September 2009 Club Email

Here is the most interesting diet news that I’ve come across in the last month and an update on what I’m up to…

Three particularly interesting discoveries in August, from around the world:

1. There was a great article in Time Magazine on August 17th: “The myth about exercise” (http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20090817,00.html) John Cloud was the author and he made a number of the points that I (and many others) have made previously e.g.:

- It takes a fraction of the time to eat something as it does to use up that energy (so don’t eat it in the first place!);

- Exercise will make you hungry and many people eat more after an exercise session than they have just used up. Plus, exercise makes people particularly hungry for carbs – to replenish the glycogen stores, so people are also likely to eat the wrong things after a work out (e.g. a muffin in the gym café).

There were some great new points, however, backed by research:

- A Columbia University team (Obesity Research Journal 2001) found that 1kg of muscle burns approximately 3 calories a day (in a resting body) compared with the 1 calorie that 1kg of fat burns. If you work out hard enough to convert 5kg of fat to muscle (which would be a major achievement) you would use up just 40 calories more each day;

- The other study I loved was one that showed we have a certain amount of energy to use up each day and will adjust accordingly (Amsterdam obesity conference May 2009). The Peninsula Medical School in the UK studied children aged 7-11. Those from a private school were getting 9.2 hours of scheduled exercise per week and those from two state schools were getting between 1.7 and 2.4 hours per week. The study asked all the children to wear sophisticated activity monitors for four separate 1-week periods and found that the activity levels of all children overall were virtually the same. After school, the private kids did hardly anything – they were exhausted. The state school children were out on their bikes and far more active in their own time.

If you go to the gym after work, you may well crash all evening and you may actually have been as active, overall, if you had got home with enough energy to cook some healthy dishes, wash the car and do a few things you had long been meaning to do.

2) Another great study was published in August. This one was done in Israel on the subject of fizzy drinks and fruit juices. Whilst not strictly a weight/obesity article, obesity campaigners will welcome any ammunition against the fizzy drink giants and the fact that fruit juices are similarly implicated is also very interesting. Remember – fruit juices are refined substances on The Harcombe Diet and you are always advised to have the whole food (the fruit) instead – and then only if Candida and/or Hypoglycemia are not problems for you.

Israeli scientists at the Ziv Liver unit in Haifa compared two groups of volunteers – neither of which was at risk of developing the liver disease. The study concluded that 80% of those who had consumed fizzy drinks and fruit juices had fatty liver changes, whilst only 17% of the control group – who had not drunk these drinks – developed fatty ­livers. The study found that people who drank a daily litre of fizzy drinks or fresh fruit juices were five times more likely to develop fatty liver disease. Drinking as few as a couple of cans of fizzy drinks a day, raised the risk of liver damage as well as potentially causing diabetes and heart damage.

3) The final article to comment on this month was a rant by Amanda Platell in the UK Daily Mail. I often quite like Amanda’s work – her commitment to helping childhood obesity is excellent. This article, however, will make your blood boil if you are one of the millions of people who have been made overweight by the current ‘healthy eating advice’: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1205112/My-visit-Fat-Central-mission-whos-really-blame-obesity-crisis.html#comments#ixzz0NlhvSAKx

Amanda opens with the statement “I am a fattist. I find obese people unappealing in almost every regard. They are physically unattractive, they lead unhealthy lives, they take up too much space on public transport, and (most of all) they are a strain not only on their clothing but on NHS resources. The secret of their size? Their outsized appetites are matched by a lack of self-control and even less self-respect.” Amanda goes on to ‘diagnose’ the cause of obesity “they’re fat because (guess what?) they eat too much and they don’t exercise.” How wrong can she be?!

If anyone still has any doubt, after reading “Stop Counting Calories…” that eating less and/or doing more will do anything other than 1) make you hungry 2) make you store fat and 3) slow down your metabolism, so that you get to the point where you put on weight at a depressingly low calorie intake, then check out the first calorie counting experiment ever done: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html We should have stopped (back in 1945) when these results were known and we have continued to make people more and more overweight since.

The only thing that the people being attacked by Amanda have done wrong, is to follow the current eat less/do more diet advice. If only they would stop this, and eat real food, they would lose weight and be far happier and healthier in the process.

Quick headlines on what I’m up to:

1) We had two new phase 1 records! A 16lb weight loss was posted on The Harcombe Diet facebook page and barely a couple of days later a 17lb loss was posted on a blog! Yes, a lot of this will be water, but there is no need for this weight to return. This is a sure sign that at least one of the conditions was a major problem and water retention was a result. If you haven’t taken diuretics to lose water, you are drinking normally and you weigh 17lb less than you did 5 days ago – that counts! You will notice it on everything from your ring fingers, to ankles, thighs, face, clothes sizes etc.

2) I’ve had a makeover! Thank you Nick Ede (Project Catwalk) for doing this. All part of (hopefully) a chance to get on TV at some point to get the message about eating real food out to more people. You can see the after pics on theharcombediet web site.

3) We reprinted “Stop Counting Calories” and all stock flew out of the door, so we then went to reprint again! Largely due to unbelievable coverage in UK press over the summer – Bella, Closer, Fabulous, Glamour, OK, Perfect Wedding, SHE, Sunday Mirror, Sunday Star, Woman, Zest etc (thank you EdenCancan – you are awesome!)

Don’t forget – if any of you have any before and after pictures – we’re really happy to get you payments from magazines for them (the bigger the difference, the more they pay)!

Thank you so much to those of you who have left book reviews on Amazon – you are so kind and it is much appreciated.

Summer has all but gone in the UK, but autumn is such a lovely time of year – apples and rustling trees and dog walks. Don’t get SAD this winter – plan to spend the dark nights and shorter days sticking to The Harcombe Diet and emerge next spring a few stone lighter!

All the best – Zoë x