Here’s the maths!

One fairly small (5 inch diameter) Duchy Original Christmas pudding contains 2,839 calories (313 per 100g)

We live 27 miles from Bristol. This site tells me that a 110lb person would use up 1,482 calories in 9 hours walking 27 miles at 3 miles per hour. Hence I have to walk there and back to ‘use up’ over 2,800 calories.

However – and this is something I only realised writing this blog that all calories burned calculators include the Basal Metabolic Rate. Hence, I would need to allow for what I would have been doing had I not been walking to Bristol and deduct this – because, by walking, I have only burned additional calories. If I had been writing for 9 hours instead, I would have used 808 calories, so, walking to Bristol would use 2,000 calories.

Just as well that none of this calorie stuff amounts to very much. If you want to be fit – be active; if you want to be slim – don’t eat Christmas Pudding!

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 to burn off”. I gave the example that I could spend an hour in the gym and then have a cappuccino in the cafe and, in terms of calories, I would have not used up as many as I consumed. “Really?” said one journalist. It is meant to be an estimation to make a point, but I thought I’d try it out on my own stats…

This is a good site to use for calories burned doing different things. I find it quite easy to use, it has many activities listed and it helpfully will retain the last activity you put in, so that you can build up a few, as desired. That last bit was particularly helpful for this analysis:

For me – weight 110lbs, I would do the following in an hour in a gym (trying to remember what I did when I last went to a gym about 10-15 years ago!)
– 5 mins stretching
– 10 minutes on the exercise bike
– 10 mins power walking on the treadmill
– 30 mins on the various machines/free weights etc around the gym
– 5 mins stretching
(No time allowed for chatting, drinking and trying to lip read Sky News!)

This would add up to 195 calories (heavier people would clock up more).
A cappuccino (proper milk, chocolate on top) can easily be 200 cals and hence I would not even use up the drink.

PLUS – here’s the killer point that I only worked out last year (and which was the purpose of the original “Exercise – personal experience” blog) – all calculations on calorie burn calculators take into account BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) – what your body would burn anyway if you were lying in bed all day dying of swine flu. Hence exercise has to be viewed as the difference (the extra) between what you would have been doing anyway and what you did do.

If I wrote at the PC for an hour, I would burn 90 calories. Hence I would burn an extra 105 by going to the gym and drink almost double this afterwards and then people think they’ve earned a 300-400 calorie muffin – forget it!

Don’t worry – none of this has much to do with weight loss. Weight loss is about breaking down triglyceride (body fat), which has everything to do with glucose (and hence carbs) and not much to do with calories (unless those calories are empty processed food calories – especially processed carbs).

Eat real food, stay low enough in carb/glucose/glycogen to let you body burn it’s own fat for fuel and then give it no reason not to. That’s what weight loss is about.

Nestle have started a campaign whereby people collect tokens from their processed foods and can then trade these in for activities. Let’s make it look as if we are trying to help get people active eh? Processed food companies love to tell us we are fine eating processed food (they always add as part of a balanced, healthy diet which is a joke) so long as we are active and ‘burn it off’.

So let us look at an example of what this promotion could do for a 10 stone person’s health. Let us say that our average person (Sam) wants to have a horse riding lesson. I don’t know if 90 points earns 30 mins or a 60 min lesson – let’s be generous and say 60 mins. Sam would use up 165 calories in an hour’s horse riding (assuming the horse was walking all the time).

We also need to realise that calorie burn calculators include the basal metabolic needs as part of the calculation. Hence we have to factor in what Sam may have been doing otherwise and then the horse riding only helps with the calories on top of this. If Sam would have been watching TV, s/he would have burned 64 calories, so the hour’s horse riding lesson only uses up an ‘extra’ 100 calories.

To earn this exercise extravaganza Sam needs to collect 90 points. A 233 calorie Kit Kat is 5 points. a 375g box of Golden Nuggets cereal is 15 points. The latter is a whopping 1,412 calories. Hence Sam needs to consume (or give to some other unlucky person) 18 Kit Kats or 6 boxes of Golden Nuggets to earn the horse riding lesson. The 18 Kit Kats deliver 4,194 calories and the cereal delivers 8,475.

What a brilliant idea Nestle to contribute to The Obesity Epidemic even further. I’d like to ask the Nestle people behind this campaign to increase their profits at the expense of the health of their fellow humans – how do you sleep at night?

