A 20-STONE MAN has accused health bosses who advise diet and exercise as an alternative to weight loss surgery of ‘patronising’ overweight people.

Last week, the Oxford Mail revealed the number of patients who had been approved for gastric surgery had doubled in three years with £761,000 due to be spent by NHS Oxfordshire, the county’s primary care trust, this financial year.

NHS Oxfordshire said gastric bands and bypasses were only offered as a last resort to morbidly obese patients.

Instead, it said it paid for people to try diet and slimming clubs and light to moderate exercise.

But Michael Treadwell, of Trefoil Place, Greater Leys, said the attitude was condescending.

Mr Treadwell, 47, said most severely overweight people had tried every diet ‘under the sun’ to lose weight and many were born into big families.

He added: “Not all fat people are lazy and can’t be bothered.

“Don’t tar us all with the same brush. To suggest we haven’t already tried losing weight on our own is patronising.

“To be considered for weightloss surgery a GP or consultant has to agree it is the best option for you and will benefit your health.

“It seems to me there is one set of people who work for the NHS who know what is best for you, and then another set who are in control of the purse strings.”

Mr Treadwell used to weigh 27 stone and at five feet 10 inches, had a Body Mass Index of 54.

A healthy BMI shows between 19 and 25 per cent body fat, overweight is 25 to 30, more than 30 is obese, and more than 40 is morbidly obese.

Mr Treadwell said he has always eaten a healthy diet of lean meat, brown bread, and fruit and vegetables, but admitted his weight increased because he drank 12 pints of lager every night.

Two years ago he decided to quit and lost seven stone, but he said he has struggled to lose any more weight for six months.

He also suffers from type 2 diabetes, hypertension and sleep apnoea and takes a cocktail of six pills a day for a host of other ailments.

Now he believes the only option for him is a gastric bypass which makes the stomach smaller, a procedure his consultant has told him could cure all three conditions, and will save the NHS thousands in the long run. But he has been told plans for his surgery have been shelved because of funding, despite fitting the criteria for it to be paid for on the NHS.

He said: “What I am saying is it would make so much more sense for me to have this one off procedure rather than keep costing the NHS more in the long run.

“It would cure my diabetes, which would mean I would then have to pay for my other medication, and I would be less of a burden to the system.”

Mr Treadwell’s comments came as Nick Finer, professor of obesity medicine at University College London, called on the NHS to carry out a mass programme of gastric bypass surgery because he said dieting did not work.

An NHS Oxfordshire spokesman said no operations which it had agreed to fund had been cancelled. The trust funds surgery for those with a BMI of more than 50. National guidelines are for it to be given to those above 40.

awilliams@oxfordmail.co.uk