Do they also read ‘heat’ magazine and know exactly how many pounds a particular celebrity might have gained or lost in time for some beach holiday in st tropez before getting two divorces and having six babies?

Bang on.

I just say I don’t diet. Social isolation be damned – I hang out with the guys and talk about sports instead.

marmite and peanut butter

That’s great – I highly doubt that you’ll be able to keep up doing a food diary/’exercise prog’ long term though.

Or you might be unlucky like I was with using My Fitness Pal, and end up losing the weight but having an eating disorder instead.

…and as for the feeling hungry bit, yes, you will feel hungry. It’s a feeling that we have all but forgotten, and one with which we should become reacquainted.

It’s normal to feel a bit hungry. It’s your body telling you it needs fuel. The problem is when people eat for emotional reasons, rather than hunger. We should indeed become reacquainted with the signals of true biological hunger. What we shouldn’t do is turn the ability to ignore or deny hunger into a personal moral virtue, because that is also as mentally unhealthy as overeating or eating for other reasons than hunger.

So the migration from physical/manual jobs to more desk/sedentary work, as well as the increase in less physical pass times such as tv/computer viewing, has nothing to do with it?

I made an earlier post on this thread that mentioned that, I think yes, that does have a lot to do with it.

In summary, the diet fascists, calorie counting enthusiasts and thin fantasy peddlers are taking the piss out of us in order to make themselves rich it’s everyone elses fault, and personal responsibility has no part to play.

Nope, I don’t believe that either. I think we do have personal responsibility to question what these idiots feed us, whether in the form of advertising for miracle diets, “thinspiration” and the fetishization of skinny in the media, or telling us butter is bad, here eat this cocktail of processed vegetable fat and it’s better for you.

I think we have personal responsibility to look after our own health, and not just blindly believe the crap we are fed by an industry whose primary motive is profit, not our health and wellbeing.

People give up on ELMM because they feel really hungry, and eating less doesn’t help. But they could eat ‘better’ food and feel more full whilst still losing weight.

100% agree.

Eating less of the same processed crap foods won’t help you lose weight because you’ll be hungry, give up, binge, gain weight, then feel guilty, beat yourself up for having no “willpower” and the whole cycle starts again.

Hence how we start associating food and eating with morality – this thread shows very clearly that people make moral judgements about overweight people, i.e. they must be greedy, lazy, stupid, have no self control, etc.

The diet industry conditions us to think that it is a matter of choice, moral willpower, the ability to ignore hunger and refuse food is virtuous and eating, or heaven forbid, enjoying food, is sinful. No wonder we have eating disorders at both ends of the spectrum.

If you enjoy food, then you give a shit how it’s been produced, reared, and got to your table. You start questioning mass production, factory farming, supermarkets, the whole system, and that’s the very thing they don’t want us to do. Why were our grandparents, by and large, not overweight when they ate butter, cheese, lard, and bacon and all the things the diet industry tells us we shouldn’t eat, and instead we should choose chemical laden crap which is full of artificial stuff that HUMANS ARE NOT DESIGNED TO EAT.

If you don’t enjoy food, i.e. you have been conditioned by the mass media, food manufacturing and diet industries to think that enjoying eating is bad, will make you overweight and socially unacceptable, then of course, you will buy this shit in order to feel better about yourself.

As a woman who does not enter into diet talk, doesn’t care about calories, and will have a dessert if she wants one, I am something of a social pariah among women in my workplace who are always dieting, breaking the diet, or about to start a new diet. Putting butter on my toast seems like a political act, in this setting. They continually wonder why I am not overweight or the same size they are. They say it’s not fair and I must have a fast metabolism or something.

In summary, the diet fascists, calorie counting enthusiasts and thin fantasy peddlers are taking the piss out of us in order to make themselves rich.

@sugarnaut, if you’re still about….

It’s no problem. I read a couple of pages of the thread and thought I would highlight the fact that for some people it’s more complicated than it should be. It’s strange, I tend to feel like a prisoner trapped in my own life, and I’m not sure how I got here. It seems impossible to make a permanent change for the better.

