ABSTRACT
Health professionals promoting evidence-based strategies for lifestyle change face fi erce criticism and fi erce competition from many sources, many of whom base their critiques and alternative solutions on personal experience. Dominic Lawson in the Independent (19 October 2007) has argued that the humiliation of being unable to purchase 42-inch waist trousers in Peter Jones drove him to lose weight and that stigmatising obesity is the way to get people to lose weight. Janet Street-Porter in the Independent on Sunday (27 January 2008) claimed that obesity is ‘a result of wilful self-abuse’.
