With headlines like this:
and this
dominating our headlines in the past few days, I really felt the need to write my reaction down, rather than just keep shouting at the TV and annoying everyone around me!
As a society our attitude towards health is all wrong. And I am saying HEALTH here and not WEIGHT. If Boris wants us all to stop being such a burden on the NHS then we need to shift the focus from ‘losing 5 lbs’ to how we can all be healthy through eating sensibly and in a balanced way and most importantly exercising more.
I keep seeing crash diets being pushed and the general public being blamed once again for the ‘pressure’ that our extra lbs are putting on the NHS. The number of fasting ads I’m seeing pushed at me on tiktok, weight loss app adverts on TV and headlines like the above is quite honestly ridiculous. And ALL of them seem to be targeted predominately at women. Is male weight not a problem then?! I’ll leave that with you to consider….
There was a global pandemic the likes that none of us have seen before, people were losing jobs left right and centre (and still are) and every news story was doomsday. So excuse me if I had an extra bar of chocolate!
We were also forced to not go to our local gym and stay indoors as much as possible. Of course we were going to move less and naturally put on a few lbs.
I watched a segment on This Morning today of Dr. Michael Mosley talking about loosing 1 stone in 21 days. Just think about that. 1 stone in 21 days. How can people not see that this is dangerous and unrealistic? In order to do this you apparently have to eat 800 cals a day. How is this a normal thing to push on TV? You know why you are loosing weight so quickly? Because you are literally starving yourself. Just think about that, this is honestly a recommendation from a Doctor to starve yourself. It’s dangerous and irresponsible. And it’s not sustainable, people will absolutely give up because 800 calories a day is nothing and then they’ll feel even more of a ‘failure’ then they did before. (By the way, this segment was then followed by how to make the ‘Best Ever Brownies’. Want to make people feel even more guilty?)
Don’t get me wrong, we do have a health crisis in this country, I’m not blind to that. There are too many people who are too unhealthy and eat too much rubbish. And statistics prove that. But the way to tackle that is to tell people all the things they CAN eat rather than starve themselves and tell them all the things they CAN’T eat. And while we’re at it, can we just shift our health focus from constantly being about food and instead talk about how good exercising is for not only our bodies but also our mental health!
Sure, some people are severely overweight, and losing lbs would help them to be healthier and happier (not because of how their body LOOKS but as result of how being healthy makes you FEEL). But I also know a lot of people who are slim and have the outward ‘appearance’ of health, yet all they eat is sugar and processed foods (I’m sure we all know people like that.) I truly believe a person who is 20lbs heavier but regularly went for a run and worked out during the week would beat a ‘skinny’ person in a race every time. It’s not as black and white as we are presented.
Put it this way, if everyone ate the exact same diet and did the exact same exercise regimes, we would all still have different bodies.
So can we all give ourselves a bit of a break? Crash diets will not lead to long term health and happiness. And isn’t that ultimately the goal, Boris? So can you stop pushing this line of ‘quick we all need to loose weight immediately!’ and really think about what it takes to get our nation healthy permanently.
Ok, I’ll get off my soap box now. 😜
On Cloud Katy 