Fat (topic du jour)

I should add that yes I am obese. And as usual, I'm reading all the usual posts. Apparently my obesity is due to my own choice, I'm apparently choosing to gorge on unhealthy processed food, so it's my fault!

What people don't allow for is all the other causes of obesity. In my case it's down to medication. I gained 3 stone within the first month of starting one drug, and I'm on 7 different medications that cause weight gain.

Daftbag1 quite a few reasons.
It must be very hard, if you are on multiple medications you may fall into more than one of these categories.
I suppose, in the ‘olden days’ not only did we not have such a preponderance of highly processed food we also had less exposure to many of the medications that cause weight gain.

I am size 12, weighs 9.5 stone but I got diabetes and high blood pressure. One of my female colleagues is healthy despite being obese.

Right now I am on 24 hour fasting due to religious reasons, been doing that for the last three weeks and so far has only lost 1 kg!

Cook every night, don’t eat readymade meals or processed food and rarely have takeaways. My main weakness is snacking, I blame my husband for this because he is the one who buy biscuits, doughnuts and chocolates.

Start taking fish oil because there is a strong correlation between the lack of Vitamin D to all sort of illness including diabetes. Hope this helps me lose more weight. I need to lose 3kg roughly 1/2 stone.

My daughter has just returned from a holiday In Albania, she said the Albanians are all slim, they don’t have fast food restaurants there not even Macdonald’s.

Daftbag1

I should add that yes I am obese. And as usual, I'm reading all the usual posts. Apparently my obesity is due to my own choice, I'm apparently choosing to gorge on unhealthy processed food, so it's my fault!

What people don't allow for is all the other causes of obesity. In my case it's down to medication. I gained 3 stone within the first month of starting one drug, and I'm on 7 different medications that cause weight gain.

I put on two stone on a certain medication Daftbag.
I'd rather keep taking it than the alternative ?

I don't live on a diet of processed foods.

Daftbag1 I quite understand that some people have medical problems that cause obesity and medication can also be a major contribution to weight gain.

I’m at least a stone overweight. When I’ve mentioned it to doctors and nurses, I’ve been told that perhaps I don’t actually eat enough, so my body goes into starvation mode, or that I’m not really overweight, and lately by my GP “Better that way that if you lost weight unintentionally “!

SporeRB

I am size 12, weighs 9.5 stone but I got diabetes and high blood pressure. One of my female colleagues is healthy despite being obese.

Right now I am on 24 hour fasting due to religious reasons, been doing that for the last three weeks and so far has only lost 1 kg!

Cook every night, don’t eat readymade meals or processed food and rarely have takeaways. My main weakness is snacking, I blame my husband for this because he is the one who buy biscuits, doughnuts and chocolates.

Start taking fish oil because there is a strong correlation between the lack of Vitamin D to all sort of illness including diabetes. Hope this helps me lose more weight. I need to lose 3kg roughly 1/2 stone.

My daughter has just returned from a holiday In Albania, she said the Albanians are all slim, they don’t have fast food restaurants there not even Macdonald’s.

You say you don’t eat processed food but you snack on foods you blame your husband for buying. Biscuits, donuts and chocolate are all processed foods !!

Namsnanny

sazz1

Totally disagree with this as very heavy weight leads to diabetes, heart problems, joint problems, and premature death.
There are very few obese people who live into their 90s. OH is obese and borderline diabetic with knee and hip arthritis.

Studies show with regards to diabetes, the percentage of average weight people suffering from it is increasing annually.
The percentage of overweight people who have diabetes is higher in that group, but not bu a great deal.
So is weight really an accurate indicator of increased chance of developing diabetes?

Sugar especially in the form of fructose seems to be the issue.

In type 2 diabetes, the enemy seems to be carbs. My partner was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and struggled to regulate his blood sugar. We cut out all added sugar and he continued to eat carbs and fruit. By elimination we worked out that carbs were to blame because if you don’t use them they turn to sugar. During the winter months when he’s less active, he continues to eat protein, fresh fruit and veg, and has drastically reduced bread, pasta and potatoes, and his blood sugar is down significantly. Now that the better weather is here and he is more active in the garden and out and about, he’s increased carbs bit by bit and blood sugar is steady. I think if you have type 2 diabetes and you’re not physically active, carbs will likely be the problem.

