Woman's Hour - PHONE-IN. Jenni Murray takes your calls on your experience of being fat

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Sofie Hagan is a young Danish comedian and author of Happy Fat. We spoke to her on the programme earlier in the year. She’s now touring the UK and has been talking about some of the issues raised in the book as well as tweeting about it. ‘I am not a body positivity campaigner,’ she said, ‘I am a fat liberationist. I care about abolishing the systemic discrimination and abuse that fat people endure on a daily basis.’What’s your experience of being fat? Do you think your size affects the way people see and treat you?Share your stories and experiences. Call 03700 100 444 lines open from 0800 or email via the website…Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley Purcell

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning. At eight o'clock today I told you that Woman's Hour would be a phone-in about being fat and the kind of abuse and discrimination the obese and overweight suffer on a daily basis. The calls and emails have flooded in. One of you said, being fat is the greatest source of heartbreak in my life. The shame is almost

unbearable. Another said, I take up too much space. I'm conscious of it every minute of the day. Another, the words fat, lazy and ugly were strung together as a means of verbal abuse. Well, it's clear from what we've heard from you so far that Sophie Hagen, the author of Happy Fat, was not exaggerating when she said fat people get hired less and we get paid less and her intention is to abolish fat shaming. Well, you can join us on 03700100444 to discuss your own feelings about being fat

and the kind of discrimination you've had to face. You can also contact us through email, Twitter and Instagram. Let's go first to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire where Karen is on the line. Karen, good morning. Morning, Jenny. What's your point? You said you became overweight when you were an adolescent

yeah um up until being about 13 i was um just a normal size and then through puberty i put a lot of weight on and um i think the thing was that i felt that people had the right to talk about my um physical appearance where they felt felt that they had because I was fat. So there were always sort of comments about the way that I looked. An example being, I went to see my uncle

after not seeing him for a few months and I walked through the door and he said, oh, you're as broad as you are tall, girl. And it just made me feel so, you know, not being liked, being stigmatised really.

Do you have any idea, Karen, of what caused that change in your adolescence where you'd been a normal weight and then it changed? It's just my body just seemed to explode really um when i was at school i can remember making a dress at the beginning of the term um and then by the end of the term i put so much weight on that um they had to i had to put some extra um seams in the side and take it out and the the home economics teacher said, oh, it must be middle-aged spread. So I'm not really sure. Perhaps it was just to do with the emotional need to eat more.

I just don't know. But I know that it was a complete change to how I was when I was younger. I know you're 65 now. What's happened recently? Yeah, I recently, as you get older, you have to go to the doctor to have an NHS check. And I went in for my check and they take your bloods and weight and blood pressure and everything. And then the nurse said to me, and she said, you're overweight. She said, do you have a sweet tooth? And I've spent my whole life trying to monitor that I don't put weight on.

I weigh myself every day just because I'm frightened of going back to being the bigger person that I was. I now weigh nine stone um 12 pounds um and I try to keep below 10 stone and um she said you know you're overweight um have you got a sweet tooth and I just went home and I just felt all those feelings of insecurity and failure um just seemed to um come back to me. And I just felt that she had no understanding of the daily struggles that I've had, really,

just to feel acceptable now in the skin that I'm in, if that makes sense. Karen, thank you very much for calling us and starting us off this morning. Let's go to Telford now in Shropshire and Jo is on the line hello Jo hello there Jenny what's your point my point is that I think um being overweight is one of the last stigmatisms and last um isms for sizeism if you like for which we are bidified quite rightly there is an awful lot of support out there for those with eating disorders such as anorexia and an awful lot of sympathy for those. And I totally sympathise with people like that.

But the first reaction when people see someone is overweight isn't one of sympathy, it's one of vilification. And how could she let herself get like that? And what a drain on the NHS. And even colleagues and close friends will be oh doesn't she look well and we all know that's a use for vision for oh she hasn't lost any weight or she still looks fat but what do you say to people who say these fat people they are a drain on the nhs you know they do get type 2 diabetes and and are a problem how do you respond to those kind of comments

my response to that is well let's try and look at the cause of why people are fat nobody wants to be fat nobody wants well there may be one or two i don't know but i have hated being fat all of my life and my view is that this is very much linked to mental health but that fat people are just told go on a diet but. But if it was that easy, we would do that. In the end, I reverted to bariatric surgery and paid for it to have done myself. It took me 10 years to decide to have it done.

