Published: Good Men Project (May 19, 2015)
Why are we so sensitive about telling people when they’ve gained weight?
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Between last October and this May, I put on almost forty pounds. And I wish someone had told me that I was gaining weight.
Don’t get me wrong, I take full responsibility for my current dilemma. It was my decision to eat poorly, settle into a sedentary lifestyle, and ignore clear warning signs of my expanding girth (clothes that were suddenly too tight, increased perspiration and fatigue, etc.) At the same time, I always assumed that if I was starting to pack on the pounds, others around me would feel the need to say something. Because they didn’t, I remained oblivious to my situation until I summoned the nerve to step on a scale last week.
Even as a man with Asperger’s Syndrome, I can pretty easily figure out why they remained silent. Discussing weight gain is one of the great taboos in our society, and people are understandably sensitive about it. As such, the “Why?” in this article has less to do with understanding the reason for the phenomenon in question and more with explaining why it’s patently absurd. This is where being autistic comes into play; there are many social rules that everyone else seems to implicitly understand which make no sense to me, and indeed sensitivity about weight used to be one of them, as I learned the hard way when I was inappropriately honest with ex-girlfriends who inquired about their own weight. Nevertheless, I think this is one rule we ought to start bucking. Here’s why:
1. It’s a health issue.
If someone is a habitual smoker or drinker, we don’t feel self-conscious about drawing attention to their unhealthy lifestyle. Yet even though obesity can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other health problems, the subject is fraught with social implications that don’t exist for most other bad habits (more on that in a moment). As a result, it’s easy to overlook that when you fail to tell a loved one that they’re gaining weight, you’re allowing a potentially serious health crisis to remain un-addressed. If obesity was treated as matter-of-factly as other health conditions, this wouldn’t be the case.
2. By avoiding the subject, you lend credence to the worst social stigmas attached to weight gain.
I always assumed that if I was starting to pack on the pounds, others around me would feel the need to say something. Because they didn’t, I remained oblivious to my situation until I summoned the nerve to step on a scale last week.
Our conventional standards for attractiveness reward slenderness and punish being overweight; it is doubtful that anyone will contest this. Here’s the thing, though: It’s totally fine to not be at your most attractive. This doesn’t diminish your value as a human being, and when you fear telling people that they’ve become heavier, you imply (intentionally or otherwise) that the news that they’re not at their aesthetic peak will somehow diminish their overall worth as a person. Even worse, you imply that YOU find that individual less desirable—and regardless what society’s consensus about one’s attractiveness may be, if you truly love someone, no amount of weight gain will alter your attraction to them.
3. They may not know that there is a problem.
The most common argument I’ve heard against candor on this front is that “if he/she is gaining a lot of weight, they probably already know about it.” As I can personally attest, that isn’t always true. After I threw away my rickety old scale last October, I started informally measuring my weight by whether my clothes still fit. When they became tight, I assumed (in what can retrospectively be diagnosed as denial) that they had simply shrunk in the wash or that they had always been a tad snug. For whatever reason, I almost never entirely outgrew any part of my wardrobe, and so long as I could still squeeze my body into my clothes, I assumed everything was fine. It wasn’t until a friend made a blunt remark about my appearance—one that got him scolded by his peers but for which I am deeply grateful—that I realized I had a problem.
Concluding Thought: You don’t have to be a jerk about it … or sugarcoat it.
Just because you’re telling someone they’ve gained weight doesn’t mean you need to be cruel about it. In fact, studies have found that fat shaming people doesn’t work, because it reinforces negative preconceptions about worthlessness. Instead of belittling someone who has gotten bigger, you can find constructive ways of helping them. Now that I realize I have a problem, I have friends who are helping me learn how to count calories and develop a more physically rigorous daily regimen, because barring certain medical conditions, weight gain isn’t permanent. You can lose weight if you’re willing to make the necessary lifestyle changes … but for that to happen, you first need to be informed about your situation.
Of course, you shouldn’t sugarcoat the news either. That’s simply insulting to the other person’s intelligence and …
Mmmm …. Sugar.
Sorry, I lost my train of thought there. It happens when you’re a junk-foodaholic.