SOME MAY FIND DISTURBING – man drinks glass of fat to make point about fizzy drinks - Health, Diet and Fitness Today – 15/12/09
15/12/2009 at 09:30pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
A new video released in America as part of a campaign to curb the consumption of sugary beverages has been clogging up the internet pipes so far this week, showing a man drinking a glass of fat.
In the video, which was posted on YouTube and the health department web site on Monday, a man opens a can of what looks like what is supposed to be coke, but as he pours the drink into a glass, it turns out to be a mess of yellow muck, realistically made to resemble fat.
The message is that drinking just one can of coke a day can add up to 10 pounds of weight in a year.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, who commissioned the video, said in a statement that sugary drinks are a main contributor to the city's obesity epidemic.
"If this campaign shifts habits even slightly, it could have real health benefits," Farley said.
A 2007 health department survey found that more than 2 million New Yorkers drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day, which can have as many as 16 teaspoons of sugar in one 20-ounce bottle. I haven’t found any figures for the UK, but it’d be great to know.
Watch the video below – and let us know what you think in the comments section below. Will it work, or is it wasted effort? Would something similar work in the UK?
Zilli Light - healthy diet cook book first look...
14/12/2009 at 10:04pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
At Fat Free Fitness, there are two things we like to encourage people to do. We like to think that we give you the knowledge and support to eat healthily whilst still allowing yourself treats, and we like to think that we encourage you to keep active. With both of these aspects in balance, you will achieve your weight loss goals.
But what happens when you start getting bored of the same healthy meals, day in, day out? Do you revert to eating quick and easy microwave meals, or pick up ‘on-the-go’ foods such as sandwiches or pastries? Chances are, if you do, you’ll soon find yourself the maybe not-so-proud owner of a few new pounds. So, where do you go if your meal plan is more boring than a night in watching football?
To the realms of new inspiration, that’s where.
The internet is literally awash with healthy meal options and ideas you may not have tried before, and all it costs is your time to find them. If you’re like me though and prefer to have something next to you as you cook whilst your laptop is charging, or your printer is out of order, look no further.
We’ve been test-running a new cook book by Italian celebrity chef Aldo Zilli, who lost an impressive 2 and a half stone on the third series of Celebrity Fit Club, and have been hugely impressed.
As well as holding the world record for the most times a pancake is flipped in 1 minute (117, in case you were wondering), Zilli is a fantastic chef who has worked with Thomson Airways and Kraft Foods to provide new and creative meal options, whilst managing a chain of restaurants in London.
His new book, Zilli Light shows us how to dine ‘deliciously, while getting the weight off – and keeping it off’ (his words, but to be honest, we couldn’t have said it better).
Aldo runs us through the expected salads and dressings, detailing 15 fantastic looking and brilliantly healthy options, which as he states, can be used as snack choices if prepared beforehand.
The rest of the book then guides us through starters and light meals, pasta and pizza (he is after all Italian!), rice, beans and grains, fish and shellfish, meat, game and poultry, and the all important desserts and treats!
A large number of the recipes have delicious looking accompanying images, and each meal is as simple as cooking gets (without a microwave), clearly listing the ingredients and bullet pointing the method behind the nutrition.
If you buy one cook book to accompany your New Year’s Resolutions, get this one. Aldo Zilli has been there, lost it, committed to healthy living and now we can benefit as a result from his fantastic range of healthy, nutritious but best of all tasty meals! Forget our recently returned Transatlantic journeyman Jamie, and ignore the furrowed brow of everybody’s favourite foul-mouth – Aldo Zilli shows you how it’s done, proves that healthiness is a lifestyle and not achievable via shortcuts and, perhaps most importantly, walks us through something that for many of us seems all too difficult. I guarantee you, half an hour cooking with Zilli will make a believer out of you, and will have you casting off the tired claims that cooking healthily is just too hard/expensive/boring/bland (delete as appropriate).
The book is available from the 7th of January 2010 (we can’t believe it’s gone so quickly either) and is available to pre-order from Amazon right now, from just £17.00, delivered free.
Snowball - the treadmill pounding, fat hedgehog - Health, Diet and Fitness Today – 11/12/09
11/12/2009 at 08:19pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
We thought we’d end the week with a bit of a light-hearted one after a week of putting diet pill companies to rights and looking at childhood obesity…
Snowball, an albino hedgehog weighing 3 times the average has been placed on a diet of low-fat kitten biscuits and is being put through his paces with (I kid you not) running and swimming sessions. He has so far lost a hefty 38 grams!
Snowball piled the… umm, grams on, by eating dog food left out for him. When his weight started affecting his health, St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire was tasked with trimming down the little blighter after a concerned member of the public took him there in October.
So, by my admittedly pretty poor maths skills (bolstered only by the use of a trusty calculator), Snowball has 962 grams to go until his goal weight of 500g. If he keeps going at the current rate of 6g a week roughly, it’ll only take him 160 weeks, or 3 years to trim down.
How long do hedgehogs live again?
How cute!?
