Ads say ‘eat more’, mags say ‘eat less’…no wonder there’s an obesity crisis, says Ulrika Jonsson
LOVE Islander Megan Barton-Hanson says she’s really struggling with her body.
Her recent healthy weight gain has had the 28-year-old “obsessing” over it.
It would be all too easy to make a crass joke about how there’s no hope for the rest of us if the Only Fans babe is worried about her shape at her age.
And as if to amplify the obsession we have with size, last year’s Love Island winner, Millie Court, admits she felt the need to lose weight before entering the villa and was not only miserable but tired and dizzy as she dropped to a size six.
Obsession with body shape is more prominent than ever.
Megan had a gorgeous body but says she was often called “fat”, and I’m guessing the verbal abuse must have got the better of her
She admits that she deliberately sought to lose weight last year and set herself the goal of just 800 calories a day, when the recommended amount is more than twice that.
This girl must have been starving!
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Coincidentally, then, I read this week about a new “diet” which is supposedly all the rage — The Human Being Diet (surely that’s just called “eating”).
I digress. Word on the street is that it has got a whole bevvy of socialites and slebs following this regime — and it’s pretty hardcore.
It’s formulated by a nutritional expert who claims this isn’t a diet but a “programme”, to give you more energy and help you sleep better, but in the same breath she also concedes that it will make you lose weight.
All you have to do is avoid oil, meat and alcohol and survive on 600 calories a day. If that isn’t a diet, I don’t know what is.
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Of course, avoiding alcohol and reducing your meat intake is no bad thing, but it’s the message these diets keep sending us that we need to lose weight, that our bodies are the wrong shape and that we must restrict our intake of food and think of it in terms of units and numbers.
Granted, we do have an obesity crisis but that’s due to our unhealthy attitude to food.
We’re told by retailers and manufacturers to buy more.
We’re told via subliminal messages in magazines and social media that we need to be smaller.
It’s little wonder we have a very warped and confused attitude to our bodies.
My story is probably a quite common one.
My early childhood was notable by an absence of proper meals and highly processed food.
It is no exaggeration to say I went to bed hungry many nights.
My life turned around when I moved to England and gained a stepfather whose passion was food, which suited my hungry stomach no end.
To this day, I find so much joy in food that it is one of the biggest aspects of my daily life
“That’s easy for you”, I hear you say, “you’re skinny and bony”.
Pretty hardcore
But my weight has fluctuated over the years — in part due to four pregnancies, which ravaged my body. I never felt content with my body shape, as the “norm” was always unattainable.
I was either chubby or I was gaunt, my breasts were too big and made me feel fat, my arms too thin because I was just born that way
And to this day, if I post a picture of my body — nearly 55 years worth of it — on social media I get comments bemoaning the fact that I’m “scrawny”, “skin and bone” or “too wrinkly”.
I post because I want to try to normalise whatever shape it is that I am and what is my norm.
Because while society will never want me to be content with my body, I want to try to embrace it. It carries the hallmarks of all my various lived experiences.
I have never believed in diets. When I say “never”, I mean since I once tried Weight Watchers at the age of 20 because I continually heard that I was “hefty” and “big boned”.
In truth, I was probably just average.
But I was so programmed and conditioned to believe that the solution was a diet. And in the short term, it was.
I lost a stone and went about my life until it registered that it was never going to be a diet that would help me find the body I wanted, it was my mind.
I have to confess, I have no experience or true understanding of what it is to be obese.
Balance is key
Part of that is luck when it comes to metabolism but a huge credit has to go to my absolute joy and understanding of food as a means of bringing me so much pleasure.
Balance is what it is all about.
As many women currently feel obliged to get themselves “beach body ready”, I really appreciate Megan and Millie being honest about their unsustainable, low-calorie intake.
And I applaud Megan for showing off her curves, as I hope it encourages the next generation to now accept their bodies in a more positive way.
To eat healthily, rather than seeing food in terms of just numbers and calories.
But also, to enjoy the fun things like alcohol and dessert. Life is definitely for the eating.
Turn tide on drowning
SUMMER is upon us, apparently. And as the weather gets better, we will no doubt head to the coasts or the riverbanks or sit by canals, drinking alcohol and larking about.
Peer pressure and intoxication will see us mess around with watersports without the right buoyancy aids.
We’ll briefly turn our backs on our kids splashing around. Or we’ll simply get in way over our heads.
Search-and-rescue and emergency services respond to around 35,000 water rescue and flood-related events a year.
Each year, 400 people die from drowning, which accounts for more accidental fatalities than fires in the home or cycling accidents on the road.
We are an island nation and yet, in the 43 years I have lived in England, I believe I’ve only heard two Public Service Announcements regarding drowning and the dangers of water.
As a kid in Sweden I spent a lot of time on the open water, sailing with my dad around the Swedish archipelago.
It was ingrained in me to fully understand the dangers, that safety came first and being able to swim was a crucial life skill.
And yet in this country, nearly half of children aged seven to 11 cannot swim 25 metres unaided. (Undoubtedly not helped by swimming pools and schools being closed during these past two very messy years).
I am a strong swimmer but know to hold the power of water – open or otherwise – in high regard.
My friend, who is not a strong swimmer, says she always remembers to respect the sea because once you’re in, “there’s no back door”.
I hope people really enjoy our stunning coastlines, beautiful beaches and gorgeous waterways but do so safely.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the RNLI and the emergency services could have a quieter summer than before?
Older, wiser, beaten by app
SINCE I was young, I’ve always had a healthy respect and a lot of time for old people (because, apart from anything else, we’ll all hopefully be old one day).
Where I live there is a huge ageing community and I have befriended quite a few – including Raymond, 86, who has a glint in his eye and always asks me about what TV work I’ve got coming up; and my lovely Ian, 75, who I met by the large cucumbers in our local supermarket.
Both are active and independent but how on earth does that generation get through life when everything is digitalised?
Most things are done online nowadays – paying for your parking, booking your doctor’s appointment, banking, shopping, self-scanning. You name it, there’s an app for it.
I have to confess to struggling myself at times, even though I know there are some very capable, savvy 80-year-olds.
But according to the ONS, three million people are still offline and more than two million of them are aged 70 or above.
Not everyone has a smartphone, either.
I may be getting old or just be old-fashioned, but I will always prefer human interaction.
While I am continually confused by technology, fundamentally I always manage to work it out.
But I worry about many elderly people feeling isolated by all this technology – and worse still, marginalised.
I fear we are increasingly likely to leave them behind.
Massacre at school… but lessons not learned
ANOTHER day, another shooting in an American school.
As I write, the death toll from the massacre at Robb Elementary in Texas is at 19 children and two adults.
The shooter’s motive, age and ethnicity is largely irrelevant in a nation oversaturated with guns.
Yes, the statistics are shocking: 120 firearms per 100 people and, even more horrific, 316 people die each DAY from gun violence in a country which has an obsession with the right to be armed.
It brought back painful memories of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, where 26 people were shot – 20 of whom were children.
These lives weren’t lost – they were taken in vain, as nothing about gun ownership ever changes.
The gun lobby always holds all the cards, all the votes and most of the guns.
In a regressive country where women are about to lose their rights over their bodies, it is perfectly fine for an 18-year-old to go and buy 400 rounds of ammo.
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But if a woman wants an abortion she may be forced to have a cooling-off period of 48 hours and may need parental consent and a medical note confirming she understands the consequences.
But we’ll happily arm a man because it’s his constitutional right.