Forum Topic

Eat less to reduce weight - simple

I was reading about the Dukan diet from France and how hundreds of people have died due to heart valve problems associated with the drug offered by Mr Dukan to supress hunger.What gets me is what is the point of taking a pill to supress hunger when you see them all scoffing a huge burger and chips and drinking diet coke.The only way in my opinion to lose weight is eat less and cut out all junk food and fizzy drinks. It's not rocket science.Next time you go shopping, just take a glimpse at an overweight person's shopping basket and you will find the only things they have in it are chocolate, cakes, crisps, burgers. No sign of any fresh veg or fruit.By the way, I read that soon it will be an offence to call someone 'Fat'. You could be fined for offending their feelings.

Asha Smith ● 4675d38 Comments

The local hotel serves new potatoes and roast potatoes with their roast dinner but just too much.I used to wrap the new potatoes/boiled potatoes and they went with the evening's salad either as potato salad or fried potato.The meals on wheels are often roast dinners but not as good but we have now all gone off roast dinners!  The delivery person is more interesting than the dinners but he is of course always in a hurry.I'm surprised at how happy a lot of places are to wrap food for you to take home.

Philippa Bond ● 4673d

Sounds like someone from my late mother's generation. She was young at the time of rationing and the 'no waste' mentality stayed with her for life.

Nigel Brooks ● 4673d

I did once hear a woman at the next table at the Brewer's Fayre complaining that her portion was enormous before adding that she would eat it all as she'd paid for it.

Susan Kelly ● 4673d

Pasta and chips - it's on my list of letters of complaint to make (to Morrisons - whose filled baked potato and salad is brilliant - but who I think should offer another vegetable alternative.) Sometimes you can have an alternative - if you ask for it - but we don't.  If enough of us did it might eventually make its way onto the menu.The size of the portion difficult though.  People are more likely to complain if the portion size is reduced. They are less likely to write and praise smaller portions.Perhaps we should ask to vote on menus! We also have complaints on the amount of potato that comes with the meals on wheels BUT no chips.  I always feel that this is because some people have bigger appetites.  Of course all is eaten so no space for anything healthy at teatime.

Philippa Bond ● 4673d

I find most restaurants are happy to provide a salad instead of chips if asked.  That is what I do anyway unless of course I feel like chips!

Marion Dunn ● 4673d

I agree people have a responsibility to look after their own health but this goes for thin people too.  They are not immune from ill health caused by poor diet and anyone regardless of size can have a healthy or unhealthy looking trolley.  What I object to here is the frankly unpleasant tone of Asha's post which she has chosen not to comment on and the implication that fat always = unhealthy and thin always = healthy. I also object to the implication that only the thin are allowed to eat unhealthy treats.  I think it was Asha in a previous post commenting on the lack of fat people in a gym who said fat people should be made to eat salads.  With attitudes like these it is no wonder the gyms do not feel like safe places for fat people.

Marion Dunn ● 4673d

You're right about restaurants: I take my father out to lunch every week to a Brewers Fayre, which is his idea of a top-notch restaurant, but almost everything there comes with chips, even the pasta dishes, and the only remotely healthy thing on the menu is a chicken salad. Portions are large too.Dad's meals on wheels also come with chips with everything, including pasta and dishes that already have potato on them such as shepherd's pie.

Susan Kelly ● 4673d

Due to injury and an inability to exercise I have piled on weight in the last five years. I now walk less in a month than I used to do in a day. My doctor says that I am obese, I regard myself as fat. Injury aside, I have blood pressure that is 'spot-on', low cholesterol readings and great lung function. I cannot remember the last time that I over-shopped. I buy food to eat not to take out to the recycling every week. I last had a hamburger last weekend (made at home with onions and chillies). My weight is under control and VERY slowly reducing. Not one of the stereotypes then.I agree though about children being overweight and parents only have themselves to blame I'm afraid.Kids get driven to school in many cases when they could walk, packed lunches contain 'quick energy' rather than a nutritious 'slow burn' lunch. The school day now allows very little time for intense physical activity yet when did you last see a group of kids 'sans parents' playing in the park. It seems that the world has gone 'paedo-mad' and unless the child is taken to the park by a parent they simply don't go.On what do I base these sweeping generalisations?The queues of (often poorly driven) cars by every school twice a day.Conversations with relatives and friends actively involved in education of small children who don't believe some of the 'healthy' packed lunches that are given to children (just look at the fat in a 'healthy' energy bar.The fact that my local park is almost totally devoid of groups of children save for weekends.

