People are overweight because they have slow metabolisms . . . in fact, recent studies show that fat people have faster metabolisms and burn off more energy than slimmer people, simply to keep their bodies going.
Obesity is genetic . . . unfortunately, only 1 per cent of the obese can blame their parents.
Calories from fat make you fat- ter than calories from carbohydrates . . . a calorie is a calorie, whether it comes from fat, carbohydrate or protein.
You can "spot reduce" body fat . . . a pear shape will simply be a smaller pear shape after dieting. Exercise, though, may slightly streamline certain areas.
Reduced-fat foods are always lower calorie . . . the calorie count can be the same as high-fat foods because of added sugar: check the packet.
All dietary fat is bad . . . your body needs a certain amount of it, though excess causes weight gain.
Carbohydrate makes you fat . . . nutritionists say most of us need to increase our intake, because it has less than half the calories of fat.
High-protein diets are good for weight loss . . . actually they're dangerous (they can permanently harm your liver and kidneys and deprive you of essential minerals and vitamins) and because they are so incompatible with a normal lifestyle, most people give up and quickly regain the weight they lost.
Eating late at night makes you fat . . . the human nutrition research centre in Cambridge showed recently that people who ate their main meal at 8 p.m. burned exactly the same calories as those who ate it at lunchtime.
Food allergy causes obesity . . . the characteristic of food allergies is actually an increased metabolic rate and weight loss.
Pregnancy makes you fat . . . fat stores are built up in pregnancy for breastfeeding, but not excessively, unless the mother stuffs herself silly. There's no metabolic explanation for keeping the weight on afterwards.
Your metabolism changes as you get older . . . latest research shows little evidence of a "permanent resetting of the metabolism" with ageing, though you may be more sedentary and the weight you've gained gradually over the years of eating too much and exercising too little may catch up on you.
Dieting is a healthy activity . . . 98 per cent of dieters regain the weight they lost, plus more.