So this is a topic (hmm topics...) very close to my heart - I've always been hugely overweight my whole life from way back before I can remember and I'm currently in the middle of changing my life and sorting my mess of a body out. My post will probably only be relevant to overweight people trying to lose weight, and it might go a little off topic but humour me....

I've tried it many MANY times over the years to lose weight, with all manner of fad diets and also just simply applying the rules that 'everyone knows' and since they never work I'd always lose motivation and genuinely you get to a point where you don't physically believe you're capable of doing it. This is where you get depressed, which makes you eat more and its a horrible cycle. Trust me - thats where these 'well known' ideas (i.e.. eat salad and walk 30 minutes a day, or hit the treadmill etc..) can get you and its exactly why so many people fail miserably. We should never be afraid to question things that are common knowledge - I mean its common knowledge to eat three set meals a day but actually its healthier to eat 5/6 small meals a day (but less practical). Probably the worst misconception right now is the whole 'carbs are bad for you' thing. Carbs aren't bad - carbs are wonderful, life giving energy bearing things that we need! But like everything else they need to be in proportion to the amount of fats and protein also being consumed. One of the major problems with Atkins is that no ones got enough carbs to properly workout because they're just drained. There's also the whole 'diet' or 'no sugar' versions of your favourite brands which we're led to believe are the healthy option, but then fill you with so much other sh*t that you're body is just as badly off anyway. One of the other major problems I've seen is people cutting back too much when they diet - the body goes into starvation mode and bang - you're burning muscle, reserves,  anything but fat. This is where I believe the education to the masses is severely lacking.

I've been fortunate to comes across Tony Horton and Team Beachbody and through their p90x workout and nutrition programme I'm finally on my way. I've dropped nearly 10 inches off my waist and just over 1.5 stone in the first 31 days. This has happened because they've taught me a whole new set of rules, and frankly given me some tough love over how much exercise I have to do and how hard I have to work at it - 30 minutes a day light activity isn't cutting it people! Treadmills and salads are not going to sort out the obesity problem in the world - its just going to create a load of miserable people confused why they're not losing weight. I believe that the information being communicated to the masses isn't necessarily wrong, but its not optimal - I mean I consider myself a slightly above average intelligence person and yet I was 30 before I've really learnt what actually works, and thats had to come from a private company in the US. Really is that good enough when we've a growing obesity problem across the nation?

I know some people just won't ever understand that this is anything more than 'stop eating cake fatty' but its that ignorance that is half the problem, and its also that attitude that kills peoples confidence to do anything about it. I've got my goals, and now I believe I have the knowledge to hit them how ever long it takes, and when I do I truly hope I can find a way to help other people learn it to.


I've never posted this on the internet before (its not even on my blog) so here's a tekforums exclusive:

Me at my biggest a year or two back, and me last Thursday night - still absolutely miles to go but definitely the right direction:

I've been fortunate to comes across Tony Horton and Team Beachbody and through their p90x workout and nutrition programme I'm finally on my way.

I see that guy doing his thing on infomercials all the time! They play them on the 'babe' channels up in the 900s on sky, I can now say HEY THAT ACTUALLY WORKS!

Cheers guys

Matt - I'd just like to say that is NOT where I discovered him lmao!! Although actually my boss recommended him so maybe I should ask that question....

When you're talking about the concepts of P90x you have to remember that its not really a weight loss plan. Its an extreme fitness programme that essentially is designed for already fit people to get super ripped - but obviously since the hardest part of getting ripped is losing the fat that covers the muscles it works great all round. It does however mean a fat git like me gets the shock of his f'ing life in the first week or two!!

Tony's principles are fairly old fashioned - lean meats, fish, veggies and if you can't pronounce it don't eat it. He's also very much against the whole sugar / modified crap etc... Very much a sore point with him (and don't get him started on Coca-Cola....) I'd say the main thing that I've learnt is that you can't do one or the other in terms of diet or exercise - it has to be both. "You can't out exercise a bad diet" was one line I remember reading. He hates fad diet plans, and he hates people 'dieting' - you should be changing your eating habits and making better food choices, not just holding off on certain foods until you've lost a bit of weight. He is not at all a fan of Weight Watchers...

