Thursday, September 03, 2009

Help Me & Help Our Heroes Too


Dear Reader,

There was a time when I could eat all I wanted and not put on a pound. But then I went on a school trip to Russia, got a chronic form of food poisoning and from that moment on, all I had to do was look at a Mars Bar and I'd put on a few ounces.

Back in January 2008, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I was told to lose a stone. I did. But I am sad to say I have put it all back on - and more. Five years ago, when I was Conservative candidate in North Norfolk I decided to raise money both for my campaign and for a local charity. I promised to lose 2 stone in three months. Amazingly I did, and raised more than £2,500. That taught me that if I have a goal, and have the possibility of shaming myself I will actually do all I can to lose the weight.

Well, I'm going to do it again and I want your help. The more of you who donate money to Help for Heroes, the more pressure that will put on me to achieve my goal of weighing under 16 stone by 30 November. At the moment I am close to tipping 18 stone, I am ashamed to say.

There's no hiding for me. If I don't lose weight, you will see the results on your TV screens. So come, on, help me out, put pressure on - and we can both help a superb charity fulfil its goals. I've set a target of raising £2,500 through this sponsored diet. I'd be ever so grateful if you would click HERE to donate whatever you feel you can afford. Think of it as a subscription for all the content you have enjoyed (or not!) over the past few years.

Thanks so much for your support.

Iain

PS Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.

You can also pre order the forthcoming book, shown above, THE HERO INSIDE by clicking HERE.


26 comments:

Anonymous said...

Iain, cut aspartame from your diet. As a rough guide, cut any foods advertised as "low-calorie" or "diet" from your sweet diet, because they are very likely to contain aspartame.

Aspartame makes you hungrier and has a number of nasty side-effects. Typically, the FDA has pronounced it "safe"; aspartame is a multi-billion dollar industry. Go figure.

Anonymous said...

Firstly you do not look 18 stone on TV (heaven knows what Adam Boulton weighs in at) and 16 stone is far too heavy.
You are invited to a lot of dinners and functions. the harsh fact is you should speak circulate and network all you like but eat and drink ?? Thats a no no. I will gladly make a donation but starve yourself (and stick to tonics) at the next juicy rubber chicken do you're invited to.

To my mind and to what little I have read 'diets' they are a bad thing. Once you come off them you are open to put the pounds back on and more - as you have experienced - its a metabolic thingy.

Eat a balanced diet, but a little of it. You will be hungry - but if all those French women can put up with it to be slim and trim then so should you.

So should we. We (me !) all eat too much and too badly. Try 'diet' rather than 'dieting'.

Of course you could take up marathon running.

Anonymous said...

Good for you Iain !!!

And let us hope we will be seeing a lot less of you on our TV screens in the near future !! So to speak !!

Best of luck in this endeavour...

Anonymous said...

A great article on 'The Golden Generations' to do with WW2 and Afghainstan. Well worth a read from an up-and-coming young blogger!

http://ddtaylor88.wordpress.com/

Bob said...

Check out weight loss resource.

Wife used it and it worked, and I am just about to try and lose 10 kilos in 4 months...........

Rob said...

Good luck with Iain. I'll try and donate a little. It's a very good cause. As stated in the previous thread I'm trying to plan a fundraiser for them myself as I found out about a young lad in the village next to mine that lost both legs because of an IED in Afghanistan. It is people like this who are helped by this charity, we don't see or hear about them in the news but they have to live with the effects of the war every single day. The least we all can do is offer them and their families a little help.

Oh and also, good luck with losing weight, for your own health alone it's worth doing.

Rob said...

I've put a link in to your donate page on my blog HERE and had a little fun at your expense...purely in the interests of motivation obviously! I shall donate some wonga myself as soon as my income support clears in my bank account. £270 already, I think you're going to blitz £2500. If every reader here donated a pound you'd be flying!

Sir Lancelot de Boyle said...

You could not have chosen a better charity. The very best of luck with your endeavour.

Anonymous said...

Great plan and best of luck with it.

However, do you really want to weigh 16 stone. That still sounds like a lot to me. Why don't you choose your dream weight and set that as your challenge.

Anonymous said...

C'mon chubby chops, lose the pies and get back to your former svelte self. At least set the rest of us porkers a good example anyway.

Gordon Brown said...

Iain, At 16 stone and 6ft2, I feel overweight. If you are 18 stone, you have my sympathy. I will go for 2 stone weight loss also....!

