....FAT.....

              If the average person runs for 30 minutes he will burn a Mars Bar or a glass of wine in calories.       

           I used to play five-a-side football three times per week and there was a gym near the car park and every other day women would file out of their dance/step /whatever class with their rolled up mats, leggings and sweat tops. This was a very impressive commitment year in and year out.....but there was one slight problem....they were all fat, not overweight but fat. I saw the same people for years and I just couldn't get my head around what for me and my footy mates was blindingly obvious. Were they looking in a mirror? I would have asked for my money back.I could see that they actually felt good about themselves. ..'Just been to my dance class' blah blah blah. Now you may think I am being nasty, after all, at least they were trying and thats true but all they were actually doing was getting fatter. However the really scary thing about all this was that I was as guilty as them......and I didn't see it either.

      This was 17 years ago, I looked fit and healthy but I wasn't. I was 15st-7lbs, (thats 217 pounds!). Just like the dance class I believed because I played football, vigorously, three times a week I was in good shape.
35% of Americans and 25% of Brits are clinically obese and a great many more are fat or overweight. We ALL know why.....we eat too much and don't exercise enough. WRONG!!!!!!! I now way 12st-6lbs (174 pounds). Thats 3st-1lb (or 43 pounds ) LESS. And I have more muscle ( which is supposed to weigh more), so what is going on?  Even more scary 90% of Americans believe they  eat a healthy diet.
      There are two problems with exercising A You feel hungry and B You believe you can now eat because its your reward for all the calories burnt. The result is you eat more than you lost. I personally find that drinking alot of water just after excersise helps and also a healthy protein /carb snack- nuts, fruit, glass of skimmed milk etc seems for me to work best. There is a great deal of research on this but psychologically I tell myself that the fact I have exersised makes no difference to what I would normally eat. Suprisingly long, slow, low intensity training can and does temporarily supress my appetite.
         The main thing is we all know excercise is good for us in so many ways that the benefits are endless-just watch out on the eating afterwards.

                  So why did I say 'Wrong' to eating and excersising; You have to do the right kind of excersise and learn how your body works...Aerobic is the obvious answer but many high intensity workouts are just as effective. Secondly its not how much we eat but what we eat.I am constantly  staggered at what people think is healthy and what isn't. A tiny bit of reasearch will tell you all you need to know. I tend to assume that I am stupid and need to educate myself more and then hopefully I will keep going in the right direction.

      Its all a learning curve but food labelling today can be highly illuminating. I did this experiment....try it.

I visited the local store and looked at the fat, salt and calorie content of 10 different HEALTHY meusli/ organic type, breakfast cereals.....ie the good ones.  Per 100 grams the fat content alone ranged from 3 to 16 grams. My case rests.........Its a jungle out there.