His big thing though is the concept of muscle confusion. The logic is that basically since the body is so adaptive, any repetitive exercise (applies to diet too) will work at first, then get less and less effective over time as the body adapts. The trick is to keep it guessing by constantly changing the muscles that you're working out. This is why he's against gym kit -treadmills, stationary bikes etc.. - he believes they're the main reason people hit the 'plateau effect' where you lose weight at first then it stops. All his workouts on the plan are do at home workouts that require little space and nothing more than a few weights and a chin up bar or resistance bands. So what you end up with is a plan from day 1 to day 30 mapping out which workout you are going to do on each day, and obviously you never do the same one twice in a row. Also its not just weights and squats - his workouts cover Kenpo, Yoga, Plyometrics (jump training), Core Synergistic's, and old school PE lesson stuff like arm circles and superman/banana. I can only speak from experience but its the first time in my life I haven't hit the plateau so frankly I believe it.

What really helps me personally though is him - he's very motivational during the workouts and you genuinely want to keep going even when you're in agony! Its very easy to motivate yourself for the workout each day and I think thats whats made the difference with me.

Forgot to say massive congrats to Rikvid, keep it up. Sounds like a good enough plan to me. Soon you'll be able to make one of those before and after photos you see on pron site adverts.

Haha that would be awesome - I was going to clear my wardrobe out but maybe I should keep some of my old jeans for that photo where you put them on and hold the waist out!! 

Or you never know when you need a pair of clown pants 

Britain came close to adopting a traffic-light system of compulsory food labelling to grade the health impact of food products - but, as Jacques Peretti reports, opposition from within the food industry prevented it happening.

In the crucial 15 seconds a consumer takes to decide on a supermarket purchase, the labelling is often the deciding factor.

It means being able to know - at a glance - what goes in to what we eat. But for the food industry, it means being told what they must put on their packaging.

A significant part of the food industry is against legislated labelling. They want the freedom to decide how best to disclose the levels of fat, salt and sugar in their food so that it doesn't damage sales.

Labelling can easily lead to unintended consequences for the consumer according to Pierre Chandon, a visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School, whose research focuses on the ways in which fattening foods can be marketed as healthy.

Prof Chandon tested his theory by re-labelling familiar chocolate treats as "low fat".

"We found that just because [the treats] were called low fat, people consumed up to 50% more of them," he said.

"This is something I call 'the health halo'. It's the idea that when the food is marketed as being healthy, people think it has less calories."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18767425

The traffic light system suggested would have benefited people by making it easy to tell how bad a product was for you. It was vetoed and then the tories removed the FSA's food labelling responsibilities within 6 months of getting into office.

You cannot say that they are "hiding" these things from us, I've lost 1st 6lbs in the last 3 weeks and you know how I've done it?

I've read the bloody packaging.

So you didn't read the packaging before? Perhaps you decided 'I'll look really good if I'm nice and fat.'

And yes, they do "hide" as much of it as they can from you. If they could get away with it they wouldn't put any nutritional information on at all.

Britain is fat because Britain wants to be fat.

Britain is fat because it is against corporate profits for us to be slim. Most hardly notice their gaining weight, they wake up one morning and suddenly realise how many pounds they have put on.

Then they go on a diet, and because they eat the wrong stuff they fail, and fail again.

I've seen a video news clip of two American women tucking into huge amounts of sweets. When asked they said that the stuff was 'low fat and couldn't make them put on weight' 

Advertising wins over education every time, because it's in front of people every day.

Low fat may mean low fat but it covers up the fact that people don't really like the taste of low fat. Try feeding skimmed milk to kids, they don't like it. That means they replace the fat with high sugar - which is worse for those eating it and a flavour. They then extol how the calcium and low fat content is good for kids. It is a lie by omission, which isn't covered by the ASA. I could put a low fat statement on a 2 kilo bag of sugar.

The companies gain because sugar, of any kind, gets mass produced and is really cheap for them. They have no reason to do otherwise than pack it in. Sugar affects people's eating habbits, it gets digested very quickly, stops people feeling full and encourages them to eat more. That means corporates have absolutely no reason to change and every reason to promote eating sugars.

If they wanted to be truthful they would put a big sticker on HIGH SUGAR - THIS PRODUCT WILL MAKE YOU FAT. They don't want to be truthful, it is against their shareholder's profits to be truthful. Corporate management can and has been sued for doing it by their shareholders.