B00AFYX78I EBOK Kate Harrison

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.But before you write off the BMI or the waist circumference guidelines, remember statistics don’t tend to lie.For every chain-smoking Great Aunt Winifred, who was the size of a horse and ate like one, and celebrated her 100th birthday with a bottle of gin for breakfast, there are millions of us whose diets are damaging our health.Excess weight can increase our risk of developing a range of diseases and conditions including:High blood pressureType 2 diabetesCoronary heart diseaseStrokesGallbladder diseaseCancer of the breast or colonOsteoarthritisRespiratory problemsOf course, you could hope you’re going to be the exception that proves the rule.Or you can try to maintain to a ‘healthy’ weight to keep the statistics on your side.Whatever your BMI, the truth is you probably don’t need a figure to tell you you’ve put on too much weight.My guess is that if you’re reading this book then you, like me, want to reduce your risks of these life-shortening, or quality-of-life reducing, conditions.As well as looking better by the pool…But, as we all know, losing weight is easier said than done:I was first taken to a slimming club at the age of 11 and have been dieting ever since, sometimes with success, sometimes not.I originally lost weight when I was 17 by starving.I would have 1oz All Bran (dry) in the morning, an apple at lunch time and plain salad in the evening.I used to tell my mum I was having lunch at college so that I didn't have to eat in the evening.I did this for 2 years and got down to 8 stone which is too thin for my 5 foot 7 inches! Once I started eating normally again the weight piled on.In my mid 20s I went to a slimming club and got to within 7lbs of my goal weight.Again, as soon as I started eating normally the weight piled on! Then Weight Watchers - Slimming World, Rosemary Conley classes, Atkins, Paul McKenna, Scarsdale.far too many diets to mention!!!Jeanny, 53I've tried all sorts - from The Cabbage Soup diet, Slimfast and the Beyoncé diet to Weight Watchers.The one that's worked best for long term weight loss was WW.I've had two successes there, though gradually the weight has gone back on.I'm greedy, really, it's that simple.Sarah, 49Eating too much makes you fat - and other annoying things thin people sayPeople who don’t struggle with their weight often have a maddening habit of stating the obvious.‘Losing weight is easy,’ they’ll say.‘Couldn’t be simpler.Eat less, move more.’Or they might point out the basic maths - that if you consume more food (or calories) than you burn off, you’ll put weight on, and if you do the opposite then you’ll lose it.‘Oh, if I feel a bit chubby,’ they might say, pinching the imaginary inch (more like a millimetre) around their waists, ‘I just hold off the chocolate for a couple of weeks and I’m back to normal.’Well, bully for them! For many of us, it’s a lot more complicated.Don’t blame yourself, blame biologyThere are a whole range of reasons, a lot of them external.But one important internal factor is our biology: we are designed to take in as much energy as we can in the ‘good’ times, to help us survive in the leaner times.It’s only very recently that starvation has ceased to be a threat to most developed populations.Now, we have the widest choice of foods available to us – including all the healthy, fresh, minimally processed foods that doctors and diet experts recommend.So why do so many of us make such bad choices?Because our bodies still act as though we’re living in caves, rather than centrally-heated houses, and still work as though we have to hunt and gather our food, instead of nipping to the supermarket or even ordering our groceries online.What that means is, we naturally crave high energy foods.Our bodies can’t think ahead.All they can do is react to now.So when sweet and fatty foods are on offer, we’re programmed to like the taste and texture, and to eat as much as possible – so we can lay down fat stores for a nutritional ‘rainy day.’For our ancestors that made perfect sense, because there were plenty of times when there was no food to be had, so we relied on the times when we’d eaten everything that was available, to store energy for survival.But now, even if the economy is suffering, we tend not to cut back on food.And we still crave the sweet, fatty stuff.Some people do manage to strike a balance, and stay slim.However, increasing numbers of us are becoming overweight or obese.And we need a new strategy to help cope with external factors like those glamorous air-brushed actresses, enticing new foods and energetic marketing.Turning biology to your advantageWhat 5:2 and fasting does is to go back to basics – I think of it as reintroducing some of the ‘rainy days’ our ancestors were only too familiar with, by providing less energy from food, in a controlled way.How the body responds is incredible, as we’ll see in Chapter Three [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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