To call out friend on 'body positivity' delusion?

[treesandflowers95]

My bestie (i'll call her 'J') and I have been friends since primary school. She's godmother to my DD and we almost see each other as sisters as friends.

J has always been a curvier girl but as we've gone through our 20s, she's steadily put on more and more weight. She's 5ft 2 and now a size 30. Over the last couple of years its been noticeable how much into the 'body positivity' movement shes got. Her socials are full of shared posts about it, and she'll often bring it up in conversation.

Its not something i've ever really made an issue of with her before as though it worries me for her, i've always been of the view that everybody's body is their own business.

However we were on a hen do a few weeks ago, and honestly it was a real eye opener to just how big she's got and the impact that's starting to have on her health. The first one for me was that she needed a seatbelt extender on the flight and she seemed to think it was hilarious. We stayed in a villa on the edge of a little area with a strip of bars and restaurants. It was 350yds (i put it into Google maps) and slightly downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back, but nothing major. J was struggling to keep up with us on the way there, and on the way back was having to stop at least once because she was so out of breath. Bear in mind this was a group of girls quite a few in heels etc so its not like we were sprinting, and shes sweating and bright red. Aside from that, even basic stuff round the villa like walking upstairs (it was over 3 floors) and she struggled climbing up and down the ladders in and out of the pool. I didnt say anything to her at the time but its played on my mind.

This weekend there were four of us (all close friends) who'd been on the hen do out for drinks in the pub. We were talking about the hen do and i can't remember how it came up, but she started talking about the walk back to the villa and how steep the hill was etc. I said to her something along the lines of 'Oh it wasn't that bad' to which she replied 'Are you joking, it was so steep!' and was basically trying to get the other girls to agree and I just left it.

A bit later in the conversation she was talking about some body positivity stuff and how its about how you look after yourself and not how much you weigh. I've bit my tongue at stuff like this loads of times, but this time i said 'I think that's true to an extent but there's a point where you can't argue that you're healthy'. She didn't look happy and said 'what are you saying?'. I basically said that the fact she thought that walk on holiday was so difficult that she should have struggled with it so much was worrying, and might suggest her health wasn't as good as she seems to think it is. The reality is (and I didn't say this to her) that she eats really badly and drinks quite a lot. She spends loads on hair, make up, nails, etc which she considers as looking after herself.

She got really frosty with me, and has been funny in texts since, not her usual self, so i know i've annoyed her.

Fully accept it may not have been the best way to bring it up especially in front of others (but it wasnt like it was strangers, we're all mates back to primary school) but i just felt like it wasn't a time where i could just say nothing in the moment.

So i guess question is AIBU to have brought this up with her, and any advice on how to handle things next.

As for the Mayo Clinic.

I find it rather odd they put the figure as LESS than 5% of people whom are obese due to health reasons.

Look alone at the statistics for PCOS. Just ONE health condition. According to WHO - up to 13% of women have it. Up to 70% of cases, are undiagnosed. Obesity affects somewhere between 40-90% of sufferers of PCOS.

Obesity is highly correlated with PCOS - which is why metformin is still prescribed so often, at least in the UK. And works. And before anyone starts the 'alongside dietary changes' - no. This is without dietary changes.

The figures don't quite make sense, especially considering the point I made in an earlier post about how that reference doesn't seem to account for psychological factors, eating disorders, or undiagnosed cases.

There are plenty of fat people walking around with unknown health conditions they are getting zero assistance with, and just being labelled as lazy and greedy.

You can delude yourself that people who are fat just have no willpower and are greedy people all you want. It's true, in some cases. It's not true in a hell of a lot of cases. We need to support people suffering with obesity. But then we'd not be able to walk around feeling really ace about ourselves for calling people greedy and lazy, would we?

@SpeakfromExperience

Isn't it bizarre how UK and US have some of the biggest obesity stats in the world.
Whereas Asian, Italy, France and Switzerland, our European neighbours have some of the lowest.
I wonder why those countries are exempt from the fact that by your analogy most of their population not having mental health problems.

It's because in most cases obesity is due to lifestyle choices.

I also wonder why just some decades ago that obesity was pretty rare in this country. Again, change in life style choices.

The countries I've listed above of course are not exempt from mental health problems. They choose to look after themselves better. Just like we did as a country decades ago.

Yes in some cases obesity is due to medical issues (mental health involved) but in most cases it's not. It's just overeating and not moving enough. There's so many posters on threads like this who say 'I'm fat / obese because I like cake too much' and it's a matter of willpower.

What happened to your friend is shocking, nobody deserves to go through that. But if that's really the case, the general publics safety is at risk of being misdiagnosed because they're obese, surely that's a given reason to change that? To get back to good health? I used to be fat. No one in this world would've got me to a size 8 apart from me. There has to be accountability.

You get yourself there, only you (unless you have medical intervention and pay for it) can get yourself out.

