Why can't we discuss how fat we've all become?

[Nodinnernogift]

Obesity is becoming the norm. Why aren't we allowed express concern or any views that are less than celebratory about this?

I mean seriously why?

If whole parts of your country were in the grip of a meth addiction we would be allowed have a discussion about it.

National campaigns to stop people smoking are applauded.

Look around you. Look in the mirror. We are all getting bigger and bigger. It reminds me of when people would visit the US in the 80s / 90s and come back with tales of huge people and massive portion sizes.

Does nobody care? It's like the Emperors New Clothes. I don't get why it's a sacrosanct topic.

Yabu - it's nobody's business
Yanbu - it's fine to address this as a societal problem

Would you do this in 2025, I sometimes use 250 or 350 ? More than 500g mince for 4 ? What are you making ?

Look in the mirror? Speak for yourself. I weigh 40kg and would dearly love to be able to put weight on, and no I don't have an ED and have never been on a diet in my life. My three adult DC are all very slim too

Okay, so talk about how fat and lardy everyone is. Is that going to help or change anything? Make people magically thinner?

How about you talk about how, constructively and realistically, we solve the obesity crisis? Since you're so concerned about fat people and want to talk about them, I assume you have some innovative and effective solutions to make them thin that nobody else have ever thought about before? Because, if your point with this thread isn't to actually help - but to vent your hatred for fat people - you're kind of a bitch.

True.

But it's interesting that people have got larger in the last 30 years.

It is absolutely true, when I was young I was a size 8/10.

Clothes didn't come any smaller, I had a 22" waist, it's 26" now and I'm still an 8/10.

But I see a lot of women who carry their weight well, so are not 'fat', just larger.

So even though I've sized up, I'm still considered a 'skinny bitch'.

It's often the outlier size of dresses that survive because so few people fit them, they weren't handed down or shared.

I think obesity is the most complex condition we’re dealing with as a society and it’s the hidden cost of terrible poverty.

1. people are overworking and have no time to cook food - longest hours in Europe this country. Need a double income to survive so there’s no one at home to prepare food
2. Fresh food gaps - loads of people, rural and trapped in shit towns have zero access to fresh food - public transport too expensive to get somewhere to get it
3. gap between ‘north’ and ‘south’ - at least a 6 mile walk:exercise is built in to my day on the commute in London, there is fresh food everywhere I pass - markets, Asian food shops, sourdough shops, as well as every major supermarket within half a mile of my house. £1.75 bus fare to get ANYWHERE - it’s incredibly easy for me to eat healthily no matter how many hours I do
4. Processed food - we’ve literally fucked our systems over the last 40 years and changed our gut health due to processed foods. Added sugar to everything meaning we now NEED more sugar (unless you detox from it, which you can’t unless you can replace it with fresh food)
5. Malnutrition - anyone who works in schools knows that our children are horribly undernourished. We provide shit food in schools, it’s not been a priority for successive governments - we need to spend money on this
6. Food Technology - the utterly stupid replacement term for ‘home economics’ - no proper cooking of basic healthy foods. One memorable occasion when my daughter was at school was the £15 worth of ingredients for a fruit salad - all out of season
7. Trauma - obesity is a complex disease where people use a 27 pence packet of biscuits to treat hideous trauma. One in nine girls experience sexual abuse. One in 3 women have been sexually assaulted. The nhs is hugely underfunded in this area. Charities are massively struggling to provide services.
8. Culture of blame - I think the vast majority of people blame people for being ‘fat’ as if the above is a REAL CHOICE. Obesity is a disease, end of.

Making people responsible for the overworking to survive, for living in a fresh food desert and for being raped as a child is cruel victim blaming.

Yes, being obese looks disgusting - it’s literally people wearing the trauma of their lives on the outside of themselves. Thinking unkind thoughts about the obese is likely fear driven behaviour, not that different from being horrible to people with disabilities.

We need the following as a society:

1. reduce working hours
2. address food deserts
3. address societal poverty
4. education adverts on tv - ‘Charlie says’
5. boxes of healthy food and recipes in supermarkets, like Gousto or Hello Fresh but at an affordable rate, there’s bound to be a celeb who’d want to do this - an advert every week of what the meals are on national tv - maybe national kitchens where you can go and get a proper meal for £2.50 - we had something similar during the war

weight loss medications are going to change the conversation. Once there’s a cheap pill available to reduce the symptoms of physical hunger and providing we do at least some of the above we can get healthier.

The transformative thing about weight loss injections is it literally makes you want healthy food, craving for sugar and alcohol goes down dramatically.

If you’re poor and in a food desert you’ll eat a chicken breast and whatever veg is available cheaply because crucially you will start to care less about food. Food will just be for energy rather than medication.

It does mean we will need to deal with the trauma though - and we will need to put money and services into that

(I know I’ve missed out loads of reasons for obesity, some detailed in other posts thankfully)

True I live in London and don’t see as many obese people. Only one from my group of 8 is overweight.

Agree, there should be some sort of campaign based on the health issues it can cause; teaching people how to eat, excercise, etc.

I dispute that this is ‘obvious’

If people are overweight and this impacts on their health they won’t live as long. Dead people don’t use the NHS or draw pensions.

