Dinner service - obesity

less in (calories), more out (activity)…. 99% of the battle.

other 1% comes to balancing what you eat and when.

others will pipe up with how it’s a lot more complicated however…

E = mc^2….. if there’s mass being created, it’s due to excess energy.

If not, we’ve broken the laws of physics….

I’ve got big white plates, they are 27cm and big white bowls for pasta because I got married in 2000 and they were fashionable then. Massive plates and a jus. Now we eat off the 23cm ‘side plates’ and have pasta in what are supposed to be cereal bowls.

My mum replaced her big pasta bowls with bowls she got at TKMaxx. When she got to the till she found out they were supposed to be sugar bowls.

I agree that plates might help. I notice all you can eat restaurants have smaller plates to stop you taking crazy portions. I think portion control is a big issue with overweight people.

I noticed portion size difference when I lived in Japan where obesity isn’t much of an issue. Portions were overall smaller. I’d get take away meals and not be completely stuffed like here.

When I moved to London in the 90s I bought Rosemary Conley’s Hip & Thigh diet. I was a jeans size 8-10 (before elastane) what glorious hips, thighs (and bum!) I had… But did I know it? No, Siree!

I also remember doing Atkins & eating a whole bag of nuts at my desk. Looking at old episodes of Friends now, though… Rachel & Monica were sooo skinny! That was the look we were all aiming for.

I remember people going on 'the baby food diet'. One of the daftest fad diets in an era of fad diet after fad diet - the cabbage soup diet enjoyed a revival and in the late 1990s Atkins was all the rage, people eating nothing but bacon fried in cream or whatever. The '2, 4, 6, 8' diet - a four day rotational diet guaranteed to make you ill within a week (eat 200 calories Monday, 400 Tuesday etc.)So many downright dangerous diets in the 1990s.

I remember reading that Liz Hurley used toddler sized cutlery. Also, in the same realm as Jennifer Aniston eating baby food. Anyhoo…

We used to have plates in between dinner and side that my mum called breakfast plates. They were used for children's dinners and when she was on a diet.

if i have a boiled egg for breakfast i have 3 bits of toast, but i am greedy and overweight!
i only eat this meal at the weekend at least!

I (5ft5 9st 7lb aged 50) would eat 1 egg on toast for breakfast or lunch maybe with a bit of tomato or avocado.

The egg thing is probably linked to rationing more than anything else though.

They still are aren’t they? 60g is a sharing bag isn’t it ?

And a bag of crisps used to be 25g, not 60g

Well, it was the Kate Moss era. Nothing wrong at all with looking like Kate Moss if you have that kind of gamine build naturally, the problems come if you have Kate Winslet's hourglass build, tiny waist but defined boobs and hips, and you try to diet yourself into Kate Moss's boyish build - it can't be done without making yourself ill.

Yes, everything protion size has got ridiculous.

My mum still uses the tins she used in the 70s to make fairy cakes. The cakes we thought were a perfectly reasonal size for a treat after lunch etc at the time. Now they seem like a very small mouthful compared to the muffins and cupcakes of today.

I saw a film set in the 1940s recently. They has one egg and toast for breakfast. Again perfectly normal when I was a child (later than that!) but who would do one egg each now?

I did it by accident just a few days ago, when I looked at MFP I had eaten less than usual. I had also gone to bed very early whether that made a difference at all. I woke up at around 02:00 with my stomach feeling like my throat had been cut. Ended up eating a bag of 'snack a jacks' in bed like a student!

I have quite a large meal of a morning now. Once I am back from the gym and the dog's walked I'll take in a lot of protein and some healthier carbs. Then again mid-afternoon and that's it. That seems to be working for me so far, but if I am honest (other than meals out etc where I've veered from this routine!) I cannot remember the last time I used a plate!😆

I tried going to bed hungry and the rumbling of my stomach would wake me up! I also found it hard to get to sleep with the discomfort of being hungry!

It really is so much personal preference though, as you say, otherwise there would be one simple answer that people could be told to follow and - instant slim! We all do what works best for us.

Different things for different people isn't it. For some, going to bed hungry is their best tip for staying slim!

I did OMAD for a while. It didn't really work for me,or at least didn't mean for any improvement.

There were fat people, true. But it was much less common. Some people who were thought of as fat then would probably pass as pretty average now. In my primary school in the 1960s/70s there was one girl, a good friend of mine, who was a bit chubby. She was generally regarded as fat by most of the other children. When I look at my old school photo she wouldn't stand out at all these days; probably half the kids in the class would be the same now.

You almost never saw the vastly obese people who are a common sight now. Honestly, I think people would have turned to stare in the street back then at what is, sadly, not unusual these days.

I remember the Roly Poly's - and Les Dawson!

Bing Videos

The 70s adults was the war/children of the war generation. Portions of food were smaller, but people filled up on bread. Luckily bread was healthier. Tea snd biscuits, tea and fruitcake, tea and a scone etc was a mid morning/evening option. People used side plates, during my childhood, people still had dining tables. There was more crockery used. We'd have soup bowls and desert bowls. It was a usual Wedding present. Along with full cutlery. I've still got my Mothers trifle set, we'd need two bowls each. It's pure calories in vs out, actual ingredients/fresh food and activity levels. Which is why weight loss injections work. People eat less and because they are warned that they'll lose muscle, they move more. Women worry about hair loss, so eat nutritionally. It equals weight loss.

I tried to get 9" plates for a ship I worked on 10 years ago. They just weren't available through the chandlers. We generally preferred the smaller plates but only 12" ones were available. Only the skinny guys ate off the 12" ones.

I remember going to school after seeing it and everyone, boys and girls, raving about how absolutely beautiful she was. But yeah... fat and not very pretty, apparently. No wonder eating disorders were so common in the 90s. And yet, with pressure to be super thin, endless fat shaming even of people who weren't fat, no decent clothes past a size 16 (and not a very big 16 either) and diets and eating disorders everywhere, obesity still rose and rose.

That was crazy about Kate, she looked beautiful in Titanic. Her figure was just right for the early 20th century costumes she was wearing.

I use the OFTAST plates, bowls and side plates from Ikea, it's their most basic range so is really cheap. The plate is 25cm or 9.8 inches.

I don't know if you want smaller than that, but this is definitely smaller than a lot of plates out there.

I'd never heard of her or the programme but I had a quick look and it seems she did sometimes wear padding (but even that seems minimal from the stills I've seen, and yeah, there are shots where she clearly isn't padded and is not remotely overweight) and she also did indeed work as as a stripper and a model.

Remember the hue and cry when Titanic came about because the young Kate Winslet was apparently so fat?