Fight obesity like tobacco

[the.fee.fairy]

I edited your post Berry - the word p0rn. If you type it correctly, it identifies you as a spammer due to the word filters, so i edited it so you're not :)

I think the other problem with obesity is that the causes are not studied enough by the medical profession. I have PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). This causes weight gain with even the simplest of diets. Whenever I go to the GP, i take a food diary for the previous week with me. They always tell me that I'm not actually eating enough. However, I'm also not losing weight.

Here, I do Tai Chi and walk around 3-4 miles a day, every day. I take the dog out at lunchtime and again in the evening. We walk to tai chi class (about 30 mins away) and do tai chi for about an hour and a half and then walk home again. So I'm getting in exercise.

I wish it was as easy as 'eat less do more', but when you've got a problem, it's not. My Gynaecologist explained it - If you eat a kit kat and run round the surgery 6 times, you'll burn it off. If I eat a kit kat and run round the surgery 6 times it does nothing. I need to run round the surgery 10 times to burn it off'. This amount of exercise is just not possible when a. you're overweight to start with and b. you lead an active life. I don't have time to run about trying to burn off calories. I also need to eat.

Food is not something that you can give up. People can give up smoking, they can give up alcohol, but they can't give up food.

There's also very little genetic research into obesity. My dad's side of the family are farmers, and I've always described my grandmother and aunties as being the type of women who can walk across the field to the farmhouse with a lamb on each shoulder. We're all built with broad shoulders and strong upper bodies. My Mum's side of the family are also large women. All of them. I don't have a thin female blood relation. I definitely have inherited the build from my Dad's side of the family. Dad's auntie is a farmer's wife. She's constantly on the go - traipsing across fields, walking to the local shop, cooking, feeding animals etc. She's still a size 16! She's never been thinner! So I'd like to see more genetic research going on, is being overweight genetic? If it is, what can we do about it?

Personally, the smallest I've ever been was a size 12 (copious amounts of illegal drugs and not eating for days on end). I hated it. I hated the fact that my hip bones were bruised from sleeping. I was tired all the time, I felt ill. Even when I started eating properly and not taking speed anymore, I still felt rough. I'd rather be about a 14 - good amount of coverage for the sticky out bones! But, this is not allowed on the (outdated) BMI plan.

The scary thing about the BMI is that all of the England Rugby Team are classes as obese. Every bodybuilder is classed as obese. You can't measure someone's weight against height. It doesn't work. Unless we want to create people who are thin, but weak with no muscle tone and no strength, then BMI is a useless system.

[demi]

Sorry but i can't resist!

Tim Minchin - Fat Children!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXr9T5xpVFs


Fee, you said you used to take speed too, did you feel you were taking it to stop yourself eating as well as for partying? Or the not eating was just a bad side effect?
I was taking speed every day at one point for about 6 months. I'd have a small line in the morning before going to uni, not enough to get me wasted, just enough so i didn't feel hungry. I'd have another at lunch time at uni then i'd go home and by the time i made dinner at night time i'd need to eat somthing. I'd make salad with a small portion of pasta or somthing. At the weekends id party from friday till monday morning, usually not eating anything but I'd drink a lot of buckfast ( look it up if you don't know what it is ) and take a concoction of other drugs and i'd be totally out of it. Pretty wreckless really the amount of drugs i was taking, im lucky i never overdosed. I never really thought about the damage i was doing to my body at the time. I just wanted to be skinny and wasted all the time, and i was. I weighed 7st back then and i still thought i was fat. I passed out regurarly from not eating for days on end. My bones were sticking out and my hair was really weak and i could pull handfulls of it out. I definetly wasn't healthy back then. Even though i was eating healthy foods. I don't do any on that anymore. I'm married with 2 kids now and we only smoke weed now. My son is 16 month now and im still breastfeeding him so we don't even drink alcohol.

Anyway, what was my point?.........

