I didn’t crack my weight problem with a diet – it took a shrink…
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how overeating is an emotional issue, says Kate Spicer
According to the latest mortality data, the UK is top of the global coronavirus death charts; of all the countries we have the greatest excess deaths per capita. In Britain, the virus has directly or indirectly killed 891 people per million.
A third of all our dead were diabetics, mostly type 2 diabetics – the condition linked to obesity. Being obese makes those infected nearly 50 per cent more likely to get a severe life-threatening case.
Could we use the stick of the virus to shift a few pounds and throw in the carrot of “saving the NHS”, too? Being fat is a disaster when it comes to Covid-19, and a suspected cause of the pandemic’s hold in Europe over Asia. A paper published last week asked: “Is diet partly responsible for differences in Covid-19 death rates between and within countries?” An unhealthy lifestyle has always been a form of Russian roulette, Covid-19 just put more bullets in the gun.
Let’s instruct people to get healthy, tell them it is their civic duty to stop eating, drinking, puffing and loafing into an early grave, stop doing things that are bad for you, be they legal or illegal, and protect yourself from the virus and save the NHS. Start taking your health seriously, take personal responsibility for it, and avoid doctors and early death. Something like, say: “Stay healthy, save the NHS.”
Of course, there will be a level of non-compliance. Some people still drink and drive, too, but perhaps it will be much lower than expected given the imminent threat of actual death rather than death being this distant, fuzzy, cross that bridge when we come to it concept.
Now is the time to ask the British people, soberly, at a desk or a podium, to sort their bloody lives out and save both the individual the hassle of being out of shape and the blessed institution that is the NHS.
Our PM, himself no slouch in the fatty leagues, will be aware that tens of thousands of academic studies basically say “eat less; move more”. It’s a simple design for life that is very complex to instil in people’s hearts and minds. On the matter of weight, “We need to be more interventionist,” said
Boris Johnson, and he is not wrong. We might have left the EU, but we are still top of its obesity league.
While I think we need to own our lives more fully, I am not a complete Ayn Rand-style individualist. The Government has its part to play. But can it ever? The very food companies that are killing us, also advise the Government on food policy. Stop eating c---! Think for yourself. Say no to chicken nuggets! Say no to biscuits!
The problem is to be healthconscious and keen on selfimprovement is positioned as some kind of risible, niche, elitist middleclass hobby popular among pious, tiresome people like Gwyneth Paltrow.
I’m a hopelessly PC twit most of the time, a liberal of the most irritating, virtue-signalling kind. But when it comes to weight, I can’t make my heart bleed. Smoking is bad for you, drinking alcohol – and not even very much of it – is bad for you, eating too much – especially junky foods – is also, very bad for you; when you also sit on that fat a--- doing nothing, it’s even worse. What we used to call fat and lazy has a new name now, metabolic syndrome, which study after study links to premature death.
Sean Collins, 49, an illustrator from Co Durham, says: “When they kept mentioning the words ‘underlying health condition’ around the mortality rates I’d think, ‘Oh, I’m fine’. But when I realised obesity was considered an underlying health condition, I thought, hang on, that’s scary. It was a push I needed. I upped the walks, cut out the late-night snacks and swapped complex carbs, in what were already healthy meals, for more veg. No more complicated than that. To date, I’m walking about five miles a day and I’ve lost nearly a stone.
“[Covid] forced me to take a look at myself and confront the fact, I’m overweight. I started doing something about it, I knew it was down to me. It was a process of acceptance and acting on it.”
This is the idea and the ideal. We need to understand the reasons why we eat, drink, do drugs, smoke … partly, it’s the patterns of addiction, it’s an emotional issue, it’s not just about what we eat, it’s why.
When I finally confronted my own fluctuating weight in my 20s, it was not with a diet, it was with a shrink. I ate to smother uncomfortable feelings. For some people, that crazy pattern of sad, lonely eating is never-ending. It is the premature death of them.
Baroness Warsi recently dropped 2st and took up exercise because she felt a sense of responsibility to not just herself but society, too. She said in an interview that her medical student daughter told her: “We all have a responsibility to protect ourselves and the NHS, by making sure we all do all we can to not be too dependent on it.
“The NHS is a gift, but we all need to ask ourselves: ‘Have I done everything I can to not be dependent, to not need this medication?’ ”
‘It is our civic duty to stop eating and drinking our way into an early grave’