Joanna Hall
THE GI
WALKING
DIET

LOSE 10LBS AND 10 YEARS IN 6 WEEKS

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction: Active Ageing – One Foot in the Future

Part I: Dealing Positively with Ageing

1 Physical Changes

How Old Do You Feel?

Changing Your Attitudes and Habits

How the Body Ages

Ageing and Body Weight

2 Emotional Challenges

Emotional Stress

Emotional Eating

3 Making it Happen – Changing Habits and Attitudes

Get Active!

Small Steps for Big Change

What Is a Habit?

Have I Left it Too Late?

Part II: Opening the Window of Opportunity

4 How the GI Walking Diet Works

The Exercise Plan

The Eating Plan

5 Getting Ready for Action

Your Five-minute Body Road Test

Establishing Body Facts

Testing Your Fitness

6 The Six-week Exercise Plan

How Hard Should I Be Exercising?

Warming Up and Cooling Down

The Walking Plan

The Strength Plan

The Flexibility Plan

The Balance Plan (Optional)

Check Your Posture

7 The Six-week Eating Plan

How the Eating Plan Works

The Macronutrients You Need

The Micronutrients You Need

The Anutrients You Need

Drinks

The Menu Plans

8 Meal Ideas and Recipes

Breakfasts

Lunches

Carb Curfew Dinners

Carb Curfew Soups and Stews

Carb Curfew Desserts

Snacks

Glossary

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction: Active Ageing – One Foot in the Future

Ageing isn’t really ageing – it’s inactivity that’s the problem

As we progress through life, we may find it more challenging to be as active as we once were. The ageing process imposes changes upon our bodies that can gradually reduce our capabilities, but this can be compounded by lack of physical activity. There are many reasons for being inactive. Often, life seems to get in the way as we spend time focusing on careers, bringing up a family or caring for elderly relatives. We may be so busy that we feel guilty about taking time out for ourselves. Whatever the reasons, you may find your middle has got thicker and you’re not feeling quite the way you’d like to at this stage in your life.

Sedentary lifestyles contribute to a number of physical complaints that start to creep in as we get older. Suffering from – or a fear of suffering from – arthritis, diabetes, osteoporosis, creaky knees or a troublesome back can all be potential barriers to getting us moving. The sad truth is that by not taking an active role in your body’s ageing, you are accelerating the process of decay. Yet there is a viable alternative that can make you feel better, look better and lose that middle-age spread.

How Active are You?

Asking people to define their level of activity is often a sensitive issue. In my experience of working with clients, I have found that many of us tend to overestimate how active we are. This is not because we are lazy, though some of us by our own admission do prefer to curl up with a good book. To me, the confusion comes from the different ways we can define being active.

Ask anyone about their day and they usually reply that they are tired because they have been very busy and active. We naturally associate tiredness with a physically active day. When you probe a bit deeper, however, you often find that their day has not been physically active – it has been active in quite a different way. You can, in fact, be geographically or mentally active.

Here’s the scenario for a geographically active day. You wake up and think about the things that have to be done. You need to drop clothes off at the dry cleaners, pick up dog food for Fido, get to work, get across town for a lunch meeting, get back to the office to finish a report, grab something for dinner at the supermarket, get home, unload the car, cook dinner, get things ready for tomorrow. It gets to 8pm. You are tired. You have had a busy day and you’ve been all over town but you have not moved your body much – the car has moved, the train has moved but in reality your body has not really moved that much. You have been geographically active but not physically active.

Here’s the scenario for a mentally active day. You wake up in the morning, having been up half the night thinking about all the things you need to do. The monthly report needs to be completed before 10am, and the sales director wants figures by 11am. You’ve got a dinner party to plan for Saturday night, and you need to do the online shop by midday to get the home delivery service to deliver by 5pm on Friday. Your tax return is late so you need to get on with it. You also need to speak to the family about the arrangements for Christmas or that special occasion. It gets to 8pm. You are tired. You have had a busy day. Your brain has been all over the place – but you have not moved your body much. You have been mentally active but not physically active.

Our days will always be geographically active and mentally active but we have to encourage ourselves to be more physically active, and this is where this book comes in.

Time for Action

At this stage in your life, you may find you have more time for yourself than before. Your children may have left home. You may be retired or working part-time. This could be a real opportunity for you to make time to get active.

I have designed the GI Walking Diet to be realistic and achievable for everyone. What one person might find achievable could be difficult for someone else. That’s why you will find a variety of programmes that actively assist and guide you to improve your health and fitness and achieve sustainable weight loss. While the overall plan guides you to walk your way to fitness, weight loss and health improvements in just six weeks, your progress starts with small steps that are achievable for just about everyone.

In Chapter 1 we’ll look at the physical changes that occur as we get older. Chapter 2 tells you all about the emotional side of ageing. Chapter 3 explains how taking small steps can bring about big changes to your lifestyle. In Chapter 4 you’ll find out about the GI Walking Diet, why it’s achievable and the huge impact it can have on your health. In Chapter 5 we’ll address exactly where you are now and how you can get ready for your six-week plan. In Chapters 6 and 7, the plan is clearly laid out. All the exercises are described and illustrated so they are easy to follow, and the week-by-week guide gives you both a structure and a flexible approach to success, guiding you to achievable results, whatever your ability. Getting in shape and losing weight doesn’t mean missing out on great food, and in Chapter 8 you’ll find delicious recipes that easily fall in with the GI style of eating you can enjoy on your way better health.

Having good intentions about starting a diet and exercise plan is one thing – knowing where to start can be a minefield. My specially-designed ‘at a glance guides’ in Chapter 6 will help you get going. You can use them as starting points or as handy references as you progress with the programme.

Weight loss can be a significant motivator for us to change our habits, get a grip and make a difference. As we get older, however, it can seem more difficult to lose weight. We may also become more accepting of our expanding waistlines. Many people mistakenly believe that the only way to improve their health is to lose large amounts of weight and spend lots of time exercising, which just seems like too much effort. For many, a rotund, cuddly figure can become an acceptable part of later life.

But stop right there! You can make a significant difference to your health without too much hard work. You don’t have to lose large amounts of weight to experience real health benefits. In fact, a weight loss of just 5–10 per cent provides major health benefits. So, if you weigh 16 stone (100kg), a drop of between 8lb (3kg) to 1 stone 2lb (7kg) can make a major difference. Accepting this fact makes the whole process much more realistic and achievable.

So the time has come to take action. No more excuses. Stop kidding yourself – or your middle-age spread and muscle stiffness are here to stay. Start taking small steps to create big changes to your health, your weight, your fitness, your energy and your self-esteem. If you’re ready, I’ll show you how.

I Dealing Positively with Ageing

Fitness for a young person is an option – for an older person it’s imperative

1 Physical Changes

“I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything till noon.

Then it’s time for my nap.” Bob Hope

How Old Do You Feel?

So you woke up this morning, got out of bed and looked in the mirror – what did you think of the person staring back at you? You may be a parent, a grandparent, a lover, a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter. But as you reflect on yourself and your current stage in life, how do you actually feel about yourself and how do you see your body?

Do you think of yourself as:

Young

Young at heart

Youthful

Fit

Active

Agile

Sexy

Darn good for my age

Not bad considering …

Middle-aged

A bit baggy and saggy

Age is creeping up on me fast!

