Agree with Alex on this one. Good suggestion.

Skimmed through the comments. Don't think I found a single positive one about Nick Boles. I hope you're reading these comments Nick and realising just how divisive you and your "modernisers" have become.

You're 50 years old and have been in politics since 1998. I don't know how you can still describe yourself as a moderniser. You are what we need to 'modernise' away from.

Tim, the Crosby recipe was right at the time and it worked. But we should not be building books of recipes, we're not cooks. If Zac was trying to follow a Crosby recipe then it's his own stupid fault for trying to master someone else's recipe in the first place. I dislike that politicians these days seem to be looking for formulas, playbooks, recipes, whatever you want to call them. Did Crosby say "here's my recipe, here's how I did it, follow this and you'll be fine"? I'm asking not asserting. Where did this notion of a playbook first come from? Why do we have to say 'oh that worked over there in that context, so let's try and copy it with fewer resources and less skill and experience and try to generate the same outcome' - why are we playbooking politics in the first place?

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The fight back starts now

I had to pause for a while at answering that question. I have a similar approach, trying to avoid thinking about it, but then I woke up one morning and realised that the last thing I remembered dreaming about was eating a strawberry cheesecake. It was then I thought maybe I do think about food an awful lot.

I hope you like my little amendment to the post.

The main difference is that with smoking (and other drugs) you are able to control a consumption problem by simply avoiding the material. Whereas with food you can't just stop eating. You must enter into a healthy long-term relationship with food in order to control an over-eating problem and mitigate potential future medical implications. Therefore, a food-related problem is a lifetime commitment to cure whereas smoking has a fixed goal.

In my own case I would have appreciated support from the healthcare sector. I was paying over £70 per week for my weight loss programme and it genuinely worked with no health effects. However, some GPs refuse to sign patients off on the diet plan and some charge upwards of £80 per session to monitor a patient who is on the plan. It's not just the plan I follow either. And it's not just GPs. I've had times when a pharmacy worker refused to carry out a blood pressure check as part of the NICE recommended monitoring of any weight loss programme because I was on a weight loss programme.

So you see it's not as simple as doing something like paying patients to lose weight, paying for gastric bands or even a fat tax. The whole healthcare system in this country has got to change its attitude to provide the kind of medical treatments and interventions that the population needs. So long as our system continues to follow some apparently ancient ideals about food and our relationship with it there will never be the focus on obesity that it deserves.

What could have been done in my case? What do I think needs to change? To start with, having lost nearly 9 stone in 6 months it would be nice to be able to tap into a support structure to make sure the weight doesn't come back as old habits start to kick in again. There's no support out there at the moment for people like me and yet if we are helped now it will prevent problems in the future. The commercial people who helped us get the weight off in the first place aren't long-term hand-holders. In fact, they'll welcome us and our money back in a few months when the weight comes back on. And so starts the cycle of weight gain and loss that lines their pockets.

I don't have answers and I've mostly just ranted here. But I hope I've made a few points and given some food for thought, if you'll pardon the pun.

Tony: Mobile access will be repaired and improved over the weekend.

Thanks Sainty. It's been tough recently - lots of sabotage, but slowly getting back on board the wagon.