The Department of Health has a Draft Paper: Losing Weight – Feeling Great! (I believe the advice it gives is WRONG!! - What do you think?)

The Department of Health has a Draft Paper online entitled
Losing Weight – Feeling Great!
and dated 29 November 2005. This is the link: here

Here is some of its content, in italics:

In the U.K. almost two thirds of adults are now overweight. One child in every three has an unhealthy weight too.

WHY HAVE I GAINED WEIGHT?

It’s all about calories. Calories (you will see kcals on packets) are a measure of energy. (You may sometimes see the metric measure on packs – joules or kilojoules.)....
Your weight remains the same if you take in roughly the same amount of energy (calories) through food and drink, as the amount of energy (calories) your body burns up through physical activity.

Your weight will go up if you take in consistently more energy (calories) from food and drink, than your body burns up through physical activity.
Your weight will go down if you take in consistently less energy (calories) from food and drink, than your body burns up through physical activity.

But it is not true that gaining weight is all about calories. There is absolutely no evidence to support this statement. We all know slim people who eat huge amounts of calories and do not take much exercise and do not gain weight at all. - They eat far more calories than their bodies burn up through physical activity. - But they do not gain weight. - The Calorie Myth is unsupported by evidence and is not the true explanation for obesity.

Here is some more of the document's content:

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT

To lose weight you need to take in less energy from food and drink than the amount of energy your body uses up. Although this may sound simple, actually doing it day in, day out, over a period of weeks or months, requires real determination and commitment...
...to lose weight, healthy eating is rarely enough. As a guideline an average man requires 2500kcals and average woman requires 2000kcals.You will need to make sure you really are reducing your total energy (calorie) intake. Eating 500 to 600 calories less each day, than your body needs, is realistic. That way you eat enough to be properly nourished and you won’t feel too hungry. It gives you a steady and safe weight loss of about 1lb a week.

This also is untrue. Following the calorie reduction advice given will cause hunger and tiredness and it will be difficult to keep to the advice. And it is very, very unlikely to result in weight loss. - The advice is not supported by evidence. The 1lb a week weight loss claimed for the advice is a calculation based on arithmetic, calculating so many calories to the pound weight; it is not based on actually trying out the advice on real people. - If you want the FACTS about the causes of obesity and the safest way to reduce excess weight: (Eat less salt/sodium) , see http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ - It is easy for most obese people to lose weight safely and rapidly - up to a stone (14 pounds) in the first month alone - by seriously and strictly eating less salt/sodium and eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. One woman following my advice lost 5 stones (70 pounds) in a year without hunger and without restricting calories at all!

Here is an extract from http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html

"Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7423/1085 for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,11381,1515455,00.html for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

Contributing to the increase in obesity we have the widespread prescribing of steroids and HRT and other drugs which cause weight gain, and the failure of doctors to adhere to the protocols connected with the prescribing and monitoring of steroids. But pre-eminent, in my opinion, is the catastrophically damaging calorie-reduction advice that continues to be given despite such a wealth of evidence that it is bad advice.

Another possible factor is the increase in the amount of oestrogen in the water table."

The Department of Health's Draft paper makes no mention of salt or sodium! And yet salt sensitivity is overwhelmingly the main cause of obesity, and reducing salt intake is overwhelmingly the easiest, safest, speediest and most reliable way to lose excess weight. Nor does the Draft paper make any mention of the huge role of prescribed medications in causing salt sensitivity! And there is no mention at all in the Draft paper of fluid retention, yet fluid retention is a major component of obesity!

And how can the Department of Health be so completely unaware that calorie reduction such as they recommend for reducing weight is actually well recognised as being a major cause of weight gain? And how can they be suggesting that surgery, with all its attendant risks and costs, may be appropriate as a means of losing weight? I consider this highly irresponsible.

This Alice in Wonderland approach to weight reduction, whereby the advice given to reduce weight is actually highly likely to result in weight gain, should be abandoned forthwith, along with all the research aimed at finding ways to get obese people to limit their calorie intake and thus harm themselves further. - I include here the dangerous intention to prescribe so-called anti-obesity pills to people already damaged enough.

Give people the correct information about obesity and the salt connection and they will lose weight fast - just like magic - rapidly and easily.