The most iconic Secret Eaters episode of all time?
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I cannot tell you how many times in my life I’ve thought to myself “I DON’T EAT THAT MUCH WHY AM I GAINING WEIGHT” – and as we can see from the people on Secret Eaters – I am not alone.
And as someone who spent most of their life very overweight (I was justtt a little bit away from being considered CLASS 3 – formerly known as MORBIDLY OBESE…) – I think the overall message of the show is an important and comforting one if you’ve been struggling with your weight at all.
The message being… IF YOU’RE GAINING WEIGHT, YOU’RE EATING TOO MUCH.
It is INSANELY easy to underestimate how much we’re eating every single day. Even when we think we’re eating an extremely healthy diet, as proved by today’s subject.
One of the most notorious secret eaters contestants of all time. A sweet but naive older man by the name of Murray.
This episode covers the story of Murray Young and Helena Young. Anna Richardson leads the Secret Eaters team as they investigate the couple’s ‘mysterious’ weight gain.
0:00 – I don’t eat that much!
1:54 – Meet Murray and Helena
4:44 – Food Diary
7:20 – Murray’s Low Calorie Cereal
10:03 – Not So Special-K
12:30 – HOW many calories?
14:01 – “One piece of fruit per day”
16:21 – 70s moment
17:49 – Helena
20:12 – An Update
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I cannot tell you how many times in my life I thought to myself I don’t eat that much why am I gaining weight and I am not alone I feel my size does not reflect what I eat I’m eating very healthy my diet is pretty good I’m not one of a wor theaters out there it just doesn’t sound like you’re eating that that much but the British weight loss show secret eaters takes contestants who are certain they are doing everything right and proves to them that they’re secretly lying to themselves about they’re actually consuming every day and as someone who spent most of their life very overweight I was just a little bit away from being considered class 3 formerly known as morbidly obese I think the overall message of the show is an important and comforting one if you’ve ever struggled with your weight even a little bit the message being if you’re gaining weight you are eating too much you don’t have a slow metabolism it’s not your genetics nothing is wrong with you and you are not doomed what’s really happening is it is insanely easy to underestimate how much we’re consuming every single day there’s usually a difference between what we think we’re eating and what we’re actually eating even when we think we’re eating an extremely healthy diet As proved by today’s subject I can’t really say that eating anything different than what I do now is going to make any difference one of the most notorious secret eaters contestants of all time a sweet but naive older man by the name of Murray Murray are you a secret eater I think I’m the most secretive eater there’s ever been but first a quick message before we get into it if you’re someone with big goals but have bad habits and destructive behaviors holding you back my behavior change course how to change was made for you it’s almost here so if you’d like more control over your behavior and you’re ready to do the work click the link below for more information thanks so much and now back to the video so in this episode we meet Murray and his wife Helena a couple in their mid-50s who spent most of their lives fit and healthy but have suddenly found themselves struggling with their weight they’ve put on 146 lb between them but neither think they over e I’m getting all the the nutrition I need and I’m not really eating that much I don’t eat every mil I often miss meals cuz I’m not always hungry now when the host Anna asks them what their diet looks like so what are you eating during the day Murray and Helena both claim that they’re eating really healthy they say they both cook most of their food at home they don’t really eat and in general they think that their weight gain just doesn’t really make any sense your wife’s not eating that much I can’t believe that anyone could put white on in the quantities that Elena do now if you’ve ever seen the show before you know that they’re both secret eaters and that the show will in fact prove that they’re both eating way too much and Murray in particular will turn out to be one of the most iconic secret Eaters of all time because of just how off base he was about how much he was really consuming in a day now the fact that both Murray and Helena are certain that they could not be eating enough to be gaining any weight is already a red flag why because in reality it’s just not that difficult to be eating enough calories every single day in order to be gaining weight it might have been difficult to gain weight in like 1835 when putting food in your mouth required 3 to 4 hours of manual labor but in our modern world with super convenient food and snacks it is insanely easy to consume enough calories to gain a substantial amount of weight every single year and on top of that when the host Anna inquires further we find out that Murray and Helena are both very sedentary do you exercise no their favorite pastime is watching TV together they both work sedentary jobs and at this point the most exercise they get is walking the family dog now Murray used to be a marathon runner but he can’t run anymore and he had to give it up so we have two almost 60-year-old people living sedentary Lifestyles and it’s already becoming less mysterious why they might be gaining weight what’s happened do you think well I put it down to age what your hormones hor yeah early menopause so you’ve got