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?

The public transport where I live is fairly crap

Outside London and a couple of other big cities, that's the case for most of the country. It encourages car use. It's one of the reasons why a lot of London commuters are thin - they're doing a lot of walking/standing because they're on public transport. People without that kind of excellent public transport have no option but use a car, so they only walk front doorcar and then work car parkdesk. You can walk a few miles per day just using the London tube if you factor in hometube station, then walking up/down the long corridors, then destination tube stationoffice. We desperately need far better public transport outside the few main cities. When you're sports centre is 5 miles away and there's no viable bus route to get you there, you're going to use your car or just not bother.

Further to the last, doesn't help when your local council close down the town centre swimming pool and open up a new shiny sports centre out of town that isn't on a bus route! Fools!

Yes. Where r u going?

Sorry accidentally replied to a text from my husband here! Don't know how to delete!

I'm rubbish at making time specifically for exercise /going to gym/running etc. so I make sure I factor in exercise to my every day routine. I work 3 miles away, a 45 min walk so I make sure I walk to and from work. That's my 10,000 steps sorted. My colleagues often express surprise that I'd walk so far when I could drive but I don't feel 3 miles is a long walk and I feel it helps maintain my weight.

I went to France recently and there are loads of overweight/ obese people both male and female. Maybe there's a lower proportion but the average/ normal weight people are the same build as in the UK. Bit like London, there are lots of overweight and obese people there too.

Interestingly I'm still struggling to shift the weight I put on in France, the food was frankly awful in the main .....

Maybe there's a lower proportion but the average/ normal weight people are the same build as in the UK.

if you buy clothes, for adults or children, from a French label, you will quickly notice that the average sizes are not the same at all. Children sizing in France are really small!

I am very lucky that there is a swimming pool at my work where you can always swim lengths.

However recently it was closed for a refurb so I looked at the council pools to see where I could swim.

I was shocked at how bad the timetable is for actual swimming - just an hour at lunchtime and an hour really late at night and none at all on a Sunday.

The rest of the time is kids fun swimming and lessons.

Which is fine - if you're a kid. But if you want to keep fit by swimming as an adult they make it really hard.

But if you want to keep fit by swimming as an adult they make it really hard.

Yep, same with our council pool, VERY limited hours for public swimming. Years ago, when I wanted to swim to get fit, I had to drive 10 miles to the local university to use their pool in the evenings as the council one only had 8-9 in the morning and 4-5 in the afternoon - useless for workers.

@anyoneseenmykeys: Particularly shameful in sports centres (you should see the vending machine at our local leisure centre!!), but it's everywhere: national trust cafes, railway station cafes, artisan coffee shops, supermarket cafes, newsagents (I've already ranted about these!), cinema and theatre cafes, pubs, petrol stations, town centre bakeries, park cafes, library cafes, just everywhere.

The quality of the cake and crisps may vary, but it's still all just cake and crisps.

I was travelling through london from the airport early one morning last week and had 20 mins to grab breakfast while changing trains at a small suburban railway station in an unfamiliar part of town. It was raining (welcome home) so I went to the artisan-hipster-looking coffee shop off the station platform to get breakfast. I weakened and ordered a flat white (weekend rules), but there was nothing decent to eat, just 20 different types of cake. Starving, I went with a ham and cheese croissant (heresy I know, to French readers) and it was offensive. It was sitting in a pool of butter by the time it arrived. I must have pulled out 50g of cheese slabs from the middle (not least because they hadn't bothered to melt it properly), leaving plenty still in there, and also one of the two thick slices of shitty slimy tepid ham flopping out over the edge. The flat white turned out to be a large latte when it arrived. I don't even want to think how many calories that lot was. And this was a trendy cafe in expensive, commuter-belt London.

I'm suppose I must count myself lucky that I work near a Pret a Manger and an Itsu that sell decent, interesting and varied soups and salads at lunchtime. Otherwise I'd be mindlessly chomping on the the beige mountain too. Even they stock plenty of baguettes and noodles, to serve to sedentary office workers. It's almost inescapable.

The point about public transport made by quite a few PP is definitely valid. Google says I walked 4 miles yesterday dropping the kids off to school and getting to the office and back (that won't include underground/indoor walking). I didn't 'do' any excercise as such.

And I went to France recently and I was the fattest person (by quite some margin) everywhere I looked. I am a size ten/twelve. 5ft 7 and weigh 133lbs so not skinny but slim and I eat well. The food everywhere was delicious and I reckon they must have will powers of steel to avoid all that is on offer. I wondered was It the beach/outdoor life that keeps them so svelte. As in, if I was hanging out in a swimsuit next to my colleagues, neighbours, etc I would be far more conscious of being toned and slim. Where I live, even if you do get to the beach you are covered up so rarely any flesh on display.

Whereabouts were you Teatea?

I think to remove the problem would take a generation. You would need a major cultural and environment change similar to smoking/ recycling over recent years. And even then it won't reach everyone because some people are just living day to day and they don't have headspace for that stuff.

Shaming is no use at all because putting on weight is easy but losing it is very hard and needs the right temporary diet and long term new pattern of eating.

