Exercise In The Reducing Programme

Earlier in this chapter the calorie cost of physical activity was discussed. Table 9 shows the calorie cost of walking. The inclusion of increased exercise and physical activity in the reducing programme is advisable, both to help lose weight and to make a stronger and, we think, healthier body. A daily quota of an hour of fairly brisk walking or busy work in the garden is desirable. This is to be substituted for time previously spent in a sedentary occupation, such as looking at TV, and not for a more active part of everyday life such as the regular housework. Bicycling is even better than walking, and swimming or tennis count about twice as much. Table 10 gives estimates of the calorie equivalent and 30-day and 90-day weight losses reckoned solely for such increased activity. Double these values for twice as much time spent at them if you can actually keep up the pace. Or reduce by 50 per cent if the time is halved.

CALORIE COST OF WALKING Net hourly cost of walking (calories per hour during walking, less the calorie cost per hour of reclining quietly), for adults of 7st. 2 lb., 10 st. 10 lb. and 14 st. 4 lb. body weight. These are rough averages for walking on a good surface on the level and on 5 and

10 per cent grade.
Walking	Grade		Body Weight
Speed		7 st. 2 lb.	10 st. 10 lb.	14 st. 4 lb.
2 miles per hour	Level	90	130	190
	5%	140	210	280
	10%	200	300	400
	Level	130	200	260
	5%	200	300	400
	Level	200	300	400

CALORIE COST AND WEIGHT LOSSFROM EXERCISE This table gives the daily extra calorie expenditure, and the corresponding 30-day, 60-day and 90-day weight losses, resulting from substituting exercise for sedentary activity: One hour daily of steady walking, or „ „ „ bicycling, or „ swimming or tennis.

Your Weight 9 st. 11 st. 13 st.

„ „					17 st. 12 lb.
Daily Calorie Cost	240	300	360	420	470
! 30-day weight loss, lb.	2.2	2.8	3.4	3.9	4.4
60-day „ „ „	4.4	5.5	6.5	7.7	8.6
90-day* „ „ „	6.5	8.1	9.6	11.3	12.7

* In computing the 90-day weight losses allowance was made for the decrease in calorie cost resulting from progressive weight reduction from the exercise alone.

TOTAL WEIGHT LOSS IN 90 DAYS FROMEXERCISE AND DIET Calorie Reduction Your Initial Body Weight in Your Daily Diet st. lb. st. lb. st. lb. st. lb. st. lb.

	9	4	11	6	13	8	16	1	17	12
400	1	3	1	5	1	6	1	8	1	9
600	1	8	1	9	1	11	1	13	2	0
800	1	13	2	1	2	2	2	4	2	5
1,000		*	2	6	2	7	2	7	2	10
1,200		*	*		2	12	3	0	3	2
1,400		*	*		*		3	5	3	7

*A weight loss of more than 20 per cent of the original body weight in 90 days is seldom advisable.

Table 11 gives the total 90-day weight loss estimated for given initial calorie deficits (as in Table 8), plus the exercise effect corresponding to Table 10. Note that in both Tables 10 and 11 the initial body weight affects the result and that the influence of changing calorie expenditure because of changing weight in the 90-day period has been provided for in the computation.

A good exercise programme will increase the muscle mass in the body, particularly if more exercise than called for in Tables 10 and 11 is involved. If you are soft and fat we should like to see you gain a pound of muscle for every five pounds of fat you lose. It is preferable to lose 60 pounds of "obesity tissue", and gain 10 pounds of muscle, than simply to continue being sedentary and lose 50 pounds.

Such an exchange of muscle for fat has a calorie equivalent, of course. A pound of muscle in the body has an energy equivalent of about 400 calories, so the exchange of a pound of muscle for a pound of "obesity tissue", the kind of fat tissue you lose when you are dieting, means a difference of about 3,200 - 400 = 2,800 calories. If 50 pounds are lost by plain dieting, the energy equivalent is 160,000 calories. If 10 pounds of muscle are gained and there is a net loss of 50 pounds in body weight, there is a loss of (60 x 3,200) - (10 x 400) = 192,000 - 4,000 = 188,000 calories from the body stores. This means an extra 28,000-calorie deficit to be achieved by dieting to reach the same weight level, but the result would be well worth it.

Choice of Foods for the Reducer The reducer should not be denied the pleasure of eating - but "enough is as good as a feast" ! A period of weight reduction is actually a fine opportunity to learn new things about foods and cookery, about the delights of flavours and textures that are often drowned in a greasy monotony of too much to eat of the wrong kind of food.

When calories are restricted and rich foods are allowed only in very small quantity, it is sensible to concentrate on quality and on foods that offer large bulk but few calories. Buy the finest fruits and vegetables on the market and splurge on expensive shellfish, and such things as pheasant, mushrooms, and venison.

Many fantastic diets and foods have been urged upon those who should reduce. One recurrent idea is to devise a diet consisting only of two or three items of food, good enough in reasonable amount together with other foods but quickly becoming repugnant when they become the whole meal day after day. Once upon a time it was lamb chops and pineapple. Then it was bananas and skim milk. More recently one enthusiast said to concentrate on fat meat - all you want ! - but to cook and eat it without any salt. It sounds fine to say you may gorge on fat meat, but with no salt at all it is soon a repulsive mess. The latest idea is to stop eating in the ordinary sense and instead to swig down a brew of glucose, casein, and corn oil three times a day. Measurement and preparation could not be simpler, and one simply abandons the whole idea of eating. In spite of the warning of the Rockefeller Institute doctors that their diet was devised only for special experimental researchers, irresponsible magazine articles have persuaded thousands that this is scientific dieting!

