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?

Yes I think it's to do with snacking. It's completely pointless and just adds extra calories into your diet Abd can sometimes trap people in a cycle of craving.
Also we are such a band aid nation, if we're tired we eat sugary crap to keep going rather than rest. If we have headaches we don't drink water, just take a pill, I think we're not in tune with our bodies at all any more.

When I was teaching, the member of staff who looked after the archives, showed the school a film of a sixties sixth form sports day. Every single child and member of staff was extremely slim and contrasted clearly with the children in the audience who were all sizes from normal to very large.

I used to show the sixties’ film ‘Lord of the Flies’ when I taught the book. Again, the child actors looked like whippets and and protruding ribs, all except Piggy, the overweight boy who, in the film, looked about average for today.

So, yes, in my memory, and documented by film, people were much slimmer in the past.

We ate less at each meal and never between meals. I remember mum would share ten fish fingers or a Vesta curry between four of us. We also walked further than children do today. I liked to run everywhere as a kid and ran and walked mile to school and in the holidays.

Despite my best efforts to get my own children to eat sensibly and to take exercise, as adults they both struggle with their weight while I have stayed slim.

It is a conundrum. Our modern lives are killing us with plenty. I think the greatest deprivation the present age offers is that of willpower and volition.

That should say ‘and had’, not ‘and and’!

Also ‘walked miles...’

My mother wore rubber 'roll ons' to make herself look thinner. I used to dread growing up because I didn't want to wear them. For a while in the early seventies I wore a panty girdle. Both of those would have contributed to women looking thinner. I vaguely remember adverts for a 5lb thinner girdle!

mum would share 10 fish fingers between four of us

That's pretty much what I'd do now, tbf

It's snacking and that people are better nourished so bigger in appearance and walk less.

But in answer to your question OP my GM who lived in a rural area so was unaffected by rationing was never what anyone would have described as slim. People are skinny in films now they aren't necessarily representative.

It is under individual control though what you eat/drink and how much you exercise is a choice even if you were badly fed as a child. And a lot of women need more than 1500 calories, Garmin tells me that I use an average of 2200 per day and it goes up if I do lots of exercise. If I do nothing at all (wfh stay in the house all day) I sometimes just drop under 2000. I'm 5'10 though so that probably makes a difference. I have no idea how many I actually eat but my weight doesn't change significantly.

Hisaishi

I know what the point of the site is!

Perhaps you don't know the sketch I mean, but this thread is very reminiscent of it with its competitive retrospective frugality.

It's obvious that change isn't always for the better, and it's obvious that the obesity crisis isn't a good thing.

What I was commenting on is the overall tone of the thread. There's a v clear edge of moralistic judgement in many posts, as if this change in society and average weights makes modern people inherently worse - weak, lazy, stupid. We live in a different world, but many of us are still capable of managing our weight.

People didn’t eat as much

It was a treat to eat out or get a take away

I think after middle age people tended to get bigger but we are getting bigger all the time

We are constantly eating but I think it’s more to do with what we are eating and drinking

Something I have noticed in myself (having recently started a diet) is how many of my rewards for doing things I don’t want to do are based around food - work Saturdays, pick up a Starbucks on the way and buy a takeout on the way home (after all, it’s not that expensive and more than covered by the overtime), have a bad day at work, buy a pret lunch (as oppose to the lunch I make myself). I don’t think people had the same attitude to food back in the 50s.

Also, I have discovered the portion sizes I have been taking are far too large. I have literally halved the size of some meals I eat regularly. I thought I’d be starving and I’m not hungry at all.

Don't forget people drink more alcohol at home now too. Before, drinking was just at the pub (men only) or special occasions.

Also the low fat lie that started in the 80s meaning everyone was mainlining 'diet' products packed with sugar.

Yes, we never drank alcohol. Except for an occasional sherry

Well apart from the people who worked for breweries and got a daily beer allowance. Many men who held the purse strings if you go back spent their wages in the pub. Ah that'll be why the family were slim. The good old days.

I was alive in the 50s and 60s, not everyone was slim. Children tended to be thinner than today but from my memory many women over 40 were overweight and looked older than women today.