My body needs an overhaul

Old

Wanting a new body

Elderly

My memory is going fast

Decrepit

In my research for this book, I interviewed over a thousand men and women aged over 50. I asked them about their eating and activity habits, for their views on their bodies and their attitudes to this phase of their lives. Their thoughts, views, needs and wants – coupled with the exciting new advances being made in research – have directly shaped this book.

So what did my research tell me?

83 per cent thought that their body needed an overhaul

39 per cent considered themselves young at heart

77 per cent described themselves as a bit baggy and saggy

51 per cent considered themselves old

Over 85 per cent of respondents wanted to address weight loss and middle-age spread and improve their health

Sadly, less than 1 per cent considered themselves sexy

Changing Your Attitudes and Habits

You may feel daunted by the physical changes you are experiencing as you grow older. However, the exciting thing about this phase is that you now have the ability – more than at any other time in your life – to make a significant impact on your health. You also have more to gain from your efforts than at any other time.

Active ageing is as much about attitude as it is about action. Your children may have flown the nest; you may have retired; you may have more time on your hands – and this is the time for you. It’s an age of choice without limitations, a time of joy with few constraints. While some of us may still have some demands on our time, this does not detract from the fact that this stage in your life represents the best window of opportunity for your physical body.

And you know what? The only things that may be stopping you from taking action are your attitude and deep-rooted habits. Attitudes and habits can be difficult to change – after all, you may have been nurturing them for decades.

I’ve designed all the plans in this book so you can grab and make the most of this window of opportunity. They not only deliver results but also help you nurture new, healthier habits and attitudes without feeling you have to give up the life you enjoy. By making small changes on a regular, consistent basis, you can lose weight, feel fitter, enjoy more energy and even sleep better. These small steps together mean big changes for you and your body.

So don’t you dare think you’ve left it too late. It’s never too late. The time has come to open the window of opportunity, stop being complacent about this phase of your life, take a deep breath and go for it.

One Step at a Time

When you first look at the plan you may feel a little daunted about what you have to do. The plan has been designed to be simple and easy to follow. You’ll see that you get to choose whether to start the walking plan at an ‘entry’ or ‘advanced’ level, depending on your current fitness level (see Chapter 4).

I’d be the first to acknowledge, however, that life can be busy and throw us different challenges. Family commitments, work and health issues can all make it seem difficult to find time to exercise. While I wouldn’t encourage you to use these busy times as excuses, I’d far rather you did something than wait for the ‘perfect’ time to start. In my experience, the perfect time rarely comes, and since this stage of your life is your greatest window of opportunity, this may be the perfect time to approach your plan in a phased way. For example, you may choose to follow the flexibility plan for the first six weeks, then the strength programme for weeks six to twelve, and finally the walking plan for weeks twelve to eighteen. A phased approach such as this will get you on the road to success. You’ll feel healthier and more in control, although your weight loss may be a little slower than if you were following the complete plan.

Timetable for a Phased Approach to the GI Walking Diet

How the Body Ages

Nobody wants their body to age, but the great news is that you can slow down the rate of ageing. In fact, ageing can a positive experience, not the negative one many of us feel and dread.

In physical terms, the ageing process results in a gradual loss of coordination, flexibility, strength, power and endurance. These physiological changes can have a significant impact on our emotions, our ability to lead independent lives and our energy and self-esteem.

Whether you like it or not, your body will go through a number of changes as it ages. How these changes affect you is partly dependent on your genes, diet, and how physically active you have been through your life. Think about how your parents or siblings have aged and you’ll have a good indication of how your body is affected by your genes. The geneticist Claude Bouchard believes that genes determine 60 to 80 per cent of the body’s rate of physical change; other factors, such as diet and the amount and type of physical activity we take, can change our bodies by 20 to 40 per cent.

Fortunately, evidence suggests that your physical activity levels after the age of 35 can have a more significant effect on how you age than the amount of exercise taken in earlier years. Although you may not be able to reverse declines in physical function, they can be slowed down. Understanding what is happening to your body can help you appreciate how your diet and activity levels can positively impact upon your weight, energy, posture and, most importantly, how you look and feel about yourself.

A fit man at 70 is the same as an unfit man at 40.

Much of the deterioration attributed to ageing is now linked to physical inactivity. Our goal is to push back frailty to a very small part of life experience. Or, as the philosopher Ashley Montagne has urged, ‘To die young as late in life as possible.’

You can do this without spending masses of time exercising, waving goodbye to your existing lifestyle or surviving on a diet of bizarre foods. And you can do this in just six weeks.

Ageing and Physical Ability

Strength, power, endurance and flexibility are terms we often hear, but understanding exactly what they mean will help you appreciate your own body’s needs, allowing you to tailor the six-week plan to your needs.

Strength and Power

Muscular strength refers to the maximum force that can be exerted by a muscle group. You may be more familiar with strength referring to the maximum weight or load that can be lifted once. Power refers to the greatest amount of force that can be exerted, and requires both strength and speed of movement. This may all sound rather technical, but in real terms the impact of these capacities on your body can be far-reaching. Muscle strength declines significantly with advancing age, which results in a decreased ability to perform many daily tasks. Activities such as lifting heavy shopping bags can become difficult. Your grandchild may need to be handed to you rather than you being able to lift them directly from the floor. Even getting out of a low chair can pose a problem, perhaps requiring a few momentum-gathering rocks backwards and forwards to get you up. Later in life, both strength and power are important for balance and reducing the risk of falling.

Endurance

Endurance, often referred to as stamina, is a muscle’s ability to keep going. All muscles need endurance – the muscles of your legs need it to keep walking, for example – but one of the most important muscles is the heart. The endurance of your heart is vital to your wellbeing, and it’s often referred to as your ‘huff and puff’. Having poor endurance means that it can be hard work running after a bus, train or walking briskly up a hill. Climbing a flight of stairs can leave you feeling uncomfortable and breathless. If you have young grandchildren, you’ll know how much energy and endurance they have and how you need to be able to keep up with them!

Flexibility and Mobility

Flexibility refers to the range of motion at a particular joint, while mobility refers to the ability to take your joints through this range. Flexibility and mobility are determined by the elasticity of the connective tissue, as well as the specific length of individual ligaments and tendons. As we age, the connective tissue becomes less elastic. The special lubricating synovial fluid – found inside certain joints such as the hip, knee and shoulder – becomes less mobile and runny. This makes joints feel stiff and perhaps a bit ‘clicky’, limiting the range of motion we may be able to take them through. This can make it difficult to unzip a back-fastening piece of clothing, to reach up for something on a top shelf or to bend down to pick something up. Maybe even getting your leg up and over the bath can be a bit of a challenge, requiring you to hold on to something for support. Or perhaps you find when you need to turn to see something you have to turn your whole body around, instead of just being able to rotate at your waist.

The bottom line is that maintaining your level of physical capacity in terms of strength, endurance and flexibility is very important for continued independence. Power, strength and flexibility are all closely related, and improving one of these will have a knock-on effect on the others. The GI Walking Diet enables you to improve all these abilities in a simple, effective and easy-to-follow way.

