To think if we eat and adopted some of the lifestyle of the europeans we would not be the fattest country in Europe.

[WonderWendy1]

I went on a med cruise two weeks ago we stopped in Portugal, Spain, South Of France and Italy.

I think of myself as a fairly fit size 12 (14 in some things). I would say i'm on the slimmer side in the Uk. I go to these european cities and the women (and men) are much slimmer then me and dh.

I was then in Paris for a few nights a week ago and I can only say my gosh nearly everywomen I saw had the legs of Taylor Swift.

Aibu to think we need to be doing what the europeans do to avoid becoming the American country of Europe.

My observations on France and Scotland are as follows:

(Some) French people are forever on reducing diets or putting herbal or homeopathic drops in their water to lose weight, they ALL seem to eat good salads.

(Some) Scottish people drink IrnBru at every opportunity. Decent salad was hard to come by, lentil soup was widespread though and lovely.

I think there was much more social pressure to be trim in France, I didn't live in Paris either. My French colleagues were also more likely to do regular sport and have sporty holidays.

I think it's clear that most humans don't really work like that though - that personal responsibility stuff ( Is free will an illusion?).

You know, I have always been slim and healthy and never dieted or tried not be fat or whatever. To my perception, I've always just eaten what I wanted. But in the last six months DH has been very ill and became medically malnourished; they then also gave him some medication that made him basically anorexic. Not nervosa, just not eating. Anyway, to counter this we implemented an "obesogenic environment" at home by just changing a few general behaviours. So he ordered chips and bread on the side with every meal. I made (his) coffee with milk. I bought a sugar bowl and put a spoonful in every cup. I bought "snacks" and "treats" and put them around the place (we had previously never had them in the house, just gone to the shop to buy them). If we had coffee out he always ordered a cake or got a chocolate. It's good in that he has not died, but I have gone up two sizes and I am not even AWARE of eating more. To reiterate - I've not been adding the sugar, I've just been living in the same space and clearly having a few chips/sip of latte/mini roll.

I've had to buy new clothes. It's been pretty sobering. I can't wait for this regime to end.

Forgot my point

So YANBU, OP. I think a lot of the issue is broad societal/environmental factors that we need to address collectively, not just shouting at fatties.

I don't cycle much because it's very dangerous and frightening where I live. I do walk a lot, though, because that's easy. It's normal to do the easier thing. Japan replaced most of its sugar with stevia in the 70s, can we do something similar? (Not aspartame don't yell) Can we put chocolates in plain wrappers or put them on high shelves? IDK! But we need to do something.

I put on weight in France becaUSE I loved the bread and Normandy butter and would eat it as well as three square meals a day. I basically went a bit crazy over the novelty of tartines.

It is snacking and the constant fast food advertising is not good.

We've only recently become aware how fattening / addictive sugar is and how much food stuff it's being added to. I think people have been trying for a long time to control ther weight gain but we still don't know how to do it.

I completely agree with lolo btw (sorry to hear about your DH) I'm another who thought she could eat what she liked and stay skinny. When I was put on a medication with increased appetite as a side effect, I realised what I liked wasn't very much or very fattening.

I totally agree about the carbonara! Much prefer it the proper way but it doesn't seem to exist in restaurants. I do like a cream sauce but why call it what it clearly isn't?

The climate might have something to do with it. You burn more calories if you're cold, and from what I've seen people in England use central heating far more than in France in the winter (and it actually get a lots colder here in the south of France than in the south of England). Most people I know round where I live heat their houses to no more than 16 or 17° In the winter, where as my English friends seem to have far warmer houses (22 or 23°).

I work in a school, and out of 500 kids, only 3 are obese, and a small handful are visibly overweight (maybe 5 or 6). We live in quite a poor town on a river, in spring, summer and autumn lots of families walk down there and spend the day having fun and moving about a lot, there is also a communal swimming pool which I end up avoiding as there are so many pupils there from morning until it closes. The kids from richer families in the surrounding villages seem to all have pools, so they spend a lot of the summer using lots of energy too.

As its already been said, kids here don't snack, they have four meals a day (breakfast before 8, lunch at 12, goûter at 4 and dinner at 8), the majority have school meals which are very healthy.

There are plenty of McDo's, and quite often people go there for a special treat , a couple of times a month at the most. In the supermarkets there is plenty of crap, but far far fewer special offers, and individual packets of crisps are very very limited (you can buy a pack of 6 individual packets, either all ready salted, or two chicken, two ready salted and two BBQ ).

And yes, people very rarely eat on the move. Lycéens (15 to 18yos) quite often go out and grab a sandwich (une Americaine = half a baguette with a burger and chips in it) but they'll then go and find somewhere to sit down to eat it with their friends.

Worra
People need to take responsibility for what they put in their own mouths, and the mouths of their kids.

Nothing will change if people keep passing the buck and blaming other people/things for what they put into their own bodies.

Whilst there might be some truth in what you're saying, I think you're missing the complexity of the issue. I think Lolo's assessment, including this comment, is spot on:

Lolo
I think a lot of the issue is broad societal/environmental factors that we need to address collectively, not just shouting at fatties.

There are numerous factors that make it so much easier for people to be overweight now. Opportunities to eat (rubbish) are everywhere, and relatively, food is much cheaper than it used to be. Tweaking environmental conditions could make a big difference (although I'm not sure how far it's in the government's interest to act on this - junk food and dieting industries are worth £billions each year). Going back a few decades, when obesity in the UK was much rarer, most people did not have to think too hard about maintaining a healthy weight - it was a natural byproduct of their lifestyle, which wouldn't have required much thought to maintain. Changing your weight/lifestyle these days is a much harder proposition.

