Why do the majority of the great British public...

Affluence...most people now have more disposable income than in years gone by.

Availabilty...food is everywhere now. During the last 50 years the growth in supermarkets and fastfood outlets has lead to this almost grazing way of eating. 

I'm in my early 60s now and have always done some form of exercise. Whilst all my family/friends have health problems associated with smoking/drinking/lack of exercise I enjoy good robust health.

 I take no prescription drugs or have any health issues. I do have general aches and pains that most would expect at my age but I feel that the years of exercise have helped in maintaining my fitness/balance and co-ordination and I intend to continue because I that is part of my lifestyle.

Most of my family/friends think I'm slightly loopy but they suffer ill-health and chose to follow the sedentary life that leads to poor health and dependance on drugs in later life.    

The new Wheatabix adds aimed at children - 3 wheatabix - hard day ahead.

I like wheatabix but have never eaten three, two at most, usually one for breakfast with a scoop of flax seed. The same was true of Shredded Wheat a number of years ago - 3 Shredded Wheat. All aimed at sizing up.
Then there's the adverts for sweets, as if eating sweets was a healthy option. The  adverts  that advertise chocolate as an indulgent luxury, malteasers as an almost calorie free treat. Haribo as fun. They are selling us an idea, a concept, something that we need in our lives.

A whole different aside, some people enjoy cooking and eating. I'm thinking of my two sisters here. We all cooked as kids. I cooked most of the family meals, my eldest sister oved cooking puddings. Treacle pudding, Lemon sponge pudding, you know, those old fashioned puddings made with suet to be served with custard. Both my sisters cook now, they make jam and lemon curd and all the sweet home comforts. Both my partner and I love to cook and make wine. I give most of my produce away as I don't eat it. Made 12 jars of Damson jam yesterday. I'll probably still have the same 12 jars left when I die, plus all the ones I'll make between now and then unless I give them away. I bake at work all the time now. I eat none of what I cook. It's a lifestyle choice. They love their home cooking, they are both good cooks, my lil sis wins awards for her home produce. Much as she is over weight she does take exercise, runs 5k's in 35 mins, does boot camps, shoots arrows. She was always the sporty one. She was always the larger of all of us. My family is genetically obese or overweight at the very least. My father was always worried about me being underweight. That's til I started running and I only started running because I discovered that runners are for the most part skinny buggers. I run to justify my size. I've always exercised though.

I've never eaten ready meals, have very, very few takeaways, don't eat sweets often, so although most of what I eat is (and has always been) wholesome, (cheese has calcium!), I just tend to eat too much of it. 

I'm just greedy, I guess!

(and I certainly could manage three Weetabix, but not three shredded wheat)

Stevie G . wrote (see)

It's an easy question for the likes of us on here to ask, as we're the other side of the unfit-fit boundary.

I remember being very unfit, and it's all such tough work on the buildup.

Once you are fit, it's  easy to keep motivated and stay that way.

 

I think that's pretty much it, same goes for attitude to food. If you've always lived on convenience food or takeaway, then it's going to seem like a lot of effort to buy fresh produce and prepare healthy meals.

And all those little things like getting used to reduced portion sizes, not having three courses every time you go out for a meal, ordering americanos instead of mocha-bomb-caramel-explosion-with-extra-whipped-cream when you go to Starbucks ... it all takes time and effort to start with, and a lot of people just can't be arsed.

I actually know a guy (with much more money than sense) who paid for gastric band op because he wanted to lose weight. I asked him if he had considered losing weight through changing his diet and exercising first, and he said that he couldn't be bothered. He didn't like exercising and he didn't like grocery shopping so lived on takeaway or ate out in restaurants.

He had the money for the operation, so he had the money to pay for a personal trainer and even one of those ridiculously expensive services that deliver healthy prepreared meals to you every day. But he didn't have the motivation or willpower to lose weight that way so had the operation, now he has lost weight purely because he physically can't eat too much - it's pretty miserable if you ask me.

It's a chore, and it always will be.  People have better things to do with their time than dragging an already-tired carcass out in the rain to run, cycle, swim x miles a week.

kittenkat wrote (see)

make the lifestyle choice to ignore any need to be healthy or fit in an active lifestyle?

It's a buzz, not a chore surely?

