Lose 4 stone in just as many weeks using these 5 easy steps!

I don't understand why adverts like this are still popping up all over my advert space on the internet, when it's clearly not a feasible feat. Everybody should know this by now, and yet people are stupid enough to still believe that there's a way to get thin without leaving the couch. Or maybe I'm just underestimating the average intelligence of your average skinny-figure aspiring, ice-cream-and-donut-loving internet user.

My personal top tips

1. Eat less. But not too little. Actually, only eat when you're hungry.
2. Stop eating crap. Greasy things make you fat because it's cooked in fat.
3. Move more. More you move -> More energy body requires -> more you can eat
4. Only put in what you need out. It's like fuelling a machine.
5. Diet pills are silly. Even if they initially make you lose weight, when you go off them and you're still stuck in the same habits as when you went on them, once you finish the course YOU WON'T STOP GETTING FAT.

The whole concept of weight loss is simple. If you eat less and move more, you lose weight. Simple. Of course it's easier for some than others, because ... I don't know, some people are more inclined to eat healthier food? or they don't sit on the sofa all day? I don't believe that there are some people out there who actually sit in their house and don't leave the television set except to urinate, defecate or to get food. It's quite obvious that they don't need that much energy (I mean, they are just sitting down, which can hardly be counted as a strenuous activity), yet they must not grasp the concept that you don't need that much food whilst vegetating on the settee. If you're a hard-working builder and decide to have a bacon and egg sandwich and a mars bar for lunch, following a busy morning's brick-laying and tea drinking, (can builders lay bricks?)a heavy lunch is justified. Fuel for the afternoon. Yet Little Miss Couch Potato wonders why she's getting fat whilst munching on a sharing size pack of doritos during Jeremy Kyle.

I used to work in a health food shop, and the number of people looking for quick-fix diet pills were phenomenal. The majority of these women weren't necessarily worried about their health, but needed to drop a couple of pounds for their holiday or wedding, and fast. What I always wanted to tell them was that if they had eaten better before, they wouldn't have been in such a predicament! And now there they were, a fortnight away from their long-awaited vacation and stressing about how they would look in a bikini. To tell you the truth, I'm glad that I don't holiday with this type of people. However, despite my initial impressions, I would always politely approach them and help them find the right product. Who knows, they may actually want to change their lifestyle after all!

A typical conversation would go like this:
Customer: "Can you help me find something that would help me lose X amount of pounds in Y weeks?" (Values X and Y completely unobtainable)
Myself: "I can certainly find something to help start you off on the right track, though I think that you're setting your goalposts too high! 3-4lbs a week is more achievable and I can help you find something that will help you with that."
Customer (looks a little apprehensive): Alright. I should've started earlier then, but anything that helps would be great!
Myself: Is it alright if I ask you a couple of questions first? Just so that I can help find the right products for you?
Customer: Of course.
Myself: First of all, the killer question. How would you describe your diet?
Customer: (hesitating) I think it's alright, I guess. There are the odd days here and there where I fall down. [The odd day? No kidding. I don't know why these people lie to someone who wants to help. I only start judging you if you aren't truly honest and come back to see me in 6 months time with the same problem]
Myself: We all have those. What sort of foods are your weakness?
Customer: Sweets and cakes. But I do snack a fair bit as well on crisps when I get home from work before making the kids' dinner. But the rest of my diet's good! I only have takeaway once a week and I don't eat breakfast so I can save my calories for later in the day! [No dear, it doesn't quite work like that...]
Myself: Okaaaaay... And how much exercise do you get?
Customer: I walk to my office and back from my car every day, and I sometimes take the stairs. I don't really have time to do exercise.

