Obesity

[Ricky44]

Name changed for this as it’s outing.

My Mum has a friend who is morbidly obese. She was diagnosed as type 2 diabetes a good few years ago but she doesn’t lose weight, even though she has been advised to do so. She is now too large to move and is in a wheelchair. She has just been told she may have to have her foot amputated.

She told me that she doesn’t believe that her obesity is caused by overeating, it must be caused by something else. She has been tested for various things as she has been under specialist care for a number of years but thinks the NHS must have missed something. I hadn’t seen her for a year or so, until the weekend, and was quite shocked when I saw her.

I’m wondering if it’s a food addiction or something else? I used to smoke but quit 6 years ago so I do have some understanding of addiction. I’m also aware that you can go cold turkey when you quit smoking but you can’t do that with food - I know that if I smoked 1 cig I could well smoke the whole packet. So how do you give up over eating when everyone still has to eat something.

I quit smoking when I got a cough that I couldn’t shift and I worried that I’d done some permanent damage (I may well have done and it might not be obvious for a few years but I’m hoping I quit in time).

My BMI crept up to 25 a month ago so I’ve been on a diet, I need to lose about a stone to get back down to a healthier weight, ive lost about 3 lbs so nothing major but it’s going in the right direction and I am trying to stop myself from becoming obese in the future.

This isn’t meant to be provocative, I’m just trying to understand how someone could get into this state without trying to do something about it?

It’s sad isn’t it.

Opposite end of the scale but my cousin has had anorexia for a long time. The NHS treatment is to basically monitor their eating until they’re back at a healthy weight. Give them a bit of advice about nutrition and then let them go. There doesn’t seem to be a focus on really getting to the root cause of the problem. It’s a mental health issue and the anorexia is the symptom. I’m wondering if it’s the same with obesity.

Overeating is an incredibly complex issue which is influenced by many factors (self esteem, mental health, trauma to name a few.) The many people who think weight loss is simply eat less and get some exercise are woefully ignorant.

When we live in a world where some people think it's acceptable for an 11 year old to eat 3 Magnums in a day, I think we are as a society sleepwalking into obesity on a huge scale and long term.

@LeekMunchingSheepShagger

I understand addiction to a certain point, from my own experience of quitting smoking.

I know that 1 cig will likely cause a relapse, so I avoid that 1 cig. I know this through trial and error when I first tried to quit.

How do you go cold turkey with food though? You can’t. Everyone has to eat something so every day you’re risking a relapse.

I must admit that avoiding smoking (and the potential relapse) is getting easier as smoking is banned in more places. Food is everywhere though.

You don't go cold turkey, eating less is a start.
If you are the kind of person who eats a packet of biscuits while watching tv, start by eating half a packet and take it from there.

@Ihopeyourcakeisshit

Maybe the answer is to treat sugar and fat like we treat cigarettes? Health warnings all over the packaging, tax them to the point that they’re unaffordable, penalties for food producers and takeaways/ restaurants where more than 50% of the menu is unhealthy (thinking of you Fried Chicken shops).

No to the taxing, you shouldn't penalise everybody because some people have no self control.
Fags are different because you are either a smoker or not.
I get that there are often complicated reasons behind over eating but let's be honest it's generally not like that for most people. Obesity is becoming more accetable , we have lost sight of what normal is, greed is less frowned upon and fat shaming is practically a capital offence.

My obesity is a MH issue. I was raped at 17 and somewhere in the mind fucked melee that followed I decided if I was fat nobody would rape me again. I am a lot older now but that is still in my mind. It has led to a lifelong battle that I lose every time.

That wouldnt work. They've already done sugar taxing. Plus cigarettes cost a fortune but people still smoke.

It goes on your own willpower. You quit smoking because you wanted to. Because you felt the need to.

This lady obviously doesn't want to lose weight yet for whatever reason is her own.

The answer is to eat less but alot of people for their own reasons dont have that ability

It takes long-term motivation, determination, self-discipline, accountability and, ideally, lots of support.... She has to think about methods of weight loss which suit her personality. Some people need the accountability of an app like My Fitness Pal; some need the framework of of a slimming club; some people need to go all in with meal replacements etc. Can she do one of those meal delivery diets- then she just doesn't buy ANY other food. She plans a rigid diet of 3 meals a day, no snacks, and doesn't deviate.
This would take away the need to think about food, or to make lots of choices and decisions about what to eat every day.

If you have an addiction to smoking, alcohol or drugs, you usually go 'cold turkey' to give up, you can get whatever it is totally out of your system.

If you have an addiction to food, you can't do that - you have to keep eating, just in smaller amounts. You are therefore constantly being tempted by the thing that's harming you - for that reason, it's different from other addictions.

Does it also get to the point where it is just too much to tackle?

I need to lose another 10/11 lbs so I know it that will take about 3 months. If I had to lose 20 stone then that might seem impossible.

