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Obesity Survey

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What the doctor should say is "It is unlikely you will loose your weight for good without surgery, but eating less, eating better, and getting more exercize will improve your health.
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I realise it is only a tiny percentage but there are members of this forum who have lost ,and kept off their weight for years.
 
sugarless sue said:
I realise it is only a tiny percentage but there are members of this forum who have lost ,and kept off their weight for years.
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Hi Sue
Indeed, 5% will have kept their weight off after 10 years, so you'll always find some people doing well on diets.

For me personally, these odds are too long. that means that if I continue to diet I'm 95% likely to be the same weight or more when I'm 51 (if i live that long)
 
My incentive ,Fizzwizz is to lower my blood sugars,for the first time in fifty years I am successfully losing weight and keeping it off.For the second time I have found a successful way to lose weight but this time the incentive to keep the weight down will win out.
 
sugarless sue said:
My incentive ,Fizzwizz is to lower my blood sugars,for the first time in fifty years I am successfully losing weight and keeping it off.For the second time I have found a successful way to lose weight but this time the incentive to keep the weight down will win out.
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I sincerely hope you are one of the 5%

I must point out too that I'm not anti-diet, especially when you need to lower your BM, I just feel people shouldn't be sold false hope about solving their obesity. There is a lot of false hope in the world of obesity!

... Fizz
 
There is a lot of false hope in the world of obesity!
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Indeed there is.It is a multi-million pound industry as well.However telling someone that they may never lose the weight ,I think ,is counter-productive to them even trying.Surely everyone deserves hope?
 
NICE have determined the NHS can provide a bariatric service for 10 in 100,000 population within 5 years. England is currently funding 3 in 100,000, Wales is 1 in 100,000.
 
I can't believe that the doctors should be "selling" surgery to obese patients! We haven't evolved so much that all of a sudden we become obese if we were eating the correct diet. It has all started really since food is readily available, without effort and also nutritionally bad foods have increased. So obesity is to do with modern culture and change of foods we consume. So saying obesity cannot be tackled by diet and exercise only basically defies this. It also could be interpreted that individuals do not have the willpower to maintain suitable lifestyle and diet to lose weight and maintain the loss. Metabolic problems, insulin or leptin resistance etc don't frequently just begin, surely they are often side effects of long term weight problem or a nutritionally deficient diet like the common "yellow food diet". :?:
 
sugarless sue said:
There is a lot of false hope in the world of obesity!
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Indeed there is.It is a multi-million pound industry as well.However telling someone that they may never lose the weight ,I think ,is counter-productive to them even trying.Surely everyone deserves hope?
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Sue, without prickling your sensitivities a bit (and I sincerely don't wish to), the price for giving someone false hope is their early death. For every 100 people that get's talked into trying to conquer their obsesity by diet and exercize alone, 95 will die an early death as a result. Those are the cold hard facts. Telling people the facts is not counter productive, it is highly constructive. I understand that i sound like the harbinger of doom, but I'll accept that part if I think I can actually help someone for real.
 
saz1 said:
I can't believe that the doctors should be "selling" surgery to obese patients!
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Doctors are selling it because the NHS isn't funding it appropriately yet. It's a good price though, less than £1,000 per year of extended life.
 
The 1 in 100,000 is 1 in 100,000 of the population, not 1 in 100,000 obese people.

NICE have recommended that the service should treat 10 in 100,000

The NHS have recently added bariatric surgery to its list of funding priorities (in Wales) but wheels turn slow. Some PCTs in England already run a reasonable service, but it's a postcode lottery.

Funding is political, only when the NHS sees that people want the service will they put money behind it.
 
My personal opinion,Fizzwizz is that the NHS is using a quick fix instead of spending the money on more dieticians and resources to actually help people to manage their own weight lose.There are always going to be those who choose not to lose weight and continue to basically eat themselves to death,unfortunately that is their choice in the matter.
Conversely there are those who,given a bit of support,and re-education may lose the weight themselves without recourse to invasive surgery.Surely there should be the resources available for those that want to choose without been told that there is only one choice...ie surgery.
 
Sue, this is just my opinion, so don't take too much notice. I believe that Fizzwizz is largely correct in saying that obesity is a behavioural problem, whether or not the cause is physical. I might be taking things a little too far by comparing overeating to alcoholism, yet success rates appear to be rather similar unless serious measures are taken. Only around 5% of alcoholics maintain sobriety using conventional counselling methods such as twelve step programs. I can't help feeling that the same is likely to be true for those who eat more than they need.

