Fat Welsh men & women

Even jeni has said the jury is still out about the causes of heart disease. It's not just me. The cholesterol fad is just that – faddish group think.

good not ggod (don't mention god! )

My cholesterol was measured when I was twenty-six (some MOT thing my GP wanted to do) and apparently it was what he called "a bit high". He then dismissed that as irrelevant since I had a healthy lifestyle. It has never been measured since, nor has it been suggested that it should be, nor do I care what it is. Cholesterol is not the issue in heart disease.

Indeed Baggydarling, some fats are positively ggod at lowering cholesterol. (or so they tell us)

This is just to annoy jings (what else do I live for? ), but further to her thinking that weight doesn't have much to do with cholesterol, I would add that I don't think food fats have much to do with cholesterol either.

What? What was, vampirequeen?
Re-reading my last post it does sound a bit sarky, but absolutely wasn't meant to be - I was replying to jingl's post about the porn websites, that's all!

omg sorry Anagram. That was so thoughtless of me

Oh, I see - point taken! I'll save my indignation for something more worthy of it next time!

Don't worry I'm not taking it personally. The only time that will happen is if someone says 'Vampirequeen should....' or 'all obese people'.

vampirequeen - that is true about thin people being more prone to osteoporosis. A bit of fat is protective.

The only time I had my cholesterol tested was when I was about forty, still thin-ish, and it was high! I don't think cholesterol can have anything to do with weight.

Alison - it must have gone somewhere else after that! If the gastric band had been tightened................. Oh. never mind.

Anagram - the website I arrived at on googling BBW were definitely porn! NFKDumpling seems to have found the same site!

NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH VAMPIREQUEEN!!!!!!!

I really want to make that quite clear!

Just to be clear, I was talking about the remarks made about the BBW websites some people had viewed. I didn't mean that people had been disparaging about overweight folk in general.

As one or two posters have indicated, being obese is not a choice as such. Generally speaking fat children have fat parents, they are overfed from babyhood and then fat cells are laid down and it's very hard to lose that weight in later years. But that's only one aspect. To eat wisely and healthily requires a number things. The most important being the knowledge of how to shop and cook delicious meals using good ingredients. But that presupposes that that food is palatable to the eater. It is very, very hard to change or even modify ones diet. Eating unknown foods is threatening and often causes extreme distress. It's hard to change the habits of a lifetime. Added to that is the fact that many obese people have some degree of psychological problems which may have been triggered by life events, it's not hard to understand why obesity is a problem. And that doesn't even touch on the absurd way in which junk food isn't taxed and raw food subsidised or how very difficult it is to access a market if you live in the middle of a poor estate miles from good shops and with expensive bus fares.

Some people may be blessed with parents who fed them well from babyhood, access to the knowledge and skill and time to eat healthily, but many aren't, and I think it's too easy to condemn.

I think we should be agitating for good food policies but I'm not holding my breath. The power of the big companies such as Macdonalds or Coca Cola is immense and governments are in thrall to them.

People with low body weight are at a higher risk of oesteoporosis.
www.nos.org.uk/page.aspx?pid=263

Should we then deride the slender as I'm sure this too could be described as a 'timebomb' in the media? How much will it cost the NHS in the future to deal with all the broken bones of today's women who don't eat properly in order to conform with society's idea of the norm?

Same arguement but used against a different group of people. This campaign against the obese has nothing to do with health but everything to do with attacking a group of people who don't conform to the norm.

Each person is an individual. I'm a BBW. I eat healthily, take exercise every day and, just having had my annual MOT, I know I have excellent sugar and cholesterol levels. My kidneys, liver, lungs and heart function at average or above average levels. My blood pressure is well within the norms. My joints are supple and strong. So my obesity costs the NHS nothing.

I have a slender friend. She has high blood pressure and high cholesterol. She takes medication and has to be checked by the doctor at regular intervals. She costs the NHS.

If your weight is an issue to your self esteem or you are suffering physically then of course you should take steps to reduce it. But equally if you are affecting your health by controlling your food intake to be slim you should rethink your diet and eat more.