But having had it done has made me realize that actually being overweight was totally linked to my own mental health and that having some CBbt therapy has made me understand that and i still have an unhealthy relationship with food but i can't put the weight on anymore um and that's that's the reason i can't so yes there is a drain on the nhs but if we actually looked at the cause of people who are overweight then actually i think a lot of that

drain would disappear all we're doing is trying to treat the symptoms treat the fact that people are overweight but actually not treating the symptoms joe thank you very much indeed for calling us this morning um we're going to go to farnham now in surrey and claire's on the line hello claire good morning jenny hi Claire. Good morning Jenny, hi. What's your experience? I'd like to make a point about women, chastising women around this obsession about running. I'm a mother of quite young children. I take them to school. I'm five foot eight. I'm about a size 14 and there's a sort of gaggle of women who go out running six, seven hours a day, all talking about their personal bests, how fast they've run, who's the thinnest. And they often say to me, oh, Claire, why don't you come along with us?

And I think, well, actually, I'm OK, thanks. I don't really want to be part of that, and I don't feel that I need to. But why are they doing it? Is it fear of getting fat that's making them become obsessed with running what's going on there often dressed up gently I think is a healthy sport and you know we're out running but all I hear the conversation about is weight so it's almost like and everyone says you know you look great you look fabulous oh wow that's a fantastic time, well done.

And they're all over Facebook and social media. But no one's actually saying, is this an addiction? Is this something you're able to stop? Is this something you're in control of? Or is it something that you just are obsessed with? Now you're a psychotherapist, what do you think it is? Well I hear lots of addictions in my work, Jenny. You know, alcohol, sex, gambling, people who spend a long time in the gym.

And I've also had clients who cannot stop running or cycling. And the reason is they get themselves to a certain point physically, which they're very happy with. Their body dysmorphia, which is the condition that is sort of rooted in it, is put to one side and they become obsessed with it. So if they stop running or stop cycling they're terrified that their weight will then move so it's they're almost on this treadmill so to speak they just cannot get off well claire thank you very much indeed for calling us uh our next caller is in york and it's les who is male. Hello, Les. Good morning. Hope you're okay.

What's your point? I think, and I've got an example to prove my point, I think that TV, magazines and media have a massive role to play in this. If you look at TV adverts nowadays, most couples that are on our telly come from different different ethnic background which is absolutely fine and that shows that we should be proud of britain's multicultural society but advertisers still seem to refuse to use larger people in adverts which to me don't know about

other people is blatant discrimination and they should be challenged. And my example is, after the recent World Athletics Championships, we had a gold medal in the heptathlon and in the sprints. But we also had a very successful shot putter who got to the final, which is quite rare for a British woman thrower, who you would say, because of the job she does and her sport,

she needs to be larger. But I bet you, she will not be advertising on the telly quicker than the other two ladies you know dean rasha smith and kgt what what what about you les what sort of size are you have you suffered from being lucky or whatever i'm quite slim and i've never really had a weight problem i've done a lot of sports because i loved it and i've i think i'm just lucky in my metabolism and another thing that if you have a drug problem or alcohol problems you have groups you can go to but if people want to lose weight they have to pay 10 pound a week to go to a weight watchers club which

again i think is wrong it's discriminating against people les thank you very much indeed for calling us and i must just tell you about a tweet that we've had this came from rita and she said one of my worst stories about being plus size is whilst on an evening out with my husband a drunk came up to him and said christ mate you could do better than that one of her best stories about being plus size was another. While sitting in my beautiful red sports car in a traffic jam, a young man who was a passenger in the parallel car said, how did you get in a car like that?

I responded, by earning a darn sight more money than you ever will. Right, let's go to another caller. Let's go to Farrah, who's in Lancashire. Hello, Farrah. hi jenny good morning what's your experience um basically just wanted to reinforce slightly what the woman yesterday who was on your program was saying about asian women um in particular kind of the stereotype that we have of having to be slim or having to sort of fit certain moulds and things. And I think that's a pressure through our lives.

I remember when I was really young, when I wasn't thin and I wasn't fat, but I was called chubby. And then after I had my first daughter, I remember my dad saying to someone, oh, she used to be so slim and now look at her. And, you know, now with my own daughter, I'm so conscious that I think she's too thin.

