Boris declares war on fat

[Weallhavevalidopinions]

Boris has said his being overweight contributed to his problems with Covid-19.
Stories this morning suggest he will wage war on fat...

What type of help do you think might be suggested?

Have you decided to lose weight due to Covid-19 worries?

YABU - no I will not lose weight due to Covid worries
YANBU - I will lose weight due to Covid worries

But if DC are overweight the hunger is probably sugar craving. In which case they might be better off with an apple or a carrot, than with bread I never mentioned overweight DC. The majority of overweight adults were once slim DC who developed bad eating habits. Bad eating habits are created by poverty when you've a spare £1.50 for lunches, in this circumstance would you buy the berries or loaf for lunch?

I don't use a freezer at all (and I try to avoid fruit as the fructose and my ablity to eat 10 bananas in a row means I am better off sticking to veg).

So anyone short of money eat nothing until say 2 or 3pm and try to make that the one meal if you can with loads of veg and perhaps a tin of sardines or tuna fish or eggs.

However we all know it is very very difficult for most people to lose weight and even to stop primary age children not being obese in some communities. we liev in a minority white London borough so are surrounded by ethnic shops piled high into the street with peppers and all kind of veg - contrast that with a talk I gave in Scotland a few year ago staying at a hotel near the conference venue and there was not a single item of what I would call food in the only shop open near by - it was just chocolate, crisps. I could not even buy a bag of nuts - it was just a garage shop but down here those have all kinds of good stuff in them these days as I am sure they do in Edinburgh and other richer areas.

Take the cheap frozen berries at £1.50 = same price for a cheap loaf of bread & pack of ham. I know what I'd choose to keep the DC hunger at bay

Why not apples or bananas? Super cheap. Also, kids aren’t going to get fat eating ham sandwiches. Berries are a luxury, you can get nice fruit for much cheaper.

Honestly this isn’t a poverty issue. Immigrants can generally cook anything from a few veggies and seasoning.

British people can’t cook worth shit and that’s why they rely on overpriced processed food because they lack skills and knowledge.

Part of the problem is distorted attitudes to healthy weight.

I have 2 children both with ASD who don't really do food for pleasure. They don't eat unless they are hungry and are funny, even in normal times, about things like buffets and foods at birthday parties.

Both are slimmer than most children. My mother is constantly on about their weight as they do not fit her opinion of what a healthy weight ought to look like. She says things like you need to feed them more biscuits and chocolate to expand their stomachs so they will eat more. She doesn't realise that if they eat the biscuits and chocolate then they won't eat healthy food at all because they are not hungry.

I got into a row with my mother yesterday as my DS who is 14 took his top off to get some sun rays, and she could see some ribs.

I have been told I need to take him to the doctor, that he's anorexic etc. Been made to feel like a bad mother.

I have checked his weight /BMI and he is a HEALTY WEIGHT, she won't have it!

The massive irony is that whilst my siblings and I were not fat children we are all obese adults (I've a BMI of 31 that I'm working on). If I dare to mention that this was caused by habits in childhood, such as not eating everything on the plate and wasting food is sinful and a treat every day , then I'm encouraging anorexia in my children.

we liev in a minority white London borough so are surrounded by ethnic shops piled high into the street with peppers and all kind of veg - contrast that with a talk I gave in Scotland a few year ago staying at a hotel near the conference venue and there was not a single item of what I would call food in the only shop open near by - it was just chocolate, crisps. I could not even buy a bag of nuts

Exactly. Corner shops stock what sells among their customer base, not what people should be eating. It’s bad business otherwise. If there was great demand for apples and spinach, they’d sell it just like those ethnic shops full of veggies.

Yes, I agree although most people have access to some kind of supermarket these days (on or off line) which do tend to have things like sardines, veg etc and plenty of people could lose weight if they just ate half of what they currently eat (not that that is easy)

cantdo, that is not a normal mother surely! Even back in the 1930s in my mother's not well off mining family they knew who was fat and who was not and were not encouraging people to eat chocolate to build them up.

I LOVE these ethnic supermarkets.
Btw they have watermelons now. Oh my god. The watermelons. Not the perfectly round. I think these are from Cyprus. So good

Why not apples or bananas? Super cheap. Also, kids aren’t going to get fat eating ham sandwiches. Exactly. And the original example was berries compared with crisps or biscuits, which suggests you've already got the bread and ham and are now looking at something for a snack. In that case, bread, ham and bananas make reasonable lunches instead of buying crisps or biscuits.

Xenia

Hopefully it's not a normal mother.

She drives me mad, really f**king uphelpful. There is a link between eating disorders and autism and despite the fact I keep telling her that she's causing my kids to have eating issues by banging on she just can't help herself.

She's not talking to me now, because I sent the BMI info to her on wassap last night. I've been told that drs are stupid in the past for not seeing the fact that my kids are underweight.

If you look at people in the 1960 s - old newsreels , documentaries etc
they are all in good shape , certainly not obese . There was a lot more poverty then and presumably all the above mentioned health issues existed . While exercise is important and makes you feel better it is unfortunately too much food that makes you fat . We must stop making all the excuses -. When I was little it was the wealthier families that were more likely to have a weight problem , not the poor .

Also, back in the day, not everyone drove/bussed/got the train to work. My mum walked a few miles to/from the office, five days a week. She was like a racing snake 😊. After she learned to drive... the weight crept on. And up. She’d drive to work/the shops and basically never walked anywhere unless she absorbed had to.

We didn’t have takeaways and heat no serves, in the way we do today. We might get a Chinese once a month or so, as a treat. Otherwise, she always cooked from scratch and it was fresh veg. Grew a lot herself. Little meat. Lots of fish (cause my dad worked near the fish market).

