To be shocked at how many overweight kids there are here?

[glasgowsfinest]

Have got my fireproof hat in place, here goes...! I'm currently at a Butlin's-type holiday park on the south coast. As you can imagine, it's jammed full of kids of all ages. I'm genuinely shocked at how many of them, from pre-schoolers to older teens, are significantly overweight. I don't think puppy fat can be used as an excuse for all of them. Thinking back to my childhood, overweight kids were the exception, not the rule, but now it seems the opposite. I have two children who by no means have a perfect diet, and eat more chocolate and watch more TV than I thought I'd allow, but they're active too and don't seen to have any fat on them at all! Maybe they're just "lucky", I don't know. But the sheer numbers of chunky kids made me feel quite sad.

I just get annoyed when people ask, like above, what if you needed abdo surgery?
Obese isn't always rolls of fat and mounds of stomach and sitting stuffing junk food
This is obese - I recover from GA quicker than a lot of people, have a low blood pressure and resting pulse
And yes I'm fat (before someone posts to tell me to make sure I know) but health wise?

There is something else that concerns me besides childhood obesity - am coming over all David Icke conspiracy theory here - but children's shapes have changed - the way fat is distributed, so now you see 10 and 11 years who appear to have taken on a middle-aged hormonal weight appearance. Has anyone else noticed this? Apart from the obvious shite, what else is being pumped into our kids' bodies?

If I'm obese and eat well and exercise and don't smoke, but my not obese friend eats junk, doesn't exercise, binge drinks and smokes, who is healthier? It's complicated

Experts are pretty much in agreement that obesity is worse.

The problem with obesity is that it does strain all the various organs, and of course, there's diabetes which is hugely expensive to treat. The problem with smoking/poor diet/sedentary lifetyles is that they may lead to certain cancers and heart disease.

I calculate BMI for people daily so usually can guess pretty well on whether someones BMI will come out at obese or overweight, I personally would have put you at middle to far overweight ollivander. You must surely be on the cusp of obesity?

If you have a low resting heart rate, that's all I'd worry about. It has been a thrill watching mine drop over the past year through running. I'm pretty obsessed with it.

It's the availability of junk foods that's one of the largest changes though. We're in an unprecedented time of "feasting" with no end in sight. Combine that with social media and is it any wonder it's normalised?

People go on Instagram/Facebook and see the viral pictures of unicorn smoothies. You go into town, as I did this morning, and stop at Starbucks/Costa/Caffe Nero and see someone (let's use me and 2yo DD in this example) sit down with a flat white, a pastry and a gingerbread man for the toddler. What they don't know is that this is 1) the only time this week, possibly the only time for a few weeks, this will happen 2) DD won't have any other snacks today, only her meals which I provide and know can be nutritionally balanced because that's how I think about meals 3) That we had just walked 2 miles to take DS to school with DD in the buggy, followed by another 10 minutes into town and half an hour walking round shops, and will go on to do the same walk home. It could be very easy to look at the tray I was carrying to the table and make all sorts of assumptions.

DameDoom I don't know about kids' shapes changing (only because I am not around them that much so will leave it to others to say if they have noticed the same) but I wouldn't be surprised if all the chemicals put onto/into our food and drink wasn't having some sort of effect. Really, each generation is taking part in a massive experiment in modern living and each generation sees adverse effects from such experiments eg mad cow disease etc.

Yeah it's been fine, the only issue I had was a very low BP the day after my spinal surgery. I have full bloods every 12 weeks which are all normal
Titanz- I've been on 1200 cals and fasting for 16hrs a day and got down to 14st 12 but I'm about 15st 3 in those photos

tiptop is that the v02 max thing?

Dame - dont we all have much thicker waists too?

I like using this website to demonstrate how people carry weight differently, it's pretty interesting seeing the differences

www.mybodygallery.com/

Ollivander nice knicks and bra set. May I ask where they are from?

Interesting. We have threads like this worrying about (rightly) the rise in child obesity.

And then we have threads bemoaning the trends for bringing in cake to school for birthdays, kids being given huge piles of chocolate at Christmas and Easter, shops giving sweets as freebies with purchases, etc... and in those threads the OP is usually derided as a killjoy.

