Report on women's health by the Chief Medical Officer

For heavens sake, here we go again.

Eating too much makes people fat. It is that simple. There might be 'many and various' reasons for eating too much but that's another issue.

That would seem to make sense. However, the more obese a person is the less exercise they can actually do.

There must be a tipping-point (no pun intended!) where the good effects of diet and moderate exercise are outweighed by the bad effects of obesity.

My post was in reply to roses, obviously!

I feel so stressed now I must go and have some chocolate.

No, Anya, there are a number of reasons why people get fat and over eating is only one of them.

There are a number of illnesses like polycystic ovarian disease and other metabolic diseases that causes obesity, some drugs cause obesity, certain genetic markers are connected with obesity. There is a host of medical literature examining the causes of obesity and the reason some people both gain weight very easily and find it very difficult to lose it.

We are talking about the population in generl Monica not those few with a diagnosed disorder.

Most fat people eat too much, and by too much I mean too much for their particular metabolism. My daughter suffers from an underactive thyroid which does not respond well to medication, but she is quite slim because she moderates her diet, quite radically.

But in general people are in denial, and we've heard all these reasons before and, to be frank, most of them are excuses trotted out by those who have no medical conditions. The population is getting fatter and fatter, and NOT because they are suddenly all developing some metabolic disorder.

rose

There are also a host of group photographs form a few decades back that reveal that people were thinner then than they are now. Take a look at your school photos if you have them M0nica. In mine there are no girls that are even slightly chubby looking. Not one.

There have always been fat people. Of course there have. I can remember a family living near us when I was a child. They were as poor as church mouse and yet the mother of the family was huge whilst the husband and sons were thin. How did that happen? There could certainly have been no over-eating there.

My dietician friend recommends a tablespoon of oil in your daily diet to help with constipation. You can use it in salad dressing, stir fry, roast veg etc. A hearty bowl of porridge for brekky also helps.

Whoops! Wrong thread......!

That's just it though jingl there was always one fat lady in the village and one fat girl at school (I can even name her 60 years on) now it's everywhere.

I really and truly don't want to hurt people's feelings but if we could solve this epidemic, not only would it help society, and the NHS but these individuals would feel so much better physically and emotionally.

Katy what thread did you think you were on?

Actually Katek a spoonful of healthy oil is apparently a good idea - I read (studied) a nutritionist's guide many years ago and she said she had found that people cut fat out of their diet in an attempt to lose weight; they reached a certain plateau and then stuck. Adding good oil to their diet helped re-start the weight loss and they reached a healthy weight.