All of this squabbling also misses the point that better education and tighter regulation of the food industry would result in healthier children.

Although the calories in calories out explains quite reasonably the method that weight is gained or lost. It does nothing to explain why people are eating too much in the first place.
In my very limited understanding your long term hunger levels are controlled significantly by leptin. leptin levels don’t directly tell you how full you are, well they do partly but not to the same extent as other hormones such as ghrelin do. Leptin does appear to be a chemical that indicates to an animal how much fat an animal is carrying. Stored fat generate low leptin values and indicates to the brain that it’s beginning to starve and needs to start stocking up seriously on fat. There is increasing evidence/speculation that certain food types – specifically wheat and vegetable oils suppress or block the leptin receptor function, so although your body is producing plenty of leptin, the message isn’t getting through to the receptors properly and as a consequence your body thinks it’s carrying far less fat than it is, and is thus happy to eat far more than it needs.
The rise in vegetable oil consumption has been huge over the last half of the 20th century. I’m so sure that this true of wheat, through plenty of people would claim this to be so.

Anyway, the point I’m making is the “obesity is just calories in calories out and that people just being weak-willed” argument is an over simplification. The human body has some highly evolved survival instincts, and if it thinks it’s starving it can quite easily overcome will-power.

5th post

TandemJeremy – Member

Its the advertising industry, supermarkets and fast food places to blame

🙂

so batch cooking is waste, nothing tastes the same once frozen and defrosted

Drivel. Curry gets better left in the fridge for a day or two! (Yes, Mrs PP makes curry too…) And the pies? You’d never, ever notice the difference. Same with my meat.

I buy a load of chops, steaks, chicken, sausages, portion it up and freeze. I go to the butchers on my way home from work. This takes less time than getting a take away, but more planning. Mrs PP buys free range chickens and other stuff on offer for us on her way home from work, from the Co-Op. She goes in most days and has a quick look. Takes 2 mins more on her walk home. Again, good value…. But you have to THINK and PLAN, which is what we do: What do we want to eat this week? What are we short of? Make a list, go shopping. Take note of who does what offers and when. Somtimes cook in bulk and freeze. Think. Plan. Eat nice food. 🙂

I read somewhere that the human mind has evolved to covet fatty foods.

Presumably this is a defense mechanism developed a when we were evolving to counteract the long period of time between meals, or a defense against cold temperatures.

I can’t remember where I read or heard it, so I have no evidence to back that up…perhaps I dreamt it.

So again…I blame the Pope Darwin.

Perhaps the government should concentrate on developing human cloning and create thousands of Jamie Olivers.

So I also blame the government, Jamie Oliver and Molly the sheep for not being a chef.

The human body has some highly evolved survival instincts, and if it thinks it’s starving it can quite easily overcome will-power.

We evolved during scarcity, so we’re wired to eat when we can.

Indeed we crave fat, salt and sugar as an evolutionary hangover from when food was hard to find and chewing a few roots did not get you very far. The packeaged food folk and fast food folk use this to get us to eat their foods. its known as loading and if you can double load even better.

It makes this sort of food almost addictive.

Its no coincidence that the tighter regulated food industry is the less obesity there is – compare us and the americans to the dutch or french

Isn’t the calories in vs calories out over simplifying things. Surely the type of exercise you do will have an effect on whether you lose fat or muscle. Maybe people who think it’s that simple, do exercise (an inappropriate exercise after listening to bad advice) and don’t lose fat then return to their facefilling lifestyle as exercise doesn’t work.
You can’t just say calories in/out, it needs more explanation.

I think that having the correct balance of calories in and calories out implies that you will be employing an appropriate method of both, i.e. eating the right foods and doing the right exercise.

Perhaps there needs to be more effort to educate families on how to create this balance.

On a bike forum there might be a good percentage of people who have a reasonable understanding of exercise and diet. But the average family might not understand this concept…although my Mum seemed to know what I should or shouldn’t be eating.

From a R4 article I listened to recently the overall conclusion IIRC was that exercise in children has almost no bearing on their weight, it all comes down to the amount of calories being consumed. I suppose this applies to adults too.

I think there was an example of one of the previosuly inactive and now active kids in the experiment gaining weight; sounds counter intuitive but the argument was compelling, maybe something to do with an increased appetite due to activity, muscle mass etc.