Nigel Brooks ● 4673d

Of course there are situations where people put on weight.  The problem is that for most people it is far easier to put it on than to take it off, and we shouldn't be giving people excuses for not eating healthily and exercising and trying to live a healthy life.I think Asha is absolutely right about quite a few trolleys that you see in the supermarket.  We do buy far too much food that is not good for us and consequently we eat too much of it. It's party food for every day of the week.I think as a nation we've become very self-indulgent, self-centred and lacking in self-control (sounds good doesn't it - but that is what my Granny would have said).I would like to weigh less and I know I don't take enough exercise - but I do try and eat fairly healthily.  Recently we have been visiting and taking an elderly parent who likes (and needs) a change out to lunch.  It has taken us time to find restaurants/hotels that serve lighter meals and not everything with chips. In the meantime my husband and I have put on weight. The portions are also often too large for us and I hate wasting food and was taught not to. (I'll often ask for a bag to take the remainder of the meal home for lunch the next day.) I was absolutely amazed when I went to America because I felt fat in the UK but had never seen so many people bigger than me as I did there.  There the food was cheap and the portions huge and nobody walked anywhere they all drove.Our children will have a very poor life if we do not do something about it.  They are no longer spending as much time running around outside as they did a couple of generations ago.  They spend a lot of time sitting in front of the TV and computer.  Apparently more than a third of children in Ealing are now overweight.http://www.actonw3.com/default.asp?section=info&link=http://nnet-server.com/server/common/actfat001.htm

Philippa Bond ● 4673d

Overweight and obese are two different things, something none of the media seem able to grasp.As for doctors and their euphemisms: my favourite is 'front bottom'. Is that what they were taught to call a vagina at medical school?

Susan Kelly ● 4673d

Asha why did you put this link up without any comment.  What is the point you are trying to make.  Is it in support of your absurd earlier statement that soon it will be illegal to call people fat as if it is currently ok to go around offending people.  What doctors might or might not say is one thing.  At least they should have their patient's best interests at heart.  From your posts I can only see a nasty motive - do put me right if I am wrong or clarify your position.

Marion Dunn ● 4673d

Sorry Andy old fruit!

Gerry Tan ● 4673d

Gerry you just made me spill my coffee :)

Andy Vaughan ● 4673d

Asha has kindly pointed-out an interesting article in the Daily Mail which reports the Public Health Minister Anne Milton accusing doctors of telling their overweight patients that they are obese, when they should just say they are fat!  Doctors are a strange lot  - they should call a spade a spade - they still persist in asking you if you've 'moved your bowels' or 'have you had an evacuation' instead of saying 'have you had a shit'!

Gerry Tan ● 4673d

Oh goodie, a link to the Daily Mail, that well known source of balanced reporting.Doubtless they will have an article on fat asylum seekers soon.

Nigel Brooks ● 4673d

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298394/Call-overweight-people-fat-instead-obese-says-health-minister.html

Asha Smith ● 4673d

Susan you are right and "fat shaming" as it is now called is unpleasant and nasty and leads to overweight people feeling they have to eat in secret, that leads to shame and guilt and that can lead to binge eating.  Everyone should be entitled to enjoy a cake with their coffee in public.

Marion Dunn ● 4674d

'So what if overweight people buy crisps and chocolates.  Are only thin people allowed to enjoy them?'That's a good question, Marion. If a thin person is in a café eating a slice of cake, then they're just someone enjoying a slice of cake; if it's a fat person, then they're a greedy pig stuffing their face; but there's no actual difference.

Susan Kelly ● 4674d

This seems like a very unpleasant judgemental post.  Who is the "they" you see "scoffing a huge burger and chips and diet coke", I also think that you are making huge sweeping statements about what is in overweight people's baskets.  So what if overweight people buy crisps and chocolates.  Are only thin people allowed to enjoy them?  And do you have any idea about the reasons people put on weight.  There are physical reasons such as mobility difficulties, some medications cause weight gain.  People eat for all sorts of emotional reasons including being lonely, abused, bereaved.  People are also overweight because they are conned by the diet industry.  95% of people on diets regain lost weight within five years and extra weight because dieting messes with natural metabolism so badly. And a final point - do you think it is ok to go round being offensive by calling people names.  Why should it be ok to offend "their" feelings.  I am sure if you were constantly insulted you would want to take some comfort in something whether it be food, drink, sex or something else.  A little compassion for fellow human beings would not go amiss here.

Marion Dunn ● 4674d

'McWee', I like that. Luckily, Sainsbury in West Ealing have since opened some lavatories and I am no longer in danger of being apprehended and forced to eat their muck as payment.

Susan Kelly ● 4674d

Yeah i didn`t mean you were - sorry..RE McDonalds, I do this too. Its called a McWee :O)

Tom Clifford ● 4674d

I'm not blaming anyone but myself for my being overweight, merely challenging the idea that I eat no fruit & veg, when I eat 6 or 7 portions a day, take no exercise, when I walk for an hour most days, and spend my life in McDonalds, when the only time I've set foot in the place was to sneak in to use the loos.

Susan Kelly ● 4674d

This reads as a list of reasons why its not my fault I`m fat...

Tom Clifford ● 4674d

Oh and porridge or something that will sustain through most of the morning for breakfast...