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 able to do a lunchtime half hour does so. Andy, therefore, usually walks 60-90 minutes a day and I walk 30-60 mins a day. The walks are up and down gradients, as we live in the countryside, but nothing that steep. I go swimming about 3-4 times a month for 20 mins each time (and am always hungry afterwards!) We are both generally active, as we have loads of energy from eating well. We do our own cleaning (and notice your arms aching if you clean the windows and your stomach muscles working if you mop the floor etc) and we garden every now and again (it’s quite low maintenance).

The first observation is that you don’t need to go to the gym to get skiing fit. We were in pretty good shape just from our general active lifestyle and regular walking. Plus there are some muscles that only seem to get used skiing, no matter what, so you’re always going to be a bit stuffed!

The second observation is that you don’t use up as much energy as you might think! I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me earlier, but I was skiing one morning and suddenly thought that the exercise calculators take into account BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). Hence, if watching TV requires 68 cals an hour (this is the calculation for a 140lb/10 stone person) and moderate walking burns 200 calories an hour (for the same person), then going for a walk should really be viewed as the additional energy needed beyond doing nothing (i.e. 130 calories in this case). I understand that Weight Watchers lets people have an additional 4 points if they jog for 20 mins. This is approximately 200 calories and it is quite UNlikely that someone would use 200 calories in 20 mins jogging ABOVE what they would need anyway pottering around the house or being at work.

The calorie calculator says that I (at 110lbs) would need 299 calories (bit precise!) for 1 hour of moderate skiing (in between light and intense). Remember that it takes about 2-3 hrs to do 1 hrs skiing as you spend 5 mins going down a run and then 10 mins sitting on the lift going back up. AND we need to think about what we would have been doing otherwise. I would be using about half this number of calories in an hour of thinking/researching/calculating etc, so I was only adding about 150-200 calories every 3 hours to my fuel need. Then you see people tucking in to a huge pizza or huge bowl of white pasta for lunch and you know they are likely to go home heavier than they arrived.

The third interesting observation was that you get really hungry on a ski holiday! People often say the fresh (mountain) air makes you hungry – I can’t think why this would be – but skiing for a morning does make you hungry. For a carb addict, it would be very easy to consume significantly more energy at meal times than had been used up. For people who stick to real food, it is far more difficult to overeat. Andy and I had porridge and whole milk for breakfast; wholegrain bread, cheese and salad for lunch (mixing good foods) and a huge fat meal in the evening -  (meat for Andy), fish, seafood, loads of salads and veg, loads of cheese, berries & cream etc. We snacked on dark chocolate continuously, which leads to….

The fourth interesting observation – as I’ve often said – eating for weight loss and eating for exercise/fitness are really not compatible. Because there were so few good carbs available (no couscous, brown rice, whole meal pasta etc), we probably didn’t get enough carbohydrate loaded into our glycogen store room. The porridge and bread helped (and we had a few croissants), but it wasn’t always enough. Even at this moderate level of exercise, we hit a burn a couple of times and we were eating dark chocolate regularly throughout the day and also getting lots of milk in (decaf) cappuccinos throughout the day. Had we been doing some of the exercise that some of my clients try to do (training for marathons, 3-5 hour mountain cycle rides etc), I hate to think what kind of state we would have been in! If you are very active, the body wants lots of regular carbs several times a day. If you are trying to lose weight the body should have carbs as INfrequently as possible. The two could not be more different!

For interest, we were the same weight when we got home and slightly lower in body fat content, so we would have swapped a bit of fat for muscle (there had to be some impact on leg muscles from all that pain!)

Other observations:

- obesity in Italy is a fraction of what it is in the UK. Even in the towns and airport on the way it was rare to see an obese person. We travelled from Geneva through France and into Italy and all three countries were similarly slim.

- the (lack of) snack food is the single biggest difference in Europe. The shops just do not have aisles of crisps, biscuits, cakes, sweets etc. There are a few ‘junk’ options scattered around the shop, but the supermarkets are full of fruit, veg, meat, risotto rice, grains, cheese etc. The newsagent type shops sometimes have no confectionery on sale whatsoever. You can buy your paper or magazine, but there are no confectionery bars to tempt you. People eat three big, healthy meals a day and they just don’t snack.

The study was an international collaboration, led by the University of London and involving teams from 14 institutions from London to Ontario. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and they were that that aerobic exercise does not benefit everyone in equal measures, and its usefulness is determined by a person’s genes. According to the results, 20% of people do not receive any health benefits from aerobic exercise (my emphasis).

The work was based on the belief among researchers that one of the best predictors of health is a body’s ability to take in and use oxygen during aerobic exercise. Participants in the study were asked to undergo rigorous aerobic training, while researchers took muscle tissue samples before and after. The team then identified a set of about 30 genes that predicted the increase of oxygen their body consumed.

