The latest in how we all hate fat people (I am a fat person) is a medievil magnetic structure to prevent your mouth opening more than like 2mm – here’s the Guardian article and back to school weigh ins in September. It’s all a load of absolute bullshit. 2mm? Is that some sort of liquid diet from now on then? The issue isn’t a complete lack of control about shoving food in all day long it’s all complex and has so many varients that will cost money to fix but we have a hoarding, greedy government that only want short term solutions. They don’t care about your issues or problems or disorders or poverty that cause many people problems when it comes to food so instead they are, yet again, going to shame fat people, parents of children being weighed and compared to a BMI scale thats outdated.
My Issue With School Weigh Ins
My daughter is going through her hormone things. I mean it’s a battle to get her to eat fruit and vegetables but she does. She has a relatively healthy diet despite changing her mind what she will eat on a bi-weekly basis. She has a healthy portion, she has a school dinner and she’s tried a variety of foods. She has some issues but I try really hard to make all kinds of food accessible to her. Now she’s getting closer and closer to her teens she’s had another massive growth spurt, she’s filling out in a perfectly healthy way and that means she has some fat to her body. Finding clothes to fit her has started to become a problem and she mostly has to buy things aged 12-14 depending on where we shop. Things don’t fit her well in the length and of course in every shop sizing is different. We tried her in ‘adult’ sizes and she was a size six to eight. Perfectly healthy for a growing preteen body that is filling out and getting taller.
If I am told in September that she is ‘at risk’ of being overweight or obese I will scream. I am genuinely worried about what it will do to her self confidence. I really try to be size inclusive, talk positively and I don’t comment on her body. I try not to restrict food in an unhealthy way and as a result my daughter doesn’t binge the way I do. I could absolutely do better but I could also do worse. I want to promote a healthy, varied relationship with food and joyous movement. I want to promote a positive body attitude and reiterate that fat is a normal, healthy part of your body growing and changing. I don’t want my daughter to get caught out thinking a size 12, 14 or 16 is unhealthy like I did and as a result have binge eating, disordered eating and a terrible relationship with my body and food.
I worry that school weigh ins will shame parents that are from poorer backgrounds especially like I was because there is a huge link between poverty and obesity but why would the Tories want to fix that? They hate the poor!
Things that SHOULD happen instead of shaming parents, school weigh ins and mouth torture devices
Allow children to see all different body shapes and sizes moving, happy, living their best lives and existing.
Allow children to see all different body shapes and sizes exercising. That kind of has to start with me really, the fat woman doing yoga and lifting weights and swimming like I used to.
Teach children proper nutrition and how to cook from scratch not just cake baking. Change the curriculum to include making sauces, trying lots of different fruit and vegetables, meal planning for a family and finding new favourite flavours.
Stop labelling food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ choices because that develops into guilt and shame. Food is food.
Talk about eating disorders and the problems they cause and where they can come from. It’s not just binge and purge.
Talk about emotional eating and finding nourishment. When we figure out the craving or emotion we can turn to something else rather than food.
Stop talking about taking things out of meals but instead what we can put in? What will give us more nourishment, more nutrition, more colour to our plates?
Stop promoting slimming clubs outside schools. Children don’t need to diet and they don’t need to see those kind of advertisements reminding them that they’re not good enough, not skinny enough, not slim enough and not someone they’ve never mets ideal beauty standard. Actively be anti-diet
Offer therapy for eating disorder patients including the fat ones. Believe fat people when they say they have a problem with food or an eating disorder.
Offer children a variety of sports at school so they can find something they enjoy. Give them choice. Stop making them play endless games (I’m looking at you, Rounders) that they hate playing.
Teach children that another person’s body has nothing to do with them, to be kind as bodies around them change and grow.
Make healthy food choices more appealing and accessible. Stop shops discounting processed food which is affordable and instead focus on things like fruit and vegetable boxes.
