"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilisation."
Gerald Weinberg

Speaking as a programmer myself I just love that quote.

Anyway, with my goals written I was able to set about reading the rest of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. Essentially it has four cornerstones - Goal Setting, Nutrition, Cardio and Weight Training. Nutrition gets the lion's share of the content, but then there's a lot to say about that subject.

The key thing is that these four elements work in tandem to produce a result that's greater than the sum of their parts. And that is the answer to the chap on the radio in this post who claimed that cardio caused muscle wastage. Well it might, if done in isolation. But if done as part of a programme that also includes good nutritional practices and weight training then it won't.

Having four cornerstones seems comforting somehow. The concept of four walled constructions seems to have served the building industry pretty well, notwithstanding the Pentagon and the London Gherkin. Mind you if modern day house building techniques get any flimsier than at some point they're going to have to resort to a honeycomb structure. That way they'll get the benefits of low weight combined with high strength and rigidity and so be able to stand up to an onslaught of woodpeckers.

I was a big fan of the Dilbert cartoons when I was working for The Corporation. Even now they serve as a reminder of how great it is not to be working there any more, brilliantly satirising all the nonsense that goes on in large organisations.

There's one cartoon which I would have liked to have shown here, but that's probably not a good idea as regards copyright. So, I'll describe it instead. Dilbert's company have decreed that, as a cost-saving measure, coffee and donuts are only to be served at meetings for managers at above. Come the next staff meeting a large plate of donuts is piled up in front of Dilbert's pointy-haired boss. "Hey guys", says the boss, "it's tough on me too, I'm really not sure if I can manage to eat all these donuts!".

Anyway, many weight loss programs include the advice to eat frequent small meals. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle also strongly emphasises this. In addition the book provides strong scientifically-based reasons why you should do this.

Now my first reaction to this was that I wouldn't be able to do it. But then I thought why not? I work from home, I'm the master of my own time, so I really don't have any excuses. The book provides helpful advice so that anyone, with a bit of determination and forethought, would be able to do it.

So, I now eat five meals a day, spaced out at roughly three hourly intervals between 7:00am and 7:00pm. The first four meals are small, the fifth is a regular sized evening meal. Now that's falling short of the ideal set out in the book, but the book also emphasises flexibilility. If this regime gets me to where I want to be then that's fine. If not then I can always change it.

The book also provides clear guidelines about what constitutes a meal. Needless to say, a plate of doughnuts doesn't qualify. Following these guidelines, I'm probably eating more real food than I've ever eaten in my life. What has gone is the junk.

We are all creatures of habit and no more so than when it comes to our food consumption. For example, if you tend to relax in front of the TV at night with sweets, crisps, chocolates or ice cream, then ask yourself why you do that? Mostly it's just a habit that you've fallen into.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle makes two important points about habits. I'm going to repeat them here. I hope that won't be an issue as these ideas appear to be common currency rather than proprietory to the book:

1. It takes about 21 days to make a habit and the same time to break one.
2. Old, bad habits are much more easily broken if replaced by good, new ones.

The book devotes a substantial part of its content to describing the new nutritional habits that you should adopt and the reasoning behind them

Now the 21 days thing is interesting as by last Saturday I was exactly three weeks into the program. We had been invited to the wedding of one of my wife-to-be's work colleagues. It was a lunchtime affair with a buffet reception straight afterwards. The buffet was an assemblage of sandwiches, rolls, drumsticks, vol-au-vents etc. All very nice and I picked myself out a portion of the healthier options.

Then they cleared away one table and laid out the desserts - all the usual suspects - gateaux, pavlovas, cheescake and the like. Now my normal mode of behaviour in these circumstances would be to dash for the head of the queue, agonise over what to have, then plump for whatever had the highest chocolate content. On this occasion I didn't. I could claim that I employed massive willpower to overcome the temptation, but really it wasn't like that. I just wasn't even tempted.

So, the good news is that compared to, say, stopping smoking, breaking bad eating habits is really easy. Junk food isn't physically addictive and new eating habits easily displace the old ones. Just give it three weeks and you'll be well on your way.