And it's very hard in our culture to sort of, I think it's one of the last taboos actually in Asian culture is stopping the body shaming. It's really kind of ingrained and kind of, it's a very strange and kind of culturally embedded situation. It's not good and it needs to be confronted. You're now 50. How do you deal with your weight now? I'm just on a constant diet. I mean, it's just, you know, that sort of menopause or the 10 pounds

you couldn't get rid of has turned into 15 or 18 or whatever. Just sort of constantly aware of what I'm eating. But also as you get older, you just get more comfortable with sort of how you look and who you are. And I think it matters less. But less but no I'm on a constant I can't eat that because you know what I mean just a sort of awareness. So it's something you think about every day is what you're eating and whether it's going to make you fat? Yeah pretty much and I think this is

embedded in my childhood and I you know I've never been fat fat but i've never been thin um and the other thing i just wanted to say was this you know using all these antidepressants like catepin and ritazapine and stuff they really make women put on a lot of weight and no one's kind of looking at that as an issue have you done that have you taken antidepressant I have and it made me well it just made me very kind of more unwell mentally and also put on you know really pile on a lot of pounds. Farrah thank you very much indeed for calling us today. We're going to Cambridge now. Ely and Rosalind Ashby. Hello Rosalind. Hello Jenny. What's your experience? Well, I've had a bit of health scare at the beginning of the year,

which was all successfully treated, but it made me think about my lifestyle. And I discovered swimming, and I swim three, four, five times a week at the moment. I absolutely love it. The only reason I was fat, Jenny, was because I ate too much food and i didn't exercise enough and i think a lot of people have this problem they're quite

happy to blame other people or blame their glands or blame a medical condition but the fact is most people are fat overweight and unfit because they eat too much and they don't they don't exercise enough were you ever happy when you were fatter no with the way you look absolutely miserable it's a constant reminder it's hard to get out of a chair it's hard to get in a chair clothes shopping isn't was an absolute nightmare for me never ever tried anything on couldn't face going into the changing rooms it is a miserable existence being fat now one of your earlier callers said about the shop putter you can be quite big and be very fit what i'm saying is i was unfit and fat and i think probably they're two very different things i think as the shop putter um is an example of quite a large lady

but i suspect she's incredibly fit we heard earlier from i think it was i think it was joe who said you know to to lose weight it's something she has to think about all day every day what is she eating what impact will it have on her to what extent are you in a similar position now with your eating and your exercise? How much does it obsess your every day? Well, the fact is I love food. And if someone's going to cook me a meal, that's even better. I do like food, but I have to take it in control and I have to accept responsibility. Nobody else is putting the food

in my mouth sorry i've got a really bad cold nobody else is putting the food in my mouth it's my choice to eat that food and i have to accept the consequences of it and so i've taken that in under control and and uh you know i'm heading in the right direction how i feel i'm heading in the right direction and how much time does your swimming take? I go swimming for less than an hour a day. It only takes... The first time I went in the pool, I could just about manage two lengths.

And last week, and this is over about since August, I can now get to 60 lengths. Wow, 60 lengths, that's a lot. It is, but honestly Jenny, it's, I can solve all the world's problems while I'm swimming. I could sort Brexit out easily while I'm swimming.

It clears your mind and it's fantastic. Rosalind Ashby, thank you very much indeed for your call this morning. Suzanne is in Exeter in Devon. Hello, Suzanne. Hello. What's your experience?

Well, I was quite a normal-sized child until I was eight, and then I became fat. I'm one of five children, and the others were not. I grew up in the 50s. My eldest brother was a bit clumpy, but we ate exactly the same food. It wasn't an abundance of Mars bars or bags of sweets. Cakes were made, usually.

So I do feel that your body is... I stored that fat, and I was very body conscious. I hated games. I didn't want to stand there and not get chosen. I used to smack my body in the bath when I was about 10. I hated it so much. Then I lost weight, but no one noticed. I lost two stone.

Then Weight Watchers arrived in Exeter and i lost four and a half which was brilliant um and since then i make people laugh how much have you lost and i say oh must be 20 stone by now where i've put it on took it off you know because it's just that battle of keeping it off so do you do you yo-yo do you diet and then put it on and then diet again? No, you wouldn't necessarily notice it now because I have kept it down, but I have to watch it like that other lady all the time because I can so quickly get back to 16 and a half stone. I get fed up with the car.