One has to exercise pretty rigorously in order to burn off a significant number of calories.

You need a quite large number of calories to merely exist, and a growing child has to, well, grow.

So, who’s to blame? IMO it’s a combo of a lack of parental guidance or example, possibly some genetic or health influence(s), and the food companies that market their sometimes poor quality, hi-cal foods to kids and parents.

increase in fat kids, increase in “plus sized models”….

coincidence? 😈

My wife’s aunt constantly buys these kind of drinks for her grandchildren..

One of the children ended up needing a couple of teeth removed at 5 years old.

Her father asked the aunt to stop giving them the drinks as drinking too much fruit juice is rotting their teeth…she claimed that it had nothing to do with it and fruit juice is good for you. Which although it is…will rot your teeth if taken in excess.

Some people just don’t understand the concept of healthly food and what is or isn’t good for you. There needs to be a combination of responsible marketing from food manufacturers and education from government funded organisations.

Everyone knows this, including the manufacturers and the government, and there has been some progress…just not enough.

Apparently the concentrated ‘fresh’ orange that you can buy has more sugar in it than coke!

so batch cooking is waste, nothing tastes the same once frozen and defrosted

Drivel indeed.

Im currently slow cooking
13 portions of beef, kidney and winter veg stew
6 portions of lamb neck and pearl barley stew

and in a second Ill be off back to the stove to make
9 portions of sausage, mushroom & cider and mixed beans casserole
8 portions of Chilli
and
8 portions bolognese.

All the ingredients of which cost about £60 this morning.
so £1.25 per portion target hit as discussed in yesterday’s “how much on a weekly shop” thread.

As for fat kids, I think much of it is down to the lost art of home cooking – understanding quality of ingredients, seasonality and simplicity in recipes. I was lucky enough to have been taught by my parents, they by there’s and I will pass it on.

Can’t be arsed reading all that so here is my retort to this point:

..a lot of the time they just can’t afford higher quality healthier food, …you’ll plainly see how much more it costs too eat healthily and therefore how unaffordable it is for those on low incomes.

This gets wheeled out all the time, but it’s only really true if you are comparing value ready-meals to “healthy” ready-meals. If you look at snacks etc it is often cheaper to go for the healthier option.

Mars Bar – 59p
Twix – 49p
Monster Munch (Pickled Onion) – 46p
Total: £1.54

Cox Apple – 24p
Banana – 16p
Large Orange – 45p
Total: £0.85

(Source: prices I just looked up on tesco.com)

I blame the parents or the adults. Simple!

Or their grandparents for not being able to bring up their parents properly.

There is no excuse at all …

CG – sorry to hear you have a thyroid problem. I was diagnosed in my 20s after several years of related health problems. The replies along the lines of ‘you have just eaten too many calories’ just demonstrate a lack of understanding of the condition.

When I was diagnosed I wasn’t over weight, I was fit and biking off road 4 or 5 days a week (both days at the weekend and Tuesday, Wednesday and often Friday night rides). I had found that to manage my weight I had to stick to no more than 1200 calories per day on average. Unless you have some experience of this, it is difficult to understand how challenging that is. The responses above would suggest that a diet of 1500 calories a day was ‘me just eating too much’ and is simplistic and unhelpful. It took over 2 years of a good hormone level in my bloods for some of the clinical symptoms to go away too.

In the years since then I have found that I can manage my weight ok as long as I am exercising. If I can’t exercise then my weight creeps up. Even a well managed thyroid problem means that it is very easy to gain a bit of weight but the natural process that most people do of balancing it out by being good for a bit does not take the weight back off without extra effort through exercise. This means that people with a thyroid condition have a tougher time staying slim. It certainly isn’t impossible but it is harder. Unfortunately as you get older you tend to have longer bouts of no exercise and I have a great deal of sympathy for those with other health problems which restrict their activity levels. Unless you have tried to manage your weight purely by diet,without the benefit of exercise, it is difficult to understand how hard it is.

Having said all this, the research I have read suggests that a person with a thyroid condition can be around 10lbs/1 stone heavier as a direct result of the condition. Larger amounts of weight are more related to the cycle above than directly to the condition itself so people can not really blame it on their glands!

