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 🤔)

Yes! The claim up thread that "I know 5 people that aren't obese just overweight" is almost certainly just a case of that person not having an actual clue on what obese is. Especially since the "average" size has been increasing over the years.

I'm 5'8". When I started WLI my BMI was 36. When I was a small size 14, I was still obese I'm a size 12 now and my BMI is still 28. So I'm 4 inches taller than the "average" woman and two sizes smaller but I'm still overweight by a stone and a half - and only just not obese.

In answer to original question, I think many people secretly judge fat people. I’m less judgy than I used to be having become aware of the complexities around weight gain etc.
However, I do still catch myself having unkind thoughts and I doubt I’m the only one.

Meant to say - when my BMI was 36, I was a size 16. So, technically the "average" size but very definitely obese.

I am fat and I am taking WLI because no matter how many times I tried to eat less and move more I just couldn't do it on my own.

You know what I did do though - I stopped smoking, just like that. Cold turkey and haven't smoked since 2008.

I also don't drink now - at all. Had a few drinks in lockdown when I started my perimenopause and couldn't tolerate it so just stopped.

Should I be as judgmental and high horsey about people who can't stop smoking and drinking - because those things are just as harmful as being overweight? Or is it just acceptable to be judgmental of fat people.

I hid this thread a couple of days ago but I see it's still rumbling on.

Can I just add for context that I recognise the username of a poster on this thread who spends a lot of time on the WLI board and who has disclosed in other threads here that they are anorexic. There is very little point trying to reason with their mindset. I've suggested elsewhere that they hide this whole board as it's clearly highly triggering for them.

More widely, there's a huge amount of disordered eating and probably clinical eating disorders on MN.

No people hate people whose whole life is obsessing about weight and weight loss and won't stop going on about it

Having done a quick search, I agree. I don't think the presence of people who find the whole subject so triggering and upsetting is beneficial either for them or those who are obese and need WLIs.

Fwiw I also think this about other issues where people open threads that they know full well are about a subject they'll find upsetting, so it's not just a weight loss thing.

Oh yes, I completely agree with your last point. I remember many years ago seeing a post where someone was saying that there are posters who use MN as a kind of self-harm. It’s a sobering thought but once you recognise it you can see it everywhere. Some people are drawn to threads which they know will trigger anger or sadness; others post on AIBU looking for a kicking that they feel they deserve.

I'm 5'8". When I started WLI my BMI was 36. When I was a small size 14, I was still obese

Same here, at size 14 I had BMI of 30. And I'm also relatively tall, just muscular and heavy. Someone shorter could easily be of average build and very much into the obese range. Just because size 16 is average nowadays does not mean anyone below that is also normal weight.

I really appreciate your honesty with this post. So often on these threads you get people claiming that of course they don't hate fat people and we are all paranoid, and then they say something that makes it so clear how much they do in fact hate fat people.
Can I ask what form you'd say your judgement takes? Is it a version of the old trope that we are all just too lazy to move more and too thick to know a salad is better for us than a cake?

Not sure what the rules are on sharing archived articles but this article in yesterday’s Telegraph sets out many of the health benefits of WLI. For me it was reading about the effects on cardiovascular health which made me decide to start on MJ. So pleased I did.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/2025.05.13-205743/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/13/nhs-weight-loss-jabs-set-to-make-britons-live-longer/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.is/2025.05.13-205743/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/13/nhs-weight-loss-jabs-set-to-make-britons-live-longer/

Apologies, can’t seem to make this link look tidier.

I’m ashamed to say my unkind thoughts are the old rubbish of being fat is mostly self inflicted and especially when I see fat children with fat parents. It’s easy to just blame the adults - who not that long ago were children themselves.
I do pull myself up about it, there are many reasons for being overweight and I believe some are genetic ie some people do genuinely put weight on more easily than others.
I think the food industry has a lot to answer for and reading
‘Ultra-Processed People’ by Dr Chris van Tulleken is really interesting and informative.
As I said in my first post, wli are a good way for people to start to improve their health imo.

Thank you. I appreciate asking you to share your prejudices wasn't an easy question! It's helpful to hear that honesty though, especially from someone who sees WLI as a positive solution. So often it seems that being fat is bad... but also using a tool to be less fat is bad. One conversation even suggest that not using WLI might be seen as bad because it's making the choice not to help yourself, or something!