[merlin]

Yes, but clearly, education by itself does not work. If is did, nobody would get drunk, smoke or take drugs, all fine for adults. For me an adult has every right to do what they like with their own bodies, simple as that. However, when it comes to the children they are responsible for, no. Most children go to school, the teachers see them everyday. Currently, teachers are legally bound to report abuse if they see or suspect it. A child that is a lot overweight is clearly in an abusive situation. From there the parents or careers should be targeted for education and support, and if that does not have the desired effect, fines and other sanctions should follow.

Look, if you own a car and you fail to tax it you will dogged by letters, fines and so forth, why the devil is it so difficult to get society to take responsibility the lives they have created??

[MKG]

I (almost) agree with the things being said about juvenile obesity. But there's a fine line - actually, quite a thick, heavy one - between care and stupidity. Asking teachers (a lot of whom wouldn't know their arse from their elbow) to take responsibility for the reporting of "food abuse" crosses that line. The thing is that if you're going to go that far, then you'd also have to consider "education abuse". You know the stuff - children who are obviously not being helped at home in their reading, their maths, their anything, really. Is that not abuse, too? Anyone who hasn't heard of her should Google "Marietta Higgs".

And then, of course, we'd have to introduce "political abuse" in which parents instil their children with all manner of fuzzy pink or hard-line blue ideas. Depending upon your outlook, that could be construed as abuse - if you're a confirmed dork.

As I say, a fine line.

Mike

[demi]

I agree Merlin. The schools should provide help for the familys of overweight children. And the schools need to serve healthy meals and if school meals were manditory and free too all kids then the kids would have no choice but it eat it. No doubt some parents would still give their kids crap or money to buy crap but the schools could ban junk food on the premisies and provide free healthy snacks and meals for all the kids. And they could do more P.E. in school, they could target the overweight kids and make them do extra P.E. classes, although maybe that would trigger bullying......hmmmmmm......
But the kids are at school from about 9 till 4 5 days a week, thats the majority of their waking time and serving healthy breakfast, lunch and snacks at least give the kids the right foods while they are at school.

The parents should definetly get support, maybe a visit from the dietition to work out easy meal plans for healthy dinners. And if the refuse to do anything about it and continue to shovel crap into their kids then yes, some form of punnishment may be nessesery. They are ruining their kids health, setting them up for a whole list of weight/diet related problems, not to mention bullying in school, depression, low self esteam ect ect.

[demi]

I (almost) agree with the things being said about juvenile obesity. But there's a fine line - actually, quite a thick, heavy one - between care and stupidity. Asking teachers (a lot of whom wouldn't know their arse from their elbow) to take responsibility for the reporting of "food abuse" crosses that line. The thing is that if you're going to go that far, then you'd also have to consider "education abuse". You know the stuff - children who are obviously not being helped at home in their reading, their maths, their anything, really. Is that not abuse, too? Anyone who hasn't heard of her should Google "Marietta Higgs".

And then, of course, we'd have to introduce "political abuse" in which parents instil their children with all manner of fuzzy pink or hard-line blue ideas. Depending upon your outlook, that could be construed as abuse - if you're a confirmed dork.

As I say, a fine line.

Mike

Yes, but not helping your kids with homework or instilling crazy political views on your kids is not endangering their lives. There is a difference.

[merlin]

It is indeed a fine line, however I do think that a seriously overweight child is a tad easier to diagnose successfully, even if you are Marietta Higgs lol.

All I am saying is that over the years a lot of whittling and hot air has gone into all sorts of political correctness and so forth, and the relatively ‘easy to spot’ conditions are left unaided.

I (almost) agree with the things being said about juvenile obesity. But there's a fine line - actually, quite a thick, heavy one - between care and stupidity. Asking teachers (a lot of whom wouldn't know their arse from their elbow) to take responsibility for the reporting of "food abuse" crosses that line. The thing is that if you're going to go that far, then you'd also have to consider "education abuse". You know the stuff - children who are obviously not being helped at home in their reading, their maths, their anything, really. Is that not abuse, too? Anyone who hasn't heard of her should Google "Marietta Higgs".

