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.

@Mintjulia

Rather than discuss an individual's obesity, which I find personal and intrusive, wouldn't it be better to say, ok it exists, no blaming tolerated, now what are we going to do about it? As a community, or as individuals?

I'd start by ensuring all senior schools offered a non competitive option for PE. No picking teams, no coming first or last.

We can’t live in a world like this either though. In reality you have to adjust to different emotions because if not you will have a rude awakening once you leave high school. Never coming last for anything or failing.

Thank you for starting this. In my experience, most obesity is caused by habits developed in childhood - lack of emphasis on fitness and being active by parents, not much activity together, too much fat and sugar and too large portions. My MIL has always slathered everything in butter, had cream with every dessert and although she ate vegetables, boiled them to death and heaped on the potatoes. Unfortunately, she now has very poor health, due to diabetes and blocked arteries. Her 3 children are heading the same way. It is very sad. If I try to bring up the issue of healthy eating and exercise to my DH, he gets enormously defensive and tells me I don’t understand, as he’s genetically predisposed to gain weight, whereas I’m not. He’s wrong, As a teen, I had an eating disorder and battled with my weight during my 20s. I now make a conscious decision to exercise and eat well. The reason I am not overweight is entirely down to my choices - nothing to do with my genetics. I’m trying to teach DD similar healthy habits. So far, it’s working. It’s very difficult to reverse strong childhood influences, but with determination, it can be done.

I agree that it's shocking that a person can buy a whole Easter egg for a pound and yet a punnet of strawberries, blueberries or raspberries is often up towards £3!
Supermarket sandwiches are ridiculously priced as well.
So faced with the choice of a £3 sandwich or a discounted £1 family sized bag of crisps, they will go for the crisps.

A teenager walking home from school and feeling a bit peckish will go for the cheaper junk food.

@Crystal90567

For the love of good! What is an appropriate portion of pastry for your size? And all the tantalising exoticism around your fancy meal! Chicken, fine. Green beans fine. Tomato 'gravy' cooked in oil. Not so good. Appropriate portion of boiled pastry with oil on top. (Olive or otherwise is still same fat content as any other fat inc cooking oil or butter.) Ridiculous.

Oh for goodness sake. Stop talking rubbish!

'Pasta' is NOT 'pastry'.

Appropriate portion size is c50g for a child, 70g for an adult (though this will vary further depending on height & activity levels).

Tomato 'gravy' cooked in oil.

Well, this sounds disgusting! No idea what it is.

But homemade tomato sauce is healthy, easy to make & delicious.

Crystal you really need to understand nutrition & the role different food groups play.

@Countrygirl2021 I really agree with this. Even I slip into rewards and treats which are sugar based for dc which has already conditioned them to think chocolate is positive and veg is to be endured.
We tried to have no sweets but when dc were three it was a battle with nursery giving puddings, everyone shoving sweets in their faces as treats - family buying cakes when they visited Etc even my dh has an unhealthy puffing most nights so hard to convince kids to have different food.

On a separate note, I think some intolerance is because we all know overweight people who simply decided one day to cut out junk and start running ( I have several size 18 members of my family) so it shows to me that you can do it with willpower. Also lots of magazines showing people having massive weight loss when they decided to change.
I’m not sure it’s the same case if you’re size 22 or something though and eating through trauma but there are lots of examples of people able to make the changes and stick to them. These examples make me ( and others I assume) see it as hard but possible if someone wants to lose weight

Like previous posters, I don’t agree that healthy food is more expensive than junk but I do think that poverty is an important factor in obesity in terms of access to physical activities. For many, going for a walk or cycling in urban areas is unpleasant and even dangerous. Many sporting and active leisure activities are expensive plus you may have to pay for travel, equipment, shoes, waterproofs etc on top. Even the council gym and swimming where we are cost nearly £8 a session for one person!

pictish That's interesting and thank you for sharing, I would love to know 'how the switch flipped'.

I have been overweight most of my life, I am usually around a size 18 and am tall so I don't look massively overweight but I know I am in the obese range and I feel so much better when I am a couple of stone lighter.

But I just genuinely enjoy food a lot - food is (relatively) cheap and I can afford to buy whatever I want within reason, I always had good home cooked food growing up (my DM is a great cook) and I studied hospitality and worked in restaurants because I just love being around food. I know how to make interesting recipes that don't make me fat but the sort of food I enjoy is much more about rich sauces and hearty stew and dumplings . And the 'low fat' recipes just don't taste the same.

I don't particularly 'enjoy' exercise - I do walk a lot but not at an aerobic pace.

It's an interesting dilemma, I don't think I 'comfort' eat - I am perfectly happy with my lifestyle apart from Covid restrictions this year but I get so easily 'tempted' by nice sounding food, I saw a new chocolate bar yesterday and just wanted to try it ... so I bought it, it wasn't that nice so at least I threw half away! (My DH wouldn't want to share it!).

But homemade tomato sauce is healthy, easy to make & delicious.

