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GPs telling people to lose weight is partly why I developed anorexia. I was overweight but active and healthy, I was taking antidepressants which had helped me so much mentally but had lead to some weight gain. My weight was all the GP focused on during our appts.
I remember being weighed and being told that they didn't want to raise my medication dosage because, I quote, 'look how much weight you put on this last year, imagine what will happen after another year?'
I felt so disgusting and ashamed. I meekly told them that I went to exercise classes four times a week and took walks but they didn't care. Their treatment of me was absolutely a factor in my development of an eating disorder.
They were concerned I'd gained some weight on the antidepressants, yet when I lost half my body weight in less than a year, they were pleased. I was seriously ill and suffering the effects of malnourishment, but because I had previously been fat, I was a success story.
If I'd started at a 'normal' weight and lost the same amount, I would've been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Instead, I was congratulated.
We have to do better, but I doubt this new anti obesity strategy will, and I fear for others who will end up going through what I did.
We have to do better, but I doubt this new anti obesity strategy will, and I fear for others who will end up going through what I did.
Weighing less does not mean you have better health. After losing weight I was malnourished. My hair fell out. My wounds didn't heal. I had so many over use injuries from excessive exercise, which still plague me today. But I was never underweight, so no doctors cared.
I am tweeting this experience because I want to highlight how dangerous and misguided the government's anti obesity rhetoric is.
