In thinking the govts new obesity strategy is

[laptopdancer]

well, a bit pants?

Very sensible, I say. DH's lovely grandmother isn't exactly loaded but wartime habits die hard and she buys fresh (real) food every day, good-quality clothes only when something needs replacing and still has furniture made in the thirties and forties (so not even new when she was married)

I haven't had credit or an overdraft for about ten years and where possible draw out cash for the week as it disappears frighteningly quickly on the debit card. It goes just as quickly these days in cash too, but at least I'm more aware of it.

My sister is on benefits (as was I for a while so not bashing) and she keeps going on about her alternate good and bad weeks because one payment is paid fortnightly. She genuinely can't see that she still has a set amount of money coming in and going out each week and doesn't need to spend it all in the first week just because it's there.

But it's no different to my Dad who was a higher-rate taxpayer in the nineties who never saved for anything, whacked it all on the card and is now finding it impossible to live on his pension (which isn't bad at all) unlike DH's granny because he has never had to put anything aside for emergencies.

Oops - major derailment.

Well, yes I do, Talkinpeace, but interestingly a member of my family who was a total non-fidgeter started fidgeting when she lost a fair bit of weight, and stopped when she put it back on...

It must have taken them ages and cost a fortune to come up with

Thing is, I wish I had time to exercise, but I want to include it in my day- like a bike ride or walk to work, not 'go to the gym' but I, like most of us, don't have a lot of spare time as DH and I both have to work long-ish hours to make ends meet. The local (newish part-of-a-new-estate) primary has NO parking whatsoever to 'encourage' us to walk 4 year olds to school (assuming 8 year olds can walk themselves). Great. But what if you walk 15 minutes to school to start at 8.30am, 15 minutes back home, then in your car to drive to your non-public transport served workplace (or 1 hour 20 mins and £4.20 for a 8 mile journey by bus) past the gate of the primary to get to work for 9am?

Then home at 5.30 to get a DC to Cubs/Guides whatever by 6pm.

Doesn't add up, does it, yet it is the reality of most of us's lives.

I have a spinal injury and was worried that would make me put weight on, but I haven't. And I've done no CV exercise with it since January. I suppose I must be eating less to compensate, without realising. But living with it also makes me realise the playing field isn't level, exercise-wise. I may cross-train or swim, but it's a while before I'll be able to jog again.

I think it's fucking outrageous that the government should be telling people to eat less.

Humans have no capacity to make choices and are entirely at the mercy of our external circumstances. If we have received a poor upbringing and neither know how to prepare proper food nor feel inclined to eat it, this is entirely the fault of the government for allowing an unjust society to exist, and not intervening earlier in our lives.

Therefore when we become grossly fat as a consequence of guzzling junk food our entire lives, the government has a responsibility to provide us with bariatric ambulances, arthritis care, gastric bands and other expensive medical services. We are entitled to these services, and we should not be reproved if we then continue to shovel greasy trash into our mouths, as this is discriminatory.

It's society that's at fault. The government should do something about it. Telling us to eat less is deeply offensive as it does not take into account the countless systemic and structural causes of our eating habits, and our total lack of any active agency.

Taxation is to raise revenue - not an instrument of social control.

Robot
I do not run. Nadgered knees
I swim, do yoga and do body balance
I have minimal breakfast, lunch on a side plate and a greedy moo dinner

the older I get, the more Libertarian I get (read PJ O'Rourke to clarify)
DO NOT expect other people to pick up the pieces behind you

Werewolf
Watch "Tales of the green valley"
see how bloody hard it was to afford enough food to stay alive only 300 years ago
food is MASSIVELY underpriced at present due to corporate debt hiding the fact that much of what we eat comprises 10,000 year old water from the third world
and the oceans are being bled dry
if food prices rose back to what they were in the 1970's we would all HAVE to eat less
I can see no down side

WinterIsComing Ah, maybe the is helping to keep my cholesterol levels so low - GP was very impressed by them at recent check up !

Argh. Body size is such a shame-based issue. That's the problem and is why no amount of government shouting will work. The more of an issue it becomes, the greater the shame felt by the fat, the more miserable and self-hating they become, the more sweets/pies/chips they eat. Every time there's a thread like this, you see it in action: loads of people ranting about how nobody has an 'excuse' to be fat (which is a malicious lie, btw) and how other people "SHOULD" just eat and do whatever the poster does to be so perfect.

I feel strongly that there should be more straightforward, non-bullshit food information out there - but it won't happen while food conglomerates are worth so much money. There should be greater opportunities for sport and other active play: When did anybody last correlate the rise in childhood obesity with the selling-off of playing fields? Why is everyone afraid to let their kids rampage away on long bike, scooter and rollerskate expeditions? When did you last use a public tennis or basketball court?

