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IRELAND HAS AN obesity bomb – and it has already exploded, an expert on the issue has said.
Professor Donal O’Shea will feature in The Obesity Clinic, a two-part observational documentary which goes out on RTÉ One at 9.35pm tonight. He is the founder of Ireland’s first public weight management clinic in St Columcille’s Hospital, Dublin, and eight of his patients feature in the programme.
Speaking in advance of its screening, he said:
I am sick of hearing about the problem being a ticking time bomb. The bomb has exploded and we are working at the bomb site.
In an interview with TheJournal.ie, O’Shea said that “people keep saying if we don’t act we’re going to have a big problem with obesity – and that’s why we have 900,000 people in the country obese and another 1 million plus overweight.”
He said the medical industry is dealing with “the cancer, the Type 2 diabetes, the depression, the psoriasis” that results from this obesity.
(RTÉ/YouTube)
Awareness
Are people aware of the scale of the obesity problem?
I think people are aware but at a level, but they don’t apply it to themselves. Overweight begins for the average woman at about 10st 4 and the average man at about 12.5 – 13 stone, and most people who are that weight aren’t watching it.
Prof O’Shea said he hopes the programme shows the importance of prevention. “It’s so easy to stop weight going on – stepping on the scales once a fortnight and making sure you watch what you eat. It is so difficult to lose it.”
“We have a cohort of 3 year olds and 25 of them are either overweight or obese,” said O’Shea, explaining that 82 per cent of these children will carry obesity into adulthood. To O’Shea, we are simply not doing enough in Ireland to tackle this issue. One in four adults in Ireland is obese.
He says that education is one part of it, but the “motivation bit – that is the bit that we haven’t quite cracked”. He hopes that asking eight patients to get involved with the show will demonstrate for people “how awful it is at the extreme end of the problem and people will do something to actively manage their own weight”.
“If people see how easy it is to happen and how hard it is to lose it they might be more active in preventing it. That is my hope,” he said.
My fear is that people will love the programme and just see the extreme end and think it is not relevant to them.
There are numerous reasons for the obesity epidemic, such as the rapid change in environment, decrease in physical activity, and consumption of convenience food and sugar-sweetened drinks.
People tend to blame obese people for their obesity, said Prof O’Shea. This can make them feel guilty and stigmatised, which impacts their weight loss.
People have great sympathy for the battle with cancer, or the battle with heart disease, but they have no sympathy for the battle with obesity. They are caused by the same things – genes and environment.
Advice
Prof O’Shea said that he would advise people:
For adults it’s really important to know your weight, and track your weight a couple of times a month to make sure it’s not going up. Every parent should find out what their kid’s weight is and find out if it’s right for their age and height. If we could solve the kids [obesity problem] we really would be on the way.
He added that children don’t have to lose weight – they can stay the same weight and grow into it as they age. The same is not true for adults.
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All down to little or no exercise and crap diet, kids play with iPads not with other kids
Kids only know what they’re thought.
Parents of lifestyle-related obese children should have their children removed from their care. Expense of eating healthy, or children who don’t like the outdoors are not valid excuses, people need to stop seeing children as a right of passage in life and more as the responsibility they actually are. Take the iPad of them, put them outside with a bicycle or a football, or a couple of marbles, and lick the door for an hour. Silly excuse for having unfit, unhealthy, obese children.
Why yes, the last time I licked the door for an hour my overweight children lost 3 kgs!
Summed it up today when I saw someone park their car on double yellow lines with hazards flashing, right outside the entrance to a shop, rather than park legally (and free) no more than 10 metres away. Pure bone idle laziness.
At the end of the day it’s up to the parents to keep ctrack off their children’s weight.If they don’t take an active role in managing a child’s weight who else will??The problem is it would also involve the parents themselves maintaining a healthy diet and exercise program and unfortunately most simply aren’t bothered.
Genuine question. What is it okay to tell someone they don’t look well, their Hair is a mess etc BUT it is not acceptable to tell people they need to lose weight?
Current social norms
Hello Diabetes explosion, how are ya?!
A claim that 10st 4 is overweight for a woman is unhelpful at best and at worst very damaging to women with body image issues.
He qualified the statement by pointing out that this is above the normal weight for the average Irish woman, not all. Thank you for your concern for the delicate flowers that constitute half the Irish population but, given the negative imagery that women are bombarded with daily in ‘lifestyle’ hows and magazines, I hardly think it’s fair to call out a clinician for stating the obvious.
Anyway, there is a real problem where people who do need to drop a few kilos are discouraged from doing so by their friends or colleagues, ‘Sure why?! You’re grand!’. I’ve come across this myself recently when I said I wanted to get weight off. I’m not doing this for cosmetic reasons or because I feel pressured or have a negative body image or any of that rubbish. I’m doing it because I know I’m a good ten kilos over my normal weight because of months of bad food and sedentary lifestyle. I’m doing it because I feel better and less tired, my skin improves ( I have eczema) and I like playing sport and going for a run without keeling over. Spare me the ‘How up setting for women to have to hear this’ crap. Your statement just seems to assume some kind of indivisible link between a woman’s weight and her sense of self worth and that’s fairly insulting.