Ultimately it’s a lot of work from parents and what teachers have to teach. It’s changing the attitude. It’s stopping using an out dated system to measure health. It’s getting to the root cause of the issue – why does this problem have an issue with food? How can we help them overcome this issue? This is a mental health problem just as much, if not more, than it is a physical one. If loosing weight was just as simple as not opening your mouth then we would all be thin all the time. It’s also important to remember thiness does not autimatically equal health, just as fatness does not automatically equal lack of self control.
Diet culture has lead to decades of body image issues and been a key factor in eating disorders. It’s time to say no to diets and yes to health.
Diet culture has ruined my life. I am not saying that to be dramatic, I’m saying it because it’s true. It’s made me diet from my early teens through my twenties and as a result I’ve got fatter and fatter. I am living proof that diets don’t work and they don’t work because I am yet to undo all the damage I have around food, around health and around when I am allowed or should not be allowed to eat. I know I’m not the only person that feels like this because it’s a conversation I have with friends on a very regular basis. So if right now you are feeling shit because you’re fat and you have no idea what to do and you’re sick of starving yourself then this post is for you. When I first starting looking into fat liberation and body positivity I felt I was too fat to even try.
Ditching the unhealthy obsession with Diet Culture
I’ve been attempting to unravel all that damage now for the last 14 months and I am not there yet. I wish I could say that I’m super thin and happy and healthy and everything is perfect right now but I can’t because it’s not true, well, some of it is not true. I am happier and I’m no longer obsessed with food, calorie counting and weighing myself. I don’t sit there *every* night wishing I could cut off the fat from my stomach. I realise typing this how insane that sounds but again I won’t lie. There have been times were I’ve contemplated grevious self harm to be thin because for all of my life I have been told the only way to be healthy is to be thin. I didn’t want to do this to myself anymore. I don’t want to say I’ve been on a journey because my fat bum hasn’t moved alot in the last 12 months but I have slowly but surely changed the focus. Now rather than hating myself I’m angry at diet culture. I’m also pretty angry at the government and how they plan to try and improve the health of the nation because it’s problematic.
What is diet culture?
It’s the photoshopped magazines, the slimming club adverts, the fat shaming, the “have you thought of going on a diet?” when you go for a smear test. It’s the stigma when your fat and pregnant, or trying to concieve. It’s the feeling of laughter if you exercise. It’s the years and years of beauty myths saying thin is beauty, thin is grace, thin is the life you want. It’s the cause of eating disorders, of our daughters thinking their fat when they’re ten years old. It’s the constant need to lose weight to be considered attractive, worthy, loved and someone to be kind to. It’s the bullying, it’s the constant need to label food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s the fear of not being accepted as a decent person, the assumption you’re stupid and lazy.
It is hugely problematic, and a predatory industry that does not care about your health but relies on your constant desire to be thin to make money. It is making weight loss the goal, never health. It is the reason for so many eating disorders and why doctors and therapists and dieticians are talking about weight stigma and disordered eating.
We have all been victims to it at some point in our lives.
Do you really want to be the friend that’s always on a diet?
No I bet you don’t because that person is boring. The person that is constantly saying I’ve lost 2lbs this week, I’ve gained 3lbs this week and I don’t know why. The person that only ever wants to talk syns. It’s the person that always feels guilty for having an extra chocolate bar or indulging in a favourite snack. I was this person and I hated being that person, consumed by what I was allowed to eat. I felt controlled and childlike, as if I wasn’t able to make my own decisions and that lead to binge eating, more feelings of failure and being fatter. What a life I’ve had!
Turning 30 has been liberating; ditching diet culture and finally feeling the most ‘Me’
I was so afraid of turning 30 thinking I had messed up my twenties by being fat and not really doing anything but now I look back and think about all the time I’ve wasted dieting and talking about ‘when i’m not fat’ and obviously that just hasn’t happened. Now I still think about what I eat but the pressure isn’t as strong for it to always be a salad or lets face it something that tastes awful.
