Do you let your friends know if they've gained weight?

An interesting question was posed on a popular news network show this morning; Christmas time is often a time where old friends meet up again after long periods of time and old acquaintences are brought together in social functions. It makes it easier to notice when someone has either gained or lost weight, and while it is almost always socially acceptable to note someone's weight loss, is it ever socially appropriate to let someone know you've noticed their weight gain? 

Between the timespan of my last year at high school and just before I started college, I lost over 80 lbs, bringing myself into a healthy, normal BMI range for my stature. There's not a soul who didn't notice, and anyone who know me at all commented on it. Whether it was friends telling me I was looking better, asking to go on a shopping trip with me so we could pick out new clothes for my slendered figure, or it was church friends congratulating my loss and the natural way with which I lost it: diet and exercise. 

I continued losing weight in college. While there was still loose skin bulge on my stomach, I could comfortably wear a bikini (granted, my naturally large breasts and saggy breasts didn't fit any of the walmart bikini tops) and not feel bad about it. But everywhere else, I was beginning to look skeletal. My shoulders looked skin and bones, and my face was getting oddly thin for the heart-shape structure it holds. By christmas time of my first year, my mother hinted her discomfort with where she felt my weight was going, and asked me at several points if I was eating while I was at college, though my father had been esctatic that I'd lost and kept the weight off for some time. And of course, because I still knew there was so much fat on my actual stomach, I was more prone to listen to my dad's enthusiasm than my mother's worried expression while she watched me eat that night. 

Fastforward several years.

For reasons of depression and situational circumstances that lead to that depression, I ballooned well past the weight I was in high school and was quickly moving up the scale. None of my clothes were fitting me anymore and the handmedowns that I could fit in while I was in high school were tight and uncomfortable on me. What I remember most about my discomfort with my staggering weight, beyond the purple stretch marks that began scarring the front of my stomach, was feeling ashamed about seeing people that I used to know. I became reclusive, refusing to meet with old friends when called, and refusing to go to church functions where people who had previously congratulated me on my past weight loss would realize that I'd lost all self control. All the self control they'd praised me for having.

I was in denial. I didn't want people to see that I was a phony.

Several years later I remember being with my mother and not wanting to get out of bed. All that week long that I was with her, she'd noticed my adapted lifestyle of inactiveness and depression. If I was not laying in my bed, I was walking toward my computer chair. If I was not in my computer chair, I was either walking toward my bed to get back in it, or going toward the kitchen for any sort of sugary food I could get my hands on. If was not eating, I was probably playing a very involved game. If I was eating, then I didn't stop until it became uncomfortable to continue further. And therfore, if I wasn't eating, I was probably asleep or just too full for the net hour or so to begin my next planned snack.  By that point, I had not seen my friends in several years and it'd been the same amount of years since anyone was allowed to take a picture of me that I hadn't taken myself; usually a facial picture, with my hair and chin positioned just so that the fattiness that had swollen my face up wasn't THAT obvious. 

I found the question and the reactions to that question I mentioned earlier interesting for these reasons. I purposely avoided going out in public to avoid having anyone realize that I had, indeed, gained weight, and what their opinions would be of me for it. 

And yet, it was my mother's tough love that brought me out of it. She tore into the room that I had been staying in that week while I was trying to sleep, and began yelling at me to get up. To just, get up. Get up and go outside. Go somewhere, but I couldn't stay in that room anymore. She didn't care where I went, but she wasn't going to let me lay on that bed and continue gorging myself beyond the point of return. She yelled at me a lot that day, reminded me that it was okay to be disgusted with what I was doing, because it /was/ disgusting what I was doing to myself. But what was more important than that was that she also told me I didn't /have/ to stay disgusted with myself. I could change. I could change. I just had to make that change for myself. She couldn't do it for me, but she could no longer sit by while I continued living in my sad state of existence. 

Perhaps it's a mother's duty to bring their child out of obscurity. It wasn't just my mother; my father has consistently been on me about my weight, too; but it was my mother who truly became the aggressive pit bull about it. It wasn't fat shaming, but it definitely wasn't the sort of fat acceptance that has been pervasive as of late. 

But then, does it became a friend's duty as well? 

I'd like to think so.

I won't lie, it's uncomfortable when someone mentions your weight to you, whether you're thin or you're fat. But I wonder how much quicker my initial recovery would have occurred if it'd been my friends to be the one who held an intervention, to corner me in my discomfort and disgust with my body and to let me know, yes, I lost my control, but that they wanted to support me in getting it back. 

I think my answer would be would that I would never talk to someone over it who I hadn't had at least three good conversations with. 

But then, what about the people who are 400 lbs. plus and growing? When you see them at the grocery store and you see them buying food that cause cravings, and things that would only further worsen their condition? Would saying nothing be comparable to saying nothing if you were to see the same person dragging a sharp tipped knife up and down the underside of their wrist? 

A more interesting thought would be, what would have happened if some kind, well-meaning person had spot me doing the same thing at walgreens; getting my midnight sordid loot of an ice cream pint, a package of shortbread cookies, and generally another candy with a full  bottle of fizzy-pop--all which I intended to consume that very night after eating an ordered takeout of chinese. What would have been the outcome if they had taken me to the side and told me that there was a better way, and offered me emotional support for that moment to make a better choice.

Would I have been angry or insulted? Or embarrassed and anguished? Or would I have recognized and felt touched by the interference?

 I don't know, honestly.

But I don't think that just because someone is obviously in need of change means that they're ready for the change. Confronting people when they're not ready to be confronted can be a negative experience and many would take it that way.

I feel there's such a need for more community funded programs that focus on outreaching to people who have clearly indulged in self-destructive patterns where food is concerned, especially in a country of excess, where even people in the lowest state of poverty can still have access to addictive corn and soy loaded junk foods. 

So even if friends are comfortable and proud of the weight they're at, if it's an unhealthy weight, then I believe there /is/ a need to gently remind them that if they were ever to ever want to go down to a lower weight, that it can be done. And it can be done easily, not through calorie restriction, but just choosing the right things. Fruits and vegetales. Fruits and vegetables. It doesn't have to be an invasive type reminding. You could simply mention that you were dieting yourself and that you were looking for people to start exercising with, and ask if they would be interested in trying a new healthy lifestyle with you. It doesn't even have to be about noticing their weight, it could be about including them in your own journey. 

But I believe everyone could use extra support, wherever it can be found.