- Welcome to Real Deal.

I am Brian Rose and we are live here

at London Real World Headquarters

to talk about something that's really important

and also a little bit uncomfortable

and that is our weight.

As a country here in Britain,

we are obese and it's literally killing us.

And especially during these times of COVID,

it can actually exacerbate the virus.

And I want to talk about that today,

but also give you some solutions on how we can try

to become more fit as a country

and here as a city in London

and I'm super excited to have you here today.

I want to kick off by getting some feedback from you.

So whether you're watching this live

or you're watching it later,

please leave me a comment below right now

and I'll be talking to you throughout this episode.

I love doing these live cause I really get to hear from you.

And again, I'm here to try to understand

the struggles you have to try to project them out there

so we can find solutions together.

So first of all, tell me

what is your single biggest challenge right now

regarding fitness and weight loss?

Seriously, type a comment right now.

I really want to hear from you

and find out what is your single biggest challenge.

Next, do you think that physical and health well-being

are important right now and why?

Is it important right now when we're going into winter

and the lockdown and tell me if you think it is and why,

and finally, do you think we need better leadership

in this country and in this city

when it comes to these topics

and when it comes to getting our society healthier

to get through all sorts of issues

including things like the virus?

So, please type in your comments, I'd love to hear from you.

This is the fourth in a series of me

really going out on the streets

and speaking to people in the communities

and trying to find out how we can make

London a world-class city once again.

Let's face it, right now, it's not.

We are failing, I see a complete lack of leadership.

I see a disproportionate response to the virus

and I see a total lack of science-based decision making.

We're seeing it everywhere in the city and in this country.

Recently, we've had a 10:00 PM curfew

and I put down a lot of videos about this curfew.

It's literally crushing the hospitality industry,

responsible for 120 billion pounds of revenue,

four and a half million jobs,

almost 15% of the workforce and their revenues are down 60%

since the 10:00 PM curfew came into effect.

Even mayors in cities like Liverpool, Leeds, and Manchester

are calling for the government to end curfew

and when the people spoke to the Sage committee,

which is the committee that advises the prime minister,

they spoke to Professor Graham Medley,

who was on the committee and they said,

why did you choose the 10:00 PM curfew?

It seems very arbitrary, we don't see the science.

And he literally said, quote unquote,

it was never discussed.

So, it was never discussed with the scientific community.

It was just an arbitrary response.

And that's what I'm frustrated with.

Lack of science-based decision making, lack of leadership,

and it confuses the public.

It actually promotes more exposure because at 10:00 PM,

everyone comes outside these venues, they gather together,

they go to other places to gather

that aren't necessarily as safe

as some of these hospitality venues

and again, it's just more and more poor decisions

by our leadership that's hurting us from our health basis

and it's crushing our economy.

And it was funny to me that just recently,

our mayor here in London now decided

that he was against the curfew whereas before that,

he was scaremongering and putting everybody

in a state of fear and saying a lockdown is pending,

and we should all make sure we worry more.

Now it seems as if he's been listening

to what we're saying here at London Real,

and now he's deciding to come along for the ride

and repeating what we've been saying here,

which is get London back to work.

And that's ultimately what I want to do.

I want to get us back to work.

I want to get us healthier because I love the city,

I care about the people and this is my community

and I want to see what we can do.

So again, if you're coming here,

leave me a question below and tell me

or leave me an answer and tell me

what's the single biggest challenge

when it comes to your health and your weight loss.

Also tell me do you think health, fitness, and weight loss

are important right now and why?

And second of all, do you think we need better leadership?

So, I want to start with that

and I want to start with some facts

and you're not gonna want to see these facts

and it was hard for me to read them.

And to be honest, it's even worse in the country

I was born in in America,

but it's not nice to see those trends

coming across the pond and coming into Britain here.

And here's some of the facts

and they're not very nice to hear.

I mean, Britain really is the fat man of Europe.

This country has some of the highest obesity rates of Europe

and that's not very good to see and I'll show you more why.

Obesity in the UK has increased at 92%

since the 1990s, 92%.

