PUTTING on weight and having to lose it has never been one of life’s serious problems.

Okay I did get rather anxious when the realisation hit in middle age that my waist measurement had crept up by a couple of inches over 20 years.

In my view this rate of inflation was pretty slow and no real issue, but my wife didn’t share that view.

From her reaction to a moderate middle-age spread, you might have thought I was one of those increasing number of grossly overweight people the ambulance service is having to rebuild its vehicles to accommodate.

In Devon and Cornwall ambulances are being kitted out with £7,000-a-time reinforced stretchers to cope with obese patients. By obese they mean people weighing up to 47 stone!

Now it is true that some folk seem to be born with a propensity to put on pounds very easily. Monitoring calorie intake plays a large part in their lives as they battle to keep their weight under control.

There are others who, when the scales are down, will try to rationalise their situation by insisting they have ‘heavy bones.’ But for most overweight people the key has to be eating in an intelligent manner and exercise too.

That’s why the GOALS (Getting Our Active Lifestyles Started) scheme launched by NHS Blackburn with Darwen is such a good idea.

They are looking for 12 families with overweight children to take part in the 18-week course which includes health eating, physical activity, behaviour change and goal setting.

It’s a shame that it has had to come to this. This scourge of our age has been largely caused by people giving up the idea of doing sport in favour of watching it while sitting at home or in the pub.

At the same time we gorge ourselves on sugar-filled fizzy drinks and ‘food’ that should not be allowed to be labelled as such when it is little more than a concoction of chemicals laced with salt – and yet more sugar.

Blackburn with Darwen’s public health director said children who had completed the course had become slimmer, more active, achieved healthier diets, increased their confidence and experienced better family relationships.

The hope has to be too that they will in time pass on the healthy message to their own children and give up junk food forever.

It is worrying however that some of the biggest companies peddling the stuff responsible for fuelling our obesity problem are becoming involved with the government in supposedly encouraging healthier lifestyles.

This seems a bit like allowing the tobacco industry to sponsor athletics events.