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?

Yellredder when you say "So I'm not necessarily sure we are bigger", do you just mean your family?

I think its lack of exercize with a lot of people. I know people who do nothing apart from taking a few steps to the car.
I saw a little boy today outside the supermarket he was about 7 and really obese.Thats really sad I think.

I have a photograph of my father in a pub darts team c1950. Not one of the men is fat. Find a pub team now and compare....

I was at an office training day last week and two of my colleagues, both of whom had had a full breakfast including black pudding, were ribbing me for not having eaten breakfast. They were incredulous, saying "what's the matter with you, you veggie or something?". Both were pretty overweight and went on to eat three portions each of the buffet.

Went our socially with same colleagues for a meal yesterday and the amount of food consumed was staggering. All bar one of said colleagues are overweight or obese. I'm hardly particularly slim myself (size 10 at current sizes).

Fat shaming works for me. If I didn't feel embarrassment at eating too much, I'd be the size of a shed.

If I look at old photos it is the men that really stand out as much fatter. Even the men who look slim now, look fat in comparison to men of the past.

I am referring to the first 4 or 5 seasons of Friends. I thought Monica and Rachel looked fine and normal, but watching back now, they look VERY slim, especially Monica.. (because society so much bigger, they look quite thin now.) And I never said at any point that they didn't look 'healthy.'

I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm currently watching S2-3 and they were very, very slim. I agree that they were just so normal at the time that it was unnoteworthy. But watching back now have very slim waists. It's just that by the latter half of Friends' run Cox in particular reaches an unhealthy level of underweight. Something Cox has said herself in the years after Friends ended. But that was noticeable at the time because she went from looking proportional to looking unwell.

It's no surprise really. Given that the premise of eating less and moving more is what causes weight loss, can we really be shocked when our whole lifestyles - of easily accessible (delivered!) takeaways, and sedentary lifestyles - result in weight gain?

The answer is right there, and it takes a HUGE amount of self control to start cooking and eating healthily when it's so easy not to, and if you live a sedentary life you have to actually make time for exercise, whereas daily life a few decades ago would have been plenty exercise.

I lost 12st over a few years a little while back, so am more than familiar with this battle.

I have gained 2st back a) because I went to far and b) because I'm comfortable with a new partner, but ultimately I've found a maintainable weight which is decent.

Obesogenic society. Hard to recognise and fight. Especially in areas with lower incomes.

I thought of this when I worked and people brought cakes every day. Amazingly it was a type of workplace where everyone was slim to very slim. Bar one non-client facing guy.

Non client-facing rather

I believe the research showing not all calories are equal and that a bowl of nuts and a fizzy drinking giving you identical calories intake is not going to be processed by our bodies in the same manner. We are not robots and the old adage calories in v calories out is not correct.

If someone ate a bowl of fruit or a mini mars bar it will not again have the same affect and our bodies would use the mars bar sugar and fat in a different way.

nutritionfacts.org/2016/08/09/what-about-all-the-sugar-in-fruit/

All food in moderation is rubbish, our bodies need quality food in moderation and junk food sparingly

All the Friends cast were smokers weren't they?

I think the main problem is that if you are an alcoholic, drug addict or smoker you can go cold turkey and quit completely. You don't need the perfect amount of the 'good' alcohol or cigarettes in your life to be healthy the way you do with food. There's no getting away from it so there's not the same issues
With food though you still need to eat regularly. If you have issues with food that caused you to become obese in the first place they obviously your self control isn't great.
Cigarette and alcohol advertising is more strictly controlled in a way that food isn't.

I have recently lost two stones and I am now a size 12. Except I am not. I was a 12 in the past and I am much bigger than that now. I recently had a clear out and found a few old size 12 clothes and they were at least three sizes too small for me. So vanity sizing is a thing. (In some shops I have to buy extra small or size 8 - blatantly wrong.)

I stick to 2 meals a day, rarely snack. Some of my more overweight colleagues eat all day. They also talk about food a lot, and a couple of them are the Fat is Beautiful brigade. They are all female, the men are not overweight. They have health issues like gout, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes.

