Spectrums not black and white

It seems that in the world of health, fitness and wellbeing everything is black and white and we have lost sight of spectrums. At a time when there are more diet and exercise clubs and gimmicks than ever before, we have a growing obesity epidemic on our hands, talk about extreme opposites. Why then is this multi million pound health and fitness industry not getting success in the war against ill health and obesity.

I believe the number one reason to this problem is the extreme approach the industry uses. You are either on a diet or presumably eating junk. If you’re not training hard and every day, you must be doing nothing, whatever happened to ‘anything is better than nothing’.

In our hectic lifestyles we are expected to commit 100% to whatever diet or exercise plan we are given and if you don’t well you may as well start again next week or, well, just give up. Surly if you are moving more than you were last week you are doing better?! We have to start asking ourselves better questions and change what is currently been done as its clearly not working. A new approach needs to be implemented. Ask yourself, if diets worked why there is not just one and why are people not on it for life. Clearly then they don’t for life, they are just a quick fix. The question therefore should be ‘what can I personally do to get to my results taking into account my current lifestyle?’

I do not advocate counting calories but to demonstrate my point I will use them here. They say that on average adults put on 2 pounds every year of their adult life. Not much you say, but over the years that soon adds up. However, for our example, say currently you eat 3 mars bars per week and you decide to cut back and have only two a week from now on, what difference would it really make?

1 mars = approx 300cals
So in a month you would have had 4×300=1200cals less (the equivalent of almost a day’s worth of food)
In a year that’s 1200×12=14,400cals less (the equivalent of approx 8 days worth of food.

Counting calories does not make your diet/eating plan healthy but this highlights how you can still enjoy life and make a substantial difference to your waist line and well being. If you want to change for life you need to move away from societal black and white views and find your place on the spectrum. Any time you do better than yesterday, you are working towards your goals.