And then, of course, we'd have to introduce "political abuse" in which parents instil their children with all manner of fuzzy pink or hard-line blue ideas. Depending upon your outlook, that could be construed as abuse - if you're a confirmed dork.

As I say, a fine line.

Mike

[berry]

The scary thing about the BMI is that all of the England Rugby Team are classes as obese. Every bodybuilder is classed as obese. You can't measure someone's weight against height. It doesn't work. Unless we want to create people who are thin, but weak with no muscle tone and no strength, then BMI is a useless system.

thanks for the edit :)

BMI is flawed. under the child BMI my son is overweight yet he can walk miles further than a so called "normal' child the same age.

my BMI classes me as overweight but i run 2-3 times aweek and yes, im carrying more weight but i can out run/lift more and work longer at strenuous tasks than most "normal" weight perosn.

i agree there are lots of genetic reasons someone is overweight. PCOS is a pain and i have it myself. the only way ive managed to keep my weight down is give up treats and ive had to cut out wheat as it makes my IBS much worse and the knock on effect is ive lost weight.

the thing is what works for me wont work for everyone.

same goes with kids. whos to say that an overweight child isnt on steroids for a medical condition?

we also have to remember that so called 'skinny' kids could - probably are having just as rubbbish a diet as the overweight kids. yet we wont single out those parents for damaging thier kids!

[demi]

Is it really genetic though? Or just learned behavior? Often in obese families the kids grow up being fed the bad food the parents are eating, they then go on the eat the same things as adults, passing it onto their own kids. Also, a significant percentage of the over weight come from more underprivaliged comunities where healthy eating dosn't seem to be a concern. Higher educated, more finantially advantaged people tend to be less overweight and care more about health, diet, cooking and giving their kids good food. So to say medical conditions or genetics are responcible for a large percentage of obese people is just not true, because if that was the case you would see relativly equal numbers of obese rich and poor people.

[the.fee.fairy]

I'm not saying that it's the majority that have genetics to blame, just that its not looked into. My family were spread and we all have different diets, some in the North of England, some in the south. Now I'm in China, so my diet is completely different to what I'd eat in the UK.
I often eat with my friends, and eat the same as them...but a smaller amount. They eat loads here!! Yet still they're slim. There must be something genetic in it. Otherwise, why am I, as a tall westerner eating less of the same foods, yet not losing weight?

I do agree that more PE classes would help. Also, if there's going to be more classes, make them more varied. I had the choice of netball, hockey, athletics or dancing. Outside of school, I did Kung Fu. It would have been nice if the school had introduced things like martial arts, aerobics, yoga, tai chi, zumba etc. It was always the same boring team sports that meant that half the time you could stand at the other end of the field doing nothing. Out of an hour's lesson, we might have spent 10 minutes actually being active. Maybe making PE a whole morning, or whole afternoon activity might be a better idea. There's the 10 minutes to get changed at each end of the lesson, cutting it down to 40 minutes. Usually, about 10 minutes of choosing teams and going over the rules, leaving 30 minutes to practice skills and play a game - probably about 15 minutes in total to actually be actively playing the game. Government health advice is to do 30 minutes of strenuous activity 3x a week (i think - correct me if i'm wrong!), so children are not even getting the government advised minimum of exercise a week in school. Maybe if they were, and if they were being given a bigger variety of activities (I realise that Yoga and Tai Chi are not particularly strenuous, but they are activity), then children might be a bit fitter.

The children here start each day with 20 minutes of stretching and aerobics like exercise. The students that come to University have to do a month's military training before they start! A lot of workplaces also have 20 minutes exercise in the morning, and then again after lunch (a long, 2-2 1/2 hour lunch!).

Looking at the difference, maybe children here are taught to value food more. They have long lunches so that they can spend an hour eating and then maybe sleep for an hour before beginning classes again. They can have a leisurely lunch and then play, rather than bolting the lunch down as quickly as possible so they can play. They really do take their time and enjoy the food they have. Is that what makes them thinner? The fact that they can actually slowly digest the food, they can eat until they're full and then stop and wait for it to go down properly?

