Why am I obese?

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Obviously, I eat more calories than I burn off. My BMI is 32. But why, what can I change?

I've done the calorie counting thing and reached a healthy weight many times before. It never sticks, and I want to make permanent lifestyle changes this time. I don't care if it takes years to reach a healthy weight, but I'd prefer if it didn't take decades.

I'm not looking to do anything that I wouldn't want the whole family doing. So no cutting out entire food groups, or fasting etc. I don't want to teach my kids those habits.

I live somewhere with little to no 'temptations' from shops and takeaways. I get my shopping delivered, pay for petrol at the pump and rarely go past any other shops. So I'm not sure it is the food environment. My weekly shopping list is all fruit, vegetables, dairy, bread, fish. A little jam, peanut butter and chocolate. Reasonably healthy I think.

I get some exercise, not a lot. I'm a stay at home parent, so rarely actually sit down between 5am and 9pm. I go for walks, at small person pace. I clean and garden. I do mum and baby pilates, and go for short runs at the weekend. I don't know where I would squeeze more exercise in really.

95% of what we eat is cooked from scratch, using whole foods. We don't have desserts often. I never drink alcohol, juice, squash. Just water and tea (no milk or sugar), maybe a coke with a meal out.

I only eat at the table, although days are hectic, so it is not always 3 meals a day. Sometimes there just isn't time for me to eat at mealtime if the kids are having a bad day. I've bought the "right" sized plates etc, to make sure I'm not having huge portions.

I guess I just eat too much. Probably too many rounds of toast and jam when I need a pick me up.

I do usually have a substantial snack when the kids are in bed. But I'm still breastfeeding my toddler through the night. I can get to sleep the first few times, but without that extra food I find I am too hungry to fall back asleep after the 3am feed.

Sorry, that's a bit long. Just musing really. Any constructive thoughts appreciated.

OP, Possibly you are just not ready to lose weight? No judgement here; it's hard. And you have a lot on!

To lose weight while eating normal family foods like bread and pasta and potatoes, you will need to weigh or measure your portions, and count calories. You can have a snack at night, but you need to account for it in your calorie budget. So if it's going to be 15g of peanut butter on a rice cake, that's fine - it needs to fit within your calorie limit for the whole day.

You mention that you are concerned about sending a message about an unhealthy obsessiin with calories to your children. With respect, if you are obese, you are already sending a less than ideal message. Having a salad while they have sandwiches for lunch will not send an unhealthy message, nor will measuring your portion of spag bol at teatime.

Is there anyone you can use as a weightloss buddy to help and motivate you? There are some good threads on here.

@mynameiscalypso

Only on MN could someone suggest that a cup of warm water is a good replacement for a slice of toast with jam.

Dust? Anyone? No? Dust? High in fat, low in fat?

Also try Kerfir, kimchi kombuca. Replace white bread with sourdough (frozen then toasted)
Lots of onion, garlic, fibrous veg if you can tolerate it.

Also every single one of my slim friends eats bread, chips, jacket potatoes, etc even the odd big mac. I absolutely loathe the moral superiority that comes out when an overweight person mentioned that they once sniffed a kit kat.
Obesity is a global problem fuelled by processed food, especially targeted at lower income women. It's not about willpower or laziness or greed. Gut theory is emerging and really interesting.

@mynameiscalypso

Only on MN could someone suggest that a cup of warm water is a good replacement for a slice of toast with jam.

Especially in the middle of breastfeeding in the night!! Can you imagine how soul destroying this would be 😩

Drinking warm water is comforting, relaxing and makes you feel drowsy. OP mentioned the snack made her able to sleep.

(See a few lines down in this article,for example. I am sorry I couldn’t cut out the photo at the bottom. )

Ah, well, if Dr Petre says it, it must be true.

Who is Dr Petrie, by the way, @TooManyMiles?

Prompted by this thread I checked out the calories in the pumpkin seed and oat bread I've been buying.... and f**k-me, I may as well have been scoffing cake!!!

I swapped yesterday afternoon's almonds for raw carrot, made sure I'd not consumed any calories after ten pm and was on the spin bike at 8.30am this morning. I only managed 6 minutes, but am working on getting fitter. Really hope these small changes will help, but woke up three times in the night.

Almonds are a much better option than carrot (carb) in my opinion... protein fills you up.

