Now more than ever, Britain is bursting at the seams with people struggling to control their weight, many of whom know nothing about how to eat healthily and have little or no enthusiasm for exercise. Yet at the time of year that people do find the resolve to lose weight and get fit, the help that people need is just not forthcoming.
Can we blame the diet industry for cashing in on our desire for quick fix weight loss products? Even though we know that diets alone rarely work?
The truth is that we human animals are programmed to eat food when we find it so that the ‘spare’ food energy can be converted to fat for the lean times that, in our modern comfortable world, rarely if ever come along. And unless a dieter can recognise this and make changes a little more in depth than the standard line: “don’t eat fat, do eat fruit”, the old eating patterns will soon re-emerge and the weight is piled on again.
It is also true that most people only consider exercise as a kind of last resort to shed the pounds and yet how many of us have found that going to the gym makes little or no difference to our weight? Hardly surprising when you consider that the average person will use only 200 – 300 kcal of energy at the gym, the equivalent of two or three chocolate biscuits, a cream cake or doughnut.
……and what about all those people who fall below average for exercise?
Is it the fault of the shareholders of our fabulously equipped gymnasiums that they make money from people who sign up for 365 days and use the gym on average, less than one tenth of those days before they give up?
Doesn’t it make sense that the people who are the most overweight are going to be the ones who exercise the least because they cannot even contemplate “30 minutes of exercise of moderate intensity” every day?
At some level, we all know that we need to eat less and exercise more. We recognise that an employee who is constantly off work sick, is likely to be the first choice for cut backs during times of ‘difficulty’ over her colleague with a better attendance record. At work, those who monitor performance know that the healthy employee is up to 18% more efficient at their work.
What then is the answer? Well perhaps we should address the questions?
