What make's you think they own mirrors?

Don’t disagree with all of this: for instance, it astonishes me to see people who are apparently perfectly able, getting on a bus to go one stop. We all know about the school run and the culture of getting in the car to go around the corner for a paper.

This is an example of where the French (I’m going to stick with them as an example) walk more than we do, just on an ordinary, everyday basis. They are not a nation of gym bunnies – and indeed, I think that can be counterproductive as a weight loss method.

Not just on the basis of my own experience, but it’s widely documented that many people trying to lose weight experience weight loss – followed by regaining the same weight and then some more when they start to eat normally. That is not to say that they eat badly.

We also know that, at any one time, an estimated 80-odd percent of British women are on a diet. We know that gyms and health clubs and that sort of thing are thriving (y’see – obesity is actually good for the economy).

Research suggests that many, many British women suffer from sub-clinical eating disorders (SCDs).

Not simply on the basis of personal experience, but I’ve seen this in many other people (mostly women).

Standard diet advice – as mentioned earlier – is counterproductive. Yet it remains the mainstream understanding of what to eat. It is wrong.

One of the biggest root causes is the extent to which we have lost our national food and understanding of eating. We don’t know what to eat, when to eat, how to cook or even how to eat. And no, this isn’t just me saying this, but people like Raymond Blanc.

We do have more of a snacking culture than the French too.

But I’ll add in something else: we don’t enjoy food and, when we don’t we eat more.

Anecdote warning.

Last June, I was working at a conference where we didn’t really have time for proper lunch breaks, so food was brought into the office, where we ate while continuing to work.

One of the things that was served was a big bowl of chips – oven cooked from frozen. I’d get some on a plate and fork them into my mouth while writing. I’d eat quite a lot.

Fast forward a week or so. I was making chips at home (something I do about four times a year). I hand cut a couple of potatoes (one each) and then cooked them in lard.

Then I sat and relished eating them – flavour, textures etc. They were gorgeous. But even though I’d served less than I’d have had on my plate at that conference, I didn’t eat them all. Taking my time to enjoy, I allowed my body to recognise and convey to me that it was sated.

Back to France. Where obesity levels there are rising is where there is an attack on a the classic French lunch time – and where the ‘Western’ diet (ie the US-style of fast and junk food) is taking over. Although research has shown that even when the French have a Mackie D, they sit down and take longer to eat it than we do.

Another anecdote warning.

After 26 years of dieting – with ‘cut calories, cut fat, fill up with complex carbs and exercise’ as the mainstays of my very mainstream approach, all I had succeeded in doing was lose weight, pack it back on and then add some more for interest.

After a sort of Damascus moment, I stopped the endless cycle of dieting, ‘discovered’ food and started enjoying it. I even decided to start trying to cook.

Over the next five years, I didn’t put any more weight on. In the subsequent five years, I started losing weight. Very slowly, entirely sustainably, I’ve now dropped almost two clothes sizes.

I do my usual amount of walking, but don’t do the gym (or running or swimming) as I did in the past. I very, very rarely snack, but eat what I want – cooking it for myself and investing the time in that and in shopping for good quality food. As with the chips I mentioned, I use fats like lard and butter. I won’t touch marg. I won’t have those spray fats in the house any more, any more than I’ll buy diet foods.

And an element of all this has been rediscovering seasonality and proper northern European food and eating culture: I’ve just found that – by gum! – there really is nowt much better than a proper, homemade meat and potato pie, with lard shortcrust pastry (homemade).

It's also worth noting that, unless we have managed, in the space of a generation and a half to become far greedier and far lazier (and the gym bunny cult, that did not exist beforehand, suggests otherwise on that front) then the issues are, in general, more complex than I think they are in some cases where the simple explanation is true, just as it would have been true of those same types of cases in the past.

