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?

I have to think about food all the time and plan my days carefully, and record everything I eat (and drink), and really watch my portions in order to lose weight.

My parents used to say in the 80s "eat up your dinner then you can have a dessert", "finish your plate". So I wasn't allowed to naturally control my appetite and learned at a young age to continue eating when I was full. Plus my diet was terrible and I was just eating loads of empty calories and was always hungry. So I never know when I'm full until I'm overfull, and just end up eating way too much if I don't constantly watch myself.

People stayed slim long after rationing ended. It was the rise in mass produced convenience foods and availability and food additives and presrvatives, advertising and supermarkets that started the trend to eat more and buy more.

Our waists were a completely different shape from ours today. I was born in 1956 so a teenager in late 60’s early 70’s. My jeans and skirts from Chelsea Girl were a size 12 which was a 24” waist! Size 10 was 32” bust and 22” waist.
All my friends were about a 10 or 12, we ate at set times, walked more, didn’t have snacks or cans of drink. In my family on a Friday night, my dad brought home a single mars bar on his way home from work and it was cut into 4 pieces, one for each of us. And we regarded that as a treat.
We were quite poor in those days, but there were no cheap convienence foods so my mum had to shop every day and make cheap meals from scratch and also used stuff in season that my dad grew in the garden. So a lot of effort physically had to go into providing the meals.
I’ve stayed reasonably slim all my life but all of my children, grandchildren etc are bigger all round than my generation. Not really large just generally seem to have a bigger skeleton!

People were definitely slimmer - I'm talking late 50s and 60s, and obviously generally - of course there would have been exceptions.

There was very little fast food available and people weren't snacking nearly so much. Takeaways were much rarer, very often on grounds of cost.

Children played out more, and often walked more - there were fewer cars. People walked more in general.

Sweets and crisps etc. were very often a weekend-only treat, rather than an everyday thing.

In my senior school of 600 girls in the 60s, very few were overweight. In my year of 3 x forms of about 30 girls each, only one was at all fat, and even she was nothing like the size you so often see now.

Primary school in the fifties, virtually no over weight children. When I went to secondary school, there would be one plumpish girl in most classes, but I only remember one who was really obese. People used to say in hushed tones "Poor Sandra, it's glandular, you know."

Left school mid-seventies, perhaps one child in each class was obese and one chubby. We ate proper food - convenience food was tinned, not many people had a freezer. Living in market town, going out for meals outside birthdays and anniversaries was virtually unheard of and did not include children.

Going out for coffee and cake was something only elderly aunties would do. Biscuits were plain.

You ate what was put in front of you and ate all of it; food was a necessity, not a social event.

We were much more active in those days - I walked a mile and a half to school every.

I'm not overweight because of lack of activity. I walk the dog, do gardening, housework, and walk (briskly) on my journey to and from work, I go to the gym for at least an hour twice a week and do half cardio and half weights, I also do yoga twice a week and run once a week with a group. I burn off 2,200 - 2,500 calories a day and walk 4 - 6 miles (or more) a day.

It's very interesting - thinking about how slim people were in the recent past (60s 70s 80s), saying their attitudes to food were more healthy ect. Thinking of them as 'other' and 'in the past'. Looking at the obesity crisis of now as a totally detached issue.

However - these people from the 60s 70s 80s are our roots. What we are now is descended from how we were then. These people raised us, or were us when we were little, and to an extent they molded the attitudes to food which we have now.

My mother would serve up practically transparent slices of cake. Late 70s and 80s i would never get a second serving of anything. Frugality was seen as a virtue. I was a skinny kid and a skinny teen. And yet looking back now she was overweight though the 80s 90s and onwards. Embarrassed to be eating - telling everyone she never touched sugar, while munching on cakes and busicuits and choc every evening. She still does it. At 80 years old telling me she'll make a bar of chocolate last a month ect. What she forgets is i do her weekly shop now and i know what she's eating per week. Squirty cream, jam, cake, and chocolate!!! I don't know why she still keeps up the pretense because no one else cares! DH, DDs and i eat what ever we fancy without the internal big guilt trip.

Ramble, sorry.

I wonder if people were simply ok with being hungry?

Well being hungry was fairly normal. Snacking wasn't really a thing and food was more expensive. And shops shut at 5.30; there was no nipping out for treats on an evening.

And yes, there was the attitude that being hungry and having a good appetite was healthy. I'm 53 and if my lot say they are hungry an hour before dinner I say, "Well hunger's the best sauce, you'll enjoy your food then."

