From me:
At school I was overweight. Poor eating. Late development (testosterone) didn’t help.
Not knowing how to fix it didn’t help. Had I someone in school to encourage me, and a class to show how, I could have loved to have tackled this.

Anyway. Late year 12, took matters into my own hands – started running, surfing, working at a newsagents – carting papers early mornings etc. Weight fell off. Uni came, more surfing, eating well, work etc. Lost more. 5’7″, got to around 75kg. Finished uni, started work (office), stacked it on. Bad relationship, stopped exercising, blew out to 88kg.

One day, I just woke up, stopped the morose self hate (that’s what it is, really) – joined a gym. Started smashing weights, riding to work, cut carbs (initially only), running. 88kg July 04. I am 61kg now. I lost 3kg over xmas. Eating chocolate etc, but running everyday, swimming, cycling, surfing.

See, it’s pretty simple – you only have to want to change and then do it. I woke at 6am today and punched 170km out on the bike. This week I’ll commute 250km on the bike, run 25 km or so, and do weights and swim about 3km. I’m addicted.

people don’t understand the power of eating well, looking effing fantastic and feeling incredible. I want everyone who is overweight to realise this. Yes, it’s hard. There are no easy fixes. But, you don’t have to yo-yo. You cannot crash (it is not sustainable).

But, You. Can. Change.

Factors to losing weight. Self respect. Recognising it’s an issue. Constructive encouragement. Education (eating).

get this info into schools to kids. Start there. They’ll go home and hopefully shopping habits change from mum and dad. Maybe the kids do some weights and start running. Maybe dad takes them surfing.

It’s a holistic thing. Everyone needs to get involved but ultimately the individual has to want to change, next step is they need to know how to do it, then where to go.
Adults know to go to the gym.
Kids need help.

Desipis, your contributions here have been both shallow and pompous.

I got my own back when we there was a horse-riding camp one weekend, because I ws a very experienced horsey girl and I loved it that I coud do something so easily, that the athletic girls couldn’t do at all. My little bit of revenge.

Man that KFC ‘meal’ is hideous. I’d like to think it wouldn’t go down well in Australia, but…

The thing that gets me about obesity is how rapidly it has ballooned as a problem. I just don’t know what is so different between now and 10 years ago, 20 years ago. There are a lot of pet theories, but no compelling evidence for one or the other.

The social normalisation of fatness is inevitable. A few mixed messages in there,makes it all a bit hard to sort out what we’re supposed to think these days to be PC.

I think the problem is that it’s gung-ho types with athletic genes they take for granted who become PE teachers in the first place. They moralise exercise and fitness and they don’t know or care that some kids just aren’t like that, so compulsory PE as taught at school is miserable torture for a fair proportion of the kids.

Liam, the beige glop is inspiring in a negative sort of way. Scuse me while I whip up a bowl of brightly coloured raw veg for dinner.

When I was married I rode a bicycle for 20 years, that didn’t lose me any weight either.

I’ve also been thinking about willpower which skinny people say you should apply to lose weight but I’ll turn it around. If I had had the willpower to face up to the problems I had in the first place, I wouldn’t have turned to the drug of my choice, food.

…they were offering a new product for kids—”fun meals” that came in colorful cardboard containers that opened like laptop computers. A generation of children are growing up associating computer use with fun, grease, and food. I will flee to the mountains before I see how porn gets folded into that equation.

You do know if you are fat or not though – right?

Wrong. “Fatness” exists along a spectrum, not on one side of a boundary.

Anorexia and other body-dysmorphic states are precisely about not knowing whether you’re “fat” or not. It’s also incredibly common for pregnant women to perceive themselves, and other people to perceive them, as “fat”. Part of the whole problem in the contemporary Western weight thing is that women in particular have lost all clear sense of what constitutes “fat”. And those who are slaves to projected ideals are prone to judge themselves or someone else “fat” by totally unrealistic standards.

All that said, I couldn’t agree more about the exercise. Fine at #74 has the right idea — I know someone who got a dog and lost 12 kilos in 3 months without changing her diet at all.

But remembering the appalling torture that was inflicted on fat kids when I was at school by sadistic and mostly very stupid PE teachers, plus by the more cruelty-prone of the other kids, this needs to be addressed as well.