I agree re vanity sizing and perception of size. It's been massively skewed. As has our perception of what constitutes a healthy level of activity and exercise.

Of course environment is important. If nothing else but because children are growing up with this way of eating being the norm.

For example I come from an unbelievably judgemental and snobby family and so I too am snobby and judgemental as it's always been all around me. I'm now having to try really hard to change having realised what an awful way it is to be. I have many friends who it just wouldn't even occur to to be bitchy or judgemental because it just wasn't in the fabric of their lives growing up.

" Oh and I've yet to meet a Spanish woman who wouldnt eat something because they are on a diet "

oh come off it Mijas, take off those rose tinted specs....

what! nonsense. I used to hear a resounding chorus of 'hay que guardar la línea'' said with stoic resignation, and ''estoy de régimen, de nuevo!''.

ps, I'd say Scotland is COLDER than the rest of the British Isles.. The average level of income is probably far less relevant than the few degrees colder that it is there. Finland used to have the same problem. they've hd the balls to make a lot of changes but they did used to be plump until they tackled it head on.

I've just come home from 10 days in Croatia.
Where we were staying it was full of people from Croatia, Poland, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech republic, a few French, quite a few Germans, the odd Russian

sitting on the Riva watching the world go by and listening to the babble of voices ....
The English are all fat
Older German people are fat
Italian children are fat but their parents are not
Poles, Slovenians, Slovakians, Czechs and the Croatians themselves are lean.
A few girls were underweight, but generally they were lean and toned, as were the lads.

Coming back to Britain I was really struck by how fat the people at the supermarket were when I went to top up the fridge

And the difference?
No snacking
Cooking from scratch
Eating fruit and veg
Fish was steamed or baked, not fried
Drinking water or non sweetened juice during the day
MUCH smaller glasses of wine

Whilst there might be some truth in what you're saying, I think you're missing the complexity of the issue.

I understand the complexity of the issue and I'm in no way saying it's easy to take responsibility for what we put in our own and our kid's mouths.

But until people do, I can't see anything changing.

There are adults of 40 and 50+ who are still blaming their obesity on the fact they were made to clear their plates as kids.

It's good to understand why we are how we are but that doesn't mean we don't need to change our habits.

I agree. I know that some factors in my upbringing contributed to my weight, but I'm an adult, and the fact I'm doing something about it is entirely down to me. If I fail there ain't nobody to blame but myself.

I guess the thing is, what really is the point of all this blame and failure?

Pragmatically, I think the thing is to try to stop people dying, rather than try to make them "better" people. I think, frankly, there are better ways to be a better person. Like donating time and money to others, being kind, etc.

If you are feeling guilty because you have stolen a cake from the hands of a starving toddler and eaten it, that's one thing, but the sturm und drang about eating a cake and the guilt and the shame, the whole thing is a complete self-absorbed piece of nonsense. Food isn't morality. It's a mistake to pretend it is. Notice, as well, that it's food companies that use those "naughty" and "sinful" terms. Do you think they think it makes people eat less?

It's not a moral problem we have; it's a practical, concrete, environmental problem. We know that diets don't work in that we know over 5 years over 90% of actual human people put the weight back on. It's simply pointless to say "oh that's because they didn't follow the diet", the fact is, most people demonstrably cannot do it. We have the evidence.

We need to deal with how people ARE not how we think they should be. That is if we really want to solve the problem. If we just want to assign blame then we should carry on with this "healthy choices" individualism because we know, we can see in our current demography, that that will provide us with innumerable fat people to blame.

Que?

People in the affluent west need to learn to say "no" to food.
Simple.

Other people need to realise that aspiring to be lardies like the rich is not a good goal any more.
Simple.

OK it's simple.

All these people should "just" do that then. Problem solved.

All the remaining fatties must just really like having their legs cut off from diabetic ulcers. Simple.

Worra
If you understand the complexity of the issue, and the role of environmental factors, why is your solution solely one of individual responsibility (without even a nod to managing environmental factors)?

Talkin
How many people enjoy being overweight or obese? And if the answer is simple, why is obesity an increasingly global issue?

Just because something might be easy for you to manage, does not make it an equally easy challenge for others. People are very individual in what they find easy/difficult.

People in the affluent west need to say no to alcohol.

Other people need to realise that aspiring to be alkies is not a good goal any more.

Bet the same attitude would go down a storm on the sobriety threads.

Helena
This is AIBU, not weight loss.
And actually watching gangs of roaringly drunk aussies staggering around the Riva put all of us off wanting a drink.

Facsicle
Its only in the last 50 years that anybody other than the wealthiest 5% has had the money to eat too much.
Learning to say no has to become more common.

Diets don't generally work long-term, no. That's because people generally want a quick fix.

Doing a "diet" in the short term is much easier than making a lifelong commitment to eating less, eating better food, and being more active - but it's the latter that works.

I've watched my morbidly obese sister go from one diet to another, losing 3 or 4 stone each time, but then putting it all back on because she's never learned how to eat real, healthy food in moderation. And she's also unwilling to exercise enough for it to make a difference.

One Zumba class a week will not make you slimmer and fitter, but an all-round active lifestyle will. Problem is, it's easier to go to the odd faddy exercise class than it is to commit to four runs a week and walk everywhere in-between, in the same way it's easier to say "no carbs for a month" than to say " from now on, for the rest of my life, I'm going to eat small portions of healthy food."

TalkinPeace
'Learning to say no' seems pretty much in line with the premise for the numerous (long-term unsuccessful) diets available.