I just want to add that I don't think anyone should be shamed. I just don't like this relatively new thing of "fat is beautiful!" where they basically slate people for being thin/slim/a normal weight ("real women have curves!") and write about how being fat is as healthy as being a normal weight. It simply isn't. I don't think that pretending that being obese is healthy is the way to go.
People look for all of these crazy fixes and they're non-sustainable. I also think the focus shouldn't be on exercise - it generally tends to make people more hungry and as a consequence they eat more. They also are more able to justify eating more if they've started exercising. Of course, exercise is a good thing but in terms of weight loss it's not the most important factor by a long stretch. That is diet.
If people want to lose weight they can make small changes that result in a decrease in the amount of calories they take in per day and some of the changes are barely noticeable. I don't think people should be going to bed so hungry that they can't sleep but there's nothing wrong with being hungry before your meals or being a bit hungry in the day. People treat it like it's the worst thing in the world.
Years ago I worked in a large department with forty people and saw all kinds of unusual eating habits. One woman was trying to lose weight so each day she had a flapjack from the vending machine as a healthy snack. This flapjack had over 600 calories in it. She had swapped to that from biscuits to try to lose weight - she would've been better off staying with the biscuits. She also had a jacket potato with cheese and beans as a 'healthy lunch' for weight loss. I don't know how many calories are in that but considering they served them with butter as well it was a substantial meal and maybe near 1000 calories... whereas there are so many options nowhere near that.
If people are going around doing things like that they simply aren't going to lose weight no matter how hard they try.
She was desperate to lose weight and if she had learnt about counting calories instead of doing Slimming World and counting "sins" she would've had a better chance. A lot of the women would talk about all of this stuff constantly which drove me nuts but I don't understand why they carried on with it when it simply didn't work.
If they had worked out how many calories they were eating a day and gradually reduced it - first by 200, then by 400 then by 500 they could've done a gradual weight loss of 1lb per week. They could've found ways to reduce it that didn't impact too much - swapping things out, calories in liquid, making simple changes. The amount of money some of them spent on Slimming World was staggering and it was sad because they were getting nowhere and getting ripped off by the organisation really. They were being told things that were false.
If magazines and the media tell us over and over again that being obese or being fat is OK there comes a point when there's less incentive to change it. My issue is with us being told it's healthy which I've seen more often recently. Just take shame and feelings out of the equation and focus on healthy changes people can make. The problem now is that there's so much money in the diet industry that they have no reason to want to do that. No one wants to promote something they can't make money out of or even that works. They can't make money out of that which is the reason it's not publicised more. It's not really a method and it doesn't involve special ingredients or buying into things - it just involves common sense.