Fat's not the way

SHEER fascination made me watch the first episode of ITV's Fat Club. The Tuesday-night show has been a ratings winner and follows the fortunes of a group of people who meet once a month at 'Fat Club' where they are given advice from a psychologist, nutritionist and fitness instructor on how to lose weight.

My interest was alerted on two fronts: firstly, I'd been overweight myself and managed to slim down from 20 to 13 and a half stone through healthy eating and exercise. (I've been a finalist in a national Weight Watchers competition and worked as a fitness instructor too). Secondly, my job involves working with people to help them set goals and realise their dreams.

So I thought Fat Club would be right up my street. But it's not even on the same map.

Obesity is a growing health problem in this country and contributes to 30,000 deaths each year. Research reveals that more than half of all adults in England are overweight or obese: 46 per cent of men and 32 per cent of women are overweight with an additional 17 per cent of men and 21 per cent of women obese.

I suspect most people tuning in to Fat Club will be overweight and looking for sound advice and tips on how to drop some pounds. Well my advice is to switch off. This show will seriously damage your chance to reach that goal.

Fat Club is full of flaws... in fact, it's a blueprint for how not to lose weight.

Bullying and humiliation are two of the methods used to try to get the participants to 'shape up'. And Fat Club is a bad choice of words: nobody seems to have anticipated the self-defeating impact of calling the show Fat Club and making the slimmers wear T-shirts saying Fat Club. It just reinforces the fact they are fat. It's the equivalent of getting a child to wear a dunce's hat. At least the people behind GMTV's slimming show had the sense to give it the optimistic sounding title, Inch-loss Island.

This show isn't serious about helping these people lose weight, or encouraging viewers to do likewise. It's freak TV, and it borrows inappropriately from programmes such as Big Brother and The Weakest Link, where participants are kicked off the show if they 'fail' in some way. People go on Big Brother to become famous, or appear on The Weakest Link to have fun and make some money. In Fat Club, people want help with losing weight. The word 'failure' shouldn't even enter into the vocabulary. But it does, time and time again, as participants who don't lose enough weight are deemed to have 'failed' or be 'failing'.

But the real failing lies with the programme makers who have failed the participants by drawing up a lousy scheme for weight loss.

The first problem is that the slimmers don't seem to have any clear goals. Do we know how much weight each of them wants to lose, and why and by when? In one episode, the entire group was given the target of losing 60lbs between them that month. But you can't set goals for other people, you can only set them for yourself. It's like saying to the Leeds United team they have to cover six miles of the football pitch on Saturday. Well, what's the goalie going to do? So it was no surprise that the Fat Club group didn't reach their target. Where was the motivation?

And this brings me to another point. One bloke lost 12lbs that month, and yet I didn't hear a word of praise for him. Not one person said: "That's fantastic".

People need to surround themselves with support when they take on something like this. I've even bought the Fat Club book and in one chapter, Harvey, the hard-nosed fitness expert, dismisses one participant as "a piece of trash".

The book also denies that Harvey - who trains US marines - is a gimmick. His rule-of-fear approach might be great for a marine who has to go to fight in Afghanistan, but it's not suitable here. And I don't know any fitness instructor that would make a man over 20 stones start jogging or do full press ups.

And what happens to them during the month when they are not at Fat Club? You don't hear much about any network of support to help them stay on track. When the cameras visited one bloke at home he was tucking into a sausage and cheese sandwich.

Support is really important, and that's why slimming clubs are so successful. People have a clear target each week and are surrounded by people who all have the same interests and aims at heart.

You don't have to be a genius to work out how to lose weight. There is a simple equation: you have to balance your calorific intake and your energy output... you can only put so much petrol in a car before it's full.

You have to combine sensible eating with some exercise, but you don't have to join a gym. You can do things like get off the bus one stop earlier, use the stairs at work, cancel the newspaper delivery and walk to the shop instead.

Viewers can judge for themselves whether Fat Club works: most obese people could expect to lose about 2lbs a week by switching to a healthier regime: that's at least 8lbs a month. How many participants have achieved that? Some have even put weight on.

Fat Club purports to be helping people lose weight, but I think it's a massive missed opportunity. I predict the people taking part will have regained the weight they have lost within six months and that it will have put many viewers off even attempting to lose weight.

But actions speak louder than words, and that's why I'm offering Evening Press readers a chance to turn their lives around in a different way.

To achieve permanent weight loss, you have to change your lifestyle... not start eating lettuce. My aim will be to run a series of one-hour sessions over 12 weeks, showing you how to do this.

If you are interested, write with your name, address and daytime telephone number to Clive Gott c/o Maxine Gordon, Evening Press, PO Box 35, 76-86 Walmgate, York, YO1 9YN by Tuesday, February 19, 2002.

Clive Gott writes a monthly motivational column for the Evening Press

Updated: 09:38 Tuesday, February 05, 2002