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I’ve Eaten Too Much – So I’d Better Eat Some More

I’ve been promoting the idea of no-diet weight loss for some years now, so I’m always pleased when a bit of research comes my way that supports my ideas. It’s been obvious to me for a long time that diets don’t work, you’ve only got to listen to dieters talking about weight loss to realise that. In fact whenever I need to lose weight I never diet – and I always lose weight. But for most people, when they feel bad about their body shape, they want to do something about it and the world mind-set (encouraged massively by the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry) is that you diet when you want to lose weight.

So that’s what you do.

I mean the whole world, and all those celebrities can’t be wrong – can they?

Yes they can.

And yes they are.

One crucial piece of research is about the way people on diets think about over-eating. When people are attempting to lose weight by restricting certain types of foods or limiting themselves to a certain number of calories – everything is fine until something causes them to go over the limit. They may be offered some cake and feel it impolite to refuse; there may be a packet of biscuits being handed around the office and they don’t want to stand out by being the only one to refuse; it may have been a tough week emotionally – it doesn’t matter what the reason is, but they pass the limit for the day.

What the dieter typically does then is think that they’ve failed for the day so they might as well just forget about the diet and start afresh in the morning – and then they binge.

The reason is all about how self-control and willpower work.

Restricting food intake, whether you are counting calories or following some other method, requires monitoring what you eat. Dieters tend to be very good at this. They know exactly what is left out of the daily allowance and what they can have and what they can’t have. This feedback mechanism is essential to the success of this process.

But what happens, once the daily allowance is exceeded, is that dieters stop monitoring their food intake. They stop keeping track of what they eat and they forget about how much they’ve eaten. Once that decision is made to get back on the diet tomorrow – the body has been starved and so, like a thirsty camel in the dessert… the empty hump is filled to overflowing so that when she starts to starve me again I’ll have a little in reserve… until the next hiccup.

The body has its own intelligence and it is an intelligence based around survival. When you threaten it by severely restricting food intake it retaliates. It retaliates by pushing the possibilityof death by starvation as far away as possible. This is one of the reasons your body even has the ability to store excess fat. Back in the early days of mankind, you ate well when you killed something big. You needed to store the excess in your body because you probably wouldn’t manage to catch another one tomorrow and supermarkets wouldn’t be invented for another 100,000 years.

You can exercise your will power for only so long and then the body wins. And once the body gets control, you can’t stop eating even when you are full.

This is one of the many reasons why dieting is such a struggle.

One of the many reasons why diets don’t work – long-term.

There is an easy way out. Just read my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever

 

Michael

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It’s True… You Can Eat Cake For Breakfast And Still Lose Weight

I think researchers have the best job in the world. It seems all they have to do is dream up some crazy idea, find a bunch of people willing to try it out, and then publish the results. Cake for breakfast is one of those ideas – but it seems that this time it’s not such a crazy one.

The people at Tel Aviv University managed to find 193 obese volunteers who were willing to take part in a 32 week trial. Half of them had a 300 calorie breakfast, the other half had a 600 calorie breakfast that included dessert.

By the 16 week mark both groups had lost an average of around 33lbs. But the really interesting stuff happened in the second half of the study. During the remaining 16 weeks the tiny breakfast group had regained around 22lbs, but the Big Breakfast bunch had lost another 15lbs each.

The daily calorie intake of both groups was designed to be the same, so those with the smaller breakfast made up for it later on in the day. But those same participants were the ones who felt hunger and cravings and frequently gave in to the urges to ‘cheat’.

The reasoning behind this finding is that your metabolism is at its most active in the morning and its power to burn off excess energy drops throughout the day. So, by eating those extra calories in the morning, you not only have all day to burn them off, but you also shut down production of the hunger hormone ghrelin. This is the reason those participants in the cake-for-breakfast group experienced little in the way of cravings for sweet foods later on in the day even though they were following a calorie restricted diet

But the most interesting thing appears to be it took 16 weeks before any difference was measured between the two groups. However, this was just the way the experiment was designed. Participants had to follow the diet strictly for 16 weeks. After this time they were permitted to eat extra food if they felt hungry. So I suspect that the differences in the two regimes would have shown up much sooner without this restriction.

