Germany wakes up to the obesity problem

Yeah, there's this old saying: Don't eat meat, don't smoke, exercise daily...die anyway.

I hate these kind of people and they generally are Germans. Lots of my German friends comment that I am 'picky' about what I eat and it drives me insane. I am not 'picky' at all in fact there is not anything I actually do not like or wouldn't eat I love every type of food going. But I generally try and make the right decisions. It is usually on the Coffee and cakes or why I don't want to eat a sausage from the sausage stand. They just don't understand that if I have eaten my lunch at 1pm and am going out for dinner that evening I do not feel like stuffing myself with cake. It is not because I don't like cake or because I want to lose weight (that is the thing they often confuse me trying to be healthy with I know myself I do not need to lose any weight) but I'd rather have a piece and enjoy it and not feel stuffed to the brim... I think also not having sweet things much as a child is partly to do with this.


That sounds exactly like my world! Clothes sizes have become so insane at the moment that even a German size 34 is too big for me. I am 159cm and 52kg and would also class myself as average slim build. But pretty soon I am going to have to start buying child's clothes.


That also goes without saying...

Mine too.
And (to put the cat amongst the pigeons) I also think that fitter people have better sex.
So there.

Apropos, did you ever notice how the daily Fruestueckfressers here, along with anyone in US/UK culture who parrots that old chestnut "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" are always the fattest of the bunch?

Because you'll have all day to burn it off? Yeah, right ... until someone brings in pretzels at 10:00, you go for a massive hot lunch at 12:00 on the dot, have a bunch of Kuechen at 16:00 and then go out to dinner at 21:00 after stopping by the local Trinkhalle for a few beers.

People are always jamming stuff into their pie holes here ... usually out of a bakery bag.

I find you both extremely annoying!

My sex life is fine and I don't eat breakfast despite having a high BMI.

And yes they still cannot get a baguette right. Mind boggling really.

Exactly. I'm in the same size range, 5'5'', about 5 lbs less than your weight (I'm not exactly "big boned", more like the opposite, lol :-)), and far from skinny. On my last visit in Germany I tried to buy a skirt. The store I went to had just one (!) in a size 36. I didn't even bother trying it on since it was so obviously too big. Some other stores that I checked didn't have anything smaller than 38.

Regarding the woman who considers 65 kg (that's 143 lbs) "thin" for our height, this can come only from someone who has apparently lost any sense as to what constitutes a normal, healthy weight. This may sound harsh, but it's true.


And usually bad taste, ugly colors, low quality, high price. I can walk into virtually any women's clothes store or department store here in Canada and find nicer stuff at better quality, for half the price, and in a size that fits me. But according to many Germans that I know we (North Americans) are fat because we only eat Big Macs...


It's probably best to just tell them that you don't like anything sweet. And then there's ice cream... What's up with all the adults you see walking around eating ice cream cones that you see anywhere in Germany? I've never seen this anywhere else.


On top of that, regular German women's sizes are for women who are 167cm (5'6") or taller. Seems all three of us are considered 'short'. Call me insane, but to me >5'6" for a woman is tall, the average (in North America) is 5'4" (163cm), to me 'short' is <5' (152cm). Most women I know are in the 5' to 5'6" range with a few shorter than 5' and very few taller that 5'6". Petite sizes (regular number size divided by two) supposedly exist in Germany, but I've never seen them.

One the bright side, children's clothes are usually cheaper than adult's clothes.

Why? I can't see anything annoying about their posts and I tend to agree with their observations. Does that make me annoying too?

I think she was being sarcastic ... they both appear pretty buff

Expaticus is right - it was said very tongue in cheek because they have a problem which is the complete opposite to mine - I am heavy and could only dream of saying that I couldn't find anything small enough.

You on the other hand, really do annoy me.

A saleslady once told me often the sizes you can´t find in a store are the ones everyone has already bought, if that makes any of you skinnies feel better. Unfortunately for the not-so-skinnies, women´s sizes over 42 just don´t seem to be carried in most stores.

