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

ShengdanRoad - it is, ask any doctor.

I think we need to change the 'women are too fat' record - it's gotten a bit boring now. Leave women's bodies alone.

Happy-rises in incidences of anorexia do get press coverage, as far as I can tell, but probably not as much as this because there isn't a trend in huge rises in the proportion of underweight people!

You think that an obese person will never say NO to some food?

I have been very very slim, average weight and have gone up and down in weight, the reasons for the fact I am now obese may surprise a lot of people.

I do know someone who is far more obese than I am, she has never dieted in her life for longer than a couple of weeks, she has no shame in public with her apetite, she said to me the other day that she should really have some self control in public. I didn't want to hurt her feelings more, by stating that she was always watched by others, as have I when eating in public. I can tell you many times people have commented on the amount she can put away, and I can tell you many times people have come to me saying they have never seen me eat a lot.

I ate a roast dinner today, a twix and an egg sandwich, I drank tea with milk no sugar, and some diet ribena. That is a pretty normal day for me.

Still dont see what the big debate is here - the anwer to the Op question on why 25% of British women are obese is - it just greed. nothing more, nohing less, I've seen it too may times, at a party today for instance, nice spread of food, few cakes/pudding ets, one family had helping of food, then went up for another, then parents had 2 lots of pudding as did the children, then children went and helped themselves to a 3rd lot of pudding. It was there and they ate it, nothing to do with hunger, it was just greed that remained un-checked.

And in case anyone is wondering - yes - all of that family was overweight.

People don't walk enough - people are always amazed that I will walk for 20 minutes rather than drive or take the bus.

People are totally ignorant about what is healthy. They eat crap like Special K that is full of sugar.

I think a lot of people eat emotionally, I know I do when I've had a crap day, I just want to sit in front of the telly eating shite.

I think it's all linked to our weather (not walking, being a bit miserable a lot of the time) and the fact that we are not really a family-oriented society.

Some I think are down to genetics and health conditions. Not ALL but some.

Up until I was 19, I was stick thin - when at school in my teens, teachers questioned my parents as to whether I had an eating disorder because I was so thin. I didn't! I willingly went home every day eager for dinner.

Anyway, after 19, bit by bit I started gaining weight. At the time I hadn't long left college and put it down to not getting quite as much exercise as usual. So, along with my mum I joined a gym and went 5 days a week - the gym followed by a swimming session. Still, quite rapidly the weight piled on, along with other symtpoms such as excess hair growing in places it shouldn't. Upon going to the doctors when I failed to control it, they found I had too much testosterone in my body which was the cause. It took them a further 2 yrs to find out why this was happening. Turned out I had polycystic ovaries.

Now, whilst it's certainly not impossible to lose weight with such a condition - it's bloody difficult to say the least!

I didn't drive until last year. For 3 years I worked a full time job, on my feet ALL day and walked 3 miles each way to and from work. I started at 4:30am so no buses available to get there at that time. I've never been one for breakfast (could well be a contributing factor) so never ate anything until around 12 - which was more often than not a sandwich with fruit. During the times I was actively dieting, I'd then go home (3 mile walk) at around 4:30pm and have a meal of chicken and salad, or a roast without the trimmings...maybe a weight watchers meal - something along those lines.

After all this, I also had a dog who needed a walk each night so there was another trapse around fields etc for an hour.

Did I lose weight with all that? Not at all! I never gained but never lost either. To eat any less than what I was already doing would have been absurd (in my opinion - some may argue).

I then had an office job for another 2 1/2 yrs after this (before having DS). It was much further away, involved long periods of sitting down and for most of the journey I caught a bus - although from home to the bus stop was nearly a mile the drive way where I worked alone was just over a mile long (situated in woods). I left the house each day at 7:30am and returned at the same time in the evening to, again walk a dog. When I arrived at work in the mornings, I tried to get into the habit of eating something, so would usually have a slice of toast, some fruit or a small bowl of cereal. My lunch often consisted of much the same thing - weetabix or fruit. Then I'd have any sort of meal at home - fish, potatoes, veg sort of meals. Colleagues of mine, who were much thinner ate a lot more than I did during a working day. I remember watching my boss have breakfast at 9, followed by a sandwich, crisps etc at 11 then a normal lunch between 1 and 2. And then talk about "whats for tea". And she was stick thin. Chocolates, cake, biscuits etc were consumed regularly and I couldn't help but feel the unfairness of it all.