I have more time to do things I want because I’m not preoccupied with punishing myself to exercise or focusing on weight loss. I have found clothes I like to wear and feel comfortable in. I eat all kinds of food that I enjoy but I don’t feel the pressure to eat until I bloat or like it’s my last meal. I’m no longer binging chocolate because I eat it when I fancy it. I think about my emotions and what will statisfy my feelins the most. Sometimes it’s food, but most of the time it’s reading, or drawing or video games or a walk or watching a comedy. I no longer feel I have to feed my feelings but I also acknowledge that sometimes that’s what I need. Life is better for me.
The recent Government campaign insists that weight loss is the answer to health, but this is problematic, fat shaming, poverty shaming and only focuses on eating less junk food. This, with the recent “obese people may have to sheild” come Autumn without addressing food desert areas, nutrition, movement and childrens’ access to meals and cooking skills is ignored. It is complicated. This is long.
*Obesity is a slur. It is used to health shame fat people regardless of activity, general health & diet and is assumed the person is stupid, lazy and has no willpower. It does not take into any consideration of the socioeconomics. Fat, whilst often used as an insult, is a neutral word and does not actually connote ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Slimming Clubs don’t want you to drink smoothies even though they are a great breakfast on the go and give you a portion of fruit/veg
Before we get into this lets completey ignore the governement ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme in August which is not going to be all about making healthy choices…If I’m going to go to Pizza Express or Nandos for a half priced meal I won’t be ordering a salad, and if I do, I’ll be covering it in dressing. So running these two ‘schemes’ alongside each other is a load of crap. Here are my issues.
I’ve seen every bloody argument for and against this faphobic rethoric and it’s just a load of shit. I won’t deny I’m worried about catching covid (again?) risking being on a ventilator and dying because I am fat but as Rebelfit excellently said, it’s not fatness, it’s not weight that brings vulnerable, elderly and obese (obese is a slur – it is always meant to health shame fat people) people into the same at risk group. It is more likely to be poor(er) cardiovascular health. Improving your aerobic fitness is going to be the healthier option to weight loss.
Better Health – Lose 5lb to “save the NHS” is massively stimatising. It should be about movement.
Losing weight takes time and energy and effort and it’s hard. Diets fail 90% of the time and loosing 5lbs for a fat person isn’t going to make much difference. Do you know what will? Movement. Not saying starve yourself. Not stopping bofoff offers on chocolate. Not banning adverts. None of that will work BECAUSE PEOPLE WILL STILL BUY THESE THINGS WHEN THEY WANT THEM and people will order what they want to eat in a resturant regardless of calories – but they’ll probably feel shitty about it afterwards so let’s just drive more people into harmful hating themselves, eating disorders, guilt and stress, more anxiety based behaviours and not moving because they’re so afraid of being made fun of for being a fat person moving.
Why can’t the money go to families for free fruit and veg vouchers? Why can’t the money go to discounted swimming lessons or gym memberships instead of slimming clubs? Why is it ‘lose 5 pounds’ not ‘why not start moving for an extra 15 minutes a day’? Why can’t the money go to local authorities in schools to teach kids how to cook so they have the skills when they’re older? Or adult cooking classes? Or online cooking classes that can be done when someone is time poor? These schemes ignore the fact that poorer people, who are more likely to be fat people, or people that were poor growing up, may lack the money, time and skills to prepare freshly cooked food for every meal for their family.
it’s all about finding a way to move and exercise that you love and that feels good
Movement can benefit you almost instantly, weight loss will not. It takes months and years.
If you start moving more today, regardless of what you eat, in a week, month, years time you will feel stronger, fitter and healthier. You will have less pain. You will breathe better. You will feel better. Look at atheletes and rugby players who are clearly classed as Obese because of BMI and eat a shit load of calories a day…does anyone reckon they’re unfit? NO! Because they move every single day. They work out. They build muscle. They have nutritionists helping them know what to eat and when. They have the money and resources for healthier meals.