But there should be LESS telling fat people they're stupid and unworthy. A lot less.

garlic
sorry but you are kidding yourself
four hours of aerobics is offset by ONE of these www.subway.co.uk/menu/subs/value-lunch/default.aspx
food is cheap so we eat too much
eat less
eat less fat
eat almost no sugar
STOP blaming other people for what you choose to put in your trolley
or are you too thick to see their advertising for what it is?

playing fields have bugger all to do with it - in WW2 they were all used for veg growing and off limits to kids

sorry but as somebody who lost 3 stone in 4 months through WW, those still there after more than a year are just lazy

jugglingwithpumpkins, mine are very low too. I seriously believe it's to do with not eating meat and ingesting vast quantities of a few grapes twice a week instead.

The chips, eggs and cheese are a relatively recent indulgence. They are from Clarence Court and bloody delicious.

or are you too thick

Nice one, TP.

I'm delighted to hear you're happy with your weight loss but it doesn't make you a better person than me.

Would you like to share why you assume I'm fat - and thick?

Hmm

I'm a veggie too, so perhaps that has something to do with it - we're a veggie family following DH's example - though I can be a pesky pescatarian when I'm out and feeling a bit rebellious !

Must say the egg website looks good. Are you it's CEO Winter ?

talkinpeace did you take that post of mine at face value?

And, TP, don't try to belittle my argument by picking on one detail and twisting it.

As a child in the 1960s I went cycling, etc, at least three miles away from home - and around, and back again - with my friends, every evening after school. In every school day there was a minimum 1hr of PE, plus break-time games on the fields you deride. To answer your point, people in WW2 walked and cysled absolutely miles and dug those vegetable plots.

It's irrational to blame food for obesity. If you're too scared to give your kids free rein, and too greedy to leave recreation fields undeveloped, then you're robbing people of the exercise half of the equation and blaming them for eating!

Ridiculous.

And another yy to the fact that companies have been marketing things as "low fat" for years and making up for the tastelessness by cramming them full of sugar.

Both my parents were war babies. Dad raised in East London (rationing) but Mum in Ireland where food was real and healthy albeit meat scarce (good)

They bought into the convenience food culture from the seventies onwards and especially the low-fat ranges packed with sugar to make up for the lack of taste. How nice of these companies to care about people's health. I'll buy that.

Both have diabetes now.

For the last few years they have bought every "low-sugar" product on the market thinking that these companies are doing them a favour. But they're full of aspartame which is linked to all sorts and has possibly escalated the dementia my mother is suffering from.

Neither of them are obese; they are quite scarily fragile and when I talk to them about their diets as children and young adults it sounds so ideal but they refuse to believe it. They'd give our DC McDonalds every day of the week if they could and once gifted 3 year old DD with a Mars Bar, Crunchy, Double Decker and packet of Maltesers just before bedtime and told me I was mean not to let her eat them all

Attitudes play a huge part.

I was a child in the 60s/70s.

There certainly wasn't 1 hr of P.E. everyday at my school

Don't worry, garlic, I'm thick too it would seem, TiP doesn't think I know what libertarian means!

I think Weightwatchers is excellent (I know people who've done very well with it) but the changes to your body made by regular exercise go a long way beyond 4 hrs = one sub sarnie.

hi winter - I think it's hard for the war generation to have any sort of discipline around sugar - especially where children are concerned - At least going on my parents behaviour with the DC's.... My Mum will say "juggling, is it OK if DC2 has another ice-cream before bed ? " And what can I say ? It's already pretty much a done deal !

Oh, perhaps I should add, that's as she hands it to him from the freezer

Have you read The End of Overeating? He makes some good points about how 'fake' foods are marketed and pushed, and talks about some of the interactions between corporate interests and policy (in the US mainly but a lot of it is relevant here in the UK too). After all, human nature hasn't changed since the 70's, but food technology and the sophistication of advertising have (among many other things). So it's not just greed and lack of self-discipline or we always would have been this fat! As for what to do about it, I think there's definitely a role for good information. Lots of the food marketed as "healthy" just isn't healthy at all. How can we make good choices without good information? And in the US, without good access, too? (It can be really really hard to buy fresh food at anything like an affordable price there. I remember being in Santa Fe once at a huge supermarket where there were lots of kinds of beef that were cheaper per lb than mushrooms, peppers etc...) Here too, cooking from scratch can be almost as expensive as buying pre-made "healthy" options full of extra calories and chemicals. Ok. Rant done.

We have very similar parents, juggling! I used to be a lone parent and it really got my goat that the crap was offered to DD alongside a token permission request which would make me be the bad guy compared to their two nice ones

Perhaps the shops/retail parks should close on Sundays and people could go back to using the leisure centres that are lying idle at the weekends, instead of strolling aimlessly around the shops and gorging at Pizza Hut/McDonalds/Starbucks etc.

Robot - and YY to your the changes to your body made by regular exercise go a long way beyond 4 hrs = one sub sarnie.

Juggling, I think you have a point there about the war generation. Sugar was rationed for such an incredibly long time - until 1953 - it gained a huge rarity value. Burned into their brains, I guess