I'm quite surprised at what people say once they know you're a slimmer. They start telling me how to lose weight. And I'm in the winter years of my life and I've got angrier. What does that mean? How old are you? 72. Ah, OK.

Let's call it the autumn of your life, shall we? That's what your lady said on the phone just now. Yeah, they sort of start saying oh you must eat off a smaller plate it's rubbish it's what's on the plate isn't it and um don't eat late at night a calories are calories whether you eat them at 4 p.m or 4 a.m i think you know um and then they start to tell me they look at if i have a pudding, that's a crime. And I then have to tell them. They get better when I make them laugh because I say, look, I've earned the right to be called the expert witness in the court case

when it comes to dieting and losing weight. Don't tell me what to do. I'll tell you, you know. And I'm not that good. I've gone up at the moment because it's a struggle. Do you have the pudding anyway? Oh, yes, of course I do. Because, you know, I do that lovely one where you get sins

and they are so relaxed. They are very realistic, that club. You go on holiday, you come back and you say, they say things like, oh, you've only put on £4. That's jolly good for a fortnight. They're realistic. And their food is meant to be that you don't have to cook a separate meal for your family at night or you the family can eat the same food

as you suzanne thank you very much indeed for calling us this morning this is woman's hour discussing what being fat feels like and how it affects maybe employment, friendships and simply going about day-to-day life. You can join us on 03700 100 444 or you can join us on email, Twitter or Instagram. I'll just give you an Instagram that came in. It really does feel like open season on larger people. This is from Mar c 1979 this affects both men and women but women disproportionately definitely have suffered discrimination due to my size on the tube at work and other places let's go to the phone again now. And we're going to West Wales.

And Briege is on the line. Hello, Briege. Hello, Jenny. What's your experience? Well, the things I wanted to say was that obesity is a really ugly word for a disease. It just holds in it the shame. But it is a horrible word. And I had a consultant who put it at the top of every letter. He was treating for my heart, not my obesity, but he sent me to a Mars bar every time I read it. And the second point I

wanted to make was that if the shaming and the slimming industry and the medical industry was working there would be no fat people left the fact is that the slimming industry and the diet industry are based on the same on the same methods that fat and cattle you described obesity a word to which you have an objection but you described it as a disease by the doctors, and it has health, you know, it has all sorts of side effects, or at least so we're led to believe. And the thing is that being fat can have all sorts of reasons other than eating wrongly and not exercising. How's your heart now? Have they managed to fix the heart problem? No, it's unfixable. It's cardiomyopathy and I was born with it and I will die early with it. And it stops me exercising as much as i would like and the

medication um adds weight so i'm up the proverbial creek in that respect but i read that fat is a feminist issue years ago and i stopped dieting and i stopped putting on weight and i'll never be the size i would like to be I will never I will always have body dysmorphia but at least I won't be you know I won't be putting on any more weight the other thing that happened I got seriously ill last year and I lost 14 kilos and nobody noticed and nobody you know whereas a friend of mine who was thin and lost weight when she was ill was worried about starving to death. Well, Briege. There are actually positive things about being fat.

Briege, thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning. We're off to Devon now. Catherine's on the phone. Hello, Catherine. Hello, Jenny. You've been verbally abused in the street. What happened? Well, last week I was coming out of the public library and going back to my car. And as you do

in a car park where the two cars are parked quite closely together, I had to kind of squeeze past the car next to us, next to me. And I opened my door and I looked to my side and the man sitting in the car was mouthing something at me and he was, I thought, he cannot possibly be saying what I think he's saying to me and so I kind of indicated to him that I couldn't hear him and so he rolled

down the window and then for about five, well probably less than five minutes, there was just a complete litany of abuse using the worst possible words that you could think of in relation to a woman. And if you think of all the bad ones,

those were the ones he used. And I kind of just stood there in shock. And I said to him, you know, do you not think that that is being very rude? And I thought that might at least stop him in his tracks. But what in fact happened

