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April 20, 2020 - 12:19pm
When lockdown began, and the medical authorities started to list the so-called “underlying conditions” that multiply the dangers of Covid-19, there was a terrible moment of panic when I realised I had quite a few of them: asthma, diabetes, obesity — horrible word, but technically, I was — and having previously had a quadruple heart bypass after a heart attack. Come to think of it, it was probably something of a miracle that I was still alive. But with the emergence of this horrible virus, I was galvanised into action.
In the weeks since lockdown I have cut out most of the major carbohydrate groups (except alcohol, obviously) dropped two stone and am no longer technically obese — just merely overweight. And my blood sugars have come right down and stabilized such that I have written to my doctor requesting that I come off all diabetes medication. And I feel great.
Stay at Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives. That’s all well and good. But do those of us who have “underlying conditions” that can be addressed through diet have some sort of moral responsibility to take themselves in hand? Indeed, if we are all about protecting the NHS at this time of national emergency, shouldn’t that also include making an extra effort not to become a casualty oneself. Or this just “fat shaming”?
One of the most difficult things about talking sensibly about body weight is that there are those for whom any mention of dieting requires a forest of trigger warnings. And some people are so tiresomely angry about any and every “micro-aggression” that they spot in even the most innocent of conversations. I am not making jokes about plus-sized people. Indeed, my former psychotherapist, Susie Orbach, wrote the famous “Fat is a Feminist Issue”, so I do have some awareness of the issues here.
But if there is a link between obesity and Covid mortality, as several studies have shown, then the obesity rates within a population will surely have an effect on their overall mortality rates. As a senior scientific advisor to the French government said last week: “That is why we’re worried about our friends in America, where the problem of obesity is well known and where they will probably have the most problems because of obesity.”
Going by my own experience, and with a study group of one, I find that cutting out fat does little to shift my weight. But cutting out sugar, and the carbs that turn to sugar, makes a massive difference. Over the last five weeks, all I have done is do without rice, bread, pasta and potatoes. That’s it. And I am currently losing a pound a day. My diabetes is in retreat. No longer obese. And I am heading towards a healthy body weight.
If I was a conspiracy-theorist I would wonder whether the big pharmaceutical companies would prefer to keep on selling us expensive drugs for diabetes rather than explain to us that a simple change in diet could often replace the need for them. But it couldn’t be that now, could it?
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SubscribeIndeed, if we are all about protecting the NHS at this time of national emergency, shouldn’t that also include making an extra effort not to become a casualty oneself.
Agree, but I would largely argue the same in normal times too. We should orientate our lives to be as little a burden on others, including the state, as possible.
Giles, I am glad that you feel better for having lost the weight and I myself also try to keep as fit as I can, not consciously for the sake of the NHS, but because I want to be able to have the benefits of a longer and healthier life with my young family.
This comment, however, is a very slippery slope. You are in effect claiming to be morally superior to people who are obese. Are you then morally inferior to an athlete as they have a much lower BMI.
Comment such as this feed into the idea that some people are more worth the NHS putting its effort into. Who gets the respirator? The “morally upstanding” fitter candidates.
No objection to the sentiment behind this comment that people should be encouraged and assisted to be as fit as possible but the use of the phrase “moral responsibility” is dangerous.
Peter, I pretty much agree with the sentiment and detail of your article. I consider myself a ‘hard monetarist’ but have conceded that ideology has to take a back seat – for now. I find UBI interesting and would love to see more studies on it. My back-of-the-envelope calculations based on ONS data a couple of years ago tell me that if we add everything the country pays in (a) unemployment benefit, (b) other welfare benefits and (c) pensions and add to that (d) the income tax breaks that all workers receive (ie workers are ‘returned’ £3,000 of the first £12,500 earned), we reach a sum that if divided by all adults would amount to a little over £4,000. My point is that we (or many people) have UBI already; it’s just called something else. And if we had had a mechanism for UBI in place, then today’s much needed ‘helicopter money’ would be easy to deliver. And no more people would be depending on the state than do presently. Cheers…
PS If we added to that the VAT that Amazon and other online retailers and internet don’t pay, by having tax paid at the point of purchase, we could more than double that money.
Someone once suggested that rather than UBI we should have universal basic services (UBS). We have some of those already in education and health but we could extend that. I suppose you could have things like payments towards travel, heating and such like but with low-ish limits imposed. I like the travel one in particular, but we would need better public transport outside the bigger cities. A real plus point as it would reduce the number of cars on the roads!