I can see how a massive weight loss target might feel like an insurmountable task, ultimately it comes down to motivation.
You can have all the support in the world but if you don't have your own reasons then it's not going to happen.
Whether that be your own health, vanity, wanting to play footy with the kids?

Maybe we should have food rehab facilities like drug rehab?

@Ihopeyourcakeisshit I think that many people can't stop at half a packet of biscuits. I can't. I can not have something for months but once I indulge I eat it all, even if I feel full. A single wrapped item is fine an open packet is not.

Luckily I can balance this occasional disordered behaviour as I am active and have a healthy diet generally, but I think many people have this self control issue. Many go for a blow out or all you can eat type thing every so often. Or eating loads of chocolate at Easter etc.

For me I think it comes from
growing up poor and my mother restricting food, but my Dad having treats when we went without. My mother has an eating disorder, I find her still very wearing when she visits. "You shouldn't be having a biscuit type comment." If I eat 5 she nearly explodes

The thing is for the lady in OP's post if she is becoming disabled now due to the issue. That means she is getting little exercise and more time to eat. Something like chair aerobics often aimed at care home / elderly patients could help. She sounds in denial, but is someone being her feeder or is it all her ?

We need more education around nutrition. Many people do not have the first idea about calorie needs and the number of calories in what they eat. Dieters are some of the worst culprits.

I also do blow outs once a week, a pizza and gin and maybe sweets/cakes. I’m also generally quite active / eat well most of the time.

I wouldn’t let myself get to that point though. I couldn’t fasten an old pair of trousers last month so put myself on a diet. 3 lbs down (could have lost more if it wasn’t for the blow outs) with another 10 or so to go. I noticed the weight gain and started to reverse it. How do people who end up obese not notice it’s happening?

@Pieceofpurplesky

Thanks for your comment and I’m so sorry to hear that. The weight gain makes perfect sense in your case. I speak as someone who used to “comfort smoke”.

She has a partner who she lives with of about 5 years. I don’t know if she is his feeder or not.

The book " Gene Eating" by Giles Yeo is good on this topic.

But you could just as easily say, "how do people emd up depressed without noticing it happen?"

Of course obese people notice it happen but they dont have the things in place to handle it. Once your body is past a certain weighf it is very very very hard tk return. Your body conspires against you making you hungry.

For many (myself included) its a MH issue and/or a result of childhood trauma. It isnt as simple as it would be for you.

If it was simple everyone would be slim.

Do you ask anorexics how they let being so underweight happen!?

Obesity is such a complex issue. Obviously it is caused by eating too much and moving too little, but there are all sorts of factors that influence these behaviours. At an individual level there might be issues like a lack of knowledge about a healthy lifestyle, mental state, stress levels, lack of sleep, use of medications which affect appetite, physical conditions that affect movement etc, but at a wider population level there will also be factors. For example, people who live in an area with a high concentration of fast food outlets have higher rates of obesity than people in areas with fewer fast food outlets. The infrastructure of where you live is also important (eg access to cycle lanes, green spaces, sports facilities). Then there are all sorts of cultural and socio-economic factors that will affect a person’s behaviour, so it’s really not as simple telling someone to go on a diet and that’s that, problem solved.

How do people who end up obese not notice it happening?
Well that's just it, you can't not notice. You don't go to bed a size 10 one night and wake the next day size 18, but instead of doing what you did when your trousers were a squeeze they buy a bigger size and a bigger size .......
It just becomes a case of ignoring it and accepting it.The problem is we are accepting it too much.
We use euphemisms instead of the 'f' word and view slim women as painfully thin, worryingly thin, skinny bitches etc .

My DM is around 4 stone overweight, possibly more. She would love to be slim, but doesn't want to do what needs to be done to get there. There's a lot of people out there who are just the same, with no underlying issues, not even a lack of willpower in that they find it hard to stick to a regime. Just simply don't want to.

I'm personally of the view that we should stop fat shaming, stop trying to halt a runaway train and start refiguring the world for the way things are now, and are going to be, not how they used to be in the immediate post war period when most people were slim. The majority of people in this country are now overweight, so they clearly don't think it's enough of a problem to take action.

Disclaimer- I'm slim, but I don't think weight is a moral issue.

As someone who has lost 5 stone and has another 5 to go, in my experience it happens because you stop caring. I'm already fat so what's the point? You get used to being fat and honestly I love food and eating so it became my little treat to myself since clothes were no good and I didn't really like going places because I felt so uncomfortable.

It's taken me 10 years to properly get it under control and I think the turning point for me was having group support. I go to a group training gym and also WW and just having people around me on the same path has really helped.

Having 10+ stones to lose feels like an impossible task in the beginning. I'm half way there and it still feels like a massive distance to go. To do it you literally have to want to lose weight more than anything else. It's boring and unless you really want to do it, you can't.