I have tried/am trying to get help on the NHS, whether they can actually provide proper help remains to be seen. Unfortunately I cannot afford “private” help, although I imagine that would be ideal.

I spiralled into eating disorder behaviour after I started to diet, calorie count and experiment with so-called “healthy” diets like Paleo, IFing, etc. I found I started to binge, and then panic afterwards and restrict, which would then make me ravenously hungry so I’d binge, etc, etc.

The thing that helped me was the Intuitive Eating book which I got on kindle, it’s cheaper than a book, and they also have a website, which has a very kind and supportive online community. It really did encourage me to make peace with food, stop seeing food as being tied in with some kind of morality, and thinness as something that would make me a better person. I understood from reading the book (I eventually read it three times over, to understand the messages fully) that dieting does not and never will work, that the diet industry makes a profit from people’s dieting attempts failing, and that being fat is a character defect or a moral failing is just baloney.

It’s a tough process and it really does require mental toughness to be able to drown out diet talk, diet adverts, food advertising and all the conflicting messages we get about food and eating. But it is possible to heal your relationship with food if you want to. I felt a slave to food and dieting, even though I was preaching how great the Paleo diet was etc, and people were commenting how skinny I was, underneath I was mentally unhealthy, and I might have been a size 10, but I was bingeing in secret, anxious over eating, and thinking about food, or what I would and wouldn’t eat, obsessively.

thm – I don’t think individuals should abdicate responsibility at all. I am saying that the better choices are harder with all the noise around us. You are evidently a bright individual who is capable of drowning it out and making your own decisions. Other people might not be, so much.

Having spent most if my professional life in the second/third worlds, I would respectfully dispute that notion. In relative terms (and as folk like gee etc have noted above in absolute terms) we have pretty much everything that we need (and don’t need) and in varieties that are mind boggling. We then have to make the right choices but rarely do.

I think this is a problem, that we have too much choice around us, too much bombardment. For some people, it’s baffling, and stressful. Conflicting advice everywhere, the diet industry is full of snake oil solutions peddled in a very seductive way, and because we are a quick-fix society, we are indeed seduced by them.

Counter that with the advertising for junk food, alcohol, all-inclusive holidays, and you have a recipe for brain scramble. Which makes it harder for people to make the “right choices”. You can have an advert for Alli immediately followed by an advert for Maccy D’s. Crazy. What kind of message is that, take a fat metabolising pill and eat some burgers?

As we export our lifestyle and products to the second and third worlds, they, too, are starting to have obesity problems. Look at China.

We have everything we want, but not necessarily everything we need in our society. Overeating, like many other addictions, is often related to poor mental health, and I would argue that in many cases that poor mental health is directly correlated to lifestyle – lack of connection to other people, stressful jobs, our high inflation of cost of living in relation to wages, and our total fetishization of the individual and monetary gain above the community.

Of course, I’m not holding the third world up as an ideal, crushing poverty, war and famine is hardly the solution, (although admittedly, it probably would make us thinner, if a lot more miserable). But the solutions don’t lie in throwing more choices at people, and peddling more products to try and compensate for our unhealthy lifestyles, whilst simultaneously trying to sell us happiness and friendship in a nice, sugary, nutritionless Coke can, and then expecting the individual to negotiate this bewildering nightmare of conflicting messages and take on the burden of making the right choice.

Dieting and deprivation doesn’t work. A balanced and healthy lifestyle is what is required to be a healthy weight and in a healthy condition. Life in the first world means that frequently, it is harder to maintain a balanced lifestyle either for optimum physical or mental health.

Another moneysaving tip? Don’t work! :lol:

The money I spend working is crazy. Transport, food, work social events because I don’t want to be seen as a miserable bugger. I only really realised how much working costs when I became a self employed contractor and started claiming work related expenses.