The issue is not weight, the issue is lack of movement. You do not have to be thin, or starve yourself to be healthy. You just have to move more often. Yes cooking from scratch, eating fruit and vegetables, eating a colourful plate, eating slower, having chocolate in moderation are all healthy choices but we are discounting the biggest thing and that is moving more. I’ve read the answer is for GP’s to prescribe bike rides and for some areas to get free bikes which is great for those that 1) can ride a bike (I can’t) 2) have a garden/shed to store bikes in (I don’t).
The money would be better spent getting people to move more in a way that is accessible to them
Slimming World don’t care about you, they just want your money and for you to keep coming back.
I don’t want to waste my time doing slimming world, eating food I can not stand, constantly being drained of energy from not eating enough, and being shamed for not losing weight weekly. I’d rather be encouraged to go swimming, which I absolutely love to do but struggle to afford it. We eat relatively well when we’re not eating in resturants or having takeaways. I love adding peppers and onions and fresh herbs to food to make them taste better. I love to cook. I like decent size meals. I don’t buy crisps & chocolate on a regular basis but I’m still fat from over 10 years of dieting and hating myself and binge eating. Now I’m undoing the damage from that.
My advice, don’t diet, just move more, let go of the guilt, stop calling foods ‘bad’ and ‘good and work on finding a meal plan that works for your needs and circumstances. This campaign is fat shaming and poor shaming. It won’t work except to drive people to get fatter in the long run. If you do have the time and don’t know how to cook then find some recipe books to try. Take a look at Jack Monroe’s book, which all started from a single parent trying to cook healthy meals using tins. It can be done, but we need the skills to do it, the appliances and the time.
The Better Health campaign is rife in classist views
Again we are facing not just an issue with fatness but an issue with class which is rife in this country and it frustrates me to no end. The government do not acknowledge people living in poverty and on the breadline. Let me outline for you. You have priveledge if:
You own a fridge, cooker and other kitchen appliances that allow you to store and cook food
You can regularly afford to top up/pay your gas and electric
You have a choice of where/what time you can shop
You can feed yourself and your family three meals a day, plus have stuff at home for snacks
You work a 9-5 job with a secure salaried wage and know when pay day is
You do not rely on foodboxes
You know how to cook and prepare fresh food
You have the time to cook meals every day
You have access to your own kitchen
You have/or are the partner that does this
Now I can tell you that I tick most of the above boxes right now but I haven’t always. I have had to rely on food boxes, I have had to share a kitchen with six other families. I have had to only have one draw in a freezer and one shelf in the fridge. I have lacked the time and skills. And if you think that there are families who don’t have access to some or all of the above then you, my friend, are blinded by your priveledge. Some of the families that don’t have all of the above will struggle with what you think is easy so please stop putting shame on them.
Some of these families might rely heavily on meal deals, takeaways, ready made food, microwave meals because they can’t/don’t have the facility to cook and a lot of these options are high fat, high sugar and highly processed. This, and an inability to move more regularly lead to gaining fat. It isn’t because they’re binge eating chocolate and crisps every occasion they can.
But Fruit IS Cheaper…Let’s Unpack That Poverty Shaming Statement
Also, I keep seeing the argument that fresh fruit/veg is cheaper and I want to break that down because, in the long term, it isn’t and I saw an excellent analogy by a counciler dad on facebook which I will loosely paraphrase.
A bag of apples is, say £1, for four apples. That’s pretty cheap or the same as a multipacket of crisps. The bag of apples will be a snack for four people, or one person 4 times in a week. But one apple isn’t filling, and one apple isn’t enough fruit and veg a day, let alone a week. We are told that to be healthy we need 5-7 portions of different coloured fruit and veg every day. So lets add strawberries for £2, a bunch of bananas for £1, a packet of spinach for £2, some cauliflower for £2 and a pack of peppers for £2. Including the apples, thats £10, for a family of four and is what you need per day. So adding that up becomes £70 a week just on fresh fruit and vegetables. Thats no rice, no pasta, no herbs, no stock cupboard ingredients, no lentils, no potatoes, and the most expensive thing, no meat. That’s no snacks, no bread, no packed lunch ingredients (well maybe one) no drinks. So lets add that in.
