Big Body Squad

[meriad]

I wasn't sure if this should be on Entertainment or Health and Behaviour so figured this is as good a place...

anyone watch it. All I'll say is

I know obesity for many is a medical problem but seriously; how does a person become so large they are housebound and it takes 4 adults to get you up and down the stairs/ So large you cannot leave your house; so large you cannot take care of basic human hygiene?

I know I'm overweight but I really would like to think that I (and most people) will have enough common sense to never get to that stage. How do people end up so so overweight?

[Workingman]

I know that these programmes focus on the extremes, but just walking round town I am amazed at the numbers of grossly overweight people about.

I ain't no slim Jim, but I cannot imagine getting myself into the state some of these people have.

For most it is not genetic, or an illness, it is pure gluttony.

[Osc]

I am constantly amazed at the amount of overweight people there are now, and I despair at what I see in people's supermarket trollies. Yes, I think a lot of it is down to pure greed. They just don't seem to be able to say no to themselves, and I hate to see overweight children because if they are not helped now, they will struggle for many years. I know it's not easy to keep weight down, but there are so many easy inexpensive ways to eat well and healthily....but it needs to start early, and so many parents just give their children junk food so much of the time that it seems to me that it is very hard to break the cycle.

I remember almost 16 years ago, we did a train trip around the US, and at that stage, that was where you saw incredibly fat people. We were eating our meal one evening in the dining car and this huge man struggled as far as the door, couldn't fit through although he tried, he needed a stick to walk......so he stood there trying to attract the attention of one of the waiters and finally called out...."say, do you have a Diet Coke???" We always thought that was hilarious!

[Kaz]

A lot of serious obesity is caused by greed, or laziness, or ignorance of good nutrition, but you would be amazed by the amount of female obesity that is caused by childhood abuse - generally sexual abuse. A lot of seriously overweight women have put that weight on to avoid male attention, often subconsciously but not always.......

Some people are overweight due to health issues, taking steroids or not being able to exercise. It isn't always greed.........

I've spent my adult life fighting my weight and am a real yo-yoer with it - my overweight is down to overeating and under exercising, the same as for most, but I've never been enormous, size 16/18 at most. 12/14 is my ideal. My sister is big (around a size 20) she hates being big but never seems to seriously address it! I can't imagine being one of those huge people who need their house demolishing to be taken out of it!!

[Weka]

Whatever other reasons aside for a moment, our western diet has dramatically changed. They say when a McDs goes in, the surrounding suburb puts on weight. I don't know how true that is, but I could believe it. The Eden project in Cornwall has a placard about sugar comparing usage with he 1800s (I think) and today. Bak then a yearly amount was measured in spoonfuls, now it's measured in kgs. Then there are things like corn syrup that has never traditionally been used, which so many things now have as an ingredient. Preservatives, etc, the list goes on. How many of these modern food "techniques" are contributing to our ill health, before you even add in exercise, overheating, physiological issues, gluttony, etc?

[Kaz]

True - and the hormones in meat products. Apparently - off on a tangent here, sorry - male fertility has dropped dramatically since the war and they think hormones in the water might play a part in that! If it can affect the amount of healthy sperm a man produces, how do we know it isn't affecting weight?

[Weka]

I personally blame the bpa in plastics for declining fertility rates. I remember hearing it (and I can't remember enough to dig out the source). But basically, some wildlife reserve, large percentage of plastic waste in the waterways, low fertility rates of the animals, when it was cleaned up, fertility rates soured.

Bpa is the softening agent in a lot of plastics. It lets you squeeze your drink bottle for instance. It's also found on the inside of a lot of tin cans.

[Kaz]

There are so many pollutants in modern life, they must affect us in many different ways

[Diflower]

I didn't watch it, I'd have felt ill! I do watch Secret Eaters though, a guilty pleasure is shouting at the people

Apart from denial, one of the biggest problems seems to be that they (meaning really extremely overweight people in general) have grown up having no idea what 'normal' is. A normal meal, normal-sized portions, etc...
Last week's couple had cameras in their house for 5 days, and over that period at no time did either of them prepare or even open a pack of what you would call a meal! The amounts they ate in the course of a day were truly staggering (a snack for the bloke was a meat pie between 2 slices of bread ).
But so many people live like that, no set mealtimes, no proper meals, no idea of what constitutes a normal diet, just constant shoving food in - and doing the same to their children. These particular two had a little girl, a toddler, but she wasn't shown really in the programme - I really hope they'll have learnt enough to give her a better chance.

[pederito1]

That is very interesting, Kaz, I had never thought to link childhood sexual abuse to adult obesity as a way to deter would be seducers. Some men however seem to go for fat girls though I could not understand why. I do know of one at least who is a bit overweight for an unknown reason, has exercise and does not overeat and she never suffered abuse sexual or otherwise as a child.