Why we have to use the f-word when we talk about our weight

MICHAEL WOLSEY

IT’S not a good season for weight watchers. Maybe you drank a few too many pints over the St Patrick’s weekend and probably you’ll eat too much chocolate over Easter.

Chances are you’ll put on a few pounds, or whatever we measure weight in these days. But here’s the good news, whether you put on kilos or grams, ounces or stones, you won’t get fat.

You may become an individual with a higher weight. But not fat. That word has been more or less banned. Well, less, I suppose. More is also on the dodgy eating list.

But it’s not as bad as fat.

Psychologists won’t use that word at all and publishers have cut it from books by Roald Dahl.

The London-based Centre for Obesity Research want it entirely removed from the lexicon. And I didn’t make up that “individual with a higher weight” phrase. They did.

They have issued a set of guidelines suggesting that as well as banishing the word “fat” we should avoid terms such as an “obese person” and “overweight person” in favour of “person with obesity”, or “person with overweight” or, yes, “an individual with a higher weight” .

“We should stop blaming people for their weight in a society where there is highly accessible cheap and calorific food which our brains are attracted to,” explains Adrian Brown, from the obesity centre.

Because, of course, it is quite impossible to ignore the sweets at the supermarket checkout or to refuse that extra glass of wine. It’s cynical manufacturers and retailers who are to blame.

Not our fault at all, so don’t you be saying it is. Next thing you’ll be claiming we can eat less if we want to.

And don’t be talking about

“fighting obesity” or “the war on obesity”. Phrases like that can “feel like an attack and can lead to frustration ,” says the British Diabetic Association which helped draw up the guidelines. Frustration, it says, “may reduce engagement in health behaviours”. I don’t know what that means but, clearly, it’s not to be encouraged. So I’ll have to watch my language.

Chewing the fat is out, obviously. And that stuff in the fire should now be known as low value edible material with a high empty-calorie content.

A higher-weight chance doesn’t sound quite right. An obesity-related lot of good it will be to unfortunate bingo callers who must now find a new term to go with eightyeight. “Two overweight persons of female gender” is a bit of a mouthful. And mouthfuls should be avoided if you don’t want to get ... well, you know, there’s a word for it.

Fat cats are out too. Although there’s a lot of them about. The Royal Veterinary College has studied a million of them in Ireland and Britain and found that obesity is the second biggest threat to their health. But don’t be saying that to your moggies, now, because, you know, mental health can also be an issue. It’ s concerning, says Adrian Brown, although I think he was talking about overweight people not pudgy pets. Among phrases the obesity centre would like to ban is “pigging out”. That may have been the cause of Daddy Pig’s problems. Mr Brown laments that the cartoon character “often has Peppa pointing at his belly and making comments about his weight”.

Tom Fry, chairman of Britain’s National Obesity Forum, doesn’t approve of pointing or commenting on anyone’s weight. But he thinks these attempts to avoid such words as fat and overweight “beggar belief” and that the guidelines have taken “medical correctness to a ridiculous level”. He’s right. Eating disorders are the cause of serious problems involving weight loss and weight gain. We can’t solve them if we don’t name them in language that everyone can understand.

If we want to beat obesity we have to use the f-word.