What I want to say/what this lady needs to hear yet isn't allowed to because I would appear to be completely insensitive and not complying with the high levels of customer service that rigorously must be maintained:
Righto. First of all, don't lie to me about your diet. If you have a shit diet, just say so. I'll give you some advice and some support to help you beat sugar cravings and overcome unnecessarily calorie-laden yet nutritionally sparse foods that you so love. It'll help you with energy levels! Mood swings and sleeping patterns! But no. You're not in this losing weight thing for the long haul are you? So you most certainly do not want to disclose your true dietary habits to an impartial shop assistant who, god forbid, might tell you off! If you can't face up to the fact that you have a crap diet and yet can't shed the pounds, maybe you need someone to do so. But no, by saying your diet's alright you're effectively closing off a route that may help you.

However, having classified your diet as "alright", you then go on to say that you are impartial to the odd cake and sweet (one at 10am, 11am and 3pm perhaps? Those are my personal weakpoints), snack on a bag of crisps at home most probably after cake and have a takeaway (probably at least, she doesn't look like a woman with true willpower) FREQUENTLY? What is even the appeal of takeaways anyway, when you can make the same meal at home, it will taste loads better for the fraction of the price? I guess that we're just a nation of junk-food addicts with the aspirations of achieving a toned flexible physique trapped underneath rolls of blubber.

I guess that's what the government think as well. I think they're now saying that nearly half of under 10s are approaching obesity or are obese and we're a nation of fat people with bad eating habits. So why not have a government drive to stop kids tumbling into an early and extra large grave? So the "Just Eat More (fruit and veg" campaign was launched a while ago, Jamie Oliver gave school lunches a makeover (whilst watching his School Dinners programme I was amazed by the quality and variety of his menus) to help us and our kids. I bet half of the parents who this campaign was aimed at either didn't care/couldn't comprehend the concept or couldn't afford healthy food. Why is healthy food so expensive anyway? You can buy 40 sausages with roughly 20% meat (a variety of pork, chicken and beef plus anything else) for £2, yet a bag of 3 or 4 peppers costs nearly the same amount. Personally I would go with peppers, but I can see why some people go for the bag of frozen sausages. For one, they wouldn't read the ingredients list, and secondly, it's cheap and can feed you for aaages. I guess mums and dads stock their freezers and cupboards up with this rubbish and serve it up to their kids as a meal. NOT A VEGETABLE IN SIGHT.
Let's see... Sugary cereal and toast for breakfast, chocolate bar at break, pizza and chips for lunch with chocolate pudding for lunch, crisps and chocolate biscuits for after school snack and sausage and chips for tea followed by ice cream. For some variety in their diet, take them to a popular fast-food outlet. Mum and Dad obviously hated their vegetables as a child and didn't want to inflict the same torture on their own offspring. I HAD TO EAT  BROCCOLI EVERY DINNER TIME FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. May be I was 3 or maybe 4 when I started, but I still have broccoli every dinner time even now. In fact, I love broccoli, even though it used to be my least favourite part of the meal. If I didn't eat my broccoli, I didn't get any pudding. Simple. I guess kids answer back to their parents too much these days to find these techniques effective...

We also have fat kids because as a nation, we are becoming more lazy. What happened to the days where everyone used to run around everywhere? The days when you'd go and play in the street with a football or hide and seek in the garden or tennis or tig in the park? Gone now, it seems. I used to hate any games that involved sprinting because I wasn't very fast as a child, but I'd still take part. If you didn't, you faced ostracization by your peers, and that's no fun when you're in primary school. These days it seems like kids sit indoors all day on their x-box and cell phone and laptops and watching TV SIMULTANEOUSLY. AND EATING CRISPS. School obviously hasn't taught them that the more you eat and the less you move, the fatter you get, and of course mummy and daddy don't have time to do that. They have to do this and that and are really far too busy to be doing anything more than making sproglet's dinner. In the oven/microwave it goes. Later Mummy and Daddy wonder why child is fat, blame school for not educating child about healthy eating, government changes curriculum to include healthy eating lessons to be taught from nursery school leaving literacy and numeracy even further on the back burner. CHILD IS STILL FAT they later complain. Government changes school dinners. Why are Mummy and Daddy incapable of accepting responsibility? Maybe they're wary that it may flag up some of their poor eating traits, the neighbours would find out about their habits and publicly humiliate them. What a ridiculous food insecurity.

