Obese ‘are living a lie’ over health

Only six per cent of people believe their weight problem is severe enough to be described as obese, according to Slimming World’s annual survey.

Three quarters of people with an obese BMI underestimate their weight category according to the National Slimming Survey, which had 2,065 respondents.

But more than one in three who are regarded as overweight said they felt weight was “the most important issue in life”.

Half of those classified as obese said their weight made them feel embarrassed, while others said they felt awkward, disgusted, ashamed, clumsy or trapped.

Dr Jacquie Lavin, head of nutrition and research at Slimming World, said: “This worrying new data reveals the complex psychological issues associated with being overweight.

“Many people, including many health professionals, believe that managing weight is just about energy balance, and that people simply need to ‘eat less and exercise more’.

However, that approach can never work while so many people deny how severely their weight could be affecting their health by increasing their risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke or while they struggle with the emotional burden of being overweight, which can affect their confidence in their ability to make healthy lifestyle changes.

“As individuals, we need support to tackle the deep-rooted psychological issues around how we feel about our weight before we can begin to make those changes.”

Father-of-four Michael Druker lost 14 stone with the help of Slimming World after realising his gradual weight gain was affecting his quality of life.

He said: “I didn’t really notice when I first started to become overweight. I’m quite tall and so it didn’t show at first.

“Then when it did show I just felt helpless, like there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So I buried my head in the sand and pretended nothing was wrong.

“Eventually, though, I ended up with this long list of things that I couldn’t do because of my weight and I knew I had to do something about it.”

He added: “As a man, I thought slimming clubs were for women and that I’d feel humiliated by going to one but nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Everyone made me feel welcome and it didn’t matter at all to them that I was a man, they just saw me as someone, like them, who needed support to lose weight.”

Slimming World success story Catherine Powell, from Alsager, in Cheshire, dropped eight dress sizes and shed more than eight stone in under 12 months.

The mother-of-four was a size 28, and weighed in at 19st seven and a half pounds last January, but the 34-year-old, is now a size 12 after shedding eight stone four and a half pounds in 11 months.

Figures compiled by East Riding Council just over a year ago showed that more than one in 10 children in the borough were obese, and more than one in four adults – worse than the England average in both age groups.

Last week it emerged that plans to equalise access to surgery to treat hundreds of patients with severe obesity had been dropped by health chiefs in the region.

Around half of primary care trusts in Yorkshire have imposed restrictions on the availability of treatment, but the remainder follow national guidelines meaning more patients are eligible for operations. Provision of surgery to obese patients in the region was backed in a public consultation a year ago, but efforts to agree common eligibility criteria floundered. The plans would make it tougher for some patients to qualify for treatment but would widen eligibility in some of Yorkshire.

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