Twiggy… omg

[Newsenmum]

I knew she was skinny but I never knew how bad it was! Looking at those photos of her in the 60s is painful.Why do we do this to ourselves? Have we done this since time began?

I was just reading how in the Victorian times there was another skinny phase where women liked to look skinny and weak like they’d had TB. Awful!

Does anyone know if it’s ever been fashionable to be healthy?

@Pyreneansylvie do you have risk factors for osteoporosis?
You seem healthy to me.

Unfortunately yes - I'm asthmatic and have to use steroid inhalers every day which deplete calcium and vitamin D, there is also a family history of it with my Dad and Nana and now of course I'm post menopausal. My teeth are really starting to become problematic lately so I'm on supplements but it's still a worry.

Oh, that's a worry. It sounds like you are doing all you can. I wish you all the best.

‘Warped’ 😬 so dramatic, I think I just disagree with you and actually I’m referring to something different to you. In my mind healthy eating and exercise to stay slim is purposeful and is limiting in some ways. I was very thin when a teenager until about late 20s when I had my first child but every girl and woman I knew who were skinny or slim were controlled and purposeful about it.

I don't see eating healthy food and exercising by walking and dancing as a special intervention. It's just the way I've always lived. I've never been on a diet and I don't go to the gym to run on a treadmill. I don't deny myself cakes and biscuits because I don't crave them anyway and I'd rather eat my own cooking than a takeaway. It's no hardship.

Warped - abnormal or strange; distorted.

It's not dramatic to say your view is warped, it is., You do have an abnormal and distorted view of this if you think that eating a balanced diet means that someone is only slim because of 'special interventions'

Not everyone who eats healthy and exercises is doing it to stay slim, that's what you're not getting. They do it because that's a natural lifestyle for them

It's definitely not always limiting, and sometimes going for the unhealthy option could be what's limiting.

I could sit and binge every night and not gain weight, but that would limit me in other ways. I never feel like doing very much after I binge because it makes me tired or sluggish etc.so I tend to only do it when I know I don't want to do anything for the rest of the evening.

So there's a bit of a trade off, sometimes freedom with your food takes freedom away from you in other ways and limits you in other ways.

I go for breakfast sometimes with a friend who works from home, and she'll often see other people getting their fries and say that it looks amazing but she can't have it or or she'll be asleep so she'll get something healthier. On a weekend morning when she was going to be chilling at home all day she'd have a fry no problem.

I had a friend like this in my teens, she is still not very large - though she has a belly

but is now a type 2 diabetic and has nasty health condition due to this, they are life threatening conditions.

Talking recently she says she wishes someone had warned her of the dangers

I think people were much slimmer and healthier in the past, due to diet and lifestyle. My mum was 7st on her wedding day. She was called dead legs at school as her legs were so thin. She ate normally for the time. A slice of toast at breakfast, a slice of bread, ham and a tomato at lunchtime and then whatever her mum made at night - maybe mince and potatoes. Occasional homemade puddings and chips were also an occasional treat. My mum was born in the 1945 and when sweets were off the ration there was sometimes a bag which would last all week and my mum remembers asking her mum if she could have a sweet please. Didn't just eat the bag in one sitting like nowadays. Mum and dad worked all day then went dancing (jiving) almost every night and didn't drink alcohol but instead hung out at "the milk bar". Sounds a really healthy and really active lifestyle.

Nope.
For me, healthy eating (vegetarian) and exercise (walking with my dogs) keeps me slim. It is not 'purposeful', it is just how I have always been and I don't even have to think about it.
I have never dieted or been to a gym in my life because both would bore me rigid and I never bow to peer pressure. I'd rather take a cheese sandwich and a flask of tea and get out in the hills then sit in a coffee shop eating cakes - it's not limiting, it is just who I am.

Yes it quite clearly isn't a special intervention to eat a balanced diet of an appropriate amount and possibly doing some exercise. What a reach! 😂

Ozempic for the obese is a 'special intervention' because their hormones are malfunctioning meaning that a special intervention is needed to try to rectify that.

It is possible to be 'skinny' fat' where your lifestyle means you have fat around your organs even if it isnt visible on the outside.
Just because you can eat cake for breakfast everyday doesnt mean you should!
(my friend has been extremely skinny all her life and ate what she wanted....then middle age hit and she started rapidly expanding. Now she is finding it difficult to do anything about it as she has a lifetime of bad habits she would have to change).

We are def getting fatter as a nation though (TBH most developed countries!).
Growing up I remember you always had one fat kid in the school and even they werent massively huge.
It does seem like it is more normalized to be overweight these days.

Yes and some of those who are 'skinny fat' are considered to have 'normal weight obesity' now. They are normal weight but metabolically obese and have much of the same health risks as obese people with obese BMIs. Obviously they wouldn't have the mobility issues etc but the rest of the risks are very similar and many wouldn't realise that they are at risk because they are not overweight.

