Bikini Body Outrage

A Brummie Mummy has has invented a wooden bikini into which you can insert coins for every pound of weight you lose to get into a bikini body.

To get summer bikini body ready.

There is a WEDDING DRESS version for women to get sized down for their big day. I wonder how many men “fit-up-slim-down for their big day?

is this what women are supposed to eat so that they can have fun at the beach?

There is not an equivalent wooden weight loss “trunks” for men. We have to put an end to this kind of nonsense

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61881412

If I Took More Than 10 Steps I Would Be Sweating

Sometimes it is not about anorexia.

 At his heaviest Paul weighed 51 stonePaul suffered for years with compulsive eating and self neglect so that he made poor eating choices consistently. He has lost over 400 lbs with an operation called the Gastric Sleeve where the stomach is adapted so that only very small amounts of food can be eaten. This operation is an immediate cure for Diabetes Type 2 BUT it is not suitable for everyone.

Gastric surgery is not the quick-fix solution for everyone who struggles with compulsive eating. It will change your ability to eat for the rest of your life and means you must make many adjustments to your relationship with food. So everyone wanting Gastric surgery for weight loss needs to undergo a psychological assessment. We can do this just call 0845 838 2040.

I hope that Paul finds the money he needs to get cosmetic surgery to deal with his excess skin. Perhaps he can get it from Crowdfunding.

Here is the link if you would like to see Paul’s story
with acknowledgement to BBC 5 Live

Its Hard To Get Help When You’re Not Thin

So many people tell me that their eating problems aren’t taken seriously because they look normal or thin. Ann (not real name) said last week that she felt like a fraud sitting in an eating disorder group because she was the only person who wasn’t thin. She came to see us for an assessment. Afterwards she said

And so I haven’t fully believed that what “I” have is a proper eating disorder but rather what I have is just a problem, that just I have, that no-one has been able to help me with and that I should and will be able to sort out on my own at some point in the future. I realise now that is not the case, I deserve help, which is scary and overwhelming but also exciting and hopeful.

If you want an assessment by someone who understands all the faces of an eating disorder,  you can find it here with us.

Source The Metro

In Search Of A Personalised Diet BBC Horizon

Hello all you people who want to lose weight, this is such an important subject that I have written about this on my personal Blog at Deannetalks but also here as well.

I am going to have a lot to say about the Tanya Byron, Susan Jebb and other expert take on weight loss. I will I promise try to make it positive and helpful.

We are now in the dieting months and I’m already sick and tired of all the diet plans I’m seeing. There is the Ice Diet being promoted by Peta Bee in the Times – sorry Peta, bad science. And even a diet called EAT! Which is just another variant on the low carb diets. These diets are one size fits all and take no account of personal genes and nutrient responses. They are designed to fail in the long run, as all fervent followers will discover.

SO…Have we finally found the Holy Grail of weight loss? Is tailoring DIETS to your obesity-type the best way to help you lose weight? We have been searching for tailored programmes for years.  An army of world famous weight loss experts cannot surely be wrong. Can they?

Well let’s see.

A few years ago, the BBC ran a diet trials experiment at the University of Surrey which compared different types of diets for success. There was a clear winner (Conley)  but the take- home message in the long run is that different types of diet suit different people. People who don’t like calorie counting do well with  Atkins or Dukan, while some  people do really well with a group approach. But in the long run it’s pretty much all the same. Failure, that is, for most 18 months down the line.

The BBC have an all-singing-dancing world expert scientific approach that is new. Do people really divide themselves into three obesity types?

The first “cant-stoppers” who are low on gut hormones.

The second “constant cravers” who probably lack a good leptin response (science here) to tell their brains they aren’t hungry.

The third, “comfort eaters” who meet the day to day stress in life by using food as a feel-good drug.

Perhaps. They have all lost weight, HURRAY – but that proves very little; they have also been very unhappy here and there. it was poor research design, and the proof of the obesity pudding must surely be in how well they are able to keep it off. Oh well, it makes good TV but probably very little else.

Professor Susan Jebb is an expert-expert on obesity but has said that losing weight is not a matter of will, but of habits. People have to change their habits for life. I know that, and part of the therapy I do is to help change habits from very deep inside. This is useful for everyone and flexibility training was missing from the treatment given to these subjects.

