Fat discrimination is a gateway to other forms of discrimination

[AnxiousApocalypse]

I'm morbidly obese and have struggled with extreme weight gain due to psychiatric medication I'm on. Currently a UK size 26/28, I put up with a lot of rude, ignorant comments about my weight. I want to start taking a weight loss injection such as Semaglutide or Tirzepatide but am worried about being able to afford the higher dosages when the time comes to increase the dosage. People at work can't seem to get enough of commenting on how fat I am. I've just watched the BBC Panorama documentary about the undercover journalist in the Met Police at Charing Cross. One of the police officers was extremely rude about a fat woman he met off the internet. I also watched a clip of a misogynistic podcaster called Myron who says fat people should be rounded up. People struggle with their weight for a whole variety of reasons, but society deems it acceptable to kick someone when they're already down. I know I'm fat and I want to change that but it doesn't help having people treat you as subhuman.

How is it different to someone that binge eats but then makes themselves vomit or exercise for hours afterwards so they remain a normal size? The behaviour is very much rooted in the same lack of control and gluttony ? I say this as someone who really struggled with this same issue of obesity

Don't be ridiculous. Is that really the level of thinking on here now? By drink I mean "consume alcohol." You don't drink alcohol to quench thirst or hydrate. You don't drag on a cigarette to get oxygen. People have to eat several times a day. Time, money, medication, all sorts will factor into what they consume but they MUST consume something. That is not true of alcohol or cigarettes, both of which can easily be completely avoided to prevent can addiction developing.

It makes me so upset to hear stories of people suffering like this and to think that people are heaping sanctimonious condemnation on top of that.

Don't let anyone beat you up @GrumpyInsomniac . The truth is I am healthy weight post dc but I have to watch what I eat far more than before I had them. All my life until my 30's I could eat whatever I damn well wanted and quite honestly I was plain greedy. And thin. Very thin. Size 4 or 6 thin. Wasn't fair when friends were watching their intake, but there you go.

What that has taught me is that people's bodies are different - and even the very same body can be different at different times of your life. Unless you have been in a particular body at a particular time you simply cannot claim to know. And there can be barriers to healthy eating and exercise - financial, physical disability and also just pure lack of time to oneself first because of responsibilities to others.

There is so much wrong with the world at the moment - mostly fuelled by nastiness. Why people put so much effort into lambasting overweight people I genuinely cannot comprehend. It actually sickens me with it's small-mindedness. Lots of things make people ill or emotionally ill yet they aren't banging on about all those things - or trying to help people overcome them.

As someone said on this thread or the other - yes another - thread currently on this topic, it tends to be less intelligent people who focus on it.

It's not ridiculous at all, you need to drink in much the same way you need to eat. The issue is not choosing the right food or drink, in fact I'd say the urge to consume alcohol would be more difficult to resist than the urge to eat something high fat or sugar. It's all about what we choose to consume. That also includes smoking. We need to breathe just like we need to eat , it's what we choose to eat or breathe that's the issue.
"You don't drag on a cigarette to get oxygen."
Well you don't need to eat a pack of chocolate biscuits to get calories, you can choose something healthy.
"both of which can easily be completely avoided to prevent can addiction developing."
As can rubbish food.

Actually, no that's the point. If you are time and cash poor and don't have access to a freezer, good cooking facilities, biscuits or convenience food to get you through a nursing shift or teaching day might be exactly what you reach for because it's quick and easy. Totally different to going out purposely to buy cigarettes, find somewhere and time apart to smoke it and do so. Ditto alcohol. If you're thirsty and grabbing a drink on the go, its water or a can of pop, or an energy drink but unlikely to be alcohol at 11am.

Not everybody who is fat eats rubbish food. That just isn't true.

Some do, of course. But not all. And because we don't know who does and who doesn't, people should pull their judgmental heads in

"Actually, no that's the point. If you are time and cash poor and don't have access to a freezer, good cooking facilities, biscuits or convenience food to get you through a nursing shift or teaching day might be exactly what you reach for because it's quick and easy. Totally different to going out purposely to buy cigarettes, find somewhere and time apart to smoke it and do so. Ditto alcohol. If you're thirsty and grabbing a drink on the go, its water or a can of pop, or an energy drink but unlikely to be alcohol at 11am.

I'm talking about free will and free choice, you don't need loads of time and freezer space to eat healthy. In fact OMAD would be a great way to lose weight, it's free and takes very little time.
Why not grab an apple instead of the pack of biscuits?
And yeah alcoholics could be reaching for a drink at 11am just like someone else could be reaching for the biscuit tin.

I'd say the vast vast majority are just over consuming calories.

Because doing a 12 hour shift on one meal a day is a great idea. Really depressing that there is still so much ignorance around the factors that make weight loss difficult.

You are right: it is a mixture of ignorance and lack of empathy.

