Can we have a sensible discussion about obesity without shaming?

[BalloonCityBaseline]

I started another thread which got my thinking; why is it impossible to start any discussion about obesity without someone bringing 'will power' and 'personal choice' into it?
I always find on MN there is sympathy for those with addictions, people in poverty, people who stay in shitty relationships but there is no sympathy for those who struggle with their weight. For one, weight gain is seen as a personal struggle (you made yourself fat) rather than thought of as society's struggle (what can we do to address this and help people?)
Let's not forget that every country in the Western world is having an obesity crisis right now, yes even the Scandinavian countries and the skinny French. Also not one country has successfully managed to reduce their levels of obesity? Why?
The number one reason that we have put on weight has to be the shift to processed food and how available and cheap it is. God it's cheap! Easter eggs are now 75p in Tesco, the other day I saw a row of school kids all walking down the road munching a whole Easter egg each. But what's the alternative? That 75p would buy you absolutely nothing in the fancy health food shop across the road, and six of them would have to club together to buy one punnet of blueberries in the same Tesco so what choices do young people have?
Fat shaming just does not work. The number one reason kids are bullied in this country is because of their weight, with girls being likely to be bullied for being overweight more than any other factor. Do these kids lose weight when the bullies scream at them day after day? No, they often self harm and some end up depressed adults who take that shame with them for the rest of their lives.
As someone who has lost weight recently for the first time in their adult life I feel it coincided with a time in my life when I felt happy, busy, fulfilled, motivated and in control, which felt like the first time in my whole life. When I speak to others on the same journey they tell similar tales. The whole 'I couldn't fit into an airplane seat and everybody laughed' Take a Break narrative just doesn't ring true for so many people I know. Happiness and acceptance is much more likely to put someone in a mindset where they can change their eating habits and take control.

I'd be happy to hear other thoughts.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

Plenty of parents with big jobs who manage it.

The ones I know who do place time with their children at a lower priority to exercise/physique.

I can't/won't do that. I competed for my university in two sports, love swimming and cycling and did mainly sport based holidays for 10 years before having children, I really do wish I could do more but my children's needs come first. I'm not strapping my toddler inactive into a pram so that i can go running, we walk together so that she gets the exercise she needs. Yes it's not the workout I need to be thinner than I am but it's more important to me that she grows up fit and healthy not a fat kid strapped into a buggy so that mummy can do a pram workout.

Diet is more important.

Diet is definitely more important. I mentioned upping exercise only as a way to increase the number of calories a person can eat in a day to maintain.

I've put on weight in the last year despite eating well and exercising. I worked out that my gain was down to just an extra 100 calories per day so I hate the assumption that everyone overweight doesn't move and eats junk. My weight crept up simply because I wasn't tracking my calories during lockdown. I think encouraging people to be mindful from a young age of how calories work etc might help.

Is there a more general problem of registering when we are full? Certain types of foods don't fill you up.

Also if food is being used as an emotional comforter/anaesthetic then the body'/brain's ability to say enough is not going to kick in. Learning to track emotions and mood can be a huge help to tackle the impulse to binge.

On a family level i'd guess that we don't sit down to eat together as much as we did 40+ yrs ago. Regular meal times where your body registers it's time to start/ stop eating is more erratic.

@LoisWilkersonslastnerve

I've put on weight in the last year despite eating well and exercising. I worked out that my gain was down to just an extra 100 calories per day so I hate the assumption that everyone overweight doesn't move and eats junk. My weight crept up simply because I wasn't tracking my calories during lockdown. I think encouraging people to be mindful from a young age of how calories work etc might help.

A pound is roughly 3500 calories I think so it is certainly possible to put on a pound every month from just 100 calories per day, which would be barely noticeable to most.

BBC calorie calculator. I think that calculator over-estimates (a little bit) what i would need if I did no activity, but under-estimates (a little bit) what I can have at the upper end (I can actually eat a little bit more than it thinks I can). I actually eat about 2300/day btw. Was probably more like 3200/day when I was 22.