Being overweight has been normalised. All this big is beautiful is nonsense. It isn't and what is shameful is not calling somebody fat, but the normalisation of being overweight. We are becoming polarised - a nation of those who really look after themselves, and those who don't. It is a choice, health conditions aside, to be as healthy as you can, or just stuff yourself constantly on high calorie foods which once were considered treats but now everyday fare.

I think it starts right from when they are babies...lots of people made comments on DS being smaller than other similar age babies because he was breastfed...err his dad is S E Asian and his mum is 5'3" and a size 6/8...he's never going to be huge!

There's still a lot of pressure from some people to 'fatten DC up'/make them finish everything.
I do try to be sensitive though, especially with MIL (from a poor part of the Philippines)

Obesity is a massive problem in the country and not discussed property in society as people misinterpret it as being cruel or judgy. It should be discussed and people should be educated about healthy eating.

Children should be taught how to make a cheap healthy meal from scratch, but if their parents are overweight and eat badly it's easy for them cycle to continue.

The amount of young children who are overweight is a disgrace and the parents should be ashamed of themselves (again excluding disability, MH issues or such the like) he will only eat McDonald's chicken nuggets doesn't fall into that category (again excluding disability or MH issues )

A lot of society will always have a reason for being overweight, but it doesn't detract from the fact it is a problem, it is unhealthy and in most cases (excluding disability, MH or such the like) it's avoidable.

Fashion is moving to enable fatter people to feel slimmer ---- not helpful and not the answer.

There may be more convenience food outlets but last time I checked they weren't knocking on the door and force feeding people. Its choice and be accountable for them choices. I would hate to think I was contributing to raising the chances of being taken away from my son sooner than necessary due to ill health.

No one has the right to be cruel to anyone it is definitely not acceptable, but it is acceptable to have a discussion about the implications and how we try to resolve the issue and change the mindset and educate people .

Food is such an emotional thing. People eat because they are happy, sad, tired, stressed, as a treat. No one has a nice salad or a veg soup as a treat. It's high fat, high sugar convenience foods.

Supermarkets have special offers on crap food constantly. On the end of aisles where you can't miss it. Most supermarkets have the super 6 types of fruit and veg, but often that is it. Cereal is high sugar, the choice of sandwiches at lunchtime is mind blowing. Not much of it is healthy.

I loosely follow slimming world. If I want to eat out my choices tend to be a baked potato or a salad, no dressings etc. I can't buy a supermarket sandwich as there aren't any low fat low sugar ones, and slimming world is pretty flexible to follow.

Dcs are constantly given snacks and treats and sugary drinks. I am quite lucky with my 2. Dd is 15 and very health conscious and very active but my ndns son at 16 is morbidly obese. There are just so many opportunities for him to eat unhealthy foods and drinks. Same as everyone else.

Being able to cook healthy food is a problem as well. I can and do cook healthy meals and know what healthy is. But many people don't. Or can't afford to for whatever reason.

And despite knowing all this, being able to afford healthy food, knowing what a healthy portion is, being quite active myself (horses, dogwalks, school run, allotment, kayaking) I am still a good 2 stone overweight.

Because it's bloody difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Because I like a takeaway occasionally. Because I sometimes don't have time to make lunch at home and grab a sandwich from the shop. Because I treat myself to a few beers. Because we like a pudding after sunday lunch. Because as much as I like veg soup, I also like cheese on toast.

And I have lots of advantages compared to other people my age and social background.

It is a major problem and one that is going to get worse. At a size 16 I feel fat, but at least I am relatively fit physically and my 2 stone is more for vanity reasons.

I was shocked yesterday in a small market town in Sussex that there were a majority of very slim people. It was noticeable in the middle aged who normally get a bit of middle aged spread.
There was also wedding on and literally all the female guests had legs like racehorses (long, thin and well muscled).

Definitely related to money.

@Camomila I have the same issue, my son is petite as am I. Under 5" and an old size 6.