I’m kinda being tongue in cheek here, I’m not genuinely advising people not to work, but I wouldn’t go back to being permanently employed/owned again now I actually keep account of how much of the cash I earn is being spunked just so I can keep going to work and earning the money. I mentioned this on another thread, but where I work now, they have a lot of facilities, onsite shops, canteen etc and a discount scheme, so the employer pays people their salary, but a large proportion of it goes straight back to the employer via convenient onsite stores selling the employer’s products, people buying their breakfast and lunch there, and using the discount scheme for their home shopping, paying for their parking permit for the onsite car parks….

Basically, it’s an existential nightmare! :lol:

Part of the reason that “Eat Less Move More” doesn’t work a lot of the time is that the way people approach it is unsustainable. Currently, where I go to the gym, it is rammed in January, you can’t get into the classes, there are queues for the machines and lane swimming is more like lane queuing in the water. Come February, it starts to empty out as people drop off their new health regimes – they have a bender at the end of the January Dryathlon, they succumb to a couple of takeouts….life gets in the way, and they can’t be bothered any more. But many of them will have thrown themselves into it, going to the gym every day and eating 1200 calories a day or whatever it is My Fitness Pal tells you to eat to lose weight, and then when they’re not half starving themselves and punishing themselves in the gym, the weight goes straight back on, quicker and more stubborn than before.

Of course you will lose weight if you slash your calorie intake and start running around like a loon, but is it sustainable? For most people, probably not.

Eating Unhealthily – Easy and cheap
Eating Healthy – Hard(er) when you’ve done a full day’s work, done the chores at home, sorted the kids/pets out, and are hungry and don’t want to get to bed too late so you can get up at silly o’clock in the morning and not want to kill yourself or somebody else. And more expensive.
Exercising – See above. Often gets deprioritised when people have lives that are far too busy having to make enough money to make ends meet, and look after the kids, elderly/sick relatives, or whatever other responsibilities people have that they have to fit around work. (I do make the effort to cook from scratch mostly, but if I want to work a full day, go visit my dad, and do my share of the housework, quite often it’s the exercise that gets sacrificed, over and above cycle commute to work anyway).
Sitting on the couch – sometimes all you can muster the energy to do after doing all of the above
Reading labels – Easy, if you have all the time in the world to shop and don’t have impatient kids tugging at you, or a childminder to relieve, or any other time constraint – have you seen how small they print that stuff?
Interpreting Label information – see above
Giving a fat person a hug and saying “There there and have a pamphlet” – fairly useless.
Giving a fat person a severe talking to and making them aware that in no uncertain terms that they are killing themselves – also fairly useless
Driving to work/school – the norm.
Riding/walking to work/school – frowned upon, you might get hit by a car – how many times do we see stories just on STW about near-misses, accidents etc? Roads built for car drivers, not cyclists, and when people are in such a hurry everywhere, is it any wonder a red light or crossing means little to some people?

London drivers at least seem to expect cyclists – whereas Leeds drivers seem to be constantly surprised that there are other people on the road with them (not to mention the complete and utter disregard to the red bit of traffic lights)

Jeremy Clarkson evidently doesn’t expect cyclists!

I’ve cycled in London and found it easier than Leeds. But the worst city I ever cycled in was Bradford – never again. The drivers there are far scarier than Leeds ones, although the taxi drivers in Leeds are a special breed – red lights and indicators and no right turn signs tend to mean nothing to them!

littlemisspanda, fat, happy and married if you don’t mind love….

Glad to hear it ton :D

We have sedentary lifestyles our bodies were not made for (myself included – desk job, baaaahhh)we drive everywhere instead of walking, our kids don’t play out because we perceive it not to be safe (and in some places it probably isn’t) so they are scheduled to the hilt and driven to clubs and activities rather than making their own fun.

Our shopping centres are out of town, we have all but killed local shops in a lot of places, so we have to drive to the supermarkets, where we wander like zombies and are bombarded with adverts for unhealthy foods. The unhealthy foods are cheaper, at least in the supermarkets, so that’s what people buy if they haven’t got a lot of money.

