Gossip

To add to BradfordLass72's "supposings" Even those without physical health problems causing weight gain may have lives that lead them to eat from subconscious motives other than greed and laziness -

Supposing you had been born to a single mother in a sink estate, who had no experience of loving parentage, having herself been raised by a mother who had given up on life. You would have no self-esteem, little education, no ambition.

Supposing you didn't live in a leafy area of a well-to-do town, in a spacious home decorated and furnished in the best of taste and surrounded by pleasant and cultivated neighbours, but in a grubby street of neglected houses with old fridges and splitting binbags of rubbish in their front gardens.

Supposing your lack of self-esteem had trapped you in an abusive relationship, which had lowered your sense of worth even further, until you despaired of ever finding a soulmate.

Supposing instead of working in a blue-collar job where your expertise was appreciated by your colleagues, and effective and satisfying, your work had no job satisfaction and very low pay, and consisted of turning up in the morning, doing as you were told for an unsympathetic boss, and going home at the end of the day to a drab shoebox of a flat in a run-down street, with an assortment of neighbours just as bereft of hope or initiative as yourself.

Supposing you couldn't dream of buying Ferragamo shoes or fillet steak, instead you dressed in other people's cast-offs (of which your upbringing meant that you hadn't even acquired the flair to choose attractive and flattering examples) and lived on cheap, filling ready-meals, easily-heated comfort food that filled you up and made you feel good after a hard day as you ate them alone in front of the TV.

Eating gives a feeling of well-being. That can be the only feeling of well-being that some people experience. If you can't imagine ever being in any of the situations I have described above, (or several of them simultaneously), then at least try to avoid demonising those who are stuck in them.

It was another poster who suggested that some of the reasons for overweight and/or obesity, could be meds and fat genes passed to a baby in the womb.
I made no rude comments. I said it was sad to see. I suggested that someone (with weight issues) eating crisps and drinking coke mid afternoon was doing themselves no favours as it wasn't a healthy choice, no matter how or why they gained the weight.
I hope never to read of anyone getting disgruntled at an XL person taking up half their airline seat or the cost of knocking down a wall and getting the fire service to use heavy lifting gear to extricate a larger person out of their home and into a specially made reinforced bed in hospital.
You can bury your head in the sand about the problem but most doctors across the board agree that obesity is largely caused by over eating and not enough exercise and they know much more about it than you or I.

Of course there are many reasons a person can be overweight, genes play a big part, also certain conditions (including ones which have an effect on mobility) and we all put on weight more easily as we age ( under active thyroid ).
However....there is absolutely no doubt that an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and snacking/ overeating is taking it’s toll,
On all ages, including younger generations.
It’s easy to jump on a poster, but ‘the truth is out there’ as XFiles used to say.

A doctor I once heard on the radio said forget faddy diets,
To lose weight, ‘eat less and move about more’ !

That's a heck of a lot of supposition and thousands if not millions of people worldwide, have overcome greater adversities and gone on to rise above their beginnings, indeed, it's often given them the impetus to carve out a better path for themselves.
The people I saw were decently dressed men and women going about normal daily activity.
I hope never to read anyone's criticism of how thin Kate is, the cosmetic surgery a celeb has undergone or similar 'judgemental' posts as that would be supremely hypocritical.

Your range of friends is amazing Gagajo!

Gabriella - you’re making less and less sense. Were you drunk when you started this thread last night?

If I was Gabriella I would ask for that to be deleted.

My previous post was in response to the post by Elegran

Remember... I asked what could be done to avoid this 'growing' situation.

Oh, dear, Gabriella, you were really asking for trouble there!

It's just not done nowadays to suggest that anyone's obesity can possibly be their own fault - they must have 'issues' (medical or not).

However I dare say many of us will know someone who has no 'issues' except that they are extremely fond of their food. A relative of dh has been extremely overweight for years but he never minded admitting that it was because he thoroughly enjoyed eating - as anyone who had a meal with him could see from the heaped-up plates of food.

Nowadays I think it's more a case of a great deal of wine, not that any of this has stopped him being outstandingly successful in his career.

On our first visit to the US in the mid 70s I was astonished to see so many hugely obese people - relatively rare in the UK then - but it was quickly obvious that the easy availability of cheap, fatty fast food everywhere was a prime reason. I still remember, on our first morning in a 24 hour breakfast place, seeing an extremely fat boy of maybe 12 tucking into an enormous breakfast, just one part of which was a pile of pancakes several inches high, with a huge lump of butter on top.

I'm sure so much of it is down to cheap, fatty fast food, though what anyone can do about that I don't know.

On a visit to Prague quite a while ago an American tourist asked me how on earth it was that the people were so slim, when menus just about everywhere were very heavy on fried potatoes and dumplings, hardly any veg or salad.

Answer (presumably) because there was virtually no fast food, people cooked from scratch, and few had cars, so there was a lot of walking.

Gabriella, I agree with you re overweight people. Unfortunately overweight people do cause problems, the more overweight they become, the more medical conditions they develop. The most usual condition is Type 2 diabetes. Some people develop it despite not being overweight, but overweight people develop it far more readily. They are a massive cost to the NHS which we all know is struggling. My daughter, who is a GP, has told me how big a problem this is, and that the numbers are rising every year.

I’m sorry if you don’t agree with me, or with Gabriella, but she is right.

Agreed Witzend.

There is indeed a lot of supposing going on.

Living ^ in a leafy area of a well-to-do town, in a spacious home decorated and furnished in the best of taste and surrounded by pleasant and cultivated neighbours^ and buying Ferragmo shoes and fillet steak is actually far, far from the normality of the vast majority of people living perfectly decent, normal lives.

GG54, you were NOT merely stating. You wrote using emotive words, expressing an unkind opinion.