We moved the bread maker to the garage a few years ago after we realised that the three of us could happily go through a homemade loaf in a day and we were all putting on weight. Slices are thicker, butter melts better and jam is delicious on freshly made bread.

I reckon a slice of homemade with butter and jam would easily be around 400 calories.

Whereas shop bought has 100 calories a slice and isn't much of a treat.

You don’t need chocolate, jam, butter or peanut butter in your diet .It’s not fun to eat foods that will give you a lifestyle mediated illness, a period of illness then death

It's no wonder people struggle to lose weight with BS like this said. Is everything you do about need? Do you need to watch that tv show, have sex, get your hair done, go on holiday? If we all did only what we needed it would be a bloody miserable world. You do not need to cut carbs or any food group to be a healthy weight, it is completely possible to lose and maintain weight eating bread, chocolate and jam, it's how much of it you are eating, what else you're eating and an element of how much you're moving too. It really isn't rocket science, but when people say oh you CAN'T eat that it sets unachievable expectations, life is too bloody short to say no to carbs if you enjoy them, and it doesn't mean you're resigning yourself to diabetes

I don’t do things that will harm me @namechange2547. I don’t drink, smoke, take drugs, eat the wrong foods.

It’s not miserable waking up everyday feeling healthy or fitting into my clothes from years ago.

It IS miserable for my dh though. He has never eaten healthily, drank too much, smoked and ate a very bad diet despite knowing it was bad for him. Now he’s in heart failure at 55. He’s still in bed because his morning beta blocker knocks him out & the operations he needs have a long waiting list. He is in and out of hospital. His quality of life is awful and there isn’t much I can do to help him now.

You can all rage against the idea that eating healthily is a good idea but there’s a load of illnesses coming to get people with old age, there’s no need to invite in the lifestyle mediated disorders to join them.

There’s already a shift in how the nhs deals with obesity too, you won’t be allowed to absolve yourselves of responsibility for your own health for long.

@Fluffycloudland77 I'm sorry but that is fucking miserable and not realistic for normal warm blooded people. I am very slim, I am very fit and healthy, I've never been overweight and still wear jeans I had before my first child was born 11 years ago, but I enjoy chocolate, and a few drinks, and bread, it doesn't "harm" me because that's not all I eat.

My grandmother never drank, was the pinnacle of health, didn't indulge in anything beyond a "taste" and spent the last 10 years of her life paralysed with speech and mobility issues in and out of hospital, she had several strokes and withstood them for so long due to how healthy she was but I can tell you now I'd have chosen the quick deaths my other less healthy grandparents had.

You can eat healthily and still eat some "unhealthy" foods, something is only unhealthy if you eat it too much, just as eating one floret of broccoli doesn't suddenly make you Gillian McKeith, eating chocolate occasionally, or toast for breakfast isn't going to induce diabetes but it might make you enjoy life a bit more! Your attitude is pious and will not help someone who is overweight.

[quote namechange2547]@Fluffycloudland77 I'm sorry but that is fucking miserable and not realistic for normal warm blooded people. I am very slim, I am very fit and healthy, I've never been overweight and still wear jeans I had before my first child was born 11 years ago, but I enjoy chocolate, and a few drinks, and bread, it doesn't "harm" me because that's not all I eat.

My grandmother never drank, was the pinnacle of health, didn't indulge in anything beyond a "taste" and spent the last 10 years of her life paralysed with speech and mobility issues in and out of hospital, she had several strokes and withstood them for so long due to how healthy she was but I can tell you now I'd have chosen the quick deaths my other less healthy grandparents had.

You can eat healthily and still eat some "unhealthy" foods, something is only unhealthy if you eat it too much, just as eating one floret of broccoli doesn't suddenly make you Gillian McKeith, eating chocolate occasionally, or toast for breakfast isn't going to induce diabetes but it might make you enjoy life a bit more! Your attitude is pious and will not help someone who is overweight.
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I couldn’t like your post more. That is the exact approach my fabulous dietician took.

