MANY PEOPLE who are overweight are in denial about it, believing their weight is normal because what is normal in society now is being overweight, research has found.
Conducted by North-South food safety body Safefood, it established that only 38 per cent of people believe they are overweight when in fact two-thirds of people across the State are carrying excess weight. Furthermore, 57 per cent of those surveyed felt they didn’t need to lose weight.
Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, director of human health and nutrition at Safefood, said this meant a great proportion of the population are in denial, putting themselves at increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.
In an attempt to increase awareness of the problem of overweight people in society and to try to get people to address it Safefood has launched an advertising campaign encouraging individuals to measure their waistlines and “stop the spread”. Having a waist size greater than 32 inches for a woman or 37 inches for a man is a clear indication they are carrying excess weight.
Pharmacies will hand out 250,000 free measuring tapes from next week to assist the campaign. The waist measurement must be taken at the level of the bellybutton.
Prof Donal O’Shea, who runs an obesity clinic at Loughlinstown hospital, Co Dublin, said because we have edged up in weight over the last two decades most people who are overweight think they are just fine because they look “normal”.
He said getting people to focus on the simple measurement of waist circumference was moving the battleground for the fight against obesity into the overweight category. “And that’s really important because you can make a difference much more easily when you’re just overweight,” he said.
If those who were overweight lost six to eight pounds over a year it could take a couple of inches off their waistlines and make a big difference to their health, he added.
A measuring tape, he added, wouldn’t go around patients by the time he sees them in his clinic because they are so obese. There is now a three- to four-year waiting list for assessment at the clinic.
“The waist circumference is better than the BMI [body mass index measurement] within the overweight group because it tells you where the fat is distributed and we know the bad fat is the tummy fat . . . that’s the fat that is now absolutely proven to be associated with diabetes, cancer and heart disease much more so than the hip-distributed fat,” he said.
He added that if a woman is 64.86kg (10st 3lbs) she is likely to be overweight and for a man the equivalent would be 78kg (12st 4lbs). Prof O’Shea said unless the obesity problem, which kills 6,000 people a year, was tackled now we were heading for similar rates to the US, where 75-80 per cent of people are overweight or obese.