to think that in the future obesity will be a mental illness

[postitgirl]

ok , bear with me....
I've been watching a few programmes about anorexia, I don't know why, they've just 'popped up' on netflix and amazon, and it's so interesting how even though people with anorexia are literally starving themselves, they still don't eat. So I started thinking, I've been trying to lose weight for years and year and years, and it's so bloody hard, because there is a thing in my brain that equates pleasure with over-eating crap. I go on a diet, and my willpower lasts for a few days, if I'm lucky, and then this overwhelming urge to break the diet, to binge, to eat chocolate and all the bad things, not just a small square of chocolate, like a bar, plus ice-cream etc etc. Any of us who struggle know what i'ts like. And it's getting worse as I get older. I'm becoming more attached to that feeling of 'release' when I do overeat... I'ts like a stress reliever to my brain - I'm suddenly a nicer person to my kids, I feel chilled, I feel satisfied, I feel happy, but of course i'ts a vicious cycle of self-hatred etc etc.
So it just occurred to me that in the future, maybe the treatment for obesity will be similar to that of anorexia, with the blame being taken out of the equation, that it will be treated literally as a mental disease - a disease where your mind is taken over, in a similar way to the way anorexia takes over. just the way some of the young girls were talking about how it was the "anorexia talking" even thuogh they knew they were making themselves ill, and could even die, the anorexia wouldn't let them eat.
Just as someone who has struggled mentally with my weight for all these years - i'ts like the "fat" talking. Cos when I'm "sane" of course I want to stop doing it, I want to get fit, and slim etc etc. And I know what I should be eating and what I shouldnt I could probably get a degree in nutrition at this stage I've done so much research on what I should eat and not eat.
What do you all think - can anyone relate.

Obesity can be a symptom of a mental illness, but I don't think it is a mental illness. Being severely underweight does not always mean someone has anorexia. There could be other things going on.
I am obese (but working on it) due to the medication I am on.

Yes, it absolutely is.

The entire diet industry is based on making people feel ashamed for looking like something which is absolutely unattainable for most people. It's no measure of mental health to be well adjusted to that.

I agree OP.

I actually asked my therapist about food addiction.

I asked how you would help someone with food addiction, because with other addictions like alcohol you'd simply not keep it in the house or you wouldn't drink round the person who is affected.

So to me, the only realistic way you could support someone with an eating addiction is to not have those unhealthy high glycemic foods readily available.

My therapist told me I'm being silly and people can't just not eat sweet things because someone in the house might be fat.

But ultimately I do think it's a mental illness. I think it's complex and can be triggered by a number of different stimuli.

And I think that it's not researched because food is one of the biggest economies in the world and obesity is something to be capitalised from.

@doesparentingsuck

I agree it certainly in the addiction category and it should be liked upon the same way alcoholism it and not just widely accepted and ok within society.

Imagine if we had OA groups (obesity anonymous) I think people would be more conscious of it

I think the problem with things like OA is that many people lack the emotionally literacy / are unable to talk honestly about their eating habits. Weight and food intake has become so tied up in moral concepts of greed, laziness, selfishness, that we desperately try to avoid any allegation of this. It really shouldn’t carry his stigma - as per my previous post, we are literally programmed as a species to overeat. It’s also such a gendered issue. My BIL is a dietician. He says that, almost without exception, his male patients will quite happily admit that they’re overweight because they like beer and curry too much and prefer sitting on the sofa watching the football to running around playing it - because male fatness doesn’t carry quite the same stigma in society that female fatness does. His female patients will generally blame their hormones, mental health, baby weight, genes - anything but essentially say “I just really like to eat and don’t really like to exercise”, because for a woman to admit to greed and not being able to show restraint is “unfeminine” and met with derision and humiliation. I think this would be a barrier to so many women engaging with talking therapy about weight.

I wish binge eating disorder was more known about because it can cause very extreme obesity and is largely overlooked, particularly when people without it diagnosed are prescribed weight loss plans which ends up failing because the underlying mental illness isn’t addressed

I agree that both anorexia and binge eating are eating disorders: they are both forms of disordered eating. Two of my DD have suffered from anorexia and have described the inability to fight this demon. It’s a mental illness that regresses but doesn’t disappear. I can see how binge eating could be the same.

I think there’s certainly a psychological element to it, I grew up with parents who were obsessed with healthy eating and were very strict so I literally never had white bread, sweets, fast food or soft drinks growing up, I remember once buying some sweets on the way home from school when I was about 13 and when my mum found out she confiscated them and her and my dad lectured me about how I wasn’t allowed them and they were really disappointed in me.

Those are the foods I now crave and eat huge quantities of, because in my mind I don’t know when I’ll get them again, even though I know I can have them any time I want.

@ComtesseDeSpair such a good point about women being in denial, however men and women irrespective of how open are about it both sexes still don't seem to be fixing the issue. And I believe it is mental health why people get obese. They are unhappy in their lives so full it with food what they believe to be happiness. It's a coping mechanism

I think it's more likely it'll be considered a hormonal issue triggered by a combination of genetics and a modern western (ultraprocessed) diet.

Yes I think this is an accurate explanation

@Totallydefeated

Interesting. I think I agree with @AnneLovesGilbert. 2/3rds of adults in the UK can't have a mental illneSs

Depends how you define it. That proportion of people could easily be suffering from trauma/lack impulse control/have unmet emotional needs/be self-medicating, etc. These things are incredibly common. How many of us were brought up in a way that taught us to perfectly regulate our emotions, for example? Not many!!

