To have come back from Lanzarote feeling geuinely shocked at how fat the British tourists were?

[Illgetmycoat]

I'm not talking slightly plump, I mean seriously, morbidly obese. A whole different race to the German, French and Spanish tourists.

What is going on? When did our country become like this? Whenever you heard a british accent, it would be accompanied by a 3ft wide backside. And whole families, too, all swollen to gargantuan size, with the poor kids unable to put their feet together because of the rolls of fat on their legs.

How has this happened? What the heck are the Brits feeding their children to get them so large? How can you feed an eight year old you love so much food that they become morbidly obese?

It can't just be blamed on poverty, because it's not cheap going to Lanzarote.

I was shocked.

but on the other hand a glass of squash was mainly water, not sugar

Certainly it was in the 70s during the three day week and the constant power cuts (my memory of the 70s is one of sitting around with lit candles all the time) . My mum used to put in enough squash to (barely) colour the water and stop. I nearly fell over when I had a Ribena at a better off friend's house and found out what it was supposed to taste like.

Ever excuse me, where did I directly accuse you of stuffing your face maddening?

I was referring to my own journey with PCOS and weightloss. I was diagnosed when I was 28, and I am 42 now. I tried Metformin, was told I would never conceive, that it was a vicious circle, my weight went up to 19 stone and I couldn't see and end to it.

It was only when someone stopped hand patting me (yes me, didn't use the word you anywhere, and i had actually started to write my post before you had even posted, but had to stop and see to ds btw) and said really look at what you are eating and doing for exercise that I stopped and identified where I went wrong.

And when you (me) count all the calories of your (me again) intake and it adds up to more than 1200-1300 hundred in a sedentary job, you (me once again) are simply not going to shift the weight.

But hey presto here I am 5.5 stone lighter, still with a way to go, but the scales aren't lying to me. So what has changed in 14 years that I "battled" with it? What I put into my mouth.

I'm sorry that your weight and health is such a sensitive subject, but I wasn't really referring to you at all.

There is definitely a normalisation of being bigger. When I was growing up in the 80s, you had to go to special shops to find clothes over a size 14 (and that was probably smaller than a size 14 is now). Now it is completely normal.

I think kids are less active because they don't play out as much as we used to.

Portion sizes are definitely larger than they used to be, and snacking (anywhere and everywhere) is more acceptable. People munch at their desks (guilty!), on the street, on the train, etc. And I rarely seem to walk past a pushchair lately without seeing the child in it cramming some sort of snack into his or her face!

And people are far too reliant on motorised transport. Walking is seen as the exception rather than the rule. I try to make walking my default rule day to day for any distance up to about a mile and a half. Over that I will consider a bus. In London, it's often quicker to walk that distance anyway. People are always surprised when I turn up on foot. It's just not normal anymore. And on that topic, wtf was the thinking behind giving all kids free bus passes? You now see plump teenagers taking the bus one or two stops all the time.

I think people underestimate how important exercise is. My weight from when I was 18 until my late 30s was a pretty steady 8st 10lbs (I'm 5ft 6ins) and I was very active and sporty. I am an endomorph so aware that I could potentially put on weight very easily if I did not exercise. In my 30s I had a serious disc problem and could not exercise properly. My weight rose by 3 stone despite not eating any more - in fact watching my diet carefully.

When I was 50 I had curative back surgery and once recovered started exercising - walking mostly everywhere at first, then running up stairs instead of using lifts, then going to the gym to do aerobic exercise and weight training packing on muscle instead of fat.

Over the course of a year I was back to 8st 10lbs without ever changing my eating habits and despite hitting the menopause, a danger point for weight gain. My weight remained the same until my mid 60s, when because of arthritis, although I can walk and do walk a lot I had to cut back on the very vigorous exercise I did before because of pain and stiffness, cartilage problems etc. Sure enough the weight started coming back and this time I have had to cut about 500 calories off my diet to maintain my weight at around 9 stone.

