Overweight... The new normal !

How others look isn't any of your business and how you look isn't any of theirs.

Q4T.

The bashing comes from the idea that people who are fat should somehow be excluded from this "Love yourself the way you are" idea because they're fat.

No. Fat people need to love themselves the way they are, or else they won't manage to make any sustainable change. What change they will make will be funneled through forms of self-hate and deprivation and will only makes things worse.

Everyone needs to love themselves. Fat. Skinny. Old. Young. Absolutely everyone. Loving yourself at your body type doesn't mean you don't want to improve - it means you do not hate yourself. And that is GOOD. No one should hate themselves.

Anyone who claims that fat people shouldn't love themselves for who they are (even their bodies) is just promoting unhealthy attitudes about weight, self-love, and being (unintentional as it may be) cruel.

I wrote something that may have been taken this way - I certainly did not mean that fat people shouldn't love themselves. I just feel the attitude can be taken too far, hence the rage when a doctor gives objective medical advice to someone to lose 20/50/100 pounds. I have heard too many friends after a doctor's appointment who are absolutely enraged and say over and over how they are perfect just the way they are, and how dare the doctor insult them this way.

And you are right, as I once lost a great deal of weight fueled by self-hatred, and that's no way to live. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I still think it's important to be able to look at all the health problems associated with obesity and love oneself enough to aim to make changes for the healthiest body possible, even though it means facing the fact that the way one has been living and the choices made are not perfect just the way they are. I'm trying to lose my weight specifically because I do love myself enough to want to be healthy. The other overweight women in my office have said more than once that I am crazy and I should just love myself the way I am (was) and I feel they are misapplying the concept. If it's within my control to fix it, why would I want to live the rest of my life feeling as physically bad as I felt at my heaviest?

I font think it's bashing or derogatory. It's simple statement of fact as people perceive it. No one is saying, well do and so is a fat cow add just can't see it. What people are expressing is an observation of the brain's marvelous capacity for attenuation.

And vanity sizing IS ridiculous. Besides that, it's exacerbated by spandex or lycra, even denim jeans have that junk in it. Case in point, I have a pair of low rise levis in a size 7 that are fairly new and are falling off my hips. I've been reorganizing my house and found a bin of stored old "skinny" clothes and found a pair of the same style of jeans from a decade ago, same brand, both 7's, these with no lycra. Tried them on and could barely button them and had extreme muffin top. And thats just over the course of a decade. I've also got a pair of vintage levis (obviously not low rise but still), and they are a size 12 and about the same size as the current 7's. It just doesn't make any sense.

Plus restaurant meals. Hubby and I are NOT the best or most moderate of eaters, but when we go out it is pretty common for us to not only split an entree, but both of us eat off it again the next day.

How others look isn't any of your business and how you look isn't any of theirs.

Q4T.

The bashing comes from the idea that people who are fat should somehow be excluded from this "Love yourself the way you are" idea because they're fat.

No. Fat people need to love themselves the way they are, or else they won't manage to make any sustainable change. What change they will make will be funneled through forms of self-hate and deprivation and will only makes things worse.

Everyone needs to love themselves. Fat. Skinny. Old. Young. Absolutely everyone. Loving yourself at your body type doesn't mean you don't want to improve - it means you do not hate yourself. And that is GOOD. No one should hate themselves.

Anyone who claims that fat people shouldn't love themselves for who they are (even their bodies) is just promoting unhealthy attitudes about weight, self-love, and being (unintentional as it may be) cruel.

I wrote something that may have been taken this way - I certainly did not mean that fat people shouldn't love themselves. I just feel the attitude can be taken too far, hence the rage when a doctor gives objective medical advice to someone to lose 20/50/100 pounds. I have heard too many friends after a doctor's appointment who are absolutely enraged and say over and over how they are perfect just the way they are, and how dare the doctor insult them this way.

And you are right, as I once lost a great deal of weight fueled by self-hatred, and that's no way to live. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I still think it's important to be able to look at all the health problems associated with obesity and love oneself enough to aim to make changes for the healthiest body possible, even though it means facing the fact that the way one has been living and the choices made are not perfect just the way they are. I'm trying to lose my weight specifically because I do love myself enough to want to be healthy. The other overweight women in my office have said more than once that I am crazy and I should just love myself the way I am (was) and I feel they are misapplying the concept. If it's within my control to fix it, why would I want to live the rest of my life feeling as physically bad as I felt at my heaviest?

