I’m at that age where I need to be careful about a lot of things I never used to give a second thought to. Well into my forties I had little to worry about with my weight. But since then I have found that left to itself, my stomach indulges in what used to be called middle aged spread. This bothers me mainly because my self image is someone who is thin. And indeed most of the rest of me is indeed thin. If my stomach expands it is all the more noticeable.
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In July 2014 I decided it was about time to do something about being overweight. I weighed in the region of 91Kg, but for my height the NHS recommended range only goes up to 84Kg. I had 7 more kilograms than I wanted. But how should I go about it? Continue reading
Between Monday and Friday last week I lost 2.4Kg. I also felt a higher level of energy, was more mentally alert and slept better. And I didn’t feel hungry at any stage. Let me share my detox programme with you. Continue reading
I have a busy day ahead catching up on paperwork and writing reports. To prepare I have stocked up on snacks, including a last minute dash to the Co-op for some bananas and ginger nut biscuits. I noticed that by a coincidence both items came to exactly the same amount of money on my bill. Continue reading
Reading Twitter first thing in the morning is not a great idea. Your blood sugar level is low and you are quite likely to find it annoying. For example this morning I was confronted with a set of tweets promoting detox products and programmes. My response was to tweet that I had just investigated the detox properties of eating a biscuit. I had eaten a biscuit and felt better, and so concluded that biscuits are valuable form of detox therapy. (Note for American readers – in the UK a biscuit is the name for what you call a cookie.) Continue reading
Not every blog post I do is an instant hit. The one I did yesterday about 5 a day for example was met with widespread indifference. Oh well. But it did remind me that there is another reason to eat fresh fruit and vegetables apart from simply being more healthy. They can also make you more attractive. Continue reading
They are both bad, but which is worse? Fat or Sugar? A couple of twins who are both doctors investigated by eating just one or the other for a month. Continue reading
The previous programmes looked at how we have ended up so fat. In the third part the subject was so called healthy foods. Health foods have been around a long time, but they really took off in the nineties when a series of health scares over food eroded people’s confidence in the mainstream food industry. There was salmonella in eggs. Beef was afflicted with mad cow disease. It wasn’t mentioned on the show, but I think I remember that there was something supposed to be wrong with caviar. Mad sturgeon disease I think it was. Continue reading
This is the second part of a three part series, though frankly when I reviewed the first part I thought the first one had already covered enough to be getting on with and there wasn’t much more to add. But this week they looked at advertising and product developments. Now because we all see food adverts, fast food outlets and snack products all the time it is easy to ignore them. What this programme did superbly was to analyse what is actually going on behind the scenes with these everyday experiences. Continue reading
This programme made the case that rising levels of obesity are linked to increased consumption of sugar. It was presented as if this was a surprising proposal. I am not sure how many people would not have heard this proposition before, it was certainly not particularly news to me. It was presented in a polemical way rather than a balanced one. It was also really slowly paced, which I actually quite liked because I was taking notes and tweeting about it, but would have been annoying in the extreme if I had just been watching it. But it was clearly presented and easy to follow. So as a bit of television, it was fine. Continue reading