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?

I don’t think French women like fat men so that cuts both ways.

There are generally more overweight men than women.

In France, being overweight is strongly seen as linked to poor health hence the general concern. And the general paradigm of ‘normal’ with is lower.

How does a thread about the increasing weight of adults and children in society always turn in to a thread about the weights of individual posters and their exercise regimes?

If

If you go to a supermarket here it's eye opening how fat people are, I'm no skinny thing at 14 but the average size is far bigger, it's the kids that concern me, if you look in their trolley you can see why. Adults are free to do what they want but there's kids who are morbidly obese.

Depends on the supermarket demographic. You don’t see many fat people in West London Waitroses.

And that is because wealth and higher status are protective factors.

French women in their 40s/50s + are certainly smaller than their counterpart in the UK, but that is not the case so much for the 20yo.

I think the main difference is that the 50/60yo generation were brought up with regular meals, smaller portions and no snacking. They were also brought up with extra weight being very shameful.

And education.

I think it's a national crisis, certainly the effect of Type 2 diabetes and other weight related conditions must be crippling the NHS.

Having read around the subject I now feel the lower-carb advice makes sense, but it is seriously hard work to get this going in everyday life in the UK. What's cheap, easy, accessible food? Pizza, pasta, bread, chips. Meal deals, doughnuts, burgers. Until this changes many people don't really have much of a choice.

There's too much money in 1. manufacturing/selling crappy processed food and 2. selling drugs for people to take every day of their lives, if we stop buying this rubbish and get healthy the economy will suffer. So who's going to fund the research?

Add the tax on alcohol to the government coffers. There's no incentive to cut alcohol intake . Add to that tax on gambling while we are at it. We're stuffed really.

What's cheap, easy, accessible food?

Wraps instead of bread/sandwiches.

Fruit such as apples & bananas instead of crisps/choc bars.

Just as easy to have a side portion of rice as it is chips.

"You are what you eat" is so true. Look in the trolley of a normal weight person in the supermarket and compare that to the trolley if an overweight person. There is absolutely no denying it. If you want to loose weight and not sure which foods to eat, follow a normal weight person around the supermarket snd look at the foods they are putting in the trolley.

We went to the US for the first time in the 1980’s, we could not believe how fat the people were, especially the kids. Now it is the same here, although it depends on where you go.

5 miles from here is a rather run down market town, with large numbers of obese people on mobility scooters, also smoking/vaping.

10 miles the other up market small town, rarely smell a smoker or vaping, no mobility scooters, unless for elderly people and few if any obese.

Don’t know what the answer is, but when people are surrounded by overweight people it becomes the norm.

@managedmis, A can of full sugar coke, a bag of crisps and a kit kat wouldn't be anything like a 1000 calories. Its 140 calories in the Coke around 100-200 in a bag of crisps and 107 in a 2 finger kit kat, a four finger must be double.

I regularly get told I'm "very slim". I am a healthy weight but I'm actually right at the top of my healthy BMI range

Women used to smoke. This meant they didn’t eat to destress or distract themselves from life.

Depictions of portion sizes in adverts and in packaging are misleading.

Many of us were raised on canned and packet foods with pictures of large quantities of food on the front with "serving suggestion" printed on the picture somewhere.

A huge packet of something calorific with "only 100 calories per serving" with the small print on the back stating that the packet contains 250 grams and a single serving is 40 grams. Or 25.

Too many packets show a serving size, whose multiples don't then fit the packet.

Serving size 35 grams in a packet containing 160 grams for example.

If packets contained exact multiples of the advised serving size and clearly stated "This packet contains 4 servings", in large print, on the front, there might be a little more idea about what constitutes a 'proper' portion.

Once upon a time two Shredded Wheat was the limit.

Even Ian Botham didn't eat three Shredded Wheat!

Now, we're shown a stack of the things, rising out of the bowl like a skyscraper, lashed with thick yoghurt or sweet compôte.

We have become used to seeing obese as normal, large portions of food as normal and we are being encouraged to eat more, on the grounds that certain foods are healthy.

NOT IN THOSE AMOUNTS, THEY'RE NOT!!

Even single servings have increased.

Walkers 'Grab Bags' are almost double the size of a regular packet of crisps.

What the hell are Duo chocolate bars all about?

Double the amount of Mars, Snickers or Double Decker.

Ready to eat snacks are everywhere and adverts are forever encouraging us to "go on, spoil yourself. You deserve it."

The fat and sugar generate cravings which we are then encouraged to give in to.

Much of what's on the shelves is effectively edible crack.

Our idea of overweight has changed

I came across this the other day

www.google.com/search?q=sears%20catalogue%20chubbi&tbm=isch

And this

www.google.com/search?q=sears%20catalogue%20chubbi&tbm=isch

After posting on this thread I think every fat person in the country must be out and about. I went in Next to take an order back and the woman behind the counter must have been a size 22. She asked why I was returning my jumper and I said "It's too big" arrgh! I could have bitten off my tongue. I then went to put some petrol in my car and Mr Blobby turned up at the petrol station. I am not thin btw and wear either a size 12 or a 10 depending on which style I am wearing.

Tell it like it is, jobrien

All those saying it's because women used to smoke - I don't agree. Neither of my grandmother's smoked nor did their friends or family. They were very slim. I remember them saying they had 22 inch waists. They just ate healthy unprocessed foods in moderation, treats were occasional, they didn't snack and they were active.

you cant see multi packs of crisps and sweets in my trolley, i am sedentary though and my dh loves to bake

People also hugely underestimate how much they eat and overestimate how much exercise they do.

A friend and I took my dog for a walk this weekend. Shortish walk, maybe two miles. We came back and she said 'great, all that walking, now I can have a packet of those flapjack biscuits!'

I said we'd probably burned enough calories to eat one biscuit. One, single biscuit. We'd burned less than 200 calories, and the biscuits are 164 calories each.

Left to her own devices she would have necked the whole packet and convinced herself that she'd already burned them off...