AIBU - With this new data on obesity and the NHS is it time to have some honest and difficult conversations?

[IAmADancer]

New data from a ‘landmark study’ has show that obesity costs the NHS around 14billion a year and that 2 out of 3 adults are obese.

I know this is a difficult subject but the numbers are pretty clear. With the cost of living crisis and a general requirement for both parents to work now to support themselves how do we support people to make the right choices and tackle a growing problem?

Im really interested to hear people’s opinions on what we can do with such stark figures laid bare.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/17/cost-of-obesity-twice-those-who-are-healthy-nhs/

I think this is true of a lot of people with a disability - and if it limits you physically this will cause you to gain weight, too.

If that theory were actually true, then thyroid disorders would have zero impact on a persons weight. But they do. If the body controls what happens to the food you out in your mouth via hormones and your metabolism, you don’t have ultimate control over how your body reacts.

If everyone was forced to read Chris Van Tulleken's book Ultra Processed People I honestly think the obesity problem would largely vanish over the next 20 years.

We need to demand that the government makes it very, very hard to buy/afford UPFs. But they won't because the fake food manufacturers are worth billions to the economy.

But we are killing ourselves and our children.

Eat real food. That's all you need to do. You won't then get cravings. Stop the diet cokes and low fat spreads.

When you have businesses like Slimming World actively promoting and selling UPF food (as ready meals) as the 'answer' to obesity you know that we as a country have got something very, very wrong.

LOVE this post!

I too am absolutely addicted to sugar and salty snacks, and have to consciously say ''NO!'' to myself at the pretty packets of jelly babies and Twiglets by the counter in my local shop.

I lost 1.5 stones just by walking regularly every day, wether I feel like it or not.
My arthritic knee is better for that weight loss.

No one needs a gym to lose weight- Walking {even in town} is just as effective.

If the govt provided free gyms, they probably wouldn't be used.

A pharmacy friend says diabetes drugs {the type of diabetes that can be controlled with diet} are given out rather than people restricting their sugars/carbs.

@Windflower92 has it for me. I am very obese. This is my problem, and nobody else’s - nobody forces me to eat or drink. And the reasons I do are complicated and mine to unpick and deal with. Sure, there are things that would help (safe cycle tracks and more easily available healthy “fast” foods for example). But ultimately it will be me and my family that suffers if I don’t take action to become healthier. Which I am doing.

I said it comes to that in most cases, meaning it applied to people who don't have disorders that affect weight gain.

I am obese (according to boots scales) I run 3k a day, good diet, no takeaways , alcohol or sweets (don’t like them) , a rare meal out as can no longer afford them, I feel fit and don’t look overweight but I don’t think BMI is a very reliable measure of obesity

I am late to this thread but figures of 2/3 does actually shock me. It’s not what I see.

Apart from all the other suggestions, people should be educated on portion control. I am not overweight, but I have been amazed by how few calories my body needs in peri-menopause.

@Tiddlypomtiddlypom the correct data is 2 in 3 are overweight (not obese)

12 pages in and I have a craving to eat a large bar of chocolate. And I don't even bloody like chocolate!!!!

Picking up on the PP who said it has become culturally acceptable to eat crap, eat too much and put on weight, I agree. The converse also applies: I live in a bubble of an affluent area of London. Not a single one of my female friends or acquaintances is overweight much less obese. I am a toned size 12 bmi 24 and I am easily the biggest woman in any room I walk into. My DC are at a private school with 1000 pupils. I have never seen an overweight mum at pick up or a school event. In my social circle it is culturally unacceptable to overeat or be overweight. I go out for coffee all the time and with friends and school mums. In 14 years no one has EVER ordered a slice of cake or biscuit with their coffee.