Mark Pearson
Should we have a Fat Tax? - Health, Diet and Fitness Today – Thursday 10th December 2009
10/12/2009 at 09:42pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Health campaigners have called on the Government to tax fizzy drinks such as cola and lemonade as figures show no significant advance in the fight against childhood obesity.
More than one in five children in England is overweight or obese by the time they start school and, by the final year of primary school, nearly one in three children aged 10 or 11 is overweight, according to the data released by the Government’s National Child Measurement Programme in schools, which caused huge controversy when it was first introduced.
If things stay as they are, about 90 per cent of today’s children could become overweight or obese adults by 2050, with the bill to the taxpayer estimated at £50 billion – a hefty estimate, but remember, estimates are exactly that – merely guesses based on trends.
I personally think that taxing fatty and sugary foods is a good idea, and could benefit certain groups of society who rely on fast food and sugary drinks to feed their children, but hope that the tax would free some funding to bring down the cost of healthier food and drinks in a bid to encourage healthier diets.
Will this happen though, with such high levels of Government spending? If there is ever a ‘fat tax’, I’m sure the balance wouldn’t be redressed; the extra funds would just be seen to be a bonus, which is a huge shame and entirely counterproductive.
More education from the ground up about health and nutrition would fix the problem, instead, we’ve got lessons like Personal Social Education which teach us how to be accepting of all of the other changes in society – you know; the ones which don’t threaten lives.
Is healthy food too expensive?
Health, Diet and Fitness Today – Wednesday 9th December 2009 – Diet pill company banned by ASA - do not read the end bit
09/12/2009 at 10:37pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Today, a company has been banned from promoting slimming products after scamming customers into signing up for a free diet pills trial, and then charging them post-trial, as well as providing false proof of the ability of the pills to help people lose weight.
The company, Trading Planet, claimed customers had lost stones in weight using its Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products, with one ‘happy customer’ even claiming to have lost 30 lbs of weight in just 8 weeks, which means she would have lost a stone a month.
This is possible and to some extent, depending on the size of the person prior to the weight loss, feasible through healthy eating and diet, but in this case was investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority and found to be a scam.
I’d like readers to know that weight loss like this is possible, but not through using quick-fix products bought over a little-known website. The company has now moved and uses a distributor in Bedfordshire, which shows how it’s difficult to police issues like this online.
Many customers did not realise they would be automatically charged once the free trial period was over, but I, and other health and fitness professionals have this simple advice: do not allow yourself to be taken in by get-slim-quick schemes, no matter how many nice 'before and after' pictures they use.
If you need proof that diet pills aren’t the way forward, besides the fact that they won’t change your mindset and therefore effectively set you on the right path to staying slim, feel free to read these customer complaints. Some people on this site have lost hundreds of pounds to this scam whilst not losing one lb - don't be suckered in.
Customer complaints
Here's 'Laura's' blog, the one the ASA blamed for being misleading. Read it and laugh, it genuinely is funny.
Points such as:
False press coverage on the right hand side, the brilliant:
'Hi, I'm Laura from
'Comments closed due to spam' at the bottom of the page (where it's a page you're not supposed to interact with other than clicking through the links and being sucked into signing up).
Oh, and whatever you do, don't read the following.
If you type 'diet pills' into Google, Laura's 'blog' pops up as a Google Ad above or to the right of the organic search results, which means that for every one of your click-throughs, Trading Planet, the company behind this horrible scam, which does nothing to help the nation's need to become more healthy, pay for the privilege.
Please listen to what I'm saying when I say not to open Google up in another tab.
Do not type the term 'diet pills' into Google, and when you see Laura's 'How I Lost 3 1/2 stone' blog, please do not click through. It will cost the lovely people at Trading Planet and this just isn't nice, because after all, they'd never scam you for your money, would they?
And definitely do not send this link to your friends which details how they too can cost the poor company money which they've unscrupulously gained. Please don't do it before they catch on either.
Good luck not doing the above.
Don't do it.
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Launched in 2009, fatfreefitness.co.uk is the UK's only weight loss specific personal training agency. Fat Free Fitness helps you stop dieting and counting calories, by teaching you how to improve your nutrition, increase your activity and exercise levels and lose weight. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is a great way to lose weight and save money. fatfreefitness provides you with expert diet, fitness, exercise, gym and personal training advice and support, similar to ivillage.co.uk, weightlossforall.com, thecolumn.org, weightlossforgood.co.uk, tescodiets.co.uk and weightlossresources.co.uk. Win diet, exercise and fitness products by entering fatfreefitness.co.uk competitions. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is not a weight loss support group like Weight Watchers weightwatchers.co.uk or Slimming World slimmingworld.com. Fat Free Fitness is updated regularly with new information. Fatfreefitness.co.uk and weight loss expert, personal trainer and fatfreefitness.co.uk founder Rich Leigh disagree with and discourage fat loss tablets, diet tablets and weight loss aid tablets, fad dieting and crash diets such as the Atkins diet, the Cambridge diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Beverley Hills diet, the baby food diet and all other carbohydrate and calorie restricting diets.
