+ size women want their own clothing range designed

[Biggsy]

[pendant]70 is more than 50.  The 50 is reference to AK's age.[/pendant]

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Education is wasted. Several people on here have described themselves being overweight, I could do with losing some, but we all know how to fix it. The women outside Jamie's school new full well that the burgers were crap. None of us need education, we need motivation. Until the enablement stops there isn't any.

You seem to know an awful lot about other people's knowledge and psychologies.

[hellymedic]

I've been to slimming clubs (obviously attended by those motivated to lose some weight). There was quite a high information content to the meetings. Some of the information appeared new to some attendees.
If these people needed educating, many others would also benefit.
I don't think education is always wasted.
It may not always be welcome.

[plum]

None of us need education, we need motivation. Until the enablement stops there isn't any.

I keep coming back to this.  And wondering what, precisely, needs to be stopped and by whom.  How you expect to create that motivation.

And I'd quibble a little about the 'none of us need education'.  I suspect that there's few of us, in the sense of YACFers, that don't know a reasonable amount about nutrition and exercise and all that.  We're a bunch of people wealthy enough to have computers and internet access, loosely connected by an interest in cycling.  And arguing on the interwebs, and smut and erudition, obv.  It's a self-selecting group I would expect to be not entirely representative of society as a whole.  But out there in the big blue room I know a fair few people with some interesting notions about food.  Some of which are cultivated by food manufacturers.  Like the person who thought it was healthy to almost live on jelly.... low fat, innit?

Education is wasted. Several people on here have described themselves being overweight, I could do with losing some, but we all know how to fix it. The women outside Jamie's school new full well that the burgers were crap. None of us need education, we need motivation. Until the enablement stops there isn't any.

You seem to know an awful lot about other people's knowledge and psychologies.

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

[mattc]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

That's a hilariously simplistic view of the problem.

[CrinklyLion]

None of us need education, we need motivation. Until the enablement stops there isn't any.

I keep coming back to this.  And wondering what, precisely, needs to be stopped and by whom.  How you expect to create that motivation.

So, as direct questions...

What exactly is the enablement you think needs to be stopped, and by whom?  How do you think that motivation can be created?

[plum]

None of us need education, we need motivation. Until the enablement stops there isn't any.

I keep coming back to this.  And wondering what, precisely, needs to be stopped and by whom.  How you expect to create that motivation.

We want to stop people smoking, so we tax them, we ban them from public places, we hike up their insurance, we keep them away from our children, in other words we make it clear that it's unacceptable. I wouldn't leave an alcoholic in charge of my bike let alone my children, but if so many people here are claiming exactly the same mindset for chronic overeaters why do we treat them so differently?

Obese people, if half of this forum had their way we'd apologise to them because we've made the outside world is so terribly terribly cruel, give them a pat on the back, a bigger frock, then send them back on their way to the cake shop.

[plum]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

That's a hilariously simplistic view of the problem.

What's hilarious is that the solution is exactly that simplistic. Eat less, exercise more, both necessary and sufficient.

[mattc]

That's a biochemical view - it somewhat overlooks the role played by our brains.

It's a bit like a football coach just showing his players videos of 70's Brazil teams."Play like that!"

[CrinklyLion]

...we tax them, we ban them from public places, we hike up their insurance, we keep them away from our children, in other words we make it clear that it's unacceptable.

Right.  So to be absolutely clear, you think that we should do the same thing to people who fail the bmi test?  No size 18+ women or whatever the equivalent would be for men - sorry, don't know enough about bloke clothes sizes - anywhere we can see them? In the park (jogging, for example) or the gym or the pool?  We charge them more for their, what, car insurance?  House insurance?  Because the obese _already_ pay more for life and critical illness insurance - if they can get it, of course.  They turned me down, y'know.  Sorry, when I die prematurely I guess you'll just have to pick up the bill for raising my kids instead.  And teachers, nurses, nursery staff, youth workers, midwives, any other profession that works with kids - they can all get sacked if they breach a certain blubber limit?  Just, y'know, checking.  It's good to be clear about these things.

[plum]

...we tax them, we ban them from public places, we hike up their insurance, we keep them away from our children, in other words we make it clear that it's unacceptable.

Right.  So to be absolutely clear, you think that we should do the same thing to people who fail the bmi test?  No size 18+ women or whatever the equivalent would be for men - sorry, don't know enough about bloke clothes sizes - anywhere we can see them? In the park (jogging, for example) or the gym or the pool?  We charge them more for their, what, car insurance?  House insurance?  Because the obese _already_ pay more for life and critical illness insurance - if they can get it, of course.  They turned me down, y'know.  Sorry, when I die prematurely I guess you'll just have to pick up the bill for raising my kids instead.  And teachers, nurses, nursery staff, youth workers, midwives, any other profession that works with kids - they can all get sacked if they breach a certain blubber limit?  Just, y'know, checking.  It's good to be clear about these things.

Shut up I said none of those things. It was a post just like that one that got the thread locked last time. If you want to get hysterical that's fine, like I said before, this is the internet after all, but don't put words into my mouth.