Fair play to you @caramac04 for being so honest.

I don’t think society hate fat men as much as they hate fat women. Society view Fat women as having failed in the beauty standards department. women historically should be able to exert discipline, be small and quiet and need the strength of a big man. Fat women are always the butt of jokes. Fat men are just big guys typically, I only really see fat men being mocked of treated different when they are on the extreme end of morbidly obese. It doesn’t take much for a woman to go from attractive to unattractive based on her weight in the eyes of society.

'Wearing glasses is taking the easy route when you could just walk into things'. Brilliant!

This made me giggle :-)

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/anti-obesity-drugs-good-for-everything-else-too-so-suck-that-fitness-twats-20250514257058?fbclid=IwY2xjawKRyf5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHimWo6oogJBst00QqDJwQJsZ6XrzVH8GvkC4sfrorIB7o9d72N2KJA6bLGKJ_aem_JSpwGfPBeWcCPjChbCGrBA

You are right in that I think they do get mocked less but they do still get it. And they get teased more face to face in the form of banter with mates more than we do.
however fat men don’t have more luck with women than vice versa. I see far more fat women with slimmer partners. Generally we don’t find it attractive

What risks? Did you not see today’s report about WLIs cutting the risk of heart attacks, or yesterday’s (I think it was) about cutting the risk of cancer?
This really is jealousy, pure and simple. “I have had to work hard my whole life to be thin and now you fatties can achieve what I have, without putting in the effort or depriving yourselves”
”it’s not faaaaaair”

But you will have to deprive yourself -like everyone else, when you get to target weight, come off the jabs and the hunger and same feelings return? It’s just delaying the inevitable isn’t it? In fact in my mind it’s almost making it worse- if you lose weight naturally, you gradually make changes to your whole diet and your hunger levels, thoughts around full and not full, sugar cravings etc are all shifted- all the while you have the same constant cravings, hormones and insulin responses.
By taking the jab, that effectively shuts off the food noise, the cravings, it makes you want to eat non carby sugary foods. Which is great for the time you are the jabs but when you come off and all those feeling return, isn’t that just to make it even harder to stick to?

This is why prescribers support people with tapering and finding the right approach for maintenance when they get there.

For some people that will be continuing to take the medication at some level. For others they won’t need to do this.

My friend who has taken Semiglutinade has done so for four years (she is diabetic). Tiny dose. The WLI are being developed into a tablet.
I don't get the concern of people that have never been obese fretting about others taking these drugs long term. Some obese people are food addicts, some not. If you have made changes you might be so chuffed you don't want to go back to being plus sized.
I'm not addicted to food (but I was to wine) but having been eight stone over weight I liked to eat!
I have a household with two current athletes and a health conscious DD. There's very little upf in my house. Would I go back to being a size 24? No because the benefits I'm seeing of being an average size are too great. I've also regained some of my vanity. I been very ill and if I had still been bmi 43 my treatment would have been much more difficult.
Every fat person I know realises keeping the weight off is the next challenge. If you read the WLJ threads people are making permenant changes.
The people who won't like this are the diet clubs and food industry. However as someone up thread said there was much push back to the pill yet it changed women's lives. Why are we attacking people for trying to get healthy? Is it just skinny privalage? Fwiw I hate the expression thin, that's not healthy either.

News today says that people who stop weight loss drugs return to their original weight within a year. I mean, it doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that’s what would happen. Taking drugs means that these people don’t learn to control their weight without them. Who cares if they waste their own money, but it’s questionable whether the NHS should be paying

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/14/people-who-stop-weight-loss-drugs-return-to-original-weight-within-year-analysis-finds#:~:text=Analysis%20of%2011%20studies%20of,10%20months%20of%20stopping%20them.

For me one of the key things has been that as the jab has dampened down my carb and sugar cravings, I’ve had time to break the cycle of eating those things. When I come off the jab I’m just not going to buy them in case the cravings do return, but I’m hoping that this time off them will have broken the cycle.

‘These people’? Who do you (and others who have used that term) think you’re talking to?