A GP friend told me that her overweight patients are appalled by the idea of being hungry. When she tells them that it is normal to feel 'pleasantly hungry' in the run up to a meal, she feels it is often something that they've never considered. I wonder whether this is a pattern started in childhood, where a child saying they feel hungry is immediately fed.

@rawlikesushi that definitely wasn't the case for me. I remember spending all of childhood feeling hungry. My mum was slim and would serve us both a quarter of quiche and a handful of salad leaves for tea which just left me ravenous afterwards. I remember watching the quiche being put in a Tupperware for the next day and feeling desperately that I wish I could eat it.

There is also evidence that whatever your body is constantly trying to get back to the heaviest weight you've ever been. So if you have been 17 stone your body will constantly be trying to get back to that weight. I find this as I fast Monday to Friday, Monday I am ravenous as I have gotten used to eating three meals over the weekend but by Friday I could take or leave my afternoon meal.

[quote BalloonCityBaseline]@rawlikesushi that definitely wasn't the case for me. I remember spending all of childhood feeling hungry. My mum was slim and would serve us both a quarter of quiche and a handful of salad leaves for tea which just left me ravenous afterwards. I remember watching the quiche being put in a Tupperware for the next day and feeling desperately that I wish I could eat it.[/quote]
That sounds horrendous. How old were you? Did you not ask for more food?

Discussing body weight rather than 'obesity' would be better.

Sometime I wonder why people can empathise with drug addicts and alcoholics but not obese people.

I don't see a lot of empathy on MN for drug addicts and alcoholics!

Obesity is definitely complex. I do think in some case the person honestly has no idea how little slim people eat to stay that way. I know that is the case for one person I know. She is definitely clueless as to how much weight can be out on by just an extra 200 calories a day more than you "need".

@lljkk

BBC calorie calculator. I think that calculator over-estimates (a little bit) what i would need if I did no activity, but under-estimates (a little bit) what I can have at the upper end (I can actually eat a little bit more than it thinks I can). I actually eat about 2300/day btw. Was probably more like 3200/day when I was 22.

It seems higher than other TDEE calculators I've used - it estimates me at around 1923 whereas most have me at 1700. I don't count calories any more but from when I did, in fact, anything over 1500 had me gaining.

@rawlikesushi

A GP friend told me that her overweight patients are appalled by the idea of being hungry. When she tells them that it is normal to feel 'pleasantly hungry' in the run up to a meal, she feels it is often something that they've never considered. I wonder whether this is a pattern started in childhood, where a child saying they feel hungry is immediately fed.

Agree with this. Also eating late in the evening before bed. I tell my kids that the kitchen is closed after 8 pm. They aren't going to bed truly hungry, but they don't need to be loaded up again after dinner and before bed.

We need the 2000 guidance for women revised to reflect what most women actually need, which is nearer 15-1600.

I'm not sure how much this would help, since most people don't count how many calories they are eating. Publishing guidance doesn't actually make many people change their habits imo.

Similarly with exercise. People don't exercise because they don't enjoy it and would rather spend their limited leisure time doing something they do enjoy, even though they know exercise would be beneficial. It's pretty hard to make yourself do an entirely non-compulsory, unpaid thing week-in-week-out if you don't like doing it.

The 2000 is average, not most.
But yes. Maybe it should be revised since we in general move considerably less than when it was made, hence need less.

The I.H.T. (Ill-Health Tax) could be hypothecated, ringfenced, and circled back to the N.H.S frontline services (excluding their managers and desk-jockeys), to avoid N.H.S. resources for obesity, diabetes and alcohol related harm being an unintended government/tax-purse subsidy to the health destruction industries.

There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to start.....

But I will.

Front line services rely heavily on managers and admin to do their job and most of them have a lot of respect for the people improving the services for the patients they treat.

Secondly, I think you will find that fat people pay tax too. We also contribute to the NHS and are, therefore, entitled to use it.

