3:15pm Thursday 4th June 2009
By Andrew Mosley
10 Things You Need To Know About Losing Weight, BBC1, Wednesday 8pm LOSING weight basically comes down to eating less — not wolfing down endless packets of crisps or takeaways — and doing some exercise. End of. Except it’s not.
In the latest dieting programme to hit our screens, medical journalist Michael Mosley (no relation and, no, neither was leading fascist Sir Oswald or is Formula 1 supremo and attendee of dodgy parties Max) uncovers 10 of the simplest ways to shed those pounds.
Like most people, I thought I knew the score when it came to dropping the flab, but this programme actually gave you the science behind the slimming.
Soup, apparently is the answer, as the liquid stays in your stomach longer than, say, a deep-fried Mars bar, which means you feel full for a greater period of time and are less prone to chomp away on supposedly healthy cereal or breakfast bars all day long.
Mr Mosley does not look like he is at all overweight, but while making this film he discovered that he, like millions of others, has internal body fat around his kidneys and liver that he really needs to lose.
It’s not particularly something you would want to dwell on, but perhaps we should. He drops 19 grammes through a spell on the treadmill, but loses more through sleep and a sedentary following morning due to the after effects of the exercise.
Blur guitarist Alex James, who now writes as Foodie Boy in the Observer, is a passionate cheese maker and eater, and turns up wearing an extremely tight shirt (wonder if he bought it from Oasis?), which I presume is there to accentuate the extra poundage he has piled on.
Dairy lovers need not despair though, as it turns out that low-fat dairy products (so that excludes the old quattro formaggio pizza, then) can help you excrete more fat from your food. Nice.
Smug Alex is pretty chuffed at this, but looking at him, he should still consider cutting down on his Pork Life. Ha ha ha! Get it?
A large DJ woman burns up more than 200 calories a day simply by getting on the tube at a later stop and disembarking earlier, walking up escalators rather than just standing on them and waving her arms about a bit while presenting her show.
Basically, the message here is, get yourself down to the supermarket (or should that be soupermarket?) and stock up on the tins of vegetable potage. And no, wandering down the crisp aisle does not count as exercise.
While we’re at it, Supersize Teens: Can’t Stop Eating (ITV1, Monday 9pm) featured two morbidly obese Americans (no, really!) who decide gastric surgery is the way forward.
In America more than 200,000 children a year undergo weight loss surgery and the two featured here are knocking 20 stone despite still being at school.
One has a band fitted and, to be fair, gets involved in some sporting action (well, volleyball), losing six stone in the process.
The other girl is slightly less positive and has a bit of difficulty in giving up the school pizza breakfast — and these people wonder why they’re so big in the first place.
A look at the parents would give you a clue as well. In a way this was quite a sad programme and, as America usually is, a good indicator as to where we are going in this country.
Champions League Final, ITV1, Wednesday 7pm I know I shouldn’t, but it was good to see all those people whose only connection with success is through association with Manchester United have a bad night for a change.
Even commentator Clive Tyldesley acknowledged that most of this country wanted Barca to win and it was nice to see a team not wholly, though largely, concerned with money — they have no sponsorship, instead sporting the UNICEF logo on their shirts, their ground was once the only place where the Catalan language could be legally spoken and, unlike the fans of Real Madrid, their followers were generally on the right side during the Spanish Civil War— triumph.
"This team has played football tonight," Clive said. Well, that was the general idea.
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