To think 'celebrating your curves' is becoming a worrying trend?

[Freesunglasses]

So many of my overweight 'friends' on facebook are joining in the whole "I'm embracing my curves and loving this body, every inch"
The thing is they are Obese, not use a little overyweight but really fat. The more people see and read things like this the more it will become normalised.

Worrying times ahead I think. We're going to be a very fat country in the not too distant future.
I know it's hard to lose weight. I know lockdown has made lots put weight, I'm a little overweight myself but I will never say I'm happy with it because I'm not! I like being thin, I want to be thin.

For the love of God stop normalising and celebrating obesity.

doadeer

I’m 5 ft 8. I am not overweight( BMI chart or otherwise)and fit a 14 perfectly.

I think you need to be wary of BMI etc. My dd has been hospitalised several times with Anorexia. I don’t think her BMI has been in the danger zone once. BMI isn’t supposed to be relied on re treating for AN so not sure why it should be the decider for the general public. So many other factors.

I am amused that this thread has Just Eat ads popping up in it for me.
Hmmm

The world needs to be less obesogenic
Government policy needs to be directed to that like stopping smoking which has been pretty effective

That was done by increasing prices of cigarettes (so do that for junk food, sugar tax etc), banning advertising (see above- we really have to do this), informing people pretty graphically of the consequences via pics on packaging (not sure I fancy that idea much) and crucially banning smoking indoors in public. Could we do a similar thing to that? Maybe it sounds ridiculous but it would reduce mindless eating of crap if we banned eating in the cinema and eating in the street and you had to sit down at a proper restaurant to eat.

Just ideas and maybe some of them are stupid ones but we need to do something radical to stop this risk to public health.

Junk food companies have tonnes of power just like cigarette companies did in the past and governments are scared to take effective measures but this needs a public health response.

@AlmostSummer21

Let me assure you most of us are being shamed for being obese. Does that make you feel better?!

If one of the twats wants my health issues I'd gladly give them to them & go back to being 45kg wet through.

But no they just want to judge find me lacking. So DFO

^^This

I totally agree OP. Being obese is unhealthy, full stop. Someone who is obese is at higher risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia, joint problems, diabetes...
It's already a global public health emergency & already costing the NHS huge sums- buying bariatric (larger & stronger) beds, chairs & scanners for a start. Body positivity is pretty toxic, it's like telling an alcoholic or smoker their habit is to be celebrated because it's who they are- when it's going to put them in an early grave. US life expectancy is falling & that's thought to be due to obesity causing more heart disease & cancer.

@motherloaded

check what a 14 of TODAY actually is without the modern "vanity sizing". It is plus-size, that's the thing.

The British women especially have a very twisted idea of what is healthy.

My mum has a suitcase full of vintage size 10 clothes and they're tiny. I'm a 12 and can't get them nowhere near on.

Vintage clothes are unrealistic to compare with today.
The women wearing them were more likely underweight or malnourished. I'm a size 8 I'd easily squeeze in a 6 but I like room to breath. I struggle with vintage trousers, I have a vintage coat the buttons don't close across my cup c breast, it is tight on my waist too vintage clothing is tiny.
People constantly sa you're tiny, I might reply not small enough for vintage clothing.

Evolution vitamins regularly food has changed our bodies it's like saying you're too tall for Tudor times clothing.

A third of the population now obese which had tripled since the 1980s
That is a public health disaster
The government really needs to take serious action
This is a population level problem not something that individuals need to be shamed for but we do need to be clear that being obese leads to all kinds of poor health outcomes and is not just a vanity issue.

@OverByYer

I was going to mention Jonathan Ross’ daughters but thought I’d get flamed. They might be trying to send the right messages but they are unhealthy and if they stay that weight for the rest of their lives they will have health issues. No one should be shamed for how they look but there is nothing wrong in saying being too fat or too thin is not good for your health.

She is clearly troubled. Neighbour can barely walk after being fat all her life, she's 58, my friend has bad knees, another suffers terribly with her back.

So only rich people get to eat outside of the house.

Yes demonising eating is the way to go. Really healthy values to give impressionable youngsters. We were initially grazers until 3 square meals were needed for work patterns. Hospital has told us to make sure our dd gets 3 meals and 3 snacks a day. Lots of people prefer to eat little and often or can’t have meals at home or need to not miss meals when out.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.medicaldaily.com/how-3-meals-day-became-rule-and-why-we-should-be-eating-whenever-we-get-hungry-324892%3famp=1

I am a size 16. Dreadful yo yo dieter and I agree with you. It is a mental battle daily to eat healthy and the last thing I need is another reason to say fuck it, I will stay at an unhealthy weight and embrace my curves.

@W1llowGreen

doadeer

I’m 5 ft 8. I am not overweight( BMI chart or otherwise)and fit a 14 perfectly.

I think you need to be wary of BMI etc. My dd has been hospitalised several times with Anorexia. I don’t think her BMI has been in the danger zone once. BMI isn’t supposed to be relied on re treating for AN so not sure why it should be the decider for the general public. So many other factors.