Boston, Massachusetts? No, this post is about Boston, Lincolnshire. Yesterday's Sunday Times ran an article reporting that this town has the highest obesity rates in England, 31% against a national average of 21%. The 'mass' in my title refers to the combined weight of its inhabitants.

According to the paper, the cause is that an influx of migrant workers are now doing the heavy agricultural work which was the mainstay of employment in the area. The local population are now employed in more sedentary jobs, but are still eating as much as in the days when their work was more physically demanding. It seems a local delicacy is "chine", a shoulder cut of pork, partly boned, filled with parsely, sold cooked and eaten cold. Good grief, that must be using the word 'delicacy' in some manner that I'm not familiar with.

So, in the tones of the old Harry Enfield character I say:
"OI!, ... BOSTON!, ... NO!!!!"

Really, Boston, this is nothing to be proud of. However, help is at hand. By my reckoning if just 1200 of its populace could get themselves down from obese to just overweight then that would be enough to get this town off the top spot. It could then resume being famous for the Boston Stump, the biggest parish church in England rather than being infamous for having the fattest bods in England. So, come on residents of Boston, sign up for Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle today.

I note that this is reported as the most obese population in England, not the UK. I'd guess that there's somewhere in Scotland, home of the deep-fried confectionary, that's even worse than this. When I find out who you are then I'm going to be on your case too!

“Real wealth is ideas plus energy.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller

If you seen my goals then you will have seen the one that says "My improved nutrition and exercise regimes are giving me considerable improvements in motivation and energy." I suppose this is more of an affirmation than a goal, but nonetheless it's happening and it's real. I get up at 6:15 each day and I'm engaged in something constructive until 9:00 in the evening. This is great for getting stuff done.

I think there are two aspects to the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle programme that bring this about. Firstly, your new exercise and nutrition habits increase your base metabolic rate. If you are generating more energy then you can do more work, more physically and mentally. Secondly, the nutritional practices mean that the energy burns at a constant rate and you don't get a succession of highs and lows over the course of the day.

Now, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is primarily targetted at those people who are interested in losing some weight. Goodness know there are plenty of people like that as a target audience. However, I think this programme could equally well be targetted at anyone who doesn't have the energy that they would like.

"Tired all the time" (TATT) is a modern day ailment which seems to affect a lot of people and which has a wide variety of physical and psychological causes. I'm not claiming that this programme is a cure for that syndrome, but I suspect that it could probably help in many cases. And similarly for anyone else who just has more days when they are 'flat' rather than 'buzzing' then I would say that this programme is definitely worth a try.

Last night was Halloween. Apparently this has its roots in the old Celtic festival of Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, causing trouble and damaging crops. These days the worst that can befall you is having a few eggs thrown at your door, so I suppose that's progress.

We bought a large tin of Celebrations and left it by the front door with a view to placating any potential egg-chuckers or ghosts of the dead. This seemed to work as there were no eggs or ghostly manifestations to deal with over the course of the evening.

The night was also notable for the macabre spectacle that was the Barcelona -v- Chelsea game. Here we had some of the most talented footballers on the planet engaged in cheating, diving, kicking each other and haranguing the ref. Just occasionally when they forgot what they were there for they kicked the football around a bit. I thought Chelsea just edged the cheating whilst Barca edged the football so all-in-all a draw was was probably a fair result. ITV got into the spirit of the night by engaging a member of the living dead as their summariser in the form of David Pleat.

Anyway, at half time I spied the tin of Celebrations and thought to myself "Hmm, they look nice". Then I thought to myself "No, I'd better not or I'll end up eating half the tin". Then finally thought to myself "Let me see if I can just eat one and stop there". And that's what I did. The nutritional approach of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle doesn't seem to leave me with cravings for sweet things late in the evening such as I used to get. So, a good evening for me, my programme and my front door. Just a shame about the football.

On a Friday evening we either eat out or have a takeaway. Often this will involve eating something that's not totally in accord with the nutritional recommendations of the programme, but that's ok as you are allowed at least one 'cheat meal' per week. Our favourite is probably the Indian takeaway at the bottom of our road. Its food is every bit as good as any Indian restaurant.

