There’s no doubt that obesity is a massive health issue, and I agree that the focus should be on HEALTH not whether being fat is socially acceptable or aesthetically pleasing – if we are going to challenge the obesity crisis we should also challenge society’s obsession with skinny and the body beautiful. I’ve worked with primary school age girls who think they are fat and have poor body image – it’s heartbreaking.

Some girls who find that they can’t keep up with the skinny ideals get into a “f*** it” mentality – they comfort eat because they feel bad about their weight and think they’ll never look like the girls in the magazines anyway, so they might as well eat what they want. Some fall into binge eating, bulimia or unhealthy cycles of bingeing and fasting and yo-yo dieting.

it’s a difficult balance to strike – we SHOULD make different body shapes and sizes acceptable but we should also promote people being healthy, both mentally and physically. A skinny person who is depressed, malnourished, or has an eating disorder will also cost the NHS a lot of money, let’s not forget.

I don’t think people are pathetic for either celebrating it or protesting. We live in a democracy with the right to free speech, therefore people have the right to do both or neither.

I live in quite a poor area, where the majority of residents are not British, so there aren’t really any celebrations going on – people can’t afford it, quite simply, and spending money on celebrating the existence of someone who already has ridiculous amounts of money and every creature comfort one could want, at the expense of hardworking people, seems a bit ridiculous in the community I live in where most people are on the poverty line and we have a lot of problems with social integration, drugs and alcohol, racism and mistrust among all nationalities living there, and unemployed yoof. I just don’t think they relate to the Jubilee at all, and I don’t see many events being organised in these sorts of communities to promote neighbourliness, community spirit and all that jazz – it’s mostly concentrated within the middle class areas, or at least it is where I live anyway, I don’t want to make sweeping generalisations about the rest of the country.

For me, the pageant and all just kinda highlights a lot of the debates around fairness, social inequities and the ever widening gap between haves and have nots in our society, and that’s what makes me uncomfortable with it.

Sorry, I’m on my soapbox! Quiet afternoon at work ;)

I started in Jan, lost nearly 3 stone and have gone from tight 42″ waist jeans to 38’s almost falling down (but not quite into 36’s cos of my thighs!) I’d not felt so good in years either, loads of energy and my ulcerative colitis which has fluctuated between bad and really bad over the last 5 years seemed to have gone away. Then about 3 weeks ago a combination of my daughters birthdays, my birthday and a few other family events meant that my cheat day slipped into a cheat week and then a cheat fortnight (you can’t turn down birthday cake when it’s your kids parties)

Found the original post – I think Mike was saying that his UC improved on iDave, or that’s how I read it anyway.

It sounds a lot similar to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that is recommended for Crohns and UC – I’ve had some success with that in managing flare-ups in the past, and it eliminates starchy carbs altogether.

I’ll drop you an email – I’m interested. I would like to shift some weight. I’m right at the upper end of what’s normal for my height. I do have a medium to large frame so I’m never going to be a skinny minnie, but I would like to drop some weight for my race in September. In the last 18 months or so. I already dropped around 8lbs and a dress size after going GF, but I can’t seem to manage to shift any more. I thought I ate quite healthy but after keeping a food diary for 2 weeks I realised I ate quite a lot of starchy foods and cheese, plus drinking tea with milk in all day!

I tried the Cannondale Synapse whilst on my hunt for a commuter bike and liked that. I didn’t get it in the end because I went for a flat bar road bike as I’m commuting rather than getting in to road riding as a hobby.

I’m one of those that needs WSD, I’m 5’5″ got short arms I think!

hmm, I’m tempted. I’ve done an adventure race before but never an enduro. I’m a bit slow up hills though at the moment, was ill for 2 weeks at the start of May and that set my training back a little. Not sure if I’d be fit enough for you!

Does the iDave rely on pulses and beans a lot? I really struggle with those (Crohns) but I noticed that Mike had said it had helped his ulcerative colitis a lot, so I’m more curious now.

