Move To It: A Simple Way to Lose Weight While You Sleep

Obesity only became a major problem in the 1960s when the world and his wife began to exchange horse power for muscle power. By this time most households could afford a washing machine, which meant that energy was no longer expended washing clothes by hand. Gardens came to be tended, not with hand tools, but with hedge cutters and motor mowers. Factory workers no longer carried out repetitive manual tasks on long production lines, but sat down twiddling the knobs on increasing complex automated machinery. Instead of walking to work, thousands switched to commuting by car. In London, a survey revealed that the average white collar worker was now travelling less than a mile a day on foot. With fully half the bus journeys in the city being less than one mile in length, a journey that can generally be covered more quickly on foot, Londoners will rather wait for a bus, in rain and howling gales, than exercise their legs. This hypokinetic shift is a major cause of the current obesity plague. We get fat, not necessarily because we eat too much, but more particularly because we exercise too little. Labourers in Victorian times ate plenty of junk food, and drunk lashings of beer, yet if you look at the old photos of farm labourers, coal miners and deep sea fisherman you'll notice that none of them had a weight problem.
At one time it was believed that middle aged spreads arise because muscles have an inherent tendency to turn to fat. That's total twaddle. If we eat too much, and exercise too little, it's inevitable that we'll grow fat. At the same time we're bound to lose muscle bulk, but these two metabolic changes are contemporaneous, rather than causally linked. All too often our problem is, not that we eat too much, but that we exercise too little. And that has a knock on effect. People say they're sick and tired of being overweight, when what they really mean is that they're sick and tired through being overweight. Anyone who's overweight is likely to be prone to breathlessness, ready fatigue and rheumatic aches and pains. Fat folk fade fast. This means they're more likely to take it easy, and maybe give themselves a boost by taking some sugary foodstuffs when their spirits droop. Motion pictures of a group of girls playing volley ball during a summer camp showed that those who were overweight were standing still for nearly ninety per cent of the game compared with just over half for those who weren't carrying a load of excess fat. The truth is, you can't be fit and fat.
One way of turning this vicious circle into a virtuous circle is to start building up your muscle mass. Shun the escalators, do some form of daily exercise and walk whenever you can. The more muscle you build the trimmer you'll look, for muscle is far more compact than fat. It will also dispose of some of your surplus calories, for a kilogram of muscle burns up approximately three calories a day, compared with the one calorie required to maintain a similar weight of fat. If in the next few weeks you can increase your muscle mass by just three pounds you'll burn up about an extra 200 calories a day, which is equivalent to a loss of roughly a pound of fat every 18 days. What's more, you'll burn up extra calories every time you boost your activity levels, and this can continue even when you're watching TV, or lying asleep in bed, for the level of body metabolism remains raised for four to six hours after exercise is taken. All these benefits, and their just a muscle twitch away.
Soiurce

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Pure White and Deadly: A Simple Way to Slim Is to Reduce the Consumption of Refined Sugar

Obesity was once a rich man's disease. Now its devastating impact is far greater on the poor than on their wealthier neighbours. During this time our life styles have undergone a dramatic change. Two centuries ago, the ruling classes got little exercise and consumed far more rich foodstuffs than the peasantry. Now the positions are reversed. At one time, when sugar was first brought to Europe from the New World, it was as expensive as caviar is today and stored like tea in locked caddies. Only the rich could enjoy its luxurious taste, and even they ate only as much in a year as the average Briton eats in a fortnight today. This is one of the greatest dietary revolutions in man's history, a change which had a disastrous on men like William Banting, the nineteenth century businessman who is the leading character in this slimming tip. Banting, who'd made a fortune selling upmarket coffins to the gentry, had a passion for sugary foods. As a result, by the time he reached the age of 65, he tipped the scales at what for a relatively short man was a gargantuan 202 lb.This atavistic craving he shared with most other animals, including horses, bears and ants, who are all tempted to overindulge if they're offered sweet foods. Research has shown that if rats are given food which is bland but highly nutritious, they eat just enough to balance their energy requirements. But if they're given sugary foods, like biscuits, chocolates and sweets, they overeat and put on weight. Even infants show a preference for sweet drinks, a tendency which is so strong that you can get a new born baby to smile simply by giving it something sweet to eat. The sweet tooth habit starts in the cradle, although it should more properly be called a sweet tongue craving, since the receptors which distinguish between sweet and sour are located on the tongue.
Sugar now provides about a sixth of the total calorie intake in Western countries. This is a particular hazard for Britons, who are Europe's heaviest sweet eaters. The people in the south or Europe have always shown a lesser risk of obesity and heart disease than those in the north, which we attribute to the 'Mediterranean diet' rich in vegetables, fruit and wine. We overlook the fact that they eat fewer sweets, and less sugar laden junk foods. Surveys reveal that compared with the British, the French eat 39 percent fewer sweets and the Italians 60 per cent less. For us, today's jam doughnut is tomorrow's middle aged spread. Most of the heavily advertised foods on television are laden with salt, fats and sugar, which is how their sales are boosted. Researchers reckon that if people only ate food which was advertised on TV they would consume 25 times more than the recommended daily allowance of sugar.
One simple way of keeping slim, and improving one's general health, is to avoid eating any foods which are heavily featured in media advertisements. The other is to reduce one's overall intake of sugar. This brings us back to William Banting, who over the years had tried a variety of ways of reducing his bulk, including fasting, spa treatments, diets and exercise regimes. Relief only came when he visited his doctor, the eminent Dr William Harvey, who advised him to adopt the low sugar diet he recommended for his diabetic patients. On this regime his fat disappeared at a rate of about one pound a month. He was so delighted than he published his experience in what became the first world's first recorded diet book, Letter on Corpulence (1863). In it he tells how by reducing his sugar intake he lost over twelve inches around his waist, slept better, moved more freely and could go up and down stairs with ease. These benefits can be achieved by any chubby person who reduces their sugar intake.

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