Physiological Effects of Ageing
Resting Metabolic Rate

Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is the amount of calories your body requires just to live. It’s determined by your weight and the amount of muscle and body fat you have. As we age, RMR tends to decline. This is partly due to decreased muscle mass. It’s also affected by changes to your nervous system, specifically the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), slowing the response time between brain messages and muscle movement. Resting metabolic rate is what most people mean when they say ‘basal metabolic rate’ (BMR). These two terms are used interchangeably, although they are not technically the same.

As part of the normal ageing process, most body organs decrease in functional capacity, resulting in a 2 per cent decline in BMR each decade. However, if physical activity also declines, BMR will decrease more quickly, and there will be a greater increase in fat mass. This means that, over time, your metabolic rate slows down, and weight gain will occur unless you decrease the amount of calories you consume and increase your level of physical activity. Your metabolic rate may also decrease as the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and respiratory systems slow down with age, which can influence digestion, absorption and nutrition needs.

What This Means to You

The biggest impact of a reduced RMR is that you will find it more difficult to maintain a healthy weight, and you may experience weight gain.

What You Can Do

Experts are divided on how much weight gain is a product of the natural ageing process and how much is attributable to other factors, such as decreased energy expenditure through physical activity. But one thing’s certain: decreased physical activity results in less muscle mass, which in turn impacts upon your RMR or the rate at which the body burns calories. But it doesn’t have to be like this …

Action Worth Investing In

By following the six-week plan, specifically the walking and strength programme, you can feel confident that you will lose weight.

VO₂ MAX

Most researchers who have evaluated the effects of ageing on the stamina of the heart and lungs have focused on ‘maximal aerobic fitness’ or VO₂ MAX. This refers to the body’s maximum ability to take in oxygen, transport it around the body in the blood and use it to burn fuel in the muscles. This is considered to be the single best indicator of the changes that occur in the body with ageing. After 25 years of age, VO₂ MAX normally declines at a rate of 8 to 10 per cent per decade for both men and women. Approximately half of this decrease has been related to people exercising less and gaining weight as they age.

We all tend to have different VO₂ MAX values. Athletes have very high values, meaning that their bodies are better able to take in oxygen and use it to produce energy. Normal people have more average levels. With age, however, nature takes its toll on all of us and we all experience a decrease in our VO₂ MAX.

What This Means to You

A lowering in your VO₂ MAX can cause a decrease in your performance, your everyday ‘huff and puff’. Physical tasks that seemed easy now require a little more effort. You may feel out of breath and that you don’t have enough energy. But it doesn’t have to be like this …

What You Can Do

At any age, if you exercise vigorously and keep lean you can have a much higher VO₂ MAX. Research has shown that athletes aged from 65 to 75 can have the VO₂ MAX of young sedentary adults and are capable of performing at levels once thought physically unattainable.

But we do have to be realistic. Even among older athletes who exercise vigorously throughout their lives, VO₂ MAX will still eventually decline. The important point, however, is that the rate of decline will be much slower. A US study examining former elite long-distance runners over a 22-year period found that regardless of how much they trained, all did eventually lose aerobic fitness; but (and this is a big BUT) the rate of decline may be lessened for up to 20 years if an individual takes regular vigorous endurance exercise.

Action Worth Investing In

You’ll find that the six-week walking plan can have a significant impact on your cardiovascular fitness. It will give you more huff and puff and loads more energy. If you combine it with the six-week menu plan, you’ll lose 5–10 per cent of your excess weight. Your clothes will fit better and you will look younger.

Oestrogen

For women, oestrogen plays a significant role in controlling calcium absorption and retention in the bones, so when it starts to decline it can have a big impact on the body.

What This Means to You

Without adequate oestrogen, women over the age of 50 are at increased risk of osteoporosis, stress fractures or broken bones. In addition, research is showing how calcium has a vital role in helping the body burn fat. The exact mechanism is not entirely understood but studies have shown that when people consume inadequate amounts of calcium, the body stores more fat, resulting in weight gain. But it doesn’t have to be like this …

What You Can Do

Most experts say that calcium should come from the diet. (For details of good dietary calcium sources.) Resistance training is an excellent way for women of all ages to stimulate and maintain bone growth. Hormone replacement therapy, although once considered promising, now appears to have little or no positive effect on bone mass growth.

Action Worth Investing In

Following the six-week menu plan will help boost your calcium intake, while just by completing the six-week strength plan twice a week, you’ll experience big improvements in your physical capacity, body tone and strength.

Other Hormones

Many hormones play a significant role in the body. As we age, hormonal changes can affect us in many ways. You will come across a number of them in this book – here is an overview of the most important ones.

Human growth hormone: secreted in much greater amounts in youth to help bones grow. Also helps the body to metabolize fats. Levels tend to diminish with age, which is thought to contribute to decreases in cell membrane composition.

Progesterone: the gestational hormone, which prepares the lining of the uterus for the fertilized egg and maintains pregnancy. Progesterone is a ‘precursor’ hormone, which can be converted by the body into other steroid hormones. As levels fall, an imbalance occurs between this hormone and the other primary female sex hormone, oestrogen. This is linked with weight gain, decreases in bone density and a possible reduction in sex drive.

Testosterone: the male sex hormone, most commonly known for promoting libido and stimulating sperm production. Also helps protein build muscles, skin and bone, and nourishes all the tissues of the male urinary and reproductive systems. Regulates the production of prostaglandin, which seems to keep prostate growth under control. In both sexes, testosterone levels decrease with age. This has a significant impact on health and wellbeing, contributing to decreases in bone and muscle development as well as reduced virility. Recent evidence has linked low testosterone with Alzheimer’s disease.

DHEA: dubbed the ‘mother of all hormones’ because the body uses it to produce a number of hormones including testosterone, oestrogen and progesterone. DHEA production drops sharply after the age of 25; by the age of 75 we are producing only 10–20 per cent of the DHEA our bodies manufactured at 20, and this has an impact on the other sex hormones.

Thyroid hormones: regulate the body’s metabolism, temperature and heart rate. If the thyroid isn’t functioning at its optimal level, neither are you. Thyroid deficiency is not specifically age-related as woman can be prone to it at all ages, especially during and after pregnancy.

Insulin: the main hormone for promoting the transport of glucose rather than fat into muscle cells to be used as energy; also a potent inhibitor of the fat-stimulating hormone HSL. Excess body fat is associated with insulin resistance. Some researchers have suggested that reducing body fat through calorie restriction without under-nutrition may help improve the insulin response, which can reduce risk factors for disease. You can enhance your insulin sensitivity by increasing your intake of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and fresh tuna, and in walnuts, flaxseeds and soya products. Vigorous exercise can also improve insulin sensitivity.

Epinephrine and cortisol: prepare the body for an instant state of readiness – the classic ‘fight or flight’ response. Epinephrine is the primary hormone that stimulates lipolysis, the breakdown of fat. Epinephrine binds to the receptors on various cells and can either activate or inhibit HSL, the hormone responsible for fat mobilization. Epinephrine excretion appears not to change with age. Cortisol releases glucose and fatty acids into the bloodstream to provide energy to the muscles. It also has a direct impact on the body’s blood sugar levels. If too little cortisol is released, hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) can develop; if too much cortisol is released, hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar) can develop, which can increase the risk of developing diabetes. When people experience prolonged stress, cortisol levels remain elevated for long periods, and recent research shows that this can lead to weight gain, especially on the belly. Cortisol excretion appears to increase with age.

