Shocking Report: More Than 1 in 3 Children Aged 10–11 Are Overweight or Obese

How did we get here, what has to be done, and what can be done?

Widely reported across the media, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has warned that more than one in three children aged 10–11 in England are overweight or obese.

In a review published under the striking headline, The UK is Raising One of the Unhealthiest Generations in Decades, Paediatricians Warn, there were several concerning findings. One of them was the shocking statistic above. In other words, there is more to this warning of the unhealthy generation than the obesity problem currently facing the country. I believe the findings, taken together, show that we need to rethink the way we approach health and wellness. But for me, it is the fact that more than 36% of children in this age group are overweight or obese that stands out the most.

It stands out to me because, at that age, I was one of those statistics.

At that age, I was overweight. I was obese. And that is understating it. I had to shop in adult clothing stores, buying suits in adult sizes that, even today, more than twenty years later and after adding a significant amount of muscle mass, would still be four sizes too big for me. At my peak, aged 13, I wore a size 48 jacket and size 40 trousers. Today, I wear a size 42 jacket and size 34 trousers.

When I decided to lose weight at the age of 14, I made myself a promise. I wouldn’t buy another suit until I could walk into a shop and choose any suit I genuinely liked, rather than simply the one that fit. I didn’t need a new suit until one of my siblings got married in my early twenties. By then, at my leanest, I was wearing a size 36 jacket and size 32 trousers.

So how did I get there? How did we get here as a nation? And how do we begin to change it?

Over the last twenty years, many things have changed, and the underlying problems have only become worse. The rise of cheap fast food has been amplified by food delivery platforms, whose marketing encourages people to stay on the sofa while their meals are delivered straight to the door. You no longer even have to phone the restaurant or collect the food yourself. Just a few taps on your phone, and twenty-five minutes later it’s in your hands.

At the same time, children and adults alike spend more time indoors looking at screens than they do outside being active.

The health industry hasn’t always helped either. For years, much of the focus was on reducing fat consumption, while products proudly advertised themselves as “fat free.” More recently, however, there has been much greater recognition of the role excessive sugar intake plays in obesity and poor health. Many of those supposedly healthier products were, in reality, packed with sugar.

Then there was the body positivity movement, which I would argue eventually went too far. To be clear, nobody should be fat-shamed. But parts of the movement spent years promoting the idea that being overweight is healthy, and I believe that blurred an important distinction between treating people with dignity and accurately discussing the health risks associated with obesity.

Meanwhile, we have continued applying sticking plasters to individual problems instead of tackling the root causes. Whether it’s removing sweets from supermarket checkouts or restricting television advertising for unhealthy foods during certain hours, the response has often been a series of headline-grabbing initiatives rather than long-term solutions. We then replace one unhealthy thing with another unhealthy in-a-different-way thing. Essentially, we have gotten nowhere in trying to solve the core issues.

Thankfully, I managed to change my own life. Starting at the age of 14, I lost all the excess weight over the following few years without supplements, fat burners or medications such as Ozempic, which didn’t even exist at the time. I know how I changed things. It was through a personal decision to make the changes needed in my life and the promise to myself that I would achieve it after my mother took me for a visit to a dietitian. But the more important question isn’t how I lost the weight. It’s how I reached that point in the first place.

I really think it’s time for families to stand up and take notice of what is happening, and why it is so important to tackle this. Obesity is a serious health issue in its own right, but it also increases the risk of many other long-term health conditions as we get older. In a healthy manner, there is no better time to try to help change the course of things than in youth, and if you give a damn about the health of your children, it’s time to do something about it.