John Lark

As a personal trainer in maynooth, I have found that it is widely accepted in the fitness and fat loss community that the more a food product places on marketing, hype, colourful packaging and ‘in your-face’ labelling the worse it is for your waistline.

Take for instance Breakfast Cereals. Advertising budget of millions. Characters to sell the product to kids and so on. If you left it outside for a night rest assured even wild animals would leave it alone.

Compare this to Organic Wild Salmon. It doesn’t even get a mention in Reader’s Digest.

If you are looking to shrink your waistline and reduce your level of body fat then keep things simple and prevent falling victim to the marketing hype.

For example, the ‘low fat’ label that is attached to most, if not all, ‘healthy’ products is misleading and just scandalous.

How can a cereal bar packed full of sugar in its flimsy 100 calorie frame be anything more than a recipe for waistline disaster?

First of all, products like this that are ‘low in fat’ are also low in nutrients. They are devoid of vitamins and minerals that provide with life, vitality and energy.

Compare the Jaffa Cake to the humble Orange.  Both are low in calories. Yet one has more nutrients – can you tell which one?

Yoghurt is healthy enough without an added 2 teaspoons of sugar, masked with all the health benefits of healthy bacteria that is good for your gut.

If you want healthy bacteria then take a supplement. A quick swig on a pot that wouldn’t feed a toddler isn’t going to do it.

The problem with the ‘low fat’ staples is that they are just that – low in fat.

Food manufacturers remove key nutrients from the food to make it taste better. Ever wondered why you just can’t stop at one biscuit?

Biscuits, cakes and other processed ‘low fat items’ are also rich in things like inverted sugar syrup, glucose-fructose syrup and such like. These are as bad, if not worse, than consuming sugar. Take sugar, distort its chemical make-up and bingo you have the main part of what is your cereal bar.

We need fat. Good fats. The fats you find in nuts, seeds, oils such as avocado, walnut, hemp, olive and fish oil.

We even need saturated fat. The fat that comes with good old coconut oil and raw butter.

If you can imagine your body being nothing more than a complex network of cells that make up  our organs, skin, hair and body parts then you will see why.

Each one of these cells has an outer wall called a membrane. This membrane is made up of fat. All sorts of bodily reactions are dependant on this membrane doing its job. It must allow hormones in to allow a reaction to occur inside the cell. It must allow substances out too, like the release  of body fat from adipose tissue.

A diet that has a sensible mix of fat will ensure that this membrane does its job. Stuff comes in, stuff comes out.

Can you imagine if it didn’t? Hormones, nutrients and fluids would not be allowed in (or find it very tough) and other substances would find it hard to get in too.

Becoming a fat-phobic will do nothing for your waistline or your health.

However, the devil is always in the detail.

If you are on a calorie controlled nutrition plan then you would be wise to ensure that you don’t use this to splurge on your favourite double cream.

Instead work it into your calorie budget. If you know that you can maintain your weight on 1800 calories then think before you use these up in one feast of steak and raw butter.

Rest assured you will get fat if you eat over your calorie allowance, even if it is considered ‘healthy’.

It is, however, not surprising that once you remove all the processed and packaged foods from your calorie budget how much you have room for the foods that provide you with all the tools necessary to reach your health and fitness goals.

Fish, good quality meats, vegetables and good old-fashioned healthy fats.

John Lark is a personal trainer based in Maynooth, Kildare. Visit The Sphere Fitness Studio and claim your complimentary assessment and trial session now!