Now DS has come along, although I am obviously quite busy with him and on the move in the day, I don't actively exercise and my eating habbits are more hit and miss. I can munch on a couple of biscuits when it's more convenient, drink quite a bit of coffee, more likely to eat a sandwich (or 2!) for dinner rather than cook something - after cooking for DS I often cba. In the evenings I'm so tired I just crash and sit on my arse for most of it until bed time, sometimes with a packet of crisps or even a chocolate bar. I could definitely understand my habits now causing weight gain. But, funnily enough, 2 yrs on and I've actually lost a bit (noticable to others) for the first time in bloody years - and without trying!

I do hope it continues. But, to blame EVERY fat case on eating shite and never exercising, I think is extreme because it definitely is not ALWAYS the case. Should I continue losing weight (I'm certainly hoping), perhaps one day I'll become 'normal' again and people will then make assumptions that I don't eat junk and regularly exercise - and how wrong they'd now be!

I really think it is about the British culture- we have never been good cooks like the French or Italians are, who all know how to use fresh ingredients.
Cooking well has always been a bit of a middle class thing until pretty recently and the UK diet has been known to be stodgy, dull and unimaginative across the world. Now more people work and those simple skills on how to cook good food in the right proportions is not being passed down the generations.
Despite Europe being so close to the UK, they simply have superior eating habits and exercise portion control much better than the average Brit.
It is the same with the drinking culture which is celebrated in the UK in a way that it is not elsewhere. Similarly the ITalians have a rating system for the promiscuity levels of European Females and UK females are no 1 which is why if you ever travel to Italy, they ask if you are from the UK- they know they have a better chance of some easycome easy go nookie with a UK lass.

This is the British reputation and frankly it is not one to be proud of.Now we are the fattest chicks too-I blame the viking pilagers diluting the Anglo saxon more refined sensibilities, all those years ago.We have never recovered as a nation. YOu only have to go out in any UK city on a weekend evening and see what an uncivilised lot, a proportion of Brits are, and now we are fat into the bargain too.

mouse I have been obese (BMI 36.7) and am now overweight (BMI 29), hopefully heading down to a decent body size (9 kg to go!) before I hit 40.

I agree with most of the theories posted above - the lack of exercise culture, the lack of cooking fresh / healthily, that chicken & salad is seen as diet food and needs to be followed with a treat (as opposed to enjoyed for its own sake), the emotionalisation of food, that a high carb / sugar meal makes you feel great (short term) and the post prandial high is addictive. There are also genetic components, shift work components (night working and sleep deprivation affect hormones such as leptin which help regulate satiety) and peer pressure.

What stimulated my change in behaviour was a move to a different culture - exercise and sport is something everyone does, it's more usual to bike to work than drive, people go for a run / swim / row in their lunch break. Since being here the peer pressure has stimulated me to a healthier diet (grilled lean meats and salads, eggs to start the day and far fewer processed foods), the work life balance is better so I get time to cook, and there is oodles more sunshine.

I think there are many reasons for it:

Some are genetic (making it harder, not impossible).
Some are down to diet.
Some are due to a lack of exercise.
Some aren't very educated in terms of a good diet.
Some are brought up to eat a certain way throughout childhood and fail to break the habit.
Some are due to busy lifestyles and a 'convenience food' diet.
Some have a sweet tooth and eat enormous amounts of chocolate / cake / sweets etc.
Some have psychological problems with regards to food.
Some are a mixture of several / all of them.

There are lots who are very lucky and can eat more or less anything and never put on a single pound. Others can put on just eating half of what another eats.

There are just some who seem to eat themselves silly and continue to gain. There are also some who don't appear to care about their weight. But I don't judge every obese person I see as simply 'greedy' because there can be lots of underlying reasons.

I don't know, but I know we (American women) are worse off. 60% of us are overweight or obese. I want to be in the other 40% for once.

It's really really quite simple. It's the culmination of forty years of being told that carbs are good and fats are bad, coinciding with a shift in lifestyles meaning that we drive rather than walk and generally do fewer physically labour-intensive tasks.

Also the fact that we have so much food so readily available, and the really really bad stuff is relatively cheap compared to fresh fruit and veg and decent quality protein based foods.

But it can all be summed up in one word: Sugar.

Has it occured to anyone, that if you are physically disabled, and not able to exercise well, that the lack of movement can send you into a bad spiral, the lack of movement, means that what you could eat before and not have it effect you to the same extent. Then because you can't move as well as you could, you get depressed and you turn to food as a comfort, which makes the whole cycle even harder to get out of.

Not everyone in who is not able to walk well, who is fat is not in the state they are in physically due to being fat, they are often in the state they are in due to other reasons and as a result they become fat or fatter!

Ok I've actually read the thread now and there is an overwhelming tide of good sense and awareness of where we are going wrong as a culture with the obesity/diabetes problem. So if we are all aware, who is not? I know Mners are generally a bit more brilliant and sharp than the rest of the population, but why is it taking so long for the message to sink in for eveyone else?

