HOW NOT TO GET FIT AND LOSE WEIGHT IN THE TIME IT TAKES TO READ THIS.

What’s the worst thing about January? Go on have a guess.
Is it the desert that stretches between Christmas and the oasis of Easter? Perhaps it’s the post-festive anti-climax as the decorations come down; the knowledge that you’ve eaten too much, drunk too much, and spent too much. Or maybe it’s Tony Cameron’s increase in VAT, or the fact that none of your mates can afford to go out, as they’ve just had their credit card bills too. It might be the weather, or the dark nights, which haven’t quite begun to lengthen yet.
For me, there’s one irritant that stands out above all the above: fitness and weight loss articles in the press. Every year, January ushers in a host of new, easy ways to tone up and lose weight, without any effort, in the time it takes you to read the article.
For example, The Times Weekend supplement yesterday published a guide entitled: “How to Tone Up in Three Weeks Without Going to the Gym”. Well let’s have a look at this, shall we? The piece was scripted by Fitness Trainer, James Duigan. He claims that there is no reason why men in their fifties should be in any worse shape than they were in their twenties; take Hugh Grant, for example, one of his clients. Really, James? There is a reason: it’s called aging. The article features a picture of paunchy Pierce Brosnan next to a picture of 7% body fat-bearing underwear model, David Gandy. So, tell me what’s the difference between the two? The answer: about thirty years.
Over time, the metabolism slows, making our body less capable of disposing of the calorific intake to which it has become accustomed. Testosterone levels decline while oestrogen levels rise; in short, men gradually turn female, hence larger bottoms and the dreaded “Man Boobs” or “Moobs”. Hugh Grant - lucky bloke - is an outlier, as statisticians would say; we all know and hate blokes who eat and drink their body weight over a weekend, take no exercise, and never add an ounce.
There’s nothing wrong with Duigan’s recommended exercise regime – but there’s absolutely new about it either. And, yes, it can be done without joining a gym, but only if you buy some very expensive equipment and create your own. This will cost…err…about the same as ten years’ gym membership. The principle of “cardio circuits”, although valid, is as old as the hills; let’s just call it “circuit training” then. The idea is to vary intensity so that the body continues to burn fuel (fat, eventually) even during its rest periods, and - here’s the clever bit - even after it’s stopped exercising. This means, if you eat shortly after training, you can fool your body into thinking that you are still working out, and it will deal with the food more efficiently. However, Duigan’s programme is so un-new that most of these exercises can be found in the Canadian Air Force Fitness manual, the daddy of fitness manuals, first published in the ‘50s – that’s the 1950s. But thanks to the abolition of proper PE in schools, no one under the age of thirty will have ever heard of a “burpee”, let alone done one.
No weight loss and fitness feature would be complete without tackling how we fuel the body, and didn’t we do that well over Christmas?
The contributor here is Dr John Briffa. Well, John, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you have said here that we don’t already know. Unless you’re been in Guantanamo Bay for the last ten years, we all know that the low glycaemic index is the Nirvana to weight loss. The higher the GI of your carbohydrate consumption, the more insulin the body will produce. Insulin is bad news, as it is a hormone which stimulates the accumulation of fat whilst slowing its breakdown; so avoid bread, potatoes, pasta and anything your mother told you to eat. John urges us not to calorie count but instead to eat more protein, mainly red meat, fish and eggs. The key here is to eat food that will not make us retain our hunger. Well, gosh, that’s a break through, isn’t it?
My point is this: in all of these predictable and self-promoting seasonal articles, there is some truth. Try buying “Men’s Health” magazine for a few consecutive months and you will see what I mean. But there is also nothing which has not been said before, and very little that even the most reluctant health aficionados will not already know.
The simple answer is that there is calorific input and there is energy expenditure. You can be very fit but fat in the same way that you can be very unfit but skinny. But if you want balance in your physical equation, then moderation of both is the name of the game.
Thank goodness that everything that has to be said again, has been said again by February.