Why can't we discuss how fat we've all become?

[Nodinnernogift]

Obesity is becoming the norm. Why aren't we allowed express concern or any views that are less than celebratory about this?

I mean seriously why?

If whole parts of your country were in the grip of a meth addiction we would be allowed have a discussion about it.

National campaigns to stop people smoking are applauded.

Look around you. Look in the mirror. We are all getting bigger and bigger. It reminds me of when people would visit the US in the 80s / 90s and come back with tales of huge people and massive portion sizes.

Does nobody care? It's like the Emperors New Clothes. I don't get why it's a sacrosanct topic.

Yabu - it's nobody's business
Yanbu - it's fine to address this as a societal problem

It's true, there are lots of people who would benefit but don't have the funds. Most people seem to save on the food bill, but there's no doubt it requires some money spare. That's a really important point.

I understand having doubts about their long term efficacy, but then we also know that more traditional weight loss methods don't have that either.

Popular tights brand? That posts morbidly obese women in fishnets? It’s sad. Not shaming the women at all, but yes, normalising or even glamorising it.

But WLIs are a short term sticking plaster. As soon as you stop, the weight will go back on whereas education re:good nutrition and willpower will have a much longer lasting effect on most people.

Obviously there is no money to be made better educating people about nutrition though.

In today's money a size 10 is the same as a vintage size 14. It's roughly a 28 inch waist.

I remember my (always tiny) grandmother telling me in hushed tones that she had had a 28 waist and wore a 14 when she was young, like she had been enormous. Looking at pictures, she was indeed a little bit bigger than her contemporaries. Nowadays she'd be seen as 'skeletal', things have changed so much. Yes, they were of the post-war rationing era but fat people weren't really a 'thing' a few generations ago. Even when I was in school there might have been one chubby kid per class of thirty and they mostly grew out of it at puberty. But so many people are fat now and it seems to just be getting worse.

was very sad to see a chubby toddler at the beach yesterday, over weight adults, meh, that is their business

Here we go: people smoke instead of eating in France and Spain, that's why they're slimmer. Right.

Nothing to do with er...a mediterranean diet then??

But we are humans who will be unhealthy. We always have been, and we always will be, because we are not perfect and ultimately we will all die of something, most of which requires medical care before it finishes us off

the reasons we are unhealthy has changed but the impact is similar. The fact that the NHs may be an outdated model doesn’t mean we can change the human propensity to unhealthness.

I live near a town in South Yorkshire not known for its affluence. I see loads of very obese people in the town centre.

Poverty, lack of education, lack of cooking skills, easy access to junk food and huge portion sizes from restaurants and takeaways all contribute to these issues.

Regional deprivation has a direct correlation to health outcomes, including obesity. Highly recommend listening to this episode of The Rest is Money where they discussed this exact topic: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-money/id1703785141?i=1000704233532

See also: https://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthy-lives-the-marmot-review

Walk around Wimbledon Village and you won’t see a single fat person.
it’s largely demographics (wealth) and education related. .

Mediterranean diet… in France?

not your typical French diet, is it?

besides both greeece and Spain have an obesity problem

This is true. I currently pay £160 a month for my WLI and I fully intend to stay on them for a long while yet, at a maintenance dosage. But I fully appreciate that many just don't have the budget to do this.

However, most of the cost is down to the price of manufacturing the 'pen' containing Mounjaro. A tablet form is in development which will hopefully be cheaper?

Which is why every woman wore a girdle. The shape wear, including for bikinis, was brutal. The bra tops were moulded, so boobs looked a lot bigger.

Obesity is primarily linked to poverty. It's growing across Europe, including the much admired France, were the population is below average earnings. The food industry was allowed to provide us with rubbish, addictive food. While our lifestyles have seen a drop. It's natural to seek out dopamine hits, every species does it. The combination of sugar, fat and carbs (the average £1.50 pizza) provides that.

Did you grow up in Wimbledon village?

Agreed. It infuriates me that so many things now have hideous sweeteners in them which I refuse to consume. I manage my sugar consumption and am not overweight so if I want some cordial I want it without the vile chemical taste. Fortunately Belvoir hasn't caved and still had decent tasting cordial.

I'm an ex WWer.

We all called our meetings The Fat Club.
Our lovely leader was known as The Fat Controller. She was very motivational, highly respected, & had a good record of success.

Then someone from HQ decided that "fat" was not to be used in that context.

WHY?

Too many of us eat shite. This is the biggest problem. Supermarkets and 7-11's are half-full of garbage.

Where is the evidence that good nutrition education will have a much longer lasting effect on most people? That's a big claim, and it isn't true just because you want it to be.

The problem is that most people clearly don't have enough willpower for that to be the answer. It would be nice if we did, of course. We'd be in a much better position than we are now. But humans didn't evolve for abundance.

So the question isn't whether we'd be thinner if using willpower actually worked on a population level. It's what to do, given that it doesn't. You don't educate people into willpower, that's not what humans are like. And we simply aren't in a position to spaff public funds away because of people's wishful thinking morality tales, when it could be used on things that actually work.

WW has a ridiculously low success rate so not the one anyone should look to for advice

I was going to ask the GP about some help with weight but I just couldn't as he was large himself.

I also think a cultural thing.

I used to work abroad as a cabin crew and many of my colleagues were Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Eastern European and Russian. I am 5”8 and was 8 1/2 stone at the time. I was large compared to most of them.

They had very strict diets and to them, being fat was just not acceptable.

Artificial sweeteners gave long been known to be endocrine disruptors and research has linked them to autoimmune disorders like ulcerative colitis and type 1 diabetes.

It is.

I worked in M & S stores as a student in the late 60s. A size 10 top was a 32" bust; size 12 was 34"; size 14 was 36".

The smallest size M & S went down to for women was an 8, but most garments started at size 10. Large would have been a 40"/42" bust and sizes didn't go beyond that. Tu sizing goes up to size 26 - a 52.5" bust.

Now stores sell clothes sized 4 and 6 (where the 6 is a 32" bust and an 8 would be more like a old size 12).

A size 4 from Tu is for a 26" waist - that would have been a size 10-12 in the 60s.

Size 12 jeans from M & S will fit a considerably larger waist/hip size than they did 40 years ago.

I wish shops would go back to using old sizing.

Everyone? Really everyone you saw was obese, not just overweight but obese. This sort of statement doesn't help anyone because it clearly isn't true.

I live in the south west, if I go down to the beach I see so many thin people jogging, swimming, paddle boarding. None of them obese, very few overweight.

BMI of 1 million minority ethnic adults in England wrongly classified | Obesity | The Guardian

This interesting...