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?

Yes, I'm fat because a) I'm lazy; b) I deal with the pressures of my NHS job via grabbing food on the go and drinking too much, and c) the endlessly changing rolling 12 hour shift rotas mean few opportunities to sit around a table as a family, and inability to get involved in organised sport-oh and if work's hacked 14 hours out of your day, a nice family walk, swim or bike ride is out of the question.

Agree wholeheartedly with this and I accept I am part of the problem as an overweight woman.

If we wanted cake in the 80s at home, we generally had to bake it which meant it was not everyday. An ice cream slider was a treat. Compare and contrast with today's endless cakes and Ben and Jerry's "ice cream".

I don't know what the answer is..

What advice do you need?

Stop eating more calories than you use, how hard is that! You have apps, books, websites, scales, so many tools that can help you keep track of your calories if you need.

Enough resources to figure out that not all calories are equal and how to eat properly without feeling hungry.

If you refuse the simple basic facts, what exactly do you want people to do? What advice are you actually looking for? What people want is a miracle solution that allows them to overeat shit and losing weight at the same time. Won't happen.

What about NOT becoming fat in the first place, raising healthy kids and not making your life around food?
The amount of posters who are "hilariously" telling others that chocolate and crisps are not heroin, that's it's fine to give junk food to a toddler and sweets.

It's raining: so many kids will be plonked in a car, driven to school where they will have "wet days" so won't go outside at all - because you don't let children in the rain anymore apparently, be driven back home and will spend the afternoon and evening watching tv and playing video games. That's pathetic, how healthy are these poor kids who must be climbing the walls?

If you refuse to look at simple fact, complain and give your kids a bad start in life, yes, you should be shamed. It is shameful.

You want to stop seeing FAT people? Then society needs to start pouring more money into mental health and specialists dealing with obese issues.

Amen to that!

@Miljah I think shift work is very hard on one's appetite full stop. You crave dinner and breakfast time, and end up having dinner at dinner time as that's what's available and social. Very tricky to be slim on night duty.

I'm an educated, middle class, middle aged woman. I need to lose 3 stone.
It's crept on since I had my second child. I know I need to lose it.
I exercise & eat healthy food.
I also like cheese, wine & chocolate.
I feel shit about it sometimes. That f

If someone doesn’t have the leccy to make soup they also don’t have enough to heat up a processed meal. If you don’t have a kitchen (I didn’t for about six months), you can still eat well cheaply. As someone who has been there, you can do it if you want to.

Well... how fast is the fastest soup you can make? Because Iceland's burgers with buns take 2 minutes in the microwave. There is a link between poverty and obesity, a very obvious and well-documented one. Of course you can eat cheaply for very little money but it requires other things to be in place.

(No need to @ me, I'm on the thread.)

No, society needs to put more money in education and allow the kids who have to go to state school access to daily exercise, and decent food at least at school. That would be a start.

The difference in obesity very noticeable in the wealthier parts of towns and Europe. So there must be some socioeconomic element to it.

Not sure about that. We've been doing loads of University open days with our son and there were a lot of "chubby" students doing tours etc, plenty of whom were obese which was a great shock. But as another poster mentioned, the "oriental" looking students were mostly thin. So I think it's more cultural than socio-economic.

(Sorry posted too soon)

... that doesn't help.
Skinny people wandering around town "noticing" other people's imperfections doesn't really help either 🤷🏻‍♀️

(No need to @ me, I'm on the thread.)

that's a stupid comment, if posters don't quote then someone will pop up outraged because they "didn't say that'. No they didn't, wasn't a reply to them.

I work in supermarket home delivery. Some of the baskets I pack are so worrying, many multipacks of sweets and crisps and 'diet' drinks, it feels like they should have a warning about diabetes and other health risks associated with diet sent out with their 'food'.
Frequently shoppers spend large amounts yet so little of their shopping is what I would call healthy, nutritious actual FOOD, just snacks and treats.
The same with home delivery. The slim people receiving the shopping are buying generous amounts of fruit and veg, ingredients like meat and cheese. The fat people are receiving fizzy drinks and ready meals. Not rocket science!!

Yabbers

Wow, fat shaming people’s dogs now, are we?

That really tickled me!

Having said that, obese dogs and cats are a real problem too nowadays.

You don't have to go back to the 40s to see the difference. As a pp said, just look at school photos of 15 -20 years ago. Very few overweight children back then, now it's the norm. And because it's the norm no one thinks it's an issue.