It's not Ignorance to say intermittent fasting can work for weight loss 😂

No but its ignorance not to have a broader understanding of why it isn't possible for some people to just stop eating in certain windows.

My posts were all really directed towards a posters assumption that smoking and drinking are easier to give up because you can just abstain from those 😉

You’re right, people are abysmally rude towards fat people, I was obese at age 11 and continued that way getting steadily bigger till last year when it all came to a head and I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes and prescribed Mounjaro.

firstly the people at work should not be commented on your weight and doing so is bullying and harassment, raise a grievance with HR and address that because the behaviour is truly unacceptable in the workplace.

secondly, what tests have your doctors run to assess your current health? Is the assumption that weight gain is due to your medication based on actual test results or just it being a common side effect?

if possible try to get a ‘health MOT’ done. HbA1C to test your blood glucose over the last few months, cholesterol, liver and kidney function, thyroid function, vitamin D and iron levels. All of these could show issues that would cause weight gain and making losing weight harder.

I think Mounjaro is a miracle and feel so lucky that insulin and metformin didn’t work for me because it meant I was prescribed it on the NHS. I’ve lost a total of 9and a half stone now, am comfortably in the healthy BMI range, weigh less now at 42 than I did when I was 11, diabetes is fully controlled, cholesterol is back in normal range, blood pressure is normal and I can jog and do exercise without feeling like I’m dying.

You do still need to put in the work on WLIs, drink plenty of water, stick to a calorie deficit, carefully plan your diet to get more protein, fat and fibre and have complex carbs in small portions and white/simple carbs once in a blue moon. I can count on one hand how many slices of cake I’ve had in the last year and it’s been months since I last had chocolate. I track everything I eat and drink in my fitness pal and make a concerted effort to get at least 3 decent workouts in a week.

And I stand by that. I'm not saying it's easy, but you can totally abstain from them, even if it's a process. You can't permanently abstain from food.

Blimey, you’re a charmer! The OP hasn’t said her employer is complicit, she hasn’t said she’s told her employer, she hasn’t said she’s followed the complaints procedure at work. So to jump straight to the ‘sue the bastards’ advice is pretty stupid.

Sounds so much like a now former friend I had.

I say former because she ended up being so draining with all the drama she brought from her endless cycle of toxic chaotic relationships, not to mention the fatphobic comments she made about some of her other “friends”.

She was a gym goer, slim, and well groomed , always banged on about “eating clean” but her mental health was terrible in part due to her consistent string of poor choices and she was off sick so frequently she had formal warnings from her manager last time I spoke to her. This also then began to impact her physical health as the stress manifested in various ways. But in her eyes she looked better than a fat person so she could still look down on them and criticise them for being “unhealthy”.

I tried to be compassionate to her but I realised she had no grace for others who struggled more visibly than her.

But you CAN permanently abstain from junk food or sugar if you choose to, even easier I would guess, than you could abstain from smoking or alcohol if you were addicted to them.

So!e people do go out to get junk food. I've known some larger people go to maccy ds, eat a meal in a layby then on to burger king 20 mins later for !ore of the same . Then on to the 7 to 11 to get a load of chocolate bars, eat them one after the other , bin the wrappers and go home. Maybe even adding a tub of Ben and Jerry on the way . don't know if the !majority of bigger people eat that much but it is a thing

It’s pretty stupid to keep bringing up a thread where the OP never returned after her first post.

I’ve already explained my advice, RTFT and move on.

I have every sympathy for the other kind of obese person who lives a busy life, and grabs ready meals and fast food to eat on the go, all those calories do add up even if they aren't eating a ridiculous amount in a couple of hours or so in one evening. It's easy to do .

I don’t think it’s “a gateway”.

I think people are more likely to behave in a discriminatory or disrespectful manner towards people who are obese because it is perceived as something people can control, as opposed to race, sexuality, disability etc. which isn’t.

Yet if someone was in a wheelchair because they drove their car into a wall or jumped off a cliff and survived technically they would be as complicit in their disabled identity as someone who is overweight is responsible for their size. I realise that the majority of disabilities aren't self inflicted though! I just think it's not always as black and white as someone being to blame or not.

Of course that's true. But it's not all obese people. Thousands of people are incredibly rushed, juggling childcare, a full-time job, caring for elderly parents. There was a thread the other day with someone defending being unpleasant in shops because she doesn't have time to be even slightly inconvenienced. Eating "clean" takes planning, headspace, thought, facilities at work for storage or refrigeration. It's not always easy.

I have schizoaffective disorder and I'm also fat. The two go hand in hand for me. When I'm unwell, I don't stand a chance of managing my food intake because I'm too busy surviving. I starve and then binge, not because I have an eating disorder, but because of delusional beliefs about being poisoned. I also take the anti psychotic quetiapine, which affects metabolism and appetite and is notorious for making people gain weight. I'm not stupid, I know that obesity is a threat to my health, but then so is being mentally ill. Not that those who discriminate would know any of this, of course.