UK Council To Send Obese People 'Motivational' Texts Telling Them To Use Stairs

Qedward writes "Stoke-on-Trent City Council is sending texts to obese people in the area to help motivate them to lose weight. Examples of the texts sent include 'aim to eat a variety of fruit and vegetables each day,' 'aim to eat regular meals and keep a check on snacks and drinks' and 'maybe walk to the shops or use the stairs more often.' Over 100,000 people in the region are overweight or obese, the council said, and the texts are for those who are aged at least 18, have a body mass index of 25 or over and who have proactively signed up to receive the motivational messages."

Comments

Misleading headline again.

[sconeu]

But then I read the last line of TFS.

This is OPT-IN. You only get them if you sign up for them.

Of course, at some point, they will tap into NHS (I'm assuming that this is UK), and send to everyone, regardless of whether they had opted-in or not.

BMI

[TranquilVoid]

BMI is designed as a measure of population weight, not individual. Mine is over 30, making me technically obese, yet I have so little body fat I cannot float in swimming pools, and only just in the ocean.

Re:BMI

[AthanasiusKircher]

True. BMI is hardly perfect... but it's a good first step. Kinda like "Did you reboot it?"

Actually, no it's NOT a "good first step." It's a fair to poor "first step." It's more like a troubleshooting procedure that's guaranteed to give bogus results in a significant percentage of cases -- i.e., where it's wrong or off so often that asking the question is almost more likely to lead you down the wrong path for many cases, rather than giving you useful information.

The BMI formula assumes that adiposity relates to height squared. It does not. This is a simple fact. When people get taller, their bodies scale in three dimensions, not two. So, for really tall people, it's guaranteed to say they are more fat than they really are, and for really short people, it's guaranteed to say people are at a healthy weight when their fat or even obese.

The only reason the BMI formula appears to work at all is because women are both shorter and tend to have higher "healthy" bodyfat percentages. The BMI ranges are more-or-less supposed to be the same for men and women -- that should be a major red flag to anyone who knows anything about bodyfat, since healthy bodyfat ranges for men and women are clearly known to be different.

So, the mean female height is less than the mean male height, but the mean healthy female bodyfat amount is higher. Thus, to have a formula that works for both sexes, you need something that doesn't accurately reflect a "normal" body being scaled up or down. BMI fits the bill, and thus it has been used for population studies to compare mean statistics for overall populations. For individuals -- which it was never designed for -- it's TERRIBLE.

You can immediately see that from the men vs. women problem. BMI says a short man who is in the middle of the height range for women should have the same weight as an average woman. Given what we know about bodyfat, that doesn't make sense. Or, a tall woman who's over 6' or something -- to have a "healthy" BMI she'd often have to look like a waifish model.

"But," you say, "it's still a good first step. It's a simple formula."

Nope -- doesn't excuse it. There are a number of studies that have shown that a number of even simpler measures are actually more accurate at predicting health problems, propensity for disease, etc. For example, simply measuring the waist circumference for men -- regardless of height -- has been shown to be a better predictor of health problems than BMI. Think about that for a moment. Clearly a guy who is 5' tall should not have a waist size the same as a 7' tall guy. But studies have shown that even measuring the waist and saying, "Is it bigger than X inches?" without knowing anything about height, weight, or anything else is a better predictor than BMI.

Yeah, BMI sucks that bad.

But could a simple formula do that much harm? Well, why not just modify that "simple formula" to make it more accurate? In the days when you had to calculations by hand or with a slide rule, a formula involving only an exponent of 2 and a division might make sense. But most people don't calculate BMI by hand anymore -- they plug things into some sort of web calculator or look at a chart.

We can easily fix BMI to make it much more accurate. First, just change the exponent. Logically, as I mentioned at the outside, squaring the height makes NO SENSE. You might think that cubing the height would be better, since the body expands in three dimensions, but it turns out that the male/female factor and other things that don't quite scale precisely with the cube of the height makes an exponent of 3 bad too.

Various empirical studies have suggested an exponent of somewhere in the 2.3 to 2.7 range would be better. But really, to get any accuracy at all, you'd have to at least consider separating the sexes. At that point, you could narrow the range of the exponent for males an

Re:BMI

[TranquilVoid]

But if I used "mass" I could never lose it, just convert it into energy.

