Tag: diet

7 Reasons Why A Gastric Band Might Be The Answer

There are many reasons why someone may wish to lose weight and many ways in which they could go about it. Today though, we’re looking at just one. We’re delving deep into the world of gastric bands. And, believe it or not, it’s actually quite a trip.

1. Fashion Options. There is so much advice about what you should or shouldn’t wear if you consider yourself a little overweight, that it’s almost impossible to know who to believe. The general consensus appears to be “wear something black with vertical stripes”. Which is great if you like looking like a zebra, but even going with that look seven days a week might be a bit much. So why not take a look at having a gastric band? It’ll add a bit of life to your wardrobe too.

2. Elastic. The unscientific alternative to a gastric band has surely got to be an elastic band. However, while putting the latter around your waist may sound like a cheap alternative, are you really going to trust the stationery cupboard when it comes to helping you with your weight loss ambitions? Hopefully not. For a start, it’s a well known fact that elastic bands never come in the size you need. They’re either far too small that they snap as soon as they are stretched or they’re so big that you have to wrap them round at least thrice before they have any impact. Oh, and then they snap too. You really don’t want elastic bands snapping around your waist. Who knows where they’ll end up?

3. Genes. It’s very easy for the thin brigade to walk down the street, see someone without the perfect body shape and immediately assume it’s because they don’t do any exercise or because they have an unhealthy diet. The reality can be very different. For many it’s a case of genetics. Despite walking miles a day, going to the gym and embracing every soup and lettuce based diet out there, nothing seems to help. Meanwhile, other people live on their takeaway and TV diet to no apparent adverse consequences. It seems incredibly unfair. So talk to someone who understands. Talk to The Hospital Group and find out how they can help you.

4. Medication. It could be that you’re on medication. Or it could be that you have a health condition. Both can cause weight issues making it very difficult for you to keep to a weight you are happy with. It shouldn’t have to be that way and thanks to gastric bands it doesn’t have to be. Not only will they help you control your weight, a gastric band also helps reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes and many other obesity related disorders.

5. The Oxygen Deficiency Approach. The quickest way to look thin is to take a deep breath and use your tummy muscles to suck in your stomach. The problem with this approach is that it’s not very conducive to talking. If you really don’t want someone to see that you’re a bit overweight, you’ll have to suck in your stomach, walk up to them, spin around, breathe out, talk, breathe in, spin around and await their response. Which might me something along the lines of, “you know something, you’re weird.” It’s probably not the way you wanted the conversation to go.

6. The ‘Music’. This will probably come as no surprise to you, but rather predictably there is a group called The Gastric Band. It needs to be pointed out right now that The Gastric Band will not help you lose weight. Not unless you want to go for the ‘listen to noise, get a migraine, be very sick’ approach. Something we don’t condone in anyway. Far better would be to save your ears, save your head and save your loved-one making regular trips between your bedside and the bathroom with buckets by getting a gastric band instead.

7. Not So Magic. The gastric band isn’t the only option of course, you could have a gastric balloon inserted into your stomach. It’s a viable alternative, but do beware if you see something that causes knots in your stomach. You might end up fashioning a balloon dog. Or a giraffe. Sure, it’s a good trick to pull off, but rather wasted inside your stomach don’t you think?

October 23, 2011
7 Reasons To Get A Winter Beach Body

It’s the summer, and chances are that, right now, your thoughts are turning to holidays, with all of the indolent ease, languor and sheer carefree bliss that they entail. Unless you’re standing in a branch of WH Smith and gazing at a magazine stand consisting of dozens of covers featuring airbrushed pictures and article titles such as “How To Get The Perfect Summer Beach Body”, in which case you’re probably experiencing something akin to terror. But don’t panic, you don’t need the “perfect summer beach body” for your holiday; in fact, it’s infinitely inferior to the winter beach body. Here are seven reasons why.

1. A Winter Beach Body Is A Safer Option. And safety in the sea is important. When I was a svelte child, learning to swim, one of the things that all of my friends and family spent many hours teaching me to do was float. “It’s simple”, they would say, “you just stretch your arms and legs out and relax”, and then they’d just lie there, on top of the sea. Then it would be my turn: I’d stretch my arms and legs out, relax, and soon I’d find myself floating serenely. To the bottom of the sea. I would sink like a stone every time. But if you have a winter beach body, you’ll be difficult to sink and, should you get into trouble and find yourself floating away from the shore, you’ll be easier to spot from the beach or a helicopter. Your chances of surviving your beach holiday will be manifestly better than those of summer-bodied people.

2. A Winter Beach Body Makes A Statement. Getting a summer beach body is easy, anyone can do it. But getting a winter beach body takes a considerable investment of time and money and requires technology too. You can use it to flaunt your wealth and status. What does your winter beach body say about you? A winter beach body says that you can afford to dine well; a winter beach body says that you’re a car owner; a winter beach body says that you live somewhere modern festooned with lifts and escalators; a winter beach body says that you can afford twice as much suntan oil as anyone else on the beach; a winter beach body says that you might own a Segway. A winter beach body signifies affluence and ease.

3. A Winter Beach Body Is Practical. You might be holidaying in Britain and for that, a winter beach body is the better option. On British beaches, where people consume ice cream to warm themselves up, you’ll at least stand half a chance of not dying of hypothermia or exposure. What’s the last question that any family in the UK asks before they head off to the beach? “Have you remembered to pack the blanket”? In this country, insulation is most important thing that you can take to the beach. Winter beach bodies have more of that, built-in.

