DP and his attitude to food and me in general!

[dmmum]

At my mums over xmas, lovely, can relax eat food not do too much.

First I am overweight not grossly but 2 kids n PN depression,not the best mix to be a size 8!

He watches everything I eat, making little comments or just looks! So when he goes for a nap/out alone/or with kids I over compensate and then hate myself.

Both of us get to lay in coz parents get up with the kids. But if I get up later than him I get sarky comments, I dont say anything to him if other way round.

Also am p'd off that he gives loads of attetion and affection to DS's but i barely get anything - except a nudge in the back in the morning - you know what I mean!

Am just so fed up, been together for nearly 20 years and keep thinking do I want to spend next 20 like this - he wasnt always like this.

Sorry a very long rant but needed to get it off my chest.

I was very slim when I was younger and never felt any resentment or anything. People seemed more interested than anything else.

Now I am bigger I work with some very slim people and I harbour no resentment towards them. Some are naturally slim (you can tell as they don't talk about weight diets etc) and some who aren't and make a big production number out of every single lunch of homemade 2 leaf salad.

I honestly don't see it.

Avril I am sorry if you have been treated badly and totally agree with you that "naturally" slim people actually just do the right thing without having to think about it. As I did when I was slim.

Oh sorry Dittany. I can't really respond to your point as I've never been on a diet so I don't know how it would make me feel towards people eating around me.

Wouldn't it make people resentful of men who were eating whatever they fancied as well?

Plus loads of people on diets are larger and quite a lot of people who are slim eat quite well.

So wouldn't it have to be those on diets (irrespective of size) feeling resentment towards those not on diets (irrespective of size)?

Personally I think that the reason people are so spiteful about fat women, is that it is a stereotype of a lazy person, with no self control, who sits around munching chips, has no drive or interest in themselves, and is possibly a but thick and a chav. That is the stereotype and it is quite strongly ingrained I think. Rich/posh/successful people are rarely portrayed as fat. (Except maybe for the fat cat banker which is supposed to disgust as well).

Or is it simply that fat is considered unattractive in our society, and people see a fat person and think "there but for the grace of god go I" and try and dissociate themselves as much as possible. In case it rubs off or something.

I don't know

x-post there but I think it all makes sense.

My 19.30 post was responding to avril not dittany.

so is that YOUR opinion then iso?

This thread has been interesting reading.

I've experienced, all of the below at one time or other.
Thin & eating like a pig.
Thin & eating sensibly.
Thin & dieting (well, technically starving myself)
Fat & eating like a pig.
Fat & eating sensibly.
Fat & dieting (see above)

Which means I've experienced the varying attitudes to all these things.

My experience so far has been,

Fat is bad unless dieting (in which case you are a pig, no matter the diet)
Thin is good but only when dieting (otherwise you are lying)

Unless it's a bloke commenting, in which case.. no scrap that, they never seem to care.

It makes no sense the judgements that people make based on appearance. Although I have to say, the comments aimed at me when fat were always much worse than those when I was thin. My health hasn't correlated with my weight ever. It has correlated with my diet and amount of exercise, but not weight. So it's a stupid measure and should never be used on it's own. Anyone claiming they know better really need a rethink.

"Or is it simply that fat is considered unattractive in our society, and people see a fat person and think "there but for the grace of god go I" and try and dissociate themselves as much as possible. In case it rubs off or something."

Oh god, there was some ridiculous article once on how having fat friends meant you were more likely to be overweight. I'd go look for it, but it made me want to break my computer screen. So worryingly, there are people out there who believe it is contagious!

"If you are hungry you are likely to be bad tempered and may take it out on the people you perceive to be getting what you aren't"

That can definitely be true. At the other end of the spectrum it can make people feel smug and superior (due to their "control") instead. Both result in nasty and un-needed comments.

OP - even if you were really overweight the way your husband is behaving is not acceptable, when you love someone then yes you worry about them if there is a possibility they are making themselves unhealthy and yes he could say something and offer to support you in losing weight BUT he is being a bully and his behavior is obviously making things worse.

I am size 16 now BUT I am the same weight now that i was at 11 years old. I lost alot of weight before having my first child and although yes I need to lose more and a couple of posters on this thread would probably be very critical of this I feel I have done well (and have had 4 pregnancies in the last 6 years!) so I wont be fretting too much!.

food is very difficult for some people, I grew up thinking it was normal to have a packet of biscuits chucked across the room for your breakfast every day. Food is difficult for people for many reasons alot more complicated than being greedy

Dittany, I was agreeing with you, and supporting your assertion with a personal anecdote.