People are stuck working long hours (unpaid overtime the norm in most places I’ve worked, bar one or two – presenteeism rules) and barely have the energy or inclination to cook a meal from scratch or go to the gym or be active.

I am currently contracting for a major UK retailer, where people get paid, and then they pour their money back to their employer via the canteen, on site shops, and via the discount scheme that allows them to go buy their mass produced rubbish for slightly less. The whole system is set to benefit them, not us! When are we going to wake up to it, those with the power and the money love obesity and our general habits of overconsumption – it makes them money, which is what they live for! They sell us convenience, that’s what we need, because the majority of our time is spent wage slaving for them, so we don’t have time to grow, prepare and cook things. They stole our time and independence from us and gave us the ready meal in return.

If we want to resist obesity, then we need to resist the pull of mass marketing, we need to resist cultural homogenisation, and mass consumer culture. Start resisting these things, start looking for and posing alternatives to lining the pockets of big businesses who get rich from our misery and poor health. And I can tell you from the trenches, that is exactly how they get rich. And our governments allow them to do this whilst simultaneously blaming the individual for their every misfortune, whether that might be having the temerity to be unemployed or sick and need benefits, or getting too fat and being a drain on the NHS. This is the government of the scapegoat and witch hunt. This is the government that encourages us to hate each other, compete with each other, but trust and rely on the ruthless profiteers of big private enterprise. Co-operation is the enemy of this society. We are out for ourselves, pushing our lonely trolleys round the aisles in the supermarkets, filling ourselves with sugar and fat instead of love, companionship and social cohesion, we would rather hoard our bread than break it with our neighbours. No wonder we are all fat, miserable and lonely.

you’re on the wrong side.

Can’t get past on the other side either – not enough room between 2 lanes of cars to get through. They seem to cram together like sardines, so desperate are they for the next green light.

I ride from Chapel Allerton into the city centre, out near Crown Point. I wish the canal towpath was an option, used to do that when I lived in Armley.

Read “The Moneyless Man” by Mark Boyle. A real eye opener. I definitely don’t fancy cuttlefish toothpaste, but it just shows how many things we could not spend money on, if we chose to.

I find avoiding supermarkets helpful, as it stops me making so many impulse buys. Using my local markets means cheap fruit and veg (even if you don’t get the same wide variety of choice) cheaper meat, especially if you can buy in any quantity, and the butchers will often give me free bones for my dog. Free range Eggs are half the price of the supermarket there too, and I can buy a lot of ethnic foods that I use a lot, like coconut oil and coconut milk. The Asian shops and supermarkets sell cheap large bags of rice.

I use my pressure cooker to cook cheaper cuts of meat like beef shin or lamb neck, always cook whole chickens rather than buying breasts or legs etc, because you get a roast from it plus meals/sandwiches for the next couple of days. I also buy my gluten free flour in bulk which reduces the cost per pack – I got together with other coeliacs locally to do this.

Cleaning – using diluted white vinegar makes a good window and glass/mirror cleaner. Combined with bicarb soda and lemon or orange oil it’s a good toilet cleaner as well.

I made a cake for a colleague which was in the shape of a turd, and had been spray painted in silver edible spray, and coated in edible glitter, and then with a sugarpaste bow on top!

I work in the world of project management, and the saying in that place was that we spent a lot of time polishing turds, and if you can’t polish it, roll it in glitter!

I wear a white poppy, as a Quaker, because like most Quakers, I am anti-war, for the most part. Although I do recognise/concede that in some cases, war is unavoidable.

It seems that people think wearing a white poppy to represent the hope and wish for peace is a worse statement to make than wearing a red one. I wear the white poppy because I do want to remember those who died, but I think we should also remember the horror and sadness of war, and in some cases, the futility, and remembrance of the dead should remind us to work all the harder to achieve peace.

Idealistic? Yes, sure it is, but should we not have high aims for our society?

