ABSTRACT
The little that is known about men's attitudes to weight tends to be concentrated on identifying obstacles rather than developing solutions. Levels of obesity in men in England have trebled since 1986, and the average waist circumference of English men grew by 3.8 cm between 1994 and 2003. Abdominal fat is strongly associated with the most damaging consequence of obesity, metabolic syndrome, one of whose components, type 2 diabetes, is 10 times as common in people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. A computerised audit of almost 120,000 medical records in 26 of the participating Counterweight general practitioner (GP) practices revealed that male patients were less likely than female patients ever to have been routinely weighed in the surgery or to have had their BMI recorded. This suggests unconscious collusion between health professionals and male patients in seeing being overweight as less of a concern for men than women.
