Experts calling for Operation Transformation to be taken off the air

People love the idea of losing weight but don't like doing it

Stupid talking about taking the show off air , there's a market for it

It is not fair of someone who can control their weight through simple regular exercise and a simple healthy diet does not do this, and instead puts the costs on the quality of their life, their family, society and the taxpayer.

Now, there can be many reasons why someone can't do this as you outlined. But for others, simple changes can make a huge difference.

Operation Transformation like programmes and content can help but they trigger an obsession with body image in society . I don't think RTE do this intentionally or try to profit from it. They do it from best intentions point of view.

But if you look at social media in general, there is an avalanche of diet/weight/body related issues and this stuff causes huge mental health eating disorder, body dismorohia issues. And disgustingly there are bad actors profitting from this.

"Weight gain is 90pc irreversible for 90pc of people"

Could be influenced by one of the companies developing drugs

I'm always baffled when I hear him on the radio.

As a medical expert, you'd think that he would acknowledge that people sitting in front of tv, taking no exercise and having too many takeaways, is the major cause of obesity in Ireland.

But he never mentions people eating too much. Is this a new tact the authorities are taking? Afraid to blame the victim? Or call them out?

He keeps calling it a disease. And keeps saying its not the overweight person's fault.

I'd say it's more their desperately trying to cut anything they can to cut costs. Their dying to get rid of dancing with the stars too but the viewership remains high so it's got another season. God knows what the "experts" and KT cost them on OT

Never had any time for OT,just not for me.

I did watch it a few times and I felt its no harm educating people about weight loss exercise,lifestyle,calories, etc.

Of course there are exceptions but for the vast majority maintaining a calorie deficit (however you want to do that) will result in weight loss.Its does take a bit of discipline and control but hey,that's life.

Kathyrn Thomas will probably be cancelled in a few years over hosting this show.

Em you’re hardly some genius for telling us what 99% of people already know.

I'm always baffled by O'Shea too. I spent 20 years in Medical Genetics and the number of people presenting with truly genetic causes for their obesity was miniscule. (There are, certainly, multifactorial causes of obesity where a person's genetic makeup contributes to the propensity to obesity).

If you look at "Reelin' in the years", Irish people were way slimmer. It seems reasonable to say that cheap, fatty, sugary, processed foods which are literally everywhere and less movement has made people heavier.

I actually liked operation transformation when Eva was the doctor. We need straight talking Finns and fewer american style touchy feely crap. Tell it like it is. In one EU country I lived in, if your kid was too fat at school, they were sent to a special school during the summer to learn about healthy food/cooking/exercise and basically made lose weight. We'd have a national outcry here if that happened, and yet if parents won't take responsibility who will???

Lets promote been a fast lazy slob eating crap food. I've never seen someone become obese on a proper diet and regular exercise.

Looks like OT was eating into the RTE budget.

It started out good but all the hard luck stories and telling them they were great because they lot 2 lbs was annoying to have to listen to every week.

It sould have been like The Biggest Loser Australia where they were pushed until they nearly passed out.

The fat would fall off them after a few weeks of that.

There is alot to be said for returning Miss World and Miss Universe contests to the screen - kids need role models that they can aspire to, and there is nothing wrong with people admiring beautiful women. Kids spend all their time on social media anyway looking at pics and videos of their fave stars so just put it back on telly for all of us to enjoy

I do actually think there's a lot of truth in it.

I think many people who become obese become obese because they're eating too much and there's no point in lying about that.

However I do believe that once someone is obese that it very much can be a disease, and that it can be almost irreversible and the weight set point can be ridiculously stubborn.

So the message really needs to be to try to avoid getting very overweight or obese in the first place because it might not be as simple as losing weight then, you may never be able get back to a healthy weight again.

I've never been overweight and have always been on the lower end of a healthy low BMI with a ridiculously rigid weight set point. I would drop to underweight sometimes when stressed but then bounce back to my same set point, and I would eat a high calorie diet and never gain.

The only time I gained was when my cortisol was out of control. I was at the higher end of a healthy BMI but by that point I was eating very very little, tiny snacks here and there because I felt like no matter what I was eating my body was suffering from inflammation. I'd been on all sorts of healthy diets to try to sort out the issue (I had previously eaten whatever I wanted) and nothing worked so I lost my love of food because everything made me feel ****.