There is a problem with this research, and it is highlighted by this fact that both groups experienced the same weight loss when they stuck to the diet. So cake for breakfast makes absolutely no difference when you stick rigidly to a calorie-restricted diet. The cake only made a difference once hunger and cravings were allowed to be satisfied. So what it seems the cake does is to remove this problem. So if you are on a calorie restricted diet and you need some respite from the craving then schedule in some cake for breakfast. But if you want to lose weight the easy way then just check out my easy weight loss book.

Of course another one of the problems with research is that you tend to have highly motivated individuals and there is a world of difference between doing something uncomfortable for 16 weeks and doing it forever.

The results of this research are entirely consistent with my own experience with my weight loss clients. Those who have the most difficulty losing weight are the ones who habitually skip breakfast. I go into the problems this causes in my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever, so I’m not going to repeat that here, but I’m pleased that this research supports the ideas that I have been promoting with my weight loss clients for many years now.

Michael

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How To Stay Motivated When Nothing Is Happening

I’m sure you’ve experienced that moment when it seemed you had some amazing insight into another version of reality and became really excited about an idea you had and, for a few moments, or a few days, you fully believed you could change your world. This could be anything from losing a little weight, maybe after seeing a beautiful dress in a shop window; to starting a new business based on your inspirational idea about some new product or service that the world really needed.

You get all excited for a while, maybe buy a few diet books, or books about being self-employed; time passes, the enthusiasm wanes, insurmountable problems appear and in the end you decide it just wasn’t for you and you’d better get used to being fat or working from 9 to 5 in a job you hate for the rest of your life.

Until the next idea pops up and you go through the whole process again.

There is only one problem with this. It’s a method of living that teaches you, at a very profound level, that you are a failure and that success in life is for others – not you.

“Greatness exists in all of us”

Actor Will Smith

The problem, you may be surprised to learn, is not with you, it’s just with the approach you take.

Motivation is a skill and without it, all is lost. The only thing that stops you from being successful is the loss of that excitement you first felt about the project – before the real world got in the way and you found you still had to wash the dishes, cook meals for people who like to be fat, and still generate income.

Here are four steps you can think about that are all it takes to keep you on the track to your dreams and desires.

  1. Begin with that first inspirational moment when you had your desire or your wish. Go back to it frequently. Recall all the good feelings you felt along with it. It will have been the good feelings that made you think it was a good idea at the time, so feel those feelings and allow them to grow. When you cultivate this and forge it into a strong memory, every time you bring it to mind, those good feelings will return and those good feelings will reawaken your desire for success. So after this step, at any time in the future when you are filled with doubt and want to give up, just bring this memory to the forefront of your mind. Re-feel all the good feelings and know that you will succeed.
  2. Use the power of your mind. When you hold the vision of the end result in your mind every morning and every evening you will re-program your subconscious to assist you in creating your vision. But when you do this don’t see the end result as some future event – see it as if it were all around you right now. Think about how your life is different. See the places you are going in your new, slimmer outfits. Notice the admiring glances you are receiving and people asking you how you managed it. See yourself in new places and feel the sense of pride and confidence. Keep your vision alive, real, and as if it already exists, every single day.
  3. Offer no resistance to the process. As you move closer and closer to a total belief within yourself that this will happen; as you move closer and closer to realising that the end result is inevitable, the world around you will shift – doors will open, magical things will happen to assist you. This is the point at which many people get scared and back off. Just go with the flow. When a door opens, step through it. If you don’t like it you can always back out afterwards. But be curious and see where it leads. When the magic happens, give thanks and appreciation for the amazing universe we live in.
  4. Believe in yourself totally. If you thought about it; if it moved you; if you were inspired, excited, or pleased then this is a possibility for you. If the doubts creep in then just remember where you are going and why you want it. Know that you deserve it. Banish any doubt from your mind that you always fail because you don’t deserve enough; because you aren’t good enough, because you aren’t clever enough. Some of the richest people in the world have no academic qualifications. They left school and just started making money. No one told them they couldn’t, so they didn’t know that what they were achieving was impossible. Just give yourself a break this time and let yourself have what you want.

It’s as easy as that.

You can use this for anything you want from something small to something big. It may be an idea to try it out on something small first because there is usually less resistance to small desires. Once you have some successes under your belt move on to bigger things.

Don’t forget if you have any comments or questions post them below.

Good luck

Michael

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Lose Weight, Stay Fit And Healthy – All You Need Is An App.