Sometimes we have Kentucky Fried Chicken. Now I know that's not to everyone's taste, but we're curiously partial to it. So, I was pleased to see from this article on the BBC web site that KFC are planning to stop using trans fats in their frying process.

Trans fats are found in liquid oils that have been turned partly solid by a process called hydrogenation. This means they can be used in making foods that traditionally would have used solid fats such as butter, but they have the advantage (for the food industry) of being a lot cheaper and having a longer shelf-life. However, compared to butter they have almost no food value and are every bit as bad at clogging up your arteries.

The more responsible manufacturers are moving away from them. For example if you've found that your Rich Tea biscuits are a bit more crumbly and more tricky to dunk in your tea then it's because McVities have stopped using trans fats.

So, well done KFC. Meanwhile according to the same article "McDonalds promised to reduce trans-fats in its products four years ago, but has yet to find an alternative oil which it is sufficiently satisfied with". Now by 'sufficiently satisifed' I suppose they mean that their costs will go up or the products won't taste as good so their sales will go down. It would seem that they continue to put their profits ahead of any consideration of their customers' well-being.

My first meal of the day is always either muesli or Kellogs Fruit n Fibre. I have it with full fat milk. Yes, I know, saturated fat, but what the heck. Despite this the meal is a bit short of protein, so I supplement it with a whey protein drink.

Now the only thing I used to know about whey was that it was consumed by Little Miss Moffat, along with some curds. Or was that Kurds? Little Miss Moffat eating the repressed inhabitants of northern Iraq and eastern Turkey? That seems unlikely but there again a lot of the old nursery rhymes supposedly had sinister connotations. Of course, I meant that the Kurds are politically repressed, not psychologically repressed. Sorry, this stream of conciousness seems to be spinning out of control!

Anyway, whey turns out to be an excellent source of protein. Here's a good article about it if you're interested.

I use Reflex Instant Whey mixed with cold water. It doesn't dissolve too well, leaving it a bit lumpy and unpleasant to drink, but interspersed with sips of fruit juice I find it easy enough to get down.

I'm fascinated by words and how they evolve. The word 'diet' is a word that seems to have undergone such a change. Originally your diet was what you ate. Now when we speak of 'Mary's diet' we assume that's a temporary state of affairs whilst Mary loses a few pounds. That only applies to people though. When we say 'the panda's diet consists mostly of bamboo shoots', we don't assume that the panda has got a bit tubby around the haunches and is laying off the pizza and cream cakes for a while.

Anyway, the issue with conventional diets is that inevitably you end up back where you started. You eat less food, you lose some weight for a while then you hit a plateau, you get dispirited, you fall off the wagon, you start eating more food again, you regain the weight. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle tells you in detail why this is inevitable.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle isn't a diet. It does have a lot of advice on nutrition, but it's a lifestyle change, not a temporary matter. And you get to eat plenty of food, so that's good.

In response to my New Year's Resolutions post, 'Beer Belly' writes:

I resolved to lose 50 pounds this year by eating better, drinking more water and exercising.

Thus far I have only managed to:
1. Drink more water
2. Dust of the treadmill - That was New Year's resolution 2005

Half way through January and I have not lost even an ounce nor have I really considered taking the time to get on the treadmill.

Well it's scant consolation, but I'm sure you're in good company. One other factor that I didn't mention last time is that in early January your fridge, freezer and cupboards are still full of lots of nice things that got bought for Christmas and the New Year, but not yet consumed. That makes any 'eating better' resolution really hard, as there's just too much temptation.

Another problem with 'eating better' is that there's too much conflicting advice on what's good for you and what's bad for you. The nutritional approach of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is mostly about getting your calorie intake right and getting the right ratio of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. In addition you'll understand the important differences between the types of carbohydrates and fat. It's all straightforward stuff and explained in terms of the underlying science. The caolorie intake will also be more than for your typical diet, so there's no need to starve yourself.

Did anyone else see this on BBC2 last night? I'd watched the first programme the previous week and thought it was borderline OK, but I don't think I'll trouble with the rest of the series.

