To wonder if ‘body positivity’ has gone too far?

[WildUmberScroller]

While I fully accept supporting everyone for who they are, sometimes I feel like the body positivity movement is promoting unhealthy lifestyles. AIBU to feel like there should be limits?

The other day there was a thread slating people for using WLI's as a tool for loosing weight. Fat people just cannot win.

It's all fun and games being fat ,untill your joints start giving up and your on high blood pressure meds
I've never been so thankful for anything in my life as I have for my WL injections

Which seems like proof that body positivity has, indeed, not gone too far?

Definitely. I sometimes watch these women on YouTube who try out the rides at Disneyworld to see if ‘plus size’ people will fit. Sorry but they’re just fat 🤷‍♀️

Also, the woman who’s ginormous and tries to squeeze into plane seats and then says that airlines should give her a free seat to accommodate her…She seems to forget that she’s draping herself all over the poor person next to her and taking up a third of the seat they’ve paid for. She says she’s gorgeous, she’s not.

that's pretty unkind, so only thin people can wear revealing clothes?

This entire thread is proof of that!

What does 'just fat' mean in this context? Fat and therefore nothing else about them matters? Fat and therefore worthless? Fat and inevitably a host of other negative things?

Yeah the plane seat thing impinges on other people (welcome to the world where other people exist and do antisocial things, especially on transport!) but apart from that what does it matter if a fat person tries out a rollercoaster and lets other fat people know if they'll fit or not? Why is that a problem?

Obesity is now PROVEN to be a disease. Medically and scientifically proven. GLP1 injections reverse that disease, they allow the GLP1 hormone to work as it should, as it does, in those of a healthy weight. It so outdated and ignorant to just say eat less move more, when we know, for a fact, people are deficient in the receptor's for this hormone, that controls hunger amongst other things. Judging people for something they genetically and biologically cannot change without a medication is disgusting. Its like judging and blaming a type 1 diabetic for needing insulin, or judging someone who is anaemic for needing iron, or judging anyone who requires a medication to be healthy.

These medications arent available to all, so in the mean time, allowing someone to live and be positive about themselves rather than degrade and humiliate them for their weight, surely, its just the bloody humane thing to do.

Well there’s less to see 😁

Are you telling me that all obese people are obese because they are medically inclined to be so???
gosh that must put an absolute spanner in the gym industry…

I think the gym industry - and wider diet industry - actually thrives on people struggling to lose weight and keep it off. It's what keeps them in business and makes demand high - the more that people struggle to lose weight, the bigger the boom for anyone selling weight-loss strategies, right?

We live in the age of The Individual and those individuals refuse to take personal responsibility for anything at all.

Which you can do whilst promoting body positivity. We have to move away from the idea you can tell how healthy someone is from their body type. You can have a high BMI but do loads of exercise, eat healthy and be happy. You can be slim through anxiety or smoking.

What needs to change is allowing companies to make and market unhealthy foods.

I can remember in my teens being rail thin and so fashion was accessible for me. But I can remember anyone over a size 14 had such a limited choice and to have to go into a store called ‘Evans Outsize’ must have been awful.
Once I did start to gain a few pounds I battled it and then ended up with an eating disorder. When the ‘size zero’ era arrived I was in my 30’s and seeing these young women who weren’t naturally thin starving themselves was awful.
I had a job in my 40’s which involved Instagram
and the ED reared its head again so I know how influential imagery can be.
Being ‘tiny’ may have been how I wanted to look but I never thought of the health consequences.
Now I’m in my 50’s and I can feel them. I also am probably moving towards overweight and that brings more health issues.
As a nation how and what we eat has changed so much. Eating alone looking at phones, fast food, takeaways, and increasing portion sizes often take us away from enjoying good food.
I think any extreme which is bad for your health in the long run is not good for you.
I also know that food is emotional issue that’s tied up with our mental state.
It’s great that inclusivity has improved so much. I also don’t like to think that anyone should be ashamed of how their body looks and feels. We only get one life and as my mum used to say, you are a long time looking at the lid of your coffin!
But in terms of health becoming unhealthy at a young age affects everything and three decades in trying to reverse that damage is difficult.
If you want a long, healthy life you need to eat for a long, healthy life but that also includes a sense of balance and enjoyment.

I think the people refusing to take responsibility are those whining that they have to look at fat people sometimes and can't handle the idea that people they personally disapprove of have the right to live their lives the way they choose. You can take personal responsibility to look away!