It seems there is an app for everything these days. Samsung have just released a new health app for their Galaxy S III. Samsung say “S Health collects health data to help maintain a healthier lifestyle.” All you have to do is buy the appropriate sensors, (blood glucose meter, blood pressure sensor, and body composition scales), plug one end into the phone and take a reading. The app stores the details so you can track changes over time.

“S Health collects health data and creates graphs or tables for the results to provide a full picture of health information in a digestible, easy-to-understand format.”

Sounds good doesn’t it?

Here’s an easy way to keep track of your weight, your blood pressure, and other stuff. When you want to see how well you are doing it is all presented to you in attractive tables and graphs. With weight loss, trends are much more important than how much you lost this week. If the general trend is downward and you can see that displayed as a graph then you don’t need to be despondent about your efforts for a particular week when you had a hiccup and your weight went up a couple of pounds. Seeing it in this way might make the difference between some comfort eating and realising that you are doing really well.

Samsung’s news interested me so I turned on my iPad and typed ‘health’ in the app search. It came up with 9818 results. So there’s lots of stuff that gives advice on staying healthy, as well as apps that provide health monitoring – where you have to plug things in like blood pressure cuffs. Loads of free stuff, in fact if you downloaded all the free health apps, you’d very quickly become a health expert by the looks of things. There’s even one that measures your pulse rate by listening for your heart beat with the iDevice’s microphone. But most of these apps require you to take the measurement yourself and then manually enter the data in order to keep track of it.

I used to use a Polar heart rate monitor when I was exercising. This device uses a detector strapped around your chest that sends a wireless signal to a wrist device that keeps your current heart rate on display. It also calculated how many calories I’d burned, beeped at me when I went out of the zone – area of maximum cardio-vascular benefit – and kept a log of all this. I found it very useful because it was helping me to monitor my effort in real time. I only stopped using it when the battery in the chest strap packed up and I discovered that that meant throwing the chest strap away and buying a new one (direct from Polar) for nearly the same price as the whole original unit. Seemed to be a rip off to me so Polar was crossed off my shopping list – I mean how difficult is it to make batteries user replaceable in a £90 bit of kit?

But I have a problem with tracking and logging and it’s a problem of psychology. We all like a new toy, and we get excited about it and make use of it, but after a few weeks that excitement wanes and having to remember to take the measurements becomes a chore. If, say, the dieting is a real struggle and the weight loss graph is refusing to drop down, or the blood pressure is refusing to drop despite all our efforts, then the whole thing itself becomes a reminder of how useless we are and how nothing ever works for us. The disappointment can be a real de-motivator and trigger a giving up. This is where the powerful visual stimulus of the graph or chart has the opposite effect to that intended.

I remember a few weeks ago I started using Wii Fit. This was great fun. It monitors my weight loss, and gives me motivational bonuses. I especially love the jogging, where you get to exercise on the spot and I’ve found I can do it without my feet ever leaving the floor. But it tells me off if I miss a few days. That puts me off a little. But what the Wii Fit also does is give you a fitness age. The first time I measured this (before I had done any of the exercises) it came up as 39yrs. I measured it again after three days of exercising – it was 52yrs. After a week of Wii Fit guided exercises it measured my fitness age as 65yrs – which is older than I actually am. Talk about de-motivation. I haven’t been back on it since then. I will return, because it is such a fun way to exercise (the steps thing is brilliant) – especially when it’s raining.

When I walk for exercise, and this is something that I do regularly irrespective of what the Wii Fit thinks about it, there is nothing being measured, I sort of feel my body and its comfort levels, push it a bit, and I feel good when I’ve finished. It’s simple, free, and it works. But it works for me because it has become a habit, and when a behaviour becomes a habit it takes more effort not to do it than to do it.

So while I love the technological help that these apps offer, and I love colourful graphs, and tables showing how well things are progressing, I know that the novelty would soon wear off, so I’m sticking with what works for me.

Michael

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Ten Ways To Boost Testosterone Levels Safely

Testosterone affects everything in the male body, so lowered male-hormone levels can be the source of all sorts of problems. The most obvious symptoms are lowered sex drive and erectile strength – impotence being the extreme of this. However, lowered testosterone also causes depression, concentration difficulties, anxiety, muscle loss, less facial hair and a general malaise – a sense of not really being bothered about anything any more. You can also experience less pleasure, desire, and fun in everything in your life. Your relationships will suffer too. This problem can even adversely affect your career.

