Why are there so many overweight and obese British women?

[EvaHara]

Genuine post and I promise I am not a weight troll. Recently I was on a cruise and couldn't help but notice that many other British women onboard - especially younger women - were considerably overweight or obese. Some were in fact huge and easily as big as some women I saw in the US when there a few years ago.

What has caused this rise in overweight people, particularly younger women? I don't remember there being this many overweight/obese people even 10 years ago.

I am not judging, just curious.

I agree. Many ' body positive' advocates hide their type 2 diabetes and hypertension etc from their followers. They are also in their 20's and 30's in the main. Once they hit 40 they lose weight ( like Rebel wilson) and are seen as 'traitors' because their weight is impacting severely on their health, or they disappear.

If you watch documentaries set in the 1970s, everyone is slim. Yet in terms of food we used to eat a lot of crap - crisps, chips, sweets, chocolate, biscuits. Salad was a couple of lettuce leaves and quarters of tomato slathered in bottle mayonnaise. No one worried much about fruit and vegetables. So I am not sure you could make a strong case that the average diet was better back then.

But what we all did back then was move around a lot more. Car ownership wasn't that widespread so people walked to the shops and school and work. My school was nearly a mile away and I used to come back home for lunch, so that was four miles without even thinking about it. A lot of homes didn't have central heating so we were cold more often, and there wasn't much on TV so kids and adults were out and about more. So I suspect we just burned a lot more calories in normal daily life.

It’s not just about them giving advice on healthy living. And to be fair, most GPs know little about nutrition so don’t actually give you advice, they just send you away with a flea in your ear. It’s about the fact that GPs don’t see past a person’s weight in order to treat them. They literally tell you to lose weight for pretty much everything you go for, often delaying necessary treatment, leading to poorer outcomes.

But so so many of an obese person’s medical conditions are related to their weight.

No, they’re not.

But it simply isn’t true, you are making sweeping generalisations and patronising to boot- some of us only buy seasonal here and actually if you eat out in London or other cities that have loads of choices due to the multicultural nature of them, you can eat very well indeed, it isn’t 20 years ago British grub! I visited France last year and had some awful crepes and other food, also Rotterdam where the food was frankly not as good as the restaurants I visit - health wise or standard of cooking. I have Scandinavian heritage and like I said when I visited Denmark this is definitely on a par with prices we personally pay and everyone we know(not just organic) friends and colleagues. Spain was ridiculously cheap to the point of feeling that Brits are being scammed in supermarkets as we cannot buy that level of freshness for such cheap prices. And I also noted like in Holland, like in Denmark of course you can buy chocolate and crisps and junk! It is ridiculous to assert that for a majority of Brits food is comparably cheap, it just isn’t anymore!!
You say we aren’t all in Europe, fine but Mumsnet TBF is a British based website, most topics on here cover British life so it isn’t much of a stretch to think that on this thread in particular the comparisons have been with our European cousins!

Personally speaking nearly all my medical conditions have disappeared after I got rid of my car and lost about a stone. And I wasn't obese.
Pre diabetes: gone
Back pain: gone
Knee pain: gone
Certain menopausal issues: reduced
Blood pressure: normal down from slightly high in the pandemic
General anxiety: improved

I realise I sound like a fitness bore. I dont talk about this in RL only here!

Also, in some parts of Britain life is very very expensive so even if you think food is cheap it is part of an array of expensive outgoings which maybe in other parts of the world isn’t the case. It is absolutely hilarious the notion of life in Britain being cheap, it absolutely is not where I live and on world comparisons where I live our outgoings wouldn’t be considered cheap, when you look at costs holistically it may be why people state they have to buy cheap food it is against a back drip of huge flipping outgoings!

When you see what lockdown did to people's weight, it's hard not to get the point about 'moving less'. I walked kids to school every day (half a mile) and picked them up - 10 miles a week for me, 5 for them. Suddenly we weren't doing that anymore. Even people who would have considered themselves quite sedentary were thousands of steps down in a week - and so many put weight on (including me).

Oh goody a goady fatty thread...what have I missed? Let me guess..

Lost sight of what a normal portion is
Lost sight of what is a healthy size
3 cherry tomatoes and a sniff of lettuce a massive salad keeps me going for weeks.
Calories in calories out
Self control
Will nobody think of the NHS

Truth is food tastes good, life is often hard and losing weight even harder. I have lost 2.5 stone, but it has taken me nearly 2 years.. I wasn't sat stuffing my face with burgers (I really don't like them), I don't drink much, I do like salad, but I also like chocolate and cheese. It only takes eating a bit more than you need every day to gradually gain weight over the years.. I'm very slowly reversing that whilst still eating lots of chocolate. I'm not sure I have ever read one of these threads and thought "oh why didn't I think of that?"