menopause going on there’s this idea that as we hit middle age our metabolism slows down and thus we gain weight but apparently this is mostly a myth and what that weight gain really comes down to is an accumulation of overeating habits loss of lean muscle mass and an overall reduction of movement and exercise and if we forget about the food for a minute two out of three of those things were movement related which emphasizes how important it is for every single one of of us to find some sort of movement that we like enough to do every single day for the rest of our lives until we die if we can just find something that we are willing to do or even excited to do every single day that is going to go such a long way toward maintaining our health as we age when the couple is asked to record their food Murray recorded eating about 3,000 calories starting each day with a large portion of porridge helina said she eats small regular meals estimating her calorie intake to be around 1740 each day now first off I do have to say at least Murray is aware that he’s eating like at least 3,000 calories a day he’s already at least trying to be more honest with himself than at least like 90% of the people on this show you do eat a lot of pastries whereas where in your car in the house down the street I don’t I don’t eat pastries most people come on the show and claim they’re eating like 1,200 calories a day then the show has to point out that nope whoops you actually ate that in like one meal but here’s the thing based on their own tracking both Murray and helina are already gaining weight a 5’4 sedentary 55-year-old woman who is at a healthy BMI can eat around 1,500 calories a day while at the same time a man Murray’s height and activity level would need to eat around 2,000 calories now these are just averages based on maintaining the upper end of a healthy BMI everyone’s different I’m just trying to give you a rough idea of what the numbers look like if you’re in your 50s and sedentary being sedentary is literally the worst thing you can do if you want to maintain a healthy body weight it just biases the numbers in such a way that makes it so difficult when you’re sedentary the calorie math is rough because for example say a meal from a fast food restaurant is going to clock in on average over 1,000 calories Burger King Whopper with cheese 743 calories medium fry 398 calories medium drink 221 calories total 1,362 calories while a British breakfast fry up from a restaurant can clock in from anywhere around 600 to 2,000 calories plus according to several different polls 75% of British people consume crisps at least once per week with 53% of them consuming crisps multiple times a week or more while 37% of British people have a sweet treat every single day so just doing the math on some potato chips and a sweet treat every day depending what and how much of it you have that’s an easy th000 calories just in snacks not to mention sneaky calories coming from things like fats and oils sauces and creams alcohol even if you don’t allegedly use half a jar Mayo on your salad these sneaky calories can add up obviously doing something wrong you know some things you all year cuz you eat too many sweets or whatever but it can’t be just that except it literally can be just that now when the hidden cameras in secret investigators track Murray Duncan me and Cameron gallet they discover that his weight gain is actually being caused by something a little bit more um heavy than just a bit of overeating here and there is it usually a healthy start to the day for you yeah yeah yeah sure I’ll think so he’s eating a bowl of Special K cereal Special K very for a banana some milk and then multiple splashes of cream and a massive Lum of jam look at all that cream now I know this show was like 10 years old but I am shocked that someone could not realize that pouring all that cream on their cereal is a very risky Choice calor wise and I guess Murray wasn’t using just any old cream but something called double cream and as you can see he was really laying it on there now in Canada we don’t sell double cream the closest thing we have is whipping cream now whipping cream is a lot thicker than what you might put in coffee it’s usually only used in things like sauces or in desserts but even whipping cream isn’t the same as British double cream while whipping cream is 36% fat British double cream is 48% fat it’s low calorie cereal isn’t it and when it was all said and done it turned out that Murray was adding 1,400 calories of cream to his cereal which really points out why it’s so important for every single person to learn just even a little bit about calories and nutrition this whole situation and like 75 lbs of weight gain could have been avoided if Murray just knew a little bit if he just took the the time to take a look at the side of the box of double cream I think for people who struggle with their weight at all one of the most helpful things that you can do is just spend some time tracking your calories and getting to know how many calories are in certain things not necessarily forever just to get an idea of how calorically dense certain things are otherwise you’re completely Flying Blind you have no way of really even guessing how much you could be consuming on a daily basis leaving you vulnerable to Murray moments meaning you could be like Murray eating 1,400 calories of accidental cream in your cereal and because Murray had absolutely no idea how many calories he was consuming Not only was he consuming all that cream but he was actually eating four times the serving size of cereal and obviously the cream thing was kind of in its own leak but the