There are many, many reasons why you would see a difference in different societies, over time. We still see a higher percentage of body fat (which would be classed as obesity) in many parts of the world - studies have been done into that, if you would search for resources that don't fit your agenda. You've also had some really good, knowledgeable posts from members here addressing your points, if only you'd listen to them.

No - her experience of being mistreated by the medical community is not a sign she needs to change. It's a sign that they, and people like yourself whom harbour negative attitudes that result in mistreating fellow human being based on their body fat percentages, need to change. It's not hard to be a decent human being, and pull yourself out of bias, if you want to.

I did suspect, from your posts, honestly & genuinely, that you were previously fat. There is a certain loathing undertone that I've seen before in people whom used to be larger. It's not something you can exactly ask someone though.

I think the sound points being made against your crude notion of 'individual choice' may be passing you by? Do you think the UK and US suddenly contain a disproportionate number of lazy individuals? Or could it be something to do with social developments in the organisation of work and food production in those economies over the last few decades? 'Choices' are formed in a social context and exercised in material conditions.

As for the Mayo Clinic.

I find it rather odd they put the figure as LESS than 5% of people whom are obese due to health reasons.

Mayo Clinic has a large and highly profitable bariatric surgery business. So it makes sense for them to present obesity as something mostly caused by just being greedy, which can be fixed with $$$$$ surgery.

Like you I am not sure why Mayo's marketing materials are being quoted on this thread as somehow being the apex of medicine. They're a highly profitable and expensive business who are motivated to present seemingly objective medical advice in such a way as to persuade the patient to choose the most profitable form of treatment.

Bariatric surgery does this as a) it's expensive and b) results in a lot of long term health problems, meaning that the Mayo Clinic has a patient for life. Very good for their annual profit growth, less good for the patient, who may potentially have benefitted more from 10 weeks of residential DBT to address the psychological reasons behind their disordered eating and give them life long tools which would lead to healthy and sustainable weight loss.

Thank you for this input. Points I had genuinely not thought of, or considered - but make a lot of sense.

There is so many knowledgeable people contributing to this thread offering lots of information.

Obesity is a problem. But it's not simply a problem of 'greedy and laziness'. There is so, so much behind it that needs to be addressed for the obesity problem to really be tackled.

Art thou kidding? 47% of adults in France are overweight. It's becoming a huge problem, plus their smoking rates and much higher.

Italy has very high smoking rates. Obesity in women is less prevalent but that's because it's a deeply sexist society in which women's bodies are still overtly policed by their male relatives (speaking as someone from that part of the world).

China has a burgeoning problem with youth obesity as does Japan.

Switzerland is the playground of super rich tax dodgers, all of whom have time and leisure to pursue the body beautiful both organically and surgically, so I think we can skip that one.

She didn’t ask the OP anything other than if she thought the walk was steep. You can say ‘no, I didn’t’ without saying ‘you found the walk steep because you aren’t healthy’. You can also say ‘I don’t like talking about body positivity so much’ or ‘I don’t agree that you can be healthy at any size’ without saying ‘I think you are too fat because you could not perform that walk easily’.

It’s not hard to see what’s appropriate and inappropriate.

Did you purposefully miss this part?

A bit later in the conversation she was talking about some body positivity stuff and how its about how you look after yourself and not how much you weigh. I've bit my tongue at stuff like this loads of times, but this time i said 'I think that's true to an extent but there's a point where you can't argue that you're healthy'. She didn't look happy and said 'what are you saying?'. I basically said that the fact she thought that walk on holiday was so difficult that she should have struggled with it so much was worrying, and might suggest her health wasn't as good as she seems to think it is. The reality is (and I didn't say this to her) that she eats really badly and drinks quite a lot.

Here here!!

Why do you think it is ok to manipulate people into saying they support your addiction?

Your being kind and being adult all seems to go in one direction.

It reminds me a lot of some of the harm reduction approaches some take now with addicts. The problem is, they are horribly disempowering. People with addiction as and disordered eating are very vulnerable to hiding in a kind of powerless, childlike place. It's part of the disease.

It does them zero favours to actively help them maintain that illusion. It's in no way kind. It's disempowering and treats them like victims and children.

No one is suggesting pointing and calling her fat, or bringing it up constantly. But there is no need to demure when people try to manipulate others into affirming the healthiness of their addiction.

You made a point of saying that people who are overweight can't be fit. That is the general party line and most don't think beyond it. I took issue with your post because you blethered on about knee replacements needed. I'm in the gym most days and at least twice a week there is a woman who comes in first thing, she's obese but she does an hour with the same trainer I have.

I'm not obese, I have sore knees now and again. This woman does the same stuff that I do, leg presses, burpees, all impacting stuff and has been doing that for a while.

I don't think it was necessary for you to make a judgement of other people's fitness and oddly, I thought that having struggled yourself that you'd have a bit of insight but sadly not.