The judgment and classism on this thread poor parents dont know what bedtimes are? Yes ..ok then. hmm
Not what I said - I said IME theres seems a lack of awareness about sleep when there is awareness about exercise and diet.

My children are schooled in a very deprived area and I talk to other parents - and that observation was based on those interactions and Ds doing a class project on bedtimes and expressing surprise and resentment he's in bed at 8 when most of his friends are up to 11 or midnight and yes some are left to decide their own bedtimes.

Plus my secondary school child receiving texts and phone call from friends 11-12 at night when she fast asleep and on some recent sleep overs her saying her friends were on their phone all night even early hour of morning. Her friends have said in my presence they are surprised and shocked her phone is downstairs and she doesn’t reply when they are clearly still up.

I also listed several other factors - most of which are outside easy control. Though last area we lived was more middle class as we weren't so out of step there with bedtimes - but that could just be a fluke.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13559462
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4073897.stm
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2632774/Sleep-deprived-children-likely-obese-Infants-miss-nap-time-run-risk-overweight-seven.html
www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/health/sleep-diabetes-study-children-13483332
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39140836

Clearly I'm just being a cow - it's not like there information out there linking lack of sleep and obesity.

In fact most of the reasons I can see for the screens are often parents are exhausted or working round unsocial shifts or want there kids to have what their freinds do - which is tvs and otherr screens in bedrooms. I'm sure it's an issue in some middle class households as well but low levels of sleep are very much normal in poor area we're in currently.

If I'm obese and eat well and exercise and don't smoke, but my not obese friend eats junk, doesn't exercise, binge drinks and smokes, who is healthier? It's complicated

You are using false comparison to make yourself feel better. The appropriate comparison should be obese v. normal weight, alcoholic v. moderate drinker, smoker v non-smoker (unless there are such a thing as "moderate smokers"??)

Dame - it's a flirtelle bikini from Brastop, v cheap!

I also think there are more extremes with weight, people seem either really thin or overweight.

I don't need to make myself feel better
But I do genuinely have a size 6 friend who drinks a lot, eats shite and can't run for a bus, has high blood pressure and resting pulse. Meanwhile I'm eating fuck all, maintaining my weight, exercising, don't drink and don't smoke. If the doctor, neurosurgeon and haematology has no concern over my weight then I don't
I work part time as a plus size model so no needing to feel better. I'm hoping to drop a bit more weight as a size 12 would be perfect for my height

There is so much extremely calorific food around at the moment - I see people have already mentioned unicorn foods and freak shakes etc. I see more and more Krispy Kreme stands in supermarkets and that pumpkin spice latte everyone is clutching on the morning commute is chock-full of calories.

I actually bought a unicorn cookie dough a couple of weeks back. It came in those little one-portion cardboard tubs that are sometimes used for ice cream. It lasted me 3 days - it was delicious and extremely indulgent but there's no way I could have eaten it all a time once! And that was supposedly a single portion - in the shop there were groups of teens, families etc busy polishing that "single serving" off. If it had less than 2000 calories then I'm a 6'6" bloke from Salford called Kevin.

Good for you, Ollivander84 to let us know that you are a model.
Unfortunately not all overweight ppl get paid to carry extra weight.

I'm sure I read somewhere it was better to be slightly overweight than underweight, and overweight people (not obese) live the longest.

Thanks Ollivander will have a google.

Yes Lockheart, extreme caloric junk:

Fried oreos, fried snickers bar, etc.
ice cream mixed with M&Ms, brownies, etc.

And "single serving" of ice cream in my local ice cream shop is good for my whole family.

Jesus wept - fried Oreos - wtaf. I haven't seen those unicorn cookies but it does seem as if food manufacturers are laughing all the way to our children's graves.

There seems to be a trend for "unicorn foods" at the moment - they're usually extremely sweet and high calorie with a tonne of artificial colours and sprinkles. We tried this cookie dough parlour as we'd seen it in Time Out - we just had no idea how big the portions would be! And it was only about £3 each, which puts it right in the after school pocket money kind of range.