4. Getting A Winter Beach Body Is More Fun. You don’t need to starve yourself or drink eight litres of water a day to get a winter beach body. You won’t have to visit a gym either, unless you’re going there to use the horizontal bar (the one with the bottles on it). You won’t have to spend the months leading up to your holiday eating only beetroot during daylight hours (except for every second Tuesday, which is miso soup day) and you’ll never, ever have to eat celery.

5. A Winter Beach Body Requires Less Hair Removal. As the possessor of a winter beach body you’ll be less inclined to wear a bikini made from a shoelace or a pair of budgie smugglers so small that they can barely contain your budgie. This means that there’ll be less hair removal, which is good as hair removal is the most painful experience known to man (and the second most painful known to woman). I would sooner break my fingers with a piano lid than tweeze a nose hair, let alone pluck one from down there, beneath my trousers. A winter beach body means less pain. Or fewer pain, to be correct about it.

6. A Winter Beach Body Frees You From The Beach. With a winter beach body, you might find that you’ll want to spend less time on the beach, away from all of those preening show-offs. This is brilliant, as no one actually likes the beach. It’s uncomfortable, being made of either stones (which hurt) or sand (which chafes). It’s boring, as the number of people busy ignoring it and burying their noses in their books demonstrates and it’s frustrating, as your chips will be stolen by a seagull. If you spend less time on the beach, you’ll have more fun, and you’ll get to eat all of your chips yourself. Unless you’re a man. Your winter beach body will liberate you from the beach.

7. It’s Too Late To Do Anything Else. Having blithely ignored every magazine at the supermarket checkout and every other daytime television programme telling you how to get the perfect summer beach body for the past five months or so, there’s very little time left. This is good, as getting a winter beach body is quick and easy. It won’t be the perfect summer beach body as depicted in magazines (which are only ever perfect in the mind of the beholder, and never in the mind of the owner), but it’ll be your body. Take it to the beach and enjoy yourself, or even better, take it away from the beach and enjoy yourself. Oh, and don’t read magazines.*

*Do, however, read websites.

July 22, 2011
7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

1. Flavour. We’re all familiar with the expression, you are what you eat. This is true; diet informs flavour. The diet of chickens is dull. Chickens are fed corn and grains and the sort of dreary stuff that we use to bulk-up stews and casseroles. Flamingos eat shrimp, which are wonderfully flavoursome, and a substantial portion of their flavour comes from these. Chickens taste dull; flamingos taste of fish, which is much, much better. Also, as you are what you eat, which would you rather be, a chicken or a flamingo?

2. Health. Most flamingos are wild and are, therefore, game. They are free to roam and free to eat natural food. Most chickens are not. Eating flamingos would, consequently, be healthier than eating chickens. It would also provide American hunters with exercise as they stalked their dinner by the lake rather than driving their pick-up trucks to the supermarket. They would also have to camouflage themselves in pink, which would give the rest of us a laugh.

“Billy-Bob, you’s a sissy.”

3. Leg. Everyone wants the chicken leg because it’s firm: this is because the leg is one of the few limbs that the sedentary farmed chicken exercises regularly – as a result of this, it is toned. Flamingos spend most of their lives standing on one leg – they alternate regularly between them. This means that flamingo legs are firmer and nicer than chicken legs. They’re also bigger. This will mean that sharing the leg becomes a possibility, saving mealtime arguments. Or it will mean that you get a bigger leg, it depends how mean-spirited you are.

4. Milk. You can’t milk a chicken. You can, however, milk a flamingo. We all know that the aisles of Waitrose are choc-full of people shopping for organic, Bermuda grass-fed, hand-reared, free-range Angora goat’s milk. Imagine how much they’ll want the new fad – flamingo milk. Waitrose shoppers will be buying so much flamingo milk that they’ll probably have to fold the seats down in their Audi estates to transport it home. They may even have to buy a second Smeg fridge to put it all in.

5. Farming. Eventually, of course, the new niche popularity of the flamingo will lead to a mass-market demand for it. This will cause flamingos to become the exotic farmers livestock of choice. These people are usually found experimenting with farming ostriches, which will be replaced by the new glamorous avian farming fashion – the flamingo. This is great, as I’m – justifiably – terrified of ostriches, with their cruel, murdererous eyes, their sharp, oversized talons and their menacing, powerful beaks. I have no fear of flamingos. They are pink.

6. Colour. There are few sites in the British countryside more breath-taking than vast swathes of bright yellow rapeseed in full bloom. With the new flamingo farms, it will be possible to stumble across fields full of pink clusters of gangly birds – all year round. This will brighten up the landscape no end, especially at sunset. Countryside campsites will become countryside camp sites where you’ll be able to enjoy the countryside camp sight of intense pink colours in tents (pink coloured).

7. Feathers. The best feathers for stuffing pillows are goose and duck feathers. Chicken feathers aren’t very good so they’re usually ground down and used in textiles and plastics. Flamingos – like geese and ducks – are water-birds so, presumably, their feathers also make good stuffing for pillows. Their colourful down would enliven pillow-fights no end. The abundance of pink feathers would make feather boas cheaper and more commonplace which may lead to a boom in the burlesque industry. Sadly, it would also lead to an increase in gaudy hen nights. You don’t have too much to fear from the greater incidence of gaggles of lascivious, portly, bingo-wing-sporting harridans drunkenly cruising your local high street draped in pink feather boas though, because with your new healthier diet of flamingo, you’ll be fitter and able to run away that much faster.

February 8, 2010