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.

Alot of my colleagues are obese. i do shift work and i put on half a stone before i realised and cut back on junk/portion sizes. Shift work is notorious for causing weight gain as you eat at odd times and snack on sugary foods as you are tired.

Most obese people I know are not poor - they are in relatively well paid work, but they have sedentary lives, health problems and see getting a £2 'munchy box' consisting of kebab, chips, pizza slice and chicken wings, as a normal meal. They will have a macdonalds at 4am, they will eat a pile of cheese sandwiches and a packet of crisps at lunch time, they will give their kids money to go to the chippy at lunchtime.

I don't know what the answer is.

Lots of overweight children where I live.

We have lost sight of what 'overweight' and 'obese' look like. People assume that obese is that guy on the telly last night who couldn't walk through his doorway at home. It's actually far closer to what passes for 'normal' in some parts of the UK. I was obese. I was 12st 3 at 5'4" - it didn't look what we think obese to be (I carry weight quite well, unfortunately as it doesn't give me a massive incentive to lose it) and I was quite shocked to hear it, but it was the kick I required to get me to lose weight.

One thing that became very apparent to me when I did Lighterlife a few years ago (I would NOT recommend this diet at all, I only did it as I had to lose at least 2 stone quickly in order to have an operation) is how dependent we are as a culture on food, both as social life and sheer habit. As you don't actually eat anything on LL except the creosote food packs, you become very aware of how much social activity revolves around food - the popcorn at the cinema, the coffee & cake while shopping, the crisps at the pub, eating out for a date or just snacking for something to do... and the option to 'go large', buy a large bar of chocolate for "only a pound!" or have an (unnecessary) side order is pushed at every opportunity. Food is everywhere and most of it is stuff we don't need.

I find when I cook from scratch I eat far more healthily, but getting into that frame of mind and sticking to it is hard to do, especially when as a society we have such a skewed relationship with food.

IMO the biggest stumbling block is that people think that normal/average = okay!

it used to be! it used to be that if you were around the middle weight in your peer group you were probably a healthy weight, but now you can be the slimmest of your peer group and still very over weight.

x post with lovecat! agree with everything you say!

ubik if I ate that much I would be very, very sick. Yet I probably look like your colleagues. :( I don't remember the last time I had fast food. I think it was when I was pregnant and craved a fish sandwich (no chips).

Lovecat my DH and I do none of that. It helps that I detest popcorn, crisps and chips. Oh and count soft drinks with the list of things I dislike.

Lovecat - 100% agree. I often say to DH 'why must we always do 'date night' to a restaurant? Why is everything about food?' (he is a very healthy weight).

I often order a starter as my main and couldn't give a monkey's if someone thought it odd. We're all obsessed with food and I find the more you think about something, the more you want it.

If I take "normal" healthy food to work people say "oh are you on a diet" :-S

• it's just normal wholefood! nuts, fruit, some protein.. basically anything but a ready meal to go in the staff microwave or crisps etc

There was a programme on a few months ago where they took overweight families who were firmly in denial about why they were so fat. They insisted that they ate healthily, didnt eat much etc., but when they hid cameras in their house it told a different story.

Now I accept that that programme was probably heavily edited and not totally true, but it struck me that it probably isnt a million miles away from the attitudes of many overweight people all over the country. Denial.

Oh, and I'm currently doing Slimming World because I need to lose a stone (currently just over 11st) and want to eat more healthily long-term. The number of people who have said to me 'oh, you don't need to lose weight!' or 'you're not fat!' - erm, yes, I am. I could actually stand to lose 2 stone but am aiming for one as a first goal.

I have size 10 clothes from 20 years ago (I do a lot of amdram so never throw anything away in case it's needed as a costume!) and they are a current size 6 in measurements. Overweight has become normalised.

It makes me die that at the SW meetings so many people there talk about how they're going to the chippy for a blow-out now that they've had their weight logged for the week.

No maddening it wasn't an attack at you personally - it was at me!

In th UK my doc would sympathize and say to me how much she understood how difficult it is to lose weight.

My doc here just said I must at least get out for a stroll each day for 15 minutes, and basically I must be eating more than I expend to be gaining weight regardless of hormones. So when I analyzed my "healthy" diet with the Fitness app (thinking I was doing the right thing by olive oil rather than lard on my Sunday lunch for example) there were so many stealth calories it was unbelievable.

And the only cure to PCOS symptoms with obesity, is to lose weight. A vicious circle but you have to do it. The only way to do that is to use up more calories than you consume. There isn't really any other way.

I go to Lanzarote usually twice a year and the OP is not being unreasonable at all. It is one of the cheapest holiday destinations, and the majority of british and irish are overweight, and eat as if food was about to be rationed while they are there.

goldiehorn I think that was called secret eaters??

I think it was probably pretty spot on, so many people say they eat healthily but IMO don't at all

their actual main meals may be low cal, but there's the drinks and the snacks and the extras!

my mum is pretty typical of this, she eats miserable meagre main meals and says here genes are fat but if you stop for a coffee she has a large late and a large snack every time, I don't think she counts that stuff at all, I don't think she even tastes/notices it!

YY Oldebaglady, the first week I shopped for SW I looked at the supermarket conveyor belt, all lean meat, fruit & veg and thought 'ooh, that looks so healthy!' - yet people give me commiserations because I can't have don't want a slice of cream cake. There is a definite mindset that you're somehow depriving yourself by not eating choc, cake & crisps. I know, because I've been there too, and am now trying to retrain myself to think I'm 'treating' myself by feeding my body nutritious food that's good for it. Hard when the cheese n' onion crisps come around, but it's early days! :)

i was ill with whooping cough in the summer and watched some daytime TV and it was ALL cookery programmes, you couldn't get away from it.

peoples idea of what healthy food is is warped too!
a low protein high aspartaime diet is not healthy!!

