The FTO gene is said to make people 70% more likely to be obese, yet a large review found only a modest effect. Genes matter, but diet and lifestyle matter more. This chapter shows how headlines and journals can disagree.
Spend 80% of your time planning and 20% acting. This chapter lists what to take out, what has some value and what you can ignore, then sets out the four change-management questions: where are you now, where do you want to be, why, and how.
Diets fail because health rests on a three-legged stool: biochemistry and hormones, behaviour and mind, and society. Eighty percent of dieters weigh more two years later. Fix one leg and the stool still falls over.
Thousands of diet books sell billions of dollars a year, yet two-thirds of us are overweight. Hugh Butler, a PhD scientist, explains why he searched the evidence for himself and why the answer is taking things out of your diet, not adding more in.
10 tips for effective science based dieting are explained by the BBC documentary team in 2009. Michael Mosley is the test subject, and they visit researchers who have a range of tactics to diet effectively. Make sure you eat more protein; keep moving; eat more dairy product; understand food calories to make informed decisions; count calories; don’t skip meals; use smaller dinner plates; don’t go to buffets; eat soup, and swap higher energy calorie foods for equivalent tasty foods. Simple tactics that are scientifically proven to work.
Thousands of books. Billions of dollars. But society is continuing to get fatter, more un-healthy, and what to do about […]
Antioxidants are not necessarily vitamins, but some vitamins are antioxidants.
Anti-oxidation vs. oxidation has been billed as a contest between good and evil. It takes place in within cells in organelles called mitochondria, where the body converts food to energy — a process that requires oxygen (oxidation). One consequence of oxidation is the generation of atomic scavengers called free radicals (evil). Free radicals can damage DNA, cell membranes, and the lining of arteries. Not surprisingly, they have been linked to ageing, cancer, and heart disease. Before reviewing the scientific evidence, I thought that antioxidants were a little over-hyped but generally ineffective. We can see now that if you want to run the risk of increased cancer, take anti-oxidants. Eating some fruit and vegetables (note: fruit juice is not fruit) will reduce your weight and improve your health. The claim for health from consuming antioxidants has no evidence. For me any money spent on this sort of stuff is a complete waste of money. Do something useful. Help provide clean water to poor communities. That will do some good.
We have outsourced responsibility for our health. We don’t want to change the way we live despite documentation that lifestyle is one of the most powerful determinants of health. Vitamins are necessary to convert food into energy and when people don’t get enough vitamins, they suffer diseases. The question isn’t whether people need vitamins. They do. The questions are how much do they need, and do they get enough in foods?
But I’m very sceptical of anyone who has a pill to cure the man-made epidemics of our time, and it turns out scientists know large quantities of supplemental vitamins can be quite harmful indeed. But sales are good.
These six things are all part of the 20% of things to give us 80% of our health.
– Take-out fructose from your diet.
– Take-out simple carbohydrates. Have more complex carbohydrates, fat and protein.
– Take-out food for 2 days per week. (5:2 Diet) for a period of time if you want to loose weight fast.
– Take-out a calorie counter for a short period. Become aware.
– Take-out seed oils from your diet.
– Take-out sitting down for more than 30 minutes at a time. Try to get some form of exercise.
Review these things in the context of the 3 legged stool. Our physical body, our mental attitude, and the society we live in. Change is challenging. Understand why diets fail. But can succeed.
If you are under 40 – most are overweight, but you still keep on slowly but surely over 40 – you become obese.. It is what you eat. Not your resolution for diets, exercise. Unless you make a change in food intake, you will put on about 1% of your weight each year.
If you do make a change, you can lose that weight and the easiest way is cut out carbohydrates, starting with added sugar
