Fat/Size Acceptance

I've just done a few experiments on this b,i-calorie calculator, and it seems you burn about 110 extra calories/day per 10kg. Not much, but it's a Kit-Kat!

I'm surprised too!!! SQ, goodness knows how you managed not to wonder why 'no added sugar' drinks are sweet ... well, now you do, you might also be unimpressed to know that modern sweeteners may fool the brain into thinking you've had sugar, which may bump up your insulin - and that 'no added sugar' often means added corn syrup, lactose and various other ingredients that are basically concentrated sugars.

Walking around with an extra 4 stone in body weight obviously uses more calories up. It is load-bearing exercise! Somebody on here once had a go at me for saying this, but it's common sense. Wear a 25kg rucksack all day if you don't believe me

No food is 'intrinsically awful'. Not unless it's literally poisonous. All foods have nutritional value, and all creatures need calories. You would die a lot faster if you ate only organic celery than if you only ate white sugar.

I'm sorry, SQ, but your replies seem to betray an unrealistic understanding of diet & nutrition. No doubt that's the result of all the conflicting messages that swamp us. If you wanted to get better informed, you could start by searching the ingredients on your food labels at Wikipedia (not some health site with vested interests) and reading Orbach's book.

I may have seemed a bit rude in this post. I do hope not. As you see, I feel strongly about this whole issue. I'm sorry if I have offended you.

Also, I'm surprised that you didn't realise that 'no added sugar' = 'contains artificial sweeteners'. How did you think they managed to make the drinks taste so sweet?

Yes, if you use up exactly what you expend, you will stay the same.

But if the same person, with the same metabolism, is a size 16 while eating 2200 calories / day, they are using up 2200 calories as well. The reason heavier people use up more calories (which they do) is because it's physically harder to be a heavier person. Carry around a 14lb rucksack all day and you'll use more calories, the same logic applies. If that person then started eating 2000 calories a day they would lose a little weight untll their reduced weght meant they were, once again, expending what they ate.

"Robot it doesn't work like that I don't think.

If a person goes up to 16 stone. Then they consume 1800 calories a day and expend 1800 calories a day they will stay the same size.

If a person who is 10 stone consumes 1800 calories a day and expends 1800 calories they will also stay the same size.

I am sure that's how it is - the idea that larger people eat more than smaller people is not correct."

It does work like that. The bigger you are then the more calories your body needs at rest, because there is literally more of you to be maintained.

Robot it doesn't work like that I don't think.

If a person goes up to 16 stone. Then they consume 1800 calories a day and expend 1800 calories a day they will stay the same size.

If a person who is 10 stone consumes 1800 calories a day and expends 1800 calories they will also stay the same size.

I am sure that's how it is - the idea that larger people eat more than smaller people is not correct.

Garlicnutter this part of your post:

"Do you not find it odd that we - in the industrially-developed world, at least - are so obsessed by a wish to control our bodies? Can't we trust them to just get on with life? I'd hazard a guess that this is far more pronounced in women than in men - it's easy to observe men who don't betray any concern about how their bodies are functioning, but pretty hard to find a woman who isn't trying to rein in her natural functions and alter her physical configuration."

I really don't agree at all. Where businesses are trying to make as much money as possible and making foods that are intrinsically awful. And then market them very heavily from the cradle up.

For example drinks that contain artificial sweeteners. I was surprised the other day to realise that "no added sugar" squashes from "trustworthy" brands like robinsons contain sweeteners. I didn't realise (and I am generally quite careful about this stuff). Artificial sweeteners are a problem for a variety of reasons, and the labelling is misleading IMO in that when the average person reads a label that says "no added sugar" they do not think "oh that will have loads of nutrasweet" or whatever make it is. Ditto low fat yoghurts that are stuffed full of sugar instead, all sorts of foods that contain transfats etc etc.

These things are bad for you, the food is adulterated, it is not what our bodies need but it is cheap, available and it triggers happy sensations in the brain.

It has been left up to people's bodies to decide what they want, and in combination with a food industry aggressively marketing crap at us, we have a situation where people are becoming less and less healthy.