Agreed. I’m making some literally now. Celery, onions, carrots, tomatoes, herbs and balsamic vinegar. A tiny bit of oil to sauté the veg but that’s it.

I am very intrigued by this tomato oil gravy.

I think there are many issues which come into it but the ideal would be:
1.) look at places where there are no local, affordable places to buy meals. If I were to get to Lidl I would have to walk past KFC, Greggs and about five kebab shops. There's also a kebab shop on my council estate (which has a huge obesity problem) plus one other shop that sells booze and no fresh fruit or veg.
2.) Better metal health services. I work in mental health and there just isn't enough money.
3.) better education for doctors and teach them to actually listen to fat people. Stop telling them off for being fat when they come to see you about an allergy or broken arm! It makes us not want to get medical advice. Honestly i have a relative who didn't get a lump checked out because of the shame she feels when sat in the GP's office.
4.) A review of UC and fresh food vouchers. My friend is part of a scheme where for £3.50 per week you get a huge hamper of nearly out of date food, we're talking chopped toms, kidney beans, noodles, quinoa! I was on UC for years and never heard about it. Why not publicise it more and through in some recipe cards?

If I'm honest about obesity, what grinds my gears is that there is a narrative that everyone should be celebrated no matter their size and you can be overweight and healthy and it overlooks the medical risks associated with it.

Nobody should be shamed or bullied for being fat and people should value themselves no matter their size.

But I don't think it obesity should be embraced and accepted as a modern standard.

I do think the government are between a rock and a hard place - you can't ban crisps, there are probably loads of legal barriers. You can't make them unaffordable for the same reasons. So how do you stop people buying and eating too many?

I do sympathise that for people in poverty it's an affordable way to treat the kids. A cheap way to fill up. And I do appreciate that there are societal barriers.

But one part I'll be honest in saying is that as a slim person, who has previously put on and then lost 3 stone (stress eating) it's simply not true that every obese person is a victim of circumstance and a narrative that slim people don't understand. It's hard to stay slim. You have to say no to delicious food and exercise frequently. It's annoying that there is a belief that slim people don't understand that it's hard to lose weight- I know it is hard but I also know that I work every day at maintaining a healthy weight, it doesn't just happen. So the issue of willpower probably comes up a lot because once weight is lost it is still an ongoing battle.

I'm overweight at the moment - I've recently come out of the obese bracket, thank goodness. I was slim throughout my childhood but as an adult my BMI has fluctuated between 19 and 35. I first gained weight when I started work for the first time, in the mid-1990s and since then it has gone up and down several times.

If I look at the difference between the food I ate as a child and as an adult, what sticks out is processed food. When I was a child we ate very little processed food - not a conscious health decision, it was just the way my mum was used to cooking - meat and two veg type meals, stews, casseroles, all done from scratch. Takeaways two or three times a year at most, usually on holidays. Eating in a restaurant similar. No 'fast food' e.g. Macdonalds - not on health grounds but because it was a 'waste of money'.

As a young adult working full time, I relied heavily on ready meals and so on, and that's when my weight first started to go up, and over the last 25 years it's been in a cycle of going up until I can't bear it, and go on a diet (calorie-counting) to bring it down, but then it very slowly creeps up again ...

It's only recently that I have started to look at what I eat rather than how much I eat - what's actually in that Tesco lasagne I so readily bung in the oven when I get home from work, for instance. And when you look at the ingredients on packaged meals, it's quite shocking - there's so much there that really isn't 'food' - 'modified' this, that and the other, stabilisers, regulators, flavourings. Many hidden sugars, particularly in things labelled 'low fat' which many people probably believe are 'healthier' than the full fat version. I don't think our bodies are designed to process all this stuff.

I have now cut out processed food and cooking everything from scratch. I'm using unmodified (i.e. full fat) natural ingredients, such as butter and olive oil rather than sunflower oil and margarine. My weight is going down again and I'm hoping that if I continue avoiding processed foods, or, at least only having them on rare occasions, I can reach and maintain a healthy weight.

In summary, I blame the obesity crisis on our reliance on processed food.

I haven't been obese but I have been over weight.

Only once I lost the weight did I realise I had an addiction before.

The fact that every situation without food seemed like the most boring and depressing feeling in the world.

Then the feeling that I would rathe the fat than live like this.

It does get better though. The cravings go away and you don't need food to improve situations.

@NiceGerbil

And interestingly.

Where did the 'fat cat' city man image go?

An obese man in a suit. Powerful.

Other points in the past being overweight has been in fashion.

It's very linked to wealth.

Not helpful to try and normalise obesiry. People trying to normalise it is part if the problem. You wouldn't normalise anorexia , so why would you normalise the other extreme?

We need a solution.

