Why were people so skinny in the 70s and 80s

[Anonymous]

Aren't there any people on here who are in the opposite position? I am thinner and healthier than my parents were at my age, back in the 80s. My parents both started gaining weight in their 30s and never really got it under control again. My dad has had serious issues with his hear that have forced major diet and exercise changes for him, and thankfully he has followed those prescriptions and is much healthier. But still overweight (he benefits a lot from the medical advancement in medication and procedures for heart disease). My mom is seriously overweight and basically diets continuously and never really seems to improve. She is not active at all and I feel that's the big issue, but she's also trapped in that catch 22 of being so overweight that even very minor exercise is absolutely exhausting and hard on her joints, so she avoids it, which means she never loses weight, so it never gets any better.

I'm active and "naturally" thin in that I don't exercise (I eat more junk than I'd like to admit, though I probably don't have a very high caloric intake overall because I'm someone who feels full easily). My lifestyle is so much healthier than the home I was raised in -- hardly ever use a car, a huge focus on mental health and addressing stress, emphasis on basic health metrics like sleep and water consumption.

It's not a SES thing either -- my parents have a much higher SES than I do and I actually think it hurts their health in some ways. One reason I walk a lot and eat okay (despite the junk food) is that I am on a budget and can't realistically drive everywhere (gas and parking are expensive) or afford to eat take-out or in restaurants. I'm not cooking super healthy food at home but almost all home-cooked food is healthier than restaurant food because of the enormous amounts of butter, salt, and other fats they use in restaurants to make the food taste really good.

So I don't relate to this thread at all. I associate the 80s, at least, with very unhealthy lifestyles contributing to obesity, medical issues, and poor mental health. I feel like today there is a much better understanding of how to take care of your body in a reasonable way (not just fad exercise and crash diets). I did a barre class with my daughter this morning where the teacher spent most of the class talking about "functional movement". We'll meal plan for the week today using the internet, which is a cornucopia of healthy recipes and information. I'll use bikeshare to get around later this week. So many resources that just were not available to my parents in the 80s. I feel very fortunate to live in this time instead of back then.

[Anonymous]

^ Sorry I meant to say I don't diet. I obviously do exercise! Though not obsessively or anything -- a lot of my exercise is incidental to my lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

People weren’t able to be as lazy as people are now. They had to move more in their general life. No food delivery, no Amazon, no grocery curbside, no work from home. Kids played outside most of the day. People that were poor eat less food- no free (garbage) school lunch and breakfast. You just did without if you didn’t have money or had a small something. People didn’t use phones and screens for entertainment constantly all day long. More cooking at home. Even if the cooking wasn’t great, chances are if fared better than the giant restaurant portions of today. Portions were smaller in general then too, as ice cream places and fast food and such

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People weren’t able to be as lazy as people are now. They had to move more in their general life. No food delivery, no Amazon, no grocery curbside, no work from home. Kids played outside most of the day. People that were poor eat less food- no free (garbage) school lunch and breakfast. You just did without if you didn’t have money or had a small something. People didn’t use phones and screens for entertainment constantly all day long. More cooking at home. Even if the cooking wasn’t great, chances are if fared better than the giant restaurant portions of today. Portions were smaller in general then too, as ice cream places and fast food and such

WFH is often seen as healthier and more exercise-conducive than working on-site. Except for people who walk or bike for a commute (which is not that many people, sadly), the time saved from WFH offers more opportunities for exercise than working in an office (which they likely get to via car) all day. Plus without having to comply with strict office dress codes or worry about arriving in the office sweaty, it's much easier to fit workouts in.

I started WFH way back in 2011 and the first things I did were hang a pull up bar and print up a little list of what would now be called HIIT exercise routines and tape it to the refrigerator. I'd do pull ups or chin ups on my way to the bathroom, I'd do a 10 minute HIIT workout before lunch or while listening to an earnings call. Plus I was eating from my fridge instead of grabbing lunch (and coffees) downtown, so the quality of my food went way up. And it's not like I was seeking out health food either. It's just that a snack would be crackers and cheese and maybe some apple slices, instead of a pastry from the cafe in the lobby. Lunch would be a turkey sandwich instead of a dressing-doused salad from Chop't. Fewer calories, less additives... over time it adds up and it's just a lot healthier than how I ate before.

I grant you that a lot of people have become over-reliant on having everything delivered, and eat out more than they used to. But I don't think WFH is the culprit here. It hasn't even been widely available until very recently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren't there any people on here who are in the opposite position? I am thinner and healthier than my parents were at my age, back in the 80s. My parents both started gaining weight in their 30s and never really got it under control again. My dad has had serious issues with his hear that have forced major diet and exercise changes for him, and thankfully he has followed those prescriptions and is much healthier. But still overweight (he benefits a lot from the medical advancement in medication and procedures for heart disease). My mom is seriously overweight and basically diets continuously and never really seems to improve. She is not active at all and I feel that's the big issue, but she's also trapped in that catch 22 of being so overweight that even very minor exercise is absolutely exhausting and hard on her joints, so she avoids it, which means she never loses weight, so it never gets any better.

I'm active and "naturally" thin in that I don't exercise (I eat more junk than I'd like to admit, though I probably don't have a very high caloric intake overall because I'm someone who feels full easily). My lifestyle is so much healthier than the home I was raised in -- hardly ever use a car, a huge focus on mental health and addressing stress, emphasis on basic health metrics like sleep and water consumption.

It's not a SES thing either -- my parents have a much higher SES than I do and I actually think it hurts their health in some ways. One reason I walk a lot and eat okay (despite the junk food) is that I am on a budget and can't realistically drive everywhere (gas and parking are expensive) or afford to eat take-out or in restaurants. I'm not cooking super healthy food at home but almost all home-cooked food is healthier than restaurant food because of the enormous amounts of butter, salt, and other fats they use in restaurants to make the food taste really good.

