At Natural Health Forever, the weight loss programs are the most popular. So over the next few weeks I’m going to share my top tips for – not just losing weight – but the harder part, which is maintaining your weight loss. The programs focus on losing weight for the health of your body. I’m going to share what I’ve learned over the last ten years both through my masters degree and in clinical practice.
Weight loss (and maintaining a healthy weight) is a multifaceted subject. It’s really not as easy as just cutting down on food, so we have a lot to cover. Today I’m starting with a background and introduction but we will be covering the following over the next few weeks.
Topics
- my top tips for dietary changes you can make that work,
- how you can make these changes stick,
- I’m going to share meal ideas (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and snack ideas,
- we’re going to talk about portions and how to fill your plate to make a nutritionally balanced meal,
- I will share an example of a weekly meal plan to help get you started,
- we will cover emotional eating,
- and finally I’m going to share some issues that can prevent the body from losing weight. These things may need to be looked into first before you can successfully start a weight loss and healthy eating plan.
But first…an introduction
Genetics can play a role in weight gain, but it is the food environment, which has changed so much over the past 20-30 years, that is ultimately causing the UK, Australia, America and many Western Countries to gain weight. At present around 66% of these populations are overweight or obese and this is predicted to rise to 75% fairly quickly. And it’s not just adults who are affected. Overweight and obesity rates in children and adolescents are rising too.
A food environment is a collection of factors that affect eating practices and patterns. Examples include what foods are available to us, how the food is being promoted and advertised and how much it costs. All these factors have a big affect on what we choose to eat and our likelihood of being overweight. The changes in food environment have been coupled with a big reduction in physical activity due to cars and many other machines that make our lives easier.
Genes are a bit like light switches, which are automatically in the off position. Although some of us have genes that could predispose us to put on more weight than others, the genes need to be switched on for this to happen, and the food and physical activity environments we find ourselves in help switch them on. As George Bray, a leading obesity researcher says, “the genetic background loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger”.
It all goes back to the past
Coping in the current food environment where marketing is very powerful and food is everywhere can be difficult, because we are not genetically programmed to turn down food. This relates back to our ‘hunter gatherer’ days where our bodies learned to cope with scarcity. To survive, we needed to eat food when it became available and our bodies learned to store energy (calories) during times of shortage. We adapted to an environment with a low availability of food, the need to expend lots of energy to get food, our brains wired to get excited by foods that contain fat and sugar and the ability to consume lots of food in a short period of time (because there was no refrigeration). This conditioning was very strong and vital for survival.
Our biological systems and DNA are highly complex and have evolved slowly over hundreds of thousands of years. Our genes have not changed much between then and now, but our food and physical activity environments have evolved and changed very quickly. Today, we live in an environment where food is everywhere. We can eat at every hour of the day, marketing is powerful and relentless, we don’t need to expend energy to get food, and processed and convenience foods tend to be cheaper. All of this is hard to ignore. But we do have a choice. As Dr Altshuler, a clinical endocrinologist and human geneticist says “ Genes are the hand of cards you are dealt. It’s up to you how to play that hand. Sometimes the person with the best cards doesn’t win, it’s the person who plays them better.”
A word about diets
Many different types of diet have saturated the market and there are now so many books, websites and clubs to choose from. Many are based upon eliminating or reducing one macronutrient group for example low fat, no fat, low carb etc. However evidence based trials conducted over many years have revealed that diets don’t work. Some can work in the short term, but because they don’t teach people how to create new lifestyle habits, for the most part, people regain the weight they lost and have to start all over again. If diets did work, we would all have bought the book and would all be our ideal weight. The diet industry is huge and has no interest in solving the overweight or obesity problem because it will put them out of business.
Lifestyle Changes that Stick
The key instead is to focus on making gradual lifestyle changes that stick. To start with small steps but to start somewhere. Research shows that as humans we are far more likely to succeed if we choose one or two goals we feel comfortable with and achieve these and turn them into new lifestyle habits before starting on the next goal. If we try to change everything at once we become overwhelmed and this generally leads to failure. So start with small steps but start somewhere. Make sure your goals are realistic. Pick one thing from the list I’m going to give you and start there. Once you’ve successfully reached your goal and built it into your lifestyle you can move onto a new one.
The CDC (Centre for Disease Control) in America keeps a track of overweight and obese people who have not just lost weight, but have kept it off. And what they have found is that they have all followed a similar pattern. That there are certain things these people are doing that are working. So I’m going to share some tips with you on dietary changes you can make that really work. And I’m also going to share some habits with you from people who lose weight and keep the weight off.
It’s interesting to note that the average person who is overweight over consumes approximately 300 calories per day, which isn’t that much. So imagine if there were some small changes you could make that made all the difference. Because what I know from clinical practice is that even small dietary changes can have a big positive health impact.
So on Saturday we will start with my top tips for dietary changes you can make that work. Who’s excited? 🙂
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