But I cannot agree with that. There is a whole new science of willpower – known as self-regulation theory – which is available to obesity specialists and which is helping people to use their willpower to change their lives. This can help comfort-eaters, constant-cravers and cant-stoppers too. Why was this ignored?   So what’s going to happen to these happy weight losers? Will they have to stay on their diets for life, an impossible task surely, unless they learn how to exercise their WILL.

I like it when people feel they have done something valuable and positive. Who could fail to be moved when men weep real tears for having help and support. But is this real science when it ignores real psychological strategies that work, like flexibility training and self-regulation training. More than half of the fatties got “CBT” on top of their diets, maybe it was the CBT not the diet that helped them.

And I want to know why the experts have decided the Intermittent Fasting Regime is right approach for constant cravers. MY RESEARCH TELLS ME THAT FASTING WILL MAKE THEIR PREOCCUPATIONS WORSE? Who said this was the right way for them to eat?

So for me the jury is out. Some bits of this interesting programme hold out hope for people who cannot lose weight. It’s good for someone to know that they may be lacking in a gut hormone that helps them to feel full. Its good to suggest that an emotional eater is not just weak-willed and greedy. It may be useful to know that a constant craver might not be feeling leptin in their brain.

This programme is misnamed. It is called finding the right diet for you. It should be named the right mix of strategies for you. Possibly but I am going to write more about this shortly

World experts should know better than to suggest that what they have done is a solution. It is just one of a number of things that must be properly explored in properly designed clinical trials before we can truly discover a personalized solution for obesity. And we experts know better than to think that any single diet can provide a quick fix even when the experts say “genes”.

Does TV Make You Fat?

I’m not the only person who enjoys watching TV. However recent research has pointed to the risk of it making us fatter.

Experiments done by Professor Jane Wardle at the University of Surrey has proved that people who eat while watching TV increase snack eating subsequently by a significant amount

Two identical families (2 adults 2 children) were given identical meals before testing computer games. One family ate on their knees in front of the TV and the other family ate at a table. The TV family ate 3 times more snack food (crisps and sweets) than the family who ate at table.

Conversely…

Dolly Mittal and her team reporting in The Psychologist in 2014 have shown that snacking while watching TV, as opposed to snacking while not watching TV, lead women in particular to eat more later on, partly because the effect of the TV is to affect the memory for how much we snacked on earlier.

32 women of unexceptional weight spent 20 minutes eating snack food, half while watching TV and the others while sitting quietly. Later at lunchtime, the TV watchers ate twice as much food as did the women who had snacked while watching TV.  In a follow up study, the researchers investigated the types of TV, from comedy to a boring documentary. The same TV-overeating occurred, and it seemed that the type of programme watched made no difference at all.

Since it is proved that obesity in childhood  is directly related to the number of hours of TV watched per week, it may be useful to take your TV out of the kitchen and stop eating in front of the telly as much as possible, and for life.

I await with interest research on Facebook making us fat… perhaps.

Obesity And NICE

Obesity!  There has been a lot in the press about obesity this week with the publication of NICE guidelines for obesity treatment, information that our girls are the fattest in Europe and publication of research associating sleep in the light with obesity. Even I have had my say, see me on the BBC website

In the London Times today an article shows us that low fat custard has more calories than ordinary custard (thanks, Asda).

Fat is on my mind as well because I am about to train a group of 70 obesity professionals from all over the world.

Oh dear, do I really think that the NHS should be spending billions on 12 weeks of free attendance at slimming clubs?  Do I really think that 3% weight loss will save the NHS a lot of money on medical problems associated with obesity?   Well I don’t think I do.

The chances of people maintaining a 3% weight loss I think are nil. That’s based on evidence. It’s not going to cure diabetes or liver disease. It isn’t going to make fat people feel better or even look better which is why they try to lose weight in the first place.  How did these idiots come up with such a stupid idea.

Ah I think I know why …. lobbying pressure from the slimming club industry!  Money!  If only I had shares in a commercial weight loss company!