was that it got worse and he just kept on swearing and swearing and swearing at me. And it was just incredibly shocking. And it was somebody you didn't know? Just a complete stranger? No, not at all. I think he watched me kind of squeeze between the two side mirrors of our cars and then open my door. I didn't bang his car or anything like that. And he obviously, well, in all honesty, the way way he was behaving it seemed like he was slightly unhinged but it was such an incredibly bizarre thing and such a hurtful thing to have somebody

refer to your size and then all of the other swear words associated with that and feel that it was okay to say that just because i'd had to squeeze between two cars apart from apart from talking to us have you spoken to anybody else about it well i have actually asked um the people who run the library whether or not they have cctv cameras because i am considering um raising it with the police as a as a um an abusive incident because it was so shocking i would just hate to to let it go and and and for that gentleman to feel that it was acceptable katherine thank you very much indeed for calling us this morning uh kelly ford is on the line now she's in east london hello kelly good morning jenny how you? I'm good what's your experience?

Well my experience is at eight years old I was eight stone and I was always pacified with food so I've always been an emotional eater so if there's ever been a crisis I'll always reach for um a turkish delight or um other food to kind of pacify me and you know over time um i think i've always kind of been you know affected by being bullied very young uh being called tonka truck and being bullied for being fat and i never forget sort of a light bulb moment whilst doing an assault course with some friends who were canyoning and I never forget sort of a friend turning around saying well this isn't really you is it because you know you're overweight and I remember never forget thinking this is the trigger this is the moment where I can prove that even though I'm a size 16 I can do anything and from that point I went on and

I did a 5k and I was like oh I ran for 30 minutes I actually achieved that even with a big you know big booty and swaying hips and um went on to do a 10k and then I was like oh I've got a real fever for this and that then turned into a half marathon. Three peaks were done. Managed to do a full marathon. And this was all as a size 14, size 16 woman. And I just feel like to love the skin you're in, you know, there's a massive movement out there of body positivity and celebrating your body as it is but actually there's still very much it's still very much celebrated in social situations of oh you look great you've lost weight or oh you look fantastic you're looking skinny and whenever I hear things like that it definitely gives a trigger to that eight-year-old girl fat in the

playground and so I think by being fit and using fitness as a tool to feel good in myself and feel confident, not so much to anymore lose weight. Once upon a time, I may have done fitness to kind of lose weight, but now I do it to feel good. And actually, that's a really important example, I feel, to myself, my friends and my little girl as well, on how to kind of be just confident in the skin you're in. You know, I've only been skinny once, Jenny, and I lost my sense of rhythm. So I don't really fancy doing that again. Well, Kelly, thank you very much indeed for calling us this morning. I think we're going to Bath next, where Stella's on the line. Hello, Stella.

Hiya. Hello. What's your experience? So I'm someone who has recovered from um various eating disorders and i now work with people with eating disorders and i think there's a real misunderstanding of binge eating disorder um which does lead obviously to people being overweight and it's people just say oh you can stop eating like you can like watch what you eat and all of that sort of stuff but binge eating disorder leads you to eat until you're physically uncomfortably full and and i'm somebody who's recovered from it and i know that in that in in

that sort of space it's not as easy as just saying oh well i will put that down or well i will stop that because it's a it's an emotional hunger that drives you to until you're sort of until it's painful so so was your eating disorder binge eating so i had um anorexia um and then that developed into bulimia which then then developed into binge eating disorder. And also, obviously, recovering from anorexia, it's terrifying to hear people being vilified for being overweight, because that is your biggest fear. Your biggest fear is that you are going to be fat and you are going to be unacceptable.

How old are you now, Stella i'm 28 and how did you recover from it um so i spent a lot of time in hospitals um for my anorexia and then um came out and that was when the real hard work started um and unfortunately at that point there was no support from the nhs as a as an outpatient and because my weight was at a certain level um and then when i had binge eating disorder i went to my doctors and asked for help but unfortunately because my weight was um well slightly at the top end of what they would be okay with, I wasn't offered any help at that point. And so that was just a case of,

it was really, really difficult, but trying lots of different methods. I eventually found a few that worked for me when I was feeling the urge to binge to stop me doing it. But it is incredibly difficult and people just don't understand it at all. Stella, thank you very much indeed for calling us.