Ton, I ride on the A61 towards Rothwell, so we may well pass on opposite sides of the road in the mornings!

If its the same one that I saw on my ride to work it was on the corner of harrogate road where Chapel Allerton meets Chapel Town.

I saw the cyclist face down and not moving, did not look good. The police were there at the time but no ambulance. Hope they are ok.

Yep, was that one I saw. The cyclist had been put on a stretcher and was being wheeled to the ambulance. I join there from St George’s Ave. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a cyclist knocked off at that junction either, I saw a pretty bad accident there last year too. That one happened when a cyclist was trying to turn right and the driver clipped his wheel.

I had the lateral meniscus repaired 5 years ago after busting it playing football.

Used crutches for 3 days, was hobbling about after that, had plenty of codeine about. Was back on the bike within a couple of months, but couldn’t go back to playing football. Took me about a year to be able to run again.

Show her the back of your hand, mine has SHUT IT tattooed on it.

A piece of advice you would do well to take yourself – domestic violence is never a thing to joke about.

We don’t usually get to have time off work, except the bank holidays, as preference for Christmas holidays is given to parents. So we haven’t usually visited family, we’ve spent it on our own, because our families are dotted round the UK and it would be too much to travel round and see them all over 2 days.

Because my dad is seriously ill though this year I’ve dug my heels in and requested some time off as this may be the last Christmas I have with him. The parents at work have whinged, but frankly my dear….

Regardless of whether I’m using a bell, I slow down for pedestrians and dogs on shared pathways. Dogs and children are unpredictable.

Choices seem to be a complete stop while the owner unsuccessfully calls the dog to him across the path, or to proceed between them completely unsure as to whether the dog will react to his owners call…I find it an awkward situation, and I generally default to trackstanding when head on, but coming from behind if they don’t react to a bell it’s tricky.

It is difficult with unleashed dogs. Being a dog owner, I don’t want to say that dogs should be leashed, everywhere at all times, because I like to let my dog roam and sniff etc. But you do have to be alert/considerate to other path users. I will usually call and grab my dog by the collar if I hear a bike bell and let them pass, so he doesn’t get in the way. By the same token I would expect them not to go racing past and to slow down some.

Bridleway riding is unfortunately like that, when you aren’t on dedicated bike trails, sometimes you have to interrupt your flow for other trail users. C’est la vie. We have trail centres that are purely for MTB, where you shouldn’t really encounter pedestrians, kids or dogs on the trails (other than the family and shared ones).

The thing is, you don’t know if your friends might be funding their lifestyles through debt. Or if they really are truly happy with their lives, you never know what’s behind closed doors.

What would their lives look like without the money, the fancy holidays etc? What would happen if something meant their income was reduced, how would they cope with a change in status. Would their relationships and ties survive?

My dad was on £80k a year and he’s now been struck down with a serious illness. He won’t work again, and is having to take early retirement on ill health grounds. He is really struggling with the loss of identity and status, as well as the income side of it. Just a year ago, he was at the top of his profession, taking holidays twice a year in nice places, travelling for work, and was known in his field. But all of the high falutin people he used to go around with – have they bothered with him now he’s poorly? Have they heck.

Money and status matters very little compared to finding out who will stick around when the chips are down.

Oh poor little lad, so sorry to hear this :(

grr why can’t I post images :(

So sorry to hear this and hope the treatment is successful. I believe it can be, especially if spotted early. I am dreading my baby getting old :(

16 is quite young to be away from home and it will have been a shock to her system going from home comforts to military life. But if she can stick it out, then there are things to be gained for it, lots of experiences she won’t get in civilian life.

If she gives it a good crack and then it’s still not for her, then at least she will know she stuck it out and gave it her best shot.

I have the same thing, no lunch allowance when working on another site that belongs to the company, we get £5 if working on a client site or elsewhere. I work in London a lot, there is a subsidised canteen where I am, but the canteen can’t/won’t cater for my dietary needs (coeliac) so I have no choice but to go to the more expensive shops, and work won’t cover it.