I think that is a social problem and should be addressed, but the governments will not take on the food industry - they are terribly powerful.

All that is on top of the feminist issues surrounding food, bodies, media messages and all the it which is an equally awful but gendered issue.

I spend a vast amount of time thinking about food, because as in the majority of UK households I have the female responsibility of making sure there is dinner on the table each night. I enjoy it, but it takes obviously a lot of time and thought. I'm the one who walks round the supermarket trying to navigate through all the lovely fatty, carby, salty things to choose sensible plain meat, veg, and complex carbs.

If men were as a group responsible for the nutrition of their families and themselves, perhaps they would be more prone to disordered eating and making bad choices.

If DH is hungry, he eats something. I do now I'm pregnant, but usually there is a big internal battle of 'is it ok to have this' which I don't think men have.

We are incredibly aware as women of how our looks and bodies impact how we are accepted by others, so have to control our eating patterns or face the consequences.

For women, 'fat' is not a medical diagnosis but a nasty and hurtful insult.

It's not quite true that if you've put on weight in the past, you are now eating the same amount as everyone else, or you'd just get fatter. It takes more calories to maintain a larger frame - I assume because you're physically heavier. So you've stabilised, but at the number of calories it takes to maintain the weight you are. If you ate the number of calories to support the next dress size down, you would (very slowly) become that dress size. But that's the way to be and stay slimmer, rather than assuming you have to put yourself through a couple of months of pain and then can go back to normal.

SardineQueen

In my experience, I agree it's women who are largely on the faddish diets, but there's a pressure on men as well to be healthy and slim - but I think they resort to going to the gym/ going for a run/ cutting out the beer to get slim. Many of my male colleagues talk about their weight quite a lot

Haha, I was thinking exactly that while reading the news this morning, SAF!!

OK, have read more posts now. I like TeiTetua's post about hunters on Friday at 17:13, and where TheBride said that there are no bad foods, only bad diets :)

People do have differing metabolic rates. If you have a 'slow' metabolism you can speed it up by doing a lot of exercise, but it still won't get as fast as one of those people who can eat anything and stay thin (and, naturally, your metabolic rate changes over time and with health.)

A 'slow' metabolism is the healther sort. In expending fewer calories and laying down fat, it insures you against famine. Skinny types generate excess heat, 'spending' all their calories instead of saving them up.

My own recovery was facilitated by Susie Orbach's 'Fat is a Feminist Issue', which says it all much better than me!

Not suggesting it shouldn't be discussed, SQ. I was upset by the numerous mentions of how awful it is to be fat, how it's a dreadful problem and how people ought to be made (in various ways) to control their diets. The issues underlying eating disorders are obviously complicated and vary by individual, but the single overwhelming problem is one of control.

Do you not find it odd that we - in the industrially-developed world, at least - are so obsessed by a wish to control our bodies? Can't we trust them to just get on with life? I'd hazard a guess that this is far more pronounced in women than in men - it's easy to observe men who don't betray any concern about how their bodies are functioning, but pretty hard to find a woman who isn't trying to rein in her natural functions and alter her physical configuration.

I was interested to read the thread but alarmed to find it was mostly about control, albeit postulating different means of control.

On the point of tobacco - yes of course govt don't ban it as they'd be bankrupt.

With the food industry the current govt are in bed with them.

They want to get rid of the food standards agency article here although it has gone quiet on that and I'm not sure what the outcome was.

government won't ban transfats and talks about andrew lansley's relationship with fast food manufacturers (he has worked for them)

and last but by no means least an article about how the government has invited major fast food manufacturers to be involved in writing governement policy on obesity etc. Quote from there:

"The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. Working alongside them are public interest health and consumer groups including Which?, Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health. The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal's sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps."

Shocking, isn't it. So don't expect anything to change at the moment.

I am not sure why people posting on this thread sound disordered? Surely people being interested in this stuff is not disordered?

The people who seem disordered to me are the people I have met at work who quiz others over what they eat, when they eat, ostentatiously eat 2 pieces of salad for lunch and then around 3 get all "ooh shall I be really naughty and have a biscuit" etc etc. The people who do all the diets and know how many calories there are in everything and say they have food intolerances in order to cover up the fact that they dont' actually want to eat much.