The reason I brought up BMI is this is what is universally used by healthy professionals to determine obesity so we can't ignore BMI as decisions about your health are made based on the number. I was surprised that it didn't take a huge amount for me to be obese. I had severe pelvic girdle pain in pregnancy and couldn't walk and I ate too much as I was sad... Pre pregnancy my BMI was 24 but that required daily exercise. Post pregnancy it was 30. It can happen really quickly

YANBU op. Obesity is a national health crisis and one that needs to be treated holistically as with any other health condition. The emotional aspect of obesity needs to be given as much attention as the physical and treated accordingly. The current shame based approach is horrible for people and doesn't work. The government need to explicitly name it as it did smoking and put as much effort into tackling it. The "real women" campaigns do no one any good. Every single picture I've seen in the press of an under 60 year old who had "no underlying health conditions" who died of covid was obese. So they do have a health condition.
It's like the ad campaigns for snag tights, I can see their point but they're glorifying unhealthy and risky body types.

I am a current UK size 8 to 10. In the 80s at over a stone lighter I was a 10, 8s were rare and hard to find. I have a vintage skirt from 1979 that's tight on me, it's a size 14. Rather than glorifying extremes of weight models in clothes campaigns need to be showing stretch marks, saggy bellies (I have one and I'm slim! Post pregnancy never gone away) dimply thighs etc.

YANBU.

Boohoo.com have actually started glamourising obesity on social media, which I think is hugely irresponsible.

Everyone seems to be praising them for using “normal” women, but they’re not! They’re using morbidly obese, probably incredibly unhealthy models, for their own publicity. It’s disgraceful tbh.

They’ve never used “average” size 12-14 models - it’s either a size 8 or a size 28 with nothing in between.

Over half our population is overweight or obese and it’s causing health problems and a strain on the NHS. It really isn’t anything to glamourise.

It's a tricky one. Among the 'body positive' community on Instagram for example, I have recently seen a lot of flat out denial that obesity is a factor in how ill you will get from Covid, or people saying that there is 'plenty of evidence' to suggest that obesity isn't a factor at all, that it's 'scaremongering' etc. This is just outright dangerous bullshit.

I feel sorry for young girls really, as the only options you really see on SM are ridiculously photoshopped, impossibly perfect bodies, or very overweight and obese body positive influencers. There isn't much in between. Danae Mercer is one - she has a slim body and works out, but also posts a lot about angles, lighting, photoshop etc but they are quite few and far between.

However, also agree with PPs that shaming overweight people doesn't work either because if you hate yourself, then where is the motivation to make yourself healthier? It's a tricky line to tread, made so difficult now by lifestyles, abundance of food, social media etc.

They’ve never used “average” size 12-14 models - it’s either a size 8 or a size 28 with nothing in between.

Yes exactly! How often do you ever see a regular size 12/14 person anywhere in the public eye really?!

(Boohoo) have actually started glamourising obesity on social media
I don't think they are glamourising obesity there is a huge marketing opportunity if over 60% of the population requires bigger sizes. Of course they should have an option of nice clothing and not limited to certain shops.
H&M kids Nike kids all do an extended waist size range. It's marketing for what the people need.

Most people I know who gave up smoking, did so when it became socially unacceptable to smoke - when they couldn't smoke in bars and restaurants, when people recoiled from the smell, when the health dangers were laid bare and well known.

I am not proposing that us fat people are publicly shamed, but celebrating fatness and the associated health risks is irresponsible imo, and not dissimilar to ads years ago depicting smoking as cool.

It does not really matter about eating patterns. It matters how much you eat overall and the quality of that.
Unfortunately most snacks are empty calories and grazing will cause most people to eat more overall.
I think you are kind of proving my point when you say the hospital advised your daughter who needs to gain weight to have 3 meals and 3 snacks.
This thread is about helping people NOT to gain weight so surely it stands to reason we need to make snacking less easy.

Snacking wasn't such a thing in the 70s and 80s when obesity rates were low. I don't recall my parents feeling the need to meet me at the school gate with bags of snacks (in fact they never met me at all I walked myself home) but this is normal behaviour now. A bag of sweets or a chocolate bar was a once a week treat and now we have them in the house all the time. Similarly massive size bags of crisps.

I do not think that society causes anorexia.
There was another thread recently where a lot of people with lived experience said exactly that. Anorexia is about control most sufferers will say and food being something they can control. I think most people are too scared that giving their children healthy messages about food and exercise will lead to an eating disorder whilst no-one discusses the other pressures on adolescents eg academic and social ones that are as likely to lead to them.

Banning junk food advertising, taxing it and limiting availability are things the government should do and I can't see much argument why they don't apart from commercial pressures.

@ghostyslovesheets

fuck me what is wrong with people accepting themselves and liking themselves - surely that's the first step to change - if they want to.