I’m overweight now though I do cycle/walk a bit. Not like we did “back then“ though. Also, people travel miles for work now and do long shifts/several jobs to make ends meet.

It shouldn't cost too much to change things for them if it's a minority
You're clearly not getting it. What I said is that group is minority of the whole obese population, ie. it's not just that group that needs tackling but obesity as a whole.

The issues you raised are valid, but focusing on them only will not resolve the obesity crisis as a whole because these are not the main reason why people are obese.

There were poor people, with MH and mobility issues 30 years ago yet society were much slimer. The focus needs to be on something else.

When did I say I can't afford healthy snacks? I was making reference to a family struggling for money.

Snacks are a very British cultural thing.

The difference between being overweight and not over weight is eating the equivalent of an extra Mars bar daily. It's only about 150 calories.

Don't eat snacks, 'healthy' or otherwise. You don't need them. Just eat proper meals.

And again eating snacks is one of those tricks on your brain where you don't see how much you eat (like the buffet) so you don't mentally quantify it.

Snacks are a very British cultural thing.

I see snacks mentioned quite bit on MN but I'm not really sure what people mean by them. I'm British BTW

I think it means grazing thing? I have 4 meals a day now. 1 of it is "snack" when I have something like slice of bread with slice of ham or similar thing. A snack. But it's at the same time every day so it's a regular meal.
When I was growing up we had breakfast, snack mid morning (school starting at 8am), lunch, snack at 3, dinner 6. Maybe something little later. That mini meal/snack stops you from being ABSOLUTELY "starving" and than having the "hungry eyes". You still get hungry because these are small things to eat, but not famished.

My weight is increasing daily.
I've never in my adult life been in incorrect weight on the NHS charts.
I'm.somsick of being insulted. A few years ago over 3 years I decided I wanted to be within my correctvweight range. For the first 12.months WW worked wonders then nothing fell off for 9 weeks despite 2 to 3 hours of exercising 6 days a week. I changed to SW and put on 2lbs in 6 weeks.
I then did my fitness pal and calorie counting. After 18 months of this and exercising my weight either stabilised or I creased. I lost the odd pound here and there but increasing my calories or reducing them further made no difference at all. In the end I got to 10ztone and 2lbs which at 4ft and 111/2 inches males me a fatty. I was in size 10 clothes, they fitted loosly and I even fitted the odd size 8. However, I was told I needed to sort my life out and lose weight by my GP. To say it was the final nail in the coffin.
I'm now libibglife I'm obsessed by food and 3 hours of daily exercise but now 12 stone.
I'll never be in my range and so another reason to worried about Covid.
I dunno what's wring with me and my bidy nut i just cant get mynweight any lower than 10stone 2lbs.

I dont know if I'm going to get flamed for this and I dont mean it offensively.

But sometimes I think there is a bit more going on with the obesity crisis than food, particularly for women.

It really does seem that obesity is much more prevalent in younger women, whereas with men I have noticed the weight doesnt really pile on til middle age.

I have no foundation for thinking this (just interested in other's comments really), but do you think it could be something hormonal? Birth control? Hormones in meat?

I have also noticed that women tend to put weight on round the middle now and lose their waists, rather than putting it on their bums/boobs where you would expect it. It's more of a male pattern weight gain.

Please dont flame me 😬

@Weallhavevalidopinions

Just answering your question from the first page. I used slimfast for 3 days and that really wasn't sustainable at all. I then started weight watchers online - I've been paying for months without using it and fear just really kicked in. I've had good food days and bad food days (3 packets if crisps in succession followed by chocolate 🙊) but I have stayed in my weekly allowance of points. I'm not going to lie it's been hard somedays and I think my initial speedy loss is because I have so much to lose (bmi of 34 to start with) but I think it must be slowing as I stayed the same weight this week so have decided to try and up my exercise - just going for walks (i haven't been leaving the house/garden for weeks at a time).

Further to my earlier comment, I have huge respect for people who are struggling with this issue. My parents have done for 25 years - ironically it's the spectre of COVID-19 that changed everything and today they are losing weight hand over fist.

I don't think there's anything wrong using the fear of complications from a virus as a motivator to change one's entire lifestyle.

My folks both have health complications. Mother has hypothyroid, my father has heart issues and all manner of other things.

What they said changed for them was eating to a plan, using an app to track input and accepting they couldn't input any more once they'd reached their allocation.

Previously? They'd quietly bemoaned the fact that eating what they normally ate in the last 20 years was leading to cumulatively bad results.

And that's the key here I think. Acceptance of reality is hard at the best of times. It took a harsh reality to help them get there. I'm just happy they did.

Somehow we have to try and divorce some of the toxic emotion and bitterness around food: the "she eats what she wants, why can't I?"

We are all so different. It's what works best for us that matters, today.

Having worked in various countries, societies attitudes toward food are a real game changer but unfortunately the obesity crisis is spreading. There are of course individual reasons but we are in the UK living in a food centric society. Food is involved with nearly every activity even gyms. I do think Many people are addictive in nature and overeating is similar to the smoking generation of the 70s.

Emersldshamrock, or perhaps bring your own lunch from home, cheaper and healthier

Women probably put more weight on earlier as they get pregnant and then give birth and men don't.

On Marriedto's point - that must be very frustrating.How many calories a day were you eating when you didn't lose weight despite dieting? Like Redtoothbrush. I , sadly, only need 1400 calories a day to stay the same weight, never mind lose any.

With women I also find the meals especially outside of the home are designed for men it was the main thing I noticed in my twenties that my weight was always lower when I was single.

@marriedToABellend the GP should have signpost you somewhere especially if you are having difficult time with it. 3 hours a day exercise is excessive unless that's only movement you have imho