I did the same thing about three years ago. I thought I was just a product of poor genetics and would be overweight all my life. I cut out sugars, all grains, and potatoes. The weight melted off. I now weigh what I did when I graduated school 45 years ago. Exercise is a horrible way to try and lose weight. Change you diet and you change your life.
I somewhat disagree. To my mind, exercise is an enjoyable but inefficient way to lose weight.
The Low-Carbs-High-Fat brigade would be proud!
You don’t have a primary moral obligation to the NHS but you do have an
obligation to God to treat your body with respect and eat properly.
It’s an important observation, often missed, that the adulation afforded
to the NHS and health professionals is crypto-idolatry.
Congrats on the weight loss, Giles, we don’t want to lose you.
Nice article but there’s something I didn’t understand.
Peter Franklin says that this MMT seeks to address inflation by taxing us in such a way as to control inflation. Then he says that what’s wrong with this fancy theory is that the state no longer relies on it’s people for revenue so we have state over-reach. But it does, doesn’t it? To stop that hyper-inflation?
Or have I missed something?
I really don’t like the idea of magic money trees so I hope someone can explain this to me.
Yeah my understanding is that MMT folk still consider that there has to be taxation/an effect on the amount of money in circulation to prevent excessive inflation. I think there could still be room for some so-called People’s QE on capital investments – in the same way that Labour wanted to create an set-up in which the only borrowing was for investment – whilst making sure the books balance for day-to-day spending. But I don’t think it looks conceivable that taxation could be done away with altogether.
Thank you. So it would seem that the scenario which Peter Franklin is concerned about that the state could do whatever it wanted as it no longer relied on the people is very unlikely to happen unless the state didn’t care about hyperinflation.
To be perverse, I’ve found that a low fat mediterranean- type vegetarian diet, with lots of unrefined- brown- carbohydrates, has allowed me to achieve a healthy weight in my advancing years.
This after a very unhappy adolescence, marked by rapid weight gain.
Ageing does have some advantages.
As a matter of interest, what does it matter that the ash dieback disease started in Asia? Sniping in a serious article seems a bit childish.
it’s a metaphor
Not only are the obese very vulnerable targets for the virus, they entail massive healthcare costs every year for their chronic conditions. They are also tinder for the pandemic fire and hospitals would be much less likely to be overwhelmed if they were not obese with their comorbidities. These are self inflicted conditions and, yes, people have a personal responsibility to be at a reasonable weight.
I somewhat agree with the logic of what you say but would be careful to acknowledge that the obese can also be very vulnerable targets for people seeking easy scapegoats in the face of this virus.
Few people ‘choose’ obesity as a way of life (though, I grant, some crazy branches of ‘progressive’ thinking actively encourage some to follow this disastrous path).
It is a self inflicted condition, in the widest sense, but it is also one which is incredibly difficult to overcome -hence the value of the UK diet industry being some £2 billion each year.
I’ve been discussing just this issue with friends these past few weeks. A couple of comments.
1. Why did we willingly hand China the tools by which to defeat us. In this case I think there is a simple answer: greed. Western companies, egged on by their governments, figured that by producing in China they would save money and thus increase enormously their profits. That in so doing they would lay waste entire areas in their own western countries, and at the same time cease to maintain control over the supply chain for strategic goods–all this interested neither the conglomerates nor apparently their governments.
2. So, hopefully we have understood that we must try to control the supply chain and defend our strategic assets. In other words we should abandon the globalists strategies that have led us to this situation. Why then does the author, in the next to last paragraph, invoke yet more “global consequences” and “global consensus” meant to punish those who violate our cyber or biological safety? Global does not work: each country is responsible for the safety of its citizens and handing over those responsibilities to others, be it the UN or China or the EU, has been, and will continue to be, a fatal mistake.