Why were we a nation of hearty meals, yet leaner physique in the past than today? Nowadays it's all or nothing, you're flipping between the on and off phases of yo-yo dieting, overindulging too frequently and unwilling to face it, yet obsessed with organic food, superberries and antioxidants. In a desperate attempt to seem healthy (many would call it a "health kick and that would be the end of it)an unopened jar of overpriced manuka honey sits in the cupboard alongside an open, yet practically full bag of goji berries. It's sad when you're reduced to this marketing ploy to make yourself feel healthy whilst in real life, you're constantly surfing sugar peaks and troughs whilst craving salty meals and greasy treats. All these people that are in denial have to face up to the fact that they have a junk food addiction. Yes. That's right.
ADDICTION.

Like smoking. Junk food is addictive, just like smoking, and it is also bad for you. Smoking is also bad for you as well, but junk food is available to people of all ages and hasn't started to become regulated by the government. I read somewhere that junk food helps release dopamine in the brain (not exactly sure if that's entirely correct, but you get the gist) just like drugs. Except most drugs make you thin because of the dopamine re-uptake etc, which pretty much eliminates the desire to eat. However, as far as I know, junk food doesn't work in the same way as agonists do. For starters, junk food is generally a lot bulkier than most common agonists, and therefore will need a place to sit whilst it's being processed. Not enough room here? Quick! Produce more room to store this shit! It's not waste, so we'll have to make an extension, we're running out of room anyway. Et voila! One Large Big Mac meal comfortably stored around the consumer's abdomen. Another thing is that junk food isn't an agonist either, so as far as my knowledge goes it won't help with the re-uptake of dopamine, so your satisfaction buzz from your Big Mac won't last as long as one from a narcotic. Undoubtedly you'll be seeking more consolation in another form of crappy food at some point soon and whining about it later.

DO PEOPLE HAVE NO WILLPOWER THESE DAYS?

AND WHY DON'T WE MAKE OUR OWN FOOD ANYMORE?! We settle for this prepackaged crap that is pumped full of additives to make us buy it again, using "not enough hours in the day" as an excuse. How do people truly understand what's going into their meals if they're not making it themselves? Back in the day, everything was made from scratch (apart from base ingredients) so you knew what was happening to your food. Why have many people lost this tradition and succumbed to the temptation of ready meals, fatter middles and a very happy and extremely fat cat at the top of the corporate ladder? Make your own pack-up for once,  leave out crisps and put in a couple of apples instead. Ditch coca cola, drink squash or water. Or coffee. Simples.

I am aware that in spite of the fact that I have been preaching these words of wisdom time after time after time, I must admit that I am shit at eating well. I get away with it because I somehow have a way of being skinny, yet I'm not quite sure what it's down to. I guess that I walk a fair distance every day and don't spend all day in bed, and these days I don't even like McDonalds. However, I like muffins. I have the habit of buying a bag of something delicious (like muffins or dates or donuts or apricots or whatever) and eating them all in one go, or failing that, on the same day. With dried fruit this leads to disastrous consequences, rendering me incapable of leaving the bathroom on the same evening. However, when I go weekly shopping for food I never ever buy anything really nice. Just lots of vegetables and cheese and pasta and chilli sauce and broccoli (I can't afford chicken, fuck that)and kid myself that that's all I will eat during the next week. Fat chance.
Instead, I pay through the nose for individually packaged products just so I can only have one at a time because I know that I have no willpower if I go for the value option and buy the larger box that costs fractionally more. Dear lord, I have sacrificed value for healthy eating! But due to this lack of value, I can't buy as many over the course of a week ergo some sort of self-control in place. Only some though. If anything starts to get out of hand, a couple of days of extra hot chilli sauce with added chilli powder in every meal generally sorts everything out.

I would love to see some middle-aged ladies try that out.