MNetters obsession with weight and dress size

[pagopago]

Why are MN posters so obsessed with weight and dress size?

There have recently been quite a lot of weight related threads.

Depressing to see that women are still very much judged on appearance and body size. I couldn't care less what size you are or how much you weigh. Just be a decent, kind person.

No fat shaming or body shaming from me.

As for health, just remember everyone dies of something in the end. Even slim people can become ill. Not all health issues are down to weight.

People don’t choose to be obese. Most people are just going about their daily business and enjoying their life in a food environment where portions are excessive and food is ultra-processed. Plus none of us get as must exercise as our ancestors.

I have been obese my entire life and have battled it endlessly. The slimmest I ever was still counted as overweight officially. I don’t drink excessively or smoke or take illegal drugs. I work hard, pay my taxes and I exercise regularly. I have this one problem which is not of my choosing and despite all my efforts cannot get it under my control.

I don’t think I deserve to be vilified as a result.

It's honestly so pro Ana on here. It reminds me of the old pro ana websites that were around in 2007.

So toxic.

See my obesity doesn't cost the NHS anything
The chronic illnesses I have which aren't caused by my weight did, the spinal surgery caused by repetitive exercise did, the numerous sports injuries etc
Not everyone who is obese is unfit or dropping down from health issues
It's not like I'm advocating being fat is great but within being fat I do my best to be as healthy as I can with food, exercise, managing stress etc etc

I don't think it's clear cut
If you're normal weight, do no exercise, eat processed food, drink and smoke socially is that healthier than someone who is overweight but doesn't drink or smoke and exercises 5 days a week?
My friend is a size 6 and can't run upstairs without being out of breath, I'm not sure that's healthy at any size

Literally getting to the point of being sick of being lectured. Some, women actually would like to be a certain number on the scale/ dress size. I don’t care how healthy or not it it is. Please let us be

I'm not in the business of telling anybody what to weigh. I was always slim when younger, gained a couple of stone and was unhappy and then lost it all recently and am very slim again.

I am so so much happier being back to my old dress size. So much happier. More confident. Fitter, I do running and yoga, I don't get out of breath at all now, my balance is great and I feel good.

I think what's most sad and hypocritical is that almost all overweight women feel upset about it, unhappy with themselves or their body. Unhappy how they look in certain clothes and unhappy with what they see in the mirror. The belief that if society accepted all overweight people as they are and weight was ignored, that they would magically feel okay with themselves, beautiful and amazing just isnt true. They would still be unhappy because slim women would still exist and be considered attractive and comparison is the theif of joy. Equally, blaming society for having a preference for healthy physical traits is ridiculous, you cant force somebody else to find your body type attractive. And of course people are more commonly drawn to normal, healthy, athletic bodies. It's nature. It is how attraction works. We cant change biology, I find slim men and women more attractive. Most people do outside of those with fetishes for weight.

I'm not excusing people being rude, bullying ir derogatory to overweight and obese people, that is different.

The point I'm making is that if you're unhappy with your body the only person who can change it is you. If you're happy overweight, crack on, but most people aren't.

Swings and roundabouts. MN has always been a bit extreme one way then swings to the other. Give it a few weeks and there'll be competitive over-eating threads.

I'd love to see the people criticizing obese and fat people lift the weights I do, or be able to run or keep up in fitness classes.

I'm 'fat' but working on being strong so I don't end up frail and with osteoporosis which is also a 'cost to the NHS'. But that's an acceptable cost is it? Or are we going to start blaming people for not working on avoiding it?

Fat doesn't equal unhealthy, stop assuming things and being nasty and judge mental on people's bodies.

Any fitness person will tell you food is fuel, don't label it good or bad and limiting yourself or you'll end up with eating disorders and a very unhealthy relationship with food.

I know it wasn’t a genuine thread but I was horrified by some of the responses to the thread about the person who was 5ft 4 and 6 stone 12 and whether that was concerning. Loads of “it depends” replies and at least one “sounds like a perfectly healthy weight to me”.

I tend to be interested because I am actually quite overweight (not half a stone 🙄) and I’m trying to lose weight. BUT some of the stuff is a bit mad, my 3yr old eats more than whats posted sometimes and she’s a healthy weight and active.

The thread about "can you look good at 13 stone" was awful. People who weigh 8 or 9 stone having put on a couple of lbs talking about how gross they feel and how awful it would be to be over 13 stone.

I'm currently at 15 st at 5ft3 due to a binge eating disorder. I already know I'm fat, and the reasons why. The thing that gets me is the joy at which these people are giving their height and weight and how much they'd simply hate to be fat - like me. Well, good for them to not have diagnosed mental health conditions manifesting as a binge eating disorder. The medication i take to control my mh also causes weight gain. But the instant your weight goes over a certain arbitrary line on Mumsnet, suddenly you're lesser than.

Oh you nugget you’ve completely misunderstood. It’s not about saying “woo fat is beautiful” and then magically all overweight people will be happy. It’s about people thinking that it’s appropriate for it to be shameful to be fat and then “wondering” why so many people are still fat.

you can think everyone is worried about how much everyone fancies them if you like, but that just sounds like projection.

On that thread the other day "Things that are socially acceptable but you wish were not" (or similar), I posted that fat shaming had become the social norm, and that being the slightest bit fat made you a social pariah.

It got not one single comment of agreement or acknowledgement. Too busy moaning about vaping or parking or something.

Call it confirmation bias but it's reassuring to see a thread like this instead. I'm fat, I know I'm fat, I know how to lose weight but it isn't always simple to just do it. I feel ashamed already, and someone huffing about not having half a seat to themselves on the bus once in a blue moon (not everybody is fat) just reduces my value in normal society even further. As a commuter I didn't much like being squashed up against a smoker or someone with poor personal hygiene but what can you do.