We're going to go to York now. Elizabeth is on the phone. Hello, Elizabeth. Good morning. What's your experience of this? I'm at home at the moment recovering from a total knee replacement, which I had to pay £10,630 for. Ouch on both counts that's a lot of money and the knee must have been very painful. It still is and this is because our local CCG which is the clinical commissioning group are in debt and have decided that one way to save money is to say that anybody that is overweight or is a smoker,

that's the other group, overweight or a smoker, is not allowed to have joint surgery. So that's hips and knees. So I think the limit, you said, was a BMI of 30. What was yours when you felt you needed the hip replacement? Well in fact it has gone up and up and up because what I had was called a fixed flexion deformity which meant my leg was not only fixed but in a funny angle so that I couldn't walk very well at all, which meant any kind of exercise or fitness program was very, very difficult. So my weight just went up and up and up and it was just a vicious circle. And you said it's painful now. How easily are you using it?

Well, I'm literally just a week after surgery, so that's why it's painful at the moment. But, you know, I use walking aids and have done, but I've got another knee that's having trouble and a hip as well. And I have osteoarthritis. And you sort of feel, well, it's not my fault that I've got osteoarthritis but we're being penalized for the state we're in. Elizabeth thank you very much for calling us and I do hope it all gets resolved. Rebecca Atkinson-Lorde is on the line now she's in London hello Rebecca. Hi. What's

your experience of this? So I've been fat since I was 10. And I've had all of the horrible stuff. I've been shouted at on the street. I've had mostly men actually say horrible things. And I've had women do that horrible insidious thing where they advise you how to be a better woman. And the thing is, you know what, I'm a size 22. I don't care. I'm really happy. I'm in a happy polyamorous marriage. So I have a gorgeous husband and I have two other really brilliant, gorgeous, successful boyfriends. I have a career that I love. I don't spend my life feeling fat and ugly. And if other people see me as that, that is their problem, not mine.

And I think it's really important that there are examples of women who are fat and are happy out there for people to see so I sort of wanted to call in just to redress that balance. But do you have any idea how you have managed to cope with that when so many people that we've heard from this morning and you know lots of people you hear from outside who are really not happy to be fat and spend their lives dieting what's different about you and i am really bloody minded and i look at sorry i shouldn't swear but i you know i look at my friends who are thin and who uh who worry about their body and their parents about as much as i do and And I sort of realized that I can either spend my life hating

myself or I can live it. And it is just a question, I think, of deciding not to allow that stuff in and talking yourself into not listening when you have to. And, you know, everybody, I have had times in the past when someone said something awful to me in the street and it floored me. But I am angry at that person for abusing me just as I would be if I was a black woman and they had shouted racial abuse. And they are abusing me for an outside appearance that I am not actually capable of changing. I don't believe. So why, you know, why let that shape my life? That lets them win. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We'll go now to Westbury in Wiltshire.

And Michelle is on the line. Hello, Michelle. Hello there. Good morning. Hello. What did you have to say this morning? Well, I've just got a story a bit more hopeful or a little bit more positive in my case anyway. I struggled with my weight as I got older, especially through menopause as well. I'm currently 51. Last year I turned 50 and found a gut health program that helped me to feel so much better overall, not just about my weight loss and how I looked and felt,

but, you know, my health as well, overall health. So I just wanted to say that there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel, really. Gut health. What is that all about? So just eating gut-healthy foods that repair your gut, restore your gut health i mean i'm i'm embarrassed to say still that i don't know that much about the the workings of it but i knew nothing um of how important gut health is to your over overall health and well-being um prior to this but they call it your second brain they call your your gut your second brain, and it affects so much to do with mood, sleep, weight, everything.

And you're feeling much better as a result. Absolutely, absolutely. I've lost over three stone. My joints, my health, my happiness, everything. Better than I was in my 30s. Michelle, thank you very much indeed for telling us what you've tried. Thanks for calling us. Let's go now to Diane Westerby-Brooks,

who's in Woking. Hello, Diane. Hello. Hello. Thank you for letting me be on the programme. I've identified with so much people have said. I'd like to just say I'm 67 but it could be yesterday that when I was a teenager and one of the natives said to me in front of my mother how much fatter

