When is your body weight a matter for public discussion? When that discussion is about safety

Offshore workers must weigh less than 124kg according to new regulations | AFP via Getty Images

As the harness lowered across my lap and my eight-year-old vibrated with excitement, I began to regret chugging a theme park-quality flat white just minutes before.

I was preparing my gullet for full-body propulsion on the Spinball Whizzer for the fourth time since arriving at Alton Towers. Or so I thought.

Seconds rolled on to minutes and it became apparent that theme park workers were, instead of waving us off to have our brains rattled against our skulls, tag-teaming a man in one of the seats ahead.

“I think that man is too big to fit. He might have to get off” announced my daughter. Her voice cutting straight through the excited chatter in the way only a Glaswegian accent south of Cumbria does.

As I looked away and pretended she wasn’t with me, the workers leaned their weight on top of the bar that crossed the man’s legs and pushed until there was an audible ‘click’. They looked back to an operator in a control box and indicated - with the universal signal for ‘this man’s life is no longer in peril’, the thumbs up - that the ride could begin.

“He must be strapped in really, really tight” she blared, again, as the ride set off.

“Iris, it’s not nice to talk about other people’s bodies,” was all I could manage in reply. Mortified parenting in public rarely throws up anything inspirational.

It is something we say a lot in our house and I stand by it. But when does someone's body size become a matter for public discussion?

This week we learned that up to 840 offshore workers could lose their jobs if they can’t lose weight.

This is because if you weigh more than 124kg (19.5st) you can not be safely winched from a platform into a helicopter during an emergency evacuation.

Last year, offshore workers who did not meet the weight limit were urged to slim down and this week they were told that if they haven’t when new regulations come into force they could, eventually, find themselves out of a job.

In a series of “showcase events” trade body Offshore Energy UK (OEUK) rallied employers in a bid to help them help their workers comply with the new regulations. They suggested support for those who had opted to take weight loss jabs, offering advice about what to eat during offshore dinner times, access to gym facilities and the chance to play football, rugby and go on a ‘rig run’.

“Weight loss is a hugely personal issue,” said Graham Skinner, OEUK’s health, safety and security manager. True. But at the front of it you have people who will be, quite publicly, struggling to adapt.

Applying rational thinking to the issue, I still can’t escape the personal fear that offshore workers above the weight threshold may feel judged and embarrassed at, firstly, being categorised as such. Then, secondly, at being subject to work place weight loss measures and, thirdly, at the prospect of losing their jobs.

I might be projecting my own discomfort, as someone who refuses to even step on a scale after growing up in the 90s in a house in full ‘yo-yo dieting and weekly weigh-in’ swing.

But when it becomes a matter of safety, we need to park the fear of making other people, and ourselves, uncomfortable and perhaps adopt the matter-of-fact mind set of an eight-year-old on a roller coaster.

If that harness doesn’t fit, you can’t risk your life on the Spinball Whizzer.