[Closed] Fat people to be incentivised to loose weight

Anyone else think that maybe, now that we're not allowed to be randomly horrible to women, blacks, homosexuals, and gays, some people have just relocated their semi-random abuse to groups they're still allowed to treat like crap, in this case fat people?

Oh Definitely...
Personally I'd just file them under "General Biggots" and move on though, last time I got all huffy about certain STWists generally unpleasant attitudes towards the overweight, I was given all sorts of "Just Bantz innit" responses, and told to calm down. So I'd just leave it fella...

thestabiliser - Member
We need to stop talking about weight and girth and numbers and talk about the way being fit and healthy makes you feel good. constantly setting people targets that they fail to hit and then feel crap about and then start eating again is exactly how the diet industry works and keeps people churning throught their gates with no benefit for the people they're'trying' to help. Clinicians taking the same approach viewing it as an equation don't help either. They should dith the humiliation of scales and calipers and all that crap
give people a load of active stuff to try (sporting clubs, employers etc should be actively seeking out people via this route)
give them some ways of eating better
get the socialising with some people in the same boat
then in 6 months time asking them how they feel.

+1, But it's probably I bit too "wooly" as a strategy for the fattie basher's...

I'm sure the idea of welfare state allows for people to not worry about their own welfare as there is someone to bail them out when it goes wrong!

I'm sure the idea of welfare state allows for people to not worry about their own welfare as there is someone to bail them out when it goes wrong!

The recent introduction of Obamacare aside, the US may disagree with this.

You can be overweight and healthy/happy....

I'm overweight. I ride to work 3 or 4 days a week, and go out on the MTB every weekend. I'm fitter than the 19 yearold, 9 stone wet through, junior kid we have at work, whos main hobby seems to be chain smoking...

I could eat a lot healthier, but lifes too short.

I loathe these fattie bashing threads. It's true, they're the domain of the small minded looking for someone else to blame for something they can't really articulate.

As with every politician, the (non) logic goes like this: "This is my world view based on my experience of me, so I'll extrapolate this single thing into a general rule".

At a population level, it is possible to make generalisations. These are pretty much agreed on:

1. Our collective diet is too focussed on sugar and fat loaded convenience food.
2. We are increasingly sedentary.
3. At a population level we're getting fatter.
4. Different income groups have different long term health outcomes.
5. Different parts of the country have different long term health outcomes.

In order to apply these to the individual requires many things including:

1. Externally delivered education
2. Self education
3. Understanding where you fit into the eating/moving about continuum and what you can do about it.

So, for me I can say that:

- I'm educated enough to know in broad terms that many of my dietary choices could be better.
- I have enough money to make those choices.
- I live in the North, but 1 and 2 ought to help me not follow the general - population level - rule
- I'm at risk of developing a very serious medical condition that effectively means exercise is out (beyond the odd slow bike ride or a steady walk). No, I won;t share what it is.

So, this means I know I have to address my weight gain via diet only. And, because I can no longer access the other benefits of exercise (blood pressure and cholesterol reduction), I need to accept that I will become an earlier NHS statistic (whether through earlier access to suitable medications or long term issues).

But none of my situation makes it any nicer for someone who's making lots of great choices for themselves to dish out shit to other people based on the way they look. Stop being so ****ing judgemental you self interest ****s.

*swear words start with an F and C respectively.

Sorry to hear that omitn - that sucks! 🙁

NW whilst I broadly agree with your point IMHO you would be better off making that point when folk are having a hilarious pop at Ginger people. Its not fair to mock/comment /judge folk for things they do not control it is ok. Clearly it is frequently delivered unpleasantly /way OTT and in way I would not wish to defend but comment is, in the broadest sense OK. I care about as much as when i see someone smoke. Its there choice basically but not one i admire or support.

don't naturally thin people adore knocking 'fatties'

As for the general point about whether we can say it really depends on what you say and how you say it.
IMHO the reason they get shit is a mixture of the fact that a number of folk are asshats who are rude but it is also the fact that weight gain is generally viewed as something within the control of the individuals.An excess of weight is seen as a sign of lack of [self] control. Perhaps you can view it in the same way as no one mocks someone who drinks 2 pints a day but they do if they drink 3 pints for breakfast and then keep going.
Its not helpful to call folk names and ,like smoking, everyone knows the remedy.
Implementation of the remedy is very tricky and I support the idea of encouraging healthier lifestyles and better diet

Sorry to hear that omitn - that sucks!

