Do you remember the Roly Polys? They were Les Dawson's dance group. Most of them were overweight, one certainly obese, but they danced really well. Overweight maybe, but fit, supple and energetic.

Research has shown that obesity doesn't necessarily make you ill. Just measuring your BMI is not going to tell you whether your weight is a health risk. So concludes research by obesity expert Dr Aryan Sharma of Canada. He has now developed a scale of risk, from stage 0 where the risk is low to stage 4 where surgical interventions might be needed.

So what is the difference between healthy obese people (stages 0 and 1) and obese with health risks or damage (stages 3 and 4)? He found 3 key differences. People at stages 0 and 1 had (1) better cardiovascular strength, (2) ate more fruit and vegetables and (3) they had no history of weight cycling. So what does that mean?

Cardiovascular strength comes from physical activity. Dancing like the Roly Polys, walking to the shops, gardening, standing rather than sitting. Weight cycling is where your weight goes up and down, usually through intentional weight loss (dieting). People at stages 0 and 1 were not seeking intentional weight loss. However, those at higher stages were found to have had many episodes of weight loss and regain. They were on diets, losing weight, only to put it all back on again. This is also known as yo-yo dieting. Dieting has been shown to cause weight increase. (There are other ways of managing your weight, which may surprise you.)

So those people who were at health risk as a result of their obesity were inactive, going on and off diets and not eating fruit and veg (and this begs the question, what were they eating instead? It tends to suggest little cooking since cooking uses veg, which might make you think it might be snack foods, but that is just a supposition.)

So, if you are obese, you don't need to lose weight to reduce your health risk. Eat a greater proportion of your daily food as fruit and veg, get up and about a bit more and don't diet. Come and see me abo

I have blogged about this before. There is now a lot of evidence that shows
that dieters are prone to future weight gain. A study by researchers at the University of Helsinki, published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, supports this and also provides evidence that the waist busting effects of dieting are not related to any genetic factors.

There is lots of pressure to be thin. Models are still abnormally skinny (less than 5% of women could achieve such bodies) and not only that, they are airbrushed to look even more unnaturally svelte. So we see before us every day lots of little hints that our bodies are not up to standard.

So there is pressure to diet. But all the research says that dieting makes you fat. So losing weight just to be more socially acceptable might make matters worse. The less you feel able to achieve the unachievable, the more likely you are to hit the Bounty bar (28g, 135 calories and gone in a trice).
If you are attempting to lose weight by dieting then be warned that you may in fact be increasing your long term risk of becoming (more) overweight or even obese.

But there is another way. For most of us, we have developed bad habits, such as nibbling on crisps in front of the telly, buying a bucket of popcorn at the cinema, eating peanuts with our drinks, drinking lots of alcohol, getting hungry and work and shovelling in a mars bar on the way home, eating till we are fit to burst..... need I go on? Many of us have done or are doing all or some of these. Me too, I am just as affected by advertising as the rest of us. So, dealing with these bad habits will at least allow us to feel in control of our eating, and as a result, this will protect us from the risks of dieting.

Come and see me and give it a try.