There are a lot of important, contentious issues in the area of nutrition. As such I think it's criminal that this programme wasted time on questions such as "Does what you eat affect the taste of your semen?" and "Do women eat less on a first date if they fancy their dinner partner?". This is dumbing down of the first order and coming so soon after the news of the future increases in the BBC licence fee it made me quite angry.

So, I switched over before I got to hear the result of "Can fruit smoothies taken over a two month period improve your sperm count?". At least that was a reasonable line of enquiry. Can anyone please let me what the outcome of that experiment was?

Ok, I know I said I wasn't going to watch any more of this series after the Vic Reeves episode. However, as last night's programme was about weight loss I thought I would give it another chance.

As it turns out it was pretty reasonable, with questions that were worth asking and same fairly solid advice. If those MRI scan images of the fat congregating around the internal organs didn't scare the bejeesus out of you then I don't know what would.

Still, I think they could have done a bit better in some areas:

Is it my metabolism? It's good that they debunked the myth that being overweight necessarily results from a slow metabolism. However, the fact remains that the higher your metabolism, the more energy that you will burn. Your basic metabolic rate isn't fixed, you can increase it with exercise and the right nutritional habits.

Can keeping a track of what we eat make a difference? To my mind they got this and the bit about portion size all a bit back to front. If you are going to lose weight then you have to establish a calorie deficit. That means that your meals have to be planned with this in mind and this dictates your portion size. You eat exactly what you've served up and that's all you eat.

Filling foods and the soup diet. Reasonable advice, but why no mention of the benefits of frequent small meals? With frequent small meals with a high protein content then you're not going to get seriously hungry between meals and there is no need to liquidise what would otherwise have been a tasty offering.

In summary, anyone who was attracted to the ideas put forward in this programme is going to feel quite at home with the nutritional approach taken by Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and this will help you take it on to the next level.

Working with the Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program, my diet is now much healther than previously. However, my intake of saturated fats is higher than the program recommends. For example I still use full fat mik and cheese and I eat quite a lot of red meat.

My view is that saturated fats have been rather demonised because of the link with raised cholesterol levels. If you've got high cholesterol then cutting back on saturated fats is definitely a good idea. Also if you are overweight and struggling to lose the weight then cutting back on saturated fats might also be worth a try. Beyond that though it's just the usual case of all things in moderation. There may even be some specific health benefits from eating saturated fats, according to some sources.

However, I do have family history of early death caused by sudden heart attacks, so I thought it would be a wise precaution to get my cholesterol levels checked. The result came in at 4.9, which is just inside the ideal range. Apparently the UK national average is 5.7, so I was pretty pleased with that result.

According to news reports Prince Charles, whilst visiting the Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi, commented to their nutritionists "Have you got anywhere with McDonald's? Have you tried getting it banned? That's the key.". McDonalds response was that they had moved on and included more healthy options on their menu. That's certainly true and fair play to them for that.

However the fact remains that if you're looking for a healthy meal McDonalds probably isn't the place that you think of going. That would be akin to calling at your local knocking shop and requesting a peck on the cheek. No, if you're going to go to McDonalds then in all probability what you want is a Big Mac, Medium Fries, small Chocolate Triple Thick Shake. To you sir or madam that will be 1360 calories and 59g of fat, all served up with a sullen grunt from an economic migrant.

Meanwhile, what of Prince Charles' food preferences? This from the Telegraph web site: "Two of the mutton dishes Prince Charles enjoyed at the Ritz were prepared from sheep grazed at his Highgrove home in Gloucestershire. Gary Rhodes said the campaign had revived his own interest in mutton and he now served a variant of Irish stew made from mutton encased in a suet pudding." The fact remains that posh restaurants are just as prone to serving up high calorie, high fat dishes as any junk food restaurant. Are we going to ban those too? At least McDonalds are good enough to publish their nutritonal facts on their web site, something which I don't expect to see The Ritz do any time soon.

So perhaps it's best to stay at home and enjoy healthy food there. My advice to all of you is to ensure that your kitchen staff have read Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle so that they can serve up meals according to its nutritional recommendations. Get your Personal Private Secretary to have a word with your butler about that.

