Obesity crisis in Ireland Mod Note post 1

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

What you're missing is that obesity is a clinical term used to describe someone of a certain weight above their normal BMI.

So if your natural frame is 12st, whether you're 14 or 24 stone, you're classified as obese.

I would say Ireland and the UK, broadly speaking, have more of the very obese class of people than on the continent.

The word has a different meaning in common understanding. Nobody would look at someone carrying a stone or two think they're obese, we'd just say chubby, or carrying a few - fat would be the next step, but we tend to reserve obese for those who are extremely overweight.

When I briefly nudged into the obese BMI range (I was 30.8 at my largest, I recall), I didn’t just look a bit chubby, I didn’t just look fat, I looked really, really fat. And my clothing size at that time confirmed it. I doubt many people would have been surprised that I was clinically obese. I saw some genuine, unmistakable double-takes and eye-widening from people I hadn’t seen in a while. I was visibly obese. And I have an average frame, not petite or not large.

And to achieve that very, very fat look, I only had to gain a mere two stone over the upper range of a heathy BMI for my height. So I’d have to disagree with you there. Gaining two stone over the upper reaches of the healthy range had me looking very fat, not chubby.

And I’m not a special case in any way. Anyone who is BMI 30 won’t just look a bit chubby, if I’m anything to go by, excepting the odd few muscle-bound athletes. And I’m short but being taller wouldn’t make a difference because the taller you are, the more weight you have to gain to reach BMI 30.

So, if we take the obesity rankings, anyone who has been included as obese is BMI 30 at least. Based on my own experience of being BMI 30, I don’t believe that it’s something that people would pass off as just a bit chubby. I absolutely guarantee you would have thought I looked very fat when I was at that weight.

So, I believe the Benelux countries have plenty of visibly very fat people strolling around, based on the percentages of obese people given for each country. Even if BMI 30 predominates, it still looks fat.

Le Bruise wrote: »

This is one of truest statements I've ever read! Some people just have an innate hatred of all things that don't fit into their 'perfect' size category....and it's usually down to massive insecurities of their own that aren't as noticeable on the outside.

When I was a huskier gent a few years back, I was best man at my older brothers wedding in Bali. My brother lived in Australia and competed in iron man comps and thus, had friends of a similar ilk i.e. very fit, bordering on the obsessively so.

Now I play a good bit of rugby, so would have a level of fitness, but I'd always been a fairly big guy. At that time, however, I'd let my weight creep up after being out with an injury for a season and not curtailing my large appetite to match my lack of movement.

Unfortunately, one particular triathalony chap I'd never met took it upon himself to make constant snide comments about my size. I was first introduced to him 10 minutes before making my speech (to a load of people I didn't know), and the first words out of his mouth were 'I was expecting a slimmer, better looking man'. Did my confidence and nerves the world of good!

He then referred to me as Shrek for the rest of the night, so I just stayed away as much as I could. Eventually, my brother told him I was going to hit him if he kept on (I wouldn't have), but at least he stopped. Never understood why he held his little campaign against me, and I never saw him again.

I've since lost the excess weight (most of it anyway)......but I'm quite sure he's still an ass-hat. People like that surely can't be happy in themselves.

Yup, that guy sounds like a monumental **** stain. I’d be happy to be you and not him, no matter how buff he was.

Why is McDonald's seen as a treat for kids for just getting through the school week?
I just cannot understand the phenomenon.
I'd bring a child to the pool, park, indoor play centre, playground, any place before a fast food outlet

Most people will lose weight if they just stop eating crap and eating too much
Exercise helps after that

There was an experiment in a school district in the UK.

They removed the soft drinks and sweet machines from a few schools and replaced them with water fountains and left them in others.

After a year the kids in the schools with the soft drinks and sweets machines were on average something like half a stone heavier than the kids from the kids from the schools with water fountains at 9 years old and there was a linear progression up to 14 years old where it scaled year on year to about 1.5 stone difference between them.

1.5 stone bigger over 5 years is insane. If that progression kept on the majority end up clinically obese by early adulthood.

Ardillaun wrote: »

BMI is a quick and rough guide for average, not particularly athletic people. Any highly muscular person will get a misleading result.

The cause of our obesity epidemic seems to lie mainly on the intake side and there’s a fair bit of evidence accumulating that the biggest culprit there is sugar. For the first time in history, we can eat calorie dense food all day as we watch our screens. Personally, I think I have made a minor breakthrough with porridge. One bowl made with milk, banana and no added sugar (maple syrup is one of my many weaknesses) can last me until my evening veggies. I’m beginning to taste the sugar in bread, some salad dressing and all sorts of items now in the same way that salt in food become obvious when I stopped pouring it on.

Gotta say, I’ve always found porridge absolutely useless at keeping hunger at bay. I’d make it with full-fat milk, weight out a level of oats that would keep it with a good calorie range for my height in addition to the milk and 5g of maple syrup I’d add. I know you might say omit the 5g of syrup and add 5g of oats instead but I tried that and, nope, I’d still be ravenous by mid-morning. I’d basically need a lot of porridge to fill me, way above the calories I should be eating for breakfast. And I don’t really like porridge to boot. If it had filled me up though, I’d overlook that and eat it anyway. But because it didn’t really fill me, porridge was out.

You know what filled me? Just a bowl of full-fat Greek yoghurt and 5g maple. I’d want the 500g tub of yoghurt to last the week, so 100g full-fat yoghurt and 5g of maple syrup with a cup of tea. Then tea at tea-break around 11am with maybe a purple Snack or tea cake depending on how my meals were looking for the rest of the day, but I wouldn’t be ravenous by tea-break the way I was after eating porridge for breakfast.

I agree with you that sugar is the enemy in that it is so easy to eat way too much of it. But I found when I was losing weight, I could have small doses of it. For example, I kept away from anything marked low-fat and I’m an advocate for using full-fat dairy products (I make an exceptipn for low-fat milk because no crap is added to substitute the removed fat and some people genuinely prefer low-fat milk to full-fat) but because I was vigilant about sugar intake most of the time and carefully watched my portion sizes (my digital kitchen scales are my God), I didn’t feel guilty about putting my 5g of syrup in my yoghurt and having a spoon of sugar in my tea. It didn’t stop me losing weight at a sensible rate of 1-2 lbs a week.