If the govt wants to tax the hell out of sugar and shit I don't care because I don't like that stuff anyway. It's like fat people are actually complex, unique human beings rather than a stereotype to be insulted. Who would have known?

Fat shaming and thin shaming, all forms of shaming someone for their body and not seeing them as a human being only serves to make that person feel shit about themselves. Isn't it time we accepted people of all sizes and shapes?

I have tried to do this, and for the rest of the day that chocolate will be calling to me. I’ll distract myself for a while but then it becomes an obsession. From discussions with my sister and other slim people it isn’t like that. She’s forgotten about the chocolate, and will next have a piece when she stumbles across it. That will never happen to me, I’ll think about it and it will grown in importance in my mind until it’s gone

This eloquent post by @Pheasantplucker2 reminds me of Stephen King's description of his addiction to alcohol. At the end of an evening's drinking he would pour any booze left down the sink because if he didn't when he was lying in bed the left over drink would "call" to him and he would end up going downstairs to drink it.

Why is food addiction treated as some sort of moral failing in a way that other addictions aren’t?

(Actually I suppose some people do treat other addictions as a moral failing).

@pinkearedcow of course people see other addictions as moral failings, but I agree that addiction to food isn't treated the same as addiction to drugs / alcohol in society at large.

A few years ago there was a backlash against the Cancer Research campaign that highlighted that obesity was a major risk factor for cancer. They were accused of fat shaming. Obesity is highly complex but it does have a significant impact on a person's health - Covid has probably highlighted more than anything that has come before. People who are obese need proper help and support to address it.

of course people see other addictions as moral failings, but I agree that addiction to food isn't treated the same as addiction to drugs / alcohol in society at large.

The thing is. I don't think people, including the obese, actually want it treated really that way. It would for example mean no ads really with obese people (eg Venus, calvin klein etc). Same way as ads try not go show very obvious alcoholic or drug user with track lines.

Because people see obesity often and in situations you wouldn't see alcoholic or drug addict strongly showing physical damages caused, unless as a warning, they think differently about obesity.

Also, lots of us aren't addicted to any kind of food so you can't treat every obese as addict either.

I love fruit,but honestly a satsuma is not practical when walking about , it gets juice all down you so yes it's easier to have a chocolate bar. I think whilst cost is a factor there is a treat yourself culture, really treating your body well would be eating something more healthy, but culture is to reward with chocolate / cake / sweets / pudding.

I'm slim-ish but my waist is bordering the Max NHs suggest for health. My DH is quite chunky, as was his Dad and one out of his 3 siblings. His diet is ok when at home, I'd say he eats less than me and I see what he takes for packed lunch. So somewhere he's eating something extra or maybe just too much and just I burn off more. He was quite stunned when we compared steps and mileage the other day and mine was a lot more, despite him being busy all day at work.

Wow if I could eat the 2236 calories a day given in that tdee calculator and maintain I would never have been fat in the first place. That is a massive amount of food. I lose very slowly on 1500 which is very sustainable for me and seems like a perfectly decent amount of food, allows for three meals and some kind of snack or extra. I don't think I could regularly eat 2236 a day if I tried.

The one thing I found helpful was when Wetherspoons put the calories on their menu. That really opened my eyes to whether I really wanted to eat 4000 in just breakfast.
The problem with calories on packets is it's sneaky. It says 168 kcal but that's per serving and very rarely do people have the recommended serving as it's usually tiny. Maybe that's what it should be or maybe it's food companies choosing to feature very small portions to minimise the calorie content. Who knows? That's why I fast because calorie counting is hard work and makes me want to pack it all in and eat what I want.

Maybe that's what it should be or maybe it's food companies choosing to feature very small portions to minimise the calorie content. Who knows?

Sadly, I found that it's actually usually the correct recommended portion if not per 100g. At least with cheese.... Still shaken by that🙈

@SchrodingersImmigrant I'm still scarred by Secret Eaters showing the distance you would have to run to work off a tiny piece of cheese. Cheese is life for me but I now avoid on pasta dishes and jacket potato's. Still miss it though!