MovieChat Forums > Thin (2006) Discussion > Morbidly Obese telling Deathly Skinny ho...

Morbidly Obese telling Deathly Skinny how to eat?

posted 18 years ago by usmc5855
21 replies | jump to latest

Just to preface this: Former US Marine, male, Diagnosed in the USMC with an eating Disorder at the age of 30.

I had the tendencies all my life (was the fat kid) and the USMC just aggravated it (you try being around people where 8% bodyfat is the norm).

Had to be hospitalized.

remember in counseling being told: "Outside of professional dancers the Military and the USMC statistically has the highest percentage of people with eating disorders." Its just a lot harder to tell someone they are binging and purgeing when they work out at the gym for 3 hours at a time after beer and wings the night before.

Now that being said, I found it terrible that so many of the nurses there were so extremely obese. How is that helping the patients with their self image? Look at this huge woman telling me to eat more- yeah I'll listen to her so I can get well.

Not role model material. And certainly counter-productive.

[–] bevenly1 18 years ago

Well if some obese person was telling me I was skinny, I'd be like whoa...I must be really skinny cuz i look nothing like her. I don't understand how this anorexic thing works...i mean i admit its sad. Its just in 2005 when I was 14 I lost 20 lbs over the summer from eating healthy and NOT eating junk food(including chips). I used to be 144 lbs and 5'4. Now im AVERAGE. I'm 120 and 5'4. I feel more confident and i'm fine with my weight. I rather be average than not having friends and being a stick.

[–] BANYC 18 years ago

ok it's a mental illness and since you are just 14 or 15 you shouldn't be allowed to talk about anything.

I Rule!

- American Beauty -

[–] Parietti15 18 years ago

The nurses wouldn't be considered morbidly obese, but I definitely get what you are saying. I hate how people think it's so easy to just say, 'why can't you just eat healthy?' they obviously know nothing about the subject and the fact is that if it was that easy, don't you think people would just do that instead of putting themselves through the misery of having a eating disorder? It's not something that you choose to have.

In general I don't really agree with that clinic's practices and the fact that none of them got better is proof that they aren't 100% secure with that they're doing.

----
See the safety of the life you have built...

[–] snuzzle 17 years ago

First thing, yes, the nurses would be considered morbidly obese. To be considered morbidly obese you need to be 100lbs overweight, and it looks like some of these nurses are well over that.

That said, if these patients can't deal with overweight people in an environment as controlled in this place, how they can possibly deal out in the world where 2/3 of americans are overweight or obese? Nurses, especially. I've been in and out of hospitals my whole life, and it just seems nurses have more trouble managing their weight. My mother is a nurse and struggled with her weight her whole life. Maybe partially because of their hectic and stressful lifestyle.

I'm not defending the clinic, because I think that it has a lot of problems, but I think hiring strictly healthy weight staff is not a solution. It would be a liability, not to mention, in our sue-happy society. I used to be obese, and I know I would be a little ticked if I didn't get a job I was otherwise qualified for because of my weight.

[–] smartyp17 17 years ago

well its more than thata...alot of these women working in these centers had eating disorders...or at leaste at my center....and you look at them and say" i dont want to look like them" if thats what getting better is , if thats healthy......its not good for recovery, but you dont want skinny people in there either because than you will say well your skinny so why cant i be skinny......its a no win situtaion....but i do think that there needs to be more people helping others with eating disorders that have had one themselves and are "healthy" not underweight or overweight.........that can be a role model......but its hard in the medical proffesion.......

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] snuzzle 17 years ago

Like i said, I used to be obese myself, and I would not say I had an eating disorder. I ate too much and had trouble managing my weight, no doubt, but it wasn't for psychological reasons. I didn't need a therapist's care to lose weight. I just needed to learn to make some lifestyle changes, and eat less. The majority of obese people are like how I was.

