Please join the Jamie Oliver kids junk food campaign and save lives

SO why did my favourite celebrity chef send me this tweet about the Jamie Oliver kids junk food campaign the other day? Because he’d like me to ask you for your support with something we’re both passionate about – unhealthy food being marketed to children.

Children are heavily influenced by what they see on TV, in advertising and on social media. Like Jamie, I believe if we can stop the junk food companies from marketing directly to impressionable young people, it will go some way to helping them change their behaviour.

That’s how we can start reversing the obesity crisis among kids, which really concerns me. The latest figures I’ve seen from the House Commons Library are that in the UK one in 10 children is obese by the age of five and one in five by the age of 11.

We’ve all got work together for their sakes to change this horrible situation. It makes me weep.

More shocking figures are contained in this report.

Here’s Jamie’s tweet to me:

 

This is not a political issue. Successive governments have failed to tackle childhood obesity and prevent millions of children from suffering what experts say are “appalling life-long consequences” from being brought up on junk food.

Jamie has launched a brilliant campaign on social media called We’ve #AdEnough Of Junk Food Marketing. He says: “Kids are bombarded day-in, day-out with adverts for food and drink products that are high in unhealthy fats, sugar and salt. They’re online, on TV, on the streets and all over public transport.

“If they are constantly being targeted with cheap, easily accessible, unhealthy junk food, just think how hard it must be to make better, healthier choices. We have to make it easier for children to make good decisions.

“It’s time we put child health first. I’m calling for the Government to introduce a 9pm watershed on junk food advertising on TV and for proper controls on what ads kids see online, in the street and on public transport.

Here’s what you can do: Show your support for the Jamie Oliver kids junk food campaign by posting an image of yourself hiding your eyes on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #AdEnough.

Make sure I see your pics by copying me in : @ThinkingSlimmer

Here’s the picture I posted of myself which led to Jamie tweeting me.

You can find out more about the great work Jamie is doing here: We #AdEnough

Please leave a comment below when you’ve posted your pic on social media. Thanks for supporting the truly worthwhile Jamie Oliver kids junk food campaign.

Let’s hope it is as successful as his sugar tax campaign.

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If you were a baby, would you feed yourself the way you do now?

MOST people dream of a healthy food relationship. So here’s something that will stop and make you think. I want you imagine yourself as a baby that needs nourishing and love. Would you feed that baby the same way you feed yourself as an adult – sweets, sugary snacks, fizzy drinks, massive meals? I don’t think so.

The key thing if you want to develop a healthy food relationship is to love and care about your body and your health as if you’re feeding a new born baby.

So you must ask yourself: what exactly does food mean to me? Do I see it as nourishment and fuel because I care about your body and health? Or do I use food to make myself feel better or as a form of reward? Just reflect on your answer for a moment and ask yourself if you really have a healthy food relationship.

After 10 years of working with overweight people it’s become clear to me they have a different relationship with food compared to those who are slim.

Most slim people regard food as a source of nutrients to fuel and nourish their bodies. Their pleasure comes from the feeling that they’re caring for their bodies by doing healthy things. Of course, slim people have times when they enjoy food and drink as a reward, but it’s not a constant emotional thing. They’re in control of their food choices.

Sadly, so many of overweight people I have a relationship with food which is far more emotionally driven by pleasure, reward, stress, comfort or boredom. Occasionally, something that happened as far back as childhood has altered the meaning of food.

Healthy food relationship – how to achieve it

Many of us associate food with love and warmth because it reminds us of family dinners with everyone around the table.  I was rewarded with chocolate and sweets if I was a good girl and did my homework.

When you’re used to having a food reward as a child, in adulthood it then becomes the thing that makes you feel better about yourself.  This can often get out of control because you’ve triggered dopamine, the pleasure hormone, and the more you get the more you want.

The great thing is that you can change and influence this. If you make poor food choices based on immediate gratification and immediate reward, you can do something about it.

One of the ladies on my Slimpod Gold programme recently told me it has really helped her to change her focus so she now looks at food only as nourishment and fuel. She says she’s no longer “mindlessly eating for Britain!” I’m so excited for her!

It’s life and bad habits that have changed things for YOU. Your brain has taken you down the road to being overweight and your brain can just as easily do a U-turn and take you down the road to being slim and a healthy food relationship.

It’s the same brain after all. To make this change of direction you only need to be in tune with your body and be able to eat in a way that gives it the nourishment it needs.

Do let me know by leaving a comment below if you identify with any of the food reward stuff or if you want a healthy food relationship.

 

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Fat around the middle – the surprising cause and the simple cures

HAVE you got fat around the middle that’s been there for years and just won’t shift?

Maybe you’ve been on countless diets and lost weight in various other parts of the body but the tummy fat won’t go. Here’s what you need to know: Getting rid of the fat around your middle is not simply about your diet or lack of exercise. It’s much more to do with the stress hormones in your body, especially cortisol.

So as it’s Stress Awareness Week in the UK I thought I’d explain why this is. Because once you understand the cause of fat around the middle, it’s much easier to do something about it.

When your brain thinks your life’s under threat it becomes stressed and releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. This fight or flight survival mechanism dates back to caveman days.

The hormones released instantly create a number of physical changes. Your heart beats faster, you breathe faster, and your entire body becomes tense and ready to take action. Fight or flight is clever and very, very efficient and it provides everything your body needs to react to the stress of dangerous situations.

Once the danger’s out of the way the adrenal glands stop pumping out hormones and your body returns to normal. The problem with modern life is that many of us live under constant stress – it comes from deadlines, traffic jams, managing homes, children and elderly parents.

The effects of stress on the body

The body can’t distinguish between day-to-day stress and exceptional life-threatening stress so it reacts in exactly the same way it’s always done, which is fight or flight.

Let’s look at what happens when you’re stressed. The adrenaline helps you to be alert and focused while cortisol increases the levels of fat and sugar in the blood stream to form glucose, which provides instant energy.

However unless you do something physical, which is what your body is programmed to expect, then all that extra glucose has nowhere to go. It simply becomes fat which is stored round your middle so it’s close to your vital organs, such as the liver, for the next time it’s needed.

Fat around the middle – the refuelling problem

After a stressful event adrenaline levels return to normal and the body becomes calm. But the level of cortisol often remains higher, maybe for a few days, because your brain thinks you should refuel your body. So cortisol increases your appetite.

Now you can see why people who are under constant stress often feel hungry all the time. The body is getting them to stock up on the fuel it thinks could be needed again.

What’s most useful to it is carbohydrate and fat.  And those are the last things you need to consume if you’re trying to lose weight. In the modern world, when we spend so much time sitting at desks, in cars or in front of the TV, refuelling just isn’t necessary.

Now you know what’s going on, the question is: what can you do about it?

Find time each day to relax. Just 10 minutes of “me time” can make a big difference. If you’re on my Slimpod Gold programme, make full use of the Chillpod download which has undergone clinical trials and is unlike any other relaxation download.

The other thing you can do is exercise. This is proven to release feelgood hormones that counter stress.

Get moving to manage stress

Leave a comment below and tell me how stress affects you and what you’re going to do to relax more.

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