My brother begun losing weight a few years ago. All good, everyone thought. A lot of the family are on the larger side, so good that he was slimming down. We all put it down to the amount of exercise he got (between 2 & 3 hours a day walking) and his healthy diet (which he'd always had).

No. Uncontrolled diabetes. Type 1. We have a family history of it.

He's lucky to be alive.

Whitewavemark2

I have been thinking about weight loss and exercise.

I walk the dog for approx, 2 hours a day. It makes no difference to my weight.

My son throughout the winter when he has little exercise puts on about a stone.

Throughout the “dry” season - no mud, he mountain bikes over the South and North Downs, cycling anything up to 60 miles+ in a day. He loses all the weight he had put on the previous winter. His diet doesn’t change.

So I think that to lose weight by exercise only, you really have to go some?

Apparently you have to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound in weight and walking briskly for a mile burns 100 calories for a 180 pound person and 65 calories for a 120 pound person. This is a generalisation of course but it does give a picture of how much exercise is needed to lose weight. High intensity exercise is the best way to lose weight which is probably why your son manages to lose so much weight.

I’ve been clinically obese (not morbidly) since the age of four, when it was decided that to take me into hospital to lose weight would be psychologically damaging. Each round of loss involved a greater gain. With the constant flip-flopping of dietry advice, I’ve long held the view that it is better to eat a little of what you fancy and absolutely will not give up whole milk to drink or on cereal. I have tea with skimmed milk because that is the way I like it, and ditto Country Life ’butter’ spread with about 48% rape seed oil. My taste for goodies and chocolate is much diminished from times when I absolutely had to eat them all because they were in the house. All main meals are served on 8inch plates and I rarely get through those without feeling too full to finish but the weight stays on. (Exercise is difficult because I have mobility problems.)
People who live active and healthy lives also die early but the difficulty with scientific modelling is that no-one can know whether overweight people would have died at a given point regardless of their weight, healthy or otherwise. (I’m not talking about morbidly obese people). Leading to another curiosity - how do bedbound by morbid obesity maintain their weight if they cannot get themselves up? Is it that carers feed them excess calories and literally kill them with what they perceive as kindness.

Recent research seems to suggest that exercise is good for your health - so can have a tangential affect on weight loss but, cannot, of itself reduce your weight www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/19/exercise-dieting-public-health

Exercise also builds up muscle, which weighs more than fat. This is why BMI is nonsense as a way of measuring obesity. most serious and professional rugby players have a BMI way above the recommended rate, because of the amount of muscle they have, ditto boxers, weight lifters etc etc.

Me too!

How do bedbound morbidly obese retain weight? just watch a programme called my 600lb life. The food is enabled by carers, often family

I have watched that programme on occasion and noticed that too. I watched one where the son moved away from home halfway through his weight problem because he said his mother began to undermine his weight loss, once he had lost enough to walk about outside and do things on his own.

I have often thought that psychological counselling and support is as important for weight loss as reducing food consumption - and family dynamics play into that, it is not just the weightloosers thought processes that are important, but the whole household's attitudes to each other.

I've always wanted to keep my figure and remain at around 8 stone and have kept to this weight through life ( except when put on few pounds during my two pregnancies ) not by starving myself just eating well always had a good appetite, cut out sugar never in tea or coffee ect I think sugar spoils the taste of the beverage. I do like chocolate but not eat every day just few days a week as a treat

I love walking go out for a walk every day. I am 70 now in good health no major problems hope I stay healthy though as we age you can't be too sure.

I also cut out all soft drinks in my twenties as thought to myself they can't have any goodness in them I drink bottled water real fruit juice.

I know it's not all down to lifestyle what you eat how much you move around my sister has been obese most of her life has diabetes she said she can't loose weight and has the fat gene.

So people can only do what they think is best for them.

I think that people can though take responsibility for their health and weight as I see a lot more very fat people about can only assume that most eat junk food convenience food. So that's my take on the diet health situation for what it's worth.

Incidentally, someone mentioned being healthy and eating fruit. A few berries apart, fruit is a big no no for people like me and anyone who doesn't want to eat sugar - it will quickly turn to glucose and fat. I previously had no idea that fresh fruit could be 'bad'!

Fruit isn't really bad for type 2 diabetes. Not all, but many fruits are in the low to moderate categories on the glycemic index. In addition, they provide a lot of nutrients.

I was pre diabetic but I'm now in the normal range for blood sugar, even though I could do with losing a stone.

