Yesterday the Observer carried a feature headed ‘Why exercise won’t make you thin’. It concludes that exercise alone will not make you lose weight unless you diet as well. Well! There’s a revelation!
When I read articles like that I get pretty frustrated. Research study after research study is commissioned to prove or disprove facts that are plain, straight-forward common sense.
Being overweight is dangerous to our health. Being unfit is dangerous to our health. Being overweight AND unfit it VERY dangerous to our health! Fact!
To lose weight we need to eat fewer calories each day than our body spends in living and going about our daily lives. If we eat more than we spend in energy, we gain weight. It is not rocket science. Every time we walk a mile we spend around 100 calories. If we drink half a bottle of wine or eat a Mars bar, we need to walk three miles extra to burn it off if we don’t want to gain weight. But if we eat a bit less cereal at breakfast, eat one less sandwich at lunchtime and cut our evening-meal portion by 20%, and try to be as active every day as we can, we can get away without having to walk the extra three miles. It is about choices and a desire to be slim.
Being physically active burns extra calories, helps our heart and lungs to become fitter, reduces our cholesterol and blood pressure and helps our joints. If we could take a pill that gave us the benefits that exercise gives us, we would all be taking it. We really do not need anyone to give us any discouragement to exercise and that’s why articles such as the one in the Observer, make me mad. We need encouragement to exercise and we need to build it into our everyday lifestyle so that we don’t see it as a chore but part of living. Eating healthily, and a few hundred fewer calories each day while we are trying to lose weight, will transform our health, our figure and our confidence. But we do need to do both diet AND exercise to see fast, effective and transforming results that will encourage us. That’s why 17 years ago we launched Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness Clubs to teach exercise within a slimming clubs to encourage faster weight loss. And it works. It really, really works!
And when I read today the story of our Mr and Mrs Slimmer of the Year, Maria and Toby Webber, running in yesterday’s Great North Run having lost 18 ½ stone between them, I feel very proud. They epitomise what ‘diet’ AND ‘fitness’ can do for you. Brilliant!
Posts