Philippa Bond ● 4674d

Absolutely. I know if its cold or wet its not ideal, but unless its extremely so its good to use your legs in some form.I know that in some cases parents genuinely don't have the time but, judging by the time they have spare to natter, many of the overweight ones I see do!I also, importantly, think its good for the kids to walk/cycle. Most immediately it gets them going in the morning and must be beneficial to learning lessons. In addition the activity they do at this young age and the lifestyle choices of their parents must influence how they become later. In other words, an overweight, unfit (for age) child of an overweight and unfit parent (or two) is surely much more likely to remain so in adult life - although granted not necessarily so.

Chris Bennett ● 4674d

I agree very much with you about the sedentary lifestyle.Yes, I think it starts with walking or cycling to school - and help with making it safer - children being taught how to cross roads and cycling proficiency etc and practising this will help.  The more who do it the more hopefully can be persuaded to join in.There are also adults who need help in leaving their cars and making time to walk more! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/01/obama-trying-to-work-off_n_480790.html It is too easy to sit down in front of a box instead of going out and doing something...

Philippa Bond ● 4674d

I think Asha's comments are much too all encompassing. My children eat McDonalds occasionally, as do I, but none of us are overweight, largely due to the fact that we all take  exercise. A lot of it nowadays is pure laziness and their sedentary lifestyle. For instance ever since my children started nursery school eight or so years ago weather permitting we invariably walk or cycle to school. Its about one and a half miles, including a steep sharp hill (going) and is good for the kids and me. In contrast it amazes me the number of overweight people - mums in particular - who drive, plonking their cars as close to the school as they can, clogging up the roads, adding to their unfitness and their overweight (dare I say "fat") bodies. It's a bad lesson for the kids - why walk when you can drive! I know many of these people live shorter distances from school than we do too.

Chris Bennett ● 4674d

I very much agree with Philippa about kids being taught to cook. I went to a very academic grammar school at age 11 but we still had cookery lessons. However crowded the curriculum, schools can surely spare a couple of hours a week to teach their pupils something useful which will also be of good to society.

Susan Kelly ● 4674d

So hang on, according to this "logic", obese people avoid the gym for a place in the queue at McDonalds to scoff down Big Mac & fries!Seriously ?

Bud Richards ● 4674d

Isn't it strange how plumpness, just a few generations ago, was associated with wealth? Now it's taken for granted that fat people are stupid and poor (I'm neither, BTW), while the super rich get thinner every year and will soon disappear altogether.

Susan Kelly ● 4674d

Bud, you don't see this?

Philippa Bond ● 4674d

Where to start?I think you will find that many foods that are considered good for you eg fruit and vegetables are sadly often more expensive and less easy to store or grab to eat when you are out.We buy too much food because we are afraid of there being nothing at home to feed the family.  We don't understand the labels which have been used to market food for the benefit of the shops and food companies and to frighten us into buying more and throw away what is still good.  Be realistic they are in the business of trying to sell more and if you aren't going to eat it or will have to stuff yourself with too much food then you are the loser - in terms of body weight and money.Everybody expects everything instantly nowadays.Cookery and food management have not or were not taught in school for several generations and consequently people now reach for ready meals instead of being able to quickly put something together from what they have in their fridge or larder.Ready meals have brainwashed people into thinking that they need something cordon bleu for each meal instead of something simple eg sardines on toast and some salad. If you read the packet on the ready meal and understood what you were about to eat you probably wouldn't.With both parents working and many families never or hardly ever seeing extended family no-one can cook any more.  It is great when you find a family who all help with making the meal and putting the meal on the table.There is a desperate need for young people to learn to be able to feed themselves quickly easily and healthily.  More needs to be made of sitting round a table and enjoying healthy food and good company - instead of it being treated as just a fuel stop.Make a shopping list and buy less and enjoy it more because it is at its best.

Philippa Bond ● 4674d

Asha,Are you serious or have you outdone yourself once more in stupid comments ?

Bud Richards ● 4674d

I have noticed that if you observe the type of people who use gyms or fitness classes, they are people who are already slim but no sign of any overweight people. Where are they when they should be the ones here exercising.Also, next time you are in Mcdonalds, observe the type of people who order big macs and extra large fries. The already obese ones. They should be compulsory made to eat only salads.

Asha Smith ● 4674d

Ignoring food types for a minute, if calories consumed > calories burned then you will put on weight over time.  It doesn't matter what is in your shopping trolley.  Obviously, food high in sugar, saturated fat, etc will speed up the process. If you can do just 30 mins of exercise a day and burn 300-500 calories you will notice a difference fairly quickly.  It's getting people to exercise that's the difficult thing.

Andy Vaughan ● 4674d

Agree, eat less to slim. Thus, every other day eat about half the amount you usually consume, also desist from fizzie drinks, crisps, cakes etc - eat plenty of fresh and dried fruit.  Its simple but effective.

Gerry Tan ● 4675d

I avoid 'fizzies' as they are a proven antagoniser for arthritis.

Nigel Brooks ● 4675d

I'm overweight but my trolley always has loads of fresh fruit and veg and I would have to be dying of thirst before I'd drink a fizzy drink as I find them disgusting.

Susan Kelly ● 4675d