On the other hand, lots of people are fat because they are ignorant about what a healthy diet really is. Do we believe, as the food industry would have us do, that sugar coated frosties are better than no breakfast at all?

Do we think, as they would have us think, that low fat yoghurt full of sugar is better than normal yoghurt (which is a low fat food).

People need to wake up and get real about what is in the food we eat. Its right to correct ignorance which the slimming clubs might do. But I think that many of the so-called army of helpers are also ignorant and improperly trained. Perhaps the Government should invest in properly trained obesity specialists who can do the same job in the community, like practice nurses. These people won’t just give out diet sheets, they will understand motivation and proper nutritional wisdoms, and they will know what kinds of activity really can help – not just “going to the gym”.

FAT CHANCE!

 

Obesity Experts For Sale To VLCD?

Today I found myself arguing with the NICE co-ordination team who are on the verge of recommending VLCD liquid diets for Obese Type 2 diabetics.

VLCD diets are associated with addictive behaviours, long term weight loss failure and severe binge eating, which can make people even more  unhealthy. Of course they “work” in the short run, as does anything.  Is it any surprise that some of the expert obesity specialists who endorse diet systems and who “do the research” are in the pay of these commercial operations?

In 2010 it was reported that Susan Jebb, obesity expert, is being paid by Rosemary Conley and Weight Watchers presumably to lobby on their behalf. Or something else. Just about all commercial weight loss enterprises have their expert obesity academic on their letterhead.to confer “authority” on their products. Do you think that such organisations should be compelled to disclose what they pay and to whom? Shame on the academics for taking the “kings silver” and for not having the courage to say that everything works for someone, that long term outcomes are pretty much the same for everything, and for not being able to admit which enterprises are causing harm.

I should know about harm – I pick up the pieces. On behalf of the overweight and ill, it is naughty.

You’re Fat! Fat! Fat, Fat, Fat!

Research from the Met. University of Leeds shows that the middles classes are now fatter than the poor classes who are usually blamed for their ignorance and bad eating choices. Giles Coren writes in the Sunday times that we might now call things we hate “fat” since the word can no longer be disguised as thinly veiled class snobbery.

Janice Turner writing in the Times on the same day says that our obsession with the looks of our politicians is damaging public life, weakening debate and making poor satire. No-one should care if Teresa May loses 20 lbs, thats nothing connected with her job.

Fat still then is a very emotive word, even if is now means “middle class”. I’ve written more about this, please check out my big blog at http://deannetalks.blogspot.com

 

 

The Men Who Made Us Fat

Last night I walked down Marylebone HIgh Street, London. Every two yards there was another place to eat, a Pain Quotidien, a cafe, an epicerie, a Costa Coffee and a cake shop from heaven. People were eating as they walked along the street.

20 years ago I walked down the same street and every 100 yards there was a place to eat and very few people ate as they walked.

40 years ago I walked down Marylebone High Street. There were no places to eat, lots of other shops and no one ate as they walked.

They assume that people who gain weight are weak willed. On the contrary, people who keep their weight stable have to work really hard 24 hours a day 7 days a week to avoid – like bouncing bagatelles- the food they see around them saying “eat me now, you will feel nice, I will give you a lift, you don’t need to be hungry -you just need to be wanting a bit of fun and what’s the harm in that”.

On top of that are the dangers that we can’t see; the men who made us fat have inserted them quietly into the food we eat. Corn syrup, tastes so nice but it is food that our body cannot deal with properly. Relax, have a beer, or a bit of ketchup on your chips. It will make you fat while it makes them rich.

Going to put petrol in your car? Have a chocolate bar, it will reward you for doing all that hard work. They made it big so you would spend more money and feel virtuous because you hadn’t bought 2 bars.  They knew that you would eat it all up in one go because thats what people do. And while you were scoffing it made them rich.

Did you know that the food industry has blackmailed, denigrated, rubbished and possibly even murdered the people who wanted to tell you the truth. They have bought or crushed the politicians who could have done something about this. They wanted to make you fat so that you would need what they had to sell you.

And everyone is frightened of taking them on.See that giant bag of crisps?  See that double caramel flavoured frappucino?  JUST SAY NO.