20th January 2020
Weight loss

Mythbusting Monday: Does eating in a blindfold help you lose weight?

Has anyone seen my dinner? In my search for myths to bust, sometimes I run out of inspiration and have to take to Google to sleuth out the fads. It turns out that, in an episode of How to Lose Weight Well, they said, “Eating while blindfolded and in the dark can reduce calorie intake by 25%”. Excuse me, I have questions… Ok, so clearly, eating blindfolded AND in the dark (a rather belt and braces approach methinks) means you can’t see what you’re doing so there will be a lot of mess and yes, you’ll likely eat less if you manage one meal this way without giving up and turning the light on. But I don’t know about you, […]
16th January 2020
May the forties be with you

Tales from Chicken Cottage

You can’t move on any high street for fast food outlets, be they chicken shops, burger restaurants or traditional chippies, selling cheap, high calorie meals that fill tummies with little nutritional quality. They proliferate in deprived areas, almost to the exclusion of shops that sell fresh produce and can form a large part of the diet in low income groups. They are part of our obesogenic environment.   But it’s an individual’s responsibility to avoid going into a chicken shop isn’t it? Well aside from the fact that it might offer the most calories per pound for individuals in poverty, these establishments offer far more than just food. They offer a space for young people. – A news report on […]
13th January 2020
Girl in crop top

Mythbusting Monday: Apple cider vinegar

The apple cider vinegar diet: another “New Year New You” classic. Drink a couple of teaspoons of apple cider vinegar before a meal to witness miraculous weight loss without dieting! Alongside the usual detox hokum. What’s the evidence though and are there any risks?   I presume I don’t need to go into the pointlessness of detox products when you possess a functioning liver and pair of kidneys? Right? Good. So let’s look at the weight loss data. A 2009 randomised controlled study of overweight individuals in Japan, receiving either placebo or low or high doses of vinegar (not specifically apple cider) showed that, after 12 weeks, there was a modest reduction in weight of 1-2kg and a slight improvement […]
13th June 2019
Orange

The Truth About Dieting

Hands up who’s been on a diet? Hands up who regained most of the weight they lost? It’s not that we have suddenly started to defy the laws of thermodynamics, such that eating fewer calories than your body needs can no longer result in weight loss although to be fair, post 40, it can feel like it! Diets work, whether it’s the cabbage soup diet or simply healthy eating but only while you are on them. What happens when the diet stops is critical. Have we, as a nation, succumbed to a population collapse of willpower? Do we give up and settle for a life of jam doughnuts and wine (I mean, I’m game!)? Or do we need to rethink […]