Dear LPG,

Not long ago I realised something,  I am getting fat!

I have heard it from all my friends lately, and when three or more tell you in so many words that you look a little more ample than you did the last time they saw you, it has to be time to do something about it.

While feeling that there was no need for a slimming club yet it was obvious to me that something had to be done.  I know and have read all the information which tells me that being a ‘bigger’ person will make my heart work harder and have an adverse  effect on the ability of my legs to manage to get me around successfully so I decided to work out just how much I over eat. 

Now that I have discovered Google, I thought I might ask for a little help there, and with the help of something that I read on your web site last July (►►►) I invested in a fitness tracker.   I took on board everything you said about overdoing exercise when I got it.  The first part of my plan was to forget the exercise for a bit and focus on finding out exactly how many calories I was eating over a week, and that was a true eye opener!

It is all those little things that just slip into the mouth as you go through the day; the pack of crisps I bought when I was out shopping and the cake I had with my morning coffee. There was the pastry that my friend gave me when I popped in for a chat and the packet of biscuits I got through while watching the evening news. 

I had never noticed before but just keeping a real check on one week’s intake put me in the picture.  I only did it for a week and actually remembering to make a note of everything I ate was quite time consuming.  I am not sure that I could continue to check for longer than one week as that was enough to drive me scatty but just one week taught me a few things.

HY, Lewisham

It is not necessary to invest in a fitness tracker with an app to count the calorific value of your food intake.  LPG has found a list of values that you can use.  We also found some information about how many calories we should be consuming each day.

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