The losing weight was a side effect of daily speed usage, but, I just realised looking at your pattern that mine was similar and I used to only have a small dinner at night, no other food during the day That must have been really bad for me.



***Must Add: This post is my personal opinion as an individual, not as a representative of Ish in general. SelfSufficientish does not condone the taking of illegal drugs.***

[demi]

The losing weight was a side effect of daily speed usage, but, I just realised looking at your pattern that mine was similar and I used to only have a small dinner at night, no other food during the day That must have been really bad for me.



***Must Add: This post is my personal opinion as an individual, not as a representative of Ish in general. SelfSufficientish does not condone the taking of illegal drugs.***

Yes, drugs are bad M'kay. Just say no!

And not eating isn't good for you either: http://www.livestrong.com/article/13415 ... ot-eating/ (I know its from that armstrong guy's charity). I was dizzy and fainting on a regular basis, probably was deficient in lots of stuff too, not to mention the state of my liver from all the drugs.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

BMI has its flaws, but it has its place too. It is a quick and simple measure that anyone can do; if someone falls outside of the 20-25 range they should probably make an effort to find out why.

There has certainly been work done that has established that certain people are more genetically pre-disposed to lay down fat during periods of abundant food supply. In particular, individuals displaying the presence of a pair of genes specifying an enzyme called FTO are strongly susceptible.

Likewise, some medications can interfere with fat metabolism and cause increased levels of fat laydown.

Of course, this still needs people to overeat – no gene or drug can create calories out of thin air – but the efficiency with which some people convert surplus calories to fat varies.

Problematically, humans are programmed to overeat in times of abundance. We are hunter / gatherers by nature and tend to follow the see-food-eat-it diet because our ancestors didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.

It has been established that, if presented with larger portions, people will generally eat more than they need or even want at the time. This has been exploited by the fast food industry (they did some of the original research, back in the 70s when they were suffering from poor profitability and were looking for novel ideas) in the form of “super size” deals – 50p or whatever to go large, 45p of which will be pure margin, the incremental food cost being tiny in these days of plenty.

Our modern diet is also very different from that of our ancestors. They thrived on a diet of things like game, fish, birds’ eggs, berries, fruit, seeds, nuts, honey and fungi. These are all nutrient dense foods in the sense that every calorie consumed came with a relatively high level of nutrients – vitamins, minerals, proteins, essential fatty acids, anti-oxidants, phytochemicals and so on.

Modern foodstuffs are far less nutritionally dense – they come from agriculture that concentrates chiefly on yield and not on content, grown in soils that are denuded of minerals through years of over exploitation made possible by the liberal use of manufactured fertilisers.

Now, the “proper” level for some of these things in our diet – some of the minerals, essential fatty acids, anti-oxidants & phytochemicals – is still unclear. Biochemistry is still a young science and establishing what is going on in living systems is not easy, and it may be the case that part of our modern drive to overeat comes from an urge to seek out these nutrients by increasing our intake of food in general.

There is, in fact, a great deal that needs to be investigated.

Sorry, this turned into a bit of an essay.

[demi]

Not at all Jon, it was very informative :)

[the.fee.fairy]

I agree. Very informative Jon!

[oldjerry]

I don't want to kill this thread,(but I usually do).
It seems to me that despite the demise of the old Soviet Bloc,things havent changed that much in Eastern Europe.
The very suggestion that the State should come round and take your children away because they don't fitted the CURRENTLY accepted shape is preposterous,and that's logical cosequence of what some people are suggesting.

OK,so some people have a 'healthier' lifestyle than others,so what...you can be sure that this benchmark has been made by someone or some institution that can profit from it.

Undoubtadly some parents are lousy at bringing up their children,but before mass industrialisation the proliferation of extended families largely negated this problem.Post industrialisation the (unwritten) deal is that the State will take over some of this duty of care.If you were to list even a fraction of it's shortcomings in this repect, it'd fill every front page in the last 25 years ,and , the odd pointless war aside,it probably has.