Michael Buerk. Is obesity a disease?

I have to disagree about the ~'you have to be hungry to lose weight'~.

Its not about the volume of food but the type of food.

Grampy and I have been going to SW for 9 months now and whilst I hate being told what to eat :-) , we are losing weight and in hindsight can see where we were going wrong. BUT we have never been hungry.

Our weight gained over many, many years was partly due to lifestyle, working away from home, shift work, staying in hotels . Partly due to making bad choices and partly bad habits ingrained over many years.

It would help if advice on foods was consistent. I remember when it was all about how much fat you ate , now its sugar. I remember when margarine arrived and was hailed as 'better' for you than butter, now a complete about face.

Weight loss for those with limited mobility is a balancing act. You need to ascertain your metabolic rate and then consume less calories but the balancing act is that if you go too low your body assumes starvation mode and stop losing weight.

This is an advice thread and no one is 'telling' anyone what to do, we are simply saying what we think. No need to take it personally Lessis and it you wish to comment on what I said perhaps you would tell me why you disagree? A few people have said I was wrong, that's fine, but no one has said what was wrong despite being asked. I can therefore only conclude that saying people starved in concentration camps is not offensive.

Probably not all obese people. My friends sister puts on weight while she is asleep due to a hormonal problem, so best not to judge everyone along the same lines.

I'm with Day6 people are just far too judgmental and even when told the facts refuse to acknowledge them. I'm very well educated regarding nutrition and calorific values etc and don't want the advice of any of you but I've been working out just how little I've been eating and it's less than 500 calories a day on a good day on a bad one it can be less than 200. I don't feel hungry I don't crave any foods and what I do eat is all good for me, there is no crap in my diet at all. I'm not bothered by my weight, I know as do my specialists exactly what the cause is and no walking wouldn't help because walking isn't possible. Nor can I burn calories using my arms instead because they are just as badly affected. I don't find being a bit overweight hard what's really hard is being in pain 24/7 . I don't care if people are so small minded they judge the overweight because let's face it they do it to make themselves feel better. Skinny doesn't equal healthy either .

Ok Nonnie, I will spell it out for you in clear terms...this is a discussion about something a journalist said. It then leads to people ( women) chatting about weight gain and some ideas about how to lose weight.

to bring in the abberation that was the Holocaust is unsuitable. Those poor, desperate ,abused people bear no connection to our somewhat self indulgent naval gazing.

The journalist actually suggested that being very overweight saved the country money.
He wasn’t giving his opinion on why people put on weight. Simply pointing out that rather than costing the country more than slim people they actually cost less.

If you ignore 6lbs it becomes 12lbs then 18lbs then 24lbs...

This sounds like the proselytising teetotallers belief that one drink will assuredly lead to a terrible death as a hopeless drunk in a gutter. Yes, it can do, but doesn't necessarily.

Most people's weight fluctuates within, at times, quite a wide weight band, and if you know what goes up will come down, why worry about it?

Less you may call it gazing at the navy but I consider health to be far more important than that. You make the mistake of deciding I am comparing their plight with ours, I didn't say that, it comes from inside your head, but feel free to continue to attack if you enjoy it.

How many more threads would you like to attack me on?

None ever .

I don’t care why anyone is over weight but hate fat shaming with a passion! It’s not helpful and it isn’t necessary.
I grew up with a mother who, while rake thin, was a functional alcoholic and a smoker (the smoking eventually killed her ) The drinking and smoking were far more impactual to me as a child than if she had been overweight! My grandmother (her mother) was overweight but very beautiful, and a lovely person to spend time with.
Why or why is it ok to vilify fat people especially those who over eat through depression! Many equally harmful conditions go unobserved. my mother (if you has met her in the day time) was thin as a whippet, beautifully dressed and very elegant, so elicited admiration and praise, yet in the evenings behind closed doors after she had downed a lot of whiskey (neat) would become verbally and physically aggressive yet no critical finger pointing would have come her way because it wasn’t visible!

jenpax I think we may have a different view on what 'fat shaming' means and maybe I shouldn't have used that expression. However I do think that being overweight is as dangerous as other bad habits and don't think it should be a choice between them. Is one really worse than another for the person who has it? I have seen very fat people smoking and consider both to be as bad as each other although I don't know the statistics.

I don't believe that anyone chooses to become an alcoholic or drug addict or even to become overweight but that it is their lifestyle, which they think they can manage, which leads them to become so. They need support and encouragement to change that lifestyle, preferably before it becomes an addiction. They don't need people to say it is OK and not your fault, that does not help them.