All I said was that if there are no sanctions then there will be no change. Taxing fatty or sugary foods is one idea, sanctioning parents who make their children obese is another.

[CrinklyLion]

Shut up I said none of those things. It was a post just like that one that got the thread locked last time. If you want to get hysterical that's fine, like I said before, this is the internet after all, but don't put words into my mouth.

All I said was that if there are no sanctions then there will be no change. Taxing fatty or sugary foods is one idea, sanctioning parents who make their children obese is another.

Well, I asked a very direct question.  I guess I was hoping for a direct answer.  And no, I don't think I will shut up, if it's all the same to you, and no, I'm not being hysterical.

So, idea no 1 is to tax fatty or sugary foods.  Any details on that?

These 'sanctions' for parents - care to elaborate?

Any other suggestion?

[teethgrinder]

Tax doesn't seem to have stopped excess drinking or smoking. When all these new anti smoker laws came in, nobody where I worked quit smoking. I joked at the time that I smoked and was treated like that, it'd make me want a fag! Demonization doesn't seem to work. The overweight have been the butt of jokes for as long as I can remember, yet people have got even bigger.
I think that Dave Martin is on the money. It's a matter of balancing lifestyle, excercise, eating habbits and I think, least of all what food we eat.

How would I treat the obese?

I wouldn't

apologise to them because we've made the outside world is so terribly terribly cruel, give them a pat on the back, a bigger frock, then send them back on their way to the cake shop.

I'd just treat them as the human being they are and ignore their health problem. I'd try to get them on some bike rides and have some fun on the bike as much as possible. I reckon that would be more helpfull than trying to punish them.

[CrinklyLion]

How would I treat the obese?

I wouldn't

apologise to them because we've made the outside world is so terribly terribly cruel, give them a pat on the back, a bigger frock, then send them back on their way to the cake shop.

I'd just treat them as the human being they are and ignore their health problem. I'd try to get them on some bike rides and have some fun on the bike as much as possible. I reckon that would be more helpfull than trying to punish them.

By jingo, TG, you could be onto something there, I reckon!

[teethgrinder]

I know from my own experience that it works.

[slowfen]

The incentive to solve the problem is likely to come via the NHS/govt. Obesity comes with many issues eg diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer, lymphoedema, osteoarthritis. Some of these are going to become such a huge problem (type 2 diabetes doubling in the next few years) that there is a possibility that the NHS will not be able to afford to survive diabetes.

To me society has a very sick relationship with food, we throw away 30+% of food, we have hours of TV programs, but there are huge numbers of fast food joints on the high street. There are increasing numbers of people who do not seem able to cook and then society tells them they must be be unobtainable slim.

Locally to where I work, there was a weight loss program which involved CBT, and had some success as it focused on the relation ship with food, as well as  the mechanics of weight loss.

Overall what those incentives will be I don't know.

ps, the american sugar industry denies there is a problem. sounds familiar

[Julian]

Treating people like humans?  I think Teethgrinder might just have won.  Creating an "us" and "them" mentality isn't helpful, particularly when there's such a grey area. 

I'm not fat.  I'm all in favour of teaching kids about healthy eating, exercise and how to cook a good meal from basic, cheap ingredients.  I'm lucky that my parents taught me that - and when I was skint, which I was for a v long time, I was able to get a ten-quid veg box (shared with a flatmate), value rice, value pasta, bag of cash 'n' carry lentils, and eat for under a tenner a week.  It was boring but it was pretty healthy. 

What I am very strongly not in favour of, and I apologise if the hyperbole went overboard, is creating this "other" category in which we dehumanise the other and it is permissible to point and laugh in the street, as one poster suggested earlier would be a good way to get fat people to recognise social stigma and slim down a bit.

All that does is to give individuals the belief that they are allowed to make snap value judgements on others and then bully them.  It doesn't actually matter whether you're pointing-and-laughing at the obese, at smokers, at drunks, or grabbing your pitchfork and looking for paedophiles: it's all the same continuum of a belief that you can enforce your own values on other people via the medium of street abuse. 

To put that into a forum context, it's the same attitude that leads motorists to use punishment passes or spray water out the windows at us as we're riding our bikes.  The same attitude that leads to people being egged or worse, shoved, at best, gerronthefuggincyclePAAAATH yells.  Those people aren't necessarily BAD people but they do believe that their views on what's best for us (riding in single file on a cycle path is safer for us and will lead to us needing less of their tax for NHS treatment and / or less of their insurance if they accidentally hit us, therefore it is better for society that we do so) mean that they can shout abuse at us. 

(Before anyone says that motorists who behave like that are behaving illegally but calling taunts at someone in the street isn't - actually, it's an offence under s.5 of the Public Order Act to cause someone harassment alarm or distress.  It's not always vigorously prosecuted - there's another parallel - but it is illegal.)

It's not fun being Other, in any capacity.  Not as a cyclist and not as a fattie.  I've walked down the street with a former colleague who was a bit of a ten-ton nelly, but when people were abusive to her, which they were, they didn't know she'd already lost a lot of weight.  The street harassment did very little to persuade her to keep up with the diet and exercise.

[Biggsy]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

That's a hilariously simplistic view of the problem.