It does, but I got to do some amazing things on my bike (rode 2 Etapes, 2 x Tour of Flanders Sportives, raced TTs, road, MTB and CX (all very badly)), met loads of ace friends for life. I've got over the grieving for it, and am now focussed on all the good things. I don't have a diagnosis, but the risk is there and I'd rather have time for me and my family.

But changing nearly 40 years of appalling eating habits disguised by bucket loads of exercise is taking some doing..!

Most of all, I guess, is not judging a book by its cover and deciding how we, as a population (ignoring outliers like me) do broadly the right things. We can either blame people for the choices they make (and ignore the complex influences on that behaviour), or we can work out how we help each other to do the right thing for the longer term, bigger picture benefit.

There was some really interesting research recently in America, about why 'poor' people make what their[s] petty, small minded and judgemental pricks [/s] middle class peers, regard as 'poor' life choices.

Basically its because if you're living hand-to-mouth, day-to-day, then theres little point in planning long term, as ultimately it just frustrates you. If you won't be going on a holiday any time in the foreseeable future, theres little point looking 30 years ahead to your retirement. Think you worry about your health at some point in the distant future, when a more pressing concern is how on earth you're going to feed your kids this week? [url= http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/30/mdonalds-mcdouble-cheapest-nutritious-food-in-history_n_3675128.html ]Just take them to Macdonalds, eh?[/url]

Personally, I thought this belonged in the no-shit-sherlock school of stating-the-bleeding-obvious. But then reading threads like this on here just illustrates how some [s]petty, small minded and judgemental middle class pricks[/s] forum members have absolutely no idea whatsoever about the lives of people a lot lower down from their own lofty perches, where they sit pontificating, in the nastiest, most small-minded way possible, as if they know pretty much everything, and that their own achingly first world, mumsnetty problems (what company car for £20,000?) are somehow all the majority of people have to worry about

Its ****ing depressing how absolutely clueless some people are! And it also depresses me the utter lack of empathy that a lot of people display towards people they have no desire to even begin to understand. Why would you? When reactionary condemnation is just sooooooooo much easier, and makes you feel so much better about yourself?

^^^ great post.

Would be nice to think it made a few people think a bit beyond their own comfortable lives.

But probably not 🙁

Its ****ing depressing how absolutely clueless some people are! And it also depresses me the utter lack of empathy that a lot of people display towards people they have no desire to even begin to understand. Why would you? [b]When reactionary condemnation is just sooooooooo much easier[/b][i], and makes you feel so much better about yourself?

[img] [/img]

Northwind, homosexuals [i]and[/i] gays? 😆

Scene gays, right? 😉

Ourman hope your ok? Sounds well sucky :hug:

law of thermodynamics

That has very little to do with being fat, so please stop bringing it up.

Maybe some people need, and thoroughly deserve condemning though eh? The people who generally love telling the world about their own well-deserved superior lifestyles and how they got there by there own truly magnificent life choices, which perfectly qualifies them to preach to all and sundry, pointing out their obvious inferiority

Ha ha - lets point at the poor fat people and laugh eh? Look at them! The losers! With their big tellies, and their Sky subscriptions, and their funny coloured alcopops. I read about it in the Daily Mail. And its a ll paid for by ME, ME, [b]ME!!! [/b] 🙄

Good point binners, but looking around me I also see plenty of reasonably "well off" middle-class folk with exercise-aversion, appalling diets and huge waistlines - so I don't think it can [i]purely[/i] be dismissed as poor people making poor life choices, though obviously that is a factor.

There was some really interesting research recently in America, about why 'poor' people make what their middle class peers, regard as 'poor' life choices.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03y0n8j ]Listen to this interview with Eldar Shafir, where he talks about the influence of scarcity on individual's thought processes. It's very interesting on what having no money means to decision-making. [/url]

I'm not sure it's the only explanation, but it may assist in the understanding ohf how we have - at a population level -allowed ourselves to have been exploited by a the food "industry". At a simple level, we see it around us every day: 15 years ago there weren't a thousand Starbucks* on every high street selling us flavoured hot milk and cakes dripping in refined sugar and fats, and neither did Boots* have a huge range of manky sandwiches that we blindly consumer every lunchtime....

*other coffee and cake and sandwich vendors are available

EDIT:

Good point binners, but looking around me I also see plenty of reasonably "well off" middle-class folk with appalling diets and huge waistlines - so I don't think it can purely be dismissed as poor people making poor life choices, though obviously that is a factor.