So I don't relate to this thread at all. I associate the 80s, at least, with very unhealthy lifestyles contributing to obesity, medical issues, and poor mental health. I feel like today there is a much better understanding of how to take care of your body in a reasonable way (not just fad exercise and crash diets). I did a barre class with my daughter this morning where the teacher spent most of the class talking about "functional movement". We'll meal plan for the week today using the internet, which is a cornucopia of healthy recipes and information. I'll use bikeshare to get around later this week. So many resources that just were not available to my parents in the 80s. I feel very fortunate to live in this time instead of back then.

Just like with economics, society has gone in two directions with a much smaller middle. There are many more people dedicated to health and fitness than in the 70s with a much greater knowledge of healthy diet, strength training, cardio, yoga, etc. The majority of those people are healthier than their parents were.

And on the opposite end, there are significantly more obese people.

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to give a shout-out to this comment from pages earlier “ 3. Food did not taste very good. Yes my mother cooked from scratch and it wasn’t healthy but also didn’t taste great. It was edible but you wouldn’t want to eat more than a small serving of it. Honestly, if I served tuna casserole, dry baked breaded chicken covered in cheddar cheese, green beans cooked to mush in mushroom soup, meatloaf, turkey in a heavy cream sauce over toast or overcooked spaghetti covered in chili, cheese and onions we would all be really skinny not because these are low calorie meals but because they don’t taste good.”
I was born in 1960. My mother knew how to cook for parties but she just didn’t care enough about how our food tasted to fix good things on regular days. A typical day for a kid was Carnation instant breakfast, school cafeteria lunch, dinner with a yucky main course (baked plain frozen fish, etc) or some simple meat item and canned vegetables. No good bread anywhere. And margarine instead of butter, which made carbs a lot less appealing. Why overeat?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People weren’t able to be as lazy as people are now. They had to move more in their general life. No food delivery, no Amazon, no grocery curbside, no work from home. Kids played outside most of the day. People that were poor eat less food- no free (garbage) school lunch and breakfast. You just did without if you didn’t have money or had a small something. People didn’t use phones and screens for entertainment constantly all day long. More cooking at home. Even if the cooking wasn’t great, chances are if fared better than the giant restaurant portions of today. Portions were smaller in general then too, as ice cream places and fast food and such

Not! Women sat at home and watched the price is right and their “stories” aka soap operas.

[Anonymous]

Portion control
Never eating out. In the 80’s my parents took the kids to a restaurant maybe once a year except if we were ok a trip, or Burger King for lunch.

[Anonymous]

My dad loves to tell a story about a friend of his who worked a summer job roofing. Every single shingle was hammered in by hand. The whole summer was spent swinging a hammer.

Now the same job would be done with a nail gun - a lot less physical.

In the 70s and 80s there were lots of tasks like that, a lot more things that we do now with machine power that used to be done by hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wanted to give a shout-out to this comment from pages earlier “ 3. Food did not taste very good. Yes my mother cooked from scratch and it wasn’t healthy but also didn’t taste great. It was edible but you wouldn’t want to eat more than a small serving of it. Honestly, if I served tuna casserole, dry baked breaded chicken covered in cheddar cheese, green beans cooked to mush in mushroom soup, meatloaf, turkey in a heavy cream sauce over toast or overcooked spaghetti covered in chili, cheese and onions we would all be really skinny not because these are low calorie meals but because they don’t taste good.”
I was born in 1960. My mother knew how to cook for parties but she just didn’t care enough about how our food tasted to fix good things on regular days. A typical day for a kid was Carnation instant breakfast, school cafeteria lunch, dinner with a yucky main course (baked plain frozen fish, etc) or some simple meat item and canned vegetables. No good bread anywhere. And margarine instead of butter, which made carbs a lot less appealing. Why overeat?

Just because your mother was a crappy and disinterested cook doesn't mean that was the case everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dad loves to tell a story about a friend of his who worked a summer job roofing. Every single shingle was hammered in by hand. The whole summer was spent swinging a hammer.

Now the same job would be done with a nail gun - a lot less physical.

In the 70s and 80s there were lots of tasks like that, a lot more things that we do now with machine power that used to be done by hand.

Nail guns have been around since the late 50s. Your dad's friend might have used a hammer, but that doesn't mean that nail guns weren't common or available in the 70s and 80s.

This whole thread is ridiculously full of non facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dad loves to tell a story about a friend of his who worked a summer job roofing. Every single shingle was hammered in by hand. The whole summer was spent swinging a hammer.

Now the same job would be done with a nail gun - a lot less physical.

In the 70s and 80s there were lots of tasks like that, a lot more things that we do now with machine power that used to be done by hand.

Interesting. I wonder how much else has been replaced with machine power/automation. For example, a weekly shopping trip used to involve a half mile (guessing) of aisle walking, cart pushing, lifting grocery bags to/from car, etc. Now, it's delivered to your door. It's not a whole lot of calories/exercise in isolation, but I bet there's a lot of stuff like this.

[Anonymous]

Snacking! The snack industry is HUGE now. We never had so much to chose from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Running and working out wasn't a thing back then. My parents were skinny as heck. They played sports but weren't going to the gyn especially as they got older. Both had desk jobs. We lived in a city so not a ton of walking (it wasn't safe). Anyone feel like it's strange?

"Running wasn't a thing back then??" are for real?

[Anonymous]

Snacking. Thats the #1 reason in my opinion. Eating between meals never gives your insulin a chance to go down.