Being overweight increases incidence of cancer

yes fruit and fibre full of added sugar.
I agree jings the uk population needs to cook more cupcakes - not!

Yes. And I think a lot of these ridiculous cooking programmes have a lot to answer for. Especially the 'bake-off' ones. Oh but wait! They are aimed at the middle classes who can't possibly be greedy pigs. Far too well educated.

I am a stone heavier than I want to be, put on during the last 6 months. It makes me slower and more likely to get out of breath and I will lose it because I will feel better rather than for any other reason. The doc thinks I am not fat but I think that is because so many are obese.

For me it is simple, if you eat more than you burn off you are eating too much. No, not compared to anyone else, just on a personal level. The reason I have put on the weight is that I have eaten a 'normal' diet rather than my usual one. I have no thyroid gland and therefore need to average about 800 calories a day and get lots of exercise or I put on weight.

Someone said what they had eaten earlier in the thread and I wonder how big the portions were. Fruit n Fibre has loads of calories in even the smallest portion! Sorry but it is true.

construct a spread sheet to find out exactly what you are eating?

Wow crun that sounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon

I'm the sort of person who regards cookery as a chore not a hobby, so I eat a mixture of processed an non-processed foods. From the messages in the media I had assumed that my diet must be atrocious, so when I found myself waiting to see if I had bowel cancer two years ago it made me a bit more curious than most to find out.

Instead of pouncing on all the foodstuffs that get demonised and chucking them out, I decided to construct a spreadsheet to find out what my diet really contains, and the results were a revelation. Far from being unhealthy, I found that my diet meets all the nutrition recommendations by a country mile.

The point is that a healthy diet is about what you eat, not who cooks it. If you watch Secret Eaters you find that there are two types: one is the stereotypical couch potato who sits in front of the TV scoffing chocolate and cakes all evening, but the others are the foodies who are convinced their diet must be healthy just because they're gourmets cooking everything from scratch. One such woman was putting 2000kcals of cheese into one sauce!

When you watch the way the celeb chefs shovel salt, fat and sugar into their recipes, I think a lot of them are anything but healthy.

Well, perhaps that's the answer then. Give them a better standard of living so they won't turn to junk food for comfort. Just how to do that quickly is beyond me.

Thanks janeainsworth. It's very focussed on being sedentary, rather than on taking exercise isn't it.
jingle if you hang around in an area where a lot of people are on very low incomes you will see more overweight young women.
.

Nice one jingl only trouble is, if you just pop a ready meal in the oven/microwave you still feel hungry and deprived afterwards inasmuch as the packet to mouth to stomach (to hips?) experience is too short.

Whereas if you've caught the fish yourself, grown, then dug up the potatoes, made your own crunchy topping (called being burnt in my house) then it's all so much more satisfying.

Isn't it?

Other supermarkets are available

would you consider this to be a 'processed' meal, and to be avoided at all costs?

And not a 'nasty' in sight.

this Waitrose pasta meal has 10 grams sugar. That's not too much considering you need to keep your total daily sugar consumption down to under 20 grams. And, anyway, as far as weight is concerned, it's total calories you need to watch. 500 calories for a main meal is fine.

In fairness, you do see an awful lot a lot of slim, fit looking young women.

Perhaps it depends n which neck of the woods you are in.

That looks like an interesting report, ja.

Diet and structured exercise are not the only factors in obesity - probably the most important is a sedentary lifestyle (where the posture for most of the day is sitting or lying down).
Loss of muscle due to a sedentary lifestule leads to loss of muscle mass which in turn makes it difficult to exercise, so there is a vicious circle set up.

This is a quote from a government paper Sedentary Behaviour and Obesity: Review of the Current Scientific Evidence

'We are in what has been termed an ‘obesogenic’ environment, or society with many factors acting to make it challenging to maintain healthy body
weight or reduce overweight and obesity. In respect of human evolution,
people now adopt lifestyles in industrialised countries that were quite
unknown until very recently.'

Here's a link to the paper for anyone interested https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213745/dh_128225.pdf

I love Secret Eaters and Embarrassing Bodies because it helps to keep me focused on healthy eating. I imagine what a camera set up would see if they followed me around all day and would I be ashamed of what I ate. I also cannot imagine having to show anyone my body especially in the horrible underwear they give them to strip off in on these programmes.
I rarely eat any processed foods not only because of the hidden sugar, salt and fat but because all the additives. Since doing this I have lost some weight, my eczema has improved, my dry skin is better, my aches and pains don't feel so bad and my digestion is fine- never any problems of any kind. The only problem I have with all this righteousness is that I am still a heifer - no justice is there?

I think concern, jingle rather than bashing. it is worrying to see so many very overweight young women (some of them smokers). Also to see that in the over 50s overweight seems to be the new normal. There are a few shops in this area that cater to this age group and every single thing in their windows this spring is loose fitting and designed to flatter "fuller figures".
It is not just cancer risk there is also the known increased risk of heart disease and diabetes.

I need to shed an extra 7-10lbs which have been hanging around (mainly as love handles) for the last 6 years. I've made a few half-hearted efforts and recently bumped into a friend I've not seen for ages. She, and the advent of spring, have inspired and motivated me to finally get it shifted.

I'm going to follow the 'Cut out the Crap' diet.

Having watched Secret Eaters, it was enough to put me off eating for good! How on earth anyone could eat the volume of food they consumed was beyond my comprehension-and they couldn't see why!

It is true that as we age our metabolic rate slows down, perhaps because of being less mobile, a 'slower lifestyle' (as Harrigran put it), less muscle mass, and many others reasons we don't fully understand yet.

But people do tend also to underestimate how much they eat.

Anya you have a point but I can't be hassled with checking everything I eat. My point was I don't stuff crisps biscuits by the bucket load

I take on board everything your saying. I don't/ couldnt eat what some people imagine all those overweight get through in a day

I can relate to what you said nina, I eat three meals a day and cakes and biscuits are a treat not a part of everyday food. I remain overweight but put it down to a slower lifestyle and more sitting around. Before DH retired I walked everywhere but now we use the car.

Nina although that does seem quite frugal there are a lot of processed foods in yesterday's menu - cereal, ham and gammon, flora, biscuits, oven chips. It's hard to know exactly what hidden sugars are lurking and the salt from ham and gammon can cause fluid retention.

only saying