Deputy Labour Leader reveals how cutting carbs and sugar has helped him become healthy

A senior politician says his own weight loss journey has given him a new perspective on how to help people trying to lose weight.
Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson has lost more than six stone by cutting down on carbohydrate and incorporating more activity into his life.
The MP for West Bromwich East started by avoiding sugar and swapping beer and curries for avocado salads. He started to use stairs rather than lifts and embarked on a physical activity drive which started by walking 10,000 steps every day. As his fitness improved, he progressed to running and cycling as part of his new healthy regime.
Also, he credited “bulletproof coffee” as being pivotal in his new diet, where he adds butter to the hot drink as “a way of getting saturated fats into your diet which means you’re not as hungry during the day”.
The 51-year-old says motivation to lose weight came after reading about other Labour MPs whose poor lifestyles had led to them to dying early. He also said it was time to change having realised his waistline has progressively grown since entering parliament in 2001.
Speaking on the Peston On Sunday show on ITV, Watson said: “I basically stopped taking sugar, refined sugar, and then I started walking 10,000 steps a day and walking up staircases and when a bit more weight came off I started to jog and cycle.
“I kept reading about Labour politicians that died early in their 50s and 60s and I want to get healthy, and actually for me the journey’s been very interesting because what I realise is there’s a lot more we can do in public health to deal with the obesity crisis, because you know we’ve got 10 million of these people heading to diabetes, another 15 million sitting behind them are overweight.
“When you read in the papers or you hear political speeches it’s like we condemn them and we judge people who are overweight and I think this is a nutritional issue that retailers, manufacturers, public health officials and politicians have got to take seriously.”
Our Low Carb Program is racking up weight loss success stories, helping people change their approach to dietary advice. So far more than 270,000 have signed up and taken part in the initiative. Results show that people who complete the program on average reduce their HbA1c by 1.2% (13 mmol/mol), and 40% of people are able to come off at least one diabetes medication.