I must confess to being irritated when obese people say 'it's an illness'.
People with genuine illnesses - like a young relation of dh who has MS - would do absolutely anything, dietary or otherwise - if it would mean getting well again. But they don't have that choice.

Excluding those who are that way for medical reasons, I can appreciate that it's hard for very fat people to alter their habits of diet and exercise, but there is a cheap and certain way to lose weight - if people really want to.

Go back 30 years, the U.K. population was not obese so not sure how the genetic argument fits in with that. Also, if you draw a graph showing the rise of fast food outlets, I bet there would be a correlation between that and the weight gain of the general public.

Witzend do you know of any medical reasons which mean that someone actually cannot lose weight? I mean if they really try, not just eat what they think is normal. I can understand water retention but think there are pills for that. I understand things that slow the metabolism but that can be countered by eating less or, when possible, exercising more. I would really like to know of any conditions which make it impossible. As Bossy says 30 years ago there was not so much of it.

Nonnie - I’m not witzend but I don’t know of any such illness.
I am willing to be corrected because I hold no medical qualifications at all.

I do believe that a lot of conditions make it very difficult to lose weight. Some medications make the patient feel ravenous all the time. Some genetic factors can influence weight gain.
If the gut bacteria isn’t healthy it can send signals to the brain that the body isn’t getting the nutrients that it needs so the brain tells the body to eat more. If the food intake isn’t healthy then it’s a never ending story.

It's a very well documented fact, that constant dieting lowers the metabolism. I've dieted my whole life, therefore now to lose weight, I have to eat under 800 calories a day, and after 3 or 4 weeks, my body adjusts down and I have to cut down again. It's just not sustainable, permanently.

Exercise wise, I belong to a gym and go at least 3 times a week. I'm not as obsessive about it as I was at my peak, when I would gym before and after work at least 5 days a week. And I was still overweight.

However, medically, there's nothing wrong with me. There are however plenty of conditions that can make it next to impossible to lose weight. Polycystic ovaries and hypothyroidism being just 2.

It is VERY judgemental of those without the problem of being overweight to stand in judgement. I would not deign to judge their flaws.

Oh, and I not only look like my granny, who was born in 1906, but I'm the same size and shape as her her, too.

GagaJo states that constant dieting lowers the metabolism. I’m not sure about that but what it does do is change the muscle to fat ratio.
Muscle uses up more energy that fat. If muscle is lost whilst losing weight it is replaced by fat when the weight is regained and the body doesn’t work as efficiently. It doesn’t use up as many calories because fat doesn’t do any work!
A slightly different take on it but the same outcome.

GagaJo This probably why the 5:2 and other fasting diets seem to work well. Your body metabolism doesn't slowdown because the day after you drastically cut your food intake, you are back to normal (sensible) eating.

PamelaJ1 Sat 10-Aug-19 16:39:53 thanks for that, I agree.

GagaJo Sat 10-Aug-19 23:34:26 being hypothyroid does not make it 'near impossible to lose weight'. It really isn't as bad as that, they just have to be more careful than others.

Nonnie. Stop it. You don't know what you're talking about. Some people who are hypothyroid are not on the correct medication. They reckon it's about 15/20%. They need T3 as well as T4 due to conversion issues. It's infuriating to read people blithely suggesting that UAT isn't that bad.

For the majority the T4 medication works fine. And these people won't even have to be 'more careful than others' because the medication has basically made their issues go away.

However a big enough minority never get optimal levels unless they are prescribed T3. Which means they are still symptomatic and they can still have weight issues.

Please stop talking about something you know little about.

Minnie* please stop assuming I know nothing about it. I am not strictly hypothyroid, I don't have one! Apology please.

@gagajo: could you quote your source for your idea that constant dieting lowers the metabolism please?

I am one of those lucky people who could always eat anything and not put on weight, until recently that is. I am still slim. I do not like sweet things and prefer vegetables to carbs.

My DD on the other hand has a completely different build and needs to exercise in order to keep weight off. She is also a great fan of carbs as is my husband who is overweight.

I am sure a lot of it is body type also what your taste in food is.

What I do object to though is that all my life overweight friends have told me I must be anorexic or have an eating disorder. I would never dream of saying anything to them about the fact that they are overweight.

I believe that steroids can often cause weight gain. A friend whose dh is being treated for prostate cancer tells me he's 'ballooned' since he's been on steroids.

And I do believe there are other conditions/medications which can cause weight gain, but I dare say that the percentage of obese people who can genuinely blame such factors is relatively small.