In terms of carbs I really only eat basmati rice, gluten free oats, quinoa and buckwheat noodles, because I try to stick to low GI stuff.

welcome to england a retard who sells fruit and veg on a market can own 8 houses

Welcome to England, a place where we are such a bunch of snobs that we can’t conceive of someone being successful doing something as simple as selling fruit and veg on a market.

Nothing Jubilee related, going to view some houses with the OH, night out at a pub quiz and some live music on the Sunday and getting in a couple of rides.

I’m no fan of the monarchy but I won’t sniff at the extra days off work – anyway, if we didn’t have this bunch unelected Royal bunch of elitist toffs we’d have President Cameron, who is…..oh wait, an unelected elitist toff!

I don’t know the ins and outs of iDave, but it does seem to work well for some people it seems. I found the main culprits for putting weight on for me were gluten (coeliac) and dairy. I think I’d struggle with lots of pulses though, they tend to give me pain and bloating if I eat too many of them.

I’m not sure exactly that grains are the enemy, it’s more that they are grown with pesticides and things that our ancestors didn’t have to deal with and we just eat too much of the damn stuff especially wheat, you only have to spend a few days being gluten free to realise it’s in a hell of a lot of stuff. Can’t be good for you to eat that much of it even if you don’t have an allergy or sensitivity to it!

I make porridge either with gluten free oats or rice flakes and add fruit, linseeds, maybe chopped almonds and some honey. Rice porridge is really nice and easy on your digestive system if you’re not a good eater in the mornings. I use rice milk as well, I’m gluten and casein free and I hate soya milk but rice milk actually tastes ok, I’d have it over cows milk now.

Alpro soya yogurt with granola and berries is my summer favourite, or a smoothie with banana, strawberries, yogurt, linseeds and oats and thinned with apple juice – again easy to digest first thing but the oats and banana add some substance to it, if you can eat dairy you could use normal plain yogurt.

People do have different ideas of what is overweight. My OH’s dad told me at the weekend he thought I was “big” and could stand to lose some weight – I am a size 12, which I think is fairly average, but OH’s parents are both skinny despite having healthy appetites, although OH’s mum is vegan so I guess there’s a limit to how much weight you can put on with that diet!

There’s a difference between thinking people should lose weight for aesthetic reasons and health reasons though, and at a size 26 I would have thought you’d be at risk of a lot of problems.

I loved the guy who said that anyone who rides a bike in a public place should be insured – apart from the insane drivel spouted by MV that gave me a laugh for the afternoon.

I went to uni with that Darius Danesh guy, he dropped out to do pop idol I think it was. He was a massive nob, so nobody really missed him.

It is also important to learn that you must ALWAYS ask if it is ok to stroke a dog before doing it.

I regularly bump in to kids who make a beeline for our dogs and immediately hold a hand out to offer a pat or stroke without asking. My two love the attention but a nervous or badly treated dog may behave differently.

This. Annoys the hell out of me when kids come running up to my dog. He’s a softie, but dogs are not always completely predictable and you never know if they might get overwhelmed/spooked especially if several children they don’t know go up to them at once, and it would be mine/my dog’s fault if he growled or worse, attacked. I’ve had to politely tell local kids before that they should ask an owner’s permission before approaching a dog because the dog might not be friendly.

Wary is not a bad thing, you want a child to be sensible around dogs, I agree with the idea of spending time around one dog, building up from there.

Don’t pick him up around dogs either as that reinforces there is something to be scared of – hold his hand and walk on confidently, talk to him and distract from the presence of a dog.

if you ask me it comes down to whether being married to your OH matters to you – take the wedding shebang out of the occasion, you can still get married but without spending all the money, if the being married in itself is what matters.

Would have thought that next week would make it a bit late to change arrangements though!

aww, bummer. Hope it goes well and it’s fixed this time :)

I’d say talk to her about it. Find out if she actually does enjoy it or not – if she says she doesn’t really like it, then you have your answer and you can keep your MTB-ing to yourself. If she wants to keep trying, then I couldn’t recommend a womens’ skills course enough. It won’t make her faster necessarily but it will up her confidence and she might not feel so bad about not keeping up on the road.

