In 2002, the British politician, Ann Widdecombe, took part in a television show called Celebrity Fit Club. It was a follow up programme to Fat Club, which featured ordinary people, weighing up to 30 stone, prepared to be photographed in swimsuits in a desperate bid to have access to people…

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The other slogan I have lost count of the number of times I have heard is “a calorie is a calorie”. At one level this is meaningless. It’s like saying a car is a car. At any other level it is nonsensical. A calorie is only a calorie under a…

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The notion that overweight people just need to eat less and/or do more is just another way of saying that overweight people are greedy and/or lazy – they eat too much and/or do too little. I do not subscribe to this view. We have assumed one direction of causation and…

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Chapter 4 simply must be read by anyone working in the field of obesity and by anyone who thinks that eating less will make them weigh less. The first experiment to test what happens when people eat less was done in 1917. The definitive experiment was done in 1945 in…

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Part 2 opens with examples of just how widely the calorie formula is used “to lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories”. Government literature, private health company brochures, diet books, internet sites, nutrition manuals – all list this formula as fact (although most get…

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