Fat shaming helped me lose three stone
Obesity is a complex and emotive issue. i know this because until very recently i was obese. but since last October i have lost almost 3st — an act that has required a level of determination i never knew i possessed.
that is why i am convinced that yesterday’s headline intervention by a public health watchdog — ordering the nation to dramatically cut portion sizes — won’t have much impact.
it’s not that the quango’s calorific guidelines — a maximum of 400 for breakfast and 600 each for lunch and dinner — aren’t sensible. it’s that Public Health england is missing the point. Losing weight is as much about what goes on in the mind as what goes into the mouth.
Rationally, we all know an apple is better for you than a Kit Kat.
if you were to ask a random group of people whether they wanted to be fat, most would say no. yet, statistically, more than half of them would be.
so there’s a huge gap between the theory and the practice of how people approach food. And that goes to the heart of the problem.
Nobody sets out to become obese. We get that way for other reasons, ones that have nothing whatsoever to do with complex social and cultural roots.
FOOd — particularly highfat, high-sugar food, which triggers the pleasure sensors in the brain — provides comfort; an emotional blanket under which to snuggle when the world all gets too much.
this is the fundamental point that all these professors and politicians miss. you are not dealing with cold hard logic, but people’s weaknesses, emotions and feelings.
Healthy, happy, well-adjusted human beings don’t overeat. the fact that britain is a nation of fatties says as much about our collective mental well-being as it does our overall physical health.
the obesity epidemic is a symptom of the pressure we are all under. Lives where we work too hard, too long and snatch food on the go; where we don’t move our bodies enough; where high-calorie processed food is cheap and plentiful, and where people find comfort in small luxuries: a chocolate bar or a tub of ice cream in front of the tV.
All that would be difficult enough to overcome as it is; now you have the added pressure of social media, as ever making things worse.
this week, the charity Cancer Research UK came under fire for daring to use the word ‘obesity’ in an advertising campaign highlighting the risk of cancer associated with being overweight.
the simple message — that obesity is the second leading cause of cancer after smoking — enraged comedian sofie Hagen, 29, who encouraged a twitter backlash.
the fact that Ms Hagen is fairly chunky herself probably explains why she was so upset; nonetheless, there was nothing personal about the nature of the Cancer Research UK advert, merely a bald statement of fact, intended to save lives.
Meanwhile, the new editor of the women’s magazine Grazia, Hattie brett, who on Oscars night used the ‘F’ word to describe some of the winners, has found herself fighting for her professional life. Absurdly, she’s even had to issue an official apology.
both she and Cancer Research UK stand accused of that most heinous of modern-day crimes: fat shaming. Of course, no one likes hearing unpleasant truths. but hard as it is to accept, sometimes fat shaming works. it certainly worked for me. it might even have saved my life.
it was because of my doctor’s frank appraisal of my weight that i finally found the determination to tackle a problem that had been dogging me for years.
He told me to my face that i was fat, and i accepted his recommendation that i lose 3st for what it was — a genuine expression of his medical concern.
in so doing i have completely re-thought my attitude towards food. i have had to learn to stop making excuses, stop seeing food as a reward or refuge and view it purely as a source of energy, to be used wisely and sparingly. i will never be thin; but, crucially, i am no longer obese.
you can’t begin to tackle a problem until you admit you have one in the first place. And while we continue to walk on eggshells, and words like ‘obese’ and ‘fat’ are banned in favour of sops such as ‘plussized’ or ‘curvy’, that will never happen.