A new report says people with religious faith are fatter than atheists.

I wonder if this is because atheists happily go hillwalking on Sunday mornings instead of going to church. As any good Catholic knows, skipping Mass in order to commune with nature doesn't do any good: the consequential guilt pangs simply make us overdose on comfort food to ease our troubled conscience. And so the cycle begins. My body is my temple. Gluttony is one of the seven sins. What the hell am I doing? Better, surely, to get to Mass early then go hillwalking.

On a more serious note, a notable paradox of this new study from Coventry University, which says Christians are most likely to be overweight compared to non-believers (though male Sikhs are not far behind), is that it appears to debunk previous evidence that having religious faith and praying leads to spiritual and physical wellbeing: believers had been found to have reduced levels of anxiety and stress-related conditions.

It is true that food features strongly in many religions. On first being introduced to my family, new friends and partners have been struck by the sheer volume of food on our tables at Christmas and Easter, and at wedding and baptism feasts. They soon clock that the sharing of food is simply part of our Catholic culture.

But there's a time and a place for everything.

Periods of abstinence - as in the six weeks of Lent starting in February and leading up to Easter, the month of Ramadan before Eid, or the hours culminating in Yom Kippur - give you time to contemplate matters other than feeding the body. It clears the mind, gives you more energy, encourages outward thinking, and makes you realise that the time and money we spend on buying, preparing and eating food is currently running at unhealthy obsessional levels. Being hungry reminds us of the suffering of those who can't afford to eat. So the money saved during Lent might be spent helping others. Somehow public awareness of this ancient Christian tradition, which discourages participants to boast about it, has been lost.

I don't believe obesity and overweight are the sole preserves of the religious. I know plenty of people of no faith who are, as my darling mother was so fond of saying of me, a wee bit on the tumphy side.

Which makes me wonder if, Canon law notwithstanding, Lent should be extended to include Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas. Non-believers could join in, as those with faith do in the charity Dryathlon that has become January. This might go some way to addressing the misconception that faith is a fattist issue.

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Seasonal gripe #94: I agree with the view that one of the greatest contributors to the break-down of society - apart from Margaret Thatcher - has been the advent of the personal smartphone. Its ability to deliver, via plug-in earphones, entire canons of music, videos, games and phone-calls directly into the ear of the owner has long been championed for connecting us to the outside world no matter where we are; perversely it also wraps us up in our own little bubble of that much-prized modern concept, personal privacy. At least, that's the theory. It's a different scenario when you've forgotten to sit in the silent coach and unintentionally end up having your ears nipped by loudmouth users who've forgotten that there is such a thing as respect for others.

Out on the street, though, smartphones also seem to encourage selective blindness.

The image of harassed festive bargain-hunters suddenly standing stock still on the pavement and holding their arms up in the air with their eyes cast skywards in a most unsaintly fashion, their hasty stride interrupted by yet another oblivious self-absorbed phoney cutting right in front of them, is one that will remain in my mind at least until Easter.