Adults of a certain age do less and can eat more - hence on go a few pounds. The worrying thing about that report though was the part where they said our childhood obesity rate was 10 times higher than some European countries. Overweight kids usually are stuck like that for life - that's awful. My 8 year old son eats nearly as much as I do, but boy does he burn it off. I have a team of 16 8/9 year olds I coach mini rugby to and only one of those is what you would call overwieght - and he is getting fitter and fitter. That's how I remember it when I was a kid, there would be one "big" kid in every class, and usually he took after his parents.

I agree with this fella.

Not if it's done properly, it isn't. Granted, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's a bit dismissive to refer to those who do use a gym to stay in shape as 'gym bunnies'. The problem with many new gym users, and some more experienced ones, I suppose, is that (as McF alluded to earlier) they go and sit on an exercise bike watching 'Loose Women' for half an hour and expect that it will solve all their problems. Or, if they're men, they go and lift weights that are too heavy for them for an hour, do no cardio, and expect that to solve all their problems.

Another issue is that people expect too much, too quickly. They're not in it for the long haul. Fair enough if the gym isn't your thing, but it can work and does work in a lot of cases. Those who 'fail' when working out in a gym do so, not because there's anything inherently wrong with training in a gym, but for the reasons stated above.



But often, they do. Very often when people return to eating 'normally', what that means is that they return to the same bad habits that made them overweight in the first place. That's why the weight (and more) goes back on. I hate diets. Detest them. For that very reason. When I was working as a personal trainer, I would never advise someone to go 'on a diet', I would always advise long term, gradual, sustainable changes to eating habits so that my client never went back to eating 'normally'.



See above about the diets. As regards health clubs thriving, the gym I attend has lost 800 members in the last year.



It depends what you call 'standard diet advice'. I always advise people to eat a wide range of foods including lean protein, fats (including some saturates, but little trans/hydrogenated), low GI carbs (not quite the same as 'complex' carbs) and plenty of fresh fruit and veg. I advise them to avoid processed food most of the time and to consider their alcohol and fizzy drink intake alongside food when 'calculating' calories (though I don't advise too much in the way of weighing and measuring). Provided that you don't eat a huge number of calories more than you're expending, and you spread your calorie intake fairly evenly through the day, the overwhelming majority of people will achieve a healthy weight with this 'standard advice'(particularly if they combine this healthy eating with some exercise). It's commercial 'diet clubs' like Weight Watchers and Slimmers World that are really counter-productive. Don't even get me started on them.

Our lass, and I'm proud of her.

lucky stool .....

Mintball wrote:One of the biggest root causes is the extent to which we have lost our national food and understanding of eating. We don’t know what to eat, when to eat, how to cook or even how to eat. And no, this isn’t just me saying this, but people like Raymond Blanc. We do have more of a snacking culture than the French too. Back to France. Where obesity levels there are rising is where there is an attack on a the classic French lunch time – and where the ‘Western’ diet (ie the US-style of fast and junk food) is taking over. Although research has shown that even when the French have a Mackie D, they sit down and take longer to eat it than we do. France is the second largest market after america, for the consumption of macdonalds. When I go in there for a coffee and the free wifi it is packed. The schools now have classes to try and educate the kids to eat traditional foods but most feel it is too late. France has the childhood obesity issues to come. http://www.zomppa.com/2011/08/25/france-the-world%E2%80%99s-second-largest-market-for-mcdonald%E2%80%99s/ http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2009/06/how_mcdonalds_conquered_france.html Extracts from the following link. "Some of the reasons for the increase in obesity are those that plague the United States and much of Europe: the lure of fast food foods, the ubiquity of unhealthy snacks and sedentary lives. McDonald's is more profitable in France than anywhere else in Europe. Sales have increased 42 percent in the past five years. There is something else: the breakdown in the classical tradition in which mealtime was a family ritual so disciplined and honoured that opening the refrigerator between meals for a child was a crime worthy of punishment. (A side effect is a blame-the-Mom syndrome, as fewer mothers have time to shop at markets every day for fresh foods and instead put more prepared dishes on the table.)" "While adult obesity is rising about 6 percent a year in France, among children the rate of growth is 17 percent. At that rate the French could be - quelle horreur - as fat as Americans by the year 2020. (More than 65 percent of the population in the United States is considered overweight or obese.)" "Findus, the frozen-food giant known for its breaded fish filets, filmed ordinary people eating over a period of time and was shocked by the result. Contrary to the myth that the French spend hours sitting around the table savouring small portions of several courses, the films showed them eating in front of their television sets, while on the phone and even eating alone. In fact, the average French meal, which lasted 88 minutes 25 years ago, lasts 38 minutes today." http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/french_fat.html