Totally agree. Time to have an honest conversation around the real causes of obesity which are multiple and complex and complex to treat. Then perhaps we can stop treating it as a moral issue and stop finger wagging and sending people home with a 1200 calorie a day diet sheet and no access to the simple basic medical care that others of a smaller size can expect. In my case it was related to childhood issues. I’ve repeatedly put in weight throughout my life and yo- yoed and hated myself. After a couple of years of therapy I am more in control and my relationship with food and my body . I have stopped gaining and can sometimes gradually lose. I will likely always be obese as I’m now menopausal so will be denied some aspects of medical care for the rest of my life. With the right support years ago it could ah e been so different. So yes an honest conversation is something I could get on board with.

We need to stop normalising and playing down being fat. Starting with being overweight never mind obese.

i’ve seen so many posts on here where posters argue that being a size 12/14 or having a BMI over 25 is still slim. It just isn’t.

Same as people with fat children insisting that the kids are just “chunky” because the have a big build or it’s “puppy fat” etc. it’s extra layers of fat from eating too much, in the majority of cases.

Medical issues and medication do not explain this away. And being “active” does bugger all when people are still shoving the food and calories in, so all the “but my DC does sport twice a week” or “but I walk my dog every day” is just irrelevant.

Restrictive diets don't work for a lot of people, our bodies need a whole range of nutrients including some fats and sugars. Of course it shouldn't be eaten in excess but it shouldn't be completely cut out either. It often leads to people being very hungry later in the day and too tired to resist and so they binge. Also, calories are calories - it really doesn't matter where they come from, the body still burns them off because that's how it works. Obviously if you are eating 500 calories in a bar of chocolate instead of 500 calories in a bowl of pasta your going to be hungry again a lot sooner and so eat more - but the chocolate bar itself isn't the problem.

Lifestyles have changed as have shopping and cooking habits - children aren't really taught how to cook at school and parents aren't home as much to teach their children, and many parents do find it more convenient (and cheaper) to cook processed foods because so many households are time poor and well as financially struggling right now. More people drive now than they used to, jobs are often quite sedentary, and so even the small amount of exercise from that is being lost.

We have more medicines being prescribed which can have weight gain as a side effect, such as birth control pills and antidepressants, as well as medicines such as steroids. Finding a solution to the obesity problem won't be a simple solution, it will need tackling from so many angles and some issues there are no real solutions too.

I know families where both parents have 2 jobs to get by (a main job and a part time job each), they work around each other so childcare isn't paid for, they still have to find time to do things with their children, and keep the house running, and somehow find time for themselves and suggesting that they find some time to go for a jog in the day and spend some more time cooking meals from scratch when they're exhausted and just want to rest before the next job starts I'd laughable. Wages in this country just aren't high enough to live on in some areas. Survive - maybe - but the families I know aren't really living.

Most people don't want to hear that the bacteria and yeast in their guts are responsible to a very high degree for what they put in their mouths as we want to feel we are "in control" even when we are overweight and clearly not in control. The recent studies are absolutely frightening about how much control the invaders of our bodies have on many of our systems!

A lot of excuses to be overweight on this thread....

So - 2 out of 3 people in the UK are obese. Some of these, say one of the 2, are obese because of disability and / or medication. That leaves a third of the population of the UK obese for other reasons....over eating and under exercising?

Type 2 (and 3) diabetes are pretty much reversed by good diet and healthy eating alone. During my 2nd pregnancy, I lost about a stone through a very healthy low carb diet and reversed my gestational diabetes through diet alone. Mu obstetrics consultant and diabetes midwife were both astonished that I didn't use insulin or metfornin as was per the norm with a lot of pregnant diabetic women.

The consultant agreed most of the diabetes was able to be controlled purely by diet alone, but unfortunately most people haven't got the willpower to do so.

Like this. If the scales “say” you are obese then it’s because you are.

If you feel fine with that then good for you, but i guarantee it isn’t a mistake that you can justify with not agreeing with a BMI calculator 🙈

If we could ditch this fucking horrible attitude towards excess weight/obesity, that 'you've brought it on yourself' and 'all your problems are as a result of being a disgusting greedy piglet' (those are direct quotes from medics to me in the last 20 years! Yes I complained about the second one. Nothing happened.)...

