• There is little doubt that most westerners are fat because they eat the wrong foods rather than simply because they eat too much. By consuming too large a proportion of one’s calories as fat, sugar and refined carbohydrates, we absorb too much of the food we eat and end up fat. The answer is to eat much less fat, little or no sugar, and much more unrefined carbohydrate in the form of cereals, whole meal-flour products, fruit and vegetables. Such foods are naturally slimming because they are so bulky that it is difficult to over-eat them.
Eating such bulky foods may mean eating six smaller meals a day rather than two or three big ones, especially in the early days as you get used to large, bulky meals instead of fatty, sugary, condensed ones.
• Trouble with obesity often starts in the cradle when mothers give their babies cows’ milk formula instead of breast milk. Studies of the arteries of young children killed accidentally have found that breast-fed children have much less atheroma (the sticky material that blocks up arteries and causes heart attacks in later life) than do bottle-feds. Also, many mothers add sugar to the formula and so accustom a baby to expect sweetness from early on. Bottle-fed babies on average grow up to be fatter than do breast-feds but the reasons for this are obscure. Perhaps it has to do with the lack of oral satisfaction compared with the ‘comfort sucking’ a breast-fed baby enjoys-which makes the baby bottle-fed to a schedule more likely to turn to food for solace later in life. Breastfeeding exclusively for at least 4-6 months is undoubtedly the best start in life when it comes to obesity. And don’t be put off by the podgy breast-fed babies you see. They lose their baby fat as they are weaned but the bottle-fed baby often does not.
Exercise is thought to play a part in controlling the body’s metabolism though no one is quite sure how. Fairly vigorous exercise is known to stimulate the metabolism (so that you consume more calories doing the same things) and evidence suggests that this raised metabolic rate continues for a day or two after the exercise stops. Many slimmers find that exercising fairly vigorously two or three times a week helps keep their appetite down.
Several studies have shown that fat people tend to eat less than do thin ones. Obese people, and men in particular, are likely to consume a lot of alcohol, though, and this is very fattening. The real problem for most fat people is inactivity. One Dutch study found that fat people ate less because they were physically less active and therefore used less fuel. Yet they still continued to eat more than they burned off: result-obesity. This research group concluded that the main preventive against obesity is to take regular exercise.
• However you decide to lose weight make your principle ‘slow but sure’. Short-term, rapid weight loss on fancy diets usually depends on losing water rather than body fat. It has taken you years to get fat and it will take many months to get slim. Aim at a 21b loss every week after the rapid loss of the first week or two. Remember that the idea is not to eat less of the same foods but to eat more of bulkier foods, and to take more exercise.
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