Well it is dramatic as it is a complete exaggeration to suggest it is ‘Warped’ so ‘abnormal and distorted’ to think that a healthy diet and exercise equates to a maintained weight, not exactly abnormal or a mind blowing theory! 😂 I think you are wrong and your definition of naturally thin is wrong - sorry but it’s my opinion, if anything your reaction to my opinion is ‘abnormal’ or ‘warped’. I don’t see how this even applies to you if you can eat anything you like every night and not gain weight- you are obviously naturally skinny then? Why have you been so defensive about something that doesn’t apply to you? So bizarre!

I wasn’t arguing that everyone who eats healthily from a young age and exercises does it to stay slim, I was arguing that it is more likely than not going to be the outcome as that’s what you are supposed to do to get thin, if you are already thin and have this approach from a young age essentially it is just maintenance but it isn’t eat whatever you want kind of thin which IMO is ‘naturally thin’.

Casillo’s biography is probably the best but all these sound good variety.com/shop/best-marilyn-monroe-books-1235333564/amp/

I was just like Twiggy then, naturally slim, child in the 50s when there was far less rubbish food available like there is now. I'm much larger now post menopause. Why are you so judgemental OP?

Some people are very naturally slim. My dd is over 6 foot and wears a size 6. She eats loads, an ordinary unrestricted diet.

The problem comes when those of us who are not naturally like that start trying to look the same. It's my DH's side who are very slim and tall. My side are tall, built like vikings and extremely strong. I never looked like my dd does. If I tried to, I would be ill.

No, you think that a healthy diet and exercise is a special intervention and that if people live that way then they're not naturally thin. That's what's abnormal and distorted.

No my reaction isn't abnormal or warped because in the very early exchange we had on this it started because I said It's incredibly damaging when people try to claim that skinny or slim people must be starving themselves or torturing themselves for hours in the gym, then when teens think they want to lose a little bit of weight they start to starve themselves and then the dieting cycle begins.

And then you responded Funny as I think it is damaging to suggest you are naturally that way when in reality 1 % of the UK have the thinness gene so it is highly unlikely .....

and then kept going on and on and on about the skinny gene and making out that everyone who doesn't have it is actively putting loads of effort into trying to stay slim and that it's restrictive and limiting.

My reason for continuing to discuss this is because as I said I think it's very damaging that people keep pushing that notion. I explained in the first post why I am 'defensive' about it so there's nothing bizarre about it!

As I said, I think it's harmful for people, particularly teens to hear that message. I remember people saying shit like that when I was a teenager in the 00s and making out that thin celebrities lived off lettuce, I remember a friend of mine who wanted to lose a little bit of weight at the time and she started to eat one apple a day...well she tried to..but then she'd start binging, so it started a really bad cycle for her. And people like you are perpetuating those myths by making out that it takes serious effort and restriction in order to be thin unless you're one of the magic 1% that you keep going on about.

Many slim people ARE eating whatever they want though, you equate eating 'whatever you want' to meaning that they can eat and eat and eat and never gain weight but lots of people don't want to eat that way.

I know lots of people who do weights and many of them hate the bulking phase, even those who aren't doing a clean bulk so they technically can eat a lot of stuff that many people crave but they just don't want to.

Ideal body shapes change each decade. Twiggy was super slim with high cheekbones but rocked thw mini skirt . 80s supermodels were slim but athletic. They were all models representing an ideal at the time to aspire to. The average person wasn't expected to look like that.

Now we have the "Dove" advert promoting a different standard of beauty. Are we supposed to aspire to? Alternatively we have the over processed ideal look?

Agree. I'm the same. I'm 5'4 and my weight just naturally falls between 8 and 8.5 stone. I'm now early 40s and I've pretty much been the same size since I was a teenager (apart from when I went to 9.5 stone in my first year of university due to over-eating and over-drinking! And obviously when pregnant, though my BMI still never went above 25).

I don't diet and snack most evenings, but otherwise eat reasonably healthily, don't drink alcohol and am quite active (though currently don't do any structured exercise).

Our view of what a normal healthy weight/size is has definitely become skewed.

In my view, more people are overweight now due to increased availability of convenience foods and just a more general sedentary lifestyle...

Just simple things like driving more, having shopping delivered, rather than going to multiple shops, more access to various forms of screens, doing less and easier housework - eg more people employ cleaners, robot hoovers, less strenuous washing.

Exercise was just naturally built into the day, rather than now where people spend most of it stationary and then have to make the effort to do it.

I just find it sad that we can't be who we are naturally without someone telling us it's wrong or it isn't "normal" or suggesting that we must be bowing to some sort of pressure when it just isn't the case...

Totally agree.

Also look in antique shops at the size of plates and bowls, compared to today.

Servings were much smaller.

And Naomi Campbell, from the same era as Kate Moss, has said she doesn't eat for literally days at a time.

people.com/health/naomi-campbell-goes-days-without-eating/

The Victoria's Secret models apparently go on a liquid diet for a week before the big show.

Liz Hurley also said that she often goes to bed hungry.

I prefer this kind of honesty to the 'Oh I don't watch my diet at all but just stay so slim from drinking lots of water and running around after the kids' nonsense.