Over 65% of adults in the UK are overweight or obese. To save the NHS (obesity is projected to cost the NHS 9.7 billion by 2050) and ourselves (a longer life, fewer morbidities, more enjoyment) we need to lose weight. But diets don’t work. Allegedly. So what will?

A difficult question. And one I don’t have the answer to but I can share what has worked for me. 

To lose weight (fat) a calorie deficit is required. This can be achieved by cutting back on the calories, doing more exercise or a combination of both. Losing weight by exercise alone is nigh on impossible. Well for me anyway. A 30 minute run will use less than 300 calories. Not too bad. But exercise makes you hungry so that deficit will easily be filled once you are slumped on the sofa. 

The most efficient way to get that deficit is by cutting calories. Many commentators talk about a 80/20 split. This split being used to suggest that you can follow a calorie deficit diet 80% of the time and do what you want for the other 20%. Or that any weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise. 

I think there is something in both of these claims but I have to follow my plan over 90% of the time and allow my indulgences (lager, curry, burger, cheesecake) for less than 10% of my diet. 

Where the balance of diet and exercise is concerned it is probably the same but I try to give 100% to both.

I have spent most of my adult life overweight. Not hugely but enough to be unhealthy and not particularly happy. There have been times when I have been lean. Usually associated with my emotional state. Falling in love, falling out of it. Contentment being not so good for my body fat percentage. 

Maybe if I had never started on the diet treadmill it would all have been so different. 

The photo on the left is the fifteen year old me. I was fairly lean. But I’d already moved to the dark side. The 70’ saw the launch of replacement meals. Little blocks of cardboard disguised as biscuits. I remember them being expensive but I can’t recall whether I lost weight. I probably didn’t as there wasn’t much to lose and I soon got bored with eating cardboard. 

My weight issues probably started at the end of my teens when I discovered lager. For the first time in my life my clothes started to feel tight. And that kicked off decades of fluctuation on the scales. 

Over the decades I have tried numerous diets. They all worked but not for long. So what changed? Why can I say that at the age of 60 I am now happy with how I look and how I feel? The latter is so important. I spent those decades focusing my efforts on how I looked but it was only when I started thinking about how food was making me feel did it become so much easier to lose body fat.

This started back in 2014 when I started an 8 week challenge at my gym. The plan commenced with two weeks of no carbohydrates apart from those in vegetables. It was challenging but I started feeling good both physically and emotionally. I started looking at food not by how it was going to taste but how it was going to make me feel. Out went the early morning croissant and the lunchtime white bread sandwich. I lost weight on the challenge. But more importantly I continued eating in the same way. 

I also became interested in how nutrition affected exercise performance. This led me to getting a gym instructor and personal trainer qualification.

So I found what worked for me. The diet did work. But why do most fail?
I think a lot of it has to be mindset. When we commence on a diet is it for the right reason? Does it come from a position of self loathing? That use to be my reason. I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. Every new year a resolution which was destined to fail within weeks. January is not the best time to start something that requires tenacity and a positive outlook when a couple of weeks in we hit the saddest day of the year. Christmas and New Year are distant memories but we are still paying for the festivities and summer is not round the corner.

So when is the right time? Anytime is the right time if you are doing it for the right reason for you. The challenge is to find the reason and getting the support to help you get there.

I trained as a personal trainer with an ambition to support older adults to get fit. But increasingly I think the real challenge is getting older people engaged in health and fitness in the first place. Helping individuals to identify what they want to change and finding the tools to do so. So in March I will be adding to my professional coaching qualifications and experience by doing a diploma in coaching for wellness. Very exciting. This may be my encore career. I want to help people get to the sweet spot where they improve their health for the reasons that are personal to them and therefore sustainable. 

The diet can work. Where our health and for the health of the NHS it has to.