HAUD the bus. Actually, don't haud the bus; now is not the time to add any more hindrances to our already minimised transport system. Wait just one minute.

It appears the day has come where I have found affinity with Boris Johnson and let me tell you, never did I think that day would emerge.

"The great thing about going for a run at the beginning of the day," the Prime Minister said at the launch of the UK government's new anti-obesity drive, "Is nothing could be worse for the rest of the day."

Ah, and I don't say this lightly, a man after my own heart. Like Mr Johnson, I run in spite of myself.

The nation's bulging waistlines are a talking point yet again and the PM has been talking about his own weight struggles in a bid to encourage others to lose a bit of flab. He doesn't, he says, want the campaign to be "bossy or nannying", the lack of the latter of those presumably coming as a grave disappointment to several in his party.

This latest push to encourage the UK to slim down is connected to the Covid-19 pandemic with the science showing that those who are obese are worst affected by the illness. Matt Hancock said the government's new health campaign hopes to ease the strain on health services should we experience a second wave during winter and save money in the long term.

“If everyone who is overweight lost five pounds it could save the NHS over £100 million over the next five years,” the health secretary said.

Among the strategies mooted by the new Better Health campaign are a curb on junk food adverts online and before 9pm on television plus a curbing of snack promotions. Shops will have to list the calories in alcohol while restaurants and takeaway chains will similarly have to list the energy content of food they serve.

In England and Wales GPs will, in selected pilot areas, be able to prescribe cycling to patients while the government has pledged to improve road infrastructure to accommodate bikes and make being on the roads safer and more appealing.

Conversely, reading all the fors and againsts of this new campaign has made me want to lie down in a darkened room, not go for a jog.

On the surface, it's fairly reasonable: the UK has high level of obesity among children and adults, which puts a strain on the health service and makes people more vulnerable to a deadly virus in the middle of a pandemic so let's do something about that.

Yet the weight loss conversation is fraught. The fat positivity movement is growing ever more mainstream and there are plenty of people who would strongly dispute that, despite being technically overweight, they need to slim down. We need to be very careful not be condescending or sneering about fatness. It doesn't help to discriminate against or marginalise people, which should go without saying - but doesn't.

At the same time it's vital to take into account that people don't always eat because they're hungry and they certainly don't make bad choices because they're ill informed or stupid. Emotions have a huge part to play in food choices. Given this has been a strange and emotionally difficult time, there's much to be addressed there in terms of people comfort eating during the lockdown.

Yet the most public time I've seen this addressed in the past few days was the Foreign Secretary saying he'd "eaten his way" through the first half of lockdown but then had reassessed his choices. "But I think more generally we need to take some personal responsibility," Dominic Raab then unhelpfully added.

There are so many factors causing obesity that you can't tackle one without the other. The new campaign makes no mention of the connection between poverty and obesity either, one of the most crucial issues to tackle and little to do with personal responsibility. It doesn't mention the link between availability and affordability of healthy food.

I heard talk last week of the "lockdown 12" - that the average person will put on 12 pounds during the lockdown. Personally, I had assumed the opposite would happen for me. Since being at home all day my diet has improved exponentially. No more scoffing donuts sent into the office; no more running round to Pret A Manger for a second lunch having eaten my packed lunch at 11am. But I completely underestimated the impact that such a dramatic drop in physical activity would have.

That's one of the wonders of a cycle commute. It didn't make me lose weight, but it did maintain my weight. And that endorphin boost twice a day from physical activity was invaluable.

I wonder if that might have been a better jumping off point for the campaign. It may be called Better Health but the conversation has largely been about weight loss rather than the benefits of being more active.

Prescribing cycling might not make people lose weight but it will have other health benefits and is an excellent start in building activity into every day life.

It's hard to make time for the gym or exercise classes - life just gets in the way - but being consistently more active throughout the day has real benefits in improved mental health and reduced morbidity, to name a couple. A big part of that is active travel and a crucial part of that, again, is infrastructure.

What good health comes down to is not personal choice but a combination of personal choice and social factors. Eat less and move more might be a simple mantra but it's not simple in practice.