AIBU to rethink a friendship after comments about weight being a choice?

[MyCherryPiee]

I met with a friend last night and she has said something which is can’t stop thinking about and is making me quite mad.

She said being fat is a choice most of the time. She agreed that in certain cases like PCOS and medical conditions it isn’t a choice but in most cases it is a choice.

Friend is very health conscious, fit and active. She is usually quite upfront with her words but not hateful with it. I’ve never witnessed her say anything like this before. I am just appalled at this thinking from a full grown woman.

AIBU to think the comment is more complicated than she says and also in thinking I don’t want to be friends anymore?

I think blaming your "metabolism" is so unhelpful and long proved untrue.

Yes it's slow down at the start of a deficit to adjust, but it does adjust eventually. You do not get fat because you have a "slow metabolism". You keep it "slow' with a sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle if nothing else

It’s become the buzz word now thanks to social media but for some people theyve always known what it was and had their own names for it. So to answer your question no it’s not a made up word to sell drugs it’s just become the common phrase that we all use to describe an experience that millions of people always felt.

Can’t you just disagree strongly with a friend without making it about her being ‘hateful’? I imagine your friends are also not allowed different opinions about Brexit, gender identity, or which political party they vote for? It diminishes actual hate and discrimination to label everything hateful discrimination.

It is a choice for most of us. I have been both thin and fat. It’s making a decision each day to either exerise and eat healthy or not. When I do, I am slim. When I don’t then I am fat. It is a conscious decision we all make that can be influenced by mental health e.g eating less or too much.

You chose who you want to be friends with and this comment means you don’t share values or causes you to not like her then YANBU

And anyone who thinks it’s a choice has not experienced food noise and doesn’t understand that obesity is a disease.

Sorry attached to wrong post. Ignore

I’m afraid they are. The lowest doses of wegovy start at about £100 a month. If you’re choosing to eat and buy shit instead of cutting back and buying the injections, you’re choosing to be fat.

Some of those issues would make me question a friendship if our values were so different

£100 is still an astronomical amount so a great many families and if you think it’s not then you are privileged.

That was my post.

It’s not. The injections start at £100 a month. £25 a week. Almost everyone could cut that out of their food budget if they wanted to.

I’m sorry but it’s not. Cut back on the junk, it’s cutting back on one takeaway a week. This is why so many stay fat.

It is a choice, to an extent, but it ends up becoming a habit. I have 2 ways to go to work. Every day I make an unconscious choice which way to turn the wheel- except i am still making the choice.

Same as food. I think about food a lot. I always have. I like food a lot. But I also like being slim. So I make the choice: yoghurt for bf instead of cake. High protein salady concoction for lunch instead of loaded sandwich. No crisps. Don't eat all the portions dh gives me for tea. Finishing just before I feel full; walking away from the kitchen so I don't automatically get a pudding.

It doesn't look like I'm making choices, but I am. All the time.

It's normal for friends to have differing views, this seems like quite an over reaction from you tbh

It’s ignorant. It completely dismisses the environmental, psychological and physiological issues around obesity, which is a chronic disease. Her perspective lays the “blame” completely at your door when it is documented that it isn’t about will power or calories in vs calories out. Your friend has a very shortsighted view. I guess it’s her choice not to be educated about something she is commenting on.

Agree with this. It's fine to have different options on things. In fact it's much better than living in an echo chamber where to have any difference of opinion is forbidden.

I think being overweight IS a choice. BUT it's much harder to be a healthy weight now than it was in the past when there was less food available and more people had physical jobs.

She’s right though, and it’s not “hateful”. There are social and medical reasons why some people eat more calories than they need. Some people are genetically predisposed to lay down fat (eg some indigenous American groups), some people overeat as a trauma response, some peoples “age and stage” means they need fewer calories than they realise, some people lack the means to give themselves healthy little treats as a pick me up so buy a cheap Swiss roll from Lidl instead, some people struggle with shift work and are too crazy busy to give food much headspace so go to the cheap and easy processed calorie rich, nutrient poor easy option - there are reasons - but ultimately more energy in than is used then you get fat. If you put on half a stone and your jeans feel tight and you buy bigger jeans instead of eating less then you are making a choice. Starting adolescence or adult life already fat because of your parents then you are on the back foot, having PCOS or thyroid disease puts you in the back foot, lacking fitness because you were a sedentary kid puts you on the back foot - but as an adult eating more and moving less is still a choice and that choice has a consequence.

Well so far there are 7 million in the uk alone on them, the pills are coming in around a hundred a month, so accessible for many.

it is cals in cals out, no way round this,

Thankyou. What was it called before?

I’d be tempted to ask your friend why she made the choice to be intellectually lazy, bigoted and nasty.

How is that hateful ? It's factual, she talking about herself. I am the same, I do not want to be overweight so I watch what i eat and exercise. Who is she expressing a hatred of?

She is right and I say that as a former overweight person. I’m a healthy weight now but everyday I have to resist the urge to eat 5 peices of toast and jam etc and not do any exercise. It’s the choices I make which are sometimes tough that are keeping me at a healthy weight.
it seems very drastic to break a friendship over something that a lot of people believe to be true.

She’s right though. It’s not an easy choice, but it is usually a choice.

She is basically right even though it is something of a simplification when the forces that operate on people are a bit more complex.
I wouldn’t equate ‘factual’ with ‘hateful’
But if you have a different take on life to your friend and it’s not working then you don’t have to stay friends

No, I think it makes people react. If I used a nicer and more precise word you might not have paid attention. Thanks for the attention. Now, if you want to discuss the content of what I said, I'll be delighted.