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/

And I think this is where mental health really has an impact. If you’re in a situation where you are inconstant mental pain and that trauma is usually embodied it is to much to ask to make yourself even more uncomfortable, you are so busy trying to maintain normal day to day function without placing extra stressors.

mental health can also interact with food in various ways such as chewing stimulating the vagus nerve. Dissociation can leave you seeking grounding mechanisms, one of the easiest of these is eating.

For many overweight individuals it is necessary to address mental health issues before and physical changes can occur.

"Now I'm fat again but slowly losing weight with the help of ozempic they don't approve of that method either."

Ozempic and similar weight loss drugs are a game changer and the NHS needs to make them available to many more people.

"If you’re in a situation where you are inconstant mental pain and that trauma is usually embodied it is to much to ask to make yourself even more uncomfortable, you are so busy trying to maintain normal day to day function without placing extra stressors."

This, so much this.

It really is. It's just most don't understand their calorie intake requirements to maintain their weight.

Factors such as hormones have an impact on your bodies basal metabolic rate, ergo influencing the number of calories your body needs to merely exist.

@Peverellshire Oh i did find another source of pleasure. They wouldnt approve over on the Relationships board though.

Total codswallop. You can't argue with science.

Calorie deficit = weight loss and vice versa.

Your improved diet which is more calorie dense is allowing your body to metabolise faster as it's getting the nutrients it needs to perform hence you continue to lose weight. You are in a calorie deficit whether you like it or not.

Meh. I’ve been ill for 30 years. Physical illness but I’ve also suffered from depression. I still managed to maintain my weight over that time and lose it if I put on a few pounds. It’s not really that hard.

Science used to say a calorie is a calorie and the source doesn’t matter - vegetables or junk.

Now science has established that the empty calories of junk food are key contributers to weight gain.

@Beneficialchampion2 its not codswallop. You should try reading all the new clinical trails and research that is coming out instead of telling someone immediately they are wrong.

There are currently ongoing research trials with Kings College London, Harvard Medical School and John Hopkins University and the bay the results are showing is that it is the food you put in your body and how chemically processed it is that is causing this crisis. It is also showing how much impact the gut micro biome has on our weight and our health from cancer, heart disease and diabetes to ADHD and mental health.

There are so many replies on this thread from people who have restricted their calorie intake and nothing has worked. Don’t dismiss something without bothering to understand it, otherwise we will continue on in this ridiculous cycle of obesity with people doing the same thing over and over with no visible results. That is the definition of madness and also ignorant.

"You also hardly ever see threads like this about people who binge drink and end up in hospital needing treatment or police intervention"

What Stephen Tompkinson has just been put through is a good example. Some on here should ask him whether its fat people or drunk people that are the problem!!!!

The complete denial that medication and mental illness have a huge impact on the nation’s weight is astounding.

I don't think anyone has denied that medication and mental illness can contribute to what causes weight gain but a huge impact? Are you saying that these factors are the main causes of obesity and not lifestyle, diet, lack of exercise, motivation and self control (which tbf can be mental struggles, therefore part of a mental problem)?

You are missing the point

The reason those who restrict calorie intake usually gain weight is because they do so in a manner that changes the way their body metabolises and their daily calorie expenditure decreases hence they put on weight.

I accept what you are saying in terms of how a calorie dense healthy diet is better than a calorie restricted one made up of junk food

But for the third and final time, if you are in a calorie deficit you lose weight. You don't just magically make energy out of no where. This is scientific fact and you cannot dispute it.

What do you make of this then?

@Beneficialchampion2 and some Harvard research published back in Oct 2020
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting-calories

Happy to share more if you need it…..

It reaffirms the point I make.

For the fourth time now

Calorie deficit = weight loss.

Your diet, medication, hormones, exercise and genetics dictate your basal metabolic rate. If you consume fewer calories than your net daily expenditure you will lose weight, I'm not sure how I can put it in more simple terms for you.

But I am not going to argue with you any further.

Have you even bothered to read the Harvard paper which clearly states that calorie counting is an outdated method that doesn’t work?

You’re very blinkered aren’t you? And whilst technically CICO may mean weight loss, it doesn’t mean it ‘works’.

