Half of women in the UK 'would consider plastic surgery' - research, conducted by BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat and 1extra's TXU

Half of women 'would consider plastic surgery'

Extract:

"The spokeswoman revealed that around 1.1 million people in the UK suffer from eating disorders.

The survey of 25,000 women, mostly aged between 17 and 34, also showed that two thirds of size 14 women consider themselves overweight and more than ten per cent claim to hate their appearance. "

This is such a pity and so unnecessary. Overweight is caused by fluid retention and all that is normally necessary to lose excess weight is to eat less salt, i.e. to reduce one's sodium intake, and to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Conventional advice about eating less and increasing exercise and reducing fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7423/1085 for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1515455,00.html for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

Contributing to the increase in obesity we have the widespread prescribing of steroids and HRT and other drugs which cause weight gain, and the failure of doctors to adhere to the protocols connected with the prescribing and monitoring of steroids. But pre-eminent, in my opinion, is the catastrophically damaging calorie-reduction advice that continues to be given despite such a wealth of evidence that it is bad advice.