This fat-busting plan might actually work

There have been many half-baked plans to conquer obesity over the years, from free gastric band operations to downright bribery.

Now, it seems, there’s one that might actually work.

It has been mooted that GPs will refer obese patients to keep-fit classes in order for them to get healthy and happy.

As a devotee of Zumba I’m living proof that if you do a class two or three times a week it can make all the difference in the world.

You lose weight, but far more importantly you can keep it off. Of course, it all depends on the instructor.

I was lucky enough to find the ball of energy that is Maxine Jones who holds her classes in church halls in London.

At a fiver a class, it is the very best value for money I can possibly think of.

At those sorts of prices most people should be able to pay for a class themselves.

It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a fish supper, deep-fried pizza or a shopping bag full of cake and crisps.

As well as Maxine’s classes, I also walk everywhere.

I have an app on my phone which shows how many steps you have taken in a day.

Experts say you should aim for 10,000 daily, which seems like a lot, but it soon mounts up and I get a real sense of achievement when I manage to break that barrier.

This whole idea of sending obese people to exercise classes is obviously to help them shift pounds, but also to prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes.

It’s a potential killer and costs a fortune to treat, so anything that can prevent people from developing the disease should be welcome.

The NHS will fund the classes and also give advice about healthy eating and basic cookery skills to the overweight.

Of course they shouldn’t have to and, in an ideal world, parents would be teaching their kids how to eat well instead of stuffing their faces with junk food.

However, in real life, too many kids never get a home-cooked meal and think it’s perfectly normal to have burgers and sweets every day.

I happen to think every school should be teaching kids basic cookery and nutrition as well as making sure they take part in some sort of sport or exercise.

These subjects are just as important, if not more so, than learning the capital of Mongolia or who sat on the throne 800 years ago.

Our kids need to be educated out of becoming fat and unhealthy. At the moment this is a pilot scheme in Bradford and people are being given information in community centres about healthy eating as well as being able to join classes.

It will be extremely interesting to see the results. If it works then it could make a massive difference, but I do stress that it is all down to the instructors and teachers.

If only they could clone Maxine and put her on the NHS Britain would be very different country indeed.