Depends what you mean by slim. Marilyn Monroe was considered an ideal, she was a 12-14, big by today's targets. Sophia Loren, Diana Dors, Elizabeth Taylor, all voluptuous. Women dieted and kept an eye on their size but were rounder, not so eating disordered as now. There were less really obese people, and less really skinny ones. Actors not typical then any more than now. Petula Clarke, Jane Fonda in the 70s have been open about pressure, Bulimia etc.
Rich people often slimmer as status symbol in western culture, poor diet accounts for fat among the poor.

I think everyone was much slimmer . I don't remember anyone my mother's age being overweight, and only one or two who were overweight at school. However, EVERYONE was watching their weight 24/7 . Also, portions were much smaller, food not very nice and no one could afford to eat out. Meals were cooked from scratch too. Houses not heated as much and people walked a lot more.
I was always on a diet and knew the calories of everything I ate.

I wonder if people were simply ok with being hungry?

Today people eat when they are bored or peckish because they can, the stuff is there.
Back then, people knew they were having a meal soon so would tolerate feeling 'hungry' and have an appetite for dinner. There wasn't so much demanding instant gratification or mothers thinking their kids would 'starve' if they didn't eat something every time they complained they were hungry or giving in to fussy demands over food at meals.

I remember in the late 60's everyone looked thin apart from older women who sometimes lost their waist and got middle aged spread. They'd be classed as normal size now.
My mother was skinny, still is, despite having had 6 children. My father was always on at her to gain weight and get some curves. he bought her some Wate On once. Was most disappointed when she didn't suddenly develop voluptuous curves.

My granny was what they called a 'big girl' in the 40's until she died. She was about a size 18/20, from memory, in 2000 ish. They liked their food and ate extremely well (nice comfort stuff) by today's standards. It was all home cooked but featured fillet steak, lots of red meat in general, cream cakes, milky puddings a few times a week. The weight crept up more after she retired due to not as many calories needed.

Not only could I not sustain their amount of carb/fat, I couldn't afford it!!

I wonder if people were simply ok with being hungry?

Well, yes, if they were smoking ten fags at their desk between lunch and dinner, I imagine they were.

Have you looked at pictures of Marilyn Monroe? I reckon she's an 8 if that.

People caught and ate rabbits. That ended with myxomatosis (1953).

Agree with the poster commenting on chicken - in the 50s it was still a special treat; I can remember how strange it was when prices dropped because of battery farming and it became an everyday meat. I remember some year back reading a research paper compare nutrient value of chickens over time - less nutrient nowadays.

To people talking about ready meals in the 80s - that was 30 years later than the 50s, a whole generation later. There weren't any ready meals (even Vesta curry wasn't around), food was cooked from scratch because there wasn't an alternative.

I think snacking and sweets being a daily norm rather than a weekly treat. I was a child in the late 70's/80's and only had sweets once a week. Only had desserts at the weekend. I was a slim child. Probably considered skinny these days but I was perfectly healthy. Nothing to do with money either - just had comfortably off parents that didn't indulge every single day. I can't believe how often kids have sweets and puddings these days. No wonder there are so many none-slim children around.

Computers and the internet to blame for this. For example, even in a sedentary office job, if you wanted to send a document you had to get up and walk to the fax, if you wanted to get a message to a colleague you had to walk to their desk, there was loads of filing and if you needed info you would have to walk to the files or library to get it. You'd walk to the sandwich shop to order catering. If you wanted need you had to walk to the papershop unless you left late enough for a delivery. There were loads of foot and cycle couriers in London moving stuff around.

The thing I find irritating about this type of thread as that so many posters say that "everyone" was thinner then or we "all" eat more now. Speak for yourselves! Some people are still slim and do plenty of exercise. Although there were certainly fewer overwieght and obese people there were also fewer very slim people. As the poster above stated the "ideal" then was larger. There is much more of a range now.

I think vanity sizing complicates our view of what's normal now compared to back then.

I remember putting a bit of weight on and having to go up to a 14 in top shop in the early 80s. You were hard pushed to find a 14 and never a 16. So i was the LARGEST SIZE Top Shop sold for a while. Wow i felt a fatty. I dieted.

Photos of me back then show me as very very slim. A today's 8 -10.

I wonder if people were simply ok with being hungry?

Well, yes, if they were smoking ten fags at their desk between lunch and dinner, I imagine they were. But most women weren't either smoking or at their desk. Fewer than one in ten women in the 50s smoked.

www.google.co.uk/search?q=marilyn+monroe+exercising&ie=&oe=

yes, I've managed to be a size 12 weighing 8 and a half stone, and a 12 weighing nearly 10 stone.

To people talking about ready meals in the 80s - that was 30 years later than the 50s, a whole generation later

No indeed, but I just wanted to talk about the roots of the obesity crisis. It didn't just spring out of nowhere in the noughties, it had been building for a long time through several generations.