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/

As I said. I'm under the care of a dietician at the hospital and I follow religiously what they have advised. I'm not going to change that because of what someone here says. Sorry.

Food education is needed. So much UP foods which aren't even bloody good, consumed daily by most. So much misunderstanding about food and you're right, calories in calories out is so out dated and unhelpful.

I assume this was to me? You asked what should be done for you. Nothing should be done for you, the whole argument here is that people need to be responsible for their own health. Obviously in your case you are doing all you can, so great! But your attitude suggested that it would be wrong to tell people that they are responsible for their own health, and that something should be 'done' for them.

I think that's possibly true. I've recently gone back to work in the office and conversations with work colleagues along the lines of 'what are you having for tea tonight?' have left me a bit 😯- vegetarians who don't eat veg, apart from baked beans, parents who's kids have upf for their tea every night, never eat veg or salad, have a ham and cheese wrap, a packet of crisps and a mars bar for their school lunch every single day. These are intelligent folk so I don't know what the issue is, I can't imagine they've escaped all information regarding healthy eating but who knows?

*bloody food

There is nothing to be frightened about in inciting acceptable levels of shame to encourage better behaviour

I agree with this, but the problem starts when GPs diagnose everything as fatness and ignore very real issues that underlie the presenting obesity. This is very common for women. How many of us are refused investigations because whatever it is it’s clearly caused by obesity or anxiety. I know too many women with complex chronic illnesses who’ve been fobbed off by their drs for years, whilst they put on more weight, to be repeatedly told “just lose weight” aaaaargh!

If it was so easy to take control and lose weight most of us would be doing it. Fobbing us off and treating us as idiots does not help.

I’m convinced part of it is the UK’s obsession with living in detached houses. We need more high density, desirable, living areas, and amenities that are best reached by walking and cycling. Creating a lifestyle where active travel is incorporated will make a difference. If we reduce the streets that are filled with cars and let kids move around on bikes, on foot, give them more places to play safely…. I think getting everyone to move more would make a difference. Our life styles are not sustainable. Having us all living further away from everything- work, shops, schools means more car trips, less time to cook decent meals, more reliance on kids to wait around on parents to drive them places. Of course some people live rurally, but we need to build better for the majority.

This!

We're literally driving ourselves to death

The demand certainly is there because the food is cheap, addictive, convenient and tasty.

People aren't going to change unless it's made more difficult to get hold of these foods and easier to make decent healthy food.

But to do this it would need a huge shift in values, attitudes, culture.
This.

I think a lot of this can be explained by metabolism. When I was younger I ate unhealthily and stayed slim, just increasing my weight very slowly. It’s only as I’ve aged that I’ve crept into an unhealthy bracket and had to take a proper look at food.

I walk the only thing I can do now due to arthritis but I’m lucky I’m on my own now I don’t drink don’t go out much my freezer is a godsend frozen veg fruit for smoothies when weather is hot enough.

Not sure it’s had that effect in the US.

OP I highly recommend reading https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451300/ultra-processed-people-by-tulleken-chris-van/9781529900057. This isn’t about people making right choices, it’s about governments and regulators making right decisions about our food environment.

The thing is it’s all such a complex issue. I’m obese for the first time in my life now. Up until 30 I was always super slim, size 8 at 5ft 7 and then I was diagnosed with lupus, asthma and Addisons, all of which require steroids. The weight piled on. I didn’t change what I was eating - I’ve always been fairly healthy in what I eat, but I do like chocolate and I’ve always walked a lot, like at least 2 hours a day, briskly. I am now 42 and a size 20. I know that to lose the weight I’d have to seriously cut what I’m eating and exercise more. But I can’t exercise more because of my complex health issues. So that leaves me with cutting down on what I eat - but when that’s pretty much all you have to enjoy it’s hard isn’t it. Losing weight isn’t actually going to improve my quality of life or my health conditions and going on a diet is going to make me miserable so why bother? That’s the honest truth of it. My blood pressure is good, my heart is good. I’m still walking, more than most do.

I have a very overweight sister in law …I don’t think it’s an issue for her. Bless her, I’ve noticed she can sit for literally hours, not moving, no sign of restlessness, really relaxed - and tends to eat out at Pubs a lot. Bless her, when she does move she is very slow with her movements. She probably doesn’t burn off many calories.

None of it is easy. It involves tackling everything from poverty to people's work patterns to education to the food industry. We need to change to society so that health, wellbeing and the environment and not continual economic growth and allowing the super rich to become much richer at the expense of everyone else. Successive governments have allowed society to develop this way since the 1970s, but I've been hearing regularly about rising obesity rates since the early 00s. My secondary school in the last 1980s/early 1990s was obesogenic. We had a tuck shop, chocolate machines, an ice cream van selling crap and massive queues for the canteen. Money talks though, so good luck with all that.

GF

How patronising can you get? Bless her, bless her….

Calories in calories out and that stupid plate with sections are rubbish. While the advice is plain wrong there are going to be a lot of fat people. With some variations most people can sustain a healthy weight with intermittent fasting which can just mean an early supper and late breakfast and not carb and sugar loading. Low fat and calorie counting doesn’t work for most people.

I think this when I read on here about teenagers eating like horses, and their parents responding by saying Ahh yes, but they're growing - eating a whole loaf of bread with peanut butter between school and dinner time is OK because they're growing, or eating a family sized bag of crisps and drinking 2 litres of iron bru, well, they're going through a growth spurt. Which is fine until the growth spurt stops and the metabolism changes, but the eating habits don't.

The demand was there for cigarettes and Oxy and even laudanum and bloody lead face paint. We neeD to get rid of highly processed sugary cheap UPF food stuffed with addictive chemicals. Humans are literally not going to be able to stop tending to obese as a population unless we do that, and replace with affordable proper actual food, and make it harder for us to use our cars and much easier to walk or cycle. It’s not a case of putting the biscuits down nowadays as good as it may make people feel to write that.

Awh bless.

Calorie counting does work.

But fat and low sugar increases satiety which makes it easier.

Instead of forcing maths and English down teenagers throats, we could do a lot of good teaching budgeting and cooking.

This. Most women need significantly fewer than 2000 calories a day, yet you can get that easily in one pub meal.