I HATE the obsession with thin = healthy it's so fucking toxic and wrong

I was a size 4 - I was anorexic and chain smoked

Now I am bigger - way bigger but I don;t smoke, I eat healthily and exercise very regularly

I am fitter now - but people like you OP would applaud the anorexic smoker and chastise the fat runner

so yeah - that toxic bollox can do one

It isn't a first step to changing though. It's usually the only step toward deciding not to bother. When I was obese (at a way lower appearance of being fat than people assume is obese) I made an honest assessment of myself and accepted that my weight was not good for my long term health. That while I didn't feel like it was affecting my day to day abilities, that was almost certainly because I got used to carrying the extra weight bit by bit as I piled it on and I just hadn't noticed how it was holding me back. And even if by some extremely unlikely miracle I wasn't being held back by my excess weight in my late 30s as I went on into my 40s and beyond I certainly would be. I recognised that I almost certainly already wasn't being the best parent to an extremely active child already through the limits on my fitness and the example I was setting. And that I definitely would be limiting the time and quality of our future relationship. That while there are things I have limited or no control over with my life and health, I could develop a rare cancer/get hit by a drunk driver/etc, I owed it to my child and myself to take control of the things that I could to be my best, healthiest self.

The day that I was truly honest was the day I lost the weight and got really fit. Obviously it took 5 months to get to a healthy-ish weight. Another 8 months or so to get really fit. Another 4-6 months on top of that to get to the really strong, athletically fit state I'm in now. But it all happened that first day that I was honest. I never loathed my fat body. I never really gave it much thought. I was admittedly unhappy with the state of my belly after pregnancy and a C-Section and had read all the body positivity 'love your tiger stripes' bollocks online which just made me feel really fucking sad and helpless about it.

Because that's what body positivity does. It makes you feel fucking helpless. It's nasty toxic shit that doesn't teach positivity about your body. It teaches denial about very real health implications and helplessness instead of power. When I decided to be honest with myself about what I had done to my body, myself, what I could take control over and what I couldn't, I improved my life 1000fold. My physical abilities now are so far over and beyond what they were when I was heavy. I can get up and go and go and go. I was holding myself back so much with extra weight and like a slowly boiling frog, I had no idea. Pains I had for over a decade have gone. I have no more joint pain. I have strong, capable muscles that easily achieve the kinds of speed, endurance, strength and flexibility that even 20 year old me would have considered a fantasy. I would have always been capable of all that and probably so much more if I hadn't spent so long fucking 'accepting' myself.

I'm also a hell of a lot curvier now. My natural shape is hourglass and I put on weight very evenly, so even obese I had a shape I liked, and at a healthy weight I have the same shaped torso. But my bum is higher and rounder because gravity isn't pulling it down. My legs and upper arms/shoulders are hourglass too now from muscle definition. It's insane to me that our culture shames muscular women as 'mannish' when really we have these wonderful, smooth curves that match our torso-shapes when we have properly used muscles. I actually struggle sometimes with how muscular I am because I know people are horrible about it when I think they are actually really beautiful, and that's just a bonus on top of how capable they are and all the extra amazing things they let me do and make me feel. My belly that I was sad about, while still damaged now has clear muscular definition and is something I feel really proud of.

But beyond that as a fit person, I actually feel kind of higher and utterly joyous nearly every single day. My brain is often buzzing off endorphins. I laugh, really crazy laugh with my friends all the time like a happy child. I'm so constantly, really genuinely happy nearly all the time because my body and brain are so properly in sync. Even when really, really shitty things happen in my life, I have this release and sense of power and one-ness. This is body positivity. Not pretending that I'm actually happy with excess fat and weak muscles. Not thinking I'm healthy or fooling myself that I'm fully capable just because I can manage day to day basics. Telling myself that wearing a pad for a two hour drive because there would be bladder leakage was a normal part of womanhood. Yet 4 years on I'm doing 2 hour trampoline workouts and split jumps, while downing a huge bottle of water and peeing zero amounts. Being overweight has consequences and we shouldn't be normalising them. No-one should hate themselves or be hated or ridiculed for being overweight/obese. But we should be realistic about how much of normal life you are missing out on and that all the small damages we are doing to ourselves are not normal and can genuinely, very often be fixed by treating our bodies (ourselves) properly.

60% of the population are now overweight or obese, so they are in the majority. It is no wonder retailers are attracting this market with marketing that celebrates their fatness so it is up to government to bite the bullet.

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

Mostt people were much thinner in the 60s. They cycled and walked as cars were not always available. I still have some dresses my mother wore at 20. She 5 foot 11. I used to be 5 foot 5 and 9 stone when in my 20s and those dresses did not fit me. Too small.

People wore quite heavy duty underwear (18 hour girdle anyone?) in those days though.

I get what you mean about the ticking time bomb especially on the NHS and obesity does come with multiple health problems.

BUT I'm not against people accepting their body shape and trying to have positivity around it. One of the biggest triggers for overeating etc is self esteem, mood/depression and comfort eating. If people feel happier in themselves then they are less likely to comfort eat and binge so actually it may help reduce their weight slowly over time.

"Shaming people for being fat is not going to magically make them slimmer."

But what will? Increasing acceptance has run alongside increasing obesity. It's not shaming to provide facts and knowledge instead of pointless platitudes.