The idea that drugs or indigestible food imitations are desirable or necessary to help the dieter is widely promoted by commercial interests. All manner of expensive preparations are to be had with and without a doctor's prescription. Some drugs produce a sort of incipient nausea. The "anorexigenic" drugs, such as the amphetamines and their relatives, depress the appetite by disorganizing the nervous system - and they may produce either general depression or extreme irritability and impulsive behaviour as well as inhibiting hunger.

Reducing preparations that contain no "drugs" mainly consist of various indigestible bran and cellulose mixtures that provide no calories but bloat the stomach so you feel stuffed. A little bran may be useful to prevent constipation, but more than you can possibly need for this purpose is readily available at the grocer's in the form of various breakfast foods. As for simply filling the stomach, there are plenty of real foods that will do this and add very few calories.

Some doctors prescribe one or another of these chemists' shop preparations in desperation about lack of co-operation, and undoubtedly there are some patients whose serious need for reduction, combined with an unfortunate personal psychology, will call for such measures. But unless your doctor really urges you to use these, stay away from them. In any case, never use any proprietary preparation that promises reduction and does not specify, in terms you understand, exactly what it contains.

The modern reducer should be grateful for the great variety of low-calorie vegetables and fruits now to be had at all seasons. These, and seasonings and flavourings, never so varied and easily available before, offer unlimited opportunities and satisfactions in taste and bulk at least. Saccharin and other sugar substitutes (e.g., sucaryl) allow all the zero-calorie sweetness you wish. Garlic, citrus juices, peppers and peppery preparations (e.g., Tabasco), as well as the usual herbs and spices, take on new meaning when you seek food satisfactions based on bland vegetables.

Many fresh vegetables are essentially unrestricted for the dieter because they only run from 20 to 30 calories per helping. When canned or frozen some of these are considerably higher in calories, but even so they are far from being calorie rich: Almost as negligible in calorie value (40 to 60 calories per helping) are:

Beetroot	Kohlrabi	Parsnips
Carrots	Leeks	Tomatoes
Fennel	Onions (green)	Turnips

Many other vegetables and fruits are not much richer in calories. In almost all reducing diets you can have practically all the berries, melons, grapes, peaches, and other ordinary fresh fruits that a reasonable person would like. Canned and frozen fruits are usually much higher in calories because they contain added sugar.

Asparagus	Endive	Radishes
Beans, green	Kale	Sauerkraut
Broccoli	Lettuce	Spinach
Brussels sprouts	Marrow	Spring greens
Cabbage	Mushrooms	Turnip tops
Cauliflower	Parsley	Watercress
Celery	Peppers
Cucumbers	Pimentos

Proteins, Vitamins, Water, and Salt in the Reducing Diet Among many false notions about reducing diets is the idea that the reducer must get a large amount of protein in the diet. Fortunately, research on diets, emergency and "survival" rations, conducted on behalf of the Armed Forces during World War II and after, has disposed of many exaggerated notions by controlled experiments on human beings. We approve of generous amounts of protein in all diets and of super-amounts in the diets of some types of hospital patients. But the attempt to maintain a 100 per cent "margin of safety" of protein in reducing diets leads to the absurdity that skim milk and dry cottage cheese must be included in practically every meal and there is very little scope for variety.

Actual measurement of the protein intake and excretion shows what happens in the body. Dietary protein is important because it is needed for growth and to replace protein which is constantly being broken down in the cells of the body. But protein can also be used as a fuel like carbohydrate. Any surplus protein in the diet is disposed of in this way, the nitrogen in the protein being excreted by the kidneys in the form of urea. When the diet is very low in calories, the protein in it cannot be used for the growth and repair of the body cells because it is burned to provide calories. If you are on a diet of only 1,000 calories but you are expending 2,500 calories daily, practically all of the protein in your diet will be used in this way and your net protein balance will be about the same no matter what proportion of your diet is made up of protein.

Nevertheless, all of our menus are devised to be relatively high in protein so as to adhere to the general pattern of good diets when calories are adequate and to take care of situations where the reducing diets are used at calorie deficits where diet protein may spare body protein. Besides, most people like diets that are fairly high in protein.

Similarly, all the diets we recommend are relatively rich in vitamins, though this is rarely a critical matter for the reducer. Vitamin tablets are unnecessary unless you reduce on strange and monotonous diets.

Restriction of water used to be advised by some persons on the ground that if a net loss of water from the body could be induced, the weight would fall. This idea of promoting reducing is untenable because the amount of water restriction that will actually cause appreciable dehydration would be intolerable and probably dangerous. A temporary fall in body weight can be produced also by overdosage with laxatives. But the reducer's problem is to lose fat, not water, and no method of losing weight by losing water has any useful long-range effect.

A better argument could be made for restricting salt, because by creating a shortage of salt in the body the automatic result is for the body to lose water so that the concentration of salt in body water stays constant. This actually happens and it is easy to push the weight up or down a few pounds by changing the salt intake. This is only a temporary effect and does not change the body fatness.