Sorry, that was a bit sharp. Know you don’t mean it to be insulting but it still sort of is.
you’re fine don’t worry. Everyone is different. Just commenting from experience.
Great comment Sarah. People need to be aware of and take responsibility for what they eat and their weight, whether they are over or under it. Unfortunately its actually not any easy job, with the constant adverts, lovely lovely sweets at every till, crap but tasty fast food, shitty ready meals etc etc.
Also, something worth noting is the fact that Binge drinking is seen as a perfectly normal activity (and a lot of the times encouraged) here in Ireland. That’s likely to be a factor….
200 calories a pint X 6 + Chips/Burger that night (1000) + Fry (1000) the next morning + more hangover consoling comfort junk food (1000) = More than the energy required to run a marathon.
Of course regular binge bringing brings a heap of its own problems too.
James, I have to ask three things
1) How many children do you have?
2) What is your basis for your staunch dogmatic views on parenting?
3) What do you propose to do with the countless children in Ireland who are (in your opinion) in the care of totally unfit and neglectful parents?
that’s why Wii are better for kids then ps3,be nice to be able to hand your son a football and tell him to be home for dinner safe in the knowledge he will return safe and sound after blasting a ball round for hours with the lads but them days are long gone sadly,too many dangers round now
Then make time, go outside and enjoy an hour with your son. Nothing saying you’re too old to go out and kick a football around!
What dangers are there now that wasn’t there 30 years ago. I don’t understand that. The streets were safer only because there was more kids out playing.
What danger?
Lots of studies show dangers have not increased but fear of dangers have.
Still more dangerous to drive kids to school than let them walk on their own
Mick Lennon, the streets are no more dangerous now then they were in the 1970′s.
Stats in the uk shows that the same amount of kids went missing in the 70′s as they do now, yet the all time fear of kids going missing or being murdered etc etc is at a all time high!
This is all thanks to the 24/7/365 lets report it till your mind bleeds media we have in this day and age
My kids spend pretty much every dry day out on the street playing Mick. It’s a battle to get them to come in.
There are no more dangers today than when I was growing up.
rubbish,how can you compare the 70′s danger to today,theres ten times as much traffic,murders every day,more knives,more drugs,thankfully child abductions are rare if any in Ireland but so was murder once upon a time,perhaps as a first time parent im a bit overly paranoid but I don’t believe it’s safe to let kids wander off for the day carefree as much as it would have been in the good old days
@mick – you are being a bit paranoid. As has been stated, Statistically we’re safer today than your beloved childhood. It’s more to do with the 24 hour instant news cycle which makes the world seem like more incidents are happening.
Did you know the vendors must pay supermarkets for their product to be displayed at the till, knowing full well their revenue is enhanced by the product being there? The manufacturers and vendors of junk food understand our consumer behaviour inside out and are using it to their own means. Is a disgrace this is tolerated. Where I work there is a vending machine on every level – why? It is too easy to gain weight, but to do so requires a steady input of food. Obese people are trained eaters who are the victims of mass marketing. We need to tackle obesity and the plague of junk food with the same aggression we took against smoking
I see so much of my old self on The Obesity Clinic on RTE – I’ve been lucky & blessed to have the discipline & support to remedy it – these people need help…
@scarr statistics prove nothing,74% of people will tell you that
You’re paranoid. Put on a coat, go outside and throw a ball around with your son and quit blaming your ill health upon something you have control over. People face danger every day of the week, but they put it into perspective. It’s called reasoning. If we didn’t have it we’d just crawl into a corner, rock back and forth, pining for the good old days, when by the way there were other dangers, like cigarette smoke in restaurants or eating meat that you didn’t know if it really was meat, or cars that gave out so much in fumes that they make old age China look positively angelic in terms of their environmental record. There are always dangers, it’s life, get on with it.
If you’re not comfortable sending your child out then go out with them, but don’t wrap them in cotton wool and keep them inside at the detriment of your health and more importantly, theirs. Now, outside! Hop to!
@James fyi im not obese nor terrified to leave my home for fear of being murdered in a random drive by shooting,my lad isnt walking yet,when he is I’ll spend all my free time bringing him out walking,playing footie etc,the point I was trying to make was that when im in work I can’t watch him,I’d love for him to just go out and play and not have to have a care in the world,imo the world we live in is more dangerous,maybe because we’re bombarded with all bad news due to social and digital media it seems more dangerous but Im not going to apologize for worrying about the world my kid is growing up in.
Personally I think the same amount of people are as fat as they were 40/50 years ago, I might be a lil over weight but I can still run on a rugby pitch for 60/80 mins, a lot of things are blamed on fat people, Christ the fat people I know gave low sugar levels and their cholesterol levels are low where as my non smoking non drinking pals are having a lot of health trouble ! It’s a in the genes
# have not gave
Doctor must be Conor OSheas brother? Sane surname and absolutely spitting image. Anyone know for a fact?
Yep they are brothers
Yes he is
These guys are addicted to food like the drug addicts with methadone – stop giving them drugs and they will take responsibility for their own lives. We just had a referendum and yet you see drug addicts in a terrible state at the Irish times building giving kids in buggies beer out of a can and they are so strung out it dosent matter.
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