What's hilarious is that the solution is exactly that simplistic. Eat less, exercise more, both necessary and sufficient.

Simple to say, but not easy to do when your unconscious mind has more control than your conscious mind.  You've got a useless over-simplistic view if you think everyone can act like robots (and it would be terribly boring if we all did).

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/LM_iiPFkNas&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/LM_iiPFkNas&rel=1</a>

[teethgrinder]

What I am very strongly not in favour of, and I apologise if the hyperbole went overboard, is creating this "other" category in which we dehumanise the other and it is permissible to point and laugh in the street, as one poster suggested earlier would be a good way to get fat people to recognise social stigma and slim down a bit.

I say that this will only exacerbate the problem.
You need a positive attitude if you are going to achieve anything. Losing weight is an achievement. Putting someone in a negative state of mind won't help their positive attitude. Making clothes for big people seems like a good way of putting some people in a positive mindset about themselves. People want to be fit. I know many fit people who want to be fitter. I know unfit people who want to be fitter too. I've never met an unfit person who wanted to be even less fit.
Making nice clothes for big people isn't about accepting their size, it's about accepting them as a person.

[mattc]

Getting the balance right is hugely problematic. It's one thing to help/support someone who has decided to (say) do some more cycling, but how do you help them get to that point?

"You're dangerously obese, did you know? I've got some suggestions that might help you."
Hmm, maybe not ...

I feel really bad for some obese friends, but I really don't know know how to help them without creating all the negativity mentioned upthread.

[plum]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

That's a hilariously simplistic view of the problem.

What's hilarious is that the solution is exactly that simplistic. Eat less, exercise more, both necessary and sufficient.

Simple to say, but not easy to do when your unconscious mind has more control than your conscious mind.  You've got a useless over-simplistic view if you think everyone can act like robots (and it would be terribly boring if we all did).

I'll say it again if you like. It's exactly that simple to say because it's exactly that simple. All I said was that everyone already knows *how* to lose weight; eat less and exercise more. It's true.

I made no comment whatsoever about the biological, chemical, emotional, neurological, intellectual or any other barriers which people find to excuse themselves from actually doing so. Deliberately, I'm avoiding that part of the conversation because I don't want to say something that will get the thread locked again.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

What you don't seem to be able to grasp is that for some people, eating is a compulsion and an addiction and they are not able to stop as easily as you seem to think they should. I don't believe there's a fat person in the country who doesn't know they're fat, know that they're taking in more calories than they're burning up and know that to lose weight they need to reduce their intake and increase their output. What you are ignoring or not understanding is that some people can't do that. It's not laziness, or greed, or selfishness, or stupidity, or ignorance, any more than alcoholism is any of those things.

That's a biochemical view - it somewhat overlooks the role played by our brains.

It's a bit like a football coach just showing his players videos of 70's Brazil teams."Play like that!"

Hmmm. I wonder if Scotland have tried that. I might write and suggest it.

[Chris S]

Plum.

I simply can't make up my mind whether you are:

(a) A Troll
(3) Autistic to the point of complete inability to empathise with anyone
(viii) Thick
(e) A genius

On the face of it, yes fat people have an energy imbalance that is simple to fix. If you were in charge of what went into their mouths, it would be an easy fix. But you aren't are you? They are. People have issues, faults, foibles, anxieties.

Frankly - expecting everyone to conform to some kind of theoretical "norm" is... well... a bit Nazi.

Are you Hitler reincarnated? Are you?

[teethgrinder]

but how do you help them get to that point?

Not like this 

"You're dangerously obese, did you know? I've got some suggestions that might help you."

Ignore the obesity. Just get them out for a bike ride, or whatever, just as you would with anyone. Then you might need to reassure them that they'll be OK, it's just for fun etc and not let them do so much that they feel trashed when they get home.
Forget fat, just get them having fun. They'll still be fat when they finish that ride, and the next, and the next... It takes a lot of bike rides to lose fat, but only one to have fun. Make it fun and they'll want to do a lot.

[plum]

Never mind yacf or self selecting groups. Eat less + exercise more then see if you've lost weight. If not go to step 1. There can't be anyone left in the English speaking world who hasn't been told that. That they choose to ignore it is the problem, not that they haven't been told it.

What you don't seem to be able to grasp is that for some people, eating is a compulsion and an addiction and they are not able to stop as easily as you seem to think they should. I don't believe there's a fat person in the country who doesn't know they're fat, know that they're taking in more calories than they're burning up and know that to lose weight they need to reduce their intake and increase their output. What you are ignoring or not understanding is that some people can't do that. It's not laziness, or greed, or selfishness, or stupidity, or ignorance, any more than alcoholism is any of those things.

In the post prior to that one I'd already made it clear what I'm ignoring and why, but since you choose to labour the point I'll go into more detail while trying to follow C3POs advice to be excellent.

There's no such thing as can't. If it can't be done then you might as well give up, eat yourselves to death. Addictive people will come up with a zillion reasons why they can't quit, but those are just excuses. What they actually list are reasons why it is difficult to quit. What is necessary is to help them to overcome those difficulties. Giving them bigger frocks does not achieve this.