Yeah ditch the woman part. People in general are way bigger, and way fatter, than ever before.
This isn't a good thing (the fatter part).
Losing weight for most people (medical conditions aside) is simple. It's also difficult. Those are not in conflict.
We know we need to eat less, and eat healthier. Most people will be in better shape if they do. But it's very, very difficult. It's similar to facebook, which is engineered to keep people engaged and coming back--food has been engineered to keep us coming back. There are armies of flavor scientists working for food companies doing one thing--making something even more irresistible than the competition's food. If the food today had been available 100 years ago, they'd have been fat too--though there was a LOT more manual labor happening to burn off some of these calories.
It was interesting visiting China a decade ago. The older folks are almost all thin there. The only fat people I tended to see were the young people--and guess who eats at all the new (newer then) fast food restaurants like KFC, Pizza Hut and McDs that I saw everywhere there? When we'd go to restaurants with my wife's relatives and friends (all middle aged and older) the food was almost entirely vegetables. Not that much rice or noodles, not much meat. Let me tell you I had a hard time finding non-healthy food to eat! (I don't like the taste or texture of veggies...so I'm a good case in point for what's wrong with people's eating habits!) When I flew back into Jersey after two weeks in China it looked like everyone had been inflated with balloons, it was fricking weird....
I've found that if I stick with the principle of: eat only what a grandma would recognize as "food" then I do better. It takes a while to get unhooked from salt and sugar and nutritionless food. it's hard when you have a family and hectic schedule. Once I haven't had "bad" food for a bit I lose the cravings for it somewhat.