In the short term it is numerically provable as next year a less healthy population means more spend, but in the long term (over the next 50 years) I have never been shown any figures that convince me it’s true.

In the U.K. life expectancy is falling and most people have a period of ill health before they die, and we all die in the end, fat or not.

This is brilliant. (I often love your posts BTW!!)

I'm very obese. I am intelligent. Above average IQ and have struggled a lot with the "whys" of it.

I'm now on wli and it's lifechanging.

Going forwards though Chris Van Tulleken work on UPF is huge. And I love his approach. He never blames individuals. He is aware of fuel poverty, time poverty, trauma and just the general food environment. His campaign is against the system where we are marketing crap (not food really) to people using clever psychology and marketing and then blaming people who for succumbing.

And yes to privilidge and money and access to food and time and mental energy etc.

Its definitely a "change the environmenr/society" issue rather than blame the individual and wash our hands of it. (That clearly hasn't worked)

My fear is affording MJ long term. It's turned my (damaged) brain into a normal one around food. Able to do all those thigns we're told like "stop when full" "plan your meals" etc. I knew so much theory but my damaged brain couldn't make it happen.

The other thing that’s rarely mentioned in terms of weight is smoking. To use the terminology on this thread I was shocked when I last visited France by the number of people who smoke and how accepted that is. Smoking is zero calories and can be a crutch, just like cakes.

YABU to say no one talks about this because people go on about this all the time! Especially on Mumsnet.

It's a pity supermarkets (with their excessive and well-documented profits since 2020) can't see their way to always providing basic veg at much reduced prices all year round and not just at Xmas and Easter.

They take the hit on bananas and sugar as loss leaders to get us in their shops and if they were as serious as they pretend to be about community initiatives, they could do the same for this.

I know it doesn't solve fuel poverty and other related issues but it would be something practical to help improve overall nutrition.

I think they are teens and generally speaking all look ridiculous; that's kind of the point of being a teenager. And I think it's horrendous that some can't enjoy regular teenage fashion. If they like it, wear it. Who gives a toss if someone else likes it, all that matters is that you like it.

I applaud them.

@LaurieFairyCake

No.

I usually really respect what you say. But your 'gap between the North and South' is nonsensical.

Look, I'm from the North and have lived all over, I worked in the City in the Blair years. It wasn't ok then, and it's not ok now.

I wish people, intelligent people, would stop doing this.

The North is not an homogeneous place of fat thickos.

Have you ever been to Essex? Or the horror that is the North or South London suburbs??

I absolutely agree with everything you've said here and I've always been slim, but I've seen so many women with a disordered attitude to food as a result of so much shame against being fat (which ironically makes it harder for people to stick to diets etc)

That is bloody horrendous

I really notice in my region (south west) that it’s a class thing.
so why is that? I’m not sure.

• more money for better food - well yes, but actually fruit and veg isn’t expensive.
• better education about food? Maybe.
• more time? Well a lot of wealthier families will have two working parents as opposed to one SAHP. (I realise in the very wealthiest families this isn’t the case).
• more access to sport - yes definitely this. However where I live is relatively rural, there are loads of parks around and I always see kids playing football etc. maybe I just don’t see the kids who are inside on their screens.
• grabbing ridiculously calorific ‘coffee’ - I think this is a bit of a class thing actually. (I also think Starbucks etc have really contributed to the obesity crisis).

i don’t know what the answer is. I’m a teacher and I feel very sad when I see obese children. It’s giving them a poor start in life. (That’s probably an un-PC thing to say but it’s true, we need to just fucking say it). Poorer parents love and care for their children just as much as wealthier parents. But go to a school in a middle class area or a private school - very few overweight people. School in a poorer area - different.

GPs should be writing over weight people out subscriptions for Ozempic. There should be no stigma attached.
Many diseases and deaths would be prevented.

People these days have no time. They are time poor.
Working too many hours, traffic making driving to work take longer and young workers can not afford houses nearer to their work. Many youger workers are exhausted.
They have to drive further for their kid's clubs too. Divorce rate increasing means that parents are also transporting kids al lover the place every fewdays.
Kidsare getting used to take-away and faster food due to the lack of time.

More people are fatties. Many are disappointed with their weight so Ozempic would be a God send.

I really notice in my region (south west) that it’s a class thing.
so why is that?

Because food is a cheap, easily accessible way to get a dopamine hit and if everything in your life is a bit crappy, why wouldn't you choose something that gives you an instant buzz like that.

But you couldn’t resist mentioning you’re a size eight?

No I don't have a solution. There definitely a simple one in today's society or we would all be doing it.

I'm overweight myself. I'm trying hard to reverse that and finding that it's so difficult. Most people around me seem to be the same.

But weight loss drugs are really expensive and we don't yet know the long term side effects. Surely banning ultra processed food and teaching proper cookery classes again in school should be top of the list. These solutions are pretty much free and there won't be any unforseen consequences.

Totally agree, saddens me when I take my children to softplay and there are so many obese children it’s nothing short of neglect and abuse

Amazing post

I don't know any woman that hasn't been raped.

As a woman, it's very instructive to understand, your body isn't yours.

It's every one else's.

And once you understand that the world has opinions and ownership, then, it becomes yours.

Then, and only then, you can tell the world to Fuck Off

Once you understand that the world has dibs on you. That's when you know.