Winning is being healthy and able to enjoy your life
WHAT would you spend the money on? Since 1994 when the National Lottery launched, that has to be the most often asked hypothetical question. My answer? A personal chef. Someone to create a healthy, nutritious menu and buy and cook the food.
It’s not the most glamorous answer but it would simultaneously remove the weekly shop and the devil on your shoulder tempting you while doing so.
The result? A healthy balanced diet, giving you the energy and time to make the most of your life and millions. People may see that as restrictive. I take the opposing view; that it eliminates bad decisions.
When I was a member of the British rowing team we were lucky enough to have a nutritionist.
She went to the hotel or training venue weeks before us and spoke to the kitchen staff, “suggesting” meals as well as food and ingredients we weren’t allowed.
And at home I was taken round the supermarket, shown what to buy and then taught how to cook from scratch.
The human body is an engine, put the wrong fuel in an engine and the car isn’t going to fire properly. Without that intervention I wouldn’t have won.
Outside of the sporting arena winning is being healthy and able to fully enjoy life.
I’m sure the Government wishes it had the financial resources to provide everyone with their own nutritionist to teach them to both shop and cook but it doesn’t.
Therefore, it has to create effective policy and balance intervention with libertarianism.
The PM prefers the latter, stating the Government’s effort to reduce obesity will be supportive rather than “bossy”. It is this lack of intervention that has led to scepticism about how effective the plan will be.
The scale of the problem is immense. More than 83 per cent of us in the UK will die of a lifestylerelated disease and 80 per cent of lifestyle disease is behaviour driven. Nearly two-thirds of British adults are overweight and more than a quarter obese (NHS Digital).
In 2018-19, 876,000 hospital admissions were linked to weight problems.
It’s a hugely positive step that last week for the first time the Government said weight loss was 80 per cent nutrition and 20 per cent exercise.
It gives the necessary strength to their elbow to ban junk food adverts on TV before 9pm and consult on whether that should be extended to a complete ban on both sweets and fast food online.a consultation which I hope neither drags on nor dilutes the proposals.
The Government will always face criticism for not going far enough and opportunities have been missed. But that misses some significant policy changes, such as the expansion of the NHS’S weight management service which includes “healthy weight coaches” to support patients.
Calorific labelling in restaurants on both meals and alcoholic drinks is a positive step. My feeling is that to the vast majority of the population calories are nothing more than a number.
People need to understand what a calorie actually means. Rather than a number, I believe it is more relatable to people that to burn off the calories of a single can of Coke requires a 35-minute walk and for a Big Mac meal you need to run for 150 minutes.
Which brings me to exercise.
It is great for weight management, physical health and mental wellbeing but ineffective for weight loss. Even if people had the time, nobody can outrun a fork.
In preparation for the Olympics I trained between 5-6 hours a day and ate 5,000kcal a day compared to the recommended 2,500. But a nutritionist prescribed and controlled our diet.
You don’t need to have been an Olympic athlete to realise that we have a problem with inactivity in Britain.
Only 33 per cent of boys and 21 per cent of girls aged four to 15 meet the minimum levels of physical activity a week. Adults are no better.
We forget that humans were designed to move all day and sit down to eat. Now we sit down all day and eat on the move – breaking the machine that is our body.
Covid-19 has forced us to look again at the state of the nation’s health, especially those of us who have gained weight from the age of 40 onwards. Humans lose 8-10 per cent of muscle mass a decade after the age of 30, which corresponds to a decrease in metabolic rate. You are fighting a losing battle the minute you wake up.
I took part in the 2019 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, I was more than 20 years older than my crewmates.
We had our Resting Metabolic Rate measured and mine, at 46, was 1,270 calories a day.the average of my crew mates (with a mean age of 22) was 2,380 calories a day. Even if I did the same training and ate the same food as my crewmates each day, it was as if I was consuming a full Big Mac Meal before I’d got up.
This surely proves that exercise – as much as I love it – is not the solution.
We need help eating a healthy diet and we need effective support for those currently living with obesity.
The Government has said it will be led by science during the coronavirus crisis. Now it is time to let the science lead on the obesity debate, where we can apply the most up-to-date research to create new solutions for all age groups.
We must change our understanding of obesity and how we can crack it.
This requires the Government to do much more than it has over the past few decades, which it is.whether it’s enough is another question.