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?

But stripped right back, it does come down to choices but choice is empowering and gives hope. The other option leaves you stuck. I don’t see the way forward if you really believe you have no power or capacity to change

This, 💯 . The OP couldn’t be more wrong, stating that saying a statement that we have “choice” is “hateful”. Saying we DON’T have “choice” is arguably what’s truly hateful as that philosophy just imprisons people in despair…

One of them is either underestimating their calories, or not being as active, or both.

There's really not as much difference between people's BMR as many think.

But even people who struggle and would have to eat very, very few calories to lose weight are still choosing whether or not to go very very low calorie. I get that it’s way easier to choose to eat 1500 calories a day than it is to choose to eat only 700, but it IS still a choice to make or not make. Sometimes we do have difficult choices to make, and we choose to take the easier or less painful route. There’s no shame in that, and no moral judgement, just an acknowledgement that as autonomous human adults, we have the capacity to make choices.

I had to choose between accepting a worsening health condition or substantial weight loss some years ago. I chose the latter, and have maintained both the weight loss and the health benefits for some years. In order to do that, I choose to eat sparingly almost all the time - around 1200 calories a day unless I add in a long session of exercise. Today I chose to go out for a long boozy lunch with a friend. I know the consequence of that choice is that I will be heavier tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, I will choose to eat under 1200 cals AND spend a couple of hours at the gym to balance out today’s over-indulgence. It’s not about ‘being greedy’ today and ‘being virtuous’ tomorrow, it’s about making one choice today and a different choice tomorrow in order not to gain weight. If I make today’s choice frequently, and don’t balance it out, I’ll steadily gain weight (and health problems). The weight gain wouldn’t be a sign that I were somehow a bad person, it would just be the natural consequence of frequent choices not to restrict my food intake. Likewise, the fact that I am now a slim person isn’t an indication of any kind of virtue, it’s just the natural consequence of years of measuring and limiting food intake.

I have said several times I am not over weight. I said I would like to lose a few pounds that I’m struggling with but I’m not overweight. Those few pounds are just what I think is best on me. I’m still a size 10 with a BMI of 22. I’m not fat with those pounds and I wouldn’t be fat without those pounds either. I just look better at a size 8 because I’m 5 feet tall. A size 10 looks different on me than it does on a 5 foot 9 person so I prefer to be a size 8.

Read my posts again. I said if I didn’t calorie count I would be a stone over weight as that’s the comfortable weight my body settles at. But that stone of weight isn’t what my friend is talking about. She’s talking about hugely over weight people.

As for takeaway I don’t eat it.

Food noise?

Do you mean the horrific sounds that some people with questionable table manners make when they eat?

Given this, I’m finding your attitude even more unreasonable.

I had assumed it had come from a place of taking what she’d said as a personal dig because you were overweight, and that you had an unhealthy coping mechanism… when, in fact, you have a very healthy BMI, and one that you have demonstrated you have achieved through choice!

Your BMI is significantly better than mine - I’m 27, so a bit overweight. Luckily If I’m reasonably self-assured, but if I wasn’t, I’d feel dehumanised and dispirited to think you believe I am incapable of making choices to become slimmer, and am doomed to be “fat”.

Based on you attitudes on this matter, I’d far rather a friend like your friend (someone who believed I had it in me to choose a healthier lifestyle) than you (someone who’d pity me and didn’t think I had the capacity make choices to reduce me weight).

If you can consider ditching friends over something like this, to me you’re not a good friend, and extremely judgmental. Any friend of yours would have to tread on eggshells in case you found one of her opinions “hateful” and ditched her.

So you are choosing not to be a stone overweight by calorie counting then. Like millions of us. Like your friend said.

I wouldn't end a friendship on just this comment, especially as you don't think it applies to you. I've had a friend mention my weight when I was overweight and although it was hurtful I didn't end the friendship. People make mistakes, the whole modern trend of cutting people out for the smallest thing is very toxic I think.

I think people are reading it in two ways.

choice means it’s easy and choice means blame.

and that’s not what’s being said at all. The choices we make when we gain weight are understandable as they are driven by many complex physiological or psychological factors that drive our behaviour.

blame is an unhealthy mindset, and should never be allocated to this.

but that doesn’t mean we didn’t make choices, it doesn’t mean we went into a trance and some other entity took over our hands and mouths and we had some form of out of body experience every time we ate.

and we should want that to be correct, as it is, because if it wasn’t and we had no choice, we are utterly fucking doomed to be fat forever.

People don't choose to be overweight any more than people choose addiction or to stay in an abusive relationship. On the surface it can look like a simple choice, but the reasons behind it are usually far more complicated.
If you spend any time reading the weight-loss injection forums, you'll see the same thing over and over again: people describing what it's like to live without constantly thinking about food for the first time in their lives. That says a lot.
I maintain my weight on around 1,200 calories a day. People often tell me that's impossible, but it's my reality. If I try to eat less than that, the hunger becomes overwhelming. It takes over my thoughts and isn't something I can sustain. Everyone's body and brain work differently, and that's exactly why weight isn't just about willpower.

At a very fundamental level, your friend is right. I say that as someone who has been very overweight and has struggled with it most of my life.

Where she’s wrong is it’s not quite as simple as getting up one morning and deciding not to overeat and to exercise more. There’s a variety of emotional triggers for overeating - for me, it was stress or a way of dealing with emotional or difficult situations.

