7 September - Why the food industry needs to do more than promote physical activity

This video answers the questions why the food industry needs to do more than promote physical activity to help reduce our national waistline. It's a report How to Get Fat Without Even Trying by ABC's Peter Jennings.

7 September - Don't let diet information constipated you

I heard the following words yesterday from yet another person, "Well, there's so much conflicting nutrition information out there, what am I meant to do?" This was from a person who was not actively trying to eat well.

While there is a lot of dubious nutrition information out there, particularly on the internet, please don't let this be a barrier or even and excuse to making real and beneficial changes to your diet.

Guidelines like;

• Eat 5 serves of vegeteables
• 2-3 fruits
• 2-3 dairy, etc

5 September - Does the Lemon Detox Diet work?

The ads on the radio contain testimonials from people who say they lost around 5 kilograms in 5 days on the Lemon Detox Diet. So how does it work and are their any risks?

The website says, "The Lemon detox diet works to ease and improve both toxic and overweight conditions and lets the body cleanse itself naturally while you take a break from solid food."

The Lemon Detox Diet is a drink consisting of the Madal Bal Natural Tree Syrup, fresh lemon juice, cayenne pepper and pure water.

Based on the recommended protocol you get up to 6-9 glassess of the drink a day during the Standard detox (5-7 days) or Optimum 10-day detox.

You are instructed, "Do not eat any solid foods".

Based on our analysis of the recipe for the drink Madal Bal Natural Tree Syrup, you can expect to consume between:

1700 to 2500 kJ a day on this detox

In most cases weight loss diets are recommended to contain at least 5000 kJ to meet minimum needs for vitamins and minerals. So, the figures show that the recommende program falls far short of this figure.

It's this lower energy figure combined with the significant weight loss claims in the advertising that really makes me worry about people using this product for weight loss.

After around 24 hours of semi-starvation (which is what this diet could be for most people) your body starts to slow its metabolism to conserve energy.

At the same time, you'll will have used up almost all your body's carbohydrate stores (glycogen). You'll start burning up a lot more fat for fuel, which at first glance is exactly what you want to happen.

But then the Lemon Detox Diet will start to backfire on you and you may not even know it, because you are so pleased that the weight is falling off.

If you lose weight as fast as they say in the radio advertisements (and anything more than 1kg a week in reality) you'll also have to use some body protein to make up the energy shortfall during semi-starvation.

This means that after a day or so on the Lemon Detox Diet you may be eating away at your muscles, losing protein and causing a further reduction in your metabolic rate.

For the next 5 to 10 days all seems to be going well though as you are continuing your weight loss on the Optimum Version of the detox.

But by the time you refeed again, you've got less protein and less muscle on your body so you are more likely to store any excess calories.

If you would like to discover the facts about rapid weight loss for yourself, understand what happens from a biological perspective and learn about approaches that help lose fat but keep muscle, consider my Weight Management Essentials Online course.

1 September - Tip for choosing calorie-limited snacks

I'm not a big fan of the food industry's % Daily Intake nutrition labelling. The Kellogg's 'Shrek' muesli bars on the right feature no less than 16 numbers across the top in blue, which is a head-full of information for the average punter to digest and utilise.

Couldn't we just have a Red, Amber and Green traffic light label consumers can check out at a glance?

• Green snacks would have no more than 300kJ (70 Cal) per serve.
• Amber snacks would have greater than 300, but no more than 600kJ per serve, and
• Red snacks would have greater than 600kJ per serve.

An Amber snack is OK. The Shrek bars have 520kJ per 1 bar serve.

But a Red snack really just has too much energy for most people to munch on regularly. For example, a 55 gram chocolate bar has 1200 KJ and a 50 gram pack of chips has 1100 kJ, so they would be labelled with a Red light.

So, see how you go aiming for Green snacks (300 kJ) today as a simple way of limiting the energy you consume.