And I'll explain more of the reasons why later.

The NHS England Chief Executive

said obesity is the new smoking.

It's one of the most important crises

that we need to address right now

and it has all sorts of other health implications.

And finally, we've got to find a way

to get London to improve their physical health.

There's been a lot of talk on this and it's really important

that we try to get people to understand

how important this issue is and we need to take action now,

especially in times of COVID

and I'll speak about that shortly.

When we actually look even further into the body mass index

of the people of Britain,

it's even more shocking and you can compute

your own body mass index, go to Google, type it in.

It's a ratio of your weight to your height.

And it kind of gives you a rough really quick idea

as to where you are when it comes to obesity.

But if you look in Britain,

it's shocking, some of the numbers.

When you look at the top percentage here,

this is the percentage of people that are obese.

So, it's less than our younger kids.

Up into the 36, 33 percentages

for us older folks here are actually clinically obese.

Now, even more than that are actually overweight.

39, 40% are even overweight.

If you look at this, two thirds of the population

are struggling from being overweight.

And that's shocking to know

that we're really at this position right now.

It's dangerous and you can really see

how this is massively disproportionate.

And it's really an issue that we're struggling with

and I'm very concerned.

And I think it's something we really need to address,

but there's actually a bigger issue here.

And this is something I really want to talk about

because there's some more things I want to show you,

which is just this, obesity increases Coronavirus deaths.

And that's why I want to talk about this right now

because this is not being spoken of.

We're being told from our government to wear a mask,

to stay away from each other,

to not engage and not come in the city,

but there hasn't been a single sentence

talking about how we need to get fit, lose weight,

and get our health better

when this is probably the single,

biggest action step we could take

to protect us from this virus

and it doesn't make sense to me.

If we look at some of the statistics,

obesity related conditions,

they worsen the effect of COVID-19.

And if you go even further than this,

severe COVID-19 cases are 1.89 times

more likely to be in the obese.

That's almost double.

It's going to affect those that are obese.

So if you're on lockdown and health is not being promoted

or educated and gyms are closed,

and I'll talk about that shortly,

you are getting more and more susceptible to this virus.

And yet, there hasn't been a single word or a single effort

by the government to try to educate

and promote being healthier.

And it just really boggles my mind.

If you go even further,

if you have a body mass index of 35 to 40,

it increases the risk of death by 40%, 40%.

And if you're even more overweight into the obesity scale

of over 40, it could increase your risk

of COVID death by 90%.

I mean, these are staggering figures.

And the worst thing is it's something you can control.

You can't control your age.

You can't necessarily control your exposure

in certain environments,

but you can control your own physical health,

but we've got to tell our citizens

that you need to take ownership of that.

No one can force you to get in better shape,

but we can educate and also give you more opportunities.

And it actually reminded me

of one of my favourite guests on London Real

and that's Eddie Hall and Eddie Hall

is the world's strongest man

and this is a picture of Eddie actually in my studio

right before we sat down and had an incredible conversation

in the chair.

We went deep for about two and half hours.

And Eddie, you might know Eddie

because he won the World's Strongest Man contest.

And you can probably see why cause he's a big boy.

And he also has the world record

for the biggest dead lift in history, 500 kilogramme deadlift.

He did it, his eyes and his ears

started bleeding afterwards, it was incredible to watch.

And Eddie wrote an open letter to the government in July

pleading for them to open up gyms.

And at that point in this country,

the government had not yet opened up gyms,

even though clearly our health

was one of the biggest contributing factors

to protect us from the virus.

Instead, they open pubs.

They open places where we could eat more and drink more

and get more unhealthy.

And Eddie wrote a letter to the government

and I'm just taking a quote from the letter.

And Eddie said, because they hadn't yet opened gyms,

he said the message from government

is that it's far more important

to be allowed to drink alcohol to excess

than it is to indulge in exercise,

which benefits physical and mental health.

Let me just repeat that.

Exercise, which benefits physical and mental health.

And this is a really important point.

Eddie even struggled with mental health issues

when he was in his teens.

And it was his embracing exercise

that brought him out of that difficult state,