Mintball wrote:One of the biggest root causes is the extent to which we have lost our national food and understanding of eating. We don’t know what to eat, when to eat, how to cook or even how to eat. And no, this isn’t just me saying this, but people like Raymond Blanc. We do have more of a snacking culture than the French too. Back to France. Where obesity levels there are rising is where there is an attack on a the classic French lunch time – and where the ‘Western’ diet (ie the US-style of fast and junk food) is taking over. Although research has shown that even when the French have a Mackie D, they sit down and take longer to eat it than we do. France is the second largest market after america, for the consumption of macdonalds. When I go in there for a coffee and the free wifi it is packed. The schools now have classes to try and educate the kids to eat traditional foods but most feel it is too late. France has the childhood obesity issues to come. http://www.zomppa.com/2011/08/25/france-the-world%E2%80%99s-second-largest-market-for-mcdonald%E2%80%99s/ http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2009/06/how_mcdonalds_conquered_france.html Extracts from the following link. "Some of the reasons for the increase in obesity are those that plague the United States and much of Europe: the lure of fast food foods, the ubiquity of unhealthy snacks and sedentary lives. McDonald's is more profitable in France than anywhere else in Europe. Sales have increased 42 percent in the past five years. There is something else: the breakdown in the classical tradition in which mealtime was a family ritual so disciplined and honoured that opening the refrigerator between meals for a child was a crime worthy of punishment. (A side effect is a blame-the-Mom syndrome, as fewer mothers have time to shop at markets every day for fresh foods and instead put more prepared dishes on the table.)" "While adult obesity is rising about 6 percent a year in France, among children the rate of growth is 17 percent. At that rate the French could be - quelle horreur - as fat as Americans by the year 2020. (More than 65 percent of the population in the United States is considered overweight or obese.)" "Findus, the frozen-food giant known for its breaded fish filets, filmed ordinary people eating over a period of time and was shocked by the result. Contrary to the myth that the French spend hours sitting around the table savouring small portions of several courses, the films showed them eating in front of their television sets, while on the phone and even eating alone. In fact, the average French meal, which lasted 88 minutes 25 years ago, lasts 38 minutes today." http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/french_fat.html

I was meaning the culture rather than individuals. Been there, done that myself etc.

But the point is that we don't need it. Why have we developed into a nation that now needs to spend a fortune going to the gym etc?




Or they 'fail' because serious gym work (and other exercise), combined with restricted diet, set the body's 'controls' (if you will) to a mode that then makes it very difficult to maintain the attained physical state when you return to 'normal' living – and I do mean a basically sensible diet and a reasonable amount of daily movement. I've been down the gym route – more than once – and combined serious weights work with aerobic exercise and diet.

You don't have to eat badly once you start eating 'normally' again to put weight back on.

And indeed, we start to ask what this 'bad' eating is.



I suspect that's the recession.



Cut calories, cut fat, fill up with complex carbs. This isn't the faddy stuff – not 'just eat grapefruits for a fortnight to cut fat' or similar – this has been mainstream advice for years. In the 1970s, it was standardly said that for weight loss, you needed to cut to 1,000kcals per day.

As I've mentioned before, I was later told by a GP to cut to 800 – because I could never get quite below the upper weight for my height. He didn't check my health or fitness (this was during the period when I was exercising heavily), so the weight that I was carrying in the form of lean tissue wasn't considered, for instance.



