The best diet is NO diet!

This morning I was thinking about how much exercise it takes to burn off the food we eat and I couldn't help but come up with the slogan, "The best diet is NO diet".

By "NO diet" I mean simply saying NO will often help you more to lose weight than trying to exercise off that treat.

For example a choc-chip muffin from Coles contains around 1,800kJ in energy. If you were to eat such a muffin how long would would you need to exercise in order to burn off the muffin? It takes a second to say NO, but now if you use the Energy Exercise Calculator you can work out how much time you will need to exercise.

If I use the figure of 93kg as the weight and go for a walk (4kph) you'll find it will take over an hour and a half to burn off the energy. I don't know about you, but to me that's a very long walk. A few minutes of pleasure eating a lovely choc-chop muffin and you then need to walk for an hour and a half, or you could simply say, "no thanks".

Next time you're thinking of a high energy treat, think about using the "NO diet" diet. You'll find you lose weight faster.

Check out the Energy Exercise Calculator and work out how much exercise and what type of exercise you can do to burn off those treats you love. Once you understand the connection between energy content in food, and energy expended through exercise, you'll see why many people who exercise alone find it difficult to lose weight. To me the best way to lose weight is to get your diet in order and then exercise for the benefits of exercise, plus exercise will help to you to lose weight faster.

Kelvin Eldridge

PS. You can find the Energy Exercise Calculator on the main page of JustLocal (http://www.justlocal.com.au/).