That said, one day, I did make a choice. A choice to build a healthier lifestyle, exercise more, and take some accountability. I did sometimes talk about being fat like it was nothing to do with me, like it wasn’t something I could do anything about. Then one day I did something and I didn’t stop and haven’t stopped.

The motivation for me was DD - the notion that I didn’t want to be parent who couldn’t go swimming with her, or run around after her, or even die when she was younger rather than older. I occasionally fall off the wagon but the key is not to beat myself up and to get straight back on it.

People may not actively wake up and choose to be overweight but they do (actively or passively) choose to make the decisions that lead them there. And I say that as someone who is currently overweight because they eat too much and don’t do enough exercise - so no judgement here.

And of course WLI’s make it easier but that doesn’t mean you never had a choice to start with. Lots of people wake up and force themselves to go for a run or to the gym or to eat a healthy diet even though they hate it and would rather be in bed until the last minute - because they know it’s necessary if they want to be healthy.

There are loads of comments on here about how skinny people can’t know how hard it is to lose weight or count calories when the reality is many of those people would also be overweight if they didn’t work at it constantly!

Agree, but this doesn’t mean it’s not a choice. No one is saying it’s an easy choice.

it goes back to my earlier post, people think choice means it’s easy or there is blame, there is not and it is not.

but we have all made bad choices, very few people can hand on heart say they only every ate healthy and were simply over whelmed with hunger,

many overweight people will last night have sat down to a fat laden roast dinner, maybe had some booze or snacks as they watched the football. That won’t have been driven by overwhelming hunger, and it was a choice, to remain fat in that moment,

sometimes our choices are driven by hunger, exhaustion, emotions, and sometimes we just make bad choices.

I’d say she’s right for most of us it is a choice. 18 months ago I was obese, I chose to eat what I did and I got fat. I then chose to start eating better and exercising and am no longer obese and the choice for me now will be to always calorie count to some degree. I knew and was choosing to eat things I knew weren’t good for me

I agree with the friend

I imagine she is talking about the micro decisions she makes on a daily basis, all day long, to be healthy.

nobody is healthy without effort. You have to decide to go for the run/not pick up the chocolate standing in the counter queue etc, they are all constant decisions that make us healthy. Those decisions are a choice.

I don’t believe it’s a choice in this life
everything is designed to lure us in.

ok you can deny yourself forever and polish that halo but for mere mortals our choices are attacked by large corps lacing food with chemicals that are addictive and bring people back

the choice is being taken away

Of course it’s not taken away 🙄

Exactly - we all do it all the time - I’m not sure why so many posters are trying to pretend otherwise. Maybe because it’s easier than admitting that you’ve made a bad choice?

Yes, I agree. It's like living in a community where drugs are freely available. There would be more drug addicts. It's harder now to maintain a healthy weight than it was in the past.

There are so many trite comments on this thread.

'i think this thread gets the heart of what is it to be human.'

I mean really what does that even mean? I am certainly not going to put weight at the centre of who I am as a human. If that is not moralising what is?

and this..

'Either you believe you are doomed forever to be a prisoner of your appetite, and are powerless to do anything about, and you absolve yourself of any responsibility, and convince yourself that you have NO CHOICES….living a life of despair and the certainty of failure…'

How utterly patronising! Many, many overweight people I know have lost and gained weight, particularly during the menopause years. It is miserable for them to look at food in terms of calories, sins etc. I don't see the same kind of guilt and shame inflicted on men, to be honest.

We know the formulas, the rules and the consequences. I find that those who have lost weight are a bit like ex smokers. I've lost sixteen pounds since April, but once I have reached and maintained my target weight, I shall never preach or judge other people who are struggling.

So the people who resist are more than mere mortals? They’re somehow superhuman because they don’t need a Wispa every time they’re at a till point?

It can be much harder for some though. Like the pp who said her daughter just started piling weight on. Like me, 1 ‘bad choice’ in the week means I gain/don’t lose.

I knew 2 sisters at school; one in my year, very overweight, didn’t eat excessively, didn’t eat loads of ‘bad’ foods. Still struggles now with her weight and has to work really hard to just not gain.

Her sister; about 2 years younger, ate what she liked; crisp, sandwiches, sausage rolls - skinny as a rake. Still is now and we’re all in our 40s.

Had a friend at work who I’m still in touch with, she eats at least 3 bags of crisp a day, has sandwiches/toasties for lunch and eats whatever she likes. Never puts weight on, whereas on the same diet I’d pile it on.

There must be some reason for this, not just ‘luck’ or ‘fast metabolism’. FWIW, I never put weight on until I had a traumatic time in life around 10-15 years ago. No ides if it’s something to do with that. Several GPs have been completely useless and just advised me to eat a ‘Mediterranean diet’, but the NHS version is full of carbs and low-fat spreads/yogurt/oils.

It’s really not hateful to say that being overweight is a choice - or a series of choices. It’s a fact.

The thing is our relative does believe nothing is in her control including her weight. She has a victim attitude to everything about her life and then projects that back that we are all so lucky not seeing that we have our own battles with health and weight. It makes it very hard to have any empathy when they do nothing to help their own issues and then say everyone else has it easier than them. As this thread shows a lot of us whether thin or fat at the time acknowledge how hard it is but ultimately only individuals can control how much they eat.