The theory that counting calories doesn't work assumes that most people are stupid (which is true on for most on this thread)

If you know your basal metabolic rate (which is incredibly difficult to calculate as there are many factors) and you consume fewer calories than your body needs to survive. It will burn it fat reserves to produce energy.

If someone's BMR is 2000 cals a day and they eat a 1800 calorie pizza which is lacking in nutrients, they will lose weight for a short period, after which their body will adjust to their calorific intake, and the lack of nutrients will be adversely affecting their metabolism, slowing it down meaning their BMR decreases, to say 1600 cals a day. They continue to eat the 1800 calorie pizza daily and are now in a calorie surplus, now they start to put weight on...

This analogy sums up your point nicely, but if said individual adjusted their diet in line with their change in metabolism and dropped to 1600 calories a day, they would continue to lose weight because that's how it is.

You take any of the 8 billion humans on this planet, if their body is ina calorie deficit they will lose weight.

I am not advocating it as a sustainable diet, merely stating the facts that if an individual consumes fewer calories than their body requires to survive, they lose weight.

It's scientific fact and has been since the start of the universe.

I can't comprehend why posting a scientific fact is being blinkered, find me a scientific paper that disputes that being in a calorie deficit causes weight loss.

I never said it was the best way to lose weight.

A few years ago I lost a significant amount of weight via Slimming World. Some people couldn't help but express their disdain for Slimming World (mostly because they misunderstand it). Now I'm fat again

I think that’s why slim people have disdain for Slimming World. They know that it doesn’t work long term.

So what is your point with repeatedly posting it then. I must have missed it.

Slim person here for whine SW worked! Slim child, teen and through most of adult life til meno. Did SW for 6 months. That was 4 years ago. Slim since! I just needed a slap round my chubby chops and to remember basics like portion control. Haven't looked back, and now eat normally, tho moderately

What do we do about the ones who are happily obese? I know several. One lad at age 15, was off the BMI scale !! Still is obese ten years later and happily enjoying burgers, chips etc…so much so that the health scares are not important to him.

Another one who is on the verge of diabetes but I estimate eats 6,000 calories per day …her breakfast alone must be 2,000 calories with the Starbucks coffee, three iced buns and porridge/oats and fruit…

I manage to maintain my mood everyday and if I catch myself feeling down I cheer myself up. It’s not really that hard.

See, it’s twatty to project your own life experience onto others and dismiss their struggles.

There’s a huge need for people to minimise the causes of obesity.

Obesity is a symptom of highly stressful lives, mental illness. Humans spend more time in states of stress than they ever have, much of it unnecessary and not life threatening. Mental health services are underfunded and mostly crap if you do get to see someone, particularly CAMHS. Food companies have been allowed to take huge advantage of this, knowing that the human response to stress is often to eat, and they have benefited via the NHS, via education (right through to universities). They push diet advice that benefits them, the food companies, and not the people. When our own homegrown doctors don’t know that the diet advice they are handing out, at the same time as they are telling sick patients they can’t do anything until they’ve lost weight, is 70 years out of date and has been debunked so many times it makes people want to scream.

Yes there are outliers who manage to lose weight and keep it off, but they are a tiny minority.

Nobody likes being obese, nobody wants to be obese, but what systems are in place that mean that so many people are obese and struggle hugely to do anything about it? It’s beyond personal responsibility now.
People need proper help to lose weight - not just being told to stop eating biscuits or go to slimming world - current diet advice is older than me!
We are in a perfect storm of miserable people living miserable lives turning to food as a cheap way to manage their feelings, because it works.
If we were supported or had better, more effective strategies, right at the start of our misery, so schools being proactive in reducing stress, dropping the pressure, work places making sure no one is routinely overworked and underpaid, if we had leaders who didn’t hand money over to big companies to manipulate us into buying their products, if we didn’t have a medical system that is benefited by big pharma sponsorship, if if if if.

This is the world we live in. Humans are humans, our bodily instincts have not evolved at the same rate as agriculture and manipulative marketing techniques.

If you are the sort of person who can resist this, well that’s amazing for you, but please stop using it as a stick to beat others with. You wouldn’t do it with mental illness I presume, but if the mentally ill person is fat it’s fair game? No. Have some compassion, some empathy, and look around at the forces at play around us all.

The NHS, education and the government have a real opportunity to make some huge changes, but they won’t because the status quo brings them more money.