Indeed. Trans and hydrogenated are bloody poisons. To add: fat not only sates (as mentioned previously) but it also carries flavour. I cannot fathom the obsession with chicken breast – mostly from factory-produced birds. It has so little flavour that it has to be covered in loads of sauce to make it edible. Chicken thighs taste so much better – and are massively cheaper too. So much of what has become viewed as 'healthy food' is bloody dire: bland and utterly lacking in pleasure. I still say that part of the problem is that we have lost our food culture – and that we have lost the real pleasure of food.




TBF, I think French schools have been having those classes for quite some time, IIRC.

38 minutes would still be longer than many in the UK. But yes, this is deeply, deeply depressing. Can't we just ban effing MacDonalds and KFC, along with loads more of the junk that has been foisted on us from the US, from litigation culture to school proms and aggressive marketing for Halloween?

But in the meantime, that doesn't disprove what I was posting earlier – indeed, it bears it out. And to go back to Rock God's points, it still raises the question of why the French do not currently require a mass gym culture.

We might not 'need' to use gyms to keep fit, but some people actually prefer to. And, as for paying a fortune, I pay £15 a month for my (off peak) gym membership - less than half of what most people spend on a single night out, or about the cost of a takeaway meal. Hardly a fortune, and money well spent if it does the job.



I don't know where you're getting this from, but it's not right for the vast majority of us. Or at least not for the vast majority of clients I have dealt with. Perhaps your personal experience differs, but if you have been given a sensible training programme, together with a healthy eating plan, there's no reason you should need to 'return to normal living'. Or, more appropriately, any definition of 'normal living' should include regular exercise and a healthy diet. If you're flogging yourself in the gym, and/or restricting your calories too severely, then you suddenly stop and return to what you were doing before, of course there's a good chance you'll put weight back on over time. I would never advise someone to change their exercise/eating habits as a short term measure in order to achieve some pre-determined goal (though setting goals is important). My approach is to encourage people to make long term changes that will benefit them (hopefully) for the rest of their lives. Exercise, in whatever form, should be a habit we all get into (unless we're physically incapable). Same with healthy eating. That's why I never tell anyone to go 'on a diet', preferring instead to identify changes to a person's eating habits that they have a realistic chance of maintaining in the longer term.

The key is balance. Work out (whether in a gym or not) at a safe, sustainable intensity for 30-40 minutes, 4-5 times per week and eat a healthy, balanced diet, and there won't be a problem. Cut down to minus calories and kill yourself in the gym for two hours a day, and there almost certainly will.



Processed foods, too much alcohol, too many calories for your activity level, to give a few examples.



This isn't mainstream advice now. It's many years out of date, in fact. Most knowledgeable people will now tell you to create a small calorie deficit from a combination of diet and exercise, and combine this with a balanced diet including all essential nutrients. There are calculators out there that enable you to, very roughly, work out how many calories you need to consume to maintain your current weight. As a rule of thumb, I would advise no more than a 500 calorie per day deficit (approx 250 from diet and 250 from exercise) off this figure for steady, sustainable weight loss. We've come a long way since the 70s, and I don't know of anyone who knows what they're talking about who would advise eating only 1000 calories per day.

As regards carbs, the advice now is to eat low-GI carbs, as opposed to 'complex carbs'. Things like white bread and white pasta contain 'complex carbs', but their wholemeal equivalents are much better for prolonging satiety and releasing energy slowly. They don't produce the same insulin spikes as high GI carbs, and therefore don't promote fat storage in the same way.



Then your GP is an idiot. I have had a similar experience with a practice nurse. I have a BMI of around 27, and she told me I needed to lose weight. When I pointed out that my bodyfat was only around 11%, she just mumbled something about 'still needing to shed a few pounds', then promptly changed the subject. But because some people are still giving out poor/out of date advice, doesn't mean that it's 'mainstream advice'.




I don't think we have a 'mass gym culture'. Of all the people I know, I can think of only one or two who use a gym on a regular basis. I'd imagine that a very small percentage of the overall population are regular gym goers. That said, the gym works for many people and I think it's often unfairly derided as somehow being a 'false' way of getting fit.