See above. For a while there was a much more direct correlation between socio-economic status and food choices, but my post above illustrates in part exactly what we're all witnessing: everyone's getting fatter. But we don;t seem to be getting healthier. So, while it does come down to what an individual consumes, there are clearly other, more complex factors at play.

That's not sufficient excuse for someone to cast an their individual ills at the feet of society, but it is part of the explanation that we're influenced in ways we don't always recognize in the instant moment of buying and consuming food.

(Yeah Northwind - what is the difference between a homosexual and a gay ? Just curious. No need to be graphic or post any pics or anything)

They interviewed a lady on radio 4 this morning who had been 40 stone. Was some grim stuff when she started going on about the various health issues. Skin infections in the folds etc. Sleep apnea. Couldn't wipe her own bum cos she couldn't reach it. She had a stomach stapling op, and her neighbour threw dog shit at her as he couldn't get a hip operation due to NHS funding issues. Depression, which was a vicious circle with the eating.

So I am not sure that this new plan is a good one, but I feel a lot more sympathy for all the fatties now.

I read about it in the Daily Mail.

Careful now. Getting all judgey about fat people is definitely not just restricted to gibbering simpletons alone, lots of moderately intelligent people do it too.

I am not sure that this new plan is a good one

It's not a plan at all. No one is giving fat people money to diet. There was a clinical trial looking at it, that's all. Oh and the report was something like three years ago.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04jjz49 ]Also have a listen to Michael Pollan on food (BBC Analysis again). [/url]

Go to any supermarket you like , choose any item, say pizza or peanut butter as random examples ... you'll find an expensive healthy choice, a mid range with some salt and sugar and a cheapo version labelled shops own or econemy. full of saltsugarshite , if you have to buy according to prices alone you will make bad choices .To take the peanut butter example the cheapo one is around 90p , the organic one will be over £3.The food industry is pissing its pants with glee everytime theres a panic

Interesting use of the moral high ground there Binners. I take it you are fine, ethically speaking, with stuffing your greedy face every day with far more food than you need even though there are others who are literally starving to death because they can't even get enough food to live.

emsz - Member

Northwind, homosexuals and gays?

Sometimes both at once 😆

I'm fat(about 5 stone +) because I enjoy food, no other reason! 😆

There's no lack of education, I know exactly how to lose weight if I choose.

If this annoys you:

[img] [/img]

I'm happy in life! 😆

What GrahamS said

Binners I think you raise valid points but it is not just poverty that leads to poor diet. generally speaking the shit food costs more

You get a lot of fruit and veg for the price of a family of 4 eating at Mc Donalds for example

Most of the folk i kno who are overweight are rich and I never had any issues with my weight when i was proper poor as I could not afford to sit there eating crisps and cakes and had to make do with making a meal

Does anyone have any stats - is it a disease/ailment of poor people?

with stuffing your greedy face every day with far more food than you need even though there are others who are literally starving to death because they can't even get enough food to live.

No need to personalise this debate like this either.

zilog6128 - Member
Interesting use of the moral high ground there Binners. I take it you are fine, ethically speaking, with stuffing your greedy face every day with far more food than you need even though there are others who are literally starving to death because they can't even get enough food to live.

I think there's a distinct mis-understanding of how the world works going on here!

Does the fact that you don't eat the same as me, mean that someone in Africa has a meal this evening? thought not! 😆

Ourman hope your ok? Sounds well sucky :hug:

Thx. All fine. Just got to keep an eye and do the right thing, which unfortunately isn't what we all normally think of as the right thing!

I am only picking on Binners as he posts virtually every day about how many sausage rolls he buys from Greggs. You're right though, probably shouldn't have bothered 🙂 Sorry Binners!

Does the fact that you don't eat the same as me, mean that someone in Africa has a meal this evening? thought not!

zilog6128 - Member
No, but instead of buying the extra food for yourself you could send the money here instead:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/oxfam-unwrapped/foodies/feed-a-family-ou9006re

If you want to get into a financial argument, why don't you forgo your next bike purchase and send the money to oxfam, or move into a smaller house, have less nights out, send off the difference?

It's a silly argument! admit it! 😆

No Problem zilog. I actually eat quite healthily most of the time. But am quite partial to the temptations of the nations premier purveyor of pastry-based products, as my waistline testifies.

