to think WLI have given many people huge health improvements despite the remarkable number of people on MN who are anti WLI for no good reason

[MountainStorm]

There seem to be endless anti WLI threads on here filled with misinformation, faux concern, and thinly disguised jibes at overweight people. I don’t really understand the motivation but that’s another issue.

On the other hand, many people have seen huge improvements in their health, confidence and wellbeing from using WLI. I certainly have.

So I wanted to ask AIBU to say that WLI have given many people huge health improvements and to ask what health improvements have you personally experienced on WLI?

For me

• been able to reduce antidepressant medication
• improved fitness, don’t get so tired or out of breath when walking

I take WLI because I have had therapy. Years of trauma therapy and, this year, EMDR.

I was prescribed anti-depressants with no requirement to have behavioural therapy (although I paid for my own). I took them for a year until I felt mentally strong enough to stop, but it didn’t help my eating.

I also have a dog which I walk every day.

Maximum points for me.

Do I deserve them yet?

Not quite yet, no.

Just wondered if certain posters here would be happy to increase their NI contributions so everyone who needs it could get WIL and therapy. The therapy will require years of intense commitment. I would estimate 5k per year for one individual. Does not include extra NHS overhead required. Im currently in my 5th year of therapy.

This is possibly off topic but I think it’s useful to widen this out.

My ‘journey’ is yo-yo dieting. I’ve been fat and lost weight through trad methods in my 20s -40s, intermittent fasting in my 50 and now in my 60s I’m doing WLI. We’ve not talking about few kilos here - I’ve lost and regained several stone each time. Sometimes more, sometimes less. This time it’s been 7 stone. It’s expensive, exhausting and incredibly mentally difficult. It’s taken up so much of my headspace.

I’m a clever and very professionally successful woman. I’m pretty sure I would have achieved more if I hadn’t battled with my weight.

This thread really shows how much women resent other women for losing weight and how much disdain they have for fat women.

In the same way we underestimate people with disabilities, we underestimate fat people. We think they’re lazy and stupid. And you can never legislate against that thinking but society is missing out on some brilliant brains because they’re in fat bodies.

'In the same way we underestimate people with disabilities, we underestimate fat people'

That is an appalling comparison to make. No one 'underestimates people with disabilities' and there is absolutely nothing they can do life-style wise to change their disability. The same is certainly not true for obese people.

And many cannot do dog walking either.

You’ve made your point @LadyTangerine over and over again. Fat people just need to eat less and walk dogs more. They just lack your fabulous willpower. They don’t need WLI to lose weight and even if they do, well they just don’t, or something. You have no understanding of the science of obesity, you are displaying zero intellectual grasp of the issues and absolutely no human understanding. I don’t know what you are getting out of your posting on this thread but you are making yourself look ignorant. I do wonder what is going on in your own life to make you so obsessed about something you know zero about.

We know that eating less and moving more is the solution. The issue is with successfully implementing that long term in order to see meaningful weight loss. Repeating that simplistic phrase does nothing to address the reasons why people find it hard to do. Neither does berating them for not having enough “willpower” or being lazy, or all the other variations on that

There is comfort in keeping things as they are. It's uncomfortable or outright scary to change and try different/ new things. WLI are a good middle ground. No gamble when it comes to your time or money. You don't really have to put any real effort into changing things, you don't have to try out different types of exercise to find what works for you. You don't have to make the switch to what is perceived as healthy, boring and bland food.

And yet when obese people do successful do something about their weight, as all the people on this thread who have lost huge % of their body weight and completely changed their lives, they are still wrong.

I don’t understand your point. You absolutely have to make changes on WLI which are uncomfortable. They only work if you eat less, and you have to change what you’re eating if you were eating junk foods before. You absolutely have to switch to ‘boring healthy food’ you absolutely get to try out new exercise etc.

it’s almost as if you don’t know what you’re talking about.

@NowLetsBeReal what? Are you being serious? I have started running (again) since taking WLI, completed C25K and run 3 times a week. I also walk a lot, way more than before. Losing weight vi WLI has enabled me to do that. I have also changed what I eat, and it’s not boring and bland. I now find processed carbs to be boring and bland and prefer other foods over them.

It wasn’t bloody “comfort” that kept me in my old patterns. It was bloody uncomfortable being morbidly obese. I assume you mean a mental comfort rather than physical. But even then I hated myself when I was morbidly obese and was constantly pissed off about my life. Nothing conforting psychologically about that.

I assume you speak from experience? Or is it ignorance?

A lot of people on MN are against anything that isn’t 100% sardonic misery.

I don’t really get the issue with them but what I also don’t get is why people say they’re not isn’t them when they are. Who cares, if you’re making a better you the what’s the problem.

@brunettemic Why do you need to know? I'm very open about it but reading the contempt that drips from people about them it's pretty obvious why people prefer to keep it private. It's medical information and there's no duty to disclose it to anyone.
Personally I find it an excellent filter to get rid of people who would rather I remained at risk of a myriad of life limiting and fatal diseases.

There's another thread running on MN at the moment that might help clue you in a little as to that.

No, they are right and it proves that by reducing what you consume then reduces weight, whether by willpower or jabs it is the same cause and result. The pp was wrong imo to bring inappropriate comparisons to disabilities into the discussion.

Just let's have some honesty about the whole process.

I think it’s simply one of those things people find hard to comprehend if they haven’t been in the position of needing it.

My BMI naturally sits at 23/24 ish. It would be easy to claim it’s due to my willpower, habits and exercise but if I’m honest it’s my genetic makeup and my childhood. I know many many friends who exercise more, eat less and have a higher bmi. I recognise the struggle some of them have.

Many people simply have a poor ability to relate to circumstances they haven’t been in. They answer why WLI wouldn’t work for THEM, or the risks to THEM. They’re not having an informed debate from the point of view of someone who needs them.

I stay out of the debate personally and leave people to their own informed decisions

Of course a lot of people underestimate people with disabilities. Ask someone who is in wheelchair how often they’re ignored or spoken over or assumed to have mental incapacity.

These are not separate issues. Many drugs for long term conditions (schizophrenia, thyroid conditions, depression) are strongly associated with weight gain. Physical impairments can make exercise painful or difficult. Obesity is correlated with heart conditions, diabetes and cancer. Disabled people are more likely to be in poverty - again associated with obesity for a number of reasons (cheaper UPF, living in food deserts).

Of course people underestimate and ignore those with disabilities my point was please do not put compare to obese people as a pp did. Disabled people cannot change their situation, fat people can.

Yet all the people on those drugs you listed will lose weight on WLI. So for years we've been told some illnesses and medication make weight loss impossible and it just not true as we are seeing.

Well yes. The drugs make a massive difference. That's the point. They support people getting to and remaining at a healthy weight

They suppress the appetite so people eat less and they lose weight which is great but it proves the point that it doesn't matter if on meds for thyroid, schizophrenia, have joint issues, whatever. If you eat less through whatever means be it WLI or willpower you lose weight.

It actually doesn't matter whether walking is effective, though, does it? What matters is what people actually do, not what you think they should do.