Why is this trauma or unmet emotional needs not seen in Japan, for instance? I don't intend this to sound goady. Surely the British diet has something to do with this.

When my SIL was in ED hospital, there were obese patients there. I assume due to Binge Eating Disorders. There were very few of them, it was mostly anorexia patients.

Why is this trauma or unmet emotional needs not seen in Japan, for instance? I don't intend this to sound goady. Surely the British diet has something to do with this.

Mental distress can be expressed differently in different cultures.

@Couchbettato I find that so odd.
It seems obvious to me that I really don't want certain foods in my house.

But the French don't have a problem either. I do think our genetics and UPFs are more of a factor tbh.

I am just uncomfortable with the pathologising of everything as a mental health issue.

If you are right op then at least 40% of adults are suffering from this mental illness right now. I've recently been away from my home town (in the wealthy south east) and was amazed to see the number of very overweight people around. My dh commented on it independently of me - he said "tbh the normal weight people are in the minority" and he was spot on. I'm not sure it is always helpful to see it as a mental illness?

No definitely not. Nhs is underfunded. Mental health services are the most underfunded. You can be actively trying to kill yourself and still find no treatment available. No way will mental health services be able to fund anything other than crisis work in the future, so not a hope for long-term projects like obesity. Privately funded maybe, but never on the nhs.

I went to a coffee shop today with my mum....none of the cake looked amazing but they had coffee cake and l had a slice even though it didn't look that great and was quite dry.
No idea why my rational brain made that bad choice because it was an absolute waste of calories and money.

I believe anorexia is very different because fundamentally at its core, the sufferer has a very distorted body image and believes (wrongly) that they are overweight and therefore must restrict their dietary intake to an extreme level. People with this condition look in the mirror and believe they see an overweight person looking back at them, so they continue to restrict their eating further and further. People with obesity do not generally speaking overeat because of a fundamental issue with their body image. That's the difference between the two; so we cannot simply view obesity as the opposite disorder to anorexia. It makes no sense.

And that's not to say I disagree that there may be a mental illness component to some aspects of over eating, for some people. But I take issue with the false comparison with anorexia.

@postitgirl

ok , bear with me.... I've been watching a few programmes about anorexia, I don't know why, they've just 'popped up' on netflix and amazon, and it's so interesting how even though people with anorexia are literally starving themselves, they still don't eat. So I started thinking, I've been trying to lose weight for years and year and years, and it's so bloody hard, because there is a thing in my brain that equates pleasure with over-eating crap. I go on a diet, and my willpower lasts for a few days, if I'm lucky, and then this overwhelming urge to break the diet, to binge, to eat chocolate and all the bad things, not just a small square of chocolate, like a bar, plus ice-cream etc etc. Any of us who struggle know what i'ts like. And it's getting worse as I get older. I'm becoming more attached to that feeling of 'release' when I do overeat... I'ts like a stress reliever to my brain - I'm suddenly a nicer person to my kids, I feel chilled, I feel satisfied, I feel happy, but of course i'ts a vicious cycle of self-hatred etc etc. So it just occurred to me that in the future, maybe the treatment for obesity will be similar to that of anorexia, with the blame being taken out of the equation, that it will be treated literally as a mental disease - a disease where your mind is taken over, in a similar way to the way anorexia takes over. just the way some of the young girls were talking about how it was the "anorexia talking" even thuogh they knew they were making themselves ill, and could even die, the anorexia wouldn't let them eat. Just as someone who has struggled mentally with my weight for all these years - i'ts like the "fat" talking. Cos when I'm "sane" of course I want to stop doing it, I want to get fit, and slim etc etc. And I know what I should be eating and what I shouldnt I could probably get a degree in nutrition at this stage I've done so much research on what I should eat and not eat. What do you all think - can anyone relate.

A mental illness isn't just something "abnormal". It's also something combined with emotional/psychological distress. Being obese doesn't automatically cause distress.

EDs often come from trauma or are a symptom of trauma.

I think it already is 🤷‍♀️

I don’t disagree that there are some (many?) people for whom obesity has its roots in mental ill health, but I reckon there are far more people for whom being overweight is just a direct consequence of it being so damn easy to consume more calories than you need. Not everything is a mental health issue.

Morning break used to be a cup of tea and a biscuit, now it’s a latte and a croissant. Lifestyles have changed so much since the 1970s and it’s never been easier to eat crap and be as inactive as possible. Hell, you don’t even have to walk to the chippie, Just Eat will deliver your junk food to your front door.

100% agree with trauma-centred treatments from a previous poster. Any and all addictions are rooted in trauma and as such are mental healthy issues. I come from a family with many obese members and I had an eating disorder so this an area I've thought about very deeply. Sadly the MH side is so often played down by society. Phrases such as 'I'm not that bad', or ' I feel OK so it must be something else'. People are very reluctant to believe something like overeating is an addiction in response to a deep-rooted health issue for which trauma therapy is the best treatment. Why? I still don't understand. Perhaps because they think addicts have needles in their arms and they secretly despise them.

Anorexia is a mental illness, my niece is currently sectioned and tube-fed, under psychiatric care

Being obese is very common, most humans overeat to some extent, if they can afford to, and obesity is not a mental illness IMO and very different from anorexia.

The majority of the U.K. is struggling with weight, being either overweight or obese.

It’s the new “normal” in a sense

Not something that needs psychiatric intervention