Why are nearly 25% of British women obese?

[twitterer]

On the news this morning we are told that British women are the fatest in Europe, why? Of course it is down to eating too much and exercising too little. But other populations don't suffer so badly. I wonder if there is more (healthy) pressure from society, men, employers and others to be healthy

You could try......

But don't blame me if it doesn't work!

I am going to go and be a surgeon this afternoon. It will come instinctively, I am sure.

I am O negative.
I get fan mail from the Blood Donor people

The wheat thing tho is because we made it up about 2000 years ago and still haven't adjusted our internals to cope with it.

That one is true.

I am Blue through and through

This is a very complex debate as shown by the variety of posts.

Living from outside the UK and returning to see its culture and norms, it seems that much of the blame for such massive weight gain is down to food culture and the general idea of what an acceptable size to be is.

As has already been discussed, the British reliance on ready-meals must be partly to blame. People in other countries do not eat them to anywhere near the extent that the British do. With one exception, America. They rely on ready-meals and convenience food as much, if not more than we do. And they are even fatter.

The other thing I really notice about the British is how the norm of what is thin/fat has changed over the last 10-15 years.
When I see pictures of people on the internet, on tv etc and meet friends and family, the average size seems to have grown massively, but people's perception is that they are normal size.
Because of this, there is little social pressure to loose weight on people who would have been considered too fat a few years ago.

If I cut out wheat and dairy, what would I have to eat instead to make sure I don't get some sort of deficiency? Rye and buckwheat would be OK, but how to deal with the dairy issue whilst avoiding gastronomic revulsions such as rice milk and soya milk??

arf at 'making wheat up'.

If it's about thyroid problems, why aren't the Dutch, Germans, French etc all fat too?
They live on very similar diets and we are all related pretty closely genetically.
Also, why would this problem only have come out in the last decade or two? Brits were much thinner in the 70s and before.
Our thyroids haven't changed since then. Nor has our intake of wheat, dairy and red meat.

Prior to the 1970s we ate a great deal more fat - especially saturated fat. It sated our appetites and gave more flavour to food, hence we felt the need to eat less often. And over-processed sugary foods did not make up the percentage of our diets then that they do now. Coupled with various other lifestyle factors, such as fewer cars, less central heating etc.

boffin - SIL basically eats a vegan diet plus meat. She used to be a vegetarian who relied heavily on dairy and wheat. To give that (and anything containing yeast) she needed to eat meat again.

Agree fell - our diets may me more 'low-fat' but they aren't better. IMO obviously.

Hully I am so glad you were joking I was about to say what a lame excuse that was!!
Obviously low thyroid does cause you to gain weight, but it can be easily diagnosed and treated so anyone who is worried about this should just get it checked

COI I have low thyroid and am on thyroxine. I have a little post baby weight to lose but am still bf and expect I won't lose the last few pounds till I stop as I currently have huge boobs

We don't need dairy. Once we get past breastfeeding age (used to be fiveish of course) we don't need it.

Cashews and kiwis, for eg, are very high in calcium.

Med diets have very little dairy too of course.

I don't eat much dairy and I don't eat any meat.

I'm sure everyone was fascinated to learn that. If only it had a point.

Whoever it was (too lazy to trawl thread!) who mentioned the high cost of swimming and other sports activities-spot on.
Its cheaper to take the kids to Macca D's than it is to go swimming.

Anyway.I have been thinking about an easy weight loss plan:

1.Get an allotment: lots of physical activity to get your food, lots of veggies.

2.Don't use your car unless you have to.

3.Give away your telly. I really think telly makes you fat. In fact it would be really interesting to do an experiment whereby everyone unplugs the TV for a week, and see how much we get done and how much less garbage we shovel into our faces of an evening.

4.Stop buying wine (note to self)

5.Cook every night. (I do this one, and it really isn't that time consuming. Especially if the telly is off.)

In other words, I suppose what I am saying is,lets go back to living in 1948. But with less smoking and racism.

Transfats & refined hidden sugars are the enemy as far as I am concerned, I blame them for widening waists.
Of course they are ultra tasty and convenient.

When you've spent all day saying 'no' to yourself, starting in the morning when you have to haul yourself out of bed, it's very easy to say 'yes'to a quick pick me up especially when it's only yourself you are harming.

Someone above said someone she knows claims she has no time to cook yet watches 2 hours of tv a night - can you really not see how taht would come about and is replicated all across the country?
You come in late from work and need to eat now - it's not like in Downton Abbey with dinner at 8 - you need to cook something quickly particularly if you have DC. And how many people finally get DC to sleep and are fit for nothing but slumping at that point?

yy

Eat what we evolved to eat and you won't go far wrong. No processed shite.

No mammoth in Waitrose!

We need Hugh F-W to make mammoth trendy again.

I would imagine it's quite 'robust and gamey' and 'delicious with lightly dressed leaves and poncey interesting heritage cheese'

I know! The government should provide all overweight people with a cook - so that when they get in at night they will be able to sit down to a perfectly cooked balanced meal. How's that for an idea? I'd go for it . DH cooks for us sometimes but TBH his cookery skills are fairly limited. And often involve pasta.....

TBH you can only balance up your thyroid so far, because you have to take synthetic thyroxine at the same dose every day, and this does not take into account your own body clock, minute and subtle day to day changes and your natural rhythms and so on. So I think it gets you nearly there but not quite.

Or.... meat only available on the hoof. Has to be hunted down with a rifle. That's help - we'd eat less red meat and burn off calories catching it. Hurrah!

it's true though.

Eat much less meat (because originally it ran about and was much less fatty and harder to catch)

Eat stuff wot grows: fruit veg pulses nuts

Don't eat stuff we muck about with, which includes wheat.