I'm leaving it there but every time I see a post saying that overweight people can't be fit, that women pops into my head. She's not an outlier, I think there are many overweight/obese people out there getting fitter because they can change that part of their lives.

Yu keep bringing up lazy which I don't think anyone has said.

There are absolutely huge changes in lifestyle overall in the west that have created the obesity crises. Not sitting down to meals. Going out to fast food weekly or even more. Snacking, Eating I the car, walking in the street, watching TV. Poor sleep habits. The push to cut out fat and substitute it with Suger. Kids being so busy that their parents don' t have time to cook. The end of "plain" cooking so people feel that if they can't make something fact them might as well have a ready meal. And snacking again because honestly I think that is one of the biggest ones. Driving everywhere. Kids not walking to school. The internet.

But these become reality at the level of the individual. And that's the only place where we have the power to make a difference, is to change our habits. It's not lazy to find that hard, but it's the only thing we can do.

*hear, hear that is! 😂

So you think it is your job to go around disabusing other adults of their beliefs. Interesting.

If one of my closest friends tries to get me to agree that her heroin addiction isn't that big a deal and she is doing fine, I have no obligation to pretend to agree; I have no obligation to treat her like a child, and I have every right to engage with the topic she has brought up with my real thoughts and feelings, since we are meeting as equals in the conversation.

In addition, when talking to my heroin addict friend about addiction which she brings up regularly. I think it would not be "kind" of me to pussyfoot around it and avoid engaging in the conversation about her beliefs as if she is an irresponsible moron.

JaneFallow
So you think it is your job to go around disabusing other adults of their beliefs. Interesting.

It’s everyone’s job if those beliefs are dangerous.

It's also everyone's job for as long as we have a socialised healthcare system paid for out of non-hypothecated taxes.

“Yes some people may be obese due to bad mental health, but that's such an overused excuse. A lot of the time it's just due to laziness, lack of willpower and greed. And if it is caused by that, and they started losing weight, their mental health would start to improve.“

Some people see laziness and greed as character flaws. Others see this behaviour as a coping strategy due to some form of distress or dis-ease, often mental health related. It’s two sides of the same coin really.

The point that I was making about shame (obviously badly since many people misunderstood it), was that when you see an obese person who is doing the body positivity thing, you never know if they have always been that weight and are deluded, or whether they had previously been two stone heavier.

No, that’s exactly the part I’m talking about – OP, shouldn’t have explicitly criticised her weight/health in connection to the walk or a conversation about body positivity, and that’s exactly what she did.

She can say she didn’t think the walk was hard and that she doesn’t think any size can be healthy WITHOUT bringing her opinion on friend’s weight/health into the equation, especially in a pub with their friends on an evening out.

That’s not a worried and caring friend, that’s someone who’s annoyed and feels the compulsion to correct.

Fitness and health are linked but not the same. Someone might be able to build up cardiovascular fitness (although in someone who is obese their ticker will always be under more strain), but their overall health will be challenged by their weight, most notable joints. I'm not sure anyone is suggesting that someone who is overweight can't exercise and has zero levels of fitness, but that weight affects it substantially. It's sad if someone is committed to working out can't shake the food addiction, hopefully they get support to overcome it.

The problem with using drug addiction as an equivalent is that, unless they are sleeping on the street with their teeth falling out, it doesn’t come with the daily social shame and criticism that a weight issue does. 99% of the time a drug addiction will be an largely unseeable issue.

If that's your mindset, wouldn't you be better served regulating the food production industry to protect public health?

It seems some posters are deliberately overlooking or missing the fact that this friend was the one to raise the frankly nonsensical bopo rhetoric:

"she was talking about some body positivity stuff and how its about how you look after yourself and not how much you weigh. I've bit my tongue at stuff like this loads of times, but this time i said 'I think that's true to an extent but there's a point where you can't argue that you're healthy'. She didn't look happy and said 'what are you saying?"

Anyone reasonable who sits and decides to raise the topic of how weight is irrelevant as long as you're 'looking after yourself' (which apparently is things like nails and makeup for her) would expect that others in the conversation are allowed to talk about it too and have their own opinions. If she didn't want that, she didn't have to raise it. It's like me sitting with a bunch of friends and deciding to say 'I'm so glad we left the EU! It really is the best thing for us as a country' and acting shocked and put out if someone else I'm speaking to says 'actually I disagree, I think we should have remained'.

She then, after hearing OP's opinion, asked her to elaborate with 'what are you saying?'

This friend sounds a bit dim tbh, I find it amazing you're all apparently best friends of many years but she takes umbrage at one of her best friends sharing an opinion that doesn't match her own. Friendship should be able to withstand that.

OP didn't raise this. The friend did.

Some people might be okay with sitting back and saying nothing for fear of upsetting their best friend who is slowly killing themselves. Not everyone is.