Or is the competitive under eating on mumsnet harmful?

[foreverlobsters]

Full disclaimer- I have a history of eating disorders myself so am possibly over sensitive to this.

Have been reading through another currently active thread as well as what we eat in a day etc (which I occasionally post on and do find interesting). Why do people feel the need to post about their extremely low calorie days on here, or give potentially harmful advice? What's the incentive exactly- and are these people lying about how much they really eat or is most of the mumsnet population in an extreme calorie deficit? Do these people not see how selfish and damaging these posts can be?

I love the baked beans in the corner of the infograph 😂

Yanbu. They're full of the types of people who proclaimed fruit is unhealthy because its full of sugar. I sometimes have a laugh at the food posts on here. It's a running joke with my partner when we are working out how much food to cook. We will say to each other how many mumsnetter's would that feed etc.

@Neonplant

Yanbu. They're full of the types of people who proclaimed fruit is unhealthy because its full of sugar. I sometimes have a laugh at the food posts on here. It's a running joke with my partner when we are working out how much food to cook. We will say to each other how many mumsnetter's would that feed etc.

And the people who think it’s child abuse to let a toddler have an apple because of the sugar….

@PurpleDaisies

The thread on restaurant portion sizes was full of posters judging anyone who could eat a whole meal at one of those with bigger portion sizes.

No it wasn’t. It was full of people taking the piss out of folks who said they couldn’t eat a whole portion 😂

LindaEllen
Shallwegoforawalk
Everybody burns at least 1500 calories even if they're in a bloody coma.

Well that's shite for a start.

Educate yourself. There's lots of literature online that you can read

There is lots of literature. You could look at the penn state equations for calculating RMR, which do not suggest everyone burns at least 1500 calories in a coma, certainly not someone my size, sex and age. And then you could look at the literature that finds, while they’re some of the best predictive equations out there, they’re still wrong nearly 30% of the time because our bodies aren’t all identical replicas of some average. Some people need more, some people need less.

These statements that we all need something when lots of people don’t are also harmful - setting people up to feel like failures when they find trying to stick to advice based on averages leaves them constantly failing.

My GP has told me that the 1200 I was following is actually the max for me as a menopausal woman and I should be looking to reduce that…. 🤷‍♀️

This is complete bullshit advice. I know lots of active menopausal and post-menopausal women who climb/run/bike regularly, maintain a healthy weight, maintain good levels of muscle, and eat a lot more than 1200 calories a day.

@NiceGerbil

It's really hard to avoid threads that are a thing you have issues with yourself.

When I had pnd and anxiety and got irrational about a ridiculous thing, I was like a moth to a flame on threads that looked to be related.

Is it a certain topic? Hide it?
If there's a thread title that hits you hide it and go and do something else for a bit might make you less likely to go looking?

Recognising disordered eating isn't 'irrational' though. Yes OP has specific issues and the threads may also be triggering, but there are many that don't realise that their eating habits aren't healthy, and making posts about not eating for over 24 hours and having others validate it is harmful.

It's like the 'thinspo' movement, very harmful in its influence and social media sites like Instagram work hard to block access to those types of posts. There's nothing wrong with talking about it and making suggestions like some have in this post for MN admins to be a bit more selective with the threads they allow.

Some GPs are totally clueless re dietary issues. I think try 1500 without too many carbs or sugar say for a couple of weeks.

I remember one mumsnetter feeling fleeced as her DH was charged nearly 50 quid for chip shop fish and chips for a family of four or something similar. She put her order up, something like 4 chips, 2 fish, 2 battered sausage, large curry large peas.
She was annihilated by mumsnetters claiming 1 portion of fish and chips could feed a family of 4 for a week.

There's also the regular aghastness at serving mash or chips with pie, apparently the crust is carb enough.

In my entire working life the majority of people either take or buy sandwiches for lunch. But the on here it's leftovers from the massive salad at 6 day chicken or 3 almonds and a green tea.

I have yet to see anything about 'thinso' in the diets section. Just people with overweight or obese bmis trying to do better for themselves.

And I have only just begun to lose weight oh so slowly with a 1200 calorie limit. So thin people telling me it's unhealthy is kinda goady.

