Everyone just hates fat people

[mamabeeboo]

Yes I'm fat and yes I'm taking the WLI.

I've had it out with a friend of a friend during a catch up dinner yesterday and I'm fuming.

I've lost some weight and still have a good 5 or so stone more to go before I'm anywhere near the 'normal' BMI category. So no, I'm not wasting away or disappearing, or losing weight too fast.

The mistake I made was being honest about the jabs. But I stand by it, I think it's important to get healthy, regardless of how you do it, just get there.

ANYWAY, this person has suddenly decided to feel concerned for my health, now that the loss has become noticeable. With some silent nods from others about how you should 'just eat less and move more'. No shit is that what was supposed to do?!

A big discussion about:
just have willpower
just have smaller portions
do it the normal way, you don't know what you're putting into your body
it's not healthy
just put down the fork
it's about dicipline
it's not really losing weight though, is it (huhh??)
it's more rewarding to do it the normal way so you can feel achievement

It's gotten me thinking of how so many people just hate fat people. You want us to pay for being fat, to suffer at the gym doing workouts we don't like or can't do with joint pain and back pain etc. You want us to 'just have willpower' like it's that easy. You want us to try all the diets and fail so you can feel superior with your 'discipline' and that you 'look after your body'.

You hate the fact that these WLI have levelled the playing field.

I said all this yesterday and it became very frosty. These aren't my friends, I was there for the birthday girl, but I won't sit there and take it.

I'm posting because I'd love to hear what you might have heard when talking about WLI. (Or if anyone agrees with the above 🤔)

Hush now, we'll have none of your science here! Not when people could make vague sweeping statements based on vibes and cope.

Apologies @HansHolbein - we missed that vital context! 😳Have undeleted your post now!

They don’t hate fat people, they’re just terrified that they’re going to lose the thing that gives them their sense of superiority (their comparative thinness)

I don't think it's that they hate fat people, I think it's that they're jealous that you can now be thin like them.

Ive only told my dh and one friend and said friend seems decidedly miffed about it. She is petite and a size 8 so why she is threatened by me losing 3 stone I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with the fact it's been quite effortless for me and she has to really work at it and starve herself to keep slim. She obviously wouldn't get it legitimately as she's a healthy bmi and I'm also not sure she could afford it. But it's funny how peoples minds work - I'm pretty sure she sees it as "cheating"

I don't let it bother me frankly, I couldn't give a stuff but I do wish I hadn't told her.

This is how you know there is nothing genuine in these posts. The weight loss forum is full of people trying all sorts of things, using all kinds of different schemes and tools, and taking it very seriously. What is also happening is that there is a struggle, people are running into obstacles, and they're not perfect weight-losers who are hitting on the perfect solution first time. No recognition of the impact of yo-yo dieting. No recognition of sustainability issues for very obese people. No acknowledgement of the fact that thousands of women, especially middle-aged women, are trying to treat obesity and health-related weight issues with no support. Zero external support. Often, at best, just a world of contradictory information. This however is something people are getting results on and they can access support from appropriately qualified people if they want or need it. Support from - and I've got a lot of time for Slimming World so I mean this in the nicest possible way - something that isn't reinforcing the idea of guilt over a cocktail or a biscuit. There is such a huge psychological impact of obesity and acknowledgement of that is nowhere to be found in 'concern' posts.

Apart from that, what is the difference between a fat person eating a packet of quavers and a sausage roll in their attempts to lose weight, and the kind of people lurking around these threads essentially doing the same to maintain their own personal thinness? I know - only one is being criticised constantly for it. Bottom line - people just don't want fat people to lose weight. There is nothing supportive in those comments. There's not even anything constructive, just a bunch of hectoring.

Yeah @JosephsCoat 😂and I note there's been no acknowledgement of it. Here's hoping the willpower brigade have read it and gone away with their tails between their legs.

Well - missed all of my points by a country mile. Completely over your head. And yet again back to the same ‘everyone hates fat people and no one wants them to be thin’ which is just completely not true.

No not at all. But it’s always the same with WLI threads.
It becomes an echo chamber of everyone saying the same quotes and phrases. Same people all validating themselves. Same people piling on to one opposing poster, mocking, scarcastic and unwilling to even take on board one small part of what the opposition has to say.
It’s pointless when people put their fingers in their ears and shouts the same thing repeatedly.

Willpower has been mentioned a number of times by the 'opposition'. Some of us have shared information from reliable sources about why willpower alone is not a viable way of treating obesity.

What's your view on that information?

@PalePinkPeony I appreciate it's difficult to respond when you are in a minority and lots of people are responding to your posts, but what you can do if you want to genuinely discuss by properly engaging, is to reply to people who are responding to you with thought out questions and making sensible points.

I feel that lots of very reasonable and well explained points have been put to you.

I fundamentally don’t agree for the majority of people. Of course there will always be exceptions.
It’s more likely a lack of support and the right approach for many that hampers willpower. It’s not as simple as ‘don’t eat as much’ and that’s what lots of people (in my experience) go for. It’s my opinion of course but I think there is a culture of no / less personal responsibility than in the past. Nothing is ever our faults. There is always someone else to blame. Not saying that’s true for everyone but I do feel that is the way things have been going these last 10 years or so.

@PalePinkPeony you really are one of the most self-righteously arrogant people I’ve read on this forum, and that’s an achievement.

