Some people live in cloud cuckoo land over their weight.
NHS direct - hardly an inflammatory inaccurate web site says - "If your BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9 you're an ideal weight for your height. " For 5 foot 5 that is a lowest weight of 8 stone.
A BMI of 18.5 is safe. It is normal healthy weight charts. It is not anorexic, underweight or anything like that.
For 5 foot 5 a weight of 10 and a half stone is safe and healthy too and that is BMI 24.5 or something like that. So when I said my height and between 8 - 10ish stone I was right. Now I am about 9 and look better at that than 10 stone for sure and at under 9 in a bikini (after 5 children and being 46 etc) and if you're a stone over weight - say 11.7 you aren't likely to be keeling over with a heart attack but once you get well above that I think everyone realises you'd be better off slimmer.
The UK has a massive obesity problem at the moment. I think it's partly because people eat too many junk foods and if they ate low GI and GL foods they would be better. I lost a stone not because I ate less at all but because I cut out junk food. What I also found was for the first time I didn't catch colds this winter too. Just look at the women coming out of the FLDS ranch in Texas in that child custody case - they eat a normal healthy diet of meat, carbs, veg. They don't eat the modern American diet. They are all healthy looking. With the Kuna Indians on islands in Panama 18 months ago we also saw an entire community where no one was fat - it was quite an amazing sight. They live on fish, veg and plantains and I think brown rice.
On the point about now more fat peopleo n the planet than starving there was this from 2006 from the BBC site which is what I remembered
"Overweight 'top world's hungry'
Overweight person being measured
The number of people overweight has topped 1bn across the world
There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.
US professor Barry Popkin said all countries - both rich and poor - had failed to address the obesity boom.
He told the International Association of Agricultural Economists the number of overweight people had topped 1bn, compared with 800m undernourished.
Speaking at an Australian conference, he said changing diets and people doing less physical exercise was the cause.
Professor Popkin, from the University of North Carolina, said that the change had happened quickly as obesity was rapidly spreading, while hunger was slowly declining among the world's 6.5bn population.
The biggest increases are being seen in parts of Asia with certain populations more susceptible than others
Professor Tony Barnett, of Birmingham University
He told the conference at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane: "Obesity is the norm globally and under nutrition, while still important in a few countries and in targeted populations in many others, is no longer the dominant disease."
He said the "burden of obesity", with its related illnesses, was also shifting from the rich to the poor, not only in urban but in rural areas around the world.
China typified the changes, with a major shift in diet from cereals to animal products and vegetable oils accompanied by a decline in physical work, more motorised transport and more television viewing, he added.