“She’s Now A Size 30”: Woman Bursts Bestie’s Delusions About Body Positivity

It's very possible to be overweight and still very fit. That absolutely does not sound like the case here, and hair, nails, and makeup is not "looking after yourself". Technically, I'd say self-soothing rather than genuine self care.

Ahh, some of these Redditors man... I swear they have to be in those "Toxic positivity" echo chambers type subs... I have no other explanation for how half the commenters turned on her and full on assumed she did some public humiliation ritual on her friend... As what me and I assume any reasonable person would think... That this was just a private conversation away from others... You know how friends who show concern for others act... But I doubt they know what real life friends are... At least half of Reddit is not fully gone(Yet). ANYWAY Body positivity is about dealing with the things you can't control. About not being shamed irrationally for something you literally cannot influence. Think deformities, Scars, Burns, Atypical body forms and such... Somehow it morphed into "Everyone is perfect and beautiful JUST THE WAY they are!" as a response to anyone pointing any kind of unhealthy practice that is fully under a typical person's control... To be clear, In some rare cases there are genetic mutations that directly cause obesity... RARE is the keyword here..."monogenic" obesity is the word. I know of it but not too many details. Anyway... This new influencer "like Lizzo or whatever her Fing name" driven movement of "Body positivity" is just an online neo cult like the Redpill and other new s**t like that millennials and gen z came up with... Key ppl push this narrative cus they are either lying to themselves and coming up with excuse to normalize their unhealthy behavior... Or even more sinisterly exploiting ppl's insecurities for money. By no means am i excusing the ones inducted into it btw... If you go that far to avoid accountability... YOU and everyone of us ARE acountable for out actions. The "influencer" does not have some magic mind control bs... At the end of they day the person is the one who clicks on the validating tiktok... I remember how they "excommunicated" Adele when she lost weight as she was their "icon"... The vile s**t you would hear thrown at her... Just cus she decided to work at losing weight and get fitter... All in the name of avoiding accountability...

You're not making fun of her, you're not degrading her. "Body Positivity" is a tight rope, it seems, that more often than not is a blanket-silencer towards honest and caring worries just the same as towards the fun-making, degrading devaluation, and to me seems like ... sort of well-meant, but the only thing good about it is just that, that it, originally, had a somewhat positive intention. NTA, YNU, and all that!

I have no problem with her raising the point when there were other friends there. She says they've all known each other for years, so it's not like some strangers were involved. In a perfect world I suppose this group could have agreed to join in an intervention for her, seeing that they were all there. But not saying anything at this point looks like big-time enabling of this woman's self-destructive behavior. If it were d***s or alcohol everybody would be like "Get her help! She needs to stop! She's killing herself!" but when it's food now we're supposed to say "Oh well, it's okay, we shouldn't make her feel bad." She's already borderline alcoholic, food is just her next d**g. I agree with Ben Aziza, the "body positivity" notion has gotten twisted to serve as an excuse. If your friend were cutting herself, or bulimic, or whatever self-destructive behavior you choose, SOMEBODY would want to call it for what it is. Why does food get a pass? You did a good thing, in my view.

The way OP went about it is wrong but they are not wrong for saying something. However they approached it, unfortunately, in a very confrontational manner challenging her friend- which always puts someone on the defensive. The better way to have done it is to bring up a conversation, having nothing to do with weight, about being concerned. "I'm worried because of how you struggled with that hill, things like that didnt used to bother you before; is something going on?" Of course, doing this in private. As it is, the best thing OP can do is appologize, and explain that they are scared for their friend seeing her struggle so much. That OP didn't know how to help, and ended up lashing out instead of trying to be supportive. And from that point forward, BE supportive. Invite her on short walks routinely ect.

If the OP wanted to be more effective in expressing concern, I would recommend making it about fitness to walk basic distances and just not mention the weight, which is likely going to make her friend even more defensive. The same solution works regardless —adding in gentle exercise like gradually increasing walking, lifting small weights etc. Maybe even offering to be a walking buddy if OP truly cares about her friends’ health more than just being right about her weight/body positivity. The friend herself had said it’s not about weight it’s about taking care of yourself, so theoretically friend should be open to exercise as a way to take care of herself.

The problem with body positivity in an economy where perople cant afford seeing a real doctor and hearing the real truth, is it becomes the only truth some people know. I have weighted 145 kg (320 lpd) and I looked good enough. But would never try to inform or coerce other people to agree that a little hill is a steep hill, and that makes me think she is deluded in her thinking. Should she have said it infront of the others, well.. as a laywer would have said, she brought it up, so she put it on the playing field. then she insisted on talking about it, so she wore down her friends normal defences around the delicacy of the topic. Having lost and gained and lost more than a 100 kg in total, weigh now 80 kg (i76 lbp) I am grateful for the body positive movment, because my skin and flabs are not nice, but I wouldnt claim them as positive. It is healthy to be accepting of one self and others, but not to idolize and bring forth as a goal not to take care of anything but nails and hair.

Fat is fat. I was fat. I did something about it. "Body positivity" is not the solution. Losing weight and getting healthy are the solution. VERY few fat people are that way because of some medical condition. They're fat because they eat more calories than they burn. They need to accept that being fat is their fault and do something about it.

Weight is so hard compared to other addictions. You can’t see that someone is an alcoholic unless you’re close enough to them to smell it or they’re making an absolute moron of themselves (and not all will, depending how well they hold their grog). Similarly, d***s aren’t always immediately obvious. But being overweight or obese is instantly in your face obvious, and I personally think that is why people don’t comment on other addictions unless there’s an obvious issue, whereas “you need to lose weight” — cushioned or not — is thrown around regularly for overweight and obese people even though some of these people could easily bench press you and I.

This reminds me of my brother. He is getting up there in weight and I am so worried something bad is going to happen. He is in his 30s and already having chest pains. His wife is the same but to her, Disney events are more important than health (she is a class A Disney adult and turned him into one too). She convinced him to go to a lorcana morning event after a night of bad chest pain before agreeing to finally take him to the ER. this stuff just worries me so much.

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Fat people are reminded constantly how much society loathes them. Every moment something or someone tells every fat person they are unwanted, unworthy, and unwelcome. There is no way to tell a fat person to change their ways while avoiding causing pain. It will never lead to positive change.

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Tough love...why, because the world isn't tough enough on every woman who weighs a kilo more than she "should"? It's hard to be attacked all the time for something you may have little control over, is it so strange that people fight back by refusing to accept even more hurt? There are better approaches, but the holier-than-thou folks aren't capable of accepting that - strange, all they needed to do was to exercise a bit of self-control....