The thing that has been so hard over the years has been that the gradual addition of weight seems to just be … one of those things that happens to some of us with age. After a years of scepticism of paleo and other low carb diets and trying to be vegan to save the planet my weight and general fitness was getting silly. Some of my congregation were recommended low carb / Keto diets by their doctors so I decided to give it a go in January. Amazing results, less stiffness, weight loss, clarity of thought and loads of energy. But before this turns into a diet room chat the most interesting thing has been about control, about taking action. The great denial about obesity and the enormous cost to us all physically, financially and environmentally has been that we didn’t really have a solution. Dieting has not worked for so many people and it feels wrong to beat ourselves, and others, up about something that just seems to be impossible to do anything about. I would say now with confidence that low carb, and in my case higher fat, is a really workable, enjoyable and creative solution. This of course leads into huge debates about agriculture, land use, ethical farming and regenerative agriculture etc and big devisions in the environmental movement about how to feed the world ethically…. But as Giles has found it us nice to be able to wade into the health debate, as a fellow ex obese statistic, with a creative and rather tasty diet solution. The reality is that we are dying of fatness worldwide and across all social demographics at rates far higher that any recent epidemic. This new way of eating and subsequent reversal and reimagining of our entire food chain may be a solution.
Giles’ recipe for losing weight, and the experiences in the comments, are hardly revelations. Cutting out carbs as thoroughly as he is doing will cut calorie intake very effectively. And weight loss follows.
Obesity is a behavioural issue. Giles is at overwhelming risk of gaining back the two stone lost and more. We live in an obesogenic environment which manages to harness normal human weakness (greed, stress, pleasure seeking) with readily available, cheap calorie-dense foods. Reducing the impact of all of that on our behaviour strikes me as something worth discussing. Can government do it? And combat the notion that we all of us have full power over our behaviour?
I find the often repeated phrase ” protect the NHS”, somewhat irritating.
I understand that as a shorthand for not letting the NHS be overwhelmed due to a new virus, it has its virtues.
But, if one stops and thinks about the matter, the whole point of the NHS is to protect us.
Giles, I find that you are in danger of allowing the present crisis to become a wholesale worship of the NHS. As a Christian I am sure that you know better than me, what happened in a moment of crisis when Moses found that there was a new god – a golden calf!
If you feel that you would live longer by losing weight – just do it.
Forget worrying about the golden calf.
A weight loss of 1lb per day is way too much (unless you are morbidly obese) – and cutting out all carbs is very unhealthy. At some point you will stop wanting to lose weight (when you hit your target) – and then you can watch it pile straight back on again as you relax your unhealthy diet habits. The only way to lose weight healthily, and keep it off, is small permanent changes to your diet that you will maintain for a lifetime. If you want a diabetes busting diet – the 5:2 diet is highly recommended for reversing type 2 diabetes and, more importantly, can be maintained permanently.
A year ago I lost a pound a day for 30 days. A half pound a day for 60 days and 5 pounds in 300 days. Blood pressure dropped from 160/90 to 120/70. I wear slim clothes now.
Everyone is different. I would suspect the initial month includes 15 pounds of water and damaged fat cells.
Most people need no carbs to maintain health. If you have an excess of body fat your body is able to make glucose and ketones out of the fat.
It is probably time to learn some new science and let go of the myths. Spend 10 hours on this website: Diet doctor.com
Unless Mr. Fraser is not eating any vegetables, then it’s not correct to accuse him of eating NO carbs. He’s avoiding hyper-carb foods:
GPS–Grains, Potatoes, Sugar. Other vegetables provide all the carbs you really need, and that is healthy. There are many studies demonstrating that a low-carb diet is healthy, and a very effective way to address diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. Watch the Ted Talk by physician Sarah Hallberg,
Dominic Raab tells us that we cannot go back to Business as usual with China. I agree with this on many fronts:
– opacity over Coronavirus;
– failure to stamp on trade in wildlife;
– the need to pull back from outsourced manufacture (and associated CO2,emissions);
– disdain for human rights (e.g. Uighur re-education camps).
(Of course, such sentiments should not be conflated with xenophobic comments about Chinese people, or UK residents of Chinese origin).
No 10 is also claiming that the coronavirus crisis strengthens the need for UK to be free of EU regulation after 2020, but the desire for separation flies in the face of the stark reality that crises such as pandemics and climate change cannot be solved through greater isolation.
Having said that, and even as someone who campaigned energetically to remain in the EU, the lessons of the Coronavirus pandemic create good arguments for different alliance blocs as well as moving away from our present model of globalisation and long supply chains.
The inevitable move to greater food self-sufficiency (not, I hope, at the expense of the natural environment) and the need for shorter supply chains could work alongside redrawn international alliances on a north-south basis. To some extent they are already there. North and South America have strong cultural and linguistic connections because of the Hispanic populations. They are also joined physically. China, much of the rest of Asia and Australasia are already closely linked for trade and, like it or not, China and India will be wanting Australian coal for a while yet. Russia is firmly entrenched with Syria and to some extent with Iran, and do we really want to keep trying for that impossible peace deal? Europe and Scandinavia are well connected but are dependent on fresh produce and seasonal labour from North Africa. We still have strong links with African members of the Commonwealth.