cereal thing is not difficult to do at all I can actually remember the first time that I realized how much cereal is actually in one serving of cereal because it was just so much different than the amount of cereal I was serving myself every single morning without having any idea and it’s interesting that Murray was eating Special K and he keeps mentioning how healthy the cereal that he’s eating is Special K very because Special K in particular did a really really good job of marketing itself as the healthiest breakfast ever in the early 2000s like I can remember thinking of Special K as this like weight loss cereal when I was a kid and so I went back and I looked at some of the commercials now and you actually really cannot blame Murray for thinking that Special K was this like super healthy choice that he was making if you find musle a bit too heavy now at last there’s an alternative and it’s from Special K drop a jean size in 2 weeks with the Special K Challenge create your free personalized slimming plan and get the scale moving in the right direction get more delicious every day lose the holiday fat keep the muscle lose the fat what will you gain when you lose this is very much so Peak 2000s era diet culture marketing and it also really just kind of makes no sense this refined carbohydrate sugar Laden cereal is marketing itself as if it’s going to cause people to somehow spontaneously lose weight and if you had no clue how weight loss worked I feel like you could think that this is a cereal that you could feel was like a more of the merrier situation it’s low calorie cereal is it so I feel like we can give Murray this one but in reality there’s nothing special about Special K it’s not even particularly low calorie or anything and for me eating refined carbohydrates first thing in the morning is like a recipe for being starving the rest of the day and that tends to be how it works for most people according to most research on the topic So Special K might actually be like the worst thing you could possibly consume for breakfast if you think about the way it might impact what you choose to consume later on and when it was all said and done it turned out that between the cereal the cream the banana and the ladles of jam that bowl of cereal there contains 22,000 calories oh i’ would never ever never ever believed that two and a half th000 calories in a bulb cereal that has got to be a secret eater record for a food that is genuinely healthy seeming on the outside but yeah this is why Murray the man who managed to turn a bowl of cereal into 25,000 calories is one of the most iconic people in secret eater history the thing is though I’ve been going on and on about how easy it is to gain weight even when you’re not over eating to some insane degree but muray um was eating quite a lot in reality well I mean you’re a very lucky man because you you you’ve got a lady on hand who’s cooking for you so there’s no need for you really to go out and buy anything when you’re on the run or anything like that not really n it wasn’t that he was just eating healthy and making a few major mistakes the private investigators also caught him consuming the following just while he was at work one day what has Murray eaten today free cheese and picol sandwiches microwaveable hot dog two bags of kettle chips one apple pie for uh three slices of meat Feast uh Pap and two slices of garlic bread bringing Murray’s total consumption on average to during surveillance you got through 6,000 calories a day I can’t really see that eating anything different than what I do now is going to make any difference not one change maray not not even once now I guess Murray was an ex marathon runner and they have to eat a ton so maybe he just got used to eating a lot and then didn’t update his eating habits as he aged or perhaps he’s just in denial about his eating habits because the private investigators also caught Marie sneaking fast food and takeaways while out of the house so that his wife didn’t notice so not only is Murray a secret eater because he’s unaware of the calories in his regular Foods he’s also a secret eater in the traditional sense as he eats food in secret away from Helena it’s funny Murray’s situation was so extreme and out of the ordinary that he ended up doing a Daily Mail interview afterwards and this is what he had to say I was eating semi correctly or believing I was I thought I was eating plenty of fruit and salad I thought if I ate one piece of fruit a day then I was eating healthily but on one particular day I’d eaten more than 8,000 calories he confesses I was shocked to the core the problem as Murray is only too willing to admit was a lack of knowledge about what healthy really means and as a result foods such as jam and cream formed a recurr part of his menu helina and I talk about healthy eating a lot and we always say that people don’t know enough he explains I think there’s a lot of people like me out there who started putting on weight in their early 20s and don’t know how to get rid of it and avoid things like diabetes maray are you a secret eater I think I’m the most secretive eater there’s ever been and it’s really so true like unless you’re really interested in learning how to eat healthy how would you even know like what it means to eat healthy this is very healthy Jen now some people will never have weight issues their entire lives they’ll remain 5 to 10 pounds away from whatever they were in high school and they’ll go their entire lives without having to worry about food or managing their weight whatsoever some people just have weights that are kind of like regulated they just kind of stay the same forever but