And as in every thread on obesity, there's a lot of posters giving reasons for their own weight issues. That doesn't get away from the fact that this is a recent and very dangerous phenomenon that affects us all.

how fast is the fastest soup you can make?

30 seconds if you reheat a tinned soup in the microwave?
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?

It's really hard if you are on medication which has increased your appetite and food is the only thing that stops you feeling the pain from the abuse you have suffered.

If it's not a problem that you have personally OP, then maybe you should just keep your thoughts to yourself?

I don't wander around town "noticing" all the ugly people 🤷🏻‍♀️

Reply to thatoldpinkumbrella.

No, society needs to put more money in education and allow the kids who have to go to state school access to daily exercise, and decent food at least at school. That would be a start.

I disagree. You can "educate" all you want but people still do what they want given the chance. Generations of people knew smoking was bad for them but it was only due to ridiculously high taxation and smoking bans in public places that had the biggest impact. Most people know fast food, crisps and chocolate is bad for you but chose to eat it anyway. Same with alcohol, people happily get themselves paralytically drunk even though they know the risks. I think we need more regulation, tax and control. The sugar tax on fizzy drinks has changed behaviour, not only the public, but also the retailers, such as fast food firms who only have the no-sugar versions as part of their meal deals and the likes of Coke who have brought out a smaller bottle of the full sugar version to sell at the same price in vending machines etc so you end up at least consuming less of it.

Agree OP. I was the "fat" girl at school. Today I would be considered a normal weight. I was a size 12.

Stop eating more calories than you use, how hard is that!

Very hard, because calories aren't just calories. Food for many fat people is more than sustenance. It's the love you missed out on as a child, it's the way you calm your mental health problems, it's the way you make yourself feel better. It's a vicious circle of course, but there it is.

This is why fat shaming doesn't work. Fat people already feel bad about themselves, so bad that they're on a self-destructive path because they believe they deserve nothing better. Making them feel even worse about themselves leads to a need to feel a bit better, leads to more food, leads to more weight...you get the picture.

One way to stop overeating is to improve self esteem. Believe you are worth not self-destroying and self-sabotaging. This, of course, requires some kind of mental health input like counselling and specialist psychological help, which is expensive. Whereas 'eat less, move more' is cheap, but also lazy and stupid because it doesn't address the underlying issues.

You can't tell someone to stop eating cheeseburgers if you don't know what that cheeseburger is doing for them.

I'm currently visiting schools with my daughter.

We were at a girls school and there were predominantly mothers and daughters. I was struck by the number of morbidly obese women with clearly overweight daughters. Shame on those mothers and the fathers too probably. Aged 10 and already disadvantaged. I suppose they won't be teased as they won't stand out. .

My mum used to diet a little, she would cut back when her clothes didn't fit so well. We were not well off and she had no intention of buying new clothes to accommodate her widening girth. Now, you can buy clothes up to size 30 and they are freely available, normalising fat.

I'm not immune myself before you all jump on me, certainly carrying some extra weight but I do what my mum taught me - cut back a bit and do some more exercise.

Now we are too scared to mention fat and get jumped on for fat shaming. It isn't beautiful, your organs are also swathed in fat and it is killing you.

Yes, let us apologise for a nation of fat by producing another generation of fat. It is an epidemic.

You can "educate" all you want but people still do what they want given the chance.

true, but I still stand by my point - not raising active children is only going to make the problem worst.

Plus the "fat free" "sugar free" options are actually worst than the full fat or full sugar versions!

If it's not a problem that you have personally OP, then maybe you should just keep your thoughts to yourself?

Why though?

It's a global problem. Why shouldn't it be discussed?

And anyway, if it doesn't affect someone personally maybe it'll end up affecting their kids one day?

@EssentialHummus I always @ in reply as it helps other readers follow individual discussions, my phone is also broken so the touch function to paste isn’t working properly.

I chop my squash, no special knife require, mircrowave for two minutes, I then add it to some vegetable stock and mash with a potato masher, or you can let it cool and manually mash it with your hands before additing it to stock or hot water with salt and pepper in. I have had to improvise and mix it together in a freezer bag before then pour it into a bowl and microwave it.

A bag of ready prepared frozen/fresh veg is cheaper than a microwave burger, more nitritious and the fibre content would keep you feeling full for longer.