GrahamS I agree 100%, Example meal: beans, baked potato & lettece & tomato less than £1 per head. I grew up poor (for this country) & my parents never failed to provide healthy balanced meals.

Another pet hate is parents saying ‘you try getting a kid to eat an apple/orange/banana’

The dog we adopted last spring was overweight when we got her. She’s not now. Was it the dog’s fault or her previous owners?

When we adopted her, we were told to take her back in a month or two for a blodd test to check her thyroid. The vet took one look when we walked through the door and said it wasn’t needed.

She’s a lab, so therefore prone to weight gain.

Exercise and portion control…

Labs prone to weight gain. That’s genetic isn’t it?

Labs prone to weight gain. That’s genetic isn’t it?

And despite that, she’s not overweight.

Still genetic though. 🙂

You’re obviously starving her 😛

Genetics influence the base metabolic rate.

If
Base metabolic rate + calories out due to activity = calories in you (or your kids or your dog) will maintain your weight.

If either side of that equation is unbalanced, you’ll lose or gain weight.

She’s fed enough to maintain her weight.

“Labs prone to weight gain. That’s genetic isn’t it?”

I’ve never known a dog yet that wouldn’t eat all day long if they could, and would therefore get VERY VERY fat.

Dogs have small brains and cant comprehend that too much food intake will make them fat and unhealthy. Just the same as kids, they both have to be controlled in what they should eat.

My wife quite regularly has to operate on fat people or not as the case may be if they are too fat. I’ve asked the question before whether its genetics/illness etc etc and she said as % of population the true number of people who have genuine medical reason is virtually nill. The majority is just people who like too many pies !

Education.

It’s not even that there’s a massive amount of overeating going on, it’s just that a lot of food is very very calorie dense in a way that it wasn’t before. Our parents eat meals of 400-500 Kcal (a chop, some boiled spuds and a some peas, for instance). A single portion ready made curry from a supermarket is easily 800-900 Kcal Add to that the fact that it’s not that healthy food is any more expensive, it’s that un healthy food is cheap (not cheaper, just cheap) add to that a lack of education about what to do with basic ingredients, and you have a real chance of getting chubby without really thinking about it.

Sorry, I withdraw my efforts at a joke. I wasn’t meaning to be THAT serious. 🙄

just as it is funny/sad:

I’ve never known a dog yet that wouldn’t eat all day long if they could, and would therefore get VERY VERY fat.

Dogs have small brains and cant comprehend that too much food intake will make them fat and unhealthy. Just the same as kids, they both have to be controlled in what they should eat.

Yep.

Our other dog is a greyhound. She eats slightly more than the lab yet is considerably skinnier and a few kg lighter. They go on the same length walks, but the lab runs constantly while the greyhound just walks next to us.

People are the same; some need more/less food than others, so recommended calorie intake, etc. doesn’t work.

As an individual though, if you‘re overweight, you‘re eating too much for you. If you don’t want to be overweight, you need to eat less. If you don’t care, carry on. You are responsible for yourself.

Kids and dogs however, aren’t responsible for themselves. Parents and dog-owners are.

Sorry, I withdraw my efforts at a joke. I wasn’t meaning to be THAT serious.

It’s okay, I knew it was a joke 🙂

The kid I saw yesterday was fatter than the boy in rootes1’s picture.

The kid I saw yesterday was fatter than the boy in rootes1’s picture.

holy crap!

lack of exercise is clearly an issue (not walking/cycling to school) playstation etc etc..

but really as mentioned above it is just the calorific density and availability of food that is the issue..

letting a kid get fat should be an offence like other forms of child cruelty / abuse etc

parents – end of…

I dont normally post in threads like this but over christmas I was introduced to my brother’s new ‘girlfriend’ a ‘larger’ lady, shall we say.

5 kids (not a crime) between 3years and 25, I only met one that was 16 and the three year old, the 16 year old was big (Im guessing 15+ stone) the three year old… well he was 3 months younger than my son, exactly the same height but was at least twice the size and weight of my boy.. All was revealed over dinner – boxing day so roast beef, potatoes, yorkshires etc…., within two minutes he’d picked a bit of potatoe and them tried to throw the rest on the floor – mum says ”ooh he’s a fussy eater..”, and then proceeded to give him a pot noodle and half a family size bag of doritos, which he proceeded to eat with no problem at all… I was gobsmacked, my other half said I literally sat there with my chin on the floor for about quarter of an hour, even my littlun asked me why he had crisps for dinner (after finishing his own and not leaving a scrap).

