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

I will have to work up to doing something like that. I'm a bit mortified at the moment.

Ask a friend to call for you ?

Boffin - they don't care, really. They just need to be able to match you up, if they can't they're sorry because they can't make any money Just keep trying.

17 hands is big, but you get used to it, size wise. And small ponies can be naughtier than big ones, IMO.

I had my first horse ride ever when I was 35. convinced I was too old to learn, but it had been a secret desire for a while.

I find that learning something new and exciting gives you energy, I only go for a 30 minute lesson a week, or 1 hr hack, but it's my "treat" (and a non calorific one at that!).

Doing something that is a bit challenging and scary somehow boosts self esteem as well (pseudo psychological view).

shall I do some virtual hand holding?

(bit of a thread hijack, but I think this thread has run it's course anyway)

Fellatio - this is it.

When I was in the throes of anorexia, all I ate really was bars of chocolate, sweets and so on - very little else.

I couldn't put on weight at all. I think they were just so filling, you ate so much of the stuff then stopped.

The way I managed to put on weight (and it wasn't classic anorexia, as I was desperate to eat, just couldn't seem to manage it) was to begin eating bread, rice, pasta - all the simple things that actually felt like they were sticking to me. This worked really well.

So it's not about good foods and bad foods. It's totally a state of mind, and body, and tbh there were other factors at work with me but it wasn't about staying off chocolate.

You can eat very healthy stuff and still be overweight, and vice versa.

I have only ever ridden naughty ponies, non-riding school ones, the sort that bolt off if they see a cow in the next field, ride under branches to try to knock you off, and flick their heads about to teach you a lesson. Perhaps I had a baptism of fire. Once some friends made me go over trotting poles on one of these beasts and I nearly crapped myself. But I am wondering whether in fact a good solid steed would be better. A medieval palfrey would be very nice, actually.

Ooh, I used to love going riding with my sister when I was young !
The DCs have been a few times at summer camp.
I'd love to go again some time with dd, especially if we could canter down the beach !

i think British women are obese because we're not very happy. We eat because it makes us temporarily feel better. Having been on the big side in my life I ate and drank too much because I felt fundamentally unhappy. I then hated myself for eating too much and ate more and hated myself more.... I've done it at various times in my life.

Now I am happy I eat less, food isn't a punishment or a reward I just enjoy it because I enjoy life more and if I do overdo the chocolate I don't punish myself as much so it doesn't become such a spiral.

It's circular. White flour, sweets etc make your moods go up and down (and most doctors recommend giving them up for those with depression etc) so the way many people eat makes them sad and makes them need to eat more for a temporary high. If they could change the kinds of foods they eat they might feel better and eat less.

I agree.

Sugar is the DEVIL.

A dear friend of mine had bowel cancer and paid to see a tip top nutritionist (not one of those pretend ones), who told him that sugar was the number one carcinogen in our society.

shit Hully that's really scary. I've heard it before from oncologists. I eat tons of the stuff ( and have ongoing mood problems -duh! Talk about seeing the hole and walking into it anyway!)

I don't eat much of it (apart from in wine!) these days, but I am fortunate not to have much of a sweet tooth.

You know, if you stop, after a while you don't like it much any more. I had some biscuits in the house (left from guests), so yesterday I finished the packet in one go (four choccy bics), so they didn't call to me and just to get rid of them, and they made me feel sick. I could feel my blood sugar going way up and then down again. Horrid.

Get nuts and dried fruit.

yeah I need to stop skipping meals and filling up on crap when I get desperate

And yet...I am always seeing threads on here where someone will complain that their dc is being given too much refined sugar at nursery and there will be a chorus of "PFB, a jam sandwich never hurt anyone, etc etc".

This really winds me up, because I have thought for a long time that sugar is a major drug in a way-it is HIGHLY addictive, and as Hully says a massive contributor to disease in later life.

One of the arguments often used by the "jam sandwiches are fine" brigade is that if you don't give kids sugar when they are little, they will gorge on it at every available opportunity.
I have seen in my own ds that this is not true.He had no sugar at all until he was two, and then only occasionally in the form of cake or fruit yogurt sometimes.
Sure, he loves cake, but doesn't eat too much. If he has one Quality St at xmas, he doesn't want another one, because it is such an intense sugar hit, it's actually a bit much for him.
He loves fruit-all kinds of fruit, in fact I get nagged in the supermarket for mangoes and pineapple, more than crisps and chocolate!