Lovecat I think the trick is to remember that when you are "allowed" that crap, you barely taste it and rarely enjoy it, you just eat it mindlessly!

we use language like "treating ourselves" and "ooo being a bit naughty" which makes crap food sound exciting and enjoyable, but it's really not! its not as nice as sitting down to a filling but not stuffing healthy meal that leaves you feeling good.
You can inhale a bag of crisps without even realising you're doing it, then it's empty and you're still hungry! its not a "treat"

Agree with a lot of the posters - trouble is (of course) that food isn't always about fuel - it's wrapped up in a whole load of other emotions and history, especially for women (and, dare I say, mums). It's taken me years to sort through food "issues" - still getting there. In the words of the very great Caitlin Moran (from "How to be a Woman"):
?In a nutshell then, by choosing food as your drug ...the valium of the working classes - you can still make the packed lunches, do the school run, look after the baby, pop in on your mum and then stay up all night with an ill five-year-old - something that is not an option if you?re caning off a gigantic bag of skunk, or regularly climbing into the cupboard under the stairs and knocking back quarts of Scotch. Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that?s why it?s come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It?s still a way of f*ing yourself up whilst still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren?t indulging in the ?luxury? of their addiction making themselves useless, chaotic or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn?t inconvenience anyone. And that?s why it?s so often a woman?s addiction of choice?
Perhaps it?s time for women to finally stop being secretive about their vices and start treating them like all other addicts treat their habits instead?Because at the moment, I can?t help but notice that in a society so obsessed with fat - so eager in the appellation, so vocal in its disapproval - the only people who aren?t talking about it are the only people whose business it really is.?

I beleive you OP. In local town I was standing at a bus stop, and many people walked by. I realised that not one of the younger girls did not have a spare tyre. I mean 18/20 yr olds with love handles and big bellies.
The boys don't seem as fat. It has become much more normalised to be overweight, and I think it is partly car culture, partly alchohol, and partly the fact that it is considered normal to fill your face on the go.
I don't think people eat meals like they used to-just snack all day. Also it used to be considered gross to eat on public transport, or walking down the street, not it is acceptable.
I don't care what people look like, but the health effects of having that much fat around your middle from such a young age are dire.
Also, parents have got to take responsibility for what their kids eat.
I don't think we should put too much store on weight though tbh. I weigh a lot more than I look like I weigh, but am very fit and active, and have a flat belly. I think I must have heavy knees or something!
It's health that matters, above all.

thebody I agree there are not that many overweight/obese infant school children but the problem gets worse as they get older.

I work hard to maintain my weight and slip up at times like most people, I never ever buy bigger clothes so as soon as they are too tight I know I haven't got any choice. My issues stem back to being bulimic and my weird control issues with eating.

Its strange though for the first time in 15 years I actually feel like I am cured, I have struggled all these years and spent time overeating and crash dieting on a constant loop.

In September I decided to stop dieting completely as it wasn't actually working at all as I was still bingeing as got so hungry. I ensured I was exercising at least twice a week and I just started eating normally without thinking I cannot have this or that. It turns out that because I had told myself I wasn't dieting I didn't actually want any extra crap and I lost a stone in about 10 weeks. I haven't felt deprived or had too many wobbles about my 'issues' other than knowing that xmas could potentially be difficult. Mentally I feel better than ever.

Being overweight/overeating is an awful thing but I think everything about weight issues in our society now is wrong. I feel there is lots of pressure to be thin but also people everywhere on tv/magazines telling you it is ok to be morbidly obese as long as you are happy ie Lisa Riley!

We have two very slim children here who eat plenty but do not ever overeat. I am very aware that there are a lot of children out there who seem to be saying "I'm hungry" as soon as they've had one snack and are given another....Also DW has a friend who has a very chunky ten year old. She seems to eat healthily (not the crisp and coke type of diet which seems partly to blame for this obesity epidemic) but it's just gargantuan portion size which is the issue for her...

DW and I had this conversation the other evening. We were saying that even up to the 1990s it was rare to see lots of fat people in this Country, regardless of socio-economic background, whereas now they are wherever you go and I cannot believe how many puffy faced, fat (there is no other word for them), waddling children there are around who look as if they've been force-fed empty calories...Not their fault at all but not a pretty sight...

I do think that portion size is part of the problem....It's not without reason that apparently the Brits were at their healthiest during WW2 on rations....

"thebody I agree there are not that many overweight/obese infant school children but the problem gets worse as they get older"

oh I don't know about that, again I think it comes back to what we perceive as "normal" again, when I look back at photos of my preschool days we were all knees, now if there's a kid like that they stand out as unusually skinny. It makes it hard to judge as sometimes I wonder if my LO is unhealthily skinny (from standing beside his little peers), but then I remember that he wouldn't have looked skinny at all "in my day"

I blame our crappy weather, who wants to go for a walk or play out in freezing weather. Kids want to stay in the warm on their pcs and adults want to sit in front of corrie. We haven't got the village squares to walk around like the Spanish and the warm nights, etc. There are a lot of reasons why.

I've lived outside the UK for ten years, and I had a similar thought when I was mulling around Manchester airport a few years ago. There used to be a handful of kids with weight issues at my primary school, thirty years ago, but they were only a little chubby. Most of us were rail-thin, always on the go and ate like horses.

even going by trouser length Vs waist sizes for pre-schoolers, it does seem that bigger = average these days. IMO the waist sizes in most kids shops are enourmous compaired to the lengths. And boys pants! they are IMO HUGE for the age they say they are for!