I have cut out rice and potatoes and I make some of my own bread and all my own pasta using Einkorn wholemeal flour, which is an ancient grain that doesn't elevate blood sugar levels to the same degree as modern wheat.

For bread I use Allinsons Einkorn blend, and for pasta, wholemeal Einkorn flour.

It works for me in terms of managing the blood sugar.

I have spent most of my adult life losing, then gaining, the same stone in weight. It’s absolutely exhausting.

We booked a week’s holiday to take my mums ashes to Italy, just before lockdown in 2020. I was slim. Felt confident and could get in all my clothes. I’d been on another diet/exercise routine. Now, two weeks to go and I’m my heaviest EVER. I’m so disappointed with myself. I’m now reduced to a very limited wardrobe and feel unattractive and shit, basically.

Any advice? I do wish I could give myself a break.

AuntieEleanorsCat

I have spent most of my adult life losing, then gaining, the same stone in weight. It’s absolutely exhausting.

We booked a week’s holiday to take my mums ashes to Italy, just before lockdown in 2020. I was slim. Felt confident and could get in all my clothes. I’d been on another diet/exercise routine. Now, two weeks to go and I’m my heaviest EVER. I’m so disappointed with myself. I’m now reduced to a very limited wardrobe and feel unattractive and shit, basically.

Any advice? I do wish I could give myself a break.

Me too. Every birthday ( which also happens to be New Years Day) I bemoan the fact that I’m STILL on a diet. The only time that I lost weight and maintained it was at the start of the pandemic as I lost weight having read that being overweight would increase my risk of being seriously ill with covid, and I didn’t overeat because I was worried about possible food shortages. Have recently put weight on and feel awful and lacking in motivation to lose it. Remember buying a loaf of Nimble bread when I was 16 and buying AYDS (remember them; like chewy toffee and very moreish) and slimming biscuits (which were just overpackaged biscuits) all of which I ate far too much of! It’s like Groundhog Day isn’t it!

I have spent most of my adult life losing, then gaining, the same stone in weight. It’s absolutely exhausting.

No, I haven't, sorry but I am all agog, waiting for advice!

It did make me laugh, though, AuntieEleanorsCat, thinking of that same stone lurking around waiting to creep back on again at the first chance!

Remember buying a loaf of Nimble bread

I seem to remember buying something called a Cambridge loaf when I was in my early 20s, after putting on weight trying to impress my new husband with my cookery skills (which I had to make up as I went along).

A slice of Cambridge Formula loaf, toasted, and a poached egg was a staple. No butter.

I did the brown rice diet with a friend. Just brown rice for a week. I put Worcester sauce on mine to make it more interesting. We were both @ 19 at the time. We still joke about it. We still have endless chats about which diet we’re on. I think, if I’d known more about nutrition when I was young I would never have ended up in this endless cycle of losing weight and gaining it. But the sixties were all about being stick thin and Twiggy like. It was only when I went to a beauty parlour when I was in my thirties that the lady there told me that I was actually trying to be a stone less than my natural weight ie I was always trying to be 8 stone when I should have tried to maintain a weight if 9 stone but exercise and tone up. I wonder if health and nutrition is taught in schools these days? If not it should be.

Anyone remember “BranSlim”? You took two horse sized tablets half an hour before a meal (it was like chewing sawdust pellets with a soapy fragrance about them) and drank a bucket of water. They were utterly revolting. I was 15 yrs old and I’ve been dodging that stone in weight, @Callistemon21 ever since ?

I hear you @MayBee… I’m still doing my Couch25K at nearly 60 and have NEVER gotten beyond week four. Makes me feel like a massive failure as people say “Oh, it’s so, so easy!” ?

I went to boarding school and they’d weigh us every week and stick us in the Diet Room for a while if we were seen to be gaining weight. I was ten. I never went in the Diet Room but I was ALWAYS hungry and knew girls to literally break down on the scales and have to be helped off and into a chair. The public humiliation was mortifying.

They were utterly revolting. I was 15 yrs old and I’ve been dodging that stone in weight, @Callistemon21 ever since ?

Mine's more than the one. I was 8 stone 2 lbs then.

I went to boarding school and they’d weigh us every week and stick us in the Diet Room for a while if we were seen to be gaining weight. I was ten

That is dreadful, it remined of what has happened recently to the gymnasts.

I do remember a friend at school telling me I was "fat" - I was about 8½ stone and 5' 5" and she was an inch or two shorter but just over 6 stone!