Everyone was obsessed with getting him the "baby rolls" as they are "so cute". He was breastfed and followed a perfect pattern for weight gain, the HV said people seem to have forgotten it's healthy to be able to see the outline of the ribcage when they stretch and there is an epidemic in obesity and it's starting at "weigh in"at the baby clinics.

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.

But that thing that makes you feel better could be anything not just food. I used to use food as a form of comfort, something that helped me carve out the space that mentally replenished me when times were awful. The hour or two every day that ensured I didn't fall into a depression when my life collapsed involved making sure I had my me time where I watched tv ate cake or chocolate and drank hot chocolate. And I got fat. I thought I was a bit overweight, I was heading for obese.

Now I skate. I go to the roller disco or the skatepark or on the trail paths and I skate. Usually until the sweat is running in rivers down my body and I need to get changed right after if not in the middle of a session. I can 'exercise' for hours and hours without ever feeling like I'm 'working' out. My brain is on a high for so long afterwards that I'm often still buzzing so much the day after that I feel like I have wonderful, wonderful news to share with everyone I see. (And I have to work really hard to remind myself that no-one will care.)

I often burn through more than my normal daily BMR and I could munch all the chocolate and cake I used to 'need' without putting on a pound. But these days my only need for food is as an enjoyable fuel. I need to eat to live, I need protein to build the muscle I'm enjoying having. I love eating socially. I love eating delicious foods for their deliciousness. But I don't need to eat to relax, to quiet my mind, to replace something I'm not getting. Because I have found something that does a far, far, far better job of keeping me mentally sustained while being really, really good for me instead of really quite bad.

It's the crap food/drinks that manufacturers are allowed to produce. Foods high in fat and sugar need to be taxed to high heaven and labelled like cigarettes with warnings.

Supermarkets horrify me most of the time, especially the budget ones like Aldi/Lidl.

I live in a Scandinavian country. When I come “home” to the UK I’m perpetually shocked by the average weight of people in the streets. I forget that as a nation, the country in which I live is incredible healthy/sporty. Where I live, I am larger than most women, but when I come home I’m average to slim in comparison.

Like a few other PPs - when I was at uni (early 80s) I was a size 12. I've saved a few bits, the clothes I was wearing the night I met DP, and having put on a pound or two here and there since they are too small for me now. In fact I'm astonished that I was so slim. Yet today I'm mostly size 8, and in some shops (Next, for one) I'm a 6. We are normalising weighing more than we did, so that what would have been considered overweight is now average, and overweight now is a lot more that it used to be.

I don't care what people look like. But it's clear that we are heading for an obesity crisis, and with it a dangerous rise in diabetes. Unfortunately the many factors which have led to this state are now so firmly entrenched - I can't see many people wanting to go back to the days when you had no option other than to cook from scratch every day - I'm not sure there's an answer. I fear that horse may have bolted.

I think we should fat shame pets!

It seems to be standard nowadays for people to get a dog and then only walk it maybe twice a day for twenty minutes and then a 'proper' walk at weekends, and maybe not even then if everyone is 'busy'. The dog gets fatter and fatter (and less and less healthy, if you think doctors are bad about fat shaming, you should hear vets!) and people think it's normal.

Same with cats, where food is available all day, or whenever the cat looks at you with big eyes and mews at its bowl...

Animals are getting fatter. People are getting fatter. Hunger is seen as something to be feared, whether in humans or animals, and exercise is something that nobody has time for. Now just about every spaniel is obese.

Recently went to Centre Parcs and was shocked at the size of people in the pool - the vast majority were overweight and many people were what I would describe as grossly obese. The few healthy looking people actually stood out.

Whereas in my office (large company) in London I’d say the vast majority of people (all ages) are slim / healthy build and in my friendship groups there is no one significantly overweight. Although to be fair I met some friends through sports clubs.

I need to eat more healthily myself and I have to say the trip to centre parcs has certainly motivated me.

Foods high in fat and sugar need to be taxed to high heaven and labelled like cigarettes with warnings.

I agree it should be labelled yes, but I don't think it should be taxed to high heaven. Why should I pay triple for a chocolate bar that I choose to eat responsibly because other eat too much.