‘There’s no need for anyone to be obese’

WHEN governments are faced with difficult problems they don't want to tackle - education, the NHS, crime, etc - they find other spurious problems instead and throw these up like a smokescreen in our faces.

So there is the senseless panic about obesity. There is no need for it - and there is no need for anyone to be obese.

I'm a City rector in London and chaplain to half a dozen livery companies and so I do more than my fair share of wining and dining. OK I admit I haven't got the figure of a stick insect, but, at 65, I'm in pretty good shape. Take up my City fitness plan as one of your New Year resolutions and you can be too.

EXERCISE. There's no need to pay fees to an expensive, smelly and pop-music infested gym with all that sweaty Lycra and MTV screens all around. Your own bedroom is more than adequate. Start by doing ten knee-bends, ten press-ups and ten sit-ups. Repeat the sequence three times.

Over a period of weeks, build up until you're doing 30 of each exercise and continue for 45 minutes. Take one day off each week.

This programme will burn between 400 and 500 calories over the 45 minutes.

I have some weights too and I add a bit of lifting just to vary the programme - but weights are not essential. After just a week or two of this regime, you will also start to feel terrific.

DIET: There's so much rubbish talked about diet. To hear all the health propaganda, you'd think that meat and eggs and bacon, butter and cheese were lethal poisons. They are not. They are full of goodness and you can't maintain good health without a moderate intake of them.

There are foods you should not eat, but they are easy to avoid because they are easily identified. Don't eat crisps or chocolate bars or doughnuts. But most important of all, never eat ready meals or the processed, packaged foods that fill the supermarket shelves. Instead eat a varied diet of simple fresh foods, keep up the daily exercise and you will become very fit and not get fat. Here are tasty meals for a week to keep you in trim: BREAKFASTS Monday: Two poached or boiled eggs on toast and butter.

Tuesday: A tin of tomatoes heated for two minutes in the microwave with a slice of fresh bread. You can add tabasco to the tomatoes for spiciness and dip your bread in olive oil.

Wednesday: Sugar-free muesli and fresh milk.

Thursday: Porridge - with a little brown sugar or honey.

Friday: Kippers from the supermarket fish counter. Dead easy: two minutes in the microwave. Brown bread.

Saturday: Two bananas - in a sandwich, if you like.

Sunday: Egg and bacon.

LUNCHES Never eat anything for lunch except fruit or green salad - tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, garlic, spring onions, radishes, celery etc. Don't put supermarket mayonnaise on the salad.

It's full of nasty trans-fats and bad for you. Use olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead.

EVENING MEALS Monday: Roast chicken with roast potatoes and a green veg.

Tuesday: Liver and onions. Green beans.

Wednesday: Use the rest of the chicken to make a curry (chopped onions, chilli powder, turmeric, paprika, mixed spice, crushed garlic and salt) with boiled rice. Cook plenty of rice and save half in the fridge for later in the week.

Thursday: Shin beef. Allow a third of a pound per person. Marinate the beef overnight in a bottle of the cheapest supermarket red plonk. Next day, cook in the wine on a very low oven 140 degrees centigrade for five hours. Don't add anything, not even salt. Half an hour before you're ready to eat, add a couple of handfuls of pitted black olives. When ready, pour off the red wine, reduce this in a pan and use as jus. Serve with any green veg. It melts in your mouth.

Friday: Grilled cod or haddock, topped with a knob of unsalted butter, with new potatoes and peas. Get an extra piece of fish and save this in the fridge.

Saturday: Lamb shanks cooked for five hours in the same low oven with chopped onions, potatoes, carrots and peas. Dried basil optional. Salt to taste.

You should cook this in half a pint of stock - a beef cube will do.

Sunday: Use up the remainder of the rice and fish to make a delicious kedgeree with chopped onions, two hard-boiled and chopped-up eggs in stock made from a chicken cube. Salt.

You can allow yourself two or three medium glasses of red or white wine each evening. Buy this from the supermarket and look out for special offers.

You need never pay more than £4 per bottle.

Forget food fads and all the propaganda and scare stories from the health police.

Follow this energising exercise programme and this simple, nutritious, inexpensive and tasty eating plan and you'll be as fit and trim as the proverbial butcher's dog.