are you going to get I can still remember the pain of your legs rubbing together because when you are really overweight you have to wear these long pants or whatever you want to call them to stop the pain the rawness of your legs rubbing together um i was you said that someone insulted you when you were very young has that continued as you got older no because um when i was 16 i went to weight watchers and lost five stone in a year i did put some of it back on but i did take it off again and i've been the same weight now for 40 years 45 years and i've had four pregnancies i can remember in one of my first pregnancies saying to the nurse i'm really concerned about putting on weight and i heard her say that to

the doctor behind the curtain and the doctor said unless she's the size of a house i'm not interested in speaking to her so these things resonate over the years but i'm 67 now i've managed to learn to control it like some of your listeners said if you've got to educate yourself you've got to take an exercise you've got to learn and and not buy the stuff that's in the shops because a lot of it is absolute rubbish it you know produced by manufacturers but i need i want to say to the people on this program, you need to think of the future. Because my friends who have got weight issues, they've had these replacement knees, terrible pain, diabetes, their legs cut off, going blind with the diabetes. Whatever you think about what you

are now when you're fat, please try and look the 10, 20, 30, 40 years ahead because you will pay for it, I'm afraid. There is no way out with being overweight. You will pay for it. We need to point out that you're talking about type 2 diabetes. Type 1 is not caused by lifestyle. But type 2 diabetes, you're right, can be caused by being overweight and lifestyle. Thank you very much indeed diane for calling us this morning um let's go now to mary who again is in the london area

hello mary mary whiting what's your point hello there yes something that hasn't been mentioned in the program i think so far um on anger um I think we should not be directing any anger we feel at individuals, but absolutely, fairly and squarely at the food industry, who've stuffed us with sugar for decades and have got clean away with it. No government has taken the food industry on. They haven't reined them in. They've just let them get away with it and do what they like there have obviously been attempts policies recently to try and

reduce sugar what what's your position what's your diet your size how do you cope with it i was a skinny child and i've always stayed fairly skinny but i got very interested in healthy eating several decades ago I don't I've virtually no sugar you can't avoid it entirely you if you're in somebody else's house you eat what you're given and it's nice to have a dessert in a restaurant sometimes but at home pudding is fruit I eat I make all my own bread because I don't like the bought stuff and that tends to be whole meal i buy brown rice brown pasta which are fine the rice is easy to cook it doesn't stick and so on and so on so we do eat um very well and we're fine um and in fact i used to teach um cooking to adults for fun on this sort of thing well mary thank you thank you so much for joining

us this morning um let's go to mike now hello mike hi i don't know where you are you haven't told us but never mind what's your point um i uh i'm married to a woman who is in the obese area on the size-to-weight graph. She's struggling very hard to get her weight down. She goes to Slimming World. I've been with her, and I've lost a couple of stone as well. I feel great about that. But how can I best support her and make her feel better about herself? How do you think you can support her and make better about herself?

Never criticise her, maybe, for being fine never never well my criticize always encourage mike thank you very much i think we can just squeeze in brenda who's in london hello brenda hello jenny good morning good morning what's your experience my experience is that it really resonates with virtually what's been said, but I want to underline a couple of things that other people haven't said yet. And that is, is really being overweight is a mindset issue. I know that from experience. I lost virtually every member of my immediate family by my youngest sister within a very short period of time. And I'd been a corporate slave. I used to sit at my desk and I used to work 16 to 18 hours per day running a very busy children's services.

So you can imagine, I just put on weight. I used to eat badly. I used to eat late at night. I didn't exercise. So I want to underline, just get one bit of self-care per day. I think most of us, we're overwhelmed and trying to do everything and trying to do too much. Even if you just move, move more. Well, thank you for all your calls, tweets and emails this morning. Here are a few more. Lynn Rafferty said in a tweet,

it's the denial of access to health care that I hate most. Whatever symptoms present, the answer's always the same. On email, Gail said, I don't think fat should be acceptable. It is unhealthy. We all have a responsibility to look after ourselves and not get ill unnecessarily. I'm slightly overweight but working hard to deal with it. Accepting fat just means people are eating

too much. You literally cannot be fat if you don't eat and drink too much. Polly said I fully sympathise with women who struggle with their weight and I think it's great that you're covering this on your programme. However as a a naturally thin woman, I get extremely frustrated when I see posts on social media about how real women have curves, as though our skinny ones are not feminine enough. Negative body image is not just something that overweight women struggle with. Thin women are stigmatised too. Someone who didn't want us to use a name said,