Lets add some chicken for £5, a pack of mince for £4, ham for £2, cheese for £2, milk for the week £2, two loaves of bread for £2, some juice for £1, pasta for £1, Rice for £1, a bag of potatoes for £2, some cereal for £2 and some yoghurts for £1. Thats another £25 and for a family of 4 thats maybe three meals and lunches a week. So it’s not enough for a weeks worth of meals, so you’ll likely have to double this and add extra to bulk out the meals with things like lentils, extra veg, beans, pulses etc. It’s easy then to arrive at something like £150 a week for food shopping for a family of four. That quickly transfers to £600 on food in a month.
Now I know what you’re thinking, why not shop somewhere cheaper. Aldi and Lidl are cheap. Yep, youre right, they are. But if a single, non driving parent doesn’t have one local, has no family to drive them to/from and can only carry so much by herself on the bus then that’s going to be a lot of trips back and fourth, resulting in more money spent on transport.
You could be thinking why don’t they just shop for the reduced meat that goes on sale every night in certain supermarkets – again, I hear you, this is an excellent way to save money, but if you’re working shifts, a single parent or not able to drive to/from a supermarket at this time then you’re going to miss out. All these sweeping statements are fine if you’re a single person or you have help with any caring responsibilities but they simply do not work for everyone. It’s complex and it isn’t one size fits all. You can’t just tell someone to do better if they do not have the resources to do better, or differently.
So a family might have to resort to buying all frozen food which is cheap and easy to prepare, providing they have an oven and the electricity/gas to use it. HFHS processed meals which lead to an increase in fatness are cheap, but will give every member of the family a hot meal each day.
The TL:DR version – to afford all nutrition food for a family of four you need to live close to a budget supermarket and be able to get there in time for the cheap fruit and veg boxes which are usually in working hours. And know and have the time to shop in the reduced section. And have transport if your closest shop is a small newsagents that doesn’t cover all your meal making needs/where the costs are spiked.
How To Improve Poverty Stricken Families Health & Wellbeing
This is what I think the government should do to help families on the breadline instead of funding repair a bike and diet club schemes.
Multi supermarket free fruit and vegetables vouchers
Reduced gym/swim/fitness memberships
Subsidised swimming lessons for children under 11
Free school meals for primary school children
Resources to get proper cooking lessons back in school for kids, including the ingredients needed
Making healthy food more accessible
Getting rid of zero hour contracts and giving job security back to people
If you are reading this and genuinely want to improve your health then I would really recommend reading more about anti diet culture, such as Health at Every Size which is a brilliant book full of recommendations, scientific studies and how diets don’t work. Improving your mental health, wellbeing and appreciating your body regardless of size will help. It’s also important to consider fat liberation movements. Rebelfit is another excellent place for information and non bias, non discrimatory fitness programmes which have lots of like minded people of all different shapes, sizes and abilities that want to move more and get healthier. Health and weight are two very seperate things. Sofie Hagen, a fat comedien who I love to follow on Instagram, is another great resource for this and has a pretty amazing book too.
Body Positivity isn’t about being fat, lazy and loving your body
No one in the fat liberation or body positive movement says this is only for fat people to be fat and lazy. I have never seen that anywhere. I have seen nothing but encouragement for fat people existing and taking up the spaces they deserve to have. I have seen a call for joyous movement, for yoga, for swimming for weight lifting and I have seen people genuinely love and appreciate their fat bodies. If it’s about health, then shouldn’t it be about all health?
