Besides the few carrots and occasional ice cream! Totally cool.
Marilyn Monroe ate mostly a HFLC
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#3
Back then everyone knew that you “cut out starchy foods and sweets” to get or stay slim. Funny how that was common knowledge for generations but then wiped out in one.
Yes! My grandmother (born in 1922) needed to lose some weight and I remember her doctor recommended weight watchers.
She scoffed at it after looking at the food choices and went with a liver, egg, broccoli and butter diet! Needless to say her doctor was impressed but irritated after she lost 40 lbs. 
Mike_W_Ellwood
(Michael Wallace Ellwood)
#5
I remember my mother trying to lose weight back in the 1950s/60s.
She used to buy these things called “starch reduced slices” and “energen rolls”. They were practically inedible (the energen rolls were like cotton wool inside), but I suppose they were lower in carbs. So, yes, people did know way back that in order to lose weight you were supposed to reduce carbs.
My maternal grandfather was always slim and athletic, and always knew when to stop eating, and would get quite cross if my grandmother tried to force another potato on him. However, his “slim” genes only seemed to pass down to some of his children, and my mother wasn’t one of them.
(However, when you see a group photo of all the siblings (it was a large family) and some of their partners from the early or mid-fifties, none of them is fat, and some are downright skinny - they were pretty much all young adults at that stage).
farmgirl
(Arlene)
#6
We recently saw a recording of a concert that happened in the early 70’s. The audience was panned, and the majority of people were thin. This was a sampling of lots of people. It was the norm to be thin. So what was different then? I think the biggest difference was the lack of fast food and coffee houses on every corner. People didn’t eat out, except on very special occasions. By the mid 70’s, fast food was really picking up steam, and now it’s available most everywhere. One other big difference was that there was usually one tv, and 2 channels with mostly boring stuff to watch. We were required to play outside and never in the house. We just didn’t sit around. There was usually one telephone. You had to get up and walk to answer the phone, change the tv channel, turn the tv on or off, etc. You get the picture. We just moved more.
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#7
“We don’t move as much as we used to” is certainly true, but it’s a red herring WRT to the obesity epidemic. The metabolic dysfunction necessary for what we see today is all from the western diet, IMO. Just moving more doesn’t solve the problem for many if not most people, therefore, it has to be something else.
I think you were right in the first part of your post when you talked about eating out, fast food and coffee houses. For example, people certainly drank lots of coffee back in the day, and many if not most put a little cream and sugar in it, but today we go to Starbucks and are faced with a plethora of massive sugary drinks and snacks that are basically dessert “foods”. As Adam Savage might exclaim, “There’s your problem!”
farmgirl
(Arlene)
#8
I agree with you that the movement was not the #1 reason we were a thinner society, however we were out and about. We were not in the house, sitting on our butts eating junk food. Snacking wasn’t a big thing like it is today. Pretty much just ate three meals a day.
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#9
This! I think you’ve hit on it right there. Which is the culprit, not “burning off the calories” from the snacks, or being active and not eating the carby snack foods in the first place? I truly believe it’s the latter.