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?

We have been conditioned to thinking it is acceptable but 30+ inch waists and the ability to grab fat on one's body is not slim.

I'm not sure if this is totally true for women as we have significantly higher levels of essential fat than men. Women naturally have a higher percentage of body fat than men. A very fit woman will have 21-24% body fat. Many female top level athletes have 14-20% body fat. As we age, from our 40s onwards, it's actually recommended that our body fat levels increase a little. Anything under 23% body fat is considered as potentially too low in women in their 40s and 50s. (Bear in mind that 23% body fat will often be present on a woman with a BMI around 20-22, so it's still slim on a woman.) But it does mean that you'd probably be able to pinch a little fat over the lower abdominal area and upper hips.

"pinch a little fat"

Pinch is not the same as grab though. Being able to grab a handful is not the same as having a bit of fat.

We're the most overweight country in Europe... It was only after I reached a healthy weight that I realised that even what we might think it's chubby/normal is actually overweight.

Im overweight when I'm a size 10. Healthy weight is something between 6 and 8.

We went on a Northern European cruise in Summer. The vast majority of the passengers weren't English - we barely ever heard anyone speaking English and in the theatre/show when they did the show of hands per nationality, it was just literally a handful out of several hundred who were English. Most were German, Spanish and Italian.

I'd say over half the passengers were clearly overweight, so it's certainly not uniquely an English thing nor a class thing (the cruise wasn't a cheap and cheerful, it was an expensive one).

12 isn't slim anymore due to vanity sizing. I'm a tall 12 and teeter on the normal/overweight mark. I have noticed that fewer older school kids are overweight or smoke nowadays compared to the 90s. Hopefully the healthy living message has landed with them which may by the NHS some time.

Anything under 23% body fat is considered as potentially too low in women in their 40s and 50s.
Why? I'm 54 and have body fat of around 14% because I do a lot of sport (mainly running) and I haven't had as much as a cold for years.
There are too many unjustifiable excuses made for being overweight these days.

Pinch is not the same as grab though. Being able to grab a handful is not the same as having a bit of fat.

True but it's always worth being careful to not promote an obsession with being unhealthy in the other direction either. I have a BMI of 21.5 and as a skater I'm quite muscular, especially in the legs and abdomen. I have very low body fat, especially for a woman of 40, and a 25" waist. My ribcage and hip bones are visible through most of my fitted clothes. And I can still pinch fat on my lower abdomen and upper hips.

I would quite like to lose some of that fat and increase my muscle. I have several athletic goals from those that I will most likely achieve in the next few months to a couple of absolute fantasy stuff that might actually be achievable in the next couple of years if I keep working towards them. These are a whole chicken and egg thing, as increased fitness is necessary to achieve the goals while pursuing them will increase my fitness. So I will most likely decrease my body fat percentage over the next year.

But I'd be absolutely lying if I said that have no interest in the cosmetic aspects of that increased fitness. I like my emerging abs an awful lot. I like that my size 6 jeans are getting loose. I'm really looking forward to my lower abs getting bigger and my tummy fat decreasing as I can see a future where the messy c-section pooch I'd resigned myself to disappears. And I can see how there is a potential for that kind of mindset to become a very, very real and dangerous problem if I got too dogged about it. So it absolutely is worth always remembering that as much as being overweight is a health risk, that there is a line below which we don't want to cross either. And that a certain level of body fat is absolutely essential to our good health.

I am just over a stone overweight, and wear a shop size 12. According to the back of my sewing patterns, the manufacturers of which stick to the sizing standards from a couple of decades ago, a size 12 is 34-26.5-36.

By that scale, I should be 18 for tops, 16 for bottoms, and yet I have never bought clothes that size. Vanity sizing does us a disservice. It's meaningless.

Why? I'm 54 and have body fat of around 14% because I do a lot of sport (mainly running) and I haven't had as much as a cold for years.
There are too many unjustifiable excuses made for being overweight these days.

Who is the 14% verified by? 14% is the absolute lowest end of healthy body fat for a woman. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, especially if you are very fit and muscular. But tbh, I'd be keeping my health monitored very regularly at that level of body fat at middle age.

I stayed with a French family as an 18 year old for a few weeks.This is what they ate, they had their own small holding as well. Breakfast would be a bowl of hot chocolate, lunch everyday was clear vegetable soup homemade, then something like a salad with chicken or duck breasts. Dinner would be the same soup again and vegetables again with meat.You wouldn't really want a pudding as you were full anyway but you could have the cheese board or sometimes ice cream and fruit.No one was overweight and there was no biscuits and snacking etc.
I think the key to this is the vegetable soup myself. If people here in the U.K had a bowl of this for lunch instead of things from Greggs they would soon be slimmer.