Low testosterone is also associated with, poor quality sleep, heart disease, memory function, depression, diabetes, cognitive disorders and osteoporosis.

A blood test will let you know the score. But if you have any symptoms you’ll want to know that there are easy, non-drug solutions that you can use.

Here are ten simple things you can do to boost your testosterone levels.

  1. Lose weight. If you can get hold of any of you around your belly – then get rid of it. Being overweight is one of the main causes of lowered testosterone. So cut out on those snacks and burgers. Don’t go overboard though, because that will be difficult to sustain, just plan to eat a little more healthily. Small regular changes are sustainable. Make a small dietary change, get used to it. Make another one.
  2. Exercise more. If you are very unfit then stick with simple exercises like walking or cycling. Just push yourself enough to raise your heart rate slightly for around 20 minutes a day. When you are fitter then consider a gym or a class so that you get a proper muscle-building workout. If you watch tv for more than 5 hours a day then you need to take action now.
  3. Eat less red meat. Too much protein interferes with testosterone production, so cut down on the meat and eat more veg.
  4. Go nuts. Mono-unsaturated fats boost testosterone levels. Nuts are an easy way to get these. You could even use peanut butter – though it would have to be an unsweetened version.
  5. Snooze. Get enough quality sleep. If you aren’t getting seven or eight hours of quality sleep each night then you need to do something about it. You can exercise more. Have a relaxing bath before bedtime. Stop doing brain work (and that includes worrying) at least an hour before bedtime. Instead wind down with some relaxing music, read a boring book, or play a fun game (not competitive) on your computer.
  6. Drink less. Cut down on alcohol. It’ll probably help with the belly fat too.
  7. Relax. Reduce stress in your life. Stress increases cortisol. Cortisol eats testosterone. Make stress reduction a priority in your life.
  8. Eat happy animals. Eat organic foods as much as you can – especially meat & dairy produce. Dioxin adversely affects testosterone levels and dioxin is mostly ingested from animals and animal products produced with intensive farming methods. The animals are not only given feedstuffs that have been treated with herbicides & pesticides, but also injected with antibiotics and other fat-building drugs. These chemicals are the source of the majority of dioxins in your diet.
  9. You’re sweet enough. Eat less sweet stuff. Just 75gm of sugar drops a healthy man’s testosterone levels by 25%. That’s 13 level teaspoons, or roughly the same amount of sugar that you get in two cans of non-diet soft drink.
  10. Sunbathe. Vitamin D, which you get from being in the sun, boosts testosterone levels. So get more sun, but be sensible, don’t get burned and don’t get skin cancer.

 There you have ten easy things you can start doing straight away to boost your male-hormone levels. This will not only give you a boost in bed but will also positively impact many other areas of your life too. You will feel fitter, healthier and happier, but if you have any health concerns make sure you check with your doctor before taking any action.

Michael

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The Low Gi Diet Increases Metabolic Burn – the Scientists Said So, So it Must Be True.

I’m not a fan of diets and I don’t encourage dieting with my weight loss patients. But I’m happy to share information that I think may benefit you if you want to lose weight. So here’s some diet advice for all you diet lovers out there.

You know what the best bit is – it seems to me it’s more like nutritional advice, and I’m ok with that. I mean no matter what else you do, controlling your weight is so much easier when you make healthy food choices.

I was in my local bookstore a few weeks back, truthfully I was looking for ideas for book covers, but I was in the weight loss section and I noticed lots of books about something called the GI Diet. I hadn’t a clue what GI was and they didn’t say, but from the number of books on the shelf it seemed like everyone else must know about it. Either that or it’s the latest fad diet that will shortly die a slow death.

I got onto Google as soon as I got home and discovered GI means glycaemic index.  Great, I thought, that’s that problem solved. The glycaemic index is a measure of the amount of sugar in your blood.

But then someone did a bit of research about this and found out something interesting and it relates to metabolism. Now, if you’ve read my Weight Loss book, you’ll know I am a fan of metabolism, and in my book I attempt to set the record a little straighter with regard to the myths surrounding metabolism and weight loss. This information that follows is in addition to what I wrote about in my book.

