His family were worried, his workmates were worried. But Charlie (name changed) wasn’t worried – at least not worried enough to do anything about it. Sure he was a bit overweight, sure he could only sing a couple of songs at church before he had to sit down, out of breath, but he was doing fine.

“You are doing the nutrition course,” his boss ordered him. Reluctantly he came along to the ten week course to learn about healthy eating. It doesn’t happen to everyone but for Charlie, the timing was right and the light went on! In the first session he realised that his breakfast was not that great. Two French sticks split open and filled with thickly sliced butter – his workmates said it was like thickly sliced cheese. He decided to give up the butter and boy did he look miserable the next week!

Habits and taste preferences take about three weeks to change so by about week 4 Charlie was looking much happier. By the end of the course he looked alive – his face glowing with life, not sweat.

At the end of the course he stood up and spoke to everyone. “Please allow me to preach a little,” he said. “It says in the Bible ‘My people perish for lack of knowledge’. That is what happened to me – and is happening to many of our people. I didn’t realise what all that butter was doing to my body – or what all that soft drink was doing to my grand-kids. Now I eat two pieces of wholemeal toast for breakfast, not two French sticks.” He patted his greatly diminished tummy. “Now I can stand up in church and play guitar for three hours without getting breathless, and my wife is very happy too.”

Charlie was probably eating about 100 grams of butter a day. When he quit the butter he slashed his kilojoule intake by at least 3000kJ (700 calories) a day. That’s about a third of his daily kJ requirement. He started walking a bit more but nothing too extreme. Diet or exercise?  In Charlie’s case it’s pretty obvious which had the biggest impact.

I normally do quite a lot of exercise and yes, it allows me to eat a bit more, but not that much more. For the past six weeks I have not been allowed to go for walks or runs. That’s about 24km running and 3-4 hours walking a week that I am not doing. You would think I might have ballooned out into a big blimp. But no. Despite massively reducing my exercise, I have only had to reduce my food intake a little to maintain my weight. I just can’t get away with the extra muffin or naughty snack, especially if it’s after dinner.

So when the NZ Herald today published a story about diet being more important than exercise for weight loss, I tend to agree. Exercise is important too – to build and maintain muscle strength, to keep your metabolic rate up, to help you look firm, not flabby, to help reduce high blood pressure, to give your heart a work-out and to produce some mood-enhancing endorphins. But as Charlie and I have both discovered, cutting back on a few unnecessary extras like butter, cookies and cake is all it takes to maintain or lose weight.

Follow-up post here.