To still live my best life even though I’m fat

[Whatyagonnadokatie]

Many mnetters hate fat people. They dress it up as concern for health. But I think it’s something deeper than that. Something about us letting ourselves lose self discipline or something. Some people even seem to think that we shouldn’t have nice clothes (let me tell you, no one purposely gains weight to wear some lovely plus size clothes).

reading some threads on here break my heart when women dread going to social events because they are fat.

aibu to say, fuck that, get on with your life and be happy even if you are fat. Wear the nice clothes, go to all the social events. And hey, eat the biscuit if you really want to

We live in an obesogenic environment. The question really is (given our genes and evolutionary history) why any of us remain slim! To tackle obesity, we need to tackle it at the social and environmental level. It cannot be dealt with at the individual level.

The most sensible comment on the whole thread. Processed food companies are motivated to keep us addicted to foods high in refined sugar, fats and salt and have the most devious strategies to sell the shit they make to people who are stressed, time poor and looking for comfort/a treat. Not even the cigarette companies are as effective at conning the public into buying their addictive, unhealthy products.

You don’t have to buy processed foods though. Pasta, rice, whole grain bread, lean meats, vegetables, fruit, water not fizzy drinks.

These are plenty of other options, also cheap, like many UPFs are, to feed yourself and your family with.

And if you want insight into food addiction,
Rachel Batterham has done a lot of work in it.

Avoid these foods to begin with - avoid the crap.

I rarely buy it if I can avoid it. Some people don’t have that xhoixe of course, but many of us do.

But loads of overweight people on threads always wax lyrical about how very moderate and healthy their diets are “, and they always seem to walk everywhere

But then the ones that have lost weight and kept it off say that when they were obese - they ate shit but denied it to themselves and did measley movement

I'm just under 9 stone. I eat 3 meals a day and my husband isn't cheating on me with a slim PT at the gym. I'm happy and healthy. Not every slim person rations lettuce leaves.

Do you also think that fat people cry into their box of donuts as their husbands cheat on them with someone who's not fat and a lot more attractive according to society? Probably not. But the fat ones are so quick to project their own feelings on the slim.

Assuming skinny people are unhealthy won't make the fat ones any healthier.

There is absolutely no reason to glamourise being fat. None at all.

@Quincythequince
You don't really understand the role of the endocrine system and appetite/metabolism do you?

Read about the role of ghrelin and leptin in governing appetite (those people who find it easy not to eat usuallly have a different hormone profile)
Read about how they change in response to weight loss and the effect on appetite.
Read about how the metabolism changes in response to weight loss to make it harder to keep the weight off.

We don't live in famine conditions thankfully but our bodies think we do if we lose weight.

Personally i prefer scientific evidence to cherry picking anecdotes on mumsnet

I would love to be a fly on the wall if you were obese and sat across the table from your GP. You’d got the appointment because your knees were bothering you and you were becoming increasingly breathless.

And the GP said it was likely due to being obese in part.

and you said that back to them 😂

I’m sure you do.

google anything and you’ll find “scientific evidence” for it!

seriously - name anything and I will find a paper or body that will argue in favour of it

@Doingprettywellthanks it's much easier to make population-level observations on weight and related health conditions. At a population level we know we eat too much sugar, too much processed food, that we don't get enough exercise or sleep, and that people don't have enough information/awareness/time/money to make good healthy choices all the time.

At an individual level someone might say they're doing all the right things but are still overweight, or eating 5000 calories of pizza and ice cream a day and are a healthy weight. But (a) we have no way of knowing if any of it is true and (b) if it is true then they have other things going on.

Plenty of people on MN are perfectly happy to say "yeah, I don't eat a brilliant diet and I don't do enough exercise so I'm overweight as a result." Just look at the threads in weight loss chat. But they don't get much attention.

😂

Indeed I do chutzpah!
I understand it very well indeed.

This is unrelated to thyroid issues, but commonly dysregulated in fat people because they are fat. So so am not sure where you are going with this.

And they can normalise after an effective WL
plan and a low GI high protein WM plan.
But it takes a lot of work a d lifelong management.

There won’t be a paper I haven’t read on this (up until end June anyway).

FYI my PhD work (many moons ago) looked at satiety hormones, including CCK, GLP-1 (the activity of which is the basis of drugs like Saxenda and Ozempic).

I do understand and it’s not easy. But it’s not impossible and that narrative of ‘I can’t help it’ needs to stop.

And they will likely be the ones that lose the weight and keep it off.

My dietitians get this all the time.

People adamant that they don’t to overeat and there’s nothing much that they can improve.

It’s wearing and according to them, not unlike dealing with anorexics who lie about how much (they’re not) eating.

You can’t help someone w who doesn’t want to be helped.

Many patients discharged by dietitians in the first instance because no personal responsibility is accepted.

Those people aren’t worth bothering about OP, ignore them

As a global population we are all getting fatter. You can either conclude that humans are getting stupider, more weak willed and morally degenerate as a species or you can think that maybe something else is going on. I.e. increased refined sugars and UPFs, increased sedentary lifestyles, relentless marketing by processed food companies who push their addictive products on unsuspecting people (Frosties as "part of a healthy breakfast" really, Kellogg?).

It's not surprising people get fat, it is surprising that people deny that their lifestyle is irrelevant to their fatness.

It's not surprising people get fat, it is surprising that people deny that their lifestyle is irrelevant to their fatness

100% agree

My conclusion is…. More food available, both huge increase in fruit and veg AND huge increase in UPF

Some have thrown themselves headlong in to the latter pile and are now experiencing the upshot of that

the main differentiator between those overweight that lose weight and keep it off and those that don’t is….the former accept their role in the situation and don’t expend enormous (static!) energy pursing reasons why their obesity was somehow thrust them without their involvement

Sorry I haven’t read the thread or even the context of this conversation but this reply has properly tickled me 😂

Then why do 95% of diets fail?
If you talk about people not being fat in genuine food shortages to mock 'excuses' of hormones then I'm not sure you do understand how our bodies work against us.
Sure it's not impossible, thats true, one in 20 people will succeed to lose weight long term but I wouldn't call those good odds for any treatment and I certainly wouldn't push it as effective.

Its very easy for a gp to say 'lose weight. Will that gp then refer said patient for bariatric surgery which is the only.proven effective way to lose weight long term for obese patients? Or just propose a treatment with a 5% success rate?

hi all, op here, I’ve not disappeared. But I was out living my best life wearing a nice dress and eating tapas.

im not saying being fat is healthy. It’s not.

but I am saying that fat women should still get on with their lives, wear nice clothes, and be happy to get out and socialize without feeling guilty and judged.

This this this.

It still doesn’t mean that people have to eat it though. Just as they didn’t have to smoke when they saw a cigarette advert…

Any evidence for that judgemental statement? Is it based on any kind of study?

They don’t!
That stat is unfounded.

And it’s the maintenance phase that’s the issue, not the loss. That’s after the weight is off and you are trying to maintain a new regime.

People struggle to adapt to a new healthier diet, with lower calories, to suit a smaller body that needs less energy.

They slowly revert back to bad habits and it creeps on over time.

It’s not until 60 that you see metabolic changes that really really start to make it harder (published last year).

It’s hard work keeping weight off, it’s hard work over time being fat and it becomes even harder as we age. It’s a cliche but people need to choose their hard.

And I haven’t mocked anything. You not liking an explanation borne out of science because it doesn’t suit your narrative, is not mocking.

Diets generally don't work long term but changing the way you eat for good can. Endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig has written about this in Fat Chance and more recently Metabolical.