I think you're correct
There is a young girl at dd nursery ( aged 3 or 4 ) and she is absolutely huge. I've never seen an overweight toddler before this girl. I can't understand how her parents let her get that way.

I started sewing recently, so had to measure myself. I downloaded a French pattern, its gorgeous, a lovely long sleeved dress it's so cool. Anyway, I looked at the sizing at it says that I am 2 sizes bigger than I think I am living in Irealnd!!
I will post the size chart, have a look.

So no way, I'm not making the dress in that size, I can't accept it. I'm going to try and lose a bit off my waist and make the dress then.

Here is the size chart:

If you look at obesity statistics, France/Germany/Italy are lower percent than the UK but not by much. Our UK/US snacky fast food culture is probably just gradually being picked up by other countries.

I did notice in France it's quite hard to find takeaway food - like if you are visiting a town or city in the UK there are Greggs and places selling prepacked sandwiches and snacks everywhere. If you want lunch in a French city you have to go and order a sit down meal even if it's a cheese toastie/croque.

I'm sure the answer to this is not a single issue but really tied up with health/pharma, food standards and manufacturing, education, sport, planning and housing. The chances of getting all those government departments to co-operate is pretty small. Plus who is going to vote for the tax-on-pies government?

It's definitely easy and normal to eat all the time here. We just had an email at work about "Wellbeing week" and there is going to be a midmorning cake session (to encourage socialising I think). I've looked at it with new eyes after this discussion!

@3luckystars, I bought a vintage 1960s jacket recently - label size 18 to my present day 14!

First number is European, then the American, then UK.

So:
23 (and seven eighths) inch waist is size 6
25 (and a quarter) inch waist is size 8
26 (and three quarters) inch waist is size 10
28 (and three quarters) inch waist is size 12
30 (and a quarter) inch waist is size 14
32 (and an eighth) inch is a size 16
33 (and an quarter) inch is size 18

Sorry I didn't know how else to do that as it looked too confusing when I typed the fractions out. I was still clinging on to the Americsn size, but it's there in black and white and I can't pretend anymore!

It's definitely easy and normal to eat all the time here. We just had an email at work about "Wellbeing week" and there is going to be a midmorning cake session (to encourage socialising I think). I've looked at it with new eyes after this discussion!

^^

Talk about a contradiction in terms!

A pp mentioned her family in Korea who share food. It's the same with my Indian in laws. If we go out and fancy a cake with our tea/coffee we buy one and share it between 4 of us. When we get dessert it's the same, always shared. If we're having lunch out we usually buy three meals between 4 of us. It's always enough food! I've learnt from them. Now when I see British people (of which I am one) eating a massive plate of pie and chips followed by a massive dessert of sticky toffee pudding and custard it seems like an obscene amount of food to me! I never want a full dessert now but will happily share with 2 or 3 others. It's just lots of little habits like these which all add up and mean other nationalities are slimmer than us. They seem to understand the importance of moderating their food intake whereas some people here really don't limit themselves at all.

I'm not overweight and I rarely have dessert but God help anyone who starts waving their fork over my piece of cake.

Haha Baguette a non sharer here too. Reading that made me tense.

I blame the move to celebrate fatness, ‘big is beautiful’ etc of a few years ago, using fat models to normalise being fat etc.

When I was at school there would be one fat kid in the class, if that. No one wanted to be fat.

Now, being fat is almost applauded, and suggesting it’s a bad thing (or even saying ‘fat’ rather than ‘overweight’) is suddenly not allowed.

How do you share cake between three anyway? You know, equally, so as not to start a war? You'd have to take into account the shrinking width, you couldn't just split by length. And the person who won the outside piece would get bonus icing. I just....no.

Ha and all that faux niceness leaving the last bit

Other people’s fork near your food. Forks might touch accidentally gneh

Back off buddy.

I really think poverty, take aways, two working parents, ignorance and processed foods have a huge amount to do with it

I think we need to have a lot more support for obese families - rather than shaming - and we need to make sure every child going through school can cook

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow how is two working parents related?

My exH had a SAHM and everybody in that house was obese... My DM was a working mum and I was chubby but my sister was skinny...