‘Walking heart attack’: Magda delves into Australia’s weight problem

Magda Szubanski is having her “Yul Brynner moment”. Like the late Hollywood actor who campaigned against smoking when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, the comedian is using her platform as one of Australia’s most beloved celebrities to raise awareness of health risk factors, including what she calls her “Achilles’ heel”, poor nutrition.

With Ask the Doctor’s Sandro Demaio by her side, she puts our collective physical and mental health under the stethoscope in her three-part documentary, Magda’s Big National Health Check.

Magda Szubanski hopes Big National Health Check will lead to more open conversations about why people are overweight.

“I was shocked to discover that 50 per cent of Australians have chronic health issues,” she explains. “And if you don’t have one now, you will have, almost certainly. So the program was really eye-opening in terms of the extent of the problem, but also some of the surprising external factors that contribute to it.”

As Szubanski shares in intimate chats to camera over a cup of tea, and, in one alarming episode, a dash to the ER, she is speaking from experience. Living with anxiety, autoimmune arthritis, migraines and sleep apnoea, she has been told by doctors to lose weight. But she argues the solution to a problem affecting so many Australians goes well beyond the individual.

“I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been on a wellness journey or a diet, throughout my whole life,” says Szubanski. “One of the things we start to scratch the surface of [in the series] is the damage done by diet culture. We’re coming to understand that it harms much more than it helps because who of us hasn’t been on a diet and come out worse at the end?”

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Szubanski stresses a person’s size does not necessarily mean they are miserable: “I’m a very happy, content person,” she says. “I love my life and I have a lot of fun.” She also stresses that weight is no indication of heart health. During filming, her “nuggetty” elder brother had a heart attack necessitating a quadruple bypass. Her own “pipes” have been declared clear.

“If you stood my brother and I next to each other, you would think I was the one that was going to have the heart attack,” she says. “Everyone thinks I am a walking heart attack. So this whole idea that because you’re skinny, you’re off the hook, is just absolute bullshit.”

The series, which also looks at food marketing, labelling and mental health, considers the potential impact on health of socio-economic status, postcode by postcode, and looks at community innovations to address the availability of fresh produce as the cost of living rises.