10 THE WALK SLIM DIET

More than 90 per of people who lose weight on diets put. the weight back on again

Most diets are temporary solution to a permanent problem-which is how to lose weight and maintain that weight loss. Most diets fail because:

o On their own, without exercising, you lose weight rapidly and much of this is lean tissue, not fat.

o Your metabolism slows down-your body thinks it’s being starved so it conserves fat, the opposite of what you want!

o They are extreme, impractical and simply boring.

With some slimming foods offering miracle weight loss without exercising, and some fitness plans offering quick weight loss without dieting, it’s easy to see why some people think that can diet without exercising or exercise without dieting.

But the answer is not that simple.

If you want to get fit, lose weight and maintain your fitness and weight loss for the rest of your life, then you need to diet and exercise. Most people fail on diets because the diets are temporary (the yo-yo syndrome), unpleasant and nutritionally unsound – and the exercise suggested is often difficult to keep up and boring. The diets leave you feeling deprived, bad tempered, depressed and yes – hungry!

But don’t despair. New research now shows that adding exercise to a moderate diet is a far more effective way to lose weight than dieting alone. According to researchers at Stanford University Medical School, Stanford, California, USA, combining a walking programme with a healthy diet results in a greater loss of total body fat and dangerous blood cholesterol than dieting alone. Exercisers in the Stanford study lost almost double the percentage of body fat than those who only dieted.

Moderation is the key to successful dieting and exercise.

Moderate exercise (brisk, aerobic walking) with a moderate diet plan (The Walk Slim Diet) is the easiest and quickest way to lose those unwanted pounds and keep them off forever.

Aerobic walking works because it speeds up your metabolic rate (performance level) anad burns fat, not lean tissue. Aerobic walking works because it is an exercise that you can keep up for the rest of your life. When it comes to achieving results, aerobic walking is simply the best.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently pub- lished worldwide scientific research recommending the amount and type of food we should eat. The key to both healthy eating and weight loss is to revamp your eating habits – eating more complex carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables and cutting down on fat, sugar and salt.

Sounds simple? It works. And to add to the growing debate on healthy eating, the Food Guide Pyramid (see page 54) which makes similar recommendations to the WHO guidelines on healthy eating.

The message that comes across loud and clear is that we should eat fat sparingly. We used to think that if we are 3,500 calories more than we needed than we would gain a pound, whatever the source of those calories. Recent research, thought, has overthrown this idea. It now seems that the body is more efficient at making body fat from dietary fats than from proteins and carbohydrates. Put simply - it’s the fat in our diet that makes us fat. We now know that:

Each fat gram we contains 9 calories Each carbohydrate gram we eat contains 4 calories

And this is only part of the story. For every carbohydrate calorie we eat, the body uses up more than 25 per cent of those calories internally. But for each fat calorie you eat, only 3 per cent is used up to convert it internally. Our bodies burn carbohydrates and store fats.

And that’s not all Those same fats are also raising your cholesterol level, damaging your vessels and possibly contributing to cancers and other degenerative diseases.

The good news, though, is that you don’t have to count calories with The walk Slim Diet. All you need to do is to focus on those in the healthy food pyramid which will lower your fat intake and increase your carbohydrates.

So forget past diets. This diet is simple, easy to keep up and it works. So step to it and eat healthy.