Re:BMI

[fatphil]

No. BMI is designed for naive people two hundred years ago who just want a number, no matter how meaningless it is.

Weight does not and should not scale with the square of height unless you imagine that taller people are taller and wider, but not thicker. It's not a cubic relation either in reality, but there would have been more logic supporting that than square, even if it's a no better fit to common-sense results wise.

Everything to do with exponent-2 BMI should just be totally ignored. It's total bullshit. It says no more, and plenty less, than a whole range of other measures that aren't bullshit. It should have been thrown into the toxic waste bin of stupid medical superstitions that's of no use to anyone decades ago.

We do some work in the field, in governmental contexts. We've come up with phrase "policy-based evidence-making" for such bogostats.

What's your BMI using a 2.5 exponent, as proposed here?
http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html
(And no, sorry, I'm not volunteering mine on either scale, given where on the bell-curve I sit. (yes, the flat bit.))

i hate fuck fat guys as much as the next...

[sexconker]

that butt's uncalled for!

they need an incentive

[thetoadwarrior]

I don't think it's a surprised that people in Cambridge, for example, are quite healthy and fit and people in Stoke are not. It's not just a case of wealth but people in Cambridge are better educated and probably feel they have more to live for. The UK government has drained a lot of the country's ability to compete in favour of advancing London. It's no surprise people in poorer areas probably simply don't care. What's the incentive to lead a healthy life when you live in one of the more economically depressed areas of the country and the government makes it clear you don't matter because you're not a banker?

Re:they need an incentive

[gnasher719]

Take out the carbs, and life is much better. Less sugar means your insulin doesn't kick in and store everything to your tissues. This takes place in London, Bath, Stokes, Leicester, Wales, wherever. It's how we're put together. Depression causes people to carb-load. That's a personal problem, not a regional one. Carb loading to increase serotinine is a well-honoured pass-time.

For the last thirty years, people have been hammered with messages to avoid fat. Coke is full of sugar and fat free. Companies put sugar into food when they remove fat, because removing fat without replacing it with sugar makes things taste bad and people don't buy them. So for the last thirty years people have been stuffing themselves with carbohydrates, making them fat and diabetic. And the more you try to avoid fat, the worse it gets.

And then they start dieting. Those with plenty of will power are the unlucky ones: They actually lose lots of weight. The body thinks it's starving. And all the weight comes back, with some more, because all the will power in the world cannot overcome a starving body in the long run.

The best advice: Ignore all the advice that tells you to avoid fat. _Do_ avoid sugar and other carbohydrates. Do _not_ try to lose weight. Ignore your weight, because being obsessed with your weight will make you unhappy which bad in itself, but will make you eat more as well.

And, if someone calls you "fatty", hit them in the face as hard as you can, knock them out, and kick the shit out of them when they are on the ground.

Hello Citizen - U Look GRate! Today!

[the_skywise]

"I don't know... lately I just don't feel like there's anything special about me."

"You are an incredibly sensitive man, who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you."

Sample Texts

[simonbp]

"Get off your arse and walk, fatso!"
"Put down the fork, you slob!"
"You're disgusting! No one will ever love you!"

"Be sure to vote in Council elections next Tuesday!"

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you RTFS, they signed up to receive the messages. So it's called for.

Re:correlation

[s.petry]

Duh, that is the secondary purpose for the texts.

Re:Council Money Well Spent

[pspahn]

Are you the naked guy I saw running with no shoes on during the blizzard?

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[dreamchaser]

You should stop feeding the trolls. It's making them fat.

Re:Council Money Well Spent

[dreamchaser]

Why, yes. Yes I am.

"Touch your toes, Winston!"

[Nova Express]

"Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! THAT’S better, comrade."

Oblig Mark Twain

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious."

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[pr0fessor]

Being fat is not a condition.It is a lifestyle choice

That is not true and my wife will gladly tell you how she was injured, unable to walk more than a few feet for three years, given steroid based treatments that's side effects included weight gain, went from size 12 to 24 and now that she is able to exercise again, is back to size 18 and still loosing weight.

If you would like she can also tell you about worthless over priced treatments and tests and how insurance companies try to get out of paying.