I'll go back to what I said. 2/3s of Americans are obese or overweight. Whether we are nutritionists or nurses or doctors or lawyers, we are just more likely to be fat. So why on earth would we isolate girls with eating disorders in a hospital with no fat people? Treating them with a strictly thin staff is enabling.

[–] smartyp17 17 years ago

um ill repeat myself there needs to be more postive role models in centers....
as u said u have never had an ED, anorexia or builima, so i think your opinion holds less weight....no pun intended.....it is true that anorexics look at the workers and dont want to become them...and it does affect recovery......not saying people should be fired or hired based on weight...but when it comes to this touchy a subject the people in your every day life matter and so their size and experiences.....
you wanna know if you let yourself eat again you wount blow up and become fat.......its just simple.....im overwieght now and might never had gooten better if i knew what i would look like....i still think ill have a hard time having a baby because of the weight gain.....but im not even any where close to heavy or fat but if i saw myself back then i wouldnt want to get better its just the way it is.....

[–] snuzzle 17 years ago

"not saying people should be fired or hired based on weight.." So what are you saying?

Are you implying that the center would have more success if all the workers were a healthy weight?

And how would that success translate to the real world, when they are released into a place where more people are fat than not? Including very successful, healthy individuals?

[–] smartyp17 17 years ago

that knowing that the staff has had eating disorders and are now fat doesnt help them get better.....and that yes there needs to be some healthy people.....how would you know what would make them better....im talking about the outside world and im talking from experience so ........you have no clue how their minds work none so i think you have no valid point other than your heavy and dont want to be judged by your weight or not get a job bc of it and thats fine but in centers that specialize in eating disorders i think there should be some conceise of what is healthy.......a nutrionist who is unhealthy telling someone how to eat isnt not gonna work.....if you were paying someone to get you in shape would you want them to look the best or the worst.....i see it at the gym sometimes....id rather pay for and get the training of the size 1 girl over the size 12 no matter if their both in shape or not bc the size 1 girl has obviously got better skills.....and i can say this since ive talked with both trainers and have had sessions...id rather someone who was healhty give me medical advice....
its a matter of opinion and as i said you have no clue what it takes to recover and what effects it!

[–] smittenkitten41 17 years ago

they can be nurses in any other context, but should not be hired in an eating disorders facility. it is like the blind leading the blind!

their body weights show that they have serious weight and body issues. imo, there should be a variety of weights shown that are in a normal, healthy range.

we don't want these people to gain weight in a problematic way. many, especially bulimics, have binge eating disorder, and might get overweight if they were simply cured of their purging, and not their binge eating.

being underweight and being very overweight are both bad for your health. in a treatment facility they should be advocating a healthy lifestyle, while preaching body acceptance, and the acceptance of people of all sizes.

let's not kid ourselves, even though 2/3 of Americans are overweight, or even obese, we should not say that this is okay.

[–] emmeaki 17 years ago

Fortunately, Bevenly1, you had the sense to loose weight the right way and you weren't 98 lbs. or something when you started! Anorexia is about way more than food and actual weight. It's about control. I would have liked to learn more about what caused these women to develop an eating disorder. We only really learned about Brittany, whose mother passed her F'ed up behavior on to her daughter. It is sad.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] hodie 17 years ago

I thought the nurses at Renfrew pretty much did vital signs, weights, charts, etc. It was the nutritionist who counselled them on food, and she wasn't obese, morbidly or otherwise.

It isn't a nurse's job or responsibility to be a role model for patients, no matter where the nurse is employed. I wonder why anyone would believe that it was.

Nurses are not patients' personal trainers, either. They are not employed by the patients; they work for the hospital. Personal trainers don't have one-tenth of the education and training that nurses are required to have.

Show me a patient who won't follow instruction unless it's under some ideal set of circumstances (e.g., skinny nurses to inspire them), and I'll show you someone who is still not ready to give up her sickness. That doesn't make them bad people. It just doesn't bode very well for their recovery.

