I have to get this somehow off my chest.
I arrived early for my appointment at the school this morning. A very obese boy (about Gr3 or 4)was dropped off, not in the parking spots provided, the car stopped right in the entrance way, blocking some teachers. The boy got out with his school bag (backpack) already on his back but what got my attention was that he had a half eaten doughnut in one hand and a Fanta in the other. All this before 7am. Was this the child’s breakfast or was it a breakfast dessert? This seems to me the flipside of child neglect. I talked to the headmaster about this, and he said that they had words with the parent, but it looks like she can not understand what they are going on about. How much more (he was very wide and heavy) evidence do you need before you can see the light? Maybe the parent is like the climate change deniers.
Oh,I see a lot of this at the school where I work. The one kid is 13, and weighs about 110 kg. I once saw him polish off a big packet of chips, a big slab of chocolate and a carton of Ultramel custard, within twenty minutes or so. That was his morning snack; for lunch he usually grabs two portions of everything.
It is a strange form of parental neglect, to spoil children rotten with material things, but completely neglect them emotionally. It’s a national sport in South Africa.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2011/11/16/boy-9-dies-of-heart-attack-in-front-of-classmates
Its an epidemic, my youngest also has an obese classmate, and this poor child is spurned at every given moment, simultaneously he’s very immature for his age (according to my son), my heart just bleeds for this boy.
Saw this with neighbours and friends many times.
Mom can’t understand why the whole family is overweight. We arrive for a party and our entre’S arrive in the form of a huge bowl of cheese grillers, another bowl of sausage-rolls, and another large bowl of quiche.
We nibble as the family tuck in “in earnest”. Before we know it we’re feeling kinda full already and they’ve polished the remains. Then we start to braai. My “one chop and a piece of wors” braai pack is slapped down next to their massive container of raw meats. As expected the braai step takes a while and thus packets of chips and dips and so on and so forth disappear one by one… meanwhile rashers start coming off the grill and also disappear in hurried fashion.
By the time we eat another massive amount of food is brought to the table and once again “we” eat a very sturdy meal. Having seconds nogal. We’re not even near dessert time yet and I’m feeling nauseous …
But mom and sis are depressed because they’re overweight, “must be glandular”, “bad genes”… :
Boetie is of course also hugely overweight but not all that encumbered by societal pressures.
I really think these people are absolutely blind to the fact that they eat 4-6 times what any normal adult should consume at a sitting. They’re clueless, no idea.
I recall watching one of these docu’s about a woman who had her stomach stapled. I recall how this was “the only way” she could loose weight because genetics/glands/blahblahblah… So they do an “after” visit to her house and she’s now massively depressed because her family get to eat “a normal meal” and she can only eat a pittance. However, her family members are clearly eating a “normal” plate of food that I would have a hard time finishing at all, even on a good day, and I’m what you would call a hearty eater. And guess what, they also have the same bad genes!
Some people genuinely have a problem, but mostly, people need to put the fork down.
Simple thing I do sometimes when I am trying to make sure I do not overeat.
Dinner - 400grams.
Doesn’t sound like much, but put a plate on the scale, set it to 0, and limit yourself to 400. It can be a good meal, and the main advantage is that it is so simple and takes no time.
Only if it’s 400g of chocolate we’re talking about. 
Chocolate is food too… I often skip dinner for a chocolate - far more satisfying especially after a hard day. Sit back and pop that square of chocolate in your mouth and just let it sit there and melt…
We used to eat like pigs: great mounds of mashed potato topped with about half a kilo of rich oxtail stew, then back to the kitchen for a second helping. When I started to have difficulty bending down far enough to put on my socks in the morning I realized that the time had come to do something about it. I’m part owner of a gym, and one of the questions on the form new members fill in is “What diet/s have worked for you in the past?” Almost all the people who had tried a low-carb diet had reported good results, so that’s the one I decided to go for. In seven months I’ve shed 18.5kg and feel terrific. I used to go through about 6 Rennie’s tablets every night, now I’ve stopped buying them since I no longer need them. If these fatties just cut out the sugar, spuds, bread, cake and pasta they’d soon be in the market for new wardrobes.
One of my ex-wives had a weight problem (she made a living out of it posing for the ‘before’ shots for diet ads) and kept making the excuse that it was ‘in the genes,’ but she also just ate too much.
I’m slightly overweight myself, and I know why: I eat too many take-away lunches. I accept it and take responsibility. I exercise at least once a week, and I eat healthily (minimal carbs) in the evenings. I also do my best to eat a balance of veg, etc. etc.
One thing that does bother me is that dieting really seems to be useless. Everyone I see who diets do the yo-yo thing perpetually.
So people say it’s a lifestyle thing not a diet thing and you must permanently eat healthy. OK, I understand that.
HOWEVER, our natural instincts to acquire and hoard calories seems like an unstoppable force for 99% of people, and I don’t think many diets/eating-plans/exercising regiments take that into account. Even the ones with cheating days don’t seem terribly effective in the long term.
Losing the weight is doable, but keeping you weight down is another matter. There are however, no fat inmates in concentration camps.
I would miss my beloved carbs way too much. Besides, what do you eat instead of it?
So what you’re saying is, I should start the world’s first paid concentration camp.
It’s been done with boot camp, so why not? 
Meat and lots of vegetables.
And that’s the problem: I simply cannot afford to live on meat. Neither can most people. And even if everyone had a middle class living standard, it is unlikely that the planet could sustain enough meat animals. Perhaps, once 6 billion or so people have died of obesity related disease, we can all live on meat.
Anyway, I am one of those lucky people: I eat whatever I like, and don’t really put on much weight. I have the normal middle-aged rounding of the belly, but I don’t think any amount of dieting will make that disappear, nor do I think it poses any significant health risk.