I think the place of exercise in fitness and weight control is very underrated.

I was in Lanzarote last week and noticed the same. Lots of very overweight people, always British.
There were of course non overweight British tourists too but it was noticeable how many large British people there were.

I think the posters saying that they never see overweight people or that the op must be exaggerating are just proof that being overweight has become normal.

They see them every day.

I went clubbing on New YearsEve. We ended up somewhere full of teenagers. I couldn't believe how fat a lot of them were.. especially as it was a drum n bass club, so they should have been all pilled up and skinny

I think it's due to our culture of staying inside, watching tv, and the constant requirement to be with our kids during all activites (can't play outside anymore without adult supervision, limiting play). Diets also poorer because fattening foods are the cheapest....
Always had a problem with fat since school nurse told me I was too fat when I was 10 and I needed to lose weight. However, my Dad was seriously overweight when he was diagnosed with cancer. Over a period of 3 months he lost 5 stone in weight, and I now realise that he would have died if he hadn't been overweight because his body would have been too weak to take the stress of the treatment. I remind myself of this when I start to obsess about being fat/kids/husband being too big, etc.

I don't advocate being overweight but being a little bit "larger" can sometimes be a good thing.

Exercise is the answer

At the moment 1 in 4 people in the UK are overweight. If current trends continue by 2020 we're looking at 8/10 men and 7/10 women. Scary!

Especially as obesity costs the NHS £5 billion a year now!

Our local Christmas market was visited by schools groups from all over western Europe. The UK kids can easily be identified by their size.

Interestingly the UK OAP groups were usually slimmer than their other European equivalents.

I've been using myfitnesspal to track what I've been eating recently and it's been a real eye opener. Things like the correct portion size of pasta and cereal, are so much smaller than you would get in a restaurant or measure by eye. I think people have got used to seeing massive plates of food on TV or in restaurants.

I don't think exercise makes as much difference as cutting back on food intake.

I've noticed it on holiday as well, British tourists tend to be worse behaved and more super-sized (in a pseudo-American way) than other nations. Or when I come home from a European break, I notice it as well.

I think if you are surrounded by overweight people, it becomes difficult to conceive what slim and healthy is. Its not just their size, an unhealthy diet generally manifests itself in the skin, teeth and eyes. So many youngish men seem to have that rough, slightly thread veined skin that is just so physically off-putting - its easy to tell what kind of lifestyle they lead even if they are still young and slimmish. My SIL is so overweight, when she slipped on wet leaves, she snapped both wrists.

I think what you eat and drink is most important, but exercise also helps - but if you exercise, you generally don't want to eat too much, because it makes you feel too bloated and heavy to do exercise - a not so vicious circle. But so many people barely move during the day. ie their entire range of movement is confined to their house, out to their car, to the office, and back again. Sitting in an office all day then slumped in front of the tv isn't enough to avoid putting on weight. So many people seem almost terrified of walking anywhere in a little bit of rain!

Exactly trixy unless you count the calories of everything you put in your mouth, and try weighing food for a while until you get used to normal portions you will always unintentionally overeat.

I blame Cadburys Creme Eggs.

I don't know what the data are, or even whether there are any. But at an anecdotal level, what the OP writes fits my own observation.

40 years ago I was a teenager, and we were all thinner than the young of today. Boys and girls, our ribs showed, as they should.

MacDonald's didn't exist then, so we didn't customarily eat chips five times a week.

I remember that when I was at primary school in the 80s there was one or two visibly overweight children in the whole school. In my daughters primary there are a couple of overweight children in each class. I'm pretty sure I read something recently which made the point that its amazing we're not all enormously overweight given the huge amount of delicious food and drink which is constantly available to us and the fact that we are primed by evolution to want to stock up on food while its available.