The govt would literally need to close down a whole fast -food/café industry and overhaul what was sold in shops, ban white bread and fizzy drinks etc. It would have to be hard to find snacks and food outlets would have to have healthy meals to suit a range of people.

I don't even know if it's possible to have a diet that is climate friendly (i.e. not airfreighted out of season food, low on meat/dairy ) and diabetes/insulin friendly so people have a hope of losing weight permanently AND affordable/available. Back to lentil stew and porridge!

It encourages car use. It's one of the reasons why a lot of London commuters are thin - they're doing a lot of walking/standing because they're on public transport. People without that kind of excellent public transport have no option but use a car, so they only walk front doorcar and then work car parkdesk.

People are making up the most ridiculous excuses.

In the country - you have plenty of healthy walking country and fresh air around you.

In London walking along polluted streets is less appealing and less healthy.

If you live round the corner from a bus or tube station, you’re not going to be doing much walking. And London is wall to wall cafes.

I've realised that the government lead change will happen if we crash out on the 31st! There will be food shortages according to the government's yellow hammer document. Also the delays at customs will mean food will have gone off even if it does reach the supermarket.

38.5% of men and 26% of women in France were considered overweight. 67.2% of men, 61.5% of women in the UK ( researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN03336) .
While France is quickly getting fatter, it's clearly not the same.

38.5% of men and 26% of women in France were considered overweight.

I think it's really going above and beyond for the fat people in France to stay indoors when mumsnetters go on holiday.

I concur that it's very difficult to keep fit by swimming when the local authority pool timetables are so limiting. There's a total of 12 hours of lane swimming per week in ours, and seven of those hours are during the standard working day. The vast majority of the time it's taken up by swimming lessons.

I also agree that it's very difficult to motivate yourself outside to play/run/generally be active when it's dark, cold and miserable. It's just not enjoyable. It would be much nicer to, say, go for a swim. But see previous point above.

I think it's also more difficult for children to play outside nowadays because of the increased number of cars on the roads. The front of our house is open to a main road, and the back is a communal parking area which gets very busy and congested and is really not ideal for playing. Our garden is tiny. If my daughter wants to ride her bike we have to bring the bike somewhere more suitable, which generally involves having to drive.

Meanwhile most families these days have two parents out at work all day. There just isn't a lot of time for cooking wholesome meals from scratch as well as keeping up with everything else like laundry and cleaning and having any sort of leisure time.

I'm petrified of bringing my daughter up to have an unhealthy relationship with food, I really want her to be active and healthy, so we do our best to normalise this by educating her on why treats are treats and not something to eat every day, and to enjoy active hobbies like swimming and ballet and junior Parkrun. None of us are overweight (although I'm top end of healthy BMI having put on a bit of weight recently) but it would be so much easier to just eat the crappy freezer food, play videogames instead of going swimming, drive to the shop and sack off the gym for the third time this week because I've had a shit day at work and want to eat my weight in doritos while watching Netflix. It's always a struggle to make good choices.

Having travelled widely in europe, their food is far better quality and delicious, in general, than British cuisine.

Here's the big difference.

It's all it is.

They. Don't. Snack.

Having travelled widely in europe, their food is far better quality and delicious, in general, than British cuisine

I don’t really get this. I have lived for extended periods in France, Spain, Italy and the UK. I had access to pretty much the same basic ingredients and the same online recipes in all those places.
Obviously eating out is different in all those places, but unless you’re eating out multiple times a week this isn’t going to be the cause of weight gain. It’s the food cooked at home that counts, and as long as you have access to meat/veg/herbs/spices etc you can good whatever cuisine you want.

*cook whatever cuisine you want

I do not believe that home cooking and swimming lessons are the reason some other countries are generally slimmer. I'm also from a country where it's simply not OK to be fat (well, for young women, at least). And if everybody else is slim, you will feel like a hippo in comparison, even when you would be 'average' in the UK. Because average in UK is overweight.

Obesity spreads. If your close friend is obese, your chances to become obese increase by 170%! You change your idea of what is an acceptable body type by looking at the people around you.
www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/health/25iht-fat.4.6830240.html

I think the previous posts about social pressure to be slim are valid- it appears to be far less acceptable to be overweight in wealthier circles.

Tatiana you have healthy air in the countryside but it's not true that you can always access safe places to walk from your front door. Roads are often narrow, winding, unlit and with no pavement. Not somewhere you would want your DC walking, and you can't just wander over random farmer's fields! We drive about 20 mins from our house to several country pubs and DH used to say how nice it would be to move to one of the villages but I said that for DC they were better were we live - small town suburbs - safe walking to local parks and local schools and a 15 minute walk into our local town where we can access a bus to the nearest large city.

Actually where I live is quite good for being able to exercise, we have those outdoor gym machines in our local park. I just lack motivation to get out there.

OTOH we have had a lot of fast food cafe's open up in our local town, including these places that do massive deserts. And all of them can be home delivered.

As we get taller, so our frames must get wider. Think about it.

Height is taken into account when calculating BMI.