Best of luck....

Anonymous said...

What a great cause! In the spirit of 'no offense, but....' at 6'2" (or so the infallible Wiki suggests), it looks like your target weight should be at the lower end of 10st5lb - 13st12lb (Body Mass Index of 19-25% for your height).

I was diagnosed with Type 2 and was very firmly told that 21% BMI would help tremendously. Rather annoyingly, my doctor was proved right when I painfully shed the weight and normalised my blood glucose levels.

Paul Halsall said...

Paraphrasing Laurence Olivier (as Crassus) to Tony Curtis (Antoninus):

Do you consider the eating of milky bars to be moral and the eating of Mars bars to be immoral? It is all a matter of taste, isn't it? And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals. My taste includes both Milky Bars and Mars Bars.

Anonymous said...

Try this Iain.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/03/health-and-wellbeing-france

UK Dietician BSc said...

Slowly does it. Crash dieting only leads to even more weight gain when you stop starving yourself.

I suggest eating low GI (Glycaemic Index) foods. They take longer for the body to breakdown, keep you sated for longer and will help stabilise Insulin and Glucagon levels - a major plus for diabetics, thus protecting sensitive tissues like the eyes, kidneys, heart & extremities from glucose damage.

Check the British Dietetic Association website for tips.

All the best to you Mr D.

ken from glos said...

Simplest rule of all, when you fancy a snack. DRINK WATER.It always works and will cure you of snacking, which you must be doing.

I will donate

Chris Paul said...

Will you put a Blubberometer tm widget on the blog Iain? I might do too if you do. Currently 14/9, down from 15/7, but was a rather incredible 10/7 on starting uni and about 11 stone of sinew on graduation ... those were the days.

Agree with Uncle Bob. Health is far more important than keeping up appearances.

Anonymous said...

oooo errrr, remember that you should only lose around 2kg a week, any more is bad for you and your body will go into famine mode, as soon as that happens it will at every opportunity try to store as much fat as it can.
Lose the weight mainly through working up a calorie deficit through exercise rather that diet. A good healthy diet with plenty of working out and it'll do wonders.

Javelin said...

Buy some decent scales set yourself a weight range and get on them every morning when you wake up. If you have self control you'll lose the weight.

Shaun said...

Buy a dog. Seriously. Well, don't buy one, get one from the Dogs Trust or RSPCA. They have *plenty*. The point is that I got one after being diagnosed with MS in order to force me to go on daily walks with the mutt; I'm too much of an animal lover to not walk a dog, you see, even though my disease my impede my capability to it. But I'm stubborn so...

Anyway, I lost a stone fairly quickly and enjoyably, even with detours to dog-friendly pubs. You may think you don't have the time but you're your own boss, run your own firm and I'm sure nobody will complain so long as the dog is vaguely cute!

Andrew Johnston said...

Dear Iain,
Can you illustrate on your site the official Help for Heroes fund-raising book The Hero Inside which we are publishing on 17th September? Please email me back on andrew@quillerbooks.com and I'll send you the book cover plus an invitation to the launch at the Guard's Museum.
Many thanks,
Andrew Johnston
Managing Director

Rob said...

Good point Shaun, I put on loads of weight after my dog died. I used to walk miles every day before then.

Anonymous said...

Iain already has a very cute dog

True Belle said...

I am certain you will have a steely determination to lose a few pounds each week. Playing golf will take you away from your desk, and exercise and fresh air will give you a feel good factor.

Hidden sugars in fruit and cereals are a real nuisance.

There is a little gadget that you can wear attached to your waist band/belt ,it will count your steps- 10,000 per day recommended, works out to be roughly five miles or a round of golf is a sure way to burn off calories.

Drinking a glass of water makes you feel full too.

Best of luck.

Kate. said...

Good Luck Iain, will donate, and wish you the very best. It's not easy I know.

Margaret said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html

This exposes the "healthy eating" advice given both here and in America as completely the wrong way round, and explains why people put lost weight back on.

Given the anonymity of this comments page I will admit that I need to lose over a third of my body weight. I have just started to change to a low carb way of eating and it seems to be working, and I am not hungry.
This is not the Atkins diet, although more and more doctors are coming to see that he was not wrong, but a way of eating based on adequate protein and limited carbohydrates.
http://www.proteinpower.com/