Surely there's a middle ground between 'celebrating obesity' and not making fat people feel like shit on a daily basis?
I follow a lot of plus size influencers and what strikes me is that loads of them start to lose weight after getting x amount of followers. Why? Because being embraced and loved means you are more likely to love yourself and not want to punish yourself with food on the daily? You can be a fat person who doesn't mind being fat and also want to get fitter and cook healthier meals? Why is that so hard for society to accept? Health should be the goal but I don't think people really care about health. I don't go around measuring people's blood pressure and telling them off if it's high. Around 30% of overweight people are healthy, it is not always an indicator of poor health.

Good post @An0n0n0n

Also if shame works then how come when a family member told me 'for gods sake put down the sausage rolls!' In a room full of people I thought I felt safe around I didn't lose weight for another 12 years? How come I actually got bigger after that? How come I immediately went home and ordered a take away?

Around 30% of overweight people are healthy, it is not always an indicator of poor health

Not at that point in time, perhaps, but ultimately, obesity is always going to be problematic for health.

I have no idea what the solution is to be honest. Though I think perhaps more funding towards the psychological side (CBT) etc. I am obese, I was neglected as a child and often had no dinner etc which I feel has definitely had a huge impact on my relationship with food. Some kind of therapy would probably really help me but good luck getting on any kind of waiting list!

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?
This is not the issue. Shops sell what sells and costs reflect volume.

The reality is very few kids will pick fruit over chocolate by choice and that's the problem.

It is without a doubt a society issue and it started when did gradually became a source of pleasure over a basic need. Add to this a drift towards lesser self-discipline and a drive towards easy options and there we go.

Say, just like smoking, I do believe that the solution is with individuals, wanting to be a healthy weight because of the benefits to our health. Sadly, if stopping smoking is tough, losing and sustaining weight loss is even harder.

@dontdisturbmenow it's so hard that over a certain weight hardly anyone is able to lose weight without medical intervention.

@Theredjellybean it was me who commented about the 6am starts. Yes, I know people who do it....but to give an example my friend does. She WFH so all she has to do after a PT/gym session is get home and have a shower then she’s ready to work. Finishes at 5. I’d have to get up at 5:30, leave at 5:45, do the class, home at 7:30, shower, do hair/make up, breakfast, make lunch for work, leave house at 1200, start work at 1300 until 2030, get home around 2115. Then usually a snack/cup of tea, bed around 2200. I’m just way too tired to do that more than once a week. If I had a WFH or local job, it would be a lot easier. I’d love to live closer to my work to have more free time but I can’t afford it.

I do a martial arts class, but again impossible to do when I’m on lates as they only run in the evenings.

On another note, I wonder if some of the obesity we see can be attributed at least partly to the much more prevalent use of artificial sweeteners?

There's an Irish expert on obesity, Professor Donal O'Shea, a consultant endocrinologist. He talks interestingly about the different factors at play.

These points stood out for me:

He said suggesting that people who are obese should simply “eat less and move more” was like telling people with lung cancer to give up cigarettes without providing any treatment. “This attitude is almost more prevalent within the medial profession and the average medic or physiotherapist is leaner so there is often a sense of being judged among who are obese”.

But also:

Prof O’Shea said many people wrongly believed willpower was all that was needed to combat obesity. “If it was just about willpower 60 per cent of the population wouldn’t be affected. If it was about willpower the person who is 25 stone who wants to not be 25 stone would simply eat less. It is not that simple,” he stressed.

He has spoken a lot about genetic issues, and how some people will need surgical solutions to deal with obesity. He argues that the judgment associated with this is wrong, abs not applied to any other surgery which might have been needed due to a condition linked with genetic background. A lot more research is being done into this area. For some, losing weight through conventional methods won't work.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ireland-has-ideal-combination-of-leaders-to-tackle-obesity-crisis-health-expert-1.4340422%3Fmode%3Damp

Once when people went with that "but poverty" (60% obese/overweight vs 20% in poverty so not really the biggest factor then) and food prices someone replied to
"You can soak pulses overnight so it's extremely cheap to eat them and they are healthy"
"Who can be arsed to soak pulses overnight!"
🤷🏻 Perfect illustration of one of the problem attitudes.

I am obese atm, my own fault, eat too much (portion control, portion control, portion control even on salds ffs!)and moved too little and swam in the sea of denial. Coming down though and should be back to my normal weight this year.

But to answer the question. No. There will never be discussion about this without people vlaiming shaming. Interestingly once I counted where the insults about fat people were coming from on one thread and it was only them using them🤷🏻

Ragwort - like you I have had a lifelong weight issue. I was a chubby kid, became a fat teen and went on to be an increasingly obese adult. I had always loathed my appearance and got into a perpetual vicious cycle of eating and hating that I couldn’t seem to break out of.
As I grew older (I’m 45 now) I started to become more anxious about my health. When my son was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, it had a very sobering effect on me. I considered that he may well need me for that bit longer than the other two (I have three children) and I wondered what use would I be to him if I had a heart attack at 55 because I was so overweight? I mulled that over and resolved to do something about it.
So in the end, it wasn’t for looks or even for myself that I lost weight. It was for my health and for the sake of my son.