Intestinal Bacteria

Our intestinal bacteria can play a role in weight gain as we age. Atrophic gastritis is a bacterial infection marked by a decreased ability to produce sufficient amounts of gastric acids. This condition occurs in 24 per cent of people aged 60–69 years, 32 per cent of people aged 70–79 and about 40 per cent of people over the age of 80.

What This Means to You

Low-acidic conditions in the stomach can affect the absorption of nutrients such as folic acid, vitamin B12, calcium, iron and betacarotene.

What You Can Do

If you suffer from atrophic gastritis, you are usually advised to get adequate calories by eating small meals throughout the day or by snacking on nutrient-dense foods. You should avoid nutrient-poor choices such as commercial biscuits and cakes. Medication may also be prescribed for this condition. Speak to your doctor if you feel you may be suffering from intestinal bacteria problems. Symptoms include bloating, discomfort and poor digestion.

Action Worth Investing In

The six-week menu plan and all the recipes are designed to provide you with an optimum nutrition plan that is both enjoyable and easy to adapt to your lifestyle, whether you are entertaining or looking after the family.

Connective Tissue

Ageing brings about stiffening of the connective tissue such as your tendons and ligaments. This leads to a loss of mobility.

What This Means to You

This may make your joints feel stiff, affecting your mobility and ability to react physically and move the way you want. When walking, you may experience an increased postural sway – moving the upper body from side to side – which affects your stride length, gait and balance. When gait and balance are affected, the risk of falling increases. But it doesn’t have to be like this …

What You Can Do

Improving your mobility is a simple and highly effective way to improve your range of motion and your quality of movement.

Action Worth Investing In

You’ll find your mobility action plan invaluable.You can do it every day, and in fewer than 14 days you’ll notice a difference in how your body feels; and after three weeks you’ll notice a big improvement in how it moves. You’ll also find the tips on walking technique helpful for enhancing mobility.

Body Stages

The body is on a journey. Like any journey,

the ride may not always be smooth.

For women in particular, hormones play a large part in the changes we notice as we get older. However, men also see their bodies changing as they pass through different stages in life.

Peri-menopause

Peri-menopause is defined as the time leading up to menopause. For some women, this can be eight to ten years before the onset of the menopause itself. Marked by a fluctuation of hormones, it is often described as a roller-coaster ride since the decline in hormones is erratic rather than steady.

During peri-menopause, many women experience a range of symptoms, including:

Mood swings

Memory loss

Bone loss

Potential detrimental changes to their cholesterol levels

Hot flushes

Sleep disturbances

At this stage in their lives, women also experience a drop in metabolism, owing to changes in hormones and muscle mass. This means their bodies require fewer calories to perform normal everyday tasks, and slowly this contributes to weight gain. Oestrogen levels become more erratic, waxing and waning, which causes fat to be stored in the abdomen. Consequently, any weight gain is laid down around the middle, and so middle-age spread is born!

Erratic levels of the hormone oestrogen cause fat to be stored around the abdomen – and so middle-age spread is born!

Peri-menopause is a critical period for a woman’s health. During this time, healthy habits – like regular exercise, good nutrition and an element of stress management – are vital to prepare for the next stage of your life, and to help you handle the physiological and associated emotional changes being experienced.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

Follow the six-week plan and you will make a great investment in your health. The structure of the programme will help you form good habits, while all the tips along the way will show you how these physical investments can fit easily into your lifestyle.

Menopause

Menopause is defined as the 12 months after a woman’s final menstrual period, which is usually around the age of 52. Although we tend to think of menopause as a single point in the body’s journey, both peri-menopause and menopause are more like peaks and troughs than finite events. After menopause, women lose about 66 per cent of their oestrogen and 50 to 60 per cent of their testosterone. Oestrogen tends to decline at a faster rate than testosterone, and so testosterone can start to have a greater effect on the body. In most cases, body fat is redistributed from the hips to the midriff. This ‘shape-shifting’ phenomenon compounds the middle-age spread that you may have started to experience during peri-menopause. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels rise. The loss of oestrogen’s protective influence on bone tissue leads to decreases in bone mineral density. On average, women lose 2 per cent of bone mass each year during menopause, yet it is possible to lose up to 20 per cent of bone in the five to seven years after menopause.

While all these changes are happening inside the body, women can experience a range of unpleasant symptoms such as:

Hot flushes

Memory loss

Slowed metabolism

Mood swings

Sexual difficulties

Some of the physical effects of menopause – weight gain, the ‘shape-shifting’ scenario and changes in blood pressure and cholesterol – can put women at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

The six-week walking plan will be particularly valuable for your health. You don’t have to be super fit – just head to The Walking Plan and you can choose a starting level to suit you. It really is that simple to start walking off your weight.

The Window of Opportunity Years

The ‘window of opportunity years’ are a time of choice – when you can choose to open the window and experience the benefits of health and fitness. As women move beyond the menopause, and men reach their mid-50s and 60s, normal changes to the body include:

Decreases in the amount of cardiovascular exercise you can perform

Slowing of your reaction time

Loss of muscle mass, strength and endurance

Diminished bone mass and density

With age, women lose more bone than men and so are more susceptible to fractures from falling. Balance training and fall-prevention programmes, such as those in this book, are extremely beneficial to women and men, especially in this ‘mature’ stage of life. Some people are more likely to experience depression, loneliness and apprehension about change at this life stage. If you are not used to exercising, you may lack confidence about taking up a new activity.

The normal, effects of ageing are compounded by a sedentary lifestyle.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

The mobility and strength programmes of the six-week plan will be invaluable. You don’t have to spend hours doing them; they literally take minutes and you will reap significant benefits for your body. Many people may be widowed at this stage of life, and exercise offers a great opportunity to meet other people and socialize. Physical activity is known to have a positive effect on depression and mood, so get moving.

Aches and Pains

Some conditions, such as osteoporosis and arthritis, become more prevalent in later life, bringing us aches and pains. When these symptoms come to the surface, you may worry about how much exercise is actually achievable for you. However, the six-week programme addresses these concerns and allows you to tailor your programme to your abilities and needs. We look at some of the most common causes of aches and pains below.

Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a skeletal disease characterized by low bone mass, increased bone fragility and risk of fracture. Women are four times more likely to develop osteoporosis than men. Osteoporosis fractures occur most commonly in the hip, spine and wrist. Osteoporosis is often referred to as a silent disease because a fracture is frequently the first indication of bone loss.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

Diet and exercise can be both a treatment and prevention, as they help make your bones stronger. The impact to the bones due to walking makes it a great bone-saving exercise, so regular walking will help maintain strong bones. In addition to reducing bone loss, walking will improve muscle strength, balance, agility and fitness, making falls and fractures less likely. You should start slowly and gradually increase the amount you walk each week.

Walking has other life-enhancing psychological and cardiovascular benefits. Increased activity can aid nutrition, too, because it boosts appetite, which is often reduced in older people. It is also important to get enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet. The biggest reason older people don’t get enough of these is that they simply don’t eat enough.

Arthritis

The term ‘arthritis’ refers to more than a hundred different diseases that cause pain, swelling and limited movement in joints and connective tissue throughout the body. Arthritis is usually a long-term condition, often lasting a lifetime. The three most prevalent types of arthritis are osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis (see below).

