit.

It's pretty and silly to throw out the what about people that drive arguement. It's a relative necessity for getting to work, hospital appointments, the supermarket. It's not s necessity to eat so much food you puff and pant when you walk, it's not necessary to puff on a cigarette and it's not necessary to drink large quantities of alcohol. The risk outweighs the benefit.

Oh and having a fall is called an accident. You can't account for those. I know of I eat junk and don't exercise I will put weight on. If I knew I was going to fall over I wouldn't do it.

What i said was where the risk outweighs the benefit.

You have a formula for risk, benefit and cost for everything that increases your chances of needing medical treatment and tells you exactly what degree of imperfect behaviour would be acceptable in the algorithm?

I'm a healthy weight, but what if I decide to have a one-off slice of cake at a birthday party and choke? Or overtrain for a marathon? That's not an accident, it's poor self-care and not resting enough, anyone can overtrain. Or develop an eating/exercise disorder? Or misuse the weights machine because I didn't have a proper induction? Or have a terrible delivery for my third child, which was, some would argue, totally unnecessary because I already had two kids?

And if fat people can't use the NHS, does that mean they don't need to pay NI? And what about when you don't know for sure if their weight was the cause of the illness or injury? Or if they have an accident that's unrelated to their weight, but their weight makes recovery harder? Or a billion other questions I could ask to show what an absolutely ridiculous argument this one always is?

@Delamalama

Friend on facebook has put about 2 stone on this past year. She posted a selfie the other day with a statement saying how she's finally learning to love herself, she may not be perfect but it's her body and she loves it!!! She's on the verge of being obese and suffers with chronic backache. Of course she had comments saying 'looking good hun' 'you beauty!' Etc.

I've noticed quite a lot of younger ones doing this 'be fat and proud' crap.

Am I wrong to think that this along with many other things is why we have an obesity problem.

And what did she say when you made this point directly to her, OP?

The idea of a friend of mine posting this kind of crap on a message board about me is enough to turn my stomach.

You really don't sound like much of a friend at all, and I would feel deeply uncomfortable about you having access to my social media content. I think you should do the decent thing and remove your connection to her.

[quote Graphista]@gwenneh but given that's a crazy low amount of cals surely what that really means is you need to increase activity not decrease intake?

According to the tdee calculator I've just tried I need 1600 cals per day which I am absolutely not eating - so why aren't I losing weight?

[/quote]
Mine said 2200 cals to maintain. 😂😂
I don't eat anywhere near that , I'm quite hungry all the time and that's just to not gain any more weight. I need to go under 1000 to lose and if I can't keep it up(and I never can) yep it comes back on.

Not much to be gained from feeling shit about herself though.

Ironically, I believe that feeling worth it/worthy could make a person more likely to make the effort to lose weight.

@PlonkItDownNOW, I have dieted on and off for about 50 years. How absolutely ridiculous. I now end up with exactly the same stats as your imaginary woman
I'm not fat shaming or fat glorifying but I need to make peace with who I am somehow.

I follow a couple of Facebook groups for clothing companies that promote themselves by posting pics of customers in their clothes. These women are all ages, shapes and sizes; the clothing goes from size 8 to size 26 and the customer pics they use reflect that. Never any word about body positivity or weight etc, just stuff like "Here's Katy from Manchester looking gorgeous in our red dress".

Is that ok?

Sounds fantastic!

The idea of a friend of mine posting this kind of crap on a message board about me is enough to turn my stomach.

You really don't sound like much of a friend at all, and I would feel deeply uncomfortable about you having access to my social media content. I think you should do the decent thing and remove your connection to her.

Wouldn't surprise me if friends like this are a reason why the woman in question feels the need to make a public statement about her self-acceptance.