I was beyond shocked
simply huge
truly enormous.
excuse
state
moan
man boobs
bellies hung pendulously

This writing is either deliberately offensive, and claiming innocence does not make you innocent.

OR it is the lazy writing of the Mail/Express/Sun/Star.

Either way, nasty.

I agree with Gabriella also.
I also accept that there are many reasons why people are overweight - medication, illness etc.
But I also know it is a growing problem and many diseases are now being linked to obesity, cancer being one of them.
My DD has the 'wrong' genes but works very hard at keeping her weight down by walking everywhere and eating healthily.
It cannot be comfortable carrying a lot of weight around - I do not judge these people but would like to feel they could receive help if they so wished.

Obesity is known to be a growing problem - that's not the issue. The issue is that someone has started a thread and used really nasty, offensive language to describe the people within that trend.

We wouldn't tolerate that for anything else and we shouldn't for this.

Since returning to our NE town last year, after an absence of nearly 20 years, I've noticed a big increase in overweight people. It seems the trend is to very heavy or very thin.
The thin ones being the smokers.
Perhaps that's a link to the reason - many people have given up smoking. Me included.

GabriellaG54

you clearly have money. you are healthy, you have your mobility and seem to live a fairly decent life yet you have a need to belittle other people.
I am wondering why?
You clearly do not know how lucky you are.

I am sure you know that Branson is very rich that he makes money buying NHS medical practices as well as other businesses. Very disingenuous to wonder where the money comes from.

These words:

I was beyond shocked
simply huge
truly enormous.
excuse
state
moan
man boobs
bellies hung pendulously

.. are factual descriptions.
Would it be better or more honest to say 'a very large but obviously kind and giving person', or is that sugar-coating the issue?
Can't people face facts any more?
Is tubby or well rounded a more acceptable version?
I was remarking on what I saw and I have no need to ameliorate my descriptions to suit those who choose to find offence in a passing comment about people I saw on one afternoon.
I wish I had photos because only a fool would disagree with my opinion.
Of course, there are no fools on GN so that is why no photos.
I'd like to know how many objectors ring the BBC to complain about 'fat' programmes or contact any newspaper re their graphic pictures and descriptions....or am I just an easier target.?
You've conveniently forgotten to mention that I wrote that it was 'sad' and what could be done to help, because that wouldn't fit your agenda of targetting my truthful portrayal as rude, insensitive, nasty and offensive.
Let's hope no GP ever tells these 'larger' people that they need to lose weight because they are obese, endangering their health and needlessly stretching NHS finances.
Ask any GP and they will say that, by a long chalk, the majority could lose weight, even those on medication.
Google the scientific facts.
IMO, it's not kind to hide the truth just to make it seem ok...if it's clearly not ok.
I ending this saga, I will apologise to those who feel slighted on behalf of a person or persons unkown.
The truth can be unpalatable but I was never one to shy away from it nor do I shrink from holding up my hands if I'm wrong.
In this case, I know I'm right.
I hope everyone has a great weekend.
??

GabriellaG54 is clearly a woman who speaks her mind, for better or worse, and says things as she sees them.
That is not the same as being "nasty" - an unpleasant term in its own right. I don't always agree with what she says, but she is refreshingly outspoken. I doubt that she needs, or even wants me to defend her, but that is not what I am doing - I am defending the right for any of us to give our opinion and describe what we see or feel.

I repeat the question in my earlier post: why is self-inflicted obesity being normalised while victims of other addictions are vilified and marginalised?

Who marginalised and vilifies these addicts?

And no, she's not refreshingly outspoken, unless you think it's fine to use the kind of language that Gabriella has used and then repeated. The correct terminology is overweight or obese as appropriate and gynaecomastia. If you want to have a reasoned, well informed discussion about why obesity is on the rise then fine - but don't start a thread simply to insult and then try and hide behind it by claiming, with wide eyed innocence, that you're just being honest and everyone who take offensive is just being sensitive.

marginalises

EMOTIVE language. Language designed to make the reader feel something. The something you were aiming for was disgust. About fellow human beings.

Speaking personally, I'm disgusted by cruelty and bigotry.

Amagram is right. I have every sympathy with very overweight people. It can't be pleasant living like that especially in hot weather, must be so uncomfortable and tiring. And many would exercise more if they could. (Thinking of myself with M.E.) I'm only slightly overweight by a few pounds but it was such a struggle to lose the excess.
But how many of us can honestly say we have never looked at someone very overweight buying rubbish food, or going into the cinema with a huge bucket of popcorn in one hand and a giant coke in the other and thought why are they doing that?

Turn that around for the context of the thread. How many people on here would look at someone who is very overweight with a huge bucket of popcorn and think, I am so shocked by that I'm going to go home, log onto Gransnet and type out the following words:

^I was beyond shocked to see 4 simply huge men and similar women, at different times, none of whom were together and all of whom were truly enormous.
I would find it unbelievable if all 5 were to fall back on the 'I'm diabetic' excuse. The idea that people can let themselves get into that state and keep eating (as 2 of them were) is very sad indeed and then they moan that they can't fit into bus or airline seats and can't work because of A, B, C or D.
Are there no answers to obesity because there were also some seriously overweight men whose man boobs and bellies hung pendulously over their trousers^

I'm willing to bet that the vast, vast majority of us on here would think 'crikey, that's probably not the best thing for you' or words to that effect and then wouldn't think anything more about it. We might, if we really wondered why obesity was on the rise, do some research on the issue, or we might post on other threads to say 'it's concerning', but we wouldn't be so judgemental and nasty as the OP has been.

OR someone smoking, or spending stupid amounts of money on unnecessary rubbish, or flashing about a stupidly expensive phone or, or, or...

Why bother? Weird, people having SUCH big opinions about how others choose to live their lives.