You clearly have negative attitudes to food and weight yourself but rather than leave people to make choices for their own bodies that impact you in no way whatsoever, you’ve continued patronising and condescending to and about people who are using these injections and seeing positive responses. It’s giving big ‘if I have to struggle so do you’ energy.

Your grand claims of a sure fire way for people to eat to lose weight would be laughable were it not so offensive to the people who, in good faith, are sharing their experiences with you in a bid to educate you into a shred of compassion rather than grand proclamations of what people on WLIs do or don’t do, whilst you claim everyone else is in an echo chamber on threads about WLIs. If you are so anti them, it begs the question why you frequent them enough to be a self proclaimed expert on the dangers and habits of those who use them.

As you seem to love discipline so much, I would suggest you exercise some when it comes to projecting your own issues on to others.

glp-1s are not for the majority of people, they are for obese people.

You're disagreeing, but you're not explaining why you're disagreeing, as if your opinion is as valid and well supported as the evidence that people have put on this thread from reliable sources.

The one thing I’m sure of is that currently I know far far more about healthy eating and how my body responds to food than I ever have done. The last time I dieted in earnest (20 years ago with WW, lost 4 stone) the weight dropped off fairly quick and I maintained for a few years. Then it crept up and then a bit more and then life etc. I don’t have the mental head space to watch my food intake through a microscope 24/7. So perhaps it was a moral failing or I was just plain lazy or perhaps you know life was happening and I didn’t have space to stop and assess what was going on. I know now how to maintain my weight, I know about UPF’s (which for all those being high and mighty about them, none of us really had a clue even 5 years ago!), I know about protein intake vs carbs, I know about fasting. I have so many tools I can use going forward that I didn’t have or couldn’t access. Once you hit a certain point you think fuck it because you are juggling life and you don’t want to suck all the joy out of food by eating nothing but lettuce and having to pay attention to every last mouthful. Maybe that makes me lazy, I think I’m just an imperfect human. I’ve gained and lost the same half a stone for over five years, I was tired of it and wanted a shot at losing the weight which was proving so very hard to shift even if I stuck at whatever diet it was. We didn’t know any better with the old diets, so much of our knowledge over food, diet and gut biomes etc is new, really new. Maybe we’re doing the best we can with what we have.

But lots of overweight (not obese) people are taking them too? As I said earlier I know at least 5 overweight not obese people currently having the jabs

And this is why I stop responding.
its gets to personal name calling and insults. Every time.
I have a different opinion to you. And this is a forum to discuss opinions. It’s a thread inviting discussion. Not a thread saying I love the WLI everyone who agrees post something!
You think WLI are great. I have my reservations.
That doesn’t make me arrogant or any of the other names you decided was ok to call me.

That’s great! Can I ask- how did you learn all you have now learned since taking the jabs about foods / nutrition and all the tools you mention

@PalePinkPeony so, skip past posts you think are rude, or just respond to the part that's relevant.

I thought you were opposed to WLI rather than just having reservations about them?

PalePinkPeony

Why should I make things difficult for myself and rely on willpower to be a healthy weight when I can take medication that makes it effortless for me? The same way I can take pills that stop me from getting pregnant so that I don't have to rely on the withdrawal method or leaving it to chance? Or any other medication that leaves you able to live a normal life and not have to think about it all so much?

Why do you care how I and others go about being slim and healthy? WLI's now enable me to eat a healthy diet by decreasing my appetite and to do more exercise as it's much easier now that I've lost 3 stone of flab.

Where does this thought process come from that losing weight and being healthy should be hard and come down to mind over matter?

It reminds me of those Mormon communities that won't allow people to take medication or have operations and instead "leave it in God's hands" and just let people die or have shit lives.

I don't get it?

Then those 5 people either have underlying weight related health issues, lied to a prescriber to get it fraudulently or got something that was hopefully the medication they thought it was from a nefarious source.
It's only legitimately prescribed to obese people - BMI of 30+ - or people with a BMI of 27+ with related health issues or of certain ethnicities. It's not legitimately available to anyone who just asks for it.

My BMI is 23.4 which is a healthy BMI, and I’m taking them, which is allowed as my starting BMI was 37.7 - which could be the case for the people you ‘know’.

Unless you have personally watched the people you ‘know’ standing on the scale to see what their weight is, and you’ve measured their height with a tape measure, you have no idea what their BMI was and is.

You also don’t know if they have one of the eligibility criteria that enables them to commence WLI at a lower BMI than the standard 30.

The people you ‘know’ may be well within the prescribing guidelines. Unless you know their starting weight and BMI and what their BMI is now, you are only guessing.

@PalePinkPeony its no use trying to get through to these people. It’s the same people who’ve ignored years of health and fitness advice from the media, government, doctors etc leading to their obesity and inability to lose weight. Why would they become any less ignorant now.

Thread asking why slim healthy people might be opposed to weight loss injections, we answered that question and were then vilified and personally attacked.

@DurbevillesGirl2 oh come on. It's not a question of ignoring advice and being ignorant. We all know what is needed to lose weight, as you types are so keen to repeat, at the basic level it's eat in a calorie deficit long term. What people struggle with is implementing that effectively over a long enough period. For many reasons, ignorance not being one of them.

Me too, it was really bugging me that I had 1.5k sitting in my bank account and I just couldn't think what to do with it. I also had insatiable cravings for Quavers and sausage rolls from morning till night every day. Talk about killing two birds with one stone! 😂