I do think it's getting better though - in certain areas or shops I used to see multiple people far bigger than I am, but I noticed the other day that I saw more slim people than fat ones. Lots of large celebrities are losing huge amounts of weight, though I suspect a gastric band on some of them - nothing wrong with that (I don't consider it "cheating", having a band or bypass is incredibly hard) but it doesn't change your disordered approach to food, it just physically prevents you eating it.

We need to make a lifestyle change but old habits die extraordinarily hard. And my worth is not decided by how heavy I am.

This could have been written by me. Glad I'm not alone.

I just looked at that 1000 calorie thread 'too many carbs'. Laughs forever.
Life is too short to go without pasta.

YANBU. I wish MN would do something about the competitive undereating threads, in the way they pop onto threads about mental illness with some standard guidance and links.

The thread about "can you look good at 13 stone" was awful. People who weigh 8 or 9 stone having put on a couple of lbs talking about how gross they feel and how awful it would be to be over 13 stone
Agree with you.
I was on that thread and said you could predict how it was going to go from the first page:
Group 1: people underweight or low healthy range claiming they'd be gross and obese if they were 10 stone
Group 2: people saying an obese BMI doesn't matter, BMI is rubbish, anyone who says otherwise is body shaming

It's the same on most threads about weight and size.

Where are you seeing all these posts? I agree there are a few PPs who do seem obsessive about weight and have strange views on what is “too big” but they are a small minority.

I see just as many posters who say they looked “gaunt” at 10 stone, that BMI is a load of rubbish, etc.

The belief that if society accepted all overweight people as they are and weight was ignored, that they would magically feel okay with themselves, beautiful and amazing just isnt true. They would still be unhappy because slim women would still exist and be considered attractive and comparison is the theif of joy.

The issue is society holding up thinness as well as meeting a very narrow set of aesthetics as the only way women can be beautiful is the whole problem though. If society truly accepted fat people and weight was ignored, and fat people were seen in advertising for things other than junk food, they wouldn't then be bombarded with messages literally every way they turn that thin is best, and therefore put unrealistic pressures on themselves which turns to self hatred.

I think understandably, people focus on what bothers them and they filter out the rest. My experience of MN over years is that there's always extremes, little middle ground and lots of exaggeration depending on what the tone of the thread is

For every thread where it seems to be competitive undereating, there are other ones or other posts which go the other way and you get the competitive overeating ones.

My take on these diet/food threads is that a lot of MNetters must have seriously fucked up metabolisms.

They seem to exist on diets which in terms of calorific value wouldn't be out of place in a concentration camp. And still do copious amounts of exercise. Things like counting out 2 almonds as a snack and the obsessive hatred of carbs. The worst is when people post their toddlers diets and then are berated for letting their DC eat things like a rice cake.

We deified thinness in the 90s. Heroin chic. Waif look. Diet books and shakes and clubs everywhere, eating disorders out the wazoo. No nice clothes for anyone over a 90s size 16. Kate Winslet was a brave choice of casting in Titanic because by the standards of the day, she was chunky (yes, I know). A lot of people were thrilled to see her, but a lot complained. It got tongues wagging. She was not the norm.

And we still got fatter.

Anyone who still thinks shame works is honestly an idiot. It clearly and demonstrably doesn't. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but we tried shaming people and denying them nice things and telling them at every turn how ugly and worthless they were and gee whizz, it didn't work.

I actually think it's a lack of understanding that not everyone is built the same or has a body that works the same. As I've mentioned before, I have stage 3 lipoedema and am sick to the back bastarding teeth of explaining that lipoedema fat is different to normal fat, it's not metabolic so no amount of dieting and exercise is going to shift it and it just keeps on growing. It's a genetic disease and my mum has it. I'm 2/3 of the way through my liposuction treatment and while I feel better, I don't look much different because of the loose skin it's left behind. Combine that with the fact that I have my dads ridiculous ribcage and I am never going to have a normal BMI even when I'm dead 🙄 plus I'm 5ft 9.
I need hernia surgery but our CCG refuses to give any sort of surgery unless life saving, to either smokers or anyone with a BMI over 30 and even my GP acknowledges that with my marvellous genetics I'll never get there but they just won't budge.

This is nothing to do with what I eat (I did a food based degree as I'd been on a diet since the age of 11 and already knew about calories and nutrition) and I've spent most of my life starving or making myself sick, but according to most of MN, I deserve to be bullied and thought of as a drain on society and repulsive, it's all my own fault dontcha know, because some 5ft 2 size 6 framed fuckwit knows my body better than me. If it wasn't so damaging it would be hilarious!

Obesity is normal, technically.

There was one thread recently which - inadvertently - subverted a lot of the Mumsnet norms on diet, and which really made me laugh.

The OP was proud she’d lost a few stone on a diet and kept it off, going from an obese weight to one in the normal range. There were lots of congratulatory posts, and posters wondering how she’d done it. Lots of speculation on whether she’d completely cut out carbs, don’t intermittent fasting etc.

A few pages in the OP posted that actually she’d simply stuck to a daily calorie limit (I think 1500) and had ate a lot of prepackaged sandwiches and ready meals as it’s easy to count the calories in these. And had had the occasional chocolate bar.

You could almost feel the bafflement and confusion in the replies to this as it contradicted so many mumsnet diet edicts. She ate lots of carbs? Didn’t cook everything from scratch? Three meals a day? Chocolate bars?? And lots of posters tried to row back on their original congratulations and be ‘concerned’ over the health of her diet.

YANBU @pagopago