Great response, NCchart130! I was going to respond to this but you said what I wanted to say much more eloquently than I would have. I don't understand why this thread is being referred to as fat bashing at all. Just last year, the Washington State Ferry System (I believe it's the largest one in the United States) had to reduce the capacity limit of the ferries. Why? Because the average person weighs so much more than they did in the past that the ferries can't carry as many people as they used to. Sorry but I think that's just one example of a sad trend in today's society.

Most people are fat. Not bashing - it's a fact. And it's driving up our healthcare costs and overwhelming our medical needs as a country.

We as a nation need to recognize this, or it's going to get even uglier than it already is.

Please spare me your hippy love sh** ('love your body the way it was made at 300 lbs' crap), put down the cinnabon, and get some exercise.

Most people are fat. Not bashing - it's a fact. And it's driving up our healthcare costs and overwhelming our medical needs as a country.

We as a nation need to recognize this, or it's going to get even uglier than it already is.

Please spare me your hippy love sh** ('love your body the way it was made at 300 lbs' crap), put down the cinnabon, and get some exercise.

I think I love you lol..

True story, at Thanksgiving I hadn't seen many of my family since before July 4th when I started. I'm down a lot, but was at roughly 20% bodyfat still, 22 pounds and 10% bf away from my ultimate goal. You'd swear I was annorexic by some of the responses I got. I can't possibly drop another 20, I need to stop right now, here have more deserts, you're too thin... I don't think I'm thin enough!

Went to my mothers place recently and saw the cereal bowls I used to eat from when I was a healthy kid/teen/adult. They are 1.5 times less the portion of cereal bowls today. I don't recall being hungry eating that portion when I was a teen. My mum recently found some older bowls at an auction and gave them to me. These are what the kids n I eat from now.

We are upsizing in every way.

My mum thinks it's funny the criticism I get at this size (overweight) compared to when I was morbidly obese. I get told I'm too thin but I've got 20lbs to go before normal BMI.

my mom does the same thing. she points out people she thinks are "sticks" and makes nasty comments when they're just healthy/normal. :ohwell:

and about the whole "overweight is the new normal thing". I work in retail and we have a women's department, a juniors department, and a plus size department. I had someone who insisted that our plus size was "womens" and our womens department is "juniors". and she got super angry at me for getting confused when trying to help her find something. :huh:

and congrats on your success! :drinker:

I find this very saddening. I often have issues finding clothes in the stores that i like. Every one has always told me that i look fine, that i look good. i never knew what to think because i walk around school and think, "im not that big, lots of others are bigger than me" but then i go clothes shopping and think "why do they only make clothes that fit skinny people." Clothes shopping depresses me, i have completely stopped trying to find pants in any store other than JCPennys. Its the only place that has my size. The worst thing is that everyone is my size and they are always out of it. I was working really hard over the summer and not seeing results and it discouraged me from continuing my healthy life style when school started back up. then i found out that a medication i have to take is making me gain weight, and that the work i was doing over the summer was counteracting it. needless to say, ive broke my 200lb limit and im ready to work even harder now to be "below average"

over here in the UK, we are beginning to see a similar phenomenon. There is a worrying tactic seen in clothes stores called "vanity sizing". You try on a pair of trousers and are surprised that you can fit into them given that they are a certain waist size. You then go home, measure your waist and find a large disparity between your actual size and the size that your trousers/dress/blouse etc is meant to be. We Brits are getting larger and our department stores are not helping. I am a doctor and I get tired of people telling me that they aren't overweight or don't eat too much when they clearly do. There is an increasing need for special hospital trolleys, beds and ambulance stretchers to accommodate the grossly overweight. We find ourselves sending patients to the local zoo because out scanners cannot tolerate their weight. BMI is a useful indicator to point you in the right direction. On my one and only trip to the US, I was genuinely appalled by the large number of morbidly obese adults and children in the street. As for the gorging that went on in restaurants, it made me feel ill. Can we not exercise any self restraint. If your gut is hanging over your trousers, then you're overweight!!!

I also live in the UK and I've been to the US once and I was also shocked at the portion sizes in the restaurants. I don't think I was able to finish a single meal while I was there, and the waitress in San Francisco looked really offended when my sister and I declined a doggy bag! No, we're full, we don't want to eat the rest later! Vegas was the worst though.

I do think that people over here are generally getting bigger. As I exercise so much and I'm interested in eating healthily, I think I notice it more. The Summer is the worst when people wear less. You see girls who are probably only a size 10, who you wouldn't class as overweight, but their belly is all wobbly. So I'd say that although BMI may be an indicator, I think body fat percentage is a more accurate indicator. My sister-in-law is a UK size 8, but she has a higher body fat percentage than I do!