The research compared three diets: low-fat, low-carb, and low-glycaemic. The focus of the research was to see whether or not any particular types of food were better than others at kick-starting the metabolism engine and getting a ‘free’ burn off of excess calories.

The low-glycaemic diet burned off 125 calories more per day than the low-fat diet. So this was good news. By the way, 125 calories equates to around half an ounce in additional lost body weight over the low-fat diet. But the low-carb diet was even better. Unfortunately the low-carb diet increased levels of cortisol and inflammation – so a low-carb diet carries with it an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. The low-glycaemic diet was the winner. It burns off a little more fat and is good for your heart.

High-glycaemic foods are: things baked with white flour, sugar, white rice and potatoes. These foods are easily digested and so the carbs in these foods are turned into sugar quickly and blood sugar goes up. So don’t eat those. The trick seems to be to make your body work for the sugar by eating things like: pulses (peas, beans, lentils…) and non-starch based vegetables, in other words – green things. Add to that whole grains, low fat meat, fish, nuts and all that health-food stuff.

The cause for concern is that the low-carb diet seemed to show a tendency towards creating heart health problems for the future. The tricky bit is separating out carbs that give a quick sugar hit, and carbs that hold on to the sugar and make you work to release it.

Michael

More info:

http://todayhealth.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/29/12478728-low-fat-low-carb-or-low-glycemic-study-shows-which-is-best-to-keep-weight-off?lite

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154

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Belviq – Another Dodgy Weight Loss Fix, or the Miracle the US Has Been Waiting For?

Yesterday the Japanese drugmaker Eisai Co. had its shares jump 4% after the FDA announced approval for a new weight loss drug, Belviq. The drug is manufactured by its San Diego-based partner Arena Pharmaceuticals. There is no question that there is big money to be made with an effective obesity medication. Arena’s stock went up 29% yesterday. Unfortunately since the pharmaceutical industry has a greater investment in profit than it does in relieving human suffering (and there’s nothing wrong with making a profit – as long as no one is harmed in the process), I thought I’d have a look and see what the fuss is all about.

However, I have to make my position clear. Medication is for emergencies, and as a last resort. When nothing else works then fair enough give it a go, but I have had so many patients come to me for help when they’ve lost faith in their prescribed medication after realising that it just doesn’t work.

“There are two kinds of medications: cosmetic drugs and curative drugs. If you take an antibiotic long enough, it cures by killing the bacterial invaders. When you’re done taking it the disease will not recur because the pathogens are dead. Antibiotics are curative drugs.”

Martin Seligman PhD author of Flourish

Cosmetic drugs alleviate symptoms but they don’t fix the problem.

Weight loss medication falls into the cosmetic drug category.

Let’s look at the real problem. 2 out of 3 Americans fall into the categories of either overweight or obese – that is, they have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 25. Excess weight causes serious health problems. It is connected with the onset of type II diabetes and cardio-vascular problems. As weight increases, exercise becomes more difficult because of the body mass that has to be moved around. You end up with a Catch 22 situation where the weight itself prevents you from doing things that might lift your mood and burn some calories. So you eat because there’s nothing else to do that feels good.

We live in the Time of the Quick Fix. The Time of Instant Gratification where Instant is generally not soon enough.

When you are hungry, or even when you are just bored, there are places, for many people, within a few minutes drive (God forbid you should walk there) where you can enjoy coffee and cake, fries, burgers dripping with melted fat (sorry, I mean cheese), sugar loaded shakes, and all sorts of stuff that just ain’t good for you. Waiting while something cooks, never mind shopping for ingredients is just too much trouble.

Yes I know I’m being unfair. I know many people who struggle with their weight, and they exercise, and they shop for healthy home-cooked meals. But just have a look at your life and see how much instantness you choose in your day. Instant entertainment at the flick of a switch; instant contact with your friends via facebook or text; instant demand for medical fixes rather than waiting to see if the body can heal itself of a cold, or virus, without the need for a visit to the doctor; have it now with a credit card, rather than save up and buy it when the money is available. It’s all around. There’s so much of it, it seems normal, and so we expect everything we want to be provided instantly.

So when we’ve been struggling with a diet for a  week and the weight that’s accumulated over the last 12 or 24 months, or maybe the last 5 or 10 years, isn’t gone – we give up and start looking round for a faster solution. All we want is for someone to invent a pill that means we can carry on with our unhealthy, instant, lifestyle and have a body to die for rather than a body that’s killing us.