God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety

[–] samadee 16 years ago

Yea, the part where they have a box of krispy kremes or something just chilling and they're talking about how they don't know the answer for losing weight?? Pretty ridiculous and unimpressive. They aren't the counselors, I don't think, but still. People with good body knowledge and health would be better ways to show people how to put what they're preaching into practice...

I imagine if I was overweight and worked at a place like that though, it'd be really hard *not* to have develop some kind of body complex over time. It's unfortunate that the nurses aren't healthy (for their own sake), but they're still eating I guess...

Aloha maku maku. Kahlui Ama Tutu. Don Ho will not emerge from the Valley of Darkness.

[–] I_Shall_Be_Released 15 years ago

Forget nurses, I had a dietician who was clearly overweight when I was hospitalised for anorexia...now that was aggravating. I mean how does that even happen? o.O

The overweight nurses didn't bother me though (and yes, there were plenty of them).

[–] rolfeder 14 years ago

Being surrounded by obese nurses is detrimental to recovering anorexics because it reinforces the pervasive notion that if they start to recover and begin to eat they'll just become fat and ugly. The facility would be more effective if they had a healthy staff, so that the girls could see for themselves that it's possible to eat normally while staying fit and attractive. If they can't come to this realization, how will they ever get better?

[–] someofusarebrave 14 years ago

Actually, my [morbidly obese] doc when I was younger informed my twelve-year-old self that I was "too fat" hence I needed to lose ten pounds.
To preface THAT, lemme explain that, development-wise, I looked about fifteen.

As someone who has always been proportionately large in EVERY way---big mouth, big thigh circumference, big curves---I know how difficult it can be to distinguish between "unhealthfully overweight" versus "within one's OWN PARTICULAR healthy range yet overweight by BMI-dictated standards."
Studies have proven that morbidly obese people can in fact be fit, that they can be healthy, that they can even eat the same way a much thinner person would.
Weight is primarily dictated by genes, remember? This might explain why members of certain races tend to have very different body shapes, weights, even diets than others. Choosing how to distribute body mass on a person in order to best suit them for their specific environment is a process which takes millenia.
The BMI index however does not account for any of that. Like most instances of modern medicine attempting to force-feed people of color the lie that "something is wrong" with them, the BMI index was formatted around the typical weights of white people.
Yes, there is SOME variation throughout the course of the BMI system, but not nearly enough when you consider that a typical Samoan without dietary interference by "well-meaning" white folks would weigh probably two hundred pounds more than the average Anglo-Saxon person.
The picts were a small dark people of the British hills who valued fleetness of foot; not so far away, in a global scale anyway, Russia was selecting the hardiest, most muscled, most wide-hipped among its populace to reproduce.
Being proportionate in one's size is a far better indicator of one's health than is one's physical weight. After all, look at Tyra Banks---by typical "model" standards, the womyn is morbidly obese [just the same as most African-American womyn would be by typical "white" standards!] yet are you really gonna stand here telling me the womyn is anything less than a knockout?

[–] queenofdystopia 13 years ago

I would think it might even be more counterproductive to have skinny nurses (or other staff) telling them how to eat. Anorexics tend to be VERY competitive so I could just picture some of them trying to outdo a skinny nurse in being thin. Or they could look at a skinny nurse and think, "Well you look pretty skinny yourself bi***, who do YOU think you are trying to get me to gain weight. I know! you're just trying to fatten me up!"

Personally, I could picture more potential problems with skinny nurses, therapists, etc but I could be totally wrong. Everyone is different though so you probably can't make any blanket statements. Some anorexics might respond poorly to an overweight nurse while others might respond more poorly to skinny nurses.

[–] hodie 12 years ago

OP: The nurses managed to stay out of a hospital bed. You didn't.
You lose the argument.

"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"

[–] usmc5855 12 years ago

I am sure every one of those morbidly obese women are pre diabetic, if not diabetic and on the way to a hospital bed of their own.