was everyone slim in the 1950s/60s

[ambereeree]

I've been watching old films and it seems that everyone was slim in the 50s and 40s. Even women with quite a few children. Is this reality or just in films?

My grandad his parents and my grandma we're all obese. They did own a bakery though.
I was a fat child in the 70's despite being very active but I was a minority.

It's strange how we're all naturally getting bigger nowadays, they were tiny years ago. I wonder if future generations will consider being obese as normal.

I've noticed a difference since my DD (youngest) went to uni. 99% of the time we'd eat the evening meal at the table. You eat more slowly, as you're also chatting together, which makes you feel more full and is better for digestion. I've noticed that now me and DH sometimes eat in front of the tv, I'm eating more quickly.

I also think the NHS guidelines of 2,000 calories for women and 3,000 for men is outdated. Our lives are so much more sedentary nowadays, I just don't think we need those calories. We're not doing physical labour like before, household gadgets help us, we're not walking every day etc etc. I used MFP to track a diet for about a year, I was on 1,200 cals most days and it really wasn't that difficult. I think 1,500 cals is more what we should be aiming to eat (women), with much more veg and fibre, fewer carbs etc.

It's strange how we're all naturally getting bigger nowadays, they were tiny years ago.

We aren't all getting bigger at all though. There is more of a spread in sizes.

@dungeaondragon15 We are getting bigger though and I mean bigger as in taller too.
I went to the Bronte house a few weeks ago and they had some of the clothes they used to wear on display, they were tiny!

Im not being moralistic or whatever, just saying how it was. I dont think older people looked well back then if they were very thin. Women today look healthier later in life with a bit more flesh, much less aging than a gaunt face. I dont mean obese though, just a healthy size for each individual.
There is a wealthy lady walking around in my town wearing beautiful clothes, who is always proudly telling people she has never weighed more than 8 stone. It definitely doesnt suit her now, she looks too gaunt

I also think the NHS guidelines of 2,000 calories for women and 3,000 for men is outdated. Our lives are so much more sedentary nowadays, I just don't think we need those calories.

The NHS doesn't state that all women need 2,000 though. It depends on a lot of factors. We aren't all sedentary either. There is too much "we do this and "we" do that on this thread. Not everyone is the same.

As a young woman my mum was admitted to hospital with malnutrition in London. She arrived from Ireland aged 16 and lived on not very much food as she earned so little. She has osteoporosis as a result now in her 70s. My aunt suffered the same.
She was so aneamic and weighed about 7 stone and spent a month at central Middlesex being fed.

This was the early 60s. She didn't smoke ir drink . Lived on tea and toast.

I have seen pictures of MIL's mother and grandmother. Both obese, as is she (born in the 50s). All very slim when they were young. They wouldn't touch junk food, they were all great cooks who would only eat wholesome, home-cooked food. She now has HBP, joint problems, pre diabetic etc.

My granny was born in just after WWI but she was never slim. My other grandmother was smaller and always rather proud of her "good legs" but she never had a flat stomach and compared to the models and actresses that we think of when we hear "1950s", she was somewhat hefty.

My dad was born just after the war and he was so tiny and thin that he was allowed extra food at school. He won't have been the only one. More people were surviving debilitating childhood illnesses and that had an effect on adult height and build. One of dad's friends had polio and he is still gaunt and stooped 60 years later. The same illnesses are now rare.

We are getting bigger though and I mean bigger as in taller too.
I went to the Bronte house a few weeks ago and they had some of the clothes they used to wear on display, they were tiny!

We're comparing with the 50s and 60s, not 200 years ago! Clearly in those days many people were tiny and malnourished.
We're aren't all bigger now than we were in the 60s. Some people are but there are certainly plenty of slim people around. There is more of a spread of weight ranges.

Snacking wasn’t allowed between meals
Parents in 1960/70 often born and lived through rationing so had different ideas about sweets
Most families, if they did own a car only had one car- people walked rather than using a car
Central heating wasn’t widespread

Sizes have increased for females since the 1960s a size 10 then would be equivalent to a size 6 now

I had a one teacher who was obese, that was during 11 years

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8538496.stm

As a previous poster said, size 10 was 22 inch waist in the 70's. The sizes have changed hugely. No pun intended.

I visited a museum in France near the D fay landing beachea and there was an exhibition if nurses uniforms and WAAF. Minuscule. Teeny. A size 4 or 6. No dlubt tje effects of 4 years of rationing. The stress. Etc must have kept them very trim. I felt like an elephant looking at them

Audrey Hepburn suffered severe malnutrition as a young woman in Holland.8 think it permanently effected her bones.

My parents only used the car at weekends and holidays, this was 60's/early 70's, it was put away in the garage in the week, DF cycled to work, DM couldn't drive.

I think also there was a big stigma attached to being overweight in the past. It was really frowned upon not to be slim in my mother's day - she is still incredibly judgmental about it. If you weren't making the most of yourself you wouldn't find a good husband. Woman thought of themselves as 'goods' to catch a man. Also the Hollywood sirens were the standard they all aspired to.

In my 20's there were few size 8's so I had to take size 10 in. I'm a size 10 (8 in some shops) yet I'm 8 stone compared to under 6 1/2 stone then. ( 5'1" so not emaciated) Remember desperately wanting a pair of levis 501 and smallest size was a 10 which were far too big. I sat in hot baths trying to shrink them to no avail. Ended up sewing up inside leg and putting darts in the waist band. Always sewing skirts up the side seams when no size 8 was available.

This story suggests that you were unusually teeny though - if lots of people were as slender as you then clothes would have been available.

Also if you were overweight you’d just bon down to the GP and be prescribed very effective diet pills.

Until someone realised being fat was less likely to kill you in the short term than amphetamines.

It’s really not a ’moralistic undertone’ to say that many more people did physical work in the post-war decades. It’s just a simple statement of fact.

They weren't all on blueys and fags. They genuinely ate less and there wasn't the constant troughing that we do today.

At some point things that used to be "treats" came to be seen as "snacks". So something like chocolate that used to be a once a week or Christmas/Easter treat became a snack in a child's lunchbox every day, and another on the way home from school.

The problem of childhood obesity is compounded by parents who have lost the ability to tell the difference between a hungry child and a greedy child.

I think it’s probably a combo of portion sizes, snacking and less moving around.

If you pour a satisfying bowlful of your fave cereal, then weigh it, you can easily find you’ve gone double the serving size because bowls and plates are bigger than they should be, and studies have shown that people judge how much they’ve eaten by the size relative to the plate/bowl they’ve eaten from.

We are in a vicious cycle with cars at this point. People drive and park in ways that are totally selfish towards pedestrians and cyclists, so more people make shorter and shorter journeys in their own car.

The vast majority of women wore some sort of corsetry up until the '70s, so waist sizes can be a bit misleading.

The great actresses of the '50s all used corsetry of some description, whether that be underwear or integrally in their costumes. They also had extremely skilled makeup artists, lighting technicians and cinematographers working to optimise their beauty. The same is true of the early celeb models like Dovima or Jean Patchett.