That desire is what the manufacturers of ‘designer’ weight loss drugs are preying upon.

They know weight is an emotive subject.

They know that losing weight in a healthy, sensible way is such a long-term project that most people give up in despair long before they come even close to success. They know that looking at an overweight body in a mirror, in the privacy of your own home, can reduce you to tears no matter what kind of a public face you wear. They know they can appeal to your emotions and your desire for instant gratification by suggesting that what they hold in their pill factories is the answer to your heart’s desire. They hint that they have the magic wand that will, Cinderella-like, allow you to go to the ball, and be the star.

You may have seen my article on another weight loss pill Qnexa. One of the drugs, phentermine, in Qnexa was formerly part of Fen-Phen a weight loss drug withdrawn due to problems it was causing with heart-valve function. Belviq is making use of the other drug, fenfluramine, that was part of Fen-Phen. I mean why let something go to waste just ‘cos it’s killing people?

Just as with Qnexa, the FDA is requiring long-term trials to establish cardio-vascular safety after the drug goes on the market!!!!

Belviq, just like Qnexa, has some side-effects – different side-effects. The FDA doesn’t want pregnant women using it. It can produce a fatal increase in the production of the neuro-transmitter serotonin. All this will do is to cause muscle rigidity, fever and maybe seizures. It may also adversely affect memory, and maybe cause a loss of concentration. Just what you signed up for when all you really wanted was to lose a few pounds.

This drug, under a different name from the same manufacturer, was rejected by the FDA in 2010 because of concerns about cancer. These risks haven’t changed, it’s just that the FDA has been persuaded that the drug’s benefits outweigh the risks. I’m guessing that means the benefits to Arena’s bank account outweigh the risks to any one individual. I rather suspect that anyone who contracts cancer as a result of taking this prescribed medication may well have a different take on this. Even then the onus will be on the cancer sufferer to prove it was the drug, and for that you need a lot of drug sales and a lot of people taking the drug to contract the disease. It’s a high price.

I found that the most interesting thing is that, in clinical trials, Belviq only produced a 3% weight loss compared to a placebo group. Anyone with very little effort can lose more than that just by following the weight loss guidelines in my book, and my book has no adverse side-effects.

But the real problem here is treating being overweight or obese as a medical problem. It isn’t. Being overweight or obese, is unhealthy, it does cause some quite serious medical problems, but of itself it is not a medical issue. It’s an issue of putting too much food in our mouths and not burning it off with activity. That’s a personal problem. It can’t be cured because it isn’t a disease. It can be helped, but it needs education in eating, in caring for the self, in recognising that our bodies actually do need looking after and caring for.

Even if weight loss seems impossibly difficult for you, as long as you are prepared to make some small changes, you can lose weight without needing to ‘take’ anything.

But what you really need to do, is to stop thinking that your excess weight is someone else’s problem and that they will fix it for you. They won’t because they can’t.

The minute we take personal responsibility; the minute we decide that we will look after ourselves and ensure our own health and well-being, that’s when things will start to change – for the better.

Michael

 

Thanks to:

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-06-27/fda-approves-first-new-weight-loss-pill-in-decade

http://vitals.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/27/12440533-fda-oks-first-new-weight-loss-pill-in-13-years?lite

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57461956-10391704/fda-approves-obesity-pill-belviq-for-obese-overweight-people-with-weight-related-health-problems/

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Obesity Checks – Big Brother or a Helping Hand?

The US Preventative Task Force has issued new guidelines for doctors for the treatment of obesity. You are obese when your Body Mass Index (BMI) is 30 or more – this is 1 in 3 Americans, so it’s a serious problem. The BMI is calculated from your weight and height and is a measure of whether or not you need to lose weight. If you are in the BMI range 25 to 30 you are considered overweight. Above that is obesity.

One of the problems with BMI is that it doesn’t work if you are super fit and carrying a lot of muscle, but if that’s you then you won’t be reading this anyway so that’s not a serious problem. Mind you, I would have thought that most people would know if they are carrying too much weight. I know when I am, and that’s true even when my BMI is in the supposedly normal range. So I sort of expect other people to be aware of when they are overweight and when they are not, but this does not seem to be the case according to this report. Apparently 50% of obese people have never had their doctors tell them they need to lose weight. “That’s just not fair to the patient,” said Dr Der-Sarkissian from the Los Angeles Medical Centre.