Arthritis and other rheumatic conditions affect an estimated one in seven people. The number one cause of disability, arthritis can limit everyday activities such as dressing, climbing the stairs, getting in and out of bed and walking.

Overweight people are at greater risk of developing arthritis in their knees, hips and hands. The heaviest individuals have seven to ten times the risk of developing osteoarthritis of the knee. Weight control helps by decreasing the pressure on the knees and hips. Your walking technique can also reduce the force you apply through your hips and knees. We’ll address this in Form and Posture with the really simple glass of water exercise.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

In the past, arthritis patients were advised to rest and avoid exercise. There is now strong evidence, however, for the benefits of exercise. While rest remains important, especially during flare-ups, inactivity can lead to weak muscles, stiff joints, a reduced range of motion in the joints and decreased energy and vitality. Most researchers agree that exercise can ease symptoms, but it is important to stress that it will neither cure nor prevent the condition.

Depending on your particular type of arthritis, you can choose which part of the six-week plan you would like to follow. The flexibility plan is a great place to start, while the strength plan may assist in building muscular strength, thus minimizing pressure on your joints. The walking plan can boost your spirits as well as aiding weight loss, again reducing pressure on weight-bearing joints such as knees, ankles and hips.

If your arthritis is severe, ease into the programme gently. You may not get the huge results you are initially looking for, but it’s important to look beyond exercise purely for the benefit of your condition. People with arthritis are at higher risk of developing several other chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis. The huge health benefits of regular exercise will help prevent these diseases.

Osteoarthritis

The most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis mostly affects people over the age of 45. Although this degenerative joint disease is common among older adults, it may appear decades earlier. Osteoarthritis begins when joint cartilage breaks down, sometimes eroding entirely, creating a bone-on-bone joint. The joint loses shape, bone ends thicken and spurs or bony growths develop. Although osteoarthritis can affect any joint, the most common are joints of the knee, hip, feet and fingers. Osteoarthritis is not fatal but it is incurable, with few effective treatments. Symptoms of pain and stiffness can persist for long periods, leading to difficulty in walking, climbing the stairs, rising from a chair, getting in and out of a car and lifting and carrying.

Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia sufferers experience general muscular pain, fatigue and poor sleep. Although it may feel like a joint disease, fibromyalgia is not a true form of arthritis and doesn’t cause joint deformities. In fact, it is a form of soft tissue or muscular rheumatism.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis, the third most common form of arthritis, is an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks itself. It is characterized by pain, warmth, redness and swelling. Many joints of the body have a tough capsule lined with a synovial membrane, which seals the joint and provides a lubricating fluid. In rheumatoid arthritis, inflammation begins in the synovial lining of the joint and can spread to the entire joint, leading to damage of the bone and cartilage. The space between joints diminishes and the joint loses shape and alignment.

Rheumatoid arthritis can strike at any age but usually appears between 20 and 50, developing slowly over several weeks or months. Although it is most often found in the small joints of the hands and the knee joint, it can affect most joints of the body. The effects of the disease vary widely: some people must remain in bed while others run marathons. It is also difficult to control and can cause severely deformed joints.

Other Forms of Arthritis

Other common types of arthritis include:

Gout, a metabolic disorder that leads to high uric acid levels and crystal formation in joints, especially the big toe, and causes pain and swelling.

Spondylarthropathies, inflammatory diseases of the spine that can result in fused vertebrae and a rigid spine.

Systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disorder that can involve the skin, kidneys, blood vessels, joints, nervous system, heart and other internal organs. Although lupus can affect any part of the body, most people experience symptoms in only a few places. The most common symptoms are aching joints, skin rashes, anaemia, arthritis, prolonged fatigue and possible high fever. It is important to stress that diagnosis is made by a careful review of a person’s entire medical history, coupled with a series of medical tests related to immune status. Currently, there is no single test that can determine whether a person has lupus or not.

Other Age-related Conditions
Hypertension (High Blood Pressure)

High blood pressure is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease and stroke. The risk of cardiovascular disease increases as blood pressure rises, even within the normal range of blood pressures. This suggests that a large number of people may be at risk.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

It’s possible to reduce high blood pressure through physical activity, such as the six-week walking plan, and by adjusting your diet. The six-week menu plan is low in salt, making it ideal for people who need to reduce their blood pressure.

Diabetes

In diabetes, the body doesn’t produce or cannot properly use insulin. Insulin is a hormone that converts sugar, starches and other foods into energy. Without insulin, glucose builds up in the bloodstream, and can lead to many health-threatening conditions. The health implications of diabetes are staggering:

Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney disease.

Diabetes is the main cause of new cases of blindness in people aged from 20 to 74 years.

Sixty to seventy per cent of people with diabetes have mild-to-severe forms of diabetic nerve damage, which can lead to loss of lower limbs.

People with diabetes are two to four times more likely to suffer from heart disease and strokes.

The exact cause of this long-term, incurable condition is a mystery. However, genetics and environmental factors – like obesity and lack of cardiovascular exercise – appear to play roles. There are two types of diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes: sufferers need daily insulin injections to stay alive because their body doesn’t produce this hormone.

Type 2 diabetes: the body makes insulin but is unable to produce enough or use it properly. Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90–95 per cent of all diabetes cases. It used to be referred to as ‘late-onset diabetes’, as it was more prevalent in later life. Now, however, with the growing number of overweight and obese people, type 2 diabetes is found even in young children. Doctors have warned that diabetes is nearing epidemic proportions. Overweight people have a greater chance of developing type 2 diabetes, so keeping your weight under control is vital.

Metabolic Syndrome

In recent years, metabolic syndrome has become increasingly prevalent. A pre-diabetic condition, it is characterized by

High triglyceride (blood fats) levels

Elevated blood pressure

High blood sugar levels

Low levels of ‘good’ HDL cholesterol

and, guess what? That fat deposition in the middle again.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

Getting physically active and reducing your weight is the most important action you can take to prevent metabolic syndrome.

Every day is an opportunity to make a fresh start or to build on yesterday’s success.

Ageing and Body Weight

Many different factors may have led to you putting on weight at this stage of your life. Some of these may have been physiological changes, while others may have been psychological issues. Understanding why this weight gain has occurred allows you to put things in context and to understand what action needs to be taken. Now is the time to get excited about what you can achieve for yourself, your body, your weight and your health.

Weight gain predominantly occurs because we are consuming more calories than we are burning off through physical activity. As we have seen, however, weight gain in later life can be the result of other factors, such as a decrease in our muscle mass and a consequent lowering of our resting metabolic rate. This leads to us requiring fewer calories to perform our everyday activities. In addition, hormonal changes make it easier for the body to lay down more fat, especially around the middle.

Why Men Lose Weight More Easily

I often hear people comment that it is much easier for a man to lose weight than it is for a woman. When partners embark on a ‘diet’ together, it is quite common for the man to lose weight more quickly, and possibly to lose a little more than his partner does. Research has shown that having personal support as you embark on a healthy lifestyle programme has a major impact on your long-term success. In fact, recovering male cardiac patients whose partners showed an active, positive, supportive role in their recovery had a 74 per cent greater success rate than patients whose partners showed neutral support.

From my research for this book, I know that many of you will want to complete the six-week plan with a partner or friend. I actively encourage people to do this. The walking plan, in particular, can be a great source of enjoyment. Walking with others can be great fun, and the support aspect will be vital when your motivation naturally wanes at points throughout the six weeks.