Don't know how someone skinny would feel about this, but does that mean the salesladies who said they don't carry anything smaller than a 38 where lying? Why would they do that? Wouldn't the customer be more likely to come back to the store at a later time if told that they were currently sold out?

Are you seriously trying to tell us normal stores are no longer carrying below a size 38? 38 isn't exactly that small and I see 34's and 36's everywhere when shopping here. Below a 34 I might be willing to believe but not below a 38.

What was the name of this store? Perhaps you inadvertently walked into a plus size store.

I had a different explanation from a sales woman in a shoe shop in London once and I assume the same would apply to dresses. She told me that stores always order very few items of the smallest and largest sizes because less people are those sizes - therefore, the majority of sizes ordered by the store are the middle ones which are more average.

I do know that skinny women have as hard a time shopping as big women. It was always great fun when me and my best friend went shopping - she was a UK size 6 and I was a UK size, well, the size doesn't matter but anyway, we both used to have an extremely hard time!

The one that had one single 36 skirt was called C&A, general impression: low quality, bad taste. The others, that didn't carry it, I don't remember what they were called, same general impression. All of them were in the same mall in a medium sized town. Was this too low end? The prizes sure weren't.

C&A is the KMart or Woolco of Germany, the clothing is cheap, low quality and while they aren't a plus size store they do cater mainly to the plus size, low income demographic (think working class housewife). I've got a few things from there , the prices can't be beat so it's perfect for stuff you don't mind ruining or throwing away after a season.

That said you can find size 34 & 36 there as well.

Oh God, I have been feeling a bit insecure today but now I think I will go and have a massive cry - I like C&A

There's nothing wrong with C&A, it is what it is, I have stuff from there too but c'mon it's no secret that it's not quality fashion.

On the German news yesterday they said the manufactures were aware of the “growing population� and are adjusting the clothing accordingly?? They’re actually making the sizes larger than they are??? Why bother with a size in the first place ?

I've come to believe over the years there is a very close relationship between eating food and interpersonal interactions. I ate when something was eating me, I ate when I was bored, I ate when I hung out with my friends, I ate when I was stressed, I ate when I wanted sex and couldn't have it, I ate when my friends were not available, and I ate when I was lonely.

Obesity was not really a problem prior to the 20th century, families were closer, communities were stronger, people kept jobs longer. But today there seem to more of a disconnection between people. People are working longer at sedentary jobs, then getting off eating processed and fast foods, then sitting with the remote on the couch or in front of their computers trying to decompress from their hard day of work so they can get up the next day to do it all over again.

There's also a problem with the kind of foods available today. There are more processed foods on the market, including foods with many artificial ingredients and hormones. Foods altered to make them low fat and foods altered to make them low carb. If you don't want to cook you can even have your choice of an array of fast food establishments and some even with "free" soda refills.

Obesity is a by-product of a consumer culture and for that matter so is health care.

I think it´s more like our organism is programmed to survive. In the past, it was difficult to get enough food, so we were programmed to feel hungry and to enjoy eating. It ´has become increasingly easy, too easy, to get hold of fatty and sugary foods and our bodies are too good at storing this energy. The problem is the ease with which we can get our food these days. It is actually somewhat unnatural to fight against the natural feelings of hunger and eating in order to gain and store energy.

And there's a huge variance between what is average in each market.
When I shopped in Japan, with my 5ft 3ish Ger 38 UK 12 figure (US 8 apart from Banana Republic where I'm a 6 for some reason), I was uniformly L or XL. Just how the market there is.
The boxy German cut suits many German women as there are fewer waists here, the more straight-up-and-down woman with a flat bottom is pretty common and so clothes are cut for that shape.
Larger breasts? Try the UK. Tall? Scandinavia. Narrow back? Italy. All-over petite? France. Small and curvy? Spain (but you may have to hem on Spanish brands outside Spain). Tall with muscular curves? NZ.
Clothes are made for a market, otherwise they would not sell.
That we specifically do not fit that local market is more our own problem.