Sorry, what do you mean you haven't got a butler?

Like everyone these days I get a ton of email spam and in amongst these quite a few for the weight loss product hoodia. Now, the first thing that I would want to know about such a product is whether it was safe. This article has something to say about that subject.

However, leaving aside the question of direct side effects, I would still caution against using this type of product. It acts as an appetite suppressant. In other words it is a drug which helps you starve yourself. Obviously if you do this then your calorie intake will be much lower than your calorie expenditure and you will lose weight.

One problem, though is that there is a lot more to food than calories. Your body continually rebuilds itself and it needs a constant supply of protein to do this. Furthermore there are a wide range of micronutrients, essential fatty acids, minerals and vitamins which are critical to the healthy function of your vital organs. When you restrict your food intake then you also restrict these. That can't be good for you.

There's worse. Our bodies are adapted to the ways of our ancient ancestors for whom food supplies were subject to periods of glut and famine. We have mechanisms to maximise our chances of surviving famine, one of which is that your body will hang on to its energy stores (i.e. your fat) as long as possible. When food is scarce your metabolic rate will drop. Furthermore your body will use catabolic processes to break down muscle tissue for energy. Your body literally eats itself. By starving yourself with these products you are triggering these exact same mechanisms. You will lose weight, but much of that weight loss will be muscle tissue, not fat.

So my advice would be to avoid these products. Find other programs that let you eat a normal, balanced diet whilst providing other ways of burning off the surplus fat.

Some years ago when I was in paid employment we used to get sent on residential courses to improve our inter-personal skills. These were mostly a complete waste of time, but it did give you the opportunity to sit up late in the bar with some work colleagues that you wouldn't normally socialise with.

On one such occasion there were just the two of us left and my drinking partner was talking about a fishing trip that he had been on recently. He spoke of getting up early in the morning, watching the sunrise over the water and feeling at one with nature. Then, he said, he had a bacon sandwich. I laughed at this point, thinking this had brought a transcendental moment down to earth with a bump. No, he said, a well-made bacon sandwich when you really fancy one is practically a religious experience.

Now, one of the good things about Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is that there are no hard-and-fast restrictions placed on what you eat. Tom does publish a list of foods that are prone to turn to body fat which you should mostly avoid, but even these you can eat occasionally. In my goals you'll see that I've given myself exemption for white bread and bacon in this regard. Like my erstwhile colleague, I am very partial to a bacon sandwich.

So I was interested to see that researchers at the Department of Food Science at Leeds University have done a research project to determine how to make the perfect bacon sandwich (more details here). Mostly I'm in agreement with their findings, although to my mind the bread should be a fresh poppy-seed bloomer from my local bakery. My preference is also for a few grilled cherry tomatoes and some blobs of HP Sauce. I wonder how I should go about getting research funding to take this crucial area of scientific and human interest on to the next level.

There has been a lot of press coverage recently about a newly discovered gene variant that has the effect of casuing some people to be overweight. The press, with their usual tendency for overstatement, have called this "The Obesity Gene". The danger is, of course, that this gives the impression that there is nothing that can be done about the condition. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The findings show that people carrying the variant are likely to be 1.2 kilos heavier than the norm, or 3 kilos heavier if they have two copies of the variant. These weight differences are not enough to cause obesity. Really this gene variant should be labelled "The Slightly Overweight Gene". It also only appears in 16% of the population, so in the balance of probability you probably haven't got it.

The fact of the matter is that if you are obese then you are at substantially greater risk of contracting diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. The presence of this gene doesn't change anything at all in respect to this. Even if you are lucky enough to avoid these conditions then your quality of life is going to be impaired in some way.

Now the great thing about humans is that they have the conscious ability to try and rise above whatever shortcomings nature might have dealt them. So, even if you are carrying this gene it doesn't mean that you have to be obese, it doesn't mean that you even have to be overweight. It just means that you have to try a little harder in order to avoid these consequences. Choosing the right lifestyle with good nutrition and regular exercise is what it is all about.