There’s an issue in the world today and unfortunately it’s more prevalent in the UK than a lot of other countries. It kills people all the time, directly and indirectly. It costs billions to the NHS, billions to the economy and unimaginable amounts to people emotionally. That issue is being overfat.
Why didn’t you say obesity James? Well there’s a problem here which stems from the nations’ desire to not actually accept or confront the problem. Obesity in medical terms is deemed as having a BMI of 30 or above. Overweight is having a BMI of 25-29.9. This is an outdated approach to measuring someone’s health status and no end of issues can come from it. I have seen lean and muscular individuals which land in the overweight category and I have also seen muscular individuals with dangerously low body fat stay in the normal weight category. Your position on this scale does not determine your health status, instead, your body composition and percentage of body fat does. It’s 2021, to get scales which measure (with at least half decent accuracy) your body fat percentage is not difficult. Therefor it’s time to move on from classifying peoples health status by BMI and using terms such as overweight. We can now look at composition with relative ease and determine if someone is ‘overfat’ or not. Unfortunately there isn’t much of a grey area on this. You are either healthy (healthy composition) and ‘lower risk’ or you’re unhealthy (overfat) and ‘high risk’. So if you’re percentage body-fat isn’t where it should be, you are risking dying. No if’s and but’s, that’s how it is. This isn’t a new concept either. I was taught about using overfat rather than overweight when I was at university. That was 13 years ago.
Now, I had planned to include the stats pertaining to illness’ and deaths caused by being overfat but everything that governing bodies such as Public Health is linked and measured by BMI. This of course makes it difficult to accurately explain the impact that this is really having. For that reason, I’ll talk about the obesity stats but I accept that they’re not the same as overfat stats however when you combine the stats with waist circumference you can find more accurate representations. Waist circumference is measured as storage of fat around your organs is seen as a higher risk and therefore a high BMI and high or very high waist circumference creates a very high risk category.
The NHS report that in 2019, 68% of men aged 16 or over were overweight or obese along with 60% of women. These numbers have been creeping up for years. Looking at waist circumference, the proportion of men and women with very high waist circumference increased from 20% of men and 26% of women in 1993 to 36% of men and 48% of women in 2019. This indicates that although more men are in the risk categories with regards to BMI, more women are storing fat around their organs and could be at even greater risk. It also shows us the dramatic rise to the body fat levels of the population and this is still on the rise. Unfortunately, the death stats are even more dramatic. In 2015 Public Health England estimated that obesity is responsible for 30,000 deaths each year. These are direct deaths and the office for national statistics states that when an individual dies of something whereby obesity was possibly the underlying cause, the cause of death is not always listed as obesity. The actual figure for deaths is likely to be substantially higher. Yet with this problem growing and Public Health England suggesting that soon, obesity will pose a greater threat to health than smoking, we do very little about it. Why is it not addressed as urgently as it should be? The country has come to a standstill for Covid-19 because a large percentage of people could die from it. Why is being overfat not percieved in the same way?
Well, there are so many reasons to explain this and probably more than I’m aware of. The first I can think of is financial. The estimated cost to the NHS for treating obesity is 6.1 billion a year. The costs linked to this would inflate total costs dramatically when you consider the other financial implications such as days lost at work etc. There is also a clear and strong correlation between living in a deprived area and obesity. It seems less affluent areas also attract more fast-food restaurants, and they have a habit of opening in close proximity to schools. So potentially, to save the NHS 6.1 billion a year (based on 2015 data) the government would need to look at whether fast food outlets can open in the quantity that they have been doing and if it’s acceptable for them to open where they are potentially affecting the health of young adults. The closure of any stores and new rules governing the marketing, sales and availability of food like this which appears to be strongly linked to the issue would cost an incredible amount in theory and so isn’t something that would be particularly attractive to any party in power. I’m also certain more financial cost would come as I suspect fast food outlets would fight this in court and argue they are not to blame for obesity. They would be correct in this but there is a strong suggestion they do contribute to the issue.