We are hard up, but I have always felt that one thing I could do for him was to control what he eats, and make sure he gets the right things. My dad was the same with me, and consequently I love vegetables and fruit.

We can't have it both ways.
Most people agree that we as a nation eat too much refined and processed food, including sugar, and this starts in childhood.
So maybe we should stop scoffing at parents who if their kids are being given a lot of sugar.
It's not to do with demanding organic or poncy things. It is just common sense. If we don't want them to be at risk of diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay, mood swings and fatigue and obesity don't get them addicted in the first place.

A visit to GBK sums up what the last couple of posts about being taught by your parents. Me and DH had a GBK burger each and a large bowl of chips to share and it FILLED us. They aren't small burgers.

We were sat upstairs and noticed a couple and a child of about 10 downstairs. They had two starters to share between them and a burger and chips each and the kid had a large milkshake. The kid had managed to eat the starter and half the burger and then stopped. He was getting upset and making a fuss which is why we noticed them. The mother was there trying to almost force feed the kid the rest of the burger. We watched slightly aghast as it was obvious the kid felt full and had clearly had a good go at the food, but the parents wanted him to clear the plate. Of course the child was more than a tad overweight (as were the parents). I felt incredibly sorry for the child at what he was being taught and how it was all setting him up for life. He wasn't being allowed to stop eating when he wanted to. Very sad to watch. We left very quickly.

I love where all this is going...

I agree to a large extent, NorthernWreck

It's interesting to see on those 'what I ate in the 70's & 80's' threads how regularly highly refined and processed foods appeared in the childhood diets of todays' adults.
It certainly wasn't the case in the 50's and not so much in the 60's.

The upswing of obesity in British women could be due to the 30 something/early 40's generation becoming plumper, joining the more natural plumpness of the menopausal and postmenopausal, thanks to the diets of their early years.

Another factor could be synthetic hormones. A lot of women rely on the pill for contraception, and we know that oestrogen in particular has a role to play in women's weight. Personally the pill puts a couple of pounds on me, it's likely it has more of an effect on other people.

We eat a lot more intensively farmed meat too, which is usually hormone treated. My TTc friend was advised not to eat non organic chicken, as the oestrogen levels could interfere with her own hormone cycle. So on a population scale it could have an effect on weight levels too.

Moral - eat natural, I suppose.

haha HullyGully

I BLAME THE PARENTS!!!!! tongue in cheek

SinicalSal I find it interesting WHEN women pile on weight. There's definitely times in life when women seem to. I noticed it at Uni, some girls just suddenly piled on the pounds. Then when they started their first jobs, some girls just piled on the pounds. Or when they had first serious relationship. Or when they got married. Definite patterns in my friends. Patterns that may well in some cases, be related to when they started taking the pill too.

NiceyNice re the times when people pile on weight, I'm not sure I would blame the pill for those, most are much more easily explained by a change in daily eating/exercise habits, for example;

IME at uni most people start going out several times a week, drinking loads of cheap booze, often followed by gorging on junk.

Serious relationships, particularly early on, usually involve lots of romantic cosy meals and portion size doesn't help, I can be guilty of serving myself the same size portion of food as DH...his is probably larger than strictly necessary for him, for me that is nearly twice as much as I need. I think many people do this regularly without thinking about it, inevitably it leads to weight gain if adjustments aren't made elsewhere.

When you first have kids, you are usually sleep deprived (proven to increase sugar cravings and makes it harder, hormonally, to control hunger and lose weight), bored with groundhog day routine of caring for DC's with the fridge an easy distraction/comfort, added to the difficulty of finding time to yourself to exercise-I think you have to be very determined about it to make that time....

I was obese not so long ago, now I am merely overweight. I became obese by eating too much and of the wrong things. I'd agree with those who say that a large part of weight problems are caused in childhood. I copied my dad and brothers and ate huge 6'3'' size person portion sizes when I was considerably shorter. As a child we always had biscuits and things in to snack on, rather then fruit. We never had vegetables as an accompaniment to a meal. I carried those habits with me as an adult and went from being an overweight child to an obese adult.

Needless to say with my own children I've done things differently and not one of my children is even close to being overweight. I would not wish what I've been through on them.

Just done the maths for the hell of it and the difference between maintaining your body weight and putting on a stone a year is a banana a day. Or a glass of wine, or a glass of orange juice. Hardly gluttony when it comes down to it.....

except there's a whole lot more to body composition and fat storage than just the amount of calories consumed!