[Girlie]

I was married in November and we spent our honeymoon holiday in London (I live near Chicago). We stayed at a hotel in Westminster and it was a really great holiday!

It was strange getting over how differently people dressed and such there...but I noticed that I hardly saw any overweight people! Why is that? Many of the "traditional" foods in the grocery stores didn't seem health friendly...we went to Tesco a few times and I did see a lot of Weight Watchers items that aren't available in the States...I dunno...it was just strange to me. Is that just London? Everyone was so thin there...I felt like people were looking at us like we were obviously from the States (they could already tell from the way we were dressed, I think!) and thinking we were fat Americans!

Any thoughts on this? Kind of a weird question, I know!

[cat90]

Hi Girlie,

I think most of them are just plain lucky because all of my life i have eaten a rotten diet i.e. chips/fries with everything and lots of stodge in the form of puddings and custard, ice cream and chocolate and i never had a weight problem until later in life and i attribute this to middle age spread ( between me and you if i eat better i can lose weight) to be honest i've never met any weight conscious people in the UK but there must be some somewhere no-one i know over there lives on carrot sticks and lettuce anyway. So, in a nutshell i can't throw any light on the subject maybe some of the other girls can help. I think half of the American problem is portion size i.e SUPERSIZE although Mc'Ds is finally clueing into the fact that people don't need a 32oz (2 PINTS) humongous cup of cola i'll never forget the day i first saw one of them!

[Girlie]

Thanks for your input, Cathy...my, that is interesting!

Funny about the 32oz beverage...I have a 64oz mug. I started keeping water in it at my desk, but sometimes I'd fill it with diet coke at the petrol station...only 79 cents!!

I could NEVER, ever finish it though!

Girlie

[linus]

were fat too im scottish but its very much seen as a disease over here

[pippie]

You must of been in the thin parts of London. lol because believe me there are just as many overweight British people walking around i know lots of people who are overweight. We don't have a lot of choice over here for clothes for us larger ladies, its terrible. Hope you had a nice honeymoon though.
Pippie

[Girlie]

Where DO larger sized folks buy clothes in London? We went all over London and none of the stores there carried anything larger than a UK 20 which is about a 16 in the states! I wear a US 18 or 20 so the UK 20 is out of the question for right now!

It was really, really depressing!

But I did find a really cool wool duffle coat in a secondhand store so that's cool!

[linus]

evans thats about the only generic one but very pricy

[linus]

hey i never thought of saying come into uk chicks and say hello we dont reject foreigners ha ha actually cat is from canada and i think brit is in your neck of the woods {somewhere? the others will tell you im hopeless at geography} so pop in for a blether

[pippie]

Yep i would have to agree with linus we larger ladies are limited to just one shop if we are lucky and it costs a fortune to buy one outfit, another reason to lose weight, lol. Its so depressing.

[peacock 2]

I would have to agree that "Yank" portions are a lot bigger - I imagine they must assume our restaurant portions are "snacks". I saw a programme on Houston I think it was and how fat the people were. Really really huge. But then you travel everywhere by car mostly I would say so prob not walking, catching buses like we do. Although there are some fat people over here (course there are or you would be taling to no one here!!!), yanks seem to do everything much bigger that us, including their size! I was always shocked when reading about some of the very fat ones how many McDonald's they would have for breakfast!

[peacock 2]

My riend is bigger tha me and she was quite chuffed to find she was medium sized in the States! She didn't even have to go to a "big Girl" shop! She said bigness was def. the norm over there.

[Girlie]

Yeah, I can see how everything seems bigger. The sizing for women, not sure about that...I think a size 16 UK is a size 12 here...that was strange! I'm not sure why that is.

The places we went in the UK seemed to have pretty large helpings, but maybe it was just where we went. Our hotel in Westminster (Dolphin Square) gave large servings...as did the Pizza Hut (but that's American!) and of course the fish and chips place both of us could eat off of one order! Mostly though we went to Tesco and I cooked most nights, curry and stuff.

I did notice when we went to Leicester Square and saw movies, you do not put butter on your popcorn so that's good!

Two food items I loved in the UK: Crunchie Bars and chocolate Digestives!!!! MMMMM!

Good thing they aren't available here!

[peacock 2]

Hi Girlie

I think I meant the number of eat all you can places with massive steaks etc.

Re Digstive biscuits - I always undestood that Graham Crackers were the American alternative. In cookbooks from USA that suggest UK variations anyway it always suggested using digestives instead of Graham crackers. Of course they may not be the same...

[veggie]

Originally Posted by linus

hey i never thought of saying come into uk chicks and say hello we dont reject foreigners ha ha actually cat is from canada and i think brit is in your neck of the woods {somewhere? the others will tell you im hopeless at geography} so pop in for a blether

Yes please come join us if you wish we nice honest I would like to think anyone could feel they can post here and we could post anywhere else on 3fc

[Shad]

From a complete outsiders point of view (Kiwi living in Australia) the portions in the UK are minute compared to those in Canada or US. I was taken to the cheesecake factory in Chicago and the doggie bag did me for three days!
Clothing in both countries was just too confusing to contemplate with inches mixed up with mm and cm and stones, lbs, kilos etc. You simply had to try everything on to see what did fit. Went to the changing rooms with 1 of every size Like here, the Brit clothes were sort of comparable in size but not in length - I say sort of because here the clothes can be made in India, Taiwan, Indochina or any other place east of here and are therefore a dozen different sizes for the same article. It's supposed to keep the prices down but ............
Back to food. British food like Aus and NZ seems to have more flavour than the US counterparts. Don't know why, the stuff in the supermarkets in US looked good enough to eat and the homecooked meals I had weren't bad at all. I also found US food to be much sweeter than ours. Can't eat the US breakfast cereals. They are just over the top. Sorry Girlie.

Anyway, that's my 2cents worth. See ya. (maybe we need some international smilies to put in the posts so I've added a fat kangaroo and a fat kiwi. Just think of them as me!!!!!