Now I’m the first to admit that I’m carrying a couple of extra stones of mainly belly fat, but….
My trips into Hull city centre (and I actually more or less already reside there) are now becoming less and less frequent. Hull, like many smaller cities, is a pale shadow of its former self when it comes to ‘real’ shops and businesses actually in the city centre. Gone forever are the large department stores, together with proper bakers, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, and in general any grocer selling a comprehensive range of everyday foodstuffs (at least that can be relied upon without reluctantly venturing even further afield to the cornucopia that is our Tesco Superstore).
What I do notice though when I reluctantly sally forth, on those days when it’s not almost eerily deserted, is the large percentage of both morbidly obese people and of large people using various disability aids. I’d say that as many as 1 in 4 fall into these categories, with noticeably far more being women than men. If any are ‘women with penises’, as beloved by the woke, they surely won’t be able to see their appendage without a mirror. Back in my 60s and 70s school days, there were normally only one or two fatties in each class of thirty – and these were always the ones bringing in, or buying, copious quantities of tuck for playtime.
I’m talking here though mainly about those women, and men, with huge frames (think Les Dawson show Rolly-Polly-esque) and legs like tree trunks. They are now seen everywhere and seem to possess absolutely no spacial awareness and waddle along – often without warning coming to a complete standstill in the most awkward of places, like just inside shop doorways. If using a disability vehicle, or other assistance device, they inevitably give off a strong air of entitlement to special treatment for wearing their health problems as a badge of honour.
I can’t understand how anyone can get into this state without thinking ‘this has got to be unhealthy and life-limiting’, and then not doing something about it. It’s not as though these people, some surprisingly young, aren’t in other ways body conscious as they all seem to sport tattoos and all the other fashion accoutrements that celebrities sport. Surely these hefty lads and lasses aren’t all NHS employees? The saintly NHS, for all its posturing and expensive lifestyle improving interventions, still seems to have more than its fair share of lard-arses.
Despite being told daily that eating or drinking X is bad for us (until next week when it’s probably a wonder food), and the stampede of the high risk unhealthily obese to get their free vaxxes and DIY test kits, the basic message that it’s not doing you or your family any favours to be the size of an elephant just isn’t gaining much noticeable traction.
Sociologists and socialists, usually the same thing, will of course tell us it’s all part of social and income inequality; the lower status of women and that low self-esteem is behind gorging on processed high fat foods, and drinking gallons of sugary fizzy drinks. The afflicted though will still inevitably cling to their delusions of being ‘big boned’ or of only ‘eating like a bird’ (oblivious that it’s a gannet in Greggs and not a budgerigar in a cage).
It always surprises me however when I see a few far larger than average people at the swimming pool, who proceed to swim like torpedoes and do not let up until they’ve done at least fifty or more fast lengths. Such frequent and vigorous exercise doesn’t seem to have any effect on their bulk, so it must surely all be put down to diet?
It’s symptomatic of the current scale of fattiness, in the developed world at least, that after a foray into gastric band ops (with sometimes adverse post-operative outcomes for patients who’d be told to slim before other types of surgery), big pharma have seen a money making opportunity through wonder slimming drugs – what a surprise! Currently it’s mainly a celebrity clientele, but I predict the NHS will soon be clamouring for an extra few £billion to prescribe to the obese.
Will we live to see the end of the fat lady (or man or indeed child)? I doubt it somehow, given the quantity of stuff I see on shop till conveyor belts in front of me, and the humongous number of fast-food delivery operatives on electric bikes working 24/7. Force feed yourself and your brood like pate foie gras ducks for all I care, I’m a libertarian – but please don’t expect my understanding or sympathy.
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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More mysterious still is how these elephantine young women manage to get pregnant? Also the phenomenon of seeing them with their prams and push chairs often with a skinny young lad (their partner) in tow and just wondering….
Last year I saw a doctor in our local hospital: “You are heavy” said she “but you have the frame to carry it.” How sweet of her. Since then I have, nonetheless, shed lots of fat; the wonder is that I’m not sure how I did it. It’s not exercise: my poor health precludes that. It’s not conscious dieting. My GP worried that it might be cancer but the tests are all clear.
Is there such a thing as unconscious dieting? If so can I patent it and make a fortune?
I was once surprised to hear the fitness instructors at my former gym discussing a new sign up (he or she wasn’t present) and agreeing that their weight loss aim in joining the gym would fail because exercise doesn’t lose weight, it only tones up muscles. To lose weight they said would only be achieved by eating more sensibly than this person did.
I suspect weight loss without dieting or exercising also comes about naturally via ageing, most notably recently observed in QEII although perhaps not entirely due just to age in her case.
A recent rare visit to that heavily guarded fortress, the GP surgery (I’d almost forgotten what it looked like) on the occasion of my new annual influenza (only – I eschew the covid one) vaccine, was a shocking reminder of just how many fat and unhealthy patients there are in my age range (early/mid-60s). The long queue snaking out of the surgery door and around the corner was noticeably liberally sprinkled with grossly fat and non-ambulant persons; several had to be helped inside and onto chairs to wait their turn (cf. Jesus healing the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda!). And it was clear from the congested adjoining car park how they had arrived – no physical exercise obtained there.
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