Author, obesity researcher .

Why trying to ‘burn off’ food is a waste of time

On 30 Dec I tweeted: “All these people ‘walking off’ indulgence make me laugh – I’d have to walk to Bristol & back (54 miles) to counter a Duchy Xmas pudding!” “Oh & that doesn’t deduct the BMR calories I would have used anyway so make that to Bath and back!” Here’s the maths! One [...]

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Exercise – personal experience – part 2

This blog has attracted a few comments – any suggestion that exercise is not going to make a person slim usually does! I also did a circular to some journalists recently and used a phrase that I have often used to make a point: “we can eat in one minute what can take an hour [...]

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Nestle and Change4life

Well done to the Children’s Food Campaign for spotting Nestle using the change4life logo as part of a promotion to get people to eat more confectionery and sugary cereal. Is there no limit to the depth to which processed food companies will stoop? Nestle have started a campaign whereby people collect tokens from their processed [...]

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Exercise – personal experience

Hi all – I’ve just got back from a week’s skiing in Italy, so here’s a blog on my experience of doing more activity than normal. Andy and I normally share 3 dog walks a day. We always do the morning half hour together and Andy generally does the night walk and then whoever is [...]

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Is aerobic exercise a waste of time?!

The headlines world-wide on 5th February 2009 were along the lines of: “MILLIONS of people who try to keep fit by jogging, cycling or going to the gym could be wasting their time, a study revealed today.” The study was an international collaboration, led by the University of London and involving teams from 14 institutions [...]

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Walk the dog or go to the gym?! (part 2)

Another article appeared on this topic in November 2009. This one was commissioned by Bob Martin (the company that does worm tablets etc). The dog product companies have obviously realised this story is a good way to get into the national press… This study was a larger study – 5,000 people, including 3,000 dog owners. [...]

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Walk the dog or go to the gym?!

The following research was commissioned by Butcher’s Dog Food food: A study of more than 1,500 dog owners and gym goers found that the average gym goer covers 468 miles per year and the average dog walker does 676 miles per year. That’s 208 more for the dog walkers! Dog owners apparently walk the equivalent [...]

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Exercise can be as addictive as heroin

This was a very brief article about a report from neuroscientists at Boston University. The researchers found that exercise ‘junkies’ experienced similar extreme withdrawal symptoms to drug addicts when unable to have their fix. The researchers also noticed that, just as ‘soft’ drugs can lead to hard drugs, so going to the gym can turn [...]

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We’ll pay you to lose weight.

Daily Mail. November 11, 2008: “We’ll pay the obese to take a walk.” News of the World. April 12, 2009: “Lards of Money: NHS paying fatties £425 to lose weight.” Daily Mail. July 3, 2009: “Lose weight and we’ll give you £1 for every pound.” (Don’t you just love the NOTW headline!) This story just [...]

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Keep-fit boom fails to stem obesity

A verbatim extract from the article: The boom in the fitness industry has done little to curb the obesity epidemic, according to leading academic researchers. A University of Leicester study has shown that while gyms and private health clubs have grown in popularity in recent years, the nation’s weight has grown too. The researchers argued [...]

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