- By the end of the study 20% of participants saw their maximum oxygen increase by less than 5%. (Zoe comment – This led to the conclusion that 20% of people receive no benefit from aerobic exercise).

- About 30 per cent showed no increase in insulin sensitivity, meaning that the exercise did not reduce their risk of diabetes. (Zoe comment – This was a secondary finding and other findings were connected to the role of exercise in specific conditions.)

What can we take out of this study?

1) This is about aerobic exercise (aerobic means ‘with oxygen’), but I expect the same will apply for anaerobic  (without oxygen) and ‘body sculpting’ exercise also.  Not everyone can be a long distance runner and some people simply do build more muscle more easily than others. Some people try everything from tablets to protein shakes to change their shape and some get an active job and it happens without them even trying.

2) The link between body, exercise and genetics can be no surprise. We have known for some time (and it is extremely obvious looking at parents and children) that height and build have a genetic element. It is highly UNlikely that two very tall, ‘column-like’, parents will produce short, stocky off-spring. Sometimes the genetics can be found from the wider family. As a home grown example, Andy’s boys are very different in build – both tall, but one has a large (rugby) build like Andy himself and the other has a more wiry (runner) build – like Andy’s own brother.

3) We can try to change fitness and/or build, but this study is saying that for c. 20% of people it will have no effect. (That’s just a headline grabber, remember, and should be taken as an indicator, not a fact). However, the mere suggestion that exercise may not be delivering benefit for some people does mean that doctors should try to find other ways to replicate the benefits of exercise for this group of people. Maybe breathing exercises/yoga/pilates etc may help oxygen utilisation. Maybe lifestyle changes and more ‘me-time’ can give some of the de-stressing benefits of exercise that this group may be missing. One of the most important findings of this study is the understanding that exercise will not have equal benefit for all people and will have no benefit for some.

4) We can sometimes get too hung up on the intensity of exercise. I spent some time with a professor of Biochemistry this week, looking at how the body uses food for fuel in different circumstances. He (like me) was a big fan of low intensity regular exercise – not running marathons and cycling for long times up hill, but just walking or gardening or doing ‘normal’ activity. This can also nicely raise the heart rate and generate the positive benefits that can be gained from more vigorous exercise. It would have been interesting for the study to have compared not just high intensity aerobic exercise in 14 different institutions, but to have low intensity exercise groups as comparators throughout.

5) There are two final points to make about exercise i) you don’t need to do exercise to lose weight – exercise is recommended by the calorie theorists to create a calorie deficit. The body will just try to get you to eat to overcome the calorie deficit and people are invariably likely to eat more than they use up (Time Magazine: Why Exercise won’t make you thin. 17.8.2009) and ii) any exercise that you enjoy is always a great thing to do (dancing, walking the dog, yoga etc – if you enjoy it, do it. If the thought of going to the gym at 6am makes your heart sink, don’t do it!). Here are some good reasons to exercise:  for your lean tissue maintenance; for your sense of well-being; for relaxation; for your joints; for your heart; for whole body health… Don’t ever think exercise is not a good thing to do – the only bad reason to exercise is because you are trying to force your body into calorie deficit. It will respond!

This study was a larger study – 5,000 people, including 3,000 dog owners. The Butchers study (see the Butchers Study here) gave statistics on how far dog owners walked vs gym goes. This study was more about the time spent doing exercise. The findings were:

- the average dog owner exercises their animal twice a day for 24 minutes each time – a total of 5 hours and 38 minutes per week. On top of that, the average dog owner takes their dog out for 3 long walks each week – adding a further 2 hours, 33 minutes to the total.

- those without a dog spend an average of just 1hour and 20 minutes a week exercising. The bigger issue is that 47% of non dog owners do no exercise at all.

We have a rescue dog and we walk her 3 times a day (Andy and I share the walks) for 20-30 mins each time and we also do longer walks a couple of times a week. We haven’t been to the gym since we got her (not that we went that much before)!

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 distance of Bangkok to London over their pet’s lifetime.

Dog owners are also more likely to stick to their routine, as the dog doesn’t let up until you take it out!

If you can offer a good home to a dog and commit to walking him or her regularly, this could be the biggest win win ever – for your stress levels and overall health and for that of your new best friend!

I have observed this in rather more people than I would like to have done. Quite often people with eating disorders ‘overcome’ anorexia or bulimia, only to replace this compulsion with a substitute – exercise. I also see people continuing to exercise when they are ill or have a muscle strain and it is just not healthy.

