" Lack of exercise 'worse for health than being obese'.."

A lack of exercise is worse for people’s health than simply being obese, according to an expert.

Dr Richard Weiler, a specialist registrar in sport and exercise medicine, said that a lack of fitness was the root cause of more illness than body fat.

This ill health includes diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, mental health problems and high blood pressure, he said.

He called for public health policies to focus more on increasing physical activity and that spending huge amounts of money on treating obesity was the wrong way forward.

"..Weight loss drugs and surgery both carry risks and their long-term benefits are limited.." he warns in an opinion piece published in the British Medical Journal.

A recent review of the evidence “suggests that cardiorespiratory fitness, which is developed and maintained by regular physical activity, is a better predictor of mortality than obesity,” Dr Weiler, from Imperial College Healthcare Trust, in London, writes.

More than nine in 10 people in Britain do not take the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week.

His article which says that health policy should focus on physical activity rather than obesity, adds that health problems “can be greatly reduced by physical activity leading to improved fitness – even in the absence of weight loss.”

However, writing in the same journal, Prof Louise Baur and colleagues from the University of Sydney, say that while physical inactivity is a “major contributor “ to disease it would be wrong to focus on exercise and ignore obesity.

Meanwhile, a new survey shows that one in five children say they do not get any support from their parents to play sport outside school.

And half of boys and 15 per cent of girls saying they would play more sport if their parents were prepared to drive them to sports clubs, the poll, of 1,000 children and 2,000 parents by David Lloyd Leisure showed