A second reason is that few leaders want to impose such restrictive measures to peoples lives. There are many reasons that someone becomes overfat and the majority link to mental health such as an eating disorder, self-harm, depression, anxiety or even addiction. To tell someone to stop doing something or to suppress their desires is never a viable option as at some stage the individual will return to that way of thinking if the underlying issue isn’t addressed. So what would the solution be? Forced activity and rationing? It doesn’t seem to be a great way forward and so the current government and many before them opt to try and educate. You’ll see things like rules on food labels with recommended intakes on them. There was an advert campaign that MR Johnson started about getting active not long after his battle with Covid-19, which he struggled with more than some others because of his body-fat levels. There are nudges to exercise and watch what we eat constantly however, from the fact the numbers are still on the rise, I think we can safely assume the education route isn’t working or at least isn’t backed enough. Part of the failure of educating to make an impact will be down to the suggestions from the NHS, Public Health and the government being incredibly basic in an attempt to suit the needs of the masses. Part will be down to the message being lost in the sea of misinformation we see on social media each day.
I can think of 2 examples of this that happened recently. Not long after the first Covid-19 lockdown, the BBC interviewed a lady who had lost weight in the period. They asked how she had done it. She said she exercised more and didn’t eat carbs. Now this had worked well for her to a point, (her results will be limited as she’s cut a macro nutrient out) but for the time she had been doing it she saw some good results. The issue is that unfortunately she had achieved the results more through luck than by actual design. Why, as a broadcaster, would you ask a non-professional how to achieve something? I wouldn’t expect to be interviewed on the BBC on how to decorate because I did a half decent job decorating my living room. Ask a pro and get a pro answer. Next they’ll have Mr Wicks on screen telling people how to cook a 900 calorie lunch as part of their weight loss journey… Let’s not venture down this route right now as I can go on about that guy for hours. The reality is that the news has a huge audience and yet the people speaking from its platform aren’t the best people to listen to.
The second example was a claim that diets don’t work. There have been multiple arguments on this lately and the reality is, they don’t. But calorie restriction and learning how to do that through adjustments to your lifestyle does work. It’s maintainable. Extreme dieting which is what most of the population engage in at some point is a real waste of your time and energy, however until people accept that diet is not what you eat between certain points in time but what you eat and drink at any point in your life, ‘diets’ as we view them now, do not work. Now this post I saw stated that diets don’t work as the country was previously in the 1940’s the country’s population was in ‘the best shape it’s been in’, yet no one was doing Keto, Atkins or Paleo etc back then and certainly weren’t tracking calories on their mobiles or watches. This is true. But also, there was a big war at the time and people were living on rations meaning they were on calorie controlled diets essentially. The misinformation out there has been mentioned by myself so man times before, but it persists and therefore so will I. Be careful who you listen to and what you learn from. That journalist writing an article about how 3 cups of strong black coffee a day reduces your risk of dementia and increases metabolism, they’re a journalist, they are not a dietary, exercise or medical professional and have not critiqued whatever study they have read very well, if they read it at all. It’s click bait designed to play on your desire to find justification to doing things you like and finding a ‘quick fix’.