The issue of so-called vanity sizing is another, I mean, I have no issue with wearing a size 40 or even 42, as I have muscles and am not skinny-thin, but for me to wear a 36 just sounds suspect. Certain brands, and the UK brand Wallis is notorious for this, would upsize their clothing to frankly make their customers feel better, give them a little boost and thus sell more.
Which could kinda explain the size zero phenomenon to some extent. It isn't purely that certain women have become thinner, or that the size ideal has decreased, rather that vanity sizing has led to the new sizes.

And also it should be said that size isn't always the best indicator - a taller woman can easily be a larger size but be completely in proportion and within healthy weight guidelines (whether BMI, body composition, whatever).

Finally, for some of us doing the sport and eating well have become natural behaviour, either like in Purple Muffin's case by parental guidance with the lack of sweets as a kid, or by discipline or personal tastes.
The body tells you what it needs - mine likes foie gras as a special treat, sport and apples from the fridge. Plus beer, but for that there's running.

Oh, and we no longer have to run after food or work physically hard to get it. So we are in the weird situation of having to force ourselves not to eat since wehave too much food, and forcing ourselves to move since we have no need to. Of course this is where we discover the joy of movement and enjoying the quality and not quantity of food. But I wouldn´t say that the people nowadays are worse than the people of the past. It´s our technological progress which isn´t quite in synch with ur biology.

Now that you say it - about KMart quality, but more expensive. I wasn't looking for anything fancy anyways.


Well, the 36 was definitely too big, don't know how the 34 would have been since they didn't have it. Do they usually cary everything in these sizes, or just stuff that's appropriate for young women and teenagers, like miniskirts and low-cut t-shirts? I'm middle aged, so that kind of thing is definitely out of the question.

My last winter holiday to Lanzarote was a year and a half ago, but we ended up staying on a site mainly for British people, and it came as a total shock to me how FAT they were - it was absolutely ghastly!!! - even the kids were FAT (as my then 6 yr old daughter pointed out rather loudly!!!)
Okay, so I´m not a stick insect (169cm tall, weighing in at 64kilos at the mo), but I felt like a stick insect next to those people!!
I have been in Bavaria for over 10 years now, and tend to think of the Bavarians at least as being rather slim people......
.....maybe it´s more of a problem in the city centre, or in other cities, I don´t know, but even in the town where I live, there is only one person I can think of who is seriously overweight...

I think the main reason for the obesity epidemic in western industrial countries is basically an over abundance of food and that food is cheap. Processed food is convenient and affordable. Neither is the case in most of the rest of the world and wasn't the case in western countries until fairly recently. I think this is an anomaly that will likely change back in the not so far future, possibly during our lifetimes. Food prices are already increasing around the world, farmland is disappearing in many places, there will be more people competing for food in the future. With increasing gas prices transporting agricultural products all over the place would become increasingly expensive, large processing plants might become unprofitable and close down. Then there's climate change...

Demographics are changing, even in Germany. The number of stereotypical tall, small-busted, waistless, buttless German women is declining rapidly.

Dug this up on obesity and BMI in the UK.

BTW does anyone have a cure for my shrinking feet? Could it possibly be gravitational forces?

looks correct and that "Andy Wood " is a fat bastardo

"The BMI doesn't take into account things like muscle, which is important. It would class most rugby players and footballers as obese and look how fit they are.

if only he had some LMAO look at the fooka crying

I personally liked the "enlarge image" option. That Brad Pitt is a fat fucker too!

You should try shopping in places like Esprit or S.Oliver, their sizes are bloody minute, and the sizes are different for each country a Jumper that I have, looks to me to be around 38, however the label says:
D 42, F 44, I 46, UK 16, US 12...WTF!!