for the rest of us in this modern food environment we have to be intentional with what we consume because if we’re just mindlessly eating whatever is around us given the current food and environment we are very likely to struggle with weight gain Murray and helina are dealing with something that I think is going to become a much bigger problem over the next 20 to 30 years I think we’re going to see a lot more stories just like this people who maintained a healthy weight when they were younger who never really had to think much about what they ate but then slowly over their lifetime things started to shift they gain a few pounds here a few pounds there and then over 15 20 30 40 50 years they suddenly found themselves overweight or obese and then had no idea really how to deal with it because it’s not something that they had to think about or worry about when they were younger but if you gain one pound every single year then in 30 years you will be 30 lb heavier and if you gain 2 lb or 5 lb or 10 lb or 15 lb those numbers get much much worse as you get up in age and going back to the modern food environment this show mentioned that both Murray and Helena were 56 years old Murray would have been born sometime in the late 50s so he was in his 20s in the late ’70s and then 1970s most people were not overweight and actually obesity was pretty rare and researchers believe that this is mostly due to how different the food environment was between then and now in the 1970s most meals were still cooked at home a standard dinner for a British family would be quote unquote meat and two veg in the 70s were actually that same decade that all those cursed recipes that you see online sometimes are from my point being that the food culture at the time revolved around homecooked meals which included having dinner part with like jello Meats as opposed to convenience food and eating on the road back then fast food was just beginning to take off this nine layer gastronomic Indulgence is known as a Big Mac it was not something that you had very often it was more of a treat and high calorie snack foods and convenience Foods did exist but we didn’t really eat a lot of them the most common convenience Foods were like Swanson’s TV dinners and like Campbell’s chicken soup so as a result if you’re growing up in the 50s 60s and ities you probably didn’t have to think much about what you consumed at all but today things are a little bit different convenience foods have taken over junk food is in every aisle and fast food is on every corner it’s hard to get away from it that’s why these days being aware and intentional about the food choices we’re making is absolutely vital but while Murray is the star of this episode helina represents a problem that is probably more common than 2500 calorie bowls of cereal I try and cook from scr like chicken chocolate potatoes I think it’s fairly healthy at diet when the show tracks her food they find that in fact she is not eating exorbitantly or anything she is not sneaking takeaway meals she is not having gigantic bowls of cereal she has a very normal diet but she does have a sweet tooth and has no idea how many calories are in the sweet foods that she’s eating resulting in her eating in a way that simply adds up to weight gain over time starting with the Two Sugars she takes in her coffee times that by the five coffees she has a day resulting in 10 tpoon of sugar in just one day which adds up to 40 g of sugar in 160 secret calories over the course of the surveillance you got through around about 1,200 calories just in hot sugary drinks then they find Helena having a turkey roll in Jam donut Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cookies and a tiny piece of chocolate and what the cameras and investigators discover is that over the tracking period she ended up eating 1,700 calories of sweet Foods in total over the course of a month same number of calories as these 104 chocolate bars which again I think they say it’s over like 5 days or something like that it seems like they’re trying to make it seem like that’s some huge number but it’s over 5 days which means it’s just about 340 calories per day which a Crispy Cream dut is exactly 340 calories a Starbucks vanilla Frappuccino is to 380 calories and a crumble cookie is around 800 calories somehow yeah cuz you eat too many sweets or whatever but it’s can’t be just that it’s got to be more and as Helena learned the hard way it absolutely does not have to be more than that if you’re already eating at maintenance or just above that an extra 340 calories per day adds up to almost a whole pound a week times that by 20 years and mystery solved and that’s not at all suggest that people can never have a sweet treat but I I think just being thoughtful and intentional with what you consume is so helpful you can definitely be healthy and have sweet treats you can have your cake and eat it too as they say just by knowing what treats are worth it and what treats are not in the end Murray and Helena end up making great progress over 6 weeks they both lost around one stone the stone not and Murray has even begun going to the gym and running again and this is one of the reasons I love secret eaters it just goes to show how a little bit of awareness can lead to Big results all I was a secret eater but not anymore now if you want more Behavior change content check out this playlist I made here or you can check out all my secret eaters content here I highly recommend my episode on Dawn # Justice for Dawn and if you’re ready to change click the link below for more information on my course how to change thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one