I used to be thinner and go to the gym ,every day ,I even went on my wedding day .
But then both my boys with autism came out of school ,due to mental health,and they couldn't be left alone together,and I couldn't get to the gym ,and all the weight I'd spend years loosing ,just came back on .
It was heartbreaking,..I couldn't even leave the house alone never mind get to the gym.
It's now 10 years later and Im tackling it again,I'm on WL injections,just to get me back to the size where I'm comfortable to go back to the gym .
Sometimes things aren't so black and white ,and life gets in the way and ruins your efforts to be thin , especially if your not a naturally thin person

Who said she liked being obese, she can feel confident and happy in herself and aim to lose weight for health reason..her weight is not tied to her love of herself, she is more than just her weight. Stop equating weight with worth.

Yes. Not everyone of course - which is why around 9% of people do not respond to the WLI. But if only 9% don't respond, thats 91% of people who are overweight, are overweight in part because they are deficient in GLP1 receptors that allow the body to respond the the GLP1 hormone. Thats a massive majority of people, who have been told all their life, by the media, by industries, by society, that they are lazy and need to eat less. When in fact, they have a hormonal imbalance as their body doesnt respond to the hormone that regulates food intake. This is why the injections stop "food noise". GLP1 tells us when we are hungry. If the brain isnt getting that message correctly, then they over eat. Even when a person has just eaten, that "food noise" is thinking about the next meal as the part of the brain that should stop, and does for people with adequate GLP1 receptors, continues. Its complex, but its proven, and not simply a choice to overeat.

Yes, a Dr or Nurse is not there as a mirror of an ideal. A Dr can smoke and also tell someone that smoking is bad because that is a fact and it is their job to give impartial medical advice that cannot be based on personal opinion. People have become so sensitive to any criticism, they now take medical advise as a personal attack and defend themselves like it's a school fight.

I think for me, it's about acknowledging that every body holds value and deserves respect regardless of size/ health/ ability/appearance etc and to try and move away from the stigmas that are attached to certain bodies. I don't feel that a plus size person should always have to come with a *health warning label to exist online or elsewhere. I understand why some people who are struggling with certain eating disorders may need this due to the nature of the eating disorder and "thinspo" posts being dangerous for others struggling, but again only where that is the intent of the post. Not where someone is just existing.

I think that when you're expecting the health warning you're also by default creating a situation where someone needs to disclose their private medical information which they're under no obligation to do. I know people who have put on really significant amounts of weight due to brain injury/ cancer treatment/, mental health. They are just as important and deserving of respect now than before and they shouldn't have to disclose any of that just because they're online and overweight. Similarly it would be disingenuous for them to talk about the dangers of obesity (as if they're only overweight because they like to eat) without explaining why this has happened. Its so much more nuanced and I think what you're looking for is overly simplistic.

I think it's more about getting away from judgement and letting people live as they want to or as they have no choice but to.

I fell down a rabbit hole when I googled The Fat Doctor UK and it came up with the notes from their warning from the General Medical Council on the first page of results

www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/documents/publishable-ic-minutes---dr-natasha-larmie-3-june-2024_pdf-107291633.pdf

That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.
I can afford private healthcare so I’m going to cancel my gym membership right now and schedule an appointment with my GP. I was also planning on getting up at 5am tomorrow before my household so that I could join my running group.
Also makes shopping so much easier now that I can just order Mr Delivery for a burger!

Thanks for saving me so much effort that I’ve been putting in to keep off all the weight I’ve lost. It’s quite tiring so you’ve really made my day. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Accepting who you are and loving your body regardless of what it looks like is not the same as promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. Existing in a fat body is not promoting obesity.

Oh fuck off. These injections also require a person to make the right food choices and exercise, however they also correct a hormonal imbalance that makes doing so possible. Stop being so sanctimonious. The medical evidence is out there if you care to educate yourself properly.

@LolaLouise There's a very interesting radio podcast about the effect of ultra processed food. There's 8 episodes and one talks about this phenomenon. The ultra processed food actually physically alters the wiring of our brains and we don't actually know how easy it is to reverse that yet. Children who are now growing up on UPFs in the majority of their diet (which is most kids) are especially worrying as there's no baseline for the brain to fall back to, even with medical and dietary intervention.
There's not much research done on the long term effects of all this pharmaceutical intervention, but what they do know is if the person doesn't completely change their lifestyle, so yes they need to cut out UPFs and stop being 'lazy', otherwise even the medicine won't help.
So I agree with you to a extent, but we've only got to the point of the disease stage because people have been lazy in both their eating and activity. There's so many factors that come into play as to why that's happened, a lot is around good poverty, but the message the media sends out about body positivity is dangerous. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground either, people are either extremely fat or extremely skinny or extremely toned. I do think people are a bit naive as to who benefits from this movement too. Its not the overweight people who's lives will be short and uncomfortable, but the owners of these food, pharmaceutical and clothing companies. You can bet a pretty penny they're not taking part in this body positivity movement and their kids have probably never touched a UPF.