I managed to reverse the inflammation and cortisol in the end with keto, and dirty keto at that, stayed on it for a little while after and was back to my original weight set point and now I can eat what I want again.

I've never been the type to judge obese people but that experience really gave me some proper insight into what it can be like for people who are trying to lose weight, you really can do everything right but if there's something wrong with your body then you can keep gaining.

Yes it's very odd. Obesity is not a disease. You cannot catch it from being in the same room as an obese person. The only reason it was categorised as a disease was to allow doctors and pharmaceutical companies to prescribe tablets to "cure" it, surgery to control it and in the process make billions in profit from this miscategorisation. Same with the BMI, which is totally flawed and inaccurate. Back in the 80s the limits of normal and overweight on the scale were lowered in one day, meaning billions of people went to bed as a normal weight and woke up overweight! Again, to fuel profits as more patients could be officially included as being overweight and have access to a raft of dangerous diet pills and very risky.procedures like bariatrics surgery and tummy tucks.

I'm not surprised OT was cancelled. Focusing solely on one factor, weight, was a reflection of our extreme fat phobia and bias towards obese people fuelled by society in thousands of ways plus social media. There is not one illness which only exists in obese people and tonnes of thin people die of strokes and heart disease each year but that doesn't fit the narrative of thin = healthy fat = unhealthy and the majority of people are brainwashed by the dieting industry but facts are facts and humiliating people week after week after stepping on the scales has a short shelf life. Even when OT pretended they weren't only focused on weight, their daily calorie meal limit was still 1200 to 1400 which is way too low for a significant population.

Yes, the obesity crises can be understood by taking a walk around any supermarket. Most sections are filled with highly processed junk food with only small sections containing non processed food that everyone should be eating. F

It become normalised. People think what's on the supermarket shelves is proper food.

Same way in the US fast food is part of many peoples regular diet

But calling obesity a disease is giving people the excuse they need, it's enabling them. And when you have the country's primary obesity expert coming on the radio and refuses to ever say these people are overeating, you are only confounding the problem.

"I don't eat too much, I have a disease".

I know several people who are very overweight, and eat all the wrong types of food. Some are back and forth to the medical people, trying to get themselves diagnosed with underactive thyroids and the like. I often wonder are the GPs honest with them in the meetings, telling them they are simply eating too much, or are they so PC now they don't want to offend them? These same people could eat takeaways 4 or 5 nights a week. Yet its not the food, it's something else causing them to put on weight.

I think O'Shea and others are failing these people. Lying to them isn't helping anybody. You would have to wonder what the nations waistlines are going to be like in 50 years time.

What if the food we are eating includes a certain additive that creates an addiction?

When you eat any processed food, you would struggle to understand the ingredients list and we are now looking seeing ultra processed foods becoming the norm. Does you think that the food production industry is beyond adding a tincture of some magic dust that makes a small percentage of the consumers addicted? I doubt any of us would volunteer to drink arsenic, but yet we are if we drink tea. For example https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25526572/ says exposure of adults was estimated in relation to the Benchmark Dose Lower Confidence Limit (BMDL05) as set by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) that resulted in a 0.5% increase in lung cancer (3.0 μg/kg body weight (b.w.) per day) and that's before we get to the tea bags https://www.publichealth.com.ng/which-tea-bags-contain-plastic/ .

The reality is we have no clue what we are eating anymore and the ingredients list does not have to declare a full list as items under a low percentage are often ignored….. I think we are in the middle of a chemical war with the food industry using chemicals to help sell their products and the health pharma industry pushing their solutions. I don't have any proof, but just look at all the issues that are around today compared to 50/60 years ago.

I think the medical profession are now starting to see the obesity issue as no longer a lifestyle choice issue and treating it as an addiction. Look at how the smoking industry promoted their product for decades and denied any addictive issues along with links to cancer.

All of this is just my opinion and not proven, its OK to have a different opinion.

@Wanderer2010

Yes it's very odd. Obesity is not a disease. You cannot catch it from being in the same room as an obese person

There's loads of diseases that you can't catch from being in the same room as someone!

The only reason it was categorised as a disease was to allow doctors and pharmaceutical companies to prescribe tablets to "cure" it, surgery to control it and in the process make billions in profit from this miscategorisation.

They're not actually miscategorised. You just don't seem to know what diseases are. Lots of diseases are preventable and reversible (in some at least). Lots of heart disease can be reversible with lifestyle changes etc.