It's rather sad, really. I've been accused of having an "eating disorder" so many times in my life, I can't even count. And I'm not underweight or anything. In fact, I'm on the high end of the normal weight spectrum for my height. Unfortunately, perceptions have become so skewed as to be utterly distorted.

You don't have to be underweight, or even average weight to have an eating disorder. It's all about your attitude to food, your body and weight loss. I'm not suggesting you do... just putting that out there
I understand what you mean though, it seems as though people paying attention to what they eat, regardless of weight, or adhering to a diet are put under scrutiny, just as much, if not more than people who are heading for a heart attack. Like if you want to eat well, all the time, you MUST have an eating disorder... of course.

I've been in the situation when I went with a friend to a family function and there was a buffet, she was doing slimming world, doing really well and had just gone down from the obese to overweight category, and she was choosing foods and sticking to her slimming world thing. I was still healthy BMI but I'd gained half a stone from an injury so I was eating clean...
WE WERE RIPPED TO PEICES by overweight people telling us we need to eat all the pies basically, we must be malnourished and anorexic and whatever else they read about in some gossip magazine and had no clue about. Is there really that much of a lack of knowledge out there that people can be overweight to obese and be blissfully unaware and even criticise people who are trying to do something about their own weight? And god forbid you should be a healthy weight and want to maintain that!

I think a previous poster made a very good point, it does fuel a divide between obesity and conversely disordered eating. I know full well that people trying to recover from E.Ds being told to eat in a "normal" way by overweight people or people who embody your fears just fuels the disorder. My friend who I mentioned above actually became bulimic, she's never reached her weight loss goal but she has had hair fall out and gastrointestinal problems instead. I often wonder if it was pressure to appear "normal" when eating with family members that helped drive her in that direction because she started dieting with a really healthy attitude but was constantly criticised.
And sorry to keep ranting on but I also think that the average person being overweight makes it harder for people to guage what a normal amount of food is. Even if everyone around you is maintaining and not losing weight with what they eat, they are still going to eat more than you, and you eat a normal amount, or the right foods and it's easy to feel hard done by.

It does really annoy me the two marketing extremes I seem to see are fast food and weight loss. I wish there were more places where you could see advertisements or information that promotes a balance, general healthy lifestyle, for the long term and from the outset.
p.s WALL-E was totally one of the most perceptive films of the past few years, it was depressing, because it's soooo true. Unfortunately, I think the message was missed by many. Only film that's haunted me for days afterwards that wasn't an asian horror!

10-15 years ago...the only time I saw people in the grocery store in a wheelchair, was 99.9% of the time, because they broke their leg or foot. 5 years ago, I started seeing people in wheelchairs in the grocery store because they were obese or morbidly obese. This weekend, I say with utter shock and sadness...I saw at LEAST 20 people in the grocery store in electric wheelchairs (it was probably MORE than 20 different people--it was a TON of them) because they were obese or morbidly obese. It was like something out of the old T.V. Show (from the 1950's-1960's), The Twilight Zone--to see all of these obese people in wheelchairs. These people were NOT together, this was not a convention or something, just sooooo many people in wheelchairs because of obesity---SCARY and uber sad to say the very least! Also, I'm seeing so many people riding/driving wheelchairs in the streets and sidewalks too, because of obesity--it's shocking!

Vanity sizes: 20+ years ago, I was a size 4 and weighed 110 pounds (I'm 5"6)
15 years ago, I was a size 10 and weighed 130 pounds
10 years ago I was a size 14 and weighed 150 pounds
TODAY I am over 190 lbs...and can get into a size 14...talk about size vanity...big time:sick:

Gluttony, slothfulness, denial (a.k.a. politically correct terms eating more and more to accomplish our goals of (fill in the blank) "sedentary lifestyle" and to DARE even speak of self-denial, self-discipline, self-control and that EVIL of ALL evil's the dastardly and DREADED four letter word..."diet" is in today's society considered absolutely forbidden, offensive, outrageously destructive and to be avoided at all cost...:ohwell:

I teach and one thing I have noticed is how fat children are nowadays. I remember being a little kid and there being like one or two fat children in the whole entire school. Now it seems like half the school is fat. And I never, ever saw a morbidly obese child when I was growing up. Now this is so common there are enough of these kids to run TV specials about them.

I'm no conspiracy theorist but a tiny part of me wonders if the obesity epidemic is part of a plan at population control...this generation of young people are the first who WON'T have a longer life expectancy than previous generations, and that's mostly due to obesity-related illnesses and disorders. Tragic.

LOL Sarah, I've started to do it anyways the minute somebody accuses me of being too skinny. I've really have lost my patience with people.

eeerm... are you talking united states?