Addiction is defined in Why do you overeat? and Stop Counting Calories – as having 4 stages:
1)    We start with an uncontrollable craving.
2)    We then need more and more of the offending substance in order to get the same ‘high’.
3)    We develop physical and/or psychological dependence.
4)    We suffer from the adverse effects.

I more often use this in the context of food, but, consider the woman featured in the Mail article 24.09.09 – Janice Utley. Janice wrote the article in the first person – good on her for sharing this. Janice had been out for a meal with some friends and she wrote “I felt restless, obsessing about the fact that I hadn’t done enough exercise that day” (That’s step 1). She ran for over an hour when she got home after midnight. She continues “every day I must jog, weight train or swim for several hours. Exercise gives me such a high…” (That’s step 2). “Any time I haven’t been able to exercise I’ve felt edgy and depressed and convinced that there is a visible difference in my body.” (That’s step 3). As for Step 4 – she had a breast cancer scare, which was actually a lump of overworked muscle near the breast and her marriage broke down. “I tell myself we grew apart, but I know my exercise obsession didn’t help.”

Do something you enjoy – dance, walk the dog, go window shopping – but don’t become an exercise junkie! It’s SO not attractive or healthy.

(Don’t you just love the NOTW headline!)
This story just doesn’t go away. I first saw it around November 2008. The news then was that Manchester would begin the scheme and then, if successful, it would be rolled out. The idea was that people would accumulate points for things like: losing weight; walking children to school; joining exercise classes and/or slimming clubs etc. Points could then be traded in through supermarkets for healthy food.

The initial proposal received much negative reaction – Tam Fry of The National Obesity Forum called it “too little, too late”. Other politicians attacked the idea as ‘gimmicky’ and ‘open to abuse’.

The April 2009 NOTW article, didn’t mention Manchester, but said that scheme would be set up under the name “Weight Wins” and that it would be run by the NHS. The maximum payout would be £425 for someone who loses 50lbs. Apparently even 40 “chubby” (as the NOTW calls them) nurses had signed up to the scheme.

The July 2009 Daily Mail article said that “Men and women are to be paid to lose weight in the first scheme of its kind in the UK”. They will be given a £1 shopping voucher for every pound they shed, in the pilot scheme involving 100 volunteers. The pilot is due to start in September 2009 in Essex and Basildon. A Basildon council spokesman said “we have initially set aside £1,000 for the scheme. We don’t want to encourage people to excessive weight loss.” (This is probably a fair sum given the success people usually have following government weight loss advice!)

I’m confused! So what happened after November 2008 and April 2009? Nothing?! Is this the pilot scheme or the third scheme? Will we hear about results, or just initiatives?!

And all of this misses the complete point that people who want to be slim don’t lack motivation. In a study of formerly fat people, who had lost weight after intestinal bypass surgery, researchers at the University of Florida reported that virtually all said they would rather be blind or deaf or have a leg amputated than be fat again. That is how much people want to be slim and yet two thirds of people in the UK are overweight (Body Mass Index, BMI, of 25+) and one quarter are obese (BMI of 30+).

So people don’t lack motviation – they lack advice that will actually work. The current eat less/do more, base your meals on starchy foods, graze, eat everything in moderation – all this advice is what needs to be changed – not financial incentives offered to already desperate people.

The findings are clearly accurate in that more people have joined gyms and private health clubs AND obesity has been rising, since the 1980′s in fact. However, I think the researchers have drawn the wrong conclusions. Far too much reliance has been put on the suggestion that exercise is going to solve our obesity epidemic. This, I believe, is wrong…

There are approximately 250 calories in an average confectionery bar. To burn off those calories, a 150lb person would need to do the following:

≠ Run for 24 minutes,

≠ Cycle for 37 minutes,

≠ Weight train for 53 minutes,

≠ Walk for 42 minutes,

≠ Aerobics for 33-38 minutes,

≠ Swim for 29 minutes.

Even after an hour in the gym, for example, people are not going to burn off enough calories to make a difference to the obesity epidemic. Furthermore, the body knows when you exercise and it asks for energy to be replenished by making you hungry when you finish.

There are several excellent reasons for exercising; it is a good workout for your heart, it makes you toned and fitter, it makes you feel good and releases stress. Probably the worst reason for exercising is because you think it will make you lose weight. It will increase your body’s desire for fuel (calories/food) and you could quite probably eat more after the gym than you have used up inside it!

The only way to lose weight is to eat better, not to eat less but to eat real food. Exercise is not the answer. This is why the higher numbers of people exercising/joining gyms, has made no difference to the obesity epidemic.