IME all of the people I have met who have behaved this way have been women. And it's so sad and boring that they give so much of their time and energy to it.

That is worth talking about. Also the situation with health in the UK is worth talking about. I don't think that these things make anyone disordered. I thought the discussion had been very interesting.

I can't read all the posts to this thread - or any other thread about body sizes - because, despite having completely got over my eating disorders 20 years ago, it makes me start feeling all squirmy and is dangerous. I wonder if all those of you, who've posted so knowledgeably about diet and obesity, realise how disordered you sound?

There are physical conditions which cause fatness and thinness. Lots of them, in fact, and they can change over a lifetime just like any other health condition.

Obsession with diet and body shape/image is a psychological-emotional disorder.

A physically and mentally healthy person, who accepts their body as it is and is reasonably OK with it, WILL naturally settle at a healthy weight for them.

Neither fashion and beauty editors nor the government know the correct weight & body composition for every individual in the country.

There is such a thing as puppy fat in children. Growth spurts happen in random sequence and in all directions. Fat adolescents are often on the way to becoming particularly tall or muscular young adults (this happens in my family; I know whereof I speak.)

Insufficient fat on the body leads to hormonal imbalances, interferes with the metabolism and is generally a bad thing for the health. Malnutrition is a much bigger threat than obesity.

I agree TheBride. Actually, to take this thread round in a circle Jamie Oliver was asked this when he gave evidence to a committee of MPs, and he was asked about universal food labelling. He said it wasn't simple - he gave the example of Marmite, which if you just looked at its contents in isolation, it's incredibly salty, but that's not really a problem as no-one eats a jar of Marmite at a sitting.

As far as I'm aware the government makes more in tax on tobacco than it spends on the whole nhs.

No- the government makes about £10-11bn in duty and VAT on fags, plus maybe another £7bn in corporation tax on tobacco companies such as BAT. However, the NHS costs closer to £100bn. What is true is that smokers definitely cover their own health costs plus some.

Should there be a fat tax? Possibly, but see cigarette taxes for why this raises cash but doesn't change behavior. Things like banning smoking in the office/ bars has done far more to reduce the number of people who smoke/ reduce the number of ciggies a smoker has in a day than cost of cigarettes. In fact, one reason for taxing fags and booze is that consumers tend to be quite price insensitive, so increase in tax doesn't have a significant impact on consumption (thereby reliably increasing tax take). Therefore, if you're taxing junk food to reduce consumption of these foods, it quite probably wont work.

Also, there's a very strong argument to say that there's no such thing as good and bad foods, only good and bad diets, and I think this is a very sensible line to take. Demonising certain foods is controverisal. Smoking is bad for everyone, all the time. Junk food is only bad if eaten in excess. Even a Macdonalds does have some nutritional value. If you ate too many carrots, that would be bad for you. Cheese has a higher fat content than a Big Mac. It's very difficult to say "this is a bad food", "this is a good food"

Fat taxes also further demonise the fat, which is a bad thing.

So perhaps then fattening food should be taxed like cigarettes?

I appreciate that no-one should be attacked or vilified for being overweight, but obesity is a bad thing

I know this may not be popular, but very few of us think of smoking as a neutral choice. It's something harmful that affects the person, people around them, and costs the rest of us money. As much as people shouldn't be a size zero, isn't a bit relativist to suggest that it doesn't matter what weight someone is? That there aren't consequences for them and those around them?

I like to think that we're designed to be hunter-gatherers, and the best human body is one that lets us get out and bend down to dig for wild carrots or chase after the mountain goats, all lean and sleek. But then, there are those years when the caribou migrate some other way, and the drought kills all the plants and the fish die out--and then if the tribe survives, it'll be because there were some plump people who lasted till the next year. Sure, we miss those slim graceful hunters, but they didn't always have what it takes.

However, we've got ourselves in a place where we get all the food we want, and the famine isn't coming (goddess forbid). Our problems are more with having too much to eat and not too little. But we should be thinking that variety in bodies is a good and wonderful thing.

Um, "thinking" = "thin king" or is that just for crosswords?