Improving mental health by focusing on positive self talk
Moving more to improve cardio health
Eating foods that you enjoy and eating a range of foods that sustain you
Recovering from eating disorders which include binge eating and disordered eating
Taking the time for self care to improve your relationship with food and your body
Having therapy where you can exist as a fat person not to be told “if you just tried to lose weight”
Do you think we haven’t tried?
Also, I want to add as a final point this comment that “you can’t be fat and healthy.” In my experience this comes from a place of shame or disgust. It’s frustrating because, for women, it absolutely comes from a place that women are here to be objectified and sexualised and that comment comes from a place where men* (usually) don’t want to fuck a fatty. Because obviously, we fatties are so desperate because no one could possibly ever want us sexually in any way ever…and the fact that there are people that put divorce reasons as ‘she/he/they put on weight after we got married’ like a big fuck you to that. Fatness is not the problem, thinness should not be the goal. Ever. Make the goal to move more, to get strong, to be healthy but stop making it about weight loss.
On one hand I see slimmer women from magazines, airbrushed and photoshopped giving me an unrealistic view of beauty and health and on the other I see women the same size as me confident and content with their bodies. I can’t help but feel what is wrong with me. I am not body confident, the way I look disgusts me.
It’s totally my fault of course because I own my body and I have made the decisions that make it the way it is right now. I ate the food, I moved less, I had children and in those years I’ve created a mindset that has a unhealthy view of food. I restrict then binge, yo-yo diet and workout but then I get complacent, or bored, or lose willpower or feel pressured and I stop. My attitude towards food is unhealthy and my attitude towards exercise is it’s painful and I feel humiliated doing it.
But I see so many women, some the same size, some larger than me loving themselves and I don’t understand what there is to love. I don’t love anything about my body, I don’t love anything about the way I look. I don’t have respect or pride for my scars and stretchmarks. All I see is fatty flesh, shoulders too big for my small head, horrible hair that never looks right however it’s cut, makeup that I can’t ever “do” proplerly so it always looks cakey no matter my budget. I see tiny hands with bitten nails, hard skin, soft pudgy bits that don’t sit right in any clothes. I feel chub rub, boob sweat and all the aches and pains that come with carrying excess fat around my body. Do these body positive, body confident women not feel these things either? Is there something wrong with me that only I suffer with these problems of being so overweight?
Do they not find it hard getting in and out of the bath? Do they not have to put the shampoo and conditioner in reach before getting in because the tyres around their middle prevent them actually reaching forward enough? Do they not sweat so much it makes them embaressed to go outside? Do they not look at themselves and the sag and excess skin and sretch marks and wish at times they could just unzip it at the back and step out of this fat suit? If they don’t feel like this then why do I feel like this if I am “one of them”
I do not want to be so slim and so ripped. I don’t need loads of muscles on show or eight abs. I don’t care about having a bit of a mum pouch from my two c-sections. I just want to wear a pair of jeans from a supermarket rather than expensive shops dedicated to plus sizes. I want to buy a bra that costs £6 instead of £36. I want to have a healthy respect for my body and a positive relationship with food.
I do not want to spend the next thirty years of my life stepping on and off the sad step until I reach my target weight and then obsessing over maintaining that weight for years to come. I do not want to have to restrict myself from food groups forever. I just want to be able to understand when I’m full and to have enough. I don’t want to have to overeat to the point of discomfort and I want to continue actually really enjoying food because it tastes so good. I don’t want to be stuck on a traffic light system focusing in on labels for the rest of my life in case something is too fatty or too high in sugar.
I want to learn to trust myself to make healthy choices and to enjoy movement. I want to be a good role model to my kids and show them that being healthy is not about being thin but it is about mental relationships. I do not want my children to live a live of obsession over their weight but how can I prevent that when the way I look disgusts me and drives me own obsession with diet culture.
I feel pressured, overwhelmed and disgusted at myself and I do not know where to start. I am too fat to be body positive and I am too fat to be healthy.