I bring lunch from home if I’m just down for the day, but can’t do that if I’m staying overnight. If I am staying in a hotel with a fridge in the room, it’s easier, but not all places have that facility.

You could get a hotel with breakfast included, and then buy your lunch in the morning and use the breakfast allowance….

I saw a programme the other day where some guy drank his own wee as an asthma cure. Though I don’t think I’ll be trying that.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4777/halloween-pumpkin-cake

I’m mixed on this. When I was in high school. my mum used to take me on her business trips sometimes, which involved days out of school. I definitely learned more from going to various different countries (Canada, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, for example)than I did in school. I think travel is good for kids, and can broaden horizons etc. If a week or so out of school is going to ruin a kid’s education, I’d say it’s a pretty crap education if they’ll forget everything they’re taught in a week.

From the POV of a childfree adult though, I want to be able to go on holiday at the times when children are in school, and don’t want to encounter hordes of brats running around like crack monkeys. I’d actually rather the prices were LOWER in the school holidays, so that the families all go en masse, and I don’t end up like last year, going on holiday during term time and then having the famblee from hell in the next door apartment.

Dorset cereals has barley malt extract in there. That’s a sweetener.

I fall into the category of having lived full-on in my teens and twenties, and knocked drink on the head some years ago. I don’t miss it at all and once you get used to not drinking, it isn’t a big deal. Dunno about the unresolved stuff but I doubt it is connected with not drinking.

I’m the same. Rarely drink now. Hate the feeling of being drunk, it just makes me feel sick. Not to mention that my former stepfather died of alcoholic liver disease, and that’s not a nice way for someone to go. Somewhat puts you off, seeing that.

Giving up drinking opens up possibilities, when I was a heavy drinker, I’d never have bothered training for any sort of sports event because it would have interfered with my partying. So yeah, you find new interests when you quit, you do different things.

I say hats off to this lady, if she’s seen drink for what it is and stopped – we’re not half sold a lot of bull about alcohol, we believe we can’t have a good time without it, etc, and that it’s not normal not to drink it – this is a lie sold to us by the drinks companies and the advertisers!

Alcohol is an addictive drug, the fact that it happens to be legal doesn’t make it any better. Tobacco is legal….but smokers are virtual social pariahs now.

Ever been sober in a British city centre on a Friday night? No better place to be than that to realise that the alcohol myth is bull****. People are not relaxed or happy, they are not super-trendy party animals in cool bars. They are often aggressive, they might be puking in the street, sprawled out on the pavement in an undignified manner, or shouting abuse at their mates or loved ones in a way they’d never dream of when sober.

So I reckon this lady is probably not the one with the problem, or at least, not any more.

Breakfast cereals, with the exception of muesli, are pretty processed crap anyway

Mueslis and granolas often have a ton of added sugar/sweetener, despite being marketed as a health food. Even the low GI ones. They might have honey or agave as a sweetener instead of sugar, but it’s still sugar, at the end of the day, and on top of all the sugar in the dried fruit you get in muesli.

not aimed at you at all molly the ads for these things just make me mad!!

however, buying plain oats, fruit, nuts/seeds etc and making your own is definitely better – I make granola with toasted nuts and seeds, coconut flakes, and add raisins for a bit of sweetness. I don’t do oats, because I’m an avoider of grains in general, but as grains go, I don’t think they’re the worst of the bunch.

I read that we’re not programmed to get on with family members so we don’t interbreed.
Does that help?

:lol:

+ for Reds – it’s usually awesome, but there can be a long wait.

If you like tapas, Ambiente on the Calls is lovely – you can also share paella dishes there. I went with my mum not so long ago and we had a little starter and then shared a mixed paella, it was really nice.

My favourite curry in Leeds is Shabab which is just underneath the station, down towards Granary Wharf. There is also a really nice teppanyaki restaurant called Wasabi Teppanyaki on Granary Wharf, which happens to be next to a good pub with a variety of real ales and Belgian beers on offer, called the Hop.