JUST in case you’ve been walking around with your eyes shut, or you haven’t watched TV or read a newspaper recently, the country’s in the grips of an obesity epidemic.

People are getting fatter and fatter due to a combination of poor diet, eating and drinking too much, and lack of exercise.

On paper, the solution’s simple – eat the right food, cut down on the booze and ditch the couch potato lifestyle or risk becoming part of the first generation who die younger than their parents. For some people it’s not that easy, and more and more are turning to surgery to shift those excess pounds and stones.

Harmful health conditions associated with obesity include increased risk of heart disease, cancer and, in particular, diabetes. The estimated cost of obesity-related illness in Somerset is about £130million a year . . . and rising. Back in 2009, 53 patients had bariatric surgery – gastric band or bypass surgery – funded on the NHS by the Somerset Primary Care Trust to the tune of £2million.

But a spokesman said: “Weight loss surgery is not without its own risks and should always be considered the treatment of last resort.”

The Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group will only recommend bariatric surgery if all these criteria are met: They have a Body Mass Index of 40kg/m2 or more, or between 35kg/m2 and 40kg/m2 and other significant disease (for example, type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure) which could be improved if they lost weight; All appropriate non-surgical measures have been tried, but have failed to achieve or maintain adequate, clinically beneficial weight loss for at least six months; The person has been receiving or will receive intensive management in a specialist obesity service; The person is generally fit for anaesthesia and surgery; The person commits to the need for long-term follow-up.

Patients seeking weight loss surgery have to show they have attempted to lose weight, and will have a psychological assessment and a session with a dietician before referral for surgery.  

MANAGING director Ali Fry and patient liaison manager Tanya Porter, both 45, are among four members of staff at The Bariatric Group in Taunton who have had weight loss surgery themselves.

The company offers to perform gastric band or bypass surgery on a private basis.

Here are Ali and Tanya’s stories, and that of one of The Bariatric Group’s patients.

ALI FRY has worn the T-shirt, but you should have seen the size of it – plenty of Xs and an L!

Things have changed since she was compared to Dawn French – nowadays she’s Nigella Lawson.

Ali, once a skinny schoolgirl, ballooned after years of eating too much of the wrong stuff.

She saw the light when a surgeon refused to operate on her varicose veins because it was too dangerous to anaesthetise her.

“I used to eat when I was happy, eat when I was unhappy – it was a form of self-harming, an addiction,” said Ali, who has a marketing and advertising background.

“People called me the Vicar of Dibley. I smiled, but inside it hurt.”

Ali, a slim 8½ stone when she met her husband, had a gastric band fitted and gradually shed six stones.

She said: “It has changed my life – when you’re obese you eat huge quantities. Now I have small portions and make healthy choices.”

Ali believes something triggers a decision to have surgery, like “a 40th birthday, becoming grandparents, getting stuck in a chair, wanting to take the kids swimming.”

She said: “It won’t make you a size 10 overnight – you have to do a huge amount of work, and there are down sides – I can’t have bread or eat on the run, but when people ask about weight loss surgery I say ‘been there, got the T-shirt’.”

SAMMY BUSH is almost half the woman she was after dropping from 16½ to 8½ stone thanks to a gastric band and, later, bypass surgery.

After marrying and having two children, Sammy, 38, of Priorswood, Taunton, piled on weight before a friend told her how TV presenter Anne Diamond slimmed down with a gastric band.

“I’d tried every diet going – I’d lose weight, but then put it on again,” said Sammy.

“Without the surgery I’d just have got bigger and bigger.

“I say if you have a headache you don’t just suffer –- you take something for it – so if there’s something out there to help you tackle your weight problem go for it.

“It has completely changed my life. I have more energy, I go swimming with my children and I have more confidence.”

Sammy had the gastric band fitted in 2007, but had it removed after it eroded, which is very rare, and six months later she had bypass surgery.

MIDWIFE TANYA PORTER realised she’d done the right thing having surgery when she helped a woman give birth.

She said: “I was 23 stone when I delivered her first baby – she came back two years later to have her second baby after I’d lost a lot of weight, and asked where Tanya, ‘the really fat one’, was.”

Tanya piled on the stones after a few personal life traumas.

She said: “By the age of 38 I wanted a mobility scooter. I had to go upstairs sideways I was so big, but now I run up and down.

“I no longer look for the parking space nearest to where I’m going and prefer cycling into town.”

Tanya initially had a gastric band fitted, but it was removed after complications and she then had stomach bypass surgery.

“It’s not just about surgery, though,” said Tanya.

“It’s also changing your attitude to food and trying to introduce some exercise.

“My diet has improved and I can no longer eat anything sweet or with lots of fat because I get a reaction with sweats and stomach cramps.

“You also lose the hunger hormone and can’t eat as much.”

Tanya decided to lose weight after her sister told her she didn’t want to see her die young.

She said: “It wasn’t easy, and when I lost weight, a friend who was also obese stopped speaking to me because she felt it was an affront to her, though she later had the surgery herself.”