Lockdown was horrendous for health and weight for so many. Stress included in that

At least what?

Increasingly sedentary lifestyle. In many ways people have to factor IN exercise (not even exercise - moving!) rather than it being part of the day to day.

Desk job, drive to desk job, drive children to activities or watch TV in evening after work. It's cold, dark and raining, don't want to go for a walk (fair enough!).

Gyms cost money many people do not have. Green spaces are built over.

Plus you really have to exercise lots, even to burn off moderate food intake. And food is tasty!

Being overweight is acceptable. Normal now.

But then many people lost weight in lockdown as they had time to exercise. It’s not like we weren’t allowed out for a walk.

From a fat 30 year old:

• being expected to work full time, maintain a house, have 2 children every where on time. I don't have time to exercise.

• because of stress of above, I comfort eat. I think the antidepressants may be a factor as well.

• wearing leggings with expanding waist during lock down meant I didn't realise my waist was getting much bigger.

There are many reasons including hormones, medication, ease of access (deliveroo, uber eats etc), UPFs, working environments, education, social and monetary etc.

For me WFH and now having a long term condition means I'm more stationary. My body doesn't need 2000 calories a day, many peoples don't with job and lifestyle changes. I steadily gained weight despite cooking from scratch most of the time and I don't snack. It wasn't until I started looking at my fitbit etc that I realised I only burnt 1500 calories a day. Changing this and reducing my calorie intake has meant I'm losing weight.

People also don't think about what calories food contains especially when eating out or on the go. Even a simple jacket potatoe with chilli and cheese is over 1000 calories - for 1 meal.

Becoming more self aware and not mindless calorie consumption can help. There isn't a magic bullet however and losing weight is always a lot slower then piling it on!

Once again, where did I mention eating out? I am talking about the cost of food in supermarkets, and yet again I am telling you that it is generally much cheaper than what you would pay for the equivalent here. I also didn't say that everyone eats out of season food, but it is more available in the UK than in some other parts of the world. I have even read threads on MN about the high price of goods in this part of the world, and the lack of some foods all the year around. Why do you think I am lying?

This is what someone who had been living in the UK wrote when he arrived back here last year: "I just came back from UK and just wow food prices are insane here( in comparison)"

You seem to be lacking in comprehension skills tbh.

Nailed it. Car dependency, sedentary occupations, and sedentary leisure activities are key here, along with highly calorific convenience food (ready meals, takeaways) as everyday meals rather than just fish and chips on a Friday night. And portion size - just look at the size of plates from the 70s or 80s - they are tiny compared to modern plates.

Whilst you are obviously right about the weight difference doesn’t the average Northern European look bigger overall to south European, height wise and frame? We are still bigger weight wise than other average Northern Europeans but surely that is a factor?

Oh goody a goady fatty thread...

Is it not legitimate to ask why people are becoming fatter? Particularly when it costs society in general and the NHS in particular so much money. Questions would certainly be asked if we were all becoming thinner.

The second lockdown was a lot worse, the winter one. The time when people would usually have gone to the gym, the pool etc. Don't know many people who want to walk miles in January (I don't mind it but in a general sense people don't like walking/running in the cold and dark).

Oh for crying out loud!! I am talking about the price of food in supermarkets - do keep up!! Yet again I did not mention the cost of anything else. This thread is about people being obese, and all I am trying to point out is that the cost of food in the UK is cheap - which another overseas poster also commented on, but you don't seem to feel the need to argue with them. Life is pretty expensive here also, surprise, surprise. I really can't be bothered arguing with someone like you.

I’d love to see the statistics about obesity in other European countries, because we’ve travelled a lot around France, Spain and Italy over the last 10 years, and there are a lot of overweight locals.

I think it’s a bit of a myth that they aren’t. I think it’s a problem now in all developed countries.

@Mirabai - it's asked over and over and over on here, often by people who have never struggled with their weight, it is often asked in a judgemental "why can't people just eat less?" way ... see also..

Why can't people just budget better ?
Why do so many people suffer from anxiety these days?

On a visit to Prague over 20 years ago, a fellow tourist (American) marvelled to me how the locals were mostly so slim, when she considered the food we were offered at the time in hotels and restaurants, ‘ unhealthy’ as she saw it - mostly meat and potatoes/dumplings - relatively little in the way of veg or salad.

Presumably, I said, because there was virtually no fast food available, and not many people had cars, so they walked a lot.