@namechange2547

You don’t need chocolate, jam, butter or peanut butter in your diet .It’s not fun to eat foods that will give you a lifestyle mediated illness, a period of illness then death

It's no wonder people struggle to lose weight with BS like this said. Is everything you do about need? Do you need to watch that tv show, have sex, get your hair done, go on holiday? If we all did only what we needed it would be a bloody miserable world. You do not need to cut carbs or any food group to be a healthy weight, it is completely possible to lose and maintain weight eating bread, chocolate and jam, it's how much of it you are eating, what else you're eating and an element of how much you're moving too. It really isn't rocket science, but when people say oh you CAN'T eat that it sets unachievable expectations, life is too bloody short to say no to carbs if you enjoy them, and it doesn't mean you're resigning yourself to diabetes

Thank God someone answered this. I don't need chocolate in the sense that I would die without it, but I need some nice things in my life!

🤷🏻‍♀️

Sooner or later it catches up with you. You only get one body, you need to look after it.

@Fluffycloudland77 what catches up with you? You seem to have a really limited understanding of nutrition. Do you think every person that has lived to be 80+ with limited health concerns hasn't drank, smoked, ever eaten anything that wasn't a vegetable? Stop being so ignorant.

@Fluffycloudland77 also I think you need to be careful, you don't need to be on mumsnet and the screen usage might be harming your eyesight, so you should probably step away, look after the one body you have etc

Actually the ones who do end up being 90> have actually lived healthily, the nursing homes aren’t full of people who smoke & lived badly.

The way the nhs is tackling obesity is changing, you will be expected to put the effort in.

I have obviously touched a raw nerve with a lot of you though.

@Fluffycloudland77 Actually, that’s not true. More NHS doctors than ever are coming out to fight fat phobia. Not everyone that is obese has brought it on themselves and being obese doesn’t necessarily make you unhealthier than someone slim.

@Fluffycloudland77

🤷🏻‍♀️

Sooner or later it catches up with you. You only get one body, you need to look after it.

I’m with you. I’ve always been a skinny person, could eat whatever I liked. But enter perimenopause and it all has caught up with me, now insulin resistant and last couple of years it was a hellish circle of trying to eat “healthy”, “everything in moderation” and “life’s too short” narrative, yet feeling sluggish, crashing after lunch and having a waist of 98cm despite being size 12.

I’ve turned it around by changing my diet but it took a long time to accept carbs are really poison for me and feed my sugar addiction. People can belittle it as much as they want 🤷‍♀️ I know it comes from a place of defence and fear of giving these things up. No-one would be telling an alcoholic that it’s ok to have wine inmoderation. Sugar is just as addictive and detrimental to health.

I’ve now lost 23cm from my waist and I’m size 8, menopause doesn’t scare me half as much anymore. I get to eat amazingly delicious meals and have discovered new treats that I would have scoffed at before.

Hot water does work and it is comforting to drink. It just takes bit of practise if you’ve used to having a massive sugar fix instead.

It’s not fat phobia, it’s not dying early and breaking your families hearts when you go.

Being overweight does put strain on a heart that has a finite number of beats & raises your risk of cancer.

I’ve got enough heart problems & cancer deaths in the family to know I want to avoid it by not repeating their mistakes. My grandfather was very slim, but he’d smoked for years before retirement & died in his mid 70’s of oesophageal cancer which is a smoking cancer. It set off a chain of events that damaged the family irreparably but people will say it’s your choice to smoke. You should look after yourself for the people you love.

My husbands heart is gearing up for another episode and I’m probably going to have to take him in within the next 12 hrs so I need to stay fit and healthy. 2am seems to be its preferred time to kick off and it’s no good if I’m over the limit and can’t drive him in. I need to be safe to drive.

@RedHotChiliChips I’m peri too, have you tried soya isoflavones? They really helped me. I started after I spent 4 nights in a row crying and my energy was dipping badly.

I take 20mg a day.

I’ve turned it around by changing my diet but it took a long time to accept carbs are really poison for me and feed my sugar addiction. People can belittle it as much as they want 🤷‍♀️ I know it comes from a place of defence and fear of giving these things up. No-one would be telling an alcoholic that it’s ok to have wine inmoderation. Sugar is just as addictive and detrimental to health.

100% agree. Since going low carb and losing significant weight, some family friends have made comments. Despite me re-telling this is the advice from my endocrinologist! Some comments in this thread sound very similar...

It's strange going from eating simple carbs (rice/potato/pasta) with every dinner to once a week, but overall it's what my body needs right now. My endocrinologist has advised that she has seen low carb and keto diets with long term maintained weight loss to a healthy BMI reverse PCOS insulin resistance so fingers crossed.