Two thirds of adults in England are obese or overweight. It would make as much sense to ask what is different about the other one third.

[H0TK]

This was a comment I read elsewhere. I thought it was an interesting comment.

Rather than wondering what is wrong with overweight people and why they eat like they do. What is different about the people who are not overweight?

I have been extremely thin, slim, athletic, overweight and extremely obese. If I volunteered to stay at a healthy, unprocessed meals type camp/spa, the weight would drop off me. I choose to eat like a pig. That's why I'm the size of a house. I had a very traumatic childhood, but it doesn't define me. If I ate three home cooked meals a day with no junk I would be slim again.🙃

I agree. Using a calorie counter for the first time was eye opening!

However I am fully aware that I eat too much and that's why I've put weight on but it has not stopped me over eating.

I have an issue where if I don't feel "full" I feel a bit panicky.

I think a lot of slimness is due to caring less about food tbh.

I have managed to lose 1 stone but it's taken me months!

I'm in a walking group. We go to a very nice cafe on one of our walks . They do a carrot cake that lots of the group like. One of the members said that they hoped the large lady who worked there( super morbidly obese) would cut the slices because they were always very big when she cut them.
I was a teacher. My TA was very big. Someone had brought cake in and she brought a piece out to me in the playground. She had cut it. It was massive.
Massive portions....massive people.

I also get anxious if I'm hungry

I am overweight and menopausal which has drained me. I don't actually over eat on a day to day basis when written in calories.

However I also grew up in a abusive neglected household. Never enough food and have grown up with a very unhealthy relationship with food and no good habits to learn from. Some of my issues are so unconsciously related to my childhood its scary. I also have a chronic bladder illness - autoimmune based most likely again collected from childhood. This makes exercise sometimes difficult. Its not an excuse its a reason.

Don't understand estimate how detrimental a child's experiences with food shape them. Hence why I am so positive and inclusive with my children

You just said it's genetics and then listed all the ways you don't overeat.

If it was just genetics, you could eat excess calories a day and not gain weight.

This is a lot of generalizations.

Removed from home.
Raised in care.
abused as a child.
Experienced severe sexual violence as a child.
Homeless at 17.
Endometriosis.
Cptsd, ocd, anxiety.

Thin people also get hungry.

If you decide everything is luck then nothing will ever change.

I come from a family or obese drug addicts.

That doesn't define me or my weight.

Accurate username 😂 obviously I’m biased as a carbaholic vegan but what an unhealthy way to eat! Especially after seeing people post their absolutely staggering cholesterol levels on the carnivore subreddit 🤢

Lol

Hello fellow vegan. Been vegetarian for 37 years apart from a small glitch with abusive boyfriend. Went back to being veggie as felt meat was poisoning my body. Ever Sunday in bed ill. Loads better when became veggie again.,now got loads of energy and weight coming off now vegan. Inflammation a lot less, joints lost their arthritic feel

I never appreciated food 'noise' until I hit peri-menopause. It was becoming a real issue and I began to understand what some people experience all their lives. I found using Slimpod hypnosis every night helped as did having a strict rule not to eat between 7pm and 9am and keeping crisps and sweets out of the house. Keeping out of the kitchen as much as possible also helped.

You’re lucky those things haven’t caused weight gain in you, many people do have weight gain caused by those factors. There’s a difference between hunger and food noise and never feeling full.

In the last year my metabolism has ground to a halt. I’m not overweight but I was definitely teetering on it before I started constantly calorie counting. I’m maintaining at 1200 calories when I would have lost at 1600 calories 8 months ago. Unsure if the gp will test my thyroid based on that alone given I’m not overweight and feel otherwise well but it’s soul destroying. I exercise, drink plenty of water, eat the right things, rarely drink. Sometimes it really is just more difficult as we get older.

This probably describes me. I definitely have far too much sugar (that resulted in an expensive trip to a dentist last year) and work shifts (a common cause of unhealthy habits) yet my BMI has always been right on the threshold of being underweight (currently 0.1 above it). I've got a job that does involve being on my feet a lot, and I cycle a 7 mile round trip to work and back which probably helps - not owning a car does discourage a sedentary lifestyle in general. But I'm aware that one cannot out-run a bad diet. So it's probably genetic, my grandfather was always very thin.

@Fizbosshoes My Dad (86) has always been obsessed with food. When I was growing up, my Mum used to laugh that he’d come home and tell her exactly what he’d eaten - now he does this to me!

His portions are moderate though and he eats plenty of veg. At his age, he doesn’t worry about having a donut if he feels like it, but through his life, he’s never overeaten or drunk a lot. He definitely suffers from food noise though, no doubt about it. 😂

I’m guessing genetics?

I’m a naturally fat person. Takes massive physical effort not to be.

I think cars are part of it too. Maybe it's just where I live but kids being dropped off when they live less than half a mile away. This is at High School by the way - not little kids.

What is different about the people who are not overweight?

Posters are answering the question 🤷🏼‍♀️ I haven’t seen many saying they eat once a day? I also haven’t seen much fat bashing etc.

I agree with you about the doctor. That made me cringe.

People often talk about processed foods now.

Am I the only one who grew up in the 70s and 80s on a diet of Smash, Angel Delight, Nesquik and Findus pancakes?!

I've always been slim - 5'8 and around 9st. While I don't really exercise, I do eat a well-balanced, whole foods diet, low in UPFs, sugar and caffeine (I'll have a little bit of chocolate every evening and will have the odd packet of crisps!)
Interestingly, a little while back, I was taking a medication that made me gain weight without realising (largely because it was giving me an increased appetite yet slowing my metabolism). Because I'm tall, the weight gain was barely noticeable - but I hated it nonetheless!
As soon as I stopped these meds and resumed my normal diet the excess weight fell off. Result! 👍

Pretty decent displine when it comes to food. And awareness of my self image. I think I might see myself as larger than I look - espesh after having a baby- and I hate it -so triggers me to eat better and excercise.

I think it would be interesting to ask why

• obesity has risen so much from the 90s ti the 2020s. Is that down to a change in genetics or more to the food that's available?

So would people with food noise be automatically healthier if the food offerings ate healthier? Because that is something that can be changed by outside influences such as governmental controls. -why there are countries which less obesity than France and Italy with less obesity numbers? Surely these countries must be doing something right even if those people have food noises too.

While I concur there are a lot of outside influences that can't be changed like genetic makeup for example. But concentrating on those is probably not helpful if we want to change the way people eat ( apart from medical solutions like Mounjaro)

I have experience with addiction myself and now that "noise" feeling. So it must be a lot harder concerning eating because we need food to survive. Still one of the first things you learn in addiction counselling is that it is partly a choice. Because if it is not you won't be able to change it.

Well this is the generation who is overweight now.
What happens to the next generation remains to be seen. Most children are not overweight now.

They're not addicted to chocolate (or any other foodstuff) I genuinely think that the way I think/feel about chocolate is the way drug addicts or smokers feel. If I'm not eating chocolate I'm thinking about the next time I can eat chocolate, I eat far too much of it every day. If I could I would eat it for every meal and never get sick of it.

My mam has always been very slim and after a recent conversation with her I realised she barely thinks about food. She's happy with small portions and doesn't snack. I think the fact it's just not on her radar is very helpful.

There is two generations between people brought up in the 70s/80s and today's children.