If, however, you are participating with members of the opposite sex, it is likely that your rate and amount of weight loss will be different. This doesn’t mean that a woman’s efforts are any less than a man’s; the truth is there are strong physiological reasons why it is easier for men to lose weight. But before you give up before you have even started, let’s make one thing clear – although your rate, and possibly the amount, of weight loss may be different, the health benefits to be gained are there for both men and women to enjoy.

Although men tend to lose weight more easily, the health benefits of the GI Walking Diet are there for both men and women to enjoy.

How the Body Stores Fat

Most body fat is stored in fat cells called adipocytes. Around 50,000–60,000 calories of energy are stored as triglycerides in fat cells throughout the body, both under the skin and around the delicate organs. That’s enough stored energy to walk briskly non-stop for 500–600 miles, or from London to Land’s End. The body also stores fat between the muscle fibres, generally holding about 2,000–3,000 calories, enough to walk briskly non-stop for 20–30 miles. So before we even start to consume food for energy, our bodies are holding on to an awful lot of energy in the form of stored fat.

Where the fat is stored creates quite distinctive body shapes. Storage of body fat around the middle, resembling more of an apple or ‘android shape’, is characteristic among males and is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Storage of body fat around the hips and thighs, creating a more rounded pear or ‘gynoid’ shape, is the most common body type among pre-menopausal women. The role of hormones in the way we store fat differs between men and women and affects how each lose weight.

Two hormones are particularly associated with fat distribution. Lipoprotein lipase (LPL) and hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL) directly affect whether we store fat or encourage it to be distributed in the blood and then burnt off. LPL tends to encourage fat storage, and HSL tends to encourage fat to be burnt off. The amount of LPL and HSL we have tends to vary between men and women, between individuals, in different areas of the body and at various stages of a woman’s life. Men tend to have more LPL in the belly and less HSL in the lower hip area. This creates the more pronounced apple or android body shape seen in overweight men, with more body fat distributed around the belly. Women tend to have more LPL in the hips and backs of the arms and less HSL in the upper body. This classically creates more of the traditional pear or gynoid shape. When women lose weight, they generally still have more LPL in the hips so retain a pear shape, even though they may be a smaller pear shape.

It therefore seems obvious that getting more HSL can be only a good thing for aiding weight loss. HSL is stimulated by the hormone epinephrine, and what is really exciting is that exercise causes greater amounts of epinephrine to be released, and as you get fitter your body becomes more adept at using even small amounts of epinephrine to burn fat. So that’s a great reason to get moving and keep moving.

A body that is significantly overweight or obese, however, will require higher amounts of epinephrine to stimulate fat-burning. For this reason it is vital that overweight people include gradual, progressive cardiovascular exercise into their weight-loss efforts. Walking is a fabulous way to do this.

The crucial difference between male and female fat loss is down to hormone receptors, which are located on the fat cell walls. There are two types of hormone receptor: alpha-receptors and beta-receptors. Alpha-receptors tend to inhibit fat breakdown while beta-receptors encourage it. Men and women don’t have the same amount of these crucial hormone receptors. Men tend to have more of the fat-busting beta-receptors and fewer of the fat-storing alpha-receptors in their abdomen, while women tend to have fewer beta-receptors and more alpha-receptors. The more beta-receptors there are in the abdomen, the easier it is to lose middle-age spread. So when a man loses weight, it will be easier for him to drop inches off the midriff area than it would be for a woman. Finally, the last infuriating piece of evidence that it’s easier for men to lose weight is that, even at rest, a man will be burning more calories than a woman. This is because their fat cells are smaller than women’s!

The Oestrogen Effect

Another factor in the weight-loss battle of the sexes relates to the female sex hormone oestrogen. Oestrogen has an impact on fat storage in a number of ways:

It encourages epinephrine production, which helps the breakdown of fat

It prevents the fat-storing LPL from working as effectively

It encourages the production of growth hormone, which increases the release of fatty acids from the fat cells

It is also thought to inhibit the production of insulin, encouraging the body to use fat rather than glucose as a source of energy

During menopause, however, the amount of oestrogen decreases, so its ability to help break down fat is diminished. This causes weight gain in the midriff to become more prevalent in women than in men.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as oestrogen also increases the production of nitric oxide, which encourages the blood vessels to relax. High nitric oxide concentrations are associated with migraine, and it is often reported that migraine sufferers experience less frequent and severe migraines after menopause.

Weight Gain and Stress

Stress is another factor that can lead to weight gain and middle-age spread. Scientists are just beginning to discover that long-term emotional stress can contribute to age-related weight gain, especially in older women.

For more on stress and other emotional challenges, see Chapter 2.

How the GI Walking Diet Can Help

You will lose weight on the GI Walking Diet. The combination of the physical activity and eating plans allows you to follow a flexible or more structured approach to your goal. All you have to do is choose which approach suits you, and you are on your way to losing 5–10 per cent of your excess body weight. Losing weight can be an intimidating process – sometimes the amount of weight we feel we have to lose can be off-putting – but the positive news is that even a small amount of weight loss can improve your health. In fact, research shows that a drop of just 6 per cent will significantly improve your health.

If you are carrying excess weight, an initial goal of losing 5–10 per cent of your starting weight is both realistic and valuable. Plus, by following the six-week plan, you will be more likely to keep the weight off, maintaining your health improvements.

If I said to you – in six weeks from today you could be 6 per cent lighter, far healthier, fitter and energetic, wouldn’t you want to take action?

2 Emotional Challenges

Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff.

Can your emotions affect your health? Evidence now suggests the answer is ‘yes’. One study of pre-menopausal, peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women found that emotions like anger, depression and anxiety increase the risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Other studies have confirmed that long-term stress causes the shape-shifting phenomenon of middle-age spread due to too much sugar being converted to fat, which gets deposited in the midriff area. Researchers have also established a link between stress and poor health. And, of course, when we are stressed, sad, angry, afraid, hurt, worried, lonely, frustrated or depressed we reach for food as a source of emotional comfort.

Emotional Stress

Most experts define emotional stress as a person’s reaction to any situation that places special physical or psychological demands on them so as to unbalance their equilibrium and take them outside their comfort zone. These situations can give rise to feelings of fear, anger or anxiety as the body responds to the perceived threat to its wellbeing. Emotional stress varies from person to person so is difficult to measure. It is highly subjective and influenced by personality and experience; everyone has a different sensitivity to stressful events – what may be stressful to one person can be perceived as quite manageable to another.

The concept of emotional stress pioneered by Dr Hans Seyle proposes that during stressful situations, the sympathetic nervous system sets in motion a series of physiological responses. Various hormones produced by the adrenal cortex, including cortisol and epinephrine, prepare the body for an instant state of readiness, the classic ‘fight or flight’ response. It is also theorized that once the ‘stress-invoking threat’ has passed, the body returns to a state of normality and balance. However, recent research shows that long-term elevated cortisol levels can lead to weight gain, especially in the belly.