Finally, the rising number of overfat people in the population isn’t addressed as urgently as it should be because of our perceptions of health status and fat levels. It is honestly scary to see how many people do not see or think that they are in an overfat condition. Even more scary is how many don’t see it in others either. In 2013 the NHS found that 23% of parents thought their children were of normal weight when they were overweight or even obese. Slowly, the ability to recognise damage we are doing to ourselves is becoming ‘normalised’ and harder to recognise. The reality is that males should be between maybe 10-15% bodyfat, women 18-25% roughly. I have obviously worked in gyms for many years and measured the body fat percentages of hundreds of people. Honestly, the amount of men I have found in the 10-15% is probably about 20 and maybe only 5 women. I have come across people at 35% body fat who I have told they’re at an unhealthy level, they say, “But I’m average“ or “I know this person who is a lot bigger than me”. Well unfortunately as roughly 2 out of 3 over 16’s in the UK are over-fat, average is not a good place to be and as I said before, it’s black and white. You either have a healthy amount of body fat, or you don’t. The issue has become invisible to us though. It has developed and spread so well that people don’t even realise how bad they actually feel. It’s like when your ears pop and you ask how long you’ve been deaf for! We hide the issue, we ask for bigger models in magazines, bigger manikins in stores, bigger seats on planes and we do this arguing that by not allowing it, it shames anyone who is over-fat. Shaming won’t work. That’s clear from multiple studies into fat shaming. Celebrating obesity also isn’t good. We wouldn’t want manikins and models celebrating anorexia as its not something we should encourage others to pursue. But the first step to fixing this issue is to admit that there is one and to understand where it has come from. There is no shame in someone gaining fat, even those that have gained substantial amounts, the same as there’s no shame in suffering with depression. But the society we live in unfortunately isn’t constructed to support these people and encourages us to fall into the same traps. Every single one of us will leave our home to go about our daily routine and will pass multiple pubs and restaurants, we’ll see masses of marketing for fast food chains, we’ll go to the shop to be greeted by sweets at the check out and money saving deals encouraging poor food choices. Even if we didn’t leave home the wonders of TV and social media will show the most unachievably in shape people telling us how easy it is to do 100 burpees on a mountain top in the winter, or more advertising and marketing for fad diets or even junk food and delivery services, and it will defeat more of us everday. So far 2 in every 3 people have fallen to it. There is no escaping the path we are all being led down.
So, what does it mean? How do we fix this? Unfortunately, ‘we’ isn’t really an option. ‘You’ are the one that must do it. You have to adjust and change the mindset. You have to learn how to make changes to your life that will help you improve. It’s not easy when you’re someone that loves carbs and hates exercise. Unfortunately, the nation isn’t behind you. There won’t be legislation banning the advertising or the scams on the internet trying to get you to buy their weight loss products or stopping fast food outlets opening on every street. There won’t be strong developmental training released from the NHS. There won’t be loads of investment directed at promoting real change out there. In an ideal world everyone would get a dietician (not a nutritionist), a personal trainer, and a therapist assigned to them for a couple of years, but it won’t happen. So, it comes down to you and you only. You don’t have to do things alone. You can always work with friends and family to achieve what you want to and to improve your health status. That will be a benefit to you. I can also assure you it’s not as hard as you may think when done correctly. All those super intense workouts online, not necessary. Eating salads and binning bread and chips or anything else you like, not necessary. You can live and enjoy your life while still reducing body fat and making real changes to your health. It is possible. You have to choose to do it. You. No one else. In my opinion it’s important to do it. People are dying and although you may not see the reality of that, it quickly becomes apparent when you’re one of the people that loses someone to obesity related disease.
You do have the time, you do have the strength and the ability, you do have the patience and will have the support if you ask for it. Look at those that are around you and closest to you and ask what happens to them if you have a heart attack or a stroke, or have to live with diabetes or cancer? These are all possible outcomes assosciated with obesity and high bodyfat levels and chances are you don’t want to put your children, partner, parents or siblings through it. Not when with education and some effort you can really make a significant change and improve your life in so many ways. That is how we need to look at things in my opinion. No more, I can’t do it. If you can’t do it for you then do it for those you care for. I will always have a strongly passionate attitude to this as I have suffered loss to obesity. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and I guarantee that the person I lost would have made a change if they had known what was going to happen. Unfortunately, we are a reactive populace. We wait until the conditions are at their worst before we make a change. Let’s not do that, let’s be proactive, embrace the changes and strive to learn more and make this sustainable and I guarantee you will not look back. Just remember it doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to lose everything you enjoy and spend hours exercising. Minimal effort and maximum gain, that’s how I work.
The Covid-19 pandemic really highlighted how severely being overfat can damage your immune function. It is time to react. The drinking, the celebrating, the meals out, the takeaways and holiday blow outs, it all adds up and slowly it is killing you. Let’s react to it as the more people that accept there’s an issue, the more we turn the tides. You don’t have to stop all the above, you just have to learn how to balance it.
Stay safe.
James