It's very easy to preach about being healthy if you are a size ten. And people with eating disorders should have the self control to stay away from weight loss threads.

It sounds increasingly like people would like to pull the support from people who genuinely need to lose weight and rely on those threads for morale support. If I see a recipe I don't like on there, guess what, revelation, I don't use it.

I agree that MN has a very weird attitude to eating. It's either take aways three nights a week and a bottle of wine with a tub of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting, or it's half a can of soup and a massive salad to last you through the day.

It creeps into threads about children's diets as well. All the sugar in fruit! Ridiculous. No one ever got fat eating six apples a day.

The saddest, strangest thing I ever read on here with regards to eating was one poster who said that she had cut sugar from her diet almost completely and if she ever fancied something sweet, she would toast a piece of dry bread and eat it because the sugar crystallised on the outside or something. I think she was talking about the breadcrumbs toasting on the surface, but in her head that was 'sugar'. I just remember thinking fucking hell, life is so short and there she is in her kitchen, miserably munching on dry toast for a cheap sugar thrill, all just to stay thin enough (enough for who? for what?).

I still get depressed thinking about it.

I think people are missing the fact that these undereating posts are not in the diet section (though there haslve been some very questionable posts in there in past, but that's gone away), but they are on AIBU and chat etc.
I mean feel free to test it and start a thread about whether 1 tin of tuna is a portion or really 2 as can suggests.

@BelleOfTheProvince

I have yet to see anything about 'thinso' in the diets section. Just people with overweight or obese bmis trying to do better for themselves.

And I have only just begun to lose weight oh so slowly with a 1200 calorie limit. So thin people telling me it's unhealthy is kinda goady.

It's very easy to preach about being healthy if you are a size ten. And people with eating disorders should have the self control to stay away from weight loss threads.

It sounds increasingly like people would like to pull the support from people who genuinely need to lose weight and rely on those threads for morale support. If I see a recipe I don't like on there, guess what, revelation, I don't use it.

The competitive underrating is rife throughout the site, nothing to do with the specific weight loss section. You only have to read the examples in this thread to see that.

Obviously a weight loss thread will involve calorie restriction, that's expected, the example a few posts above is about someone complaining of the price of fish and chips and all the comments it pulls on how much food that it and stories about how little people eat in comparison. That is harmful.

And that's just one example, many threads on AIBU and Chat have instances of competitive under eating.

@Annoyedanddissapointed

Exactly, this isn't people seeking advise on how to lose weight on a dieting board.
Its people asking if they've been fleeced for fish and chips, or if pie and mash is a good choice for a school friend coming for tea.

I have yet to see anything about 'thinso' in the diets section. Just people with overweight or obese bmis trying to do better for themselves.

Yes, this is the type of post I see most often, more than both over and under eating posts. It is always an OP that really is overweight, they describe how they are cutting back a bit only to get replies like "noooo OP you are undereating, you are going to be malnourished, that's starvation, you need to eat at least twice that". As if a person 25 kg overweight is going to skip breakfast and fall down dead!

I think the replies are mostly overweight people who don't like the idea that it is healthy to diet. They want to believe that being overweight is one thing, but cutting back calories is very dangerous, and definitely not something to try. Along with a few naturally thin/normal size people who can't understand that some people want more food but need less.

I don’t get it. You have an ED, so instead of leaving the dieting threads well alone, you are going to report them???

Leave the poor people who are trying to be healthy alone. They may have diabetes and have been told by their dr to lose weight and are looking for support. You don’t know their story and you are not their dr so don’t know if they have been told to eat 1200 cal a day.

There are drs recommending fasting and using it in their clinics with patients. Again, it’s none of your business if people choose to eat in a time restricted window. Leave them be and stick to AIBU or relationships boards

@Nonicknamesforcatapillars

I’m always amazed by the under eating that goes on on mumsnet. It’s almost as if it’s some sort of competition.

I’ve made a mental note not to every post a good thread. One poster asked about her toddlers perfectly normal and acceptable diet and she was torn to shreds!! You’d think she’d been feeding the child mcdonnalds and ben and Jerry’s, mixed with lard, for every meal if you went by some of the comments!