Re portion sizes, I still have a 1971 cookery book - with a photo of a very young Mary Berry inside! - where I do notice that instructions for e.g. a Victoria sandwich make only a very small one - 6-7 inch sandwich tins. 4 inches is roughly 10 cm.

Ditto a same-era GH book where I still use the lemon meringue pie recipe - again their quantities make a very small one. All that faff - if made properly using all the eggs and juice and zest of the lemon - for not very much.,
I always make double or triple, though should add that it's a rare thing and usually for a crowd - except for dh's birthday, since it's still his favourite by a mile..

Having said that, my mother made a lot of cakes and puddings in the 50s and 60s, but we all walked a lot more than is usual now - 2 miles each way to school - we thought nothing of it - and the house was cold in winter, no central heating until I was 14.

Has anyone watched BBC back in time for dinner?
Think it covers the 30s through to the present, very interesting.
Processed foods and take away on a large scale didn't really begin to appear until the 80s. It was also during the 80s and 90s that families began eating separately/different meals. Before this there was very little snacking between meals, and people were just more mobile. Many families didn't own a car and if they did, it was usually only used for family outings and holidays.
Every other shop on the high street now is either a restaurant, coffee shop or take away. Everywhere we go we're bombarded with readily available, easy to eat food, usually high in calories with little goodness. It gives us the quick fix on hunger for short periods. Snacking on unhealthy foods seems to have become a way of life.
Growing up myself and my brother rarely snacked between meals, if we did it was usually a piece of fruit and we always ate at the table together as a family.
Both my grandmother's and my maternal grandfather are now in their mid 80s.

Re Back in Time for Dinner - I watched the one about a middle class Edwardian family It was absolutely staggering how much they ate. The catering student who was their cook couldn’t cope with all the cooking and prep she had to do.

We have lost sight of normal. I am 42, I've had 2 dcs, I consider myself completely average (try to eat well/ exercise, liked to be a few pounds lighter) my waist is 26-27 inches (I am 5ft 5 for refference) I weigh 9st2-9st 7 and wear a (modern) size 8-10. I really am not unusually thin, I am a normal size for a mature woman. I fit my mother's (b1949) and grandmother's (born 1918) clothes from when they were my age.

I think there were fat people in the past and slim people too. What I don’t think there was, was all the angst over it. People put so much importance on what they weigh these days. It’s like a badge of honour to say you’re a size 6, when in the past people were different shapes and sizes but didn’t care as much. I know my gran used to say that calling someone fat didn’t really used to be an insult. Just a statement of fact.

There is definitely a huge problem with overweight and obesity in this country, but it’s interesting that as the nation gets fatter, people get more and more wound up about weight.

For every plus size model and proud overweight person, I will show you many times more underweight models (see article) and self-loathing overweight people.

uk.businessinsider.com/most-models-are-underweight-2016-6

Ps: I’m not overweight or underweight myself. So haven’t lost sight of what’s normal.

I am a normal healthy weight and BMI by modern standards but would have been considered a fatty in the 60s which is a bit depressing. I eat healthily and don’t snack.

Purely anecdotal - at work we have a good number of women who fall in to the obese and some clinically obese categories. They will readily admit 'the charts' say they need to lose 5 or 6 stone and tend to live for discussing their next diet. They eat huge amounts of mostly highly processed food throughout the entire day and fret if they think they might miss out on cakes etc. brought in for birthdays. That is why they are so overweight. The staff who do not do this are not huge although shapes and sizes do naturally vary.

Should have statistically I am thinner than average. But in reality a 26in waist is very normal without corsets etc. As a teen/ young w/o.en it was 24in. , I am an hour glass but have never been underweight. A healthy weight young women of average height should have a 24in waist.

Fast food outlets were pretty damn rare (apart from fish and chip shops) back then but these days people seem to trawl from Greggs to Subway to MacDonalds, etc, endlessly.....then they go home and start stuffing all over again.

There wasn't as much obesity then, though it was around. Many of us didn't have cars (we walked to and from school), machines to do the tedious work, spare cash to treat ourselves with snacks, not so much in the way of junk food. Most meals were produced from scratch.

We had fizzy drinks so loads of fillings in our teeth.