Whenever we discuss weight loss or improving our health the first items we tend to discuss are diet and exercise. We don’t often see the 2 things mentioned independently of each other. And, like love and marriage they go together like a horse a carriage – don’t they? As a doctor, personal trainer, nutritional therapist or any other health professional you would never tackle one without mentioning the other. After all what is the point of exercising regularly if you aren’t eating a healthy and balanced diet, and equally what is the point of eating properly if you aren’t exercising?

I personally see them both as of equal importance. But I also see other life choices that are as important. Getting the right amount of sleep and rest, managing stress effectively and ultimately living a healthy and balanced life – mentally as well as physically. To me, it isn’t so much a case of diet and exercise as two sides of the same coin; it is more of a puzzle with lots of different lifestyle factors to consider.

I often tell clients that I find many of the health, diet and exercise messages that are communicated in society and the media incredibly confusing to the layman. We are inundated with how much exercise we should be doing, what we should be eating, how obesity is affecting society etc. but it seems to me that the more information we have at our fingertips the harder it is to find the right path for us. Looking at it positively we have never had the ability to exercise and look after ourselves as easily as we can now. Which seems ironic, as we have never lived more busy and stressful lives with less balance as we currently do. We seem unable to marry the theory with the practice as life keeps getting in the way. Sadly, no matter what we say and think, it appears that our health has never been less of a priority and the really worrying thing is that we aren’t even aware.  Many of us are walking around thinking that we are being as healthy as we possibly can be but are making mistakes left, right and centre.

Anyway, to get back on track let me go back to where I started – diet and exercise.  As I have already said I see them both as of equal importance, but I understand them both and I enjoy them both. But, unlike many people, I don’t see either of them as short-term projects. They are both an integral part of my life. I exercise daily and have done for many years and I follow a healthy and balanced diet that works for me. But I didn’t get to this point overnight and I don’t do either to be a certain weight or look a certain way, I simply do it to feel good and for my body to stay as healthy as it can. I personally wouldn’t go on a calorie-restricted diet to squeeze into an outfit. I am a great believer in if you adopt a healthy and balanced lifestyle then you will look and feel good as a consequence. I still think too many people look at diet and exercise on a short-term basis. The January detox, the month avoiding alcohol, starving yourself for a holiday/wedding/party. Even people training for exercise events such as marathons and triathlons. Of course you have many people who take part in sporting events regularly, but often I meet people who will devote x amount of weeks and months training and dieting for a one-off event and, as soon as they have crossed it off their to-do list they slip back into their unhealthy habits and never really progress. I am not saying that everyone needs to go out and embark on a schedule to make them an ultra athlete, I am simply saying that it makes much more sense to moderate your diet and exercise, approach it in a balanced fashion and make it part of your long-term life.

The problems we are facing with obesity could, in part, be due to the fact that we are still not looking at health from a long-term perspective. I actually think more people would succeed in managing their health and weight over a longer period if we stopped tackling diet and exercise at the same time. Changing your exercise regime (or simply starting to exercise when it isn’t something you commonly do) at the same time as completely overhauling your diet doesn’t always make sense. If we look at lifestyle as a whole – work, family, hobbies, exercise, diet, rest – then trying to tackle two pretty major things at the same time seems optimistic at best and foolhardy at worst. How we behave and what we spend our time doing is in part down to habits we have formed. Habits are not broken and formed overnight. They take time to cultivate and enjoy and should be tackled slowly and over a long period. If you change everything at once you are unlikely to stick to it as you will simply feel that you are depriving yourself of too much, have too much pressure to ensure that you don’t fall off the wagon, feel miserable and give up.

Maybe by looking at one at a time we may start to see a greater level of success and compliance. I maintain that the two are inextricably linked and both need to be adhered to help guarantee long-term health, but that doesn’t mean that applying them at the same time in the same way is going to work for everyone. The facts speak for themselves, we need to eat a balanced diet and we need to exercise, but maybe we need to change the way in which we approach them.

In the job that I do I am obviously very interested in research and articles relating to health and wellbeing. Many of these focus on weight and I will often tweet what I read to my Twitter followers. I don’t always 100% agree with what I am reading (I know that most research will often have a compelling counter argument, and many of the headlines in the media can be open to bias) I do think it is good to read what is being talked about and to understand what the issues of the day are relating to health. It is good to take a balanced and reasoned approach to everything one reads and not believe everything on face value though.

