According to the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia is growing. The prevalence of overweight and obese people in Australia has steadily increased for 30 years, with around 60 percent of adults classified as overweight or obese.

And while many people argue that the methods used to define obesity aren't perfect, it paints a clear picture that aussies are losing the battle of the bulge.

Bendigo based osteopath and evolutionary medicine expert Josh Lamaro doesn't think that weight issues are quite as simple as too much food and not enough exercise.

"What people eat is a big part of it, but I think in terms of the amount people eat, I don't think that's the right way to look at obesity. At the primary base of obesity what you've got is cellular miscommunication and inflammation," he says.

He believes that much of the problem stems from processed food and processed carbohydrates that go against how we've evolved to eat.

"It's drifted so far away. You look at a packet of biscuits and there's chemicals on the back of that where I don't know how to pronounce half of them. You could say we're the first civilisation that's tried to eat something we don't know how to pronounce."

After a decade of working with the public he's surprised at how people are becoming less healthy, particularly children.

"That's the benchmark, because children should inherently be healthy if they're given the right kind of diet and the right kind of lifestyle. I'm seeing kids who are breaking down with diseases of old age."

Rather than obesity being a disease, he thinks it's a symptom of an underlying metabolic disease.

"The new paradigm shift in the way that we're looking at obesity is that we're actually low on energy, and that's stimulating hormones to trigger us to eat more, or more of the wrong kinds of foods."

Osteopath Josh Lamaro is a friend of Premier Health Partners and is available in Bendigo, Victoria.