The co-founder of the diet company behind the Downsizing Dubbo campaign has stood by its claim approximately four out of five Dubbo residents are overweight or obese.
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On August 17, Superfastdiet co-founder Victoria Black said "80 per cent of Dubbo residents are overweight".
But on Monday, after the Daily Liberal queried the figure, Ms Black said it was hard to find accurate weight statistics for people living in Dubbo's 2830 postcode
"I don't think there's been one [set of statistics] to a specific postcode, it is the region of Dubbo," she said.
"We've always said approximately and short of getting everybody on the scale and weighing and measuring them it's very hard to get accurate statistics," Ms Black said.
"We can only go by all the surveys that are out there and make an approximation."
A spokesperson for the Australian Health and Welfare Institute (AHWI), whose data Superfastdiet relied on to make the 80 per cent claim, said it only reported on overweight and obese statistics at a primary health network level.
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The most recent AHWI data showed 82.4 per cent of adults in the Western NSW Primary Health Network were estimated to be overweight or obese. The primary health network includes an estimated 309,000 people across places like Bathurst, Orange, Broken Hill, Mudgee and Dubbo.
The AHWI spokesperson said that data had margin of error of more than 10 per cent and should be used with caution.
Another source Superfastdiet relied upon to make the claim 80 per cent of Dubbo people were overweight or obese was a National Health Performance Authority (NHPA) report referred to in a 2013 Toowoomba Chronicle news story.
The NHPA ceased operations in 2016 and while the 2013 news story said 79 per cent of Bathurst and Dubbo residents were overweight or obese, Ms Black did not supply a link to the NHPA report quoted in the news story but the Daily Liberal obtained a copy and it refers to Western NSW without mentioning Dubbo or Bathurst.
Australian Health Tracker data from 2017 found 72.4 per cent of Dubbo adults were overweight or obese.
"We have definitely not exaggerated statistics," Ms Black said.
"We're not claiming to be statistical experts here, we're trying to help the people of Dubbo lose weight and keep it off. We're not making any money out of it, we're doing it as a community initiative."
"We're not claiming to have come to the town of Dubbo and weighed everybody.
"We're not trying to fat shame here, we're trying to help people."
More than 400 people had signed up to take part in the Downsizing Dubbo campaign, Ms Black said.