I blame the successive governments actually. They are coming round very very slowly to the idea that the low-fat revolution was a crock of shit, but they are taking too long to admit they were wrong, and continue to send out mixed messages about what truly healthy eating actually is. It's a crazy world where a lump of butter or cheese can have a big red NO sticker on it, but an aspartame based nutrionally shit drink gets the Green GO AHEAD message, just because it has no fat in it. We are still way behind on educating people about the evils of hydrogenated fats as well. Still far too busy focusing on telling people that they shouldn't eat too many eggs because they are high in cholesterol.

sea74 your average Italian working class middle aged person is FAT. All that pasta, and look what happens. Yes, your diet may be healthy in terms of fresh ingredients, olive oil, cooking from scratch, lovely salads etc, but I'm sorry but the Italians are not a slender bunch by and large.

The French, however, are, and they cook with more cream and butter than the British ever did.

Fell, can you come visit me and glare disapprovingly at my food choices for a few months?

Please? I need you!

Fellatio is correct on all accounts, although I've only been to Italy once and I can't remember how fat its people were.

I've lived in mainland Europe for 12 years and am always shocked at how fat the Brits are when I go home (I'm no waif myself) - but I see aisles upon aisles of readymade shite and carbs in the supermarket.

Well I would CY only I am being a bit crap at following my own advice at the moment. But I know what to do, and I know when I am not doing it. That's the difference. If my jeans get too tight now I don't blame anyone or anything except my own poor choices and self gratification. But in order to fully understand 'poor choices' you need to understand how the body processes food and in what order. I have managed (finally) to understand myself and my own metabolism where food is concerned, and that was a massive breakthrough for me. I stopped listening to whatever the official wisdom of the day was,(which changes so often it is baffling) and started to analyse my own eating habits, and to understand what food/moods would trigger me into a spate of over-eating the wrong things, or even if I am not over-eating at all, there are some foods which are just disastrous for me in terms of putting on weight, feeling tired and depressed etc.

I do COMPLETELY believe that we are all different, and do not all put weight on/lose it at the same rates, and I get really pissed off with patronising skinny people who think that if they can eat a Mars Bar a day and be thin then other fatter people must obviously be eating twelve and lying about it. It's an extremely complex and complicated issue with all sorts of variables, genetic, physiological, emotional, psychological and cultural.

However, at the heart of it, I blame white flour and white sugar based carbs.

Well, I can't eat white flour so that's a start. :o

I just eat all the damn time. I don't try to think about whether I'm hungry or not. I eat out of habit, boredom, or because it's there.

It is much easier to put on weight than to loose it. I agree with whoever said that one of the problems is that when someone is a size 14/16 they are told they are not fat. So they continue with the lack of exercise and too much cereal and....the spiral becomes irreversible. Another problem is the size zero model. There is nothing to aim for in terms of looking a nice size 10/12. I blame Posh Spice and the dreadfully depressing models of London fashion week.

In general there is a poor daily exercise culture: The parks/green spaces/pathways are driving distance only. A Sunday family walk is considered uncool and keen. The National Trust is too expensive. The supermarket aisles are full of sweet yoghurts/cakes/biscuits/muffins/crisps/nachos etc. The TV has food programmes on constantly in the evenings. Thats my two pence worth.

All I can go on is myself and I am obese. We cook most things from xcratch including bread, loads of veg, and we enjoy all the things that are good for us and eat them.

I am also diasabled. Not a wheel chair user but have chronic pain and wierd stuff going on in my arms which makes many 'excersie' things difficult. DOesn;t mean I don;t try but for example walking DD to school means that I have numbness and shooting pains. On lots of painkillers too which make me drousy.

I am well educated in food prep, hygiene and nutrition and am quite bored with the argument that obese people don;t know how to cook etc. All the plumper people I know are complete foodies. My skinny friend accross the road eats terribly: hardly anything all day then chocolates and sandwiches of white breadbuns and processed cheese.

Its surely lifestyle - longer hours, weather means folks are more liekly to meet in a soft play than at the park and that jobs are generally much less physical.

I am hoping to loose weight through portion control so eating the same but I have found using a smaller bowl has reduced calories a lot. In terms of excercise, I am hoping the new painkillers will help. Though I have been warned by doctors that I couldd cuase injury. I uised to LOVE hockey :( and played most weeks, I used to love swimming but am not able to do as much.

Also, Although I am very aware that being obese causes many health problems so do many other lifestyle choices.

Good luck mumble. :) I hope you feel better soon!

sigh... I just love food. The growing of it, the science of it, the buying, the cooking the preparing..... I often think maybe I need a 'better' hobby. Like my littl gardden..... I have been trying to get into the garden more...

Anyway.

I think Sport relief was a really good idea