I’m not suggesting hermetically sealed silos, but future pandemics might be easier to contain, and north south trade is kinder on the environment than shipping goods from anywhere to anywhere, – more so if rail infrastructure were improved. Vertical time differences between Northern and Southern Hemispheres are so small as to be Irrelevant. Dividing the world into north south chunks might also make it easier to resolve the poverty divide as the enlightened self-interest involved would be easier to understand if closer to home. Tourism could mirror such a trend. Personally, I’d much prefer a trip by train and short ferry hop to Morocco than a long haul flight to Bali.
Perhaps this should be the focus of our post-Brexit, post-pandemic trade strategy. The reliance on a UK-US trade deal previously assumed by many pro-Brexit enthusiasts was already running into sand (my farmer neighbours detest the idea). President Trump’s increasing volatility and his moves toward national self-isolation only weaken any remaining arguments for it.
Isn’t China’s economy totally dependent on its exports? War would collapse it completely, it seems to me. Even coronavirus is shrinking it quite fast
I have recently joined a program that teaches you that it’s not just about the weight loss but more about behavior and attitude. This program helps you think differently and exercise more. Again, it’s not all about the weight. It is instead about getting healthy with a healthy mind set.
Congratulations, Mr. Fraser. Your diet strategy makes sense to me. I’ve never been overweight, but apparently due to genetics, my lipid numbers (cholesterols, triglycerides, etc.) have in recent years been ominous. To avoid taking statins which wrecked my parents’ healths, I like you am foregoing high-carb foods (and I even gave up alcohol!). I’ve significantly lowered my LDL and triglycerides and raised my HDL. With some luck, I will dodge both bullets, coronary artery disease and pharmaceutical poisoning. Regarding the blame/shame issues around Covid susceptibility, there’s an anthropological argument that evolution of human metabolisms has not kept pace with the history of moving from hunting/gathering to agriculture (with its consequential shift to carb-heavy diets). If that’s true, rather than blame our lack of gumption or our parents’ genes, we can blame history and culture.
This piece is unbelievably irresponsible and unchristian. To suggest that obesity is a moral choice is absurd and frankly nasty. How do you explain the fact that obesity is a greater problem for thos on lower incomes? Do they choose that, and you now want to blame them for their condition too? As for the last paragraph on the pharma industry, I don’t know where to begin. I suppose you also believe that they’ve discovered a cure for cancer but are hiding it in order to continue to profit from selling their drugs?
Since lockdown began, I have fast-walked a half-marathon every other day. It now takes me 2 hours 45 minutes. I am beginning to feel ferociously fit, and would be quite happy to run the whole way, were it not for my badly ruptured Achilles. Nevertheless, I cannot seem to shift my half stone of overweight: at 5’11” I remain resolutely stuck on 13 stone 4lbs.
I rather disapprove of “diets,” because they are unnatural behaviour that you will only be able to keep up for a while .. perhaps until you reach your target weight. Then you stop. Then you start to put weight back on. Then you end up where you were before. I have friends who have literally lost cwt in weight over their lifetime, by lurching from one extreme to the other.
No, if you weigh more than you want to, you need to make a *permanent* adjustment of some sort. It could be more exercise but I recommend you take what ever you like eating that is bad for you, and stop eating it. Cake, biscuits, sugar in drinks, beer (worked for me!), deep fried food, fast food, just pick something. See what that does, and if it isn’t enough pick something else until your weight starts to reduce. Once you are at your target weight eat whatever it was once a week as a treat .. but it must be a permanent change.
Some people were more fortunate with their metabolism. I can not boast of this, because I try to eat properly and balanced to maintain shape. I adhere to the Cinderella solution nutrition program, I am very impressed with its approach, you can read more about it here https://ahealthyjuicer.com/…. And of course I try to move as much as possible, and do not forget about the water balance, which is very important.
Surely our beloved Prime Minister, a veritable ‘Billy Bunter’ of a man’, standing 5’9″ and weighing in at 16stone 8 ozs is clinically obese and therefore a prime target for Chinese Death Flu?
How noble of him to stay at his post, until he was, all too predictably struck down. Pericles would have been proud of him, as we should be!