I work in an office but seem to be the only person capable of moving their legs and walking anywhere. Everyone else gets the lift, I walk up 4 floors. No one else can be bothered to go for a 20 min walk at lunchtime unless it's a heatwave, I go out every lunch time rain or shine. And I swear I will scream if I hear another person say they 'can't be bothered to keep going to the printer', why not, you're not crossing the sahara FFS! Take a wild guess who the thinnest person in the office is even though they are usually first in the kitchen on cake days .

I have a 'thing' about teenage girls with bigger waists / stomachs. I'm pushing 40 and have 2 kids, teenagers should be mere whippets next to me, but I'm the thin one.

We walk almost everywhere, partly because public transport is so rubbish where I live, (and expensive).
Once I walked home from school with ds and his friend. His friend was really struggling with the walk (about 35 mins). Ds doesn't notice it, because he has always walked, and I like the freedom it gives us to be able to go places and do things. I am guilty of striding to school when late every day and having him jog alongside, but he is rarely out of breath.
I would actually love a car, for the freedom and convenience of it, but I do worry that when I get one we will both be right porkers!
Where we live everyone drives. They drive to the park, they drive to the gym, they drive to the softplay centre and then they get MacDonalds afterwards.

Obviously you don't necessarily need to worry if you can't see your child's ribs, but if you can, it definitely doesn't mean they're starved.
Perhaps they should be like horses, if you can't feel their ribs they are too fat if you can see their ribs they are too thin. .
When I was a child I was known as the 'quiet one' in our road because I spent time indoors reading, drawing, knitting etc. Yet still I walked to and fro school, to the shops/library etc (mum didn't have a car), took the dog out, a long walk over the Downs every weekend. Did ballet, tap dancing, brownies, rode my bike everywhere, had roller skates, played out with neighbour kids until dark. School swimming lessons involved walking to another school at the top of a steep hill, a mini bus was unheard of. During breaks we had a climbing frame but otherwise would be playing skipping games, doing handstands/cartwheels, running down the sloping playing field as fast as we could to see if we could take off .Honestly, I never stopped and I was the quiet one?! I really don't believe that many children nowadays have that level of activity (including mine, more's the pity, though I do nag try!).
Btw my sister was teased as the 'fat kid' at school and put on a diet by some expert or other. I look at old photos and think that nowadays she would be one of the average kids in class, no one would bat an eyelid.

Sorry took ages to post all that, got to catch up now . Agree with Ifnot. Dd walked to her school a mile away as soon as she started reception and after my mum saw us once she commented that I was mean making dd trot along beside me as I rushed along (how times change, she used to do that to me . The thing is there was very rarely anyone for us to walk with, even in summer. If dd had friends home for tea they were very shocked that they were expected to walk.

ifnotnowwhenthen the DC's have to jog a bit to keep up with me sometimes. I was told I was cruel on here a while ago . I made them walk up 8 floors in a huge multi story car park a while ago. Their legs didn't fall off.

And the only cure to PCOS symptoms with obesity, is to lose weight. A vicious circle but you have to do it

When I was diagnosed with PCOS I weighed 7.5 stone. My weight has fluctuated a lot since then, but even when I joined Slimming World and lost 2 stone to get to my target weight the PCOS didn't improve. It's a constant struggle to keep my weight down and now that I'm in my forties it feels like a losing battle .

I had a similar experience in Turkey last year - not in an all-inclusive hotel though.

Most of the guests were British couples in their 50s and 60s and many seemed very unhealthily overweight. I am an average British size i.e. not skinny, I love food, but like OP I was quite shocked.

But it was also the seeming complete lack of self-care or any interest they expressed in their appearance that was most puzzling to me. I remember one woman at breakfast. She was probably in her late 50s, was of average weight, her hair looked nice and she had a pretty print skirt on from Monsoon or something. Nothing amazing but here she might as well have been Elizabeth Taylor she stood out so much!

(These were normal, intelligent British people btw, not lager louts.)