How would you feel if your GP kept sending you messages encouraging you to eat less and lose weight?

Instinct tells me that it would be counter productive.

Having had a look at this article is seems that the announcement at the Conservative Party Conference made by Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, may be a bit premature.
Public Health England are at the early stages of assessing if this 'predictive prevention' approach is a viable or useful approach in reducing illness & therefore cost to the health service. There are concerns about data protection etc as well as PHE still looking at the research in how effective this approach might be before it could be officially recommended. Somehow Matt Hancock was reported as already presenting it as a good idea! It would seem that nobody really knows yet!

Thank you M0nica
hope your decorating is going OK and you got a good night's sleep!

Albertina

I sympathise so much with your comments. My granddaughter and her classmates have been told by a teacher that they shouldn’t put on any weight. Then child is 11! Of course she and her friends will put on weight - how else will they grow to be adults. It’s likely that the message has been received ‘out of context’ but it does highlight how easy it is to create anxiety and problems were non existed beforehand. My granddaughter who is tall for age at 5’7” is now absolutely terrified of eating anything and my daughter and the extended family are struggling to help her understand that the teachers remarks are not applicable to children who will continue to grow until maturity.

M0nica The people I was talking about were hotel guests, British, German and Russian. The Egyptian staff were all slim.

PamelaJ1 I agree with you in many ways, however subsidised gym membership would be cheaper for the NHS than the medications and surgery these folk will eventually need.

Its late, I am tired, I have been decorating all evening and I am confusing threads.
PECS www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6246191/GPs-text-patients-urging-change-unhealthy-habits.html

grr, I hate self-posting posts.

The system had been trialed in the north-east. I think Newcastle was specifically mentioned and it said that patients were very enthusiastic.

PECS I googled 'GP Group consultations' and 'group consultations in primary care. I got a lot of press references under the first search and this www.networks.nhs.uk/nhs-networks/releasing-capacity-in-general-practice/documents/2-4-group-consultations-evidence-summary-elc among others on the second search.

I read about it in the i or Observer. Someone else mentioned hearing about it on the other thread I started on peppy little emails from your GP about losing weight or eating better.

Why are GPs having to pussy foot, sylvia? Is it a policy thing?

M0nica I have looked for more info on this idea but google has let me down & not found anything.. do you recall where this idea came from?

If you saw a lot of overweight people in Hurghada, they were probably locals. Egypt has one of the highest obesity rates in the world. stepfeed.com/adult-obesity-in-egypt-is-the-highest-in-the-world-4967

Sounds like an excellant way for the doctor to make the patients depressed.
Then they can issue more medication

I cringe if I am abroad and some family comes towards me scantily dressed and all obese or over weight. I just hope they are not from the UK....but they usually are.

Some of my children are GPs and they say constantly, “ Mum, people come through the door, complaining about their knees, backs, breathlessness but we can’t be blunt” . We have to pussyfoot around them and it is so frustrating “
They are in the condition that they are, because they are obese....
Obesity is caused mainly through over eating. I understand It’s not easy to exercise and keep slimmish and mobile. I know because I struggle myself. However, its costing the NHS a vast amount of money.
And It’s preventable, hard, yes..and difficult, but preventable.

We have recently spent a week away in Hurghada and were dismayed by the huge number of vastly overweight folk sitting around drinking and smoking all day
I had to look up Hurghada
However, may I ask if these were locals, British tourists or other foreign tourists?
We've just spent a week away and I saw very few vastly overweight people and very few who were smoking - in fact I think I only saw one person smoking at our hotel.

Garnet- why should our money pay for free access to gyms?
If overweight people want to go to a gym then they should pay for it themselves. There are plenty of ways of exercising that cost nothing.
Some of my clients have had free gym sessions. They go when it’s free and then stop when it comes to an end. They can afford to come to me, a beauty therapist, and go out for meals so IMO they can afford to pay for a gym.

Jennifereccles It is all very well to say something needs to be done, but if that something will only alienate the people it is sent to what is the point of doing it?

Most people I know who should lose weight or drink less or take more exercise would either ignore these messages or go out and buy themselves some chips because they resent being hectored in the unimaginative didactic manner these types of messages are worded.

How do you help people lose weight? There is no easy answer. The energy in/energy out balance you state is out of date. Modern research has shown that at every level that this simplistic notion is inaccurate. The reasons for over eating - or not -are complex and include psychological factors including depression and a sexual and other abuse in childhood. Some people are on medication for other illnesses and these cause weight gain. Others have illnesses, like polycystic ovary syndrome that can cause weight gain. In recent years research has shown that the way different people metabolise the food they eat varies in efficiency and some people's bodies squeeze every calorie out of every mouthful of food they eat, where in others much of it goes through the digestive system far less efficiently. The causes are various including the individual's genes, the micro biome in their gut and elsewhere in their body and many other reasons.

What would help would be bringing back cookery and nutrition lessons into all schools from nursery up. Serve children well balanced school meals and get them involved on why their school meal met the best nutrition requirements and more than anything teach them to cook, properly, school lessons should be about the pleasure of food, how it is produced, and how it is processed and so on.

For the now-obese, help needs to be tailored to the individual, for some it will be Slimming World or exercise classes on prescription, others will need psychological help, others will benefit from cookery classes with others like them, young mothers, or older people or single people.

Well I think it's an excellent idea. The point is SOMETHING has got to be done about the awful level of obesity in this country. It's a massive drain on the NHS with all the associated diseases being fat can lead to.

It really horrifies me to see just how many very overweight people there are around these days.

To those who object to this proposal I would just like to ask - what would you suggest should happen?

Let's face it, the facts are simple - if we consume more calories in food than we expend in energy by moving we will gain weight.

Therefore, of course the reverse is true.

I have got no time whatsoever for those who claim they can't lose weight.

Maybe GP's should be targetting hospital staff with their nagging messages - last time I was waiting for an out-patient appt. a few weeks back it was all too apparent that many of the uniformed staff were like hippos. And when you see that amongst health "professionals" you just get a wee bit cynical.

Text back “new phone who dis”

Patticake123 Well done to you. I feel that rather than nagging texts from the GP, free or reduced fee access to gyms would be better, At the gym I attend large folk are welcomed and gently encouraged to persevere with exercise and good eating habits. I am not overweight but do have to work quite hard to stay that way. We have recently spent a week away in Hurghada and were dismayed by the huge number of vastly overweight folk sitting around drinking and smoking all day. I would prefer the tax I pay to be spent on education rather than haveing to treat folk with self induced medical problems.

I'd feel a bit peeved as I'm no longer overweight, don't smoke and rarely drink.

Well, I said my GP is obese and I didn't think he had the right. I'm not using him to excuse my own bad habits as I am not overweight.

Is this a Government suggestion or does it emanate from another source?

I am amused at how many on here justify or at least try to minimise their own bad habits because the medics treating them are in a similar position! If they were slim & teetotal people would say " It's OK for them they don't understand how hard it is" ....

I think it is an excellent idea.

I would hate to get that kind of message from my GP; getting them from the hair dresser is bad enough. Fat shaming seems fashionable at the moment. What worries me though are the overweight children I see. Their parents must be feeding them too much of the wrong food: a form of abuse in my opinion.