Although both men and women may be uncomfortable with some of the changes to their faces and bodies as they get older, women often feel more vulnerable as society places such a high value on their physical appearance. For women over 40, excess weight can become more difficult to shift, and this is often compounded by emotional challenges. At this stage of life, emotional issues that have been suppressed for years can resurface. Additionally, divorce, financial burdens, concerns about retirement, career moves and residential changes often occur alongside unpleasant menopausal symptoms. With the children now grown up and out of the family home, many people begin to question their own identity, which was typically being the family caregiver. This loss of identity can be unsettling for many, and may coincide with a new role of becoming the ‘parent’ to their own ill or ageing parents.

Emotional challenges can be difficult at any age. In later life, emotional stress can be harder to deal with if we are no longer physically fit and healthy. Coping with an age-related medical condition – such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or osteoporosis – can be a considerable burden. Physical problems combined with emotional challenges – such as periods of mourning, feelings of increased isolation in retirement and a changing social role – can all contribute to a sense of loss of control and helplessness. This makes people vulnerable to depression.

Emotional Eating

We all know food can make us feel good, providing a great source of psychological fulfilment. From infancy, we are taught that love and food are intertwined. A baby cries – we feed it to calm it down; a child does well and is rewarded with a food treat; and of course seduction and food have been entwined since Creation – just think of Adam and Eve! In later life we have a whole catalogue of food memories associated with holidays, celebrations and happy times, so it’s really no wonder that we equate food with positive feelings. When emotionally stressed, some people strive to recapture those happy feelings by comforting themselves with food. It has recently been shown that we are more likely to engage in emotional eating if our basic human needs – such as security, love and belonging – are unfulfilled. Prolonged periods of depression and anxiety also tend to cause emotional eating, leading to cravings for sweet and fatty foods.

Many parents and grandparents mistakenly use food as a reward for positive behaviour: ‘If you are a good girl or boy today you will get a treat.’ This strategy may create a lasting unconscious desire to reward oneself with sweet, high-calorie foods when under emotional stress. This may develop into unhealthy eating habits, so that being overweight becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Aim to reward younger members of the family with non-food treats, such as a trip to a park, a treasure hunt or a physical activity. This will have a much more positive impact on their health.

Why People Eat Emotionally

In my experience with both female and male clients, people often find themselves trapped in a cycle of stress-eat-stress, feeling helpless to change. Significant weight gain can occur as a result. There may be unconscious reasons for this behaviour. You may want to prevent other people getting too close, and feel that a layer of fat on the body may protect you. Or it can represent an attitude of needing to let go and be out of control when all other aspects of your life have to be neat and in order.

Case Study

A male client, a city high-flyer, had a major problem with emotional eating late in the evening. After working with him for a month it became clear that the nature of his professional position meant he had to be in control and on top of his game 110 per cent of the time. There was no room for a slip-up. This was big business with big rewards. The client was exceedingly good at his job, but it came at a price to his health – 5 stone of excess weight gain. Although he ate healthily, and in moderation at work, it was all part of his professional approach. When he came home it was almost as if some element of being out of control was needed as light relief from the constant responsibility and challenges. Ice cream was the answer, and his excessive eating of it represented a rebellious act against all the constraints in his day-to-day life. After discussing this, we established a physical activity plan that introduced an element of stress management, as well as letting him create a little slack in other areas of his life, so that the ice cream eating was not his only outlet to let off steam and take his foot off the throttle.

Emotional stress is real, and it doesn’t go away quickly or simply. However, recognizing it is the first step to taking action. If you feel you are susceptible to emotional stress, try completing the following questionnaire. Often, it can be easier to express sensitive issues on paper rather than in a face-to-face discussion. You may find that the very act of completing the questionnaire provokes thought and introspection, creating an awareness of the role stress is playing in your life.

Emotional Stress Questionnaire

Using the scale below, rate the following items/events according to how frequently they cause you emotional stress in the form of sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, depression, worry or guilt:

1 – Never

2 – Occasionally (a few times a month or less)

3 – Sometimes (one to three times a week)

4 – Often (three or more times a week)

5 – Always (daily or more)

Job-related issues (unhappy with/change in/losing job) 1 2 3 4 5

Children (leaving/returning home, marital difficulties) 1 2 3 4 5

Relationship issues with loved ones 1 2 3 4 5

Separation or divorce 1 2 3 4 5

A new relationship 1 2 3 4 5

Loneliness 1 2 3 4 5

Concerns about personal health 1 2 3 4 5

Illness or death of a parent, close relative or friend 1 2 3 4 5

Thoughts about retirement 1 2 3 4 5

Worrying about finances 1 2 3 4 5

Food and eating 1 2 3 4 5

Your physical appearance/body weight 1 2 3 4 5

Your physical activity levels 1 2 3 4 5

Moving home 1 2 3 4 5

Feelings of general unhappiness 1 2 3 4 5

Other _______________________________ 1 2 3 4 5

Answer the following questions:

Have you experienced any recent or sudden weight gain? YES/NO

Do you have frequent, general feelings of sadness, anxiety, loneliness, despair, resentment, anger, guilt, shame, boredom or fear? YES/NO

Have these feelings interfered with your normal daily functioning, including lifestyle habits such as healthy eating, regular exercise, not smoking, drinking alcohol only in moderation? YES/NO

Do you reach for food when feeling emotionally stressed? YES/NO

If yes, what sort of food do you usually reach for? ________________

Do you feel better after eating these foods? YES/NO

Are you a (circle one) binge-eater/chronic dieter/emotional eater/purger?

Do you have difficulty sleeping? YES/NO

Are you (circle one) pre-/peri-/post-menopausal?

Do you experience any menopausal symptoms? YES/NO

If so, are they severe enough to interfere with daily living? YES/NO

Are you (circle one): happy | somewhat satisfied | dissatisfied – with your current body weight?

Do you regularly participate in any stress-relieving activities, such as listening to relaxation tapes, meditating or attending mind-body classes (such as yoga or t’ai chi), or do you participate in individual or group counselling sessions with a social worker or other mental health professional? YES/NO

Are you taking any anti-anxiety/anti-depression medication? YES/NO

How You Answered

The purpose of the first part of this questionnaire is to raise your awareness of certain issues or factors that can cause you stress. The second part is designed to highlight how you respond to specific events or situations.

Raising your level of regular physical activity – especially when it involves getting outside, as in the walking plan – has been shown to be a highly effective way to combat stress and limit depression. If your answers to the questionnaire highlighted several areas that could be improved, I’d encourage you to revisit the questionnaire after you have completed the six-week plan.

Breaking the cycle of emotional stress can be hard, but the number one message to remember is that exercise – specifically cardiovascular activity – is a powerful tamer of emotional stress. Your six-week walking plan will help you alleviate anxiety and depression and boost self-esteem. You will lose excess body fat and feel more confident. So not only are you going to look better, you will feel better too.

As well as exercising, allocating a little time for yourself to engage in some form of self-nurture that doesn’t involve food can have a positive impact on how you feel about yourself. You could, for example, take a class, read or relax in the bath …

3 Making it Happen – Changing Habits and Attitudes

Would you rather exercise for an hour a day – or be dead for 24 hours a day? Think about it…

If you are serious about losing weight and improving your health, you have to make some changes. Don’t panic – these don’t have to be drastic. However, these changes will essentially involve your existing habits and attitudes. At this stage in your life, your habits and attitudes will be well developed; you have had many years to put them into practice. Your habits may be so well grooved that they are a permanent feature of your life. They feel natural and you don’t give them much thought. For example, that mid-afternoon cup of tea and slice of cake or biscuit, your daily stroll with the dog, pint down the pub or G and T in the evening.