That would be a big start.

Because of this attitude my heart failure went un dx for years, my Ehlers Danlos went un dx for years, my stenotic spine... my hypothyroidism...

I was fat because I was clearly a greedy lazy pig, not because my body was so broken that even lying down hurts, standing for more than a few seconds causes agonising pain and loss of function of my lower limbs, which made me tired and caused me to avoid exercise.

Despite a history of being a VERY active, fit child and young adult, I was discounted as a liar, laughed at when I asked if symptoms could be X or Y (they were in fact both X and Y)... told to go for a walk and take sleeping tablets for the panic attacks I was having in the night (actually I was struggling to breathe when lying down, drowning in my own fluids as a result of severe heart failure).

So here I am with a much shortened life expectancy, my medications cost the NHS a small fortune each month...

Daily:

Abasaglar
Novorapid
Carvedilol
Dapagliflozin
Spironolactone
Levothyroxine
Ivabradine
Entresto

Weekly
Butec patches
Ozempic jab

As needed:
Oramorph
Tramadol
Diazepam

Monthly, that costs around a thousand pounds.

The medical worlds understanding of human gut function is another shocking area - what we know, really, amounts to little more than we knew in the dark ages. Progress is being made but translating that progress into actual treatment and education is slower than tectonic plate movement.

If I'd been treated as an ill person with inherited health conditions, instead of treated like shit, theres a good chance I would have had the surgery to fix my back, understood my health conditions before irreversible damage was done.

I am sure people will say 'oh but we don't mean you' and 'but you're a rare case'...

I am not rare. Billions of woman (and yep it is mainly women) are treated like absolute crap by the medical profession, and everyone else, when overweight and as a result serious health issues are missed. I could very easily have died when a Dr gave me sleeping tablets for the 'panic attacks' that I was waking with as they resulted in me NOT waking when I was struggling for oxygen. Fortunately my partner dragged me upright and woke me.

At an individual level, medication and health issues and disability absolutely do "explain it away".

I have an interactive thyroid. I have ASD so some foods I cannot eat. I cannot walk more. I cannot, some days, prep my own food because it's beyond me. I take a ton of medication including antidepressants and steroids.

I'd like to see you try it.

All this stuff about gym subsidies - the fact is that even the people who can afford a gym membership and in fact buy one, still don't go. Just look how busy gyms are January compared to March, I've been one of those people in my time as well.

Over the last 10 years I have gained 5 stone. I used to be very fit. I had some joint surgery which didn't help but the reality is I ate too much and too many of the wrong foods. This wasn't out of ignorance, stupidity or poverty it was because it was nice to eat those things and not go to the gym.

Earlier this year I decided enough was enough and set about losing the weight. I'm 20lbs down with 50 to go to get to a healthy bmi. Let me tell you it is hard. Getting up an hour early to go out walking in the cold and rain to get my steps in. Saying no to a lovely slice of victoria sponge after a day walking. Not having butter on my toast. No chips, ice cream or sugar in my coffee. Or milk for that matter. It's going to take me a whole year and I was "only" a size 16. The task is much bigger and harder for people with much more to lose. Even though I can now see and feel the benefit of my efforts I still argue with myself every single day over whether to have "just one" biscuit or an extra slice of bread because I'm hungry.

Everywhere I look people are now applauded for flaunting their fat curves and no-one is allowed to comment that objectively these people are damaging their health not to mention adding to the NHS burden. Every coffee shop and tea room is rammed with high calorie foods. Cooking shows are all about adding butter and making yummy cakes. This all has to stop if we really want to become more healthy as a society. We have to recognise that eating less and moving more is even harder in the face of all this and it's about more than subsidised gym membership and showers in offices!

I agree.

Recent scientific studies have shown how Parkinson's disease may originate in the gut, and that depression can be made a lot better through eating probitics and "feeding" the good gut bacteria.

Just because for you medication can explain it away that is not the case for the vast majority
This isn't about you
It's about society and it's problem and what it costs society