to wonder what that is, that some unfortunate fat people get, hanging way down towards mid thigh??

[bejeezus]

Is it just fat???

Or is it some kind of disorder/illness that causes the body to hang right right down at the front?

And why do some people get it?

I'm currently reading this, by the nutritional doctor John Briffa, who did a web chat recently. It goes through all the studies and research, and concludes that much of the dietary advice of the last several years has been horribly damaging. I am in that boring evangelical stage at the moment, because I have only switched to the way of eating he recommends this week and I'm already feeling a big improvement. I've put on loads around my middle in the last few years, and my mum is diabetic, so I'm really keen to sort it out.

I gave up drinking diet coke a few years ago. I feel much better for it. In my mind Coke is very addictive. Is it true a car engine will run because of it?

Coke keeps me thin. I've been drinking it every day for 20 years. It's cracking stuff!

Lebof The healthiest I have ever felt and the lightest I have ever been was when I stopped eating low fat crap, diet drinks etc. I went back to basics. Low fat diet foods, I believe, cause so much damage.

Never heard of it running a car engine, but I'd assume it's addictive because of the caffeine and sugar. I still get cravings for coke, especially after seeing an advert for it online or in a magazine. They are conditioning us into eating and drinking this crap so they can make more money.

i reckon it's fair enough to ask here, i mean you can't in real life can you? i have a flat stomach despite being a touch overweight but i also have thighs that rub even when i was a size 8. bodies are soooo different and we generally don't actually stare at each other so it's really hard to understand other body shapes sometimes. i know many people think that only really fat people have thighs that rub but that's not true, just as some people here have admitted to being more prone to the apron than others are. others again will have saddle bags or a big sticky-out bum.

In response to the OP- is it a penis?

Yes, in the second episode of The Men who made us Fat, they talked about how diet foods had more crap in it than normal food. Can't remember what they were substituting the fat with, but it gives the person dieting the notion that because it low fat, you can eat more, but it still makes you take in a high number of calories.

I think surely it depends on your shape and how you store fat? I'm a porker but I'm also an hour glass shape so my breasts, thighs and hips are enormous but my tummy and waist are proportionally small, no over hang. My best friend, bless her, is an apple shape and no fatter than me really but she has overhang. Although she has huge boobs she has little hips and no waist and stores all her fat on her tummy and around her middle. Not her fault, just the way she's built. She also has very skinny arms and legs!

maybe That is very true. My Dsis is bigger than me but has an almost flat stomach,.

Why can we ask all sorts of intimate questions on here but discussing fat and some people assume it's judgemental or sneering?

Lucie You have almost described me. Apart from the skinny arms. Though I do have skinny ankles, did I already mention my ankles?

I became evangelical about food about ten years ago because I had to investigate ingredients as DS2 reacts to so many.
So my dc don't have coke, diet drinks, processed white carb or any low fat food. I hate the way processed food makes me feel too so I keep it to a minimum but carb/sugar cravings are a bastard.

I had cellulite all my life even though I have always been reasonably slim. I cut carbs/shit out and I lost it all.
Sadly it always comes back as chocolate and cake call to me....

Yes, you must drink Fat Coke - not that revolting Diet stuff. Aspartame is the work of the devil!

Exactly Toothbrush The Op wasn't slagging off fat people, nor sniggering at us, nor linking photos "for a laugh". The Op just wanted to know.

I think it was things like the "gunt" comment, tbf, Elephants, which seemed needlessly unpleasant. I thought the OP could have been worded better to avoid the freakshow implication, but I accept that a question is a question.

But the OP didn't use the word "gunt". God, I hate that word.

I remember watching a programme once where there was this fat woman just sitting on the bed with rolls and rolls of fat around her. Her diet consisted of about 8 burgers in one meal and come. Her husband had to take care of her and basically do Eveything as she couldn't move. It was shocking and scary. You have to think, why didn't people over indulge like this before? Food has always been there, yet obesity is a new illness. It's all the crap in the food making people want more. Nothing to do with portion sizes at all.