In my perfect world there would be a Greggs on every corner. Including the ones in Africa 😉

[i]Sometimes both at once [/i]

Strumpets 😆

In my perfect world there would be a Greggs on every corner.

You're suggesting they should close a few?

I love Ginsters Pasties, although I suppose 36 hours freezing cold and wet on a boat will give you an appetite for pretty much anything !

If you want to get into a financial argument, why don't you forgo your next bike purchase and send the money to oxfam, or move into a smaller house, have less nights out, send off the difference?

It's a silly argument! admit it!

zilog6128 - Member
I don't want to get into any type of argument. No, I am not going to live like a hermit but I do my bit and am morally comfortable with myself/my choices. Hopefully you can say the same.

You're suggesting they should close a few?

Got to make room for the Subways.

If its cheaper to incentivise people to lose weight than keep treating their ailments, or perform surgery, then surely its a no-brainer?

(here you are love, rather than give you this gastric band operation that costs the NHS £10k, we'll pay you £500 for each stone you lose and £500 per year if you keep it off)

everyones a winner?

In the meantime - that Orwell was a clever bloke:

[i]N The miner's family spend only tenpence a week on green vegetables
and tenpence half-penny on milk (remember that one of them is a child less
than three years old), and nothing on fruit; but they spend one and nine on
sugar (about eight pounds of sugar, that is) and a shilling on tea. The
half-crown spent on meat might represent a small joint and the materials
for a stew; probably as often as not it would represent four or five tins
of bully beef. The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and
margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes--an appalling diet.
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like
oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter
to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it
would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do
such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on
brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less
money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A
millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an
unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of
the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say
when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to
eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is
always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let's have three pennorth
of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and
we'll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are
at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don't nourish you
to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than
brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery
that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the
English-man's opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a
temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.
[/i]

OMITN, sorry to hear that.
Let us know if there's anything we can do to help - we're not far away.

Junky trouble with saying stuff like "veg cost less than maccyd" is that buying the veg is only one part of it, what if your on a pre paid meter on your gas and the choice that night is gas for cooker or gas for heat? What if your oven doesn't work, what if your kids won't eat the food you've bought, what if you don't know what to do with it? What if you don't have time?

At maccyD its warm, the foods hot, kids will eat it. I can see how it starts looking like an option

I'd happily see a substantial tax on sugar and a corresponding subsidy on vegetables. It's going to happen sooner or later and in decades to come we'll look back on this period and be amazed that we allowed a bottle of coke to be sold so recklessly cheaply, and to children too.

I think that scenario explains a tiny percentage [ if any] of the customers within a macy D's

Like many things the solution is easy but ,you are right, the implementation is the issue.

what if your kids won't eat the food you've bought

Of course they wont if a protest leads to McD's.

Its complicated in how you get folk to eat healthily but , in general, healthy food is not actually expensive.

Junky trouble with saying stuff like "veg cost less than maccyd" is that buying the veg is only one art of it, what if your on a pre paid meter on your gas and the choice that night is gas for cooker or gas for heat? What if your oven doesn't work, what if your kids won't eat the food you've bought, what if you don't know what to do with it? What if you don't have time?

Buy fruit and veg that don't need cooked?
Apples, orange, bananas, melons, lettuce, peppers, onions, peas, etc etc?

Even considering cooking cost a 1kg bag of ASDA SmartPrice potatoes is 69p. I reckon you could easily cook that and still be paying less than the equivalent volume of french fries at McDs.

But as I said above, poverty is a not the biggest factor here, the whole population is slowly wheezing towards obesity.

seosamh77 - Member
I'm fat(about 5 stone +) because I enjoy food [b]and I'm greedy too[/b], no other reason!

I'm happy in life!

I used to be a fat knacker (coincidentally about 5 stone +) and for the same reason as you. I managed OK health-wise in my 20s and early 30s but it eventually took its toll with the classic 'bad back' 🙄

You may be happy now, you may not later in life when the heath complications kick in!

OMITN, sorry to hear that.
Let us know if there's anything we can do to help - we're not far away.

Not much you can do, but thank you for the offer.

Junky trouble with saying stuff like "veg cost less than maccyd" is that buying the veg is only one part of it, what if your on a pre paid meter on your gas and the choice that night is gas for cooker or gas for heat? What if your oven doesn't work, what if your kids won't eat the food you've bought, what if you don't know what to do with it? What if you don't have time?