I introduced my other half to MTB-ing, didn’t half annoy me that he is much faster than me! But it’s not a competition at the end of the day, I let him get on with it if he wants to steam off up all the hills and run out of energy for the good bits I let him :-D

Perhaps she might be suited to another type of cycling such as touring/leisure biking? Hybrids are faster on the roads and you can go on towpaths/fireroad type surfaces as well. It’s a bit of a dull slog when you have to do a lot of road riding on a MTB.

It depends how long a commute you want and how urban you want to be. I’d suggest Horsforth if you want the convenience of being closer to the city, but if you want to be further out probably Menston or Guiseley.

If you’re gluten free it’s difficult, bread is out, pasta is out and the GF substitutes are much more expensive.

rather than focusing on only spending a certain amount I tend to try and only buy what I need and avoid food waste, even buying things on yellow sticker when they’re very cheap is false economy if you don’t use them.

In order of responsibility:

1. The political leadership and banks for creating the FSA, which was entirely toothless. They should have MADE the banks rein in their spending or influence SOMEONE to get it done.
2. Bank of England for being useless
3. Banks on their own for being idiots
4. The population who have gotten high on debt.
5. the Media for being complicit.

So he has a point, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.

Agree with this.

It’s not often I would agree with a Tory politician, but on this occasion I would agree to some extent. Lots of people lived knowingly beyond their means, but the banks also lent to people who did not understand the implications of what they were signing up to. I pretty much agree with swedishmatt’s order of responsibility here. I do not agree that there should be no personal responsibility taken for bad financial decisions and people having lifestyles that were way above their means, using credit to finance luxuries.

Got to hand it to the Northern bird though she knew her market with the tan in Essex!

They’re headlining the last day at Download, will be interesting as I’m too young to remember them first time round!

even though there are no climbs it’s quite rocky, some fun bits though.

Sounds like the Italian is the one mainly initiating the flirting here. If she really had anything to hide, she would probably passcode her phone and not leave it lying around where it could be looked at (if you’re genuinely playing around you don’t take that risk, or you delete all messages from your bit on the side).

However, there’s some reason there why she hasn’t deleted his number and cut contact, or told him explicitly not to send her inappropriate texts.

My boyfriend had an ex who used to text him when she was drunk, and it was always flirty stuff and sent about 2am. One day I got fed up when his phone kept beeping at 2am and I picked it up and looked through it. His responses weren’t flirty, but they weren’t telling her to eff off either. I told him he needed to either tell her to stop drink-texting and texting inappropriate things or cut off contact. He didn’t want the confrontation particularly, so that’s why he’d just either ignored her or replied neutrally. But I felt quite strongly that he needed to make it explicit to her that he didn’t want those texts, otherwise for me, that would have suggested he wanted to keep her around as a “possibility”.

I think you need to have it out with her – ‘fess up to looking, she won’t be happy, but neither will you until it’s sorted and you know where she is at. She needs to get rid of this guy or there’s no future for your relationship – if she won’t do it, you know where she’s at.

Grum, coffeeking – excuse my use of the word “everyone”. I revise that to “the vast majority” as there are some people who didn’t go debt crazy when there was a lot of freely avaiilable credit around, and the temptation to buy a hell of a lot of stuff we don’t need with it.

Derek:

Banks, Financial Institutuions caused the pain and have yet to repair their balance sheets and restore their confidence to such a point where they’ll loan sufficient funds for the private sector to deliver what is required.

Slowmart:

The personal greed of the masses also played it’s significant part in the position we find ourselves in. The second highest personal debt ratio in the world.

Swedishmatt:

they pretty much spent spent spent their way into massive debt.

So, can we all agree then that at every level of society everyone spent more than they had and then found they were not able to pay it back?

Been in a similar situation where house was in ex’s name and I contributed in a similar manner. When we split up I was told no chance could I get anything because he had a kid and kid’s primary residence was with her father, so no way could he be forced to sell the house to release equity for me. Though ransos also has a point, so it’s worth taking some legal advice, as you may be entitled to something (though I doubt it would be half the equity).