It is never right to discriminate against someone. Extreme weight control is quite rightly seen as an illness and sufferers receive understanding and support from society in general. Perhaps in extreme cases the over eater also suffers from an illness but they don't receive understanding and support because they're just seen as being greedy.

Just another thought, why is it that most of the special offers in supermarkets are for the unhealthy stuff?

I agree that people do need to take responsibility for their health, and this obviously includes their weight.

However, I think that there probably are clinical conditions (such as depression) and psychological conditions (such as low self esteem) that will affect an individual's ability to take responsibility for their own health/weight and which conditions might well prevent them, in ways we do not understand yet, from taking that responsibility.

I also think that more research needs to be done into the effects certain foods have on insulin levels, which effects in turn affect how the brain, the nervous system, and muscles get on with their job.

So yes, people need to be responsible for themselves, but sometimes they can't do it.

That said, I'm baffled as to why a man as young as twenty didn't go for help with his problems before he got to such a state, which cannot be good for his mental or physical health.

JO4 she put it in her mouth!! . Sorry I didn't respond before, spent yesterday at the cricket and am going again today.

Vampire I stand by what I said, it is what I believe to be true but I did not say that you should feel guilty or that anyone should look down on you. People's attitude to their own weight, and therefore health, is up to them.

In a later post you refer to smokers having been a target, the result of which is that less people smoke and so they are no longer a target. I think it is a good thing that less people smoke and if this could only be achieved by people feeling that smoking is no longer acceptable then I am happy with that.

Obesity is a problem, I don't think anyone would disagree with that. There is something terribly wrong when a young man (or anyone) reaches 35 stone. As you said they cannot do sport and it would probably harm their health to try. It almost certainly affects relationships and I can't actually see any benefits to be hugely overweight for anyone.

I doubt there are any medical conditions which could cause this sort of obesity and those of us who do have a condition which causes us to be overweight need to manage that condition for the sake of our own health. I am one such person so do know what I am talking about.

Perhaps Jane you haven't read all the thread.

I haven't noticed anyone disparaging anyone else, but perhaps I am insensitive.
There is plenty of evidence that overweight people are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and arthritis, than those whose BMI is within the 'normal' range.
Period.
No-one is judging anyone.

Well said Vampire

Anagram I agree, disparaging remarks about people and their choices are not helpful. Happens on the tattoo thread too.

Excellent post,VQ. There are a few other popular targets around, depending on which newspaper you read - single mothers, people on benefits, immigrants, the unemployed.......

Over the years people have been victims of derision for a variety of reasons. Now we accept that it's not right to deride someone for their physical or mental disability or their race so we have new targets. Smokers came in for a lot of flak as they apparently 'forced' non-smokers to become passive smokers and cost the NHS a lot of money. So they were banned from smoking in public places and most now even stand in their own gardens to smoke rather than pollute their homes. Now the number of smokers is reducing year on year so a new target has to be found.

Who else can be blamed for lacking in moral fibre and draining the NHS? Oh yes....the obese. They must have brought this on themselves by being weak willed and greedy. The health police got involved just as they did with the smokers and this reinforced the belief that the obese are a problem. How many times do you read a newspaper headline talking about the 'explosion of obesity' or the 'obesity timebomb' and how much it will cost the NHS. Who knows how much it will cost? There is no way of knowing how many people will become ill? It's all supposition. It's impossible to see into the future.

Reading some of the posts on this thread it seems obvious that some of you have very negative feelings about the obese. I don't know why this particular young man has reached 35 stones. Maybe as he got bigger he became more and more depressed so lost all motivation. Maybe he has a genetic tendency to be overweight. Maybe he has made some bad food choices. Some of you ask why he doesn't exercise more. Imagine being big (if you can). Would you want to go to a gym or swimming pool feeling that other slimmer people are judging you? Would you like to feel humilated because you can't run, jump, swim, keep up with those who are fitter. When a slim person joins an exercise class and they can't keep up it's because they're new. When an obese person can't keep up it's because they're fat.

Rather than congratulating yourselves for your self control regarding food choices you might be better thinking 'There but for the grace of God go I'.

I'm going in a couple of weeks biker. Will do the same.

off to Wales this weekend..shall people watch and take note