I think everyone should watch the men who made us fat to understand the science part about carbs which are basically starch and trigger an insulin response. Also the way that the food industry is hand in hand with governments to ensure they "feed" the public what they want them to he's. Any controversial reports get buried

Sorry LeBof Just reread and realised you weren't saying the Op had used that word.

Thanks Elephants, I wasn't saying that. It's good that people are starting to move away from that sort of comment- I'm sure it's not what the OP was after.

One risk with heavy areas of overhanging fat & skin (in this case the abdomen hanging over the groin area) - is that the skin underneath the 'overhang' can redden, feel very sore, then break down & even become infected.
I've cared for patients who are obese & who suffer with extremely painful looking sores in creases & folds of skin (under large abdomens, under heavy breasts, in groin areas).

Plus anyone with BMI 30 or above has their BMI put on the nursing handover sheet on the surgical wards due to 'manual handling risks' - eek, my BMI is still 30... this thread is reminding me to stick to my diet... and continue to wear a push up bra (to avoid under-breast soreness)!!

rainydays - the reason we have an obesity epidemic now is two-fold:

• first, we're all eating far too many easily accessible (in the sense of being quickly digested) carbohydrates. Look at any high street or railway station and what do you see? Restaurants, coffee shops and take-aways; a myriad of opportunities to fill our faces with food - most of which is based around carbohydrate. Because we eat more carbohydrate we get more hungry more often, which means that we're all snacking during the day. Again, usually on carbohydrate (crisps, biscuits, muffins, chocolate, etc). Back in the 1970s, prior to the arrival of the government's healthy eating advice, this wasn't the case. We tended to eat three meals a day, and snacks between meals were pretty unusual. Going out for a meal was a special occasion thing, and takeaways were much less common. You certainly didn't see school children coming home from school eating boxes of chips like you do these days - or bags of crisps or drinking bottles of fizzy drinks.

• second, the advice we are now given, which stems from the government but is supported and amplified by the media (especially women's magazines) is based on very dubious science. An American scientist called Ancel Keys examined data from 22 or 23 countries around the world (sorry - can't remember the exact number), to prove that there was a link between eating fat and heart disease. He then published a report saying that he had found this link, and from that point on, fat was determined to be the 'baddie'. In actual fact, he could only find a link in 7 of those countries. In the remaining 15/16 there was no link, and so he just ignored the data from them.

From that point on, the American government and media - swiftly followed by our own - decided that fat was something we had to strip out of our diets. No matter that the data actually showed that it was carbohydrate that was the real culprit, we have since been advised that our diet should be based on carbohydrate, followed by protein and lastly fat - the diet pyramid. In actual fact it should be exactly the other way around.

Strange, isn't it, that since we all started to move towards 'healthier' eating, lower fat eating and buying specifically created low fat products, that obesity levels have soared - with the subsequent rise in diabetes (the two are so closely linked that they are now sometimes referred to as diabesity).

Low fat eating clearly doesn't work, yet it's still pushed by health professionals.

That was a very basic precis by the way - but it's really worth reading more about this - especially Gary Taubes' book, The Diet Delusion, or Dr John Briffa's book Escape the Diet Trap. They make for quite shocking reading.

Do you know what I've noticed? (and i realise its slightly off topic, but still body image related!) Any of us could be on our holidays on the beach and in a bikini. Size 8 or size 28 and NO ONE gives a fuck what anyone else looks like.

However switch over to a glamorous night out in our best clothes and that is when the daggers come out.

It also makes me quite sad how it tends to be women who are the biggest critics of women and not men!

I have a slight one of these wobbly areas. It was even better when I was pregnant with my 3rd as so much had been gained and lost it kind of wobbled off the end of the bump like I was a saggy old cat!

My tummy used to be flat and smooth, now it's like a rice pudding. My belly button is like a wobbly hole and before I lost my pregnancy weight (3 times over!!) it was like a straight line that you could see the shape of through clothes! I think my tummy is quite extreme but I don't care too much and my husband who really is the only one who sees it regularly really couldn't care less.