She got made redundant in Dec and copped £35K in redundancy, walked straight in to another £45K a year job and wouldn’t borrow me £200. I’ve always been the soft shit in this relationship but I’m now starting to query why i’m sitting her eating beans on toast whist she’s sitting rather comfortably.

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but you’re her ex. She doesn’t have to lend you anything. You’re an adult, and you’re responsible for yourself.

But…. there’s a big change of focus on where the money goes. More – a LOT more – will be funeled into the pockets of the likes of a4E, Capita and G4S, as they skim off fees for providing their shite service. Private Healthcare firms are presently licking their lips

This is why I will never in my life vote Tory. Blind faith in the private sector and a complete refusal to accept that profit driven companies cannot deliver frontline services that benefit the service users rather than the shareholders. I’ve seen it first hand – worked in contracted public sector service delivery, and it is absolutely rife with the taking of shortcuts, at the expense of both staff and frontline customers, to maximise profit for the shareholders, as well as fudging and outright LYING that goes on to make out they’re meeting targets. Oh and lets not forget the ridiculous targets and financial benchmarks that price charities and nonprofits out of bidding for a lot of these contracts because they can’t afford to funnel money into it upfront.

TJ – I think we’re politically of the same leaning, but I think they WOULD argue against cuts if there was a compelling enough case. The problem is, I’m not sure we can spend our way out this time.
Austerity and spending are unfortunately two sides of the same boom and bust coin that we’ve had around for too long.

This is beacuse a weak labour are scared of the propagnada machine the tories own – they hare afraid to / have not been able to make the case against the cuts so have capitulated

Perhaps that is because there isn’t a strong enough case to make?

Like I said I’m definitely no Tory, but I’m no fan of Miliband/Balls either and I don’t see them coming up with any clear alternatives.

So basically you all think we should fix the problems we have by making small changes to the system that doesn’t work and caused this situation in the first place.

The problems we face are due to an inability to determine what is important and what is not and then to prioritise.

So here’s a question for all of you, what is more important quality of life or having money to buy useless shit?

I think kaesae has a point here. We’re stuck with a system that doesn’t work, and a society that’s embraced the wrong values. It’s chicken and egg – were we seduced by the excess and luxury the selfish free market-driven capitalist society offered us, or did we actually help to make it that way because we wanted endless stuff, to emulate celebrities, to keep up with the Joneses, and our governments just responded to what we wanted? Either way, certainly in affluent Western societies, we bought into it lock stock and barrel. Now the bubble’s burst, and the one thing we don’t want to look at is that it might be time to change our social values instead of our economic policies. All we seem to want is for someone to wave a magic wand and go “hey, it’s alright again now, here’s another credit card, off you go to Currys and buy a new HD TV”.

It’s not going to happen.

I wasn’t loading up on credit cards, maxing my mortgage and getting a car on HP as many many people seemed to be doing. The very type of things that caused the whole mess. I think most of us could see (certainly by 2007) that this couldn’t be sustained.

As much as I dislike the Tories, I cannot argue with the Micawber approach to fiscal responsibility:

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”

I understand Keynesian economics, and the argument about stimulating growth, but there does come a point where you have to stop borrowing, and I think we’re there. That’s why not even Labour will promise to reverse the austerity measures. The Micawber analogy applies to governments and nations as well as individuals.

The problem is that nobody on any side of the political landscape has any solutions that are guaranteed to work, and the political establishment has run out of options. Hence why extremist politics/the nationalist alternative are becoming more and more popular across Europe, because the mainstream parties are seen not to be dealing with the situation – all they proffer is either austerity (unpopular) or spending (risky).

We’re in a mess, and the mess was caused by rampant selfish capitalist greed. The question is, who will come up with a viable alternative and what will that be? I hope it’s not the extremists, but at the moment it’s only them thinking about alternatives to rampant free-market-ism. Time for the politicians to catch on.

Many people ‘think’ they are middle class, but the fact is that those pouring out of HE nowadays may find that, unable to get on the housing ladder and working just a few paychecks away from oblivion they are not in fact middle class. When the government sucks everyones money away, treats the population like stray dogs, whilst flaunting their own money and their lobbyist friends money in our faces, society will change to something far worse than what Maggie’s government brought to life.