Then there's the dc who only take cous cous and hummus in their lunchbox, they love eating eaw artichokes and as a very rare treat have a hm sugar free flapjack...suppodedly. Or all the faux shocked posters exclaiming that a teenage bowl is actually snacking... Ridiculous

Leave them be and stick to AIBU

That's actually where the problem is @Blondebakingmumma
The weightloss section is still OK compared to some of the crazy stuff out here

@BeenAsFarAsMercyAndGrand

My GP has told me that the 1200 I was following is actually the max for me as a menopausal woman and I should be looking to reduce that…. 🤷‍♀️

This is complete bullshit advice. I know lots of active menopausal and post-menopausal women who climb/run/bike regularly, maintain a healthy weight, maintain good levels of muscle, and eat a lot more than 1200 calories a day.

Quite. I'm post-menopausal, now and consume 1800-2000 calories a day and maintain a bmi of 23.5 without being the least bit athletic. My carb tolerance is a lot less than it used to be, though.

I think the thing about children's lunch boxes is that so many are policed by the schools. They get notes about not having a yoghurt and fruit as that is classed as 2 desserts or something equally as stupid. Of course many people on here are school staff so will stick up for school policies....

The thing about calories is that individual people do have different requirements. I run, walk and do resistance exercises daily but if I eat more than say, 1800 cals I usually find myself putting on a bit of weight. So I just adjust my portions accordingly and watch my weight. I sometimes go over and am sometimes under. People are different heights, have different muscle mass and even if they exercise might be sedentary for a lot of the day, have different fitness levels. It all affects how many calories are burnt.

And I'm pre menopausal and a normal intake of 2000 pushed up my BMI to 29. That's one point from obesity.
The point is different people's bodies respond differently to different types of food. And your body doesn't respond the same throughout your life either. You might be able to maintain a size ten even with overeating in your twenties, but perhaps your hormones or medication pushes you into a larger BMI in your 40s.

Just because you can get away with xyz doesn't mean everyone can. It actually comes across as kind of fat shaming if people go around saying you can eat 2000 calories and have a great BMI. It implies that those that can't do that are gluttonous and must be overeating.
A lot of our weight is down to genetics and people can't help that. I have nothing but respect for people who have unhealthy bmis and lose the weight through dieting. Especially as they have to entirely change their lifestyle and to some extent ignore their body's (mistaken) signals.
I do, however question the motives of people who feel the need to police those trying to lose weight.
And to be honest, if you are prone to putting on weight a whole portion of fish and chips would impact your BMI if you did it regularly enough. So for those of us that have worked hard to lose weight we might portion it out as an occasional treat, nothing wrong with that.
But I have yet to see these threads in the wild, so I can't possibly comment on that. All I would say is that if you are that effected by others' eating habits then social media is probably not for you.

And gain I think bone frame size will affect a lot. I'm almost coming to the conclusion it is a missing link in all things metabolic. I am small framed (small wrists, narrow hip bone to hip bone, narrow shoulders, small waist). I'm probably have the same bodily area as someone shorter but of more average build. It does affect muscle mass and how much fat looks right on your frame and how much food you need to sustain you.

YANBU

I remember the first time I read "what do you eat in a day" thread in chat. I was just being nosey and maybe get some inspiration for different meals.

I found it really weird after reading the first 2 pages and it was just people living on a handful pine nuts and small drop of yogurt I kept reading thinking when are the normal eaters going to turn up? I think all the ridicules diet posts put normal posters off posting.

So although I wasn't going to post as was just being nosey I decided to post to try and encourage some balance, but I think it was too late in the thread and any normal person would have already closed it or were probably feeling shit about what they eat.

My daily diet post looked so extreme to everything else posted and probably looked goady to the undereaters. I don't have a problem with food or my body, but even I had a little wobble after posting wondering if I maybe do eat crap.

Luckily the wobble lasted all of a minute, but I can imagine some other people being more affected by it. if they already have some insecurities about their weight or body.

@NewYearNewTwatName i can see what you mean by that wobble.
I am on a diet and lost 50kilo by now. I eat waaaay more than half of posters on one of these threads together🤷🏻 I absolutely get why it would give someone a wobble!