Get Active!

Evidence has shown that we tend to overestimate how physically active we are. As I explained in the Introduction, many of us believe we are physically active when in fact we are geographically or mentally active. You may need to rethink and readjust your habits. For instance, you may believe that your daily saunter with the dog is enough for your fitness. It’s not that everyday activities are ineffective: the Chief Medical Officer’s report, ‘Health of the Nation’, clearly stated that activities such as walking and gardening are sufficient to incur health benefits. The problem, however, is that they are often not vigorous enough to produce real health benefits, let alone weight loss.

In my research for this book, time and time again respondents believed they were ‘doing enough’ and that they were ‘physically active’. On closer examination, however, the intensity and progression needed to provide health improvements and weight loss were missing. Seventy per cent of the respondents said the changes they primarily sought were weight loss and health improvements. Despite putting in time and effort to improve their health, they didn’t achieve the results they sought. This lack of results creates a sense of frustration and an element of ‘what’s the use?’

So, on your six-week plan, you may need to develop some new habits and attitudes. The great news is that some of the core habits you need may already be in place, but just need a little tweaking.

Stop kidding yourself you are doing enough

and start making your actions count.

Your attitude can directly affect your health and ageing process, either positively or negatively. By adjusting your habits and educating your attitudes, the actions you take become not only achievable but also sustainable, making the whole ageing process a far more positive experience. Together, all your habits and attitudes can lead you to an achievable major change to your health, your weight and how you feel about yourself.

Small Steps for Big Change

To help you understand how you can make your existing habits and attitudes work for you, we need to introduce the concept of ‘small steps for big change’, which is central to the success of the six-week plan. This means that all the small actions you take, when put together and done progressively, can lead to a big change in your health and weight.

So often, I see people who are committed to improving their health but their actions fail. This is because their expectations are too great, and the changes they are trying to put in place are too drastic, unrealistic and unachievable for them. The six-week plan is about achievability, and the small steps for big change concept will be crucial to your success.

The six-week plan is about achievability and taking small steps to make a big change.

What Is a Habit?

A habit is a series of behaviours we have got used to doing in response to a specific cue. When trying to adopt a new, healthy regime, we can often come unstuck as we try to ditch too many habits too quickly, and implement new actions which bear no resemblance to our existing life. Such a large change can be daunting, difficult to maintain and often leads to us dropping all the good actions we need to take. Implementing new habits does involve some planning and thought, but the new habits I am going to ask you to develop need not be a world away from some of the ones you already have.

To help us make habit-changing an achievable process, we need to understand a little about how we form habits.

Habit-forming in the Brain

Understanding how the brain works provides us with an insight into our behaviour and how habits are formed. Here is a very simple overview of how habits are formed in the brain.

The brain is responsible for receiving, processing and sending out messages based on vast amounts of information. Message carriers called neurons need to travel to specific destinations in the brain so that the information can be acted upon. The message carriers reach their destinations by travelling along neural pathways; you can think of these as a mini transport system. There are millions and millions of neurons in the brain, all carrying messages and travelling along neural pathways. Different parts of the brain deal with different types of information. If the message goes to the wrong part of the brain or doesn’t reach its correct destination, the information gets lost, never to be acted upon.

At their destination, the neurons deliver their message, the information gets processed and an action may or may not occur. The brain gets very good at doing the simplest thing – taking a message and sending it along the most accessible neural pathway, delivering its message and creating an action. Some of these actions get so familiar that they become an automatic response, which requires no conscious thinking. When this happens you have given birth to a habit.

Other bits of information never reach their specific destination, so the part of the brain responsible for carrying out a particular action becomes dormant. Your brain may receive the same information again and again, but each time the message carrier gets lost in the smaller back roads of the brain, never to reach its destination.

Now you can start to see why taking small steps can be so effective. If your brain is already doing a similar action, the transport system taking the information will be established. Making a tweak to that action is easier for your brain to process and develop than trying to do a totally new action that requires the neuron message carriers to travel along unfamiliar neural pathways to a destination that may be dormant.

In this way, grooving the new habits necessary to help you lose weight and improve your health need not be that difficult. The trick is to piggy-back your new habit on to something you are already doing. For example, one of the most popular forms of physical activity is walking. We know from research studies that walking can improve your health and help you lose weight and keep it off, but the way you are walking at the moment may not be sufficient for you to reap these benefits. So the one simple habit you need to evolve may not be miles away from what you are already doing. All you need to do is address your walking technique and pace. You’ll find really simple and effective ways to do this in Learn Your Walking Technique.

Not all of your existing habits will be beneficial to your health, and it is likely that some of your habits may need to be ditched. However, eating the odd bar of chocolate or indulging in a cream tea once a week is not a bad habit – it’s when these ‘weekly’ habits are more of a daily habit that action needs to be taken.

Since we all have individual habits that directly affect our health and wellbeing, we need to apply a good dose of truthfulness. In my experience with clients, it can be very helpful to put these actions into context, and introduce an element of reality into how many times you actually complete the behaviour.

Habit Reality Check

Here’s what you do:

Carry out an activity audit. Make a list of 10 ‘physical activity behaviours’ you do regularly, such as a keep fit class, walking the dog or walking to the shops.

For each of these behaviours, complete the following Habit Reality Check questionnaire. Rate your responses on a scale of 0–7, 0 being ‘agree strongly’ and 7 being ‘disagree strongly’.

(Behaviour X) is something:

I do frequently 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do automatically 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do without having to consciously remember 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that makes me feel weird if I don’t do it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I do without thinking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

would require effort not to do 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that belongs to my (daily, weekly, monthly) routine 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I start doing before I realize I’m doing it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I would find hard not to do 1 2 3 4 567

I have no need to think about doing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

that’s typically ‘me’ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

I have been doing for a long time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Please note: some of the above statements may need to be adapted according to the nature of the behaviour. However, the main purpose of this exercise is to draw your attention to some of your actions, which may be overlooked.

Case Study

Fifteen years ago I was running weight-management programmes in the US. One particular female client in her early 50s continually struggled with her weight. Each week, this client would swear to me that she’d had no sweets or treats at all and was following a healthy and moderate-calorie eating plan. Interestingly, however, on three separate occasions I saw her driving away from the building with one hand on the steering wheel and the other in a bumper packet of sweets. It’s not for me to say that this client was telling untruths, but sometimes you do need to give yourself a good reality check and get a grip of what’s happening. When I took this client through the Habit Reality Check, the fifth point was particularly pertinent.

Have I Left it Too Late?

So you’ve picked up this book and now you’re thinking: this is all really depressing; what’s the point? I might as well not bother; I’ve left it far too late. Well, before you crawl into Victor Meldrew mode, let’s get one thing straight:

NO – it really is never too late to start!!

So don’t even go there as an excuse – your efforts can make a real and positive impact on the quality of your life. In fact, most studies indicate that untrained people, even in the eighth decade of life, have not lost the ability to adapt to aerobic exercise training such as the walking plan. It’s never too late to improve, and now the time has come for you to prove it to yourself. The same basic exercise programmes used for young adults can be applied in later life, but there will be a slightly different emphasis upon what you do and how you progress, depending on your age and ability.

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