I’d be inclined to agree with this to an extent. For recent graduates, there’s not that much to look forward to – several years perhaps working in unskilled, insecure jobs, no hope of getting on the housing ladder or building any financial security.

However, I don’t think we should lose sight of the fact that society as a whole is responsible for the economic situation as it is. Rich, poor, the vast majority of society bought into consumer culture, the “have-it-now” and the fetishization of luxury celeb lifestyle. The banks lent it irresponsibly, and borrowers at all levels spent it irresponsibly. Of course, the crisis has hit people harder who had less to begin with, and all we see is the richer in society going “I’m alright Jack” and of course, it makes us angry. But I think the situation we are in is actually a symptom of us chasing a fairly skewed set of social values – property and money before people, mainly, and I don’t think that set of values is confined to a particular class of individuals – it spans society as a whole.

I’ve had it a few times. It’s pretty unpleasant.

last time was at Dalby and I ended up losing concentration and going headfirst over the bars – not nice.

I never thought Kenny would be a long term choice, I’d be surprised if he stays another season.

Not loving much about our squad at the moment. Henderson = donkey, Carroll = rubbish, Gerrard = fragile, Carragher = needs a zimmer frame Suarez = liability. Mediocrity at best.

Nonetheless the thought that we might come out of a terrible season with more trophies than the scum makes me happy – come on City!

Mainly fruit. I love chewy bananas, dried apple rings and dried mango. Sometimes I have yoghurt, also like Bounce protein balls and the gluten free Nakd bars – ginger and cocoa orange.

OK I also love chocolate, but I try not to have it as a regular snacking food!

It’s so hard but it’s the right thing for him not to suffer any more.
I cried the other night on “Don’t Blame the Dog” when they had to put down a dog at the shelter – God knows what I’m going to be like when it gets to my boy’s time :(

hen do tomorrow
expecting not to do much Sunday!

Exercise can help with depression – perhaps trying to get out together for a walk every day, or taking up a sport or activity together?

I had terrible mood swings, anger and irritability which turned out to be down to coeliac disease. I had pernicious anemia (B12 deficiency) which caused me some days to be very fatigued, depressed, irritable and have a poor short term memory. I had been diagnosed with depression several times when seeing the GP about the symptoms. I only found out it was coeliac disease when I was hospitalized with loss of balance, co-ordination and extreme fatigue but that was after years of problems.

A lot of doctors think still that coeliac disease is rare, but actually in some areas of Europe it can affect 1 in 100 people and a lot of people go undiagnosed for many years because the symptom picture is so vague. Because my symptoms were primarily neurological, it was not investigated – put down to depression, anxiety or stress.
It would be worth your wife at least getting blood tests to make sure there is no physical reason behind the mood swings, because actually sometimes there is something that can be easily treated like a vitamin deficiency or thyroid problem – an underactive thyroid can cause depression as well and it’s more common in women.

In Western medicine doctors are still a bit behind in understanding the connections between mental/emotional symptoms and physical conditions as it has been believed that physical illness causes only physical symptoms.

Mastiles – I was also at the front for that Prodigy gig at Leeds fest. It was a pile up – it was my first ever festival as well!

Best gig – The Cat Empire on the beachfront at St Kilda Festival in Melbourne. The energy there was amazing, lovely summer evening as well.
Corinne Bailey Rae’s comeback gig in Leeds after the death of her husband was also amazing in a different way.

Worst – got to be John Squire in the Seahorses days in Manchester – he just came across as really arrogant and detached.

I think Norway is showing remarkable dignity in the way they are handling this terrible affair.

If we (and by this I mean European nations) want to see an end to white supremacism and people signing up to extreme right wing philosophies, then we need to understand why these people come to think and believe what they do. Is it that it appeals to people who are already a bit unhinged (like Breivik possibly is) or does the participation in it unhinge people and make them start thinking stuff like it’s OK to massacre people who don’t believe the same thing? There’s a lot of brainwashing particularly of young people that goes on in these sort of groups.