The natural way to be fit for life
I am a health and wellbeing coach for the NHS and am frustrated that trendy diets fail so many people. at this time of year, we are encouraged to change our ways in the hope it will turn our lives around and help us lose weight — but why do so many diets fail?
For a start, the advice is confusing: eat meat, don’t eat meat; eat fat, avoid fat; eat carbs, don’t eat carbs. Walking around the supermarket, temptation is everywhere: aisle after aisle of ultra-processed foods, from crisps to chocolate. Worse still are the foods that pretend to be healthy, such as breakfast cereals.
What does it say about the rest of the supermarket that there is a health food aisle?
Refined carbohydrates are everywhere, and the evidence points to their overconsumption as the number one cause of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The Government brought in a sugar tax to reduce the amount in our bottles of fizz, so why can’t it reduce ultraprocessed food?
It’s pretty profitable if we continue to eat it, though I’m sure the NHS, which has to pick up the pieces, would argue we could do so much better.
The average family’s shopping basket contained less than 20 per cent ultraprocessed food in the 1970s when I was growing up. Today, it’s more than 50 per cent, with poorer parts of the country at more than 80 per cent. These foods are crammed with refined carbohydrates and a list of ingredients as long as your arm with names you won’t recognise. They certainly aren’t ingredients you would find in your kitchen. The next time you pick up a ‘treat’ for your family, look at the ingredients listed on the back. Perhaps it’s OK as a one-off, but then look at everything else in your trolley. Your body wants real food — the kind you find in the fruit and veg section, cheese counter, meat, fish and dairy. Sadly, many people are eating fake food from the moment they get up until last thing at night.
I have guided hundreds of patients back to health by losing weight naturally. don’t over-complicate it by telling people to count calories and avoid healthy foods such as meat and eggs. Go a week eating real food and watch how your body will start to thank you for it.
MARK HANCOCK, Horndean, Hants. I am in my early 70s and run or cycle every day, eat sensibly and my BmI is in the green band. I have just flown through my annual health check with my GP, who commented I was the first patient to whom she hadn’t had to offer health improvement advice. Other than self-satisfaction, what other incentive is there for me? I’ll still be placed at the bottom of the waiting list should I need NHS care.
I’m surprised that those who shed weight in a Government-backed trial in Wolverhampton will be rewarded with cinema tickets and supermarket vouchers. Couch potatoes can download a free app that rewards them for eating veggies and exercising. Surely, the better option would be to award NHS treatment credits to people like me, so when we need healthcare we are higher up the waiting list. Those who neglect their health should be given a lower NHS credit rating and placed farther down the list for treatment. This would surely be the best incentive to take responsibility for your own health.