There's a difference between an active lifestyle, and being active during 'leisure' time. For most people, work nowadays doesn't involve physical activity as it would have done for generations past. And even for those who are active, the composition and availability of foods are not the same as they once were. Energy dense, fat laden products are at hand pretty much anywhere you go, so the level of activity needed to compensate for consumption of such foods far exceeds what most people do in the day to day, and even in modest leisure time activity. 

I've said it before, but it's a very complex issue that involves features that the individual has little control over, or are restricted by income. 

As someone who has been obese, I might have looked as though I was ignoring the need to be active, but inside I was burning up with shame at the size I had allowed myself to become, and the fear of the changes that I was going to have to make to get my life back.

While it may seem as though getting out and exercising is the obvious answer for people who find themselves overweight and suffering with health problems, there are often unhelpful, negative, destructive emotions bubbling away beneath the surface. People have to be in the right frame of mind to start implementing life changes, and it can be difficult to get to that point.

It doesn't help that exercise is so much more difficult when you are carrying extra weight- as anyone who has ever tried to run while obese or overweight will verify. Imagine running with a sack of potatoes on your back, except they don't stay in one place but jiggle and ripple and chafe and sweat and bounce with every step that you take. Thank God these are now memories and not present day...

I think also this can go back to role models and experiences of active lifestyle as a child; also experiences of PE at school which for many wasn't positive.

There are so many factors in determining behaviour - psychological, emotional, social, financial, physical, knowledge, past experience, local amenities, skill... Personal choice is influenced by all of them. I'd love to take up surfing, but I can't simply choose to do so and make it happen. For a start, I can't afford it. Then there's the issue of not living near the sea, living in an environment that doesn't really lend itself to good conditions for the sport, and not having the first clue as to how to surf. I could make it happen, but I'd need to invest a lot of time and money into doing so, and with working conditions and pay what they are, that just isn't going to happen. 

I know there are lots of other options over surfing, I'm just using it to illustrate a point. Plus I'd quite like to learn to surf

It's easy to overeat. It's easy not to exercise. Becoming a fat slob is the default position unless a person develops a strategy to produce some other outcome for themselves.

Stevie G . wrote (see)

It's an easy question for the likes of us on here to ask, as we're the other side of the unfit-fit boundary.

I remember being very unfit, and it's all such tough work on the buildup.

Once you are fit, it's  easy to keep motivated and stay that way.

 

Pretty much what this guy said!

l dont think there's anybody out there who genuinely prefers to be overweight and unfit. Even the most idiotic person out there knows that an under active lifestyle combined is dangerous and a fast pass to an early grave.

l first took up exercise when l started feeling size 34 jeans getting tight, when people in my local pub started taking the piss about the weight l was putting on and when l looked at myself in the shower and could no longer see the end of my 10" pecker*

It was excruciatingly difficult for the first month, l ached like a bugger everytime l woke up the morning after a night at military fitness training and l thought my lungs and chest were about to collapse if l attempted to run more than a quarter of a mile.

People as a general rule are not prepared to look past that first month and as we live in a society where everything and anything is available in an instant people are no longer willing to wait to see results for something.

Regular exercise is the mirror opposite of never budging from the sofa. They both become a habit the longer you do them for and breaking either habit takes a lot of effort and people struggle to adjust to the opposite of what they're used to.

The longer you leave it before actuallly getting your arse off the couch, the worse you begin to look and eventually, the older you get, the more likely you are to just accept that you will remain in a state of incactivity.

*One of the 3 statements above is incorrect

I guess we need a National Fitness & Health Day then, when everyone pursues healthy life choices in terms of diet and exercise for 24 hours.

Slogan, "Do it for a day, then do it for a lifetime."

And how would that be enforced? 

....or even encouraged?

It wouldn't be enforced. This is a free country.

It would be encouraged through the media. 

Haven't we got something like it that the Government is doing, Change for Life?

Intermanaut wrote (see)

It's a chore, and it always will be.  People have better things to do with their time than dragging an already-tired carcass out in the rain to run, cycle, swim x miles a week.

But they don't have to do that, it can be as simple as taking the stairs, not the lift in work. I'm not talking about huge amounts of exercise I'm talking about wanting to be more active.

Colin McLaughlin wrote (see)

It's easy to overeat. It's easy not to exercise. Becoming a fat slob is the default position unless a person develops a strategy to produce some other outcome for themselves.

But it's not easy to overeat unless you've trained your body to overeat.