Ok so we’re an active family my little boy loves coming out on my bike with me and takes his balance bike anywhere that’ll let him, and then spend the rest of the day chasing his younger sister round while shes on the trike, he loves swimming and indoor climbing, maybe we’re the exception, but I would never in my darkest times give trash like that to a child as a main meal, and if I was my parents I would have been massivley offended to boot (which I think my dad was but was too polite to say anything) – and then on top of that they (mum and daughter) worked their way through at least 20 cigarettes in less than five hours…

They seemed to embrace unhealthy living in the same way I do active and healthy living… it was quite sad, andthe child had no real communication skills (just learnedto talk aged three) and interactive skills – just took toys off my two whilst they were playing with them, if that was my son I would be ashamed personally – he was larger than one ofthose kids in that maccy d’s photo up there too…

Ive also worked on the calories in less than calories out principal and its worked for me for over 20 years – when I was boxing and had to make weight it always worked and never lost muscle as a result – Ive never heard ofthat before either and dont understand how you can ‘work off’ muscle – and I wouldnt take anythnig in mens health to support that as any proof either!

Ive also worked on the calories in less than calories out principal and its worked for me for over 20 years – when I was boxing and had to make weight it always worked and never lost muscle as a result

Yup, always worked for me too. My natural weight is 90kgs…always seem to hover around this, but when I need to drop weight for muay thai taking a tighter control of my calories for a few weeks mean I minimise the water weight I need to lose.

Maybe I’m being unfair, but I simply can’t understand why people can’t lose weight if they have no medical or psychological reason. All it takes is a little research and a bit of will power.

dont understand how you can ‘work off’ muscle

You’re right you don’t work off muscle; but if you go on a diet i.e. reduce calorie intake and fail to exercise your muscles e.g. by weight training, then the first thing your body will do is ‘shrink’ your muscles as your brain will think they not needed.

I take it when you were making a weight you still trained? probably lost fat?

yep still trained like a loon, but tbh it was a bit extreme – having to measure out food every meal, making sure you ate at the right time, trained at the right time etc…

Always wanted to apply the same kind of thinking and training principals to xc racing, but as there’s never been a headcase trying to take my head off my shoulders on the startline I was never as strict on myself!

McHamish totally agree with this:

Maybe I’m being unfair, but I simply can’t understand why people can’t lose weight if they have no medical or psychological reason. All it takes is a little research and a bit of will power.

what people dont have is willpower, or want to do it badly enough, me included sometimes…

ok then, after reading all this thread it would seem that most of us agree that the problem is down several factors, bad parenting, bad advertising, poor quality food, lack of excercise, poor skills in the kitchen etc. I have always thought being overweight however is not such a bad thing (within reason of course) if you get plenty of excercise to keep yourself reasonably fit eg, i weigh in at 18st and i am 5’9″ tall i have a 48-50″ chest depending on current weight and i cycle to work everyday, do night rides and weekend rides, i am now 41 years old and i feel that i am one of the healthier men in my age group ( i know i don’t compare to most of you on this site tho) i am rarely ill, i almost never see my doctor or need hospital treatment and feel that my extra wieght is not doing me much harm, would you say that my wieght is an issue? am i a fat bastard who costs the nhs money thru my own self neglect? what are your opinions? be honest please! i’m pretty thick skinned so i won’t take offence.

am i a fat bastard

That reminds me of one of my favourite Carter USM CDs, which starts:

You fat bastard
You fat bastard
You fat bastard…

Back to the question; dunno, I’m 45 years old, 5’9″, 12.5 stone, 44″ chest – does that make me a skinny bastard??

Its no coincidence that the tighter regulated food industry is the less obesity there is – compare us and the americans to the dutch or french

erm? French are getting fatter… well the dutch are just the dutch ‘chocolatey sprinkles’..

not just regulation but also culture

ps chocolate sprinkles on everything is an ace idea!