* Percent of adolescents aged 12-19 years with obesity: 20.6% (2013-2014)
* Percent of children aged 6-11 years with obesity: 17.4% (2013-2014)
* Percent of children aged 2-5 years with obesity: 9.4% (2013-2014)
Also when you grow with a lot of fat people around you you don't even know how normal weight looks. I noticed this last time in Paris. I had completely forgotten how normal weight looks.
Paris is leaner than the French average, but you were probably still seeing a population with a fair amount of overweight people. Just, less overweight than what you're used to.
Seeing Paris 110 years ago would be a shock. (On many levels, but certainly on the average body composition level).
I have a book by Georges Hebert, who was an influential fitness instructor in France about 100 years ago. In it, he has pictures of French peasants shirtless, and some African tribesmen and women. They are in a form that today would be considered "unrealistic".
I can't find any of the peasant pictures online, but here are a couple of examples of the Africans:
https://actionlondaise.blogspot.ca/2016/03/georges-hebert-ce...
http://ayeparkour.blogspot.ca/2012/02/tracuers-of-legend-geo...
(The top photo on the second link is Hebert)