I am also somewhat of a midget at 5.2 & a bit and cannot get jeans here, they all seem to be about a foot too long, but Next now delivers here so thats solved that problem

Mine as well.

I find it very sad that people are slowly but incrementally making themselves hostages in their own bodies. It is not a matter of aesthetics, but a simple matter of not being able to move without restriction anymore. And given the possibilities for rehabilitation in this country, pre-existing conditions are not really the excuse that most people make them out to be. There are pretty much always opportunites to improve on your own condition, at your own pace, with support if required. I suppose it depends on whether you want to be in control of your own destiny or not.

While I certainly agree, especially in old age, but the people my age that have mobility problems have them because of sports injuries or over use of particular joints in sports.

Finding a balance is always key.

Especially since your balance is one of the first things to go

After age 30 the body is deteriorating. If you are not doing anything to counter this process, such as exercise, healthy eating, strength training, participation in a sport activity it is more likely you will become feeble in your later years.

Have you ever wondered why some old people look so weak and feeble and others seem to have more vitality?

Last time I was in C&A I didn't see any slim, high income demographic (upper class non-housewives) either. Perhaps they dress down, hold their noses and go in when nobody's looking.

Again, it's over-simplifying to say that heavy=unhealthy and light=healthy. I know some chubbies who can climb a mountain and some skinnies who'd be huffing and puffing after a flight of stairs.

Ruthie, it's also over-simplifying to compare health exclusively with aerobic cardio-vascular performance.

I think you've all left out how much hormones affect your weight, especially for women. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I never thought a minute about my weight. I could eat or drink anything and not exercise and never worry about gaining a few pounds. If I did gain a few pounds, I'd make an effort and one month later, the weight was gone.
After 40 yrs old, the hormones levels drop like a brick and everything you eat seems to attach itself somewhere. Hips, thighs, double chin. If you let yourself gain 20 lbs, you have a long fight on your plate to lose it. I've spent the past 3 months on the South Beach diet and pumped up my exercise routine. I've only lost about 8 lbs but I have shed 15 inches from my body. The omentum (waist fat) stores hormones and that can throw off your numbers as well.
Food and movement count for alot in maintaining weight but don't discount the hormones levels before you're 30 and then again when you're past 40.

@gideon - chubbies can also have better muscle tone than skinnies, I was merely citing an example, not stating that was my entire argument.

No one should really be too surprised...products in the grocery stores are not required to put the amounts of ingredients in them...there's a heavy amount of chemicals added..way behind the US in that regard..(especially nitrites and nitrates in practically EVERYTHING...), pork is widely known (except in Germany) to be unhealthy...salt is eaten in large amounts, sugar, CREAM sauces...french fries dipped in mayonnaise..(fat in fat), greasy cheese laden dishes...on and on...nutrition education is practically non existent;...need I go on?

No thanks; you're making me hungry.

So if Germany is so far behind all these American advances, why are so many Americans so fat?

Gluttony!

i suppose so. i am in my 20s and i eat like five meals a day (not to mention rather unhealthy) and i don't usually gain (or lose) much weight. my exercise consists of walking to the u-bahn.
i'll probably pay for it 20 years from now, even the water i drink will contribute to weight gain, probably.

Being a cheapskate American, I check C&A on a regular basis. Latest purchase: a cute black and white cotton sundress. Size 38.

I'm 165cm, 65kg, and realize I should ditch about 5 of those sofort (ah, but I do like the beer and the spaetzle). I'm bustier than the average German gal, and have a smaller waist, but have some monster hips and thighs. Yet I just bought a 15 EUR dress in a size 38, because the 40 and 42, which I thought more likely to fit, were gaping.

Good lord, Maedels...

But it's even worse on post. Guess it's all that cheap American comfort/junk food, plus too great a temptation to just sit around Housing or various women's social groups, due to too many kids too soon and a lack of interesting job opportunities. There are a few young gym rats who take advantage of all that spare time, but I'm continually amazed at how much weight you can pack on when you don't have to be at work at 7:30...