Shocked yesterday at just how many people are overweight?

[Whatevskev]

And I know I’ll get loads of bashing but I’m not judging- myself and all my family may well be included in this observation

The day before I’d been watching a documentary about the 40s and was struck by how slim the vast majority of people were. We got chatting as a group and I remembered there was only one child at school who was considered to be overweight (this is the 80s) so I got a photo out and realised by today’s standard he wouldn’t stand out at all.

Then yesterday walking around town I started actually noticing and it struck me that only about 1 in 10 people if that would be classed as properly slim and how normalised carrying extra weight is. Many people who would have been maybe a size 12 so ‘slim’ are actually carrying so much more body fat than our ancestors.

Once I looked it was striking.
No blame on anyone- society makes it almost impossible to maintain a lower weight unless you have iron will with all the food availability and snacking culture and calorie laden drinks and meals.

And we definitely have reset in our heads what is slim and what is ‘normal’.

How on earth do we reverse this is a society or is it just going to rise exponentially?

but it certainly isn't attractive

Attractive to who?

I do think societal pressure is key though. I would never eat a whole packet of biscuits or a family sized bag of crisps because in my 1980’s child head that’s “greedy” .
Yet I can put away a man sized roast dinner and have seconds because that’s home cooked meat and veg....despite consuming more calories than that bag of crisps.

I agree that feeling hungry is also key. I think that’s why diets fail. Because they are all about what you can eat. Rather than saying “actually you need to stop thinking about food all day”.

I weighed 56kgs - the smoking diet - when I was younger and when I look back at photos I looked too thin. My DP saw the photos and said that he didn’t realise I used to be a lolly pop head. I look best at around 62/3 kgs which for me is a BMI of 22.

If you have to chose between a micro-waved burger and a micro-waved soup, the soup would be slightly less bad wouldn't it?
Barely. Tinned soup is still full of salt and sugar.

@WorraLiberty how long before we have Slimming Pets World? Must be a business opportunity in there somewhere!

Regardless of height any woman who weighs over 60kgs and doesn't have the body muscle percentage of a body builder is overweight

Barmy

a man sized roast dinner

Is that a roast dinner the size of a man?

any woman who weighs over 60kgs...

So my BMI can't go above 20 or I'm overweight? Hmmm.

Don't rely on dress sizes as a guide.

I am currently a size 16. My weight is similar now to the days, back in the 80s when I was a size 18.

Vanity sizing is a 'thing'. Based on the 'average' size 14, clothing is built around templates based on the current size of women.

As we have got bigger, the proportions of each clothing size also gets bigger.

I have a vintage M&S blouse from the late 60s/early 70s, marked up as a size 20.

It fits, but only just.

Anyone boasting that they are 'still' a size 10, has probably gone up at least two sizes.

Yes, I am borderline obese (clocking in at around 29.5 BMI) and yes, I am a dysfunctional eater.

Lol at Family

I've literally just googled to see if I was remembering correctly - some Asian countries set the top range of healthy BMI at 23/24. I think the NHS BMI calculator asks for your ethnicity these days.

Everyone is ok at BMI 20 or 21 though!

MadameForest that's why I buy little European designer clothes, the fit is much more petite.

Yes vanity sizing is definitely a thing and a bloody stupid thing at that. Are people really that stupid that they would prefer to shop at a specific shop to say they are one dress size less, when you're naked, you're still that fat.

We don't need a nanny state stopping advertising or raising prices. People just need to own their own stuff. It's no one else's fault you are overweight other than your own.

One of my friends weighs more than 60kg and she has represented the country at triathlons, she is certainly not a bodybuilder physique or overweight in any way!!

My mum was always overweight when i was a kid (in the 1980s) despite half heartedly trying loads of diets....but she had this thing that homemade food was somehow devoid of calories. So she'd be really contrite if she ate a shop bought chocolate bar (maybe 120 cals) but wouldn't feel half as bad about having a slice of homemade fruit cake.

@Skinnychip Your friend is obviously very sporty and has a lot of muscle, if you read my post I did state that athletes were the exception. I do triathlons too and it is definitely an advantage to be heavier for swimming. Not running, though.

Arh where to start... definitely going to be outed by this

My very overweight grandparents and parents are always calling me bag of bones and the like, evil for not letting my teenager have a full packet of biscuits for a treat etc. My son and I are both in healthy range bmi btw, my body fat a bit higher than I’d like.

My grandfather tried to give me one of my grandmas old gold watches, I think from 50/60 years ago.... wouldn’t go round my wrist, my grandmas wedding dress wouldn’t fit me either but they won’t except they’ve forgot what “normal” looks like.

I agree with most of what’s been said on here about ads, junk and less active lifestyles but I think it’s genetics. I have to walk 10k steps a day, go to gym x3 a week and watch my kals to maintain my bmi. My teenager also has a fit bit and has to watch what he eats, his friends can scoff like crazy and be like a pole, my ds cant even eat carb heavy in the evening and get away with it. I think once you know what your body needs and what works best for you it’s much easier, unfair, but easier.

But adults in the 60s and 70s grew up when there was rationing, so only had just enough food. Their bone structure would have been smaller than adults now as we grew up with plentiful food.

@Camomila

Isn’t that because some ethnicities are prone to diabetes at a lower body weight?

Rationing didn’t mean people didn’t have enough to eat, it meant variety was restricted. For poorer families rationing improved their overall health because they were then eating more than they had been.

My parents were war babies who grew up with rationing. The idea that everyone was underfed is wrong-headed.

Everyone was slimmer back then, before the war even started.

My parents were war babies too. I've seen on many tv programmes the amount of food people were allowed for rations in a week was not much. Don't try to pretend that food was plentiful during the war, I'm not an uneducated idiot.

@LittleSweet. There was no rationing in the 1970s in the U.K, I know because I was a child then.Rationing was during the war 1939-45 and for a bit afterwards.

Regardless of height any woman who weighs over 60kgs and doesn't have the body muscle percentage of a body builder is overweight

So the NHS BMI calculator that says I can be up to 81kg is wrong, is it I'm certainly not a muscular bodybuilder or athlete!

Sorry read it wrong.

I didn’t say it was plentiful, I said it wasn’t true that people didn’t have enough to eat. Not the same thing.

Compared to super-sized portions these days, of course rationing amounts seem small. But then people were generally slimmer, ate less, exercised more, before the war anyway.

Rationing properly ended in ‘54 but a lot of rationing had ended by then anyway.

The worst of it was up to 1950.

That's what I wrote. The adults that could fit into a Mark's and Spencer top from the 1960/70s that the other poster said she had that said it was a size 20 then but she wears a size 14 now, were growing up in the second world war. They did not have the quality and quantity of food that the people who are adults today had as children, which is why adults born in the 1970s have bigger bone structures. People who are born more recently have bigger bone structures. It's been documented that people are getting bigger, not just fatter.
I was born in the early 70s, my grandparents were adults during the war and my parents were born just before and after the second world war. So I do know when rationing was.🙄