I find one of the biggest (pardon the pun) issues I read about is obesity. Not only why are we getting bigger but what getting bigger is doing to our health and the impact on society as a whole. We know – or have the ability to know – more than we have ever known before. We are inundated with stats on an almost daily basis about how dangerously unhealthy we are all becoming –

'Nearly 2/3 of middle aged people in Wales are overweight or obese' (University of London – Nov 2013),

 ‘Overweight seen as the norm, says chief medical officer’ – March 2014,

‘At least 900 Welsh children attend slimming classes’ (Public Health Wales – August 2013),

‘WHO: Daily sugar intake ‘should be halved’ – March 2014

The above links give you an idea of what we regularly see in the press health pages and although there are often two sides to every story, it is becoming harder to ignore that our lifestyle choices have an important impact on our long-term health. I believe one of the more frightening aspects to the weight debate is that obesity seems to be affecting more and more children than ever before. Poor eating habits seem to be starting younger with many children overweight and obese before they start secondary school. Many of our habits are formed in childhood and those of us who become overweight and unhealthy, as children will find it easier to continue in this vein for the rest of our lives. Over the past 10 years there have been many studies that have been published that have frighteningly claimed that children born now may die at younger ages than their parents. As I have previously said you will often find counter arguments and varying factors that have gone into making a point with regards to health, but this cannot be ignored as simply scare mongering.

I am unfortunately programmed now to look at people in a certain way. I can usually tell just by looking at someone whether or not their diet is healthy (skin, breath, energy levels, physical presentation) and what exercise they should be doing. I would never advise anything by simply looking at someone, but how we look and where we are carrying fat and how vital we appear is usually a pretty good starting point and can help when taking a detailed case history. I am often shocked when I see the size of some young children. I have been on the train or the bus on many occasions when I will see young children gorging themselves on fast food and junk food. I see children eating crisps, fizzy drinks and chocolate on the way into school (around 7:30 – 8am) in the morning and outside McDonalds, Dominos and other fast food establishments at lunchtime eating vast amounts of fatty, processed foods. Eating badly has never been easier, I get that, but why (if we know all we know) is this allowed to happen?  Do people still not understand that eating food like this, regularly over a period of time is going to kill us? Do we not understand that fat doesn’t just sit there looking a bit ugly; it actually prematurely ages us, and may kill us (probably many years before it should and after causing years of ill health and misery?) Do people really think that their lifestyle choices really only affect them? What about your friends and family? What about your work colleagues? Not to mention the huge societal impact – the NHS simply cannot cope with a nation of obese people, can it? And why should it?

So, what can we do to prevent obesity and ideally keep ourselves disease-free for as long as possible? The answer seems to lie with tackling it from many different angles. The government needs to seriously look into the stranglehold the food industry has on all aspects of society and effectively manage more campaigns, such as those designed to cut down on smoking. If taxes are to be levied on sugar then there needs to be consistent messaging and rules applied. All foods need to be considered when applying taxes and looked into properly. And, if we are going to be penalized for eating less healthy foods, will we be incentivized for eating healthy foods? It is not just about making unhealthy food less appealing we need to make healthy food more appealing. We need to redress the balance. Schools and parents need to work together to educate children on why and how they can make sensible food choices and take time and energy to teach children how to cook healthy, low-cost meals and to understand that that eating badly will affect them health-wise. We need to stop being afraid of talking about people being fat and create a dialogue and a way of tackling this that is sympathetic and effective. Young people cannot be blamed for this. They are getting the junk food and the money to buy the junk food from somewhere. This needs to be seriously looked at. The NHS has a very important job to do. With everything we know it is still very difficult in 2014 to be able to buy any healthy food in a hospital. I have been in hospitals in the UK that have fast food and junk food franchises in the same building as the hospital. How can this be allowed to happen?

In order to tackle the issue seriously and effectively everyone needs to be on the same page and a consistent action is needed. It won’t be easy but it needs to happen, as unfortunately the endless articles, research and knowledge are not making enough of a difference. We have the information and the control to prevent obesity, which will in turn help to prevent to prevent long-term serious illnesses, which will in turn help to prevent a strain on society and untimely deaths. This is everyone’s problem, and we need to make this a priority.