How is anybody with an eating problem supposed to manage their compulsion when we now live in a snacking culture where people hardly eat at the table together anymore, advertisers offer snack foods to tide you over. Even in a restaurant, while waiting for your meal, a waiter will offer to bring snacks while you're waiting, as if being hungry in between meals was somehow unbearable. We need to come together and enjoy making and eating our food without distractions like sitting in front of your tv or pc. Emma said last year through a combination of hip surgery and stress I lost six stones in a period of five months. I didn't diet,

the weight just dropped off. I completely changed shape. It's as if someone suctioned my insides out. My blood pressure was 220 over 115 before I lost weight. It's not dropped much since, so it's not weight related, it's stress related and I'm on medication for life. I'm now a size 6 to 8. I was previously 16 to 18. My friends think I'm too skinny. Someone even said you were much funnier when you were fat. It's a lose-lose situation, particularly for my bank balance as I've had to buy absolutely everything new, including shoes. Liz said,

I'm finding the discussion a bit irritating as there is an assumption that people want to lose weight. I, like many others, put on weight as an adolescent and have lost five stone at least three times in my life. Divorce and Weight Watchers being two ways I lost that weight. The last time I lost a lot of weight, my daughter ended up seriously ill with anorexia. This was five years ago. I put on tons of weight, getting her back to a reasonable weight as we all ate together. Now I exercise regularly and I'm reasonably fit, but still would be classified as obese. Bridget said, At the age of 61, after 20 years of caring and being in a full-time job,

I took the plunge and had bariatric surgery. Not because I was unhappy with my size or because I had joint issues, but because I could see myself suffering later in life. After the surgery, I halved my weight to 13 stone. People who hadn't seen me for a long time didn't like to comment on my appearance because they thought I'd had cancer. I still feel guilty that I had to have surgery and that I did not have the self-control since the age of 12 to do it the proper way, by dieting. I still weigh about 13 stone, but I'm not neurotic about it.

Carmel said, I'm a 59-year-old woman and have been overweight since I was 11. I would be classed as clinically obese. I've never lost more than half a stone in my life, and that was for my 21st birthday party. It's been a great source of shame to me as I don't think I have any willpower. I weigh myself every day and every day I say to myself I will be good today but I love food. It's been the most reliable source of pleasure and comfort I've had in my life. So on balance I think I have to accept the way I am. Society in guises of concern for health and acceptable appearance, persecutes the overweight, but I'm fighting back by just being myself and trying to accept myself.

Again, someone who didn't want us to use a name said, I've been listening with interest to all the brave callers to your programme this morning. I've always had body image issues. In my 20s, I took slimming pills even though I was only a size 10. Over the decades, I yo-yoed and owned clothes in four different dress sizes at the same time. I've tried many different weight loss programs, all involving specially branded food, subscriptions or meal replacements. None of these were sustainable for me. 20 months ago, I adopted a food lifestyle choice, not a diet. I'm over 50 pounds lighter and almost at my goal weight. I've done this by ignoring the standard nutritional guidelines

and I follow a low-carb, high-fat eating regime. I've discovered that obesity is caused by insulin resistance once this has been reset reset by cutting carbohydrates, eating good, natural, unprocessed food and fasting, the body can begin to heal. This is not a heavily promoted lifestyle, is there? There's no money to be made from it. Tomorrow, Linda Bostrom Norsgaard's second novel,

Welcome to America, has been awarded the prestigious Swedish August Prize. It portrays a sensitive, strong-willed child in the throes of trauma. Linda will join me to talk about silence, trauma, childhood, mental illness and imploding families. And Natalie Smith from Surrogacy UK will discuss proposed changes to the surrogacy law. Join me tomorrow, if you can, two minutes past ten. Until then, bye-bye. Hi, I'm Alistair Souk, and I want to tell you about The Way I See It,

a brand-new podcast from BBC Radio 3. It's a 30-part series in which we're throwing open the collection at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to some of the sharpest creative minds of our time. We'll be speaking to comedian Steve Martin, writer Roxane Gay, musician Steve Reich and many, many more. I'll be your guide throughout the series, so join me as I explore one of the greatest collections of modern art in the world.

If you'd like to hear more, just search for The Way I See It on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig,

the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.