The presenter, apart from being pretty, certainly doesn't look like the image often portrayed in the media as the typical obese (in his case right on the border of obese) person. He's the same height and BMI as me at the moment. I like that he was the 'face of obesity' for this programme. The more and more I think about how I look and how people I see e.g. at work look, obese / very overweight can very often look "normal". A lot of people can carry weight well, and you have to study them from the side / especially when sitting down to see the problem - all that visceral fat.
I've had two doctors now, knowing I am Type 2, tell me that I don't need to lose weight. They hadn't weighed me, they just went off how I look from the front, and, presumably, their own body image prejudice which is hard to forgive in a doctor, and quite probably delayed my initial diagnosis by 3 months - I ended up diagnosing myself.
I used to genuinely believe people at work were being polite when they said I was looking 'trim' last year. Very recently, someone said I can't afford to lose any more weight. I had to turn to the side, relax my stomach as much as possible and squeeze it with my hands to convince them I still have a ton of fat I can use up.
Crikey, when I sit down I can feel my man-boobs resting on my big barrel of fat that is my stomach. And I know from my weight 20 years ago when I was very fit that I am carrying several stone of fat I don't need - it's certainly not muscle!
Anyway apart from all the science stuff the prettiness and body shape of the presenter may help people to realise that 'weight issues' are normal in our society, it's easy for it to creep on without us realising, it can affect us all. I certainly wish I'd heard of the piece-of-string test earlier and was aware of just how unhealthy visceral fat can be. That's not to say that I would definitely have taken action years ago and managed to avoid T2 - given the genetic elements at play it can be impossible to avoid. It's a battle that's worth fighting however and the best time to start is long before diagnosis.
I think a lot of people watching this program who will otherwise have thought they were not on track for obesity-related health issues will probably think twice, and it could come down as much to the way the presenter looked as any of the things discussed in the show.