Because of the nature of the OP, many here raised the perfectly valid issue of health concerns when overweight. Plenty of evidence has been cited for these. The remarkable contrast between responses on this thread and the similar one about being too thin were also discussed.

ISONT and kaloki have made excellent points.

ijustwanttoaskaquestion - I assume you mean is the stereotype what I think? of course not, I was exploring Dittany's question of why people seem to despise overweight women so much.

I don't think that the idea that a lot of it comes from people on diets being envious is quite right.

If you read my other posts you will see that I have been extremely enthusiastic about your attitude. Plus I am not exactly svelte myself these days.

There is no denying that these stereotypes abound though, and they do work their way into people's consciousnesses.

A study somewhere that i read about once showed that overweight women were the least likely to be offered a job, and the most likely to be working in the lowest paid jobs, out of everyone. Of course I won't be able to cite any references

Avril is it because anorexia is such a terrifying illness which has such well publicised results that people have a real knee-jerk horror reaction to thinking someone might be "too thin". And of course in our society of (let's face it) pretty overweight people, it seems to everyone looking in like an easy and enjoyable problem to solve.

Someone thinks someone is too thin, well that can kill you, solution is to eat some cream cakes, go for it!

Whereas when the majority of people are too fat, they shy away from talking about what is right in front of their faces. Tackle it with someone else and you might have to have a close look at your own situation, and that of your family. Plus the risks of being too fat, when they lead to death, are given other names: heart disease, organ failure etc. They don't put in the papers "died of being too fat".

Is it a case of people burying their heads in the sand, the reason for the different reaction on your thread I mean?

"A study somewhere that i read about once showed that overweight women were the least likely to be offered a job, and the most likely to be working in the lowest paid jobs, out of everyone."

Amusingly this article from 1943 says the opposite.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if this was a real article from the 40's

sorry iso - i got cut short whilst posting, was going to add , yes, i did see your comments and was

i think societies perception of beauty is skewed. We are, programed to reproduce and pass on our genes, we will be attracted to an attractive mate - take it back to biology and we should be attracted to a healthy mate - that means, not too fat - that is not healthy, not to thin, that is not healthy - most men are not interested in stick insect women as they are portrayed on the media but it is shoved down our throats at every opportunity that it has become what we, and our daughters more worryingly, aspire to.

Surely, if someone eats a healthy (properly healthy) diet, exercises and is still a size 16, then that is simply the size they are meant to be and it would be unhealthy to try and alter that?

In terms of what is/isn't considered mainstream attractive - that's easy. The mainstream 'attractive' is whatever is perceived to be the hardest thing to obtain.

So it used to be that being pale was the hardest thing to obtain, as poor people had to spend a lot of time working outside, and got suntans, whereas aristocratic women spent a lot of time inside because they didn't have to do manual work. However, the 1920s come along with the possibility of travelling to exotic places (only for the rich of course) so a deep suntan becomes desired.

I think it's the same with fat. People of a larger size are widely deemed as more attractive in some cultures because it is harder to obtain food, so size shows wealth. However now in Britain, the cheapest, easiest option is eating crap, so being of a larger size becomes associated with perhaps not being very well off or very self-controlled.

ijust I think that is true. My best friend weighs about 3 stone more than me, but there is no way she eats that much more or exercises that much less. Something must have to do with having a 'natural' weight.

Blimey if you google "women weight employment" there's loads of it. Read a bit and it is depressing stuff.

ISONT - yes, very plausible

agree with IMH about size as a status symbol. At one extreme, if you have your own personal trainer and chef, I imagine that it is very easy for someone without food issues to maintain an ideal weight. Though, for people under pressure, with little time or money to spare, eating crap tends to make weight creep up.

It brings us back full circle to the OP - in my experience, depression is the enemy of self control.

If we all pile over to the other thread there won't be room for anyone else. ijustwanttoaskaquestion and i will probably get jammed in the door like those policemen on the fast show

I am still astonished about how worked up about this subject people get. To the extent of nearly ignoring the subject of the op.

Does people really care if their friends/family are fatter/thinner than them, unless they are extremely one way or another?

The only thoughts I have about other peoples eating habits is in the work canteen at work, where the lunches all seem to be of a high calorie nature. People have 3 courses and a glass of wine. Now probably that is their main meal of the day, but I couldn't eat all that at lunch time and stay awake in the afternoon. Beyond that I could not give a monkeys.

"To the extent of nearly ignoring the subject of the op."

To be fair, the OP has come in and said she's spoken to her DH so I imagine she's done with this thread now anyway.

At least we've stayed within the bounds of one topic, which is unusual for any forum topic on any forum.