My wife certainly thinks so, and she really does try to stay in control.
 
sugarless sue said:
My personal opinion,Fizzwizz is that the NHS is using a quick fix instead of spending the money on more dieticians and resources to actually help people to manage their own weight lose.There are always going to be those who choose not to lose weight and continue to basically eat themselves to death,unfortunately that is their choice in the matter.
Conversely there are those who,given a bit of support,and re-education may lose the weight themselves without recourse to invasive surgery.Surely there should be the resources available for those that want to choose without been told that there is only one choice...ie surgery.
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Dieticians form part of the bariatric service. The problem with this idea is that dieticians have been shown to also have poor results when dealing with obesity.

There is always choice Sue, and bariatric surgery isn't the only choice you can make. But if you are going to make a choice about how to cure your life threatening illness you need to know the facts. I respect anyone's decision to not undertake surgery and pursue other methods provided they know the absolute facts. I wish there was a better alternative than the surgery but there isn't.

In my opinion morbidly obese people who continue to play with diets are playing Russian Roullette. Put simply. There are two choices for morbidly obese people. Diet and exercize, or Surgery. From these two choices you're in greater danger of dying if you are in the Diet and Exercize group.
 
Well, as another 5%er (4 stones lost, eight years ago, weight stable ever since) I still find it hard to accept that an obesity problem with its root cause in the diet cannot also be resolved by diet.

Perhaps diet is the wrong word. With its associations of calorie restriction and inevitable hunger which of course, like gravity, always wins, I think it calls instead for a long overdue rethink about what supposedly is a 'healthy balanced diet'. Who on earth could sustain a low calorie diet indefinitely? Not me.

Since overweight and obesity are now at such unprecedented levels surely we have to accept that the current concept of a healthy diet has been proven wrong? By that I mean 'a diet low in fat and with starchy carbohydrates at every meal'. There is no precedent for this in our evolutionary history so it's hardly surprising that the physiological outcome has been so dramatic.

All the best,

fergus
 
I dont think doctors are selling surgery at all, they actively discourage it in my experience.

I think the way to deal with it is to really support people. I was involved in a project a few years ago with a family of an overwt teenager. Actually being at their house gave me a bigger insight into their life and how they ate. In fact it was a great help and 2 years later he is still 3 stone lighter . I am sure that if they hadnt had the intense input from me he would not have lost all that weight as his initial food diary was ok. What I observed being at home with the family enabled me to help them to make dramtic changes. This was carried out by 12 dietitians across the uk with the same success. if you look at the cost it really isnt that great and I feel we should invest in similar.

There are not enough dietitians to help people and a lack of investment in them for years. The welsh assembly funded a lot of great projects that were working and then pulled the plug last year.

The govt is funding alot of projects still but they are not long term.
 
Thirsty said:
Sue, this is just my opinion, so don't take too much notice. I believe that Fizzwizz is largely correct in saying that obesity is a behavioural problem, whether or not the cause is physical. I might be taking things a little too far by comparing overeating to alcoholism, yet success rates appear to be rather similar unless serious measures are taken. Only around 5% of alcoholics maintain sobriety using conventional counselling methods such as twelve step programs. I can't help feeling that the same is likely to be true for those who eat more than they need.

My wife certainly thinks so, and she really does try to stay in control.
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Actually I agree with you Thirsty.
 
About 2,000 in every 100,000 increasing b 100 in 100,000 yearly.

10 in 100,000 is the number NICE believe the NHS can support within it's service now, however at present there is no infrastructure for a proper service. With proper funding and infrastructure the numbers of surgeries performed can increase dramatically. As it stands, 10 in 100,000 will cope with the present demand
 
With proper funding and infrastructure the numbers of surgeries performed can increase dramatically.
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Forgive my scepticism, but does this mean we can add bariatric surgeons to the list of (refined) food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies who can make a healthy (excuse the irony) profit from obesity?

fergus
 
fergus - u are sceptic !

we need more dietitians and fizz is making very sweeping statements about their outcomes. I am not having 100% success but I would say from my own audit that 70% of pts lose wt and i have an ever increasing no that are keeping it off. We need more dietitians at ground level - not in hospitals as that is the worst place to promote a healthy lifestyle.
 
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