I don’t need a doctor to tell me when I need to lose weight, but then I’ve only ever barely been out of the normal category. So I don’t know if it’s possible to just be unaware of a serious weight problem. But it seems the Task Force thinks that getting doctors to point out the problem and then to offer solutions is the way forward. The solutions will be long-term counselling, nutritional advice, target setting and support – none of which doctors are geared up to provide.

Obesity and obesity-related diseases already cost around $147 billion a year in healthcare spending. Adoption of these recommendations would significantly increase that spending. But there’s something else that doctors can do, and that is write prescriptions. There’s a new weight loss drug about to receive FDA approval. I wonder if there’s a connection here, because the Task Force’s finding means that healthcare treatment will be available through Medicare and other health insurance schemes. Doctors can’t provide what’s really needed which is long-term encouragement and support, so will they just write a prescription? If they do then this drug’s manufacturer will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Another problem with the solution is the boundary line. You need to be clinically obese (BMI 30+) to qualify for help, so if you are just overweight, you have to pay for your own help. I wonder how many people will put on weight just so they qualify for free help?

Losing even a small amount of weight is beneficial. According to Susan Curry (member of the Task Force) “Losing 5 percent of your body weight has tremendous health benefits, and intensive behavioural counselling programs help you do that and sustain it. Your primary care provider can, we hope, help you to find evidence-based programs.” It’s that “we hope” part that’s worrying because – at the moment – they can’t.

Michael

Thanks to:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-obesity-screening-20120622,0,2815818.story

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/06/26/panel-doctors-should-screen-patients-for-obesity/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/06/26/obesity-screening-height-weight.html

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Weight Loss Horoscopes – Whatever Next?

I don’t know what you think about horoscopes. I’m a little on the fence with most of me on the side of I’ll take a lot of convincing. That said, and the tone set, I know a lot of people take horoscopes really seriously. I also know that the 20 words in your favourite daily newspaper couldn’t possibly apply to the one-twelfth of the world’s population born in the same 30 day period and regardless of their age. However, I’m also aware that a properly crafted horoscope that takes into account not only your date of birth, but also time and location – is something that is not quite so easy to dismiss. I’m still not convinced, but I’m willing to look at the evidence.

A lot of people think that the stars are so far away that they couldn’t possible influence anything or anyone on planet earth, but astrology isn’t about stars, it’s about planetary alignments. The stars are just the graph paper the planets are plotted against. So consider the moon for a moment. The moon is certainly a planetary body that is known to exert an influence. There is evidence that in some people it affects mood (and I’m not talking about werewolves here); it has certainly been a powerful influence on the evolution of the female menstrual cycle, and it, along with the sun’s powerful gravitational influence creates the tides and, therefore, might be expected to have some small effect on all of the water present in the human body. That effect, though very subtle, may well have an influence. If you are a believer in the power of homeopathy then you will have no trouble accepting that tiny influences can have powerful effects.

So I find it interesting that Sharon Ward identifies the Moon Sign as significant in guiding people to lose their excess weight. This is because the Moon is ‘connected’ to the stomach and digestive systems.

“Astrology works on the premise that when you are emotionally balanced and happy then you are physically well and healthy and vice versa.  Medical astrology holds the key to re-balancing our bodily systems and bringing to us a greater sense of health and well being. We each have a Moon sign, just as we have a Sun sign. The Moon governs the inner self and the emotions and as we often use food as a response to life’s stresses and strains, it makes sense to find out where our weaknesses lie and what types of food are best for us according to our Moon Sign.”

Sharon Ward

So I checked my Moon Sign with Sharon’s handy calculator and found out that my Moon Sign is Capricorn (My Sun sign is Libra).

Then checked what it said about me based on my Capricornian Moon Sign.

My Inner Personality  I’d score about 70% accurate.

My Eating Habits (which after all is what this is supposed to be sorting out) I’d give about 5% accurate.

What You Need to Change and Why made me laugh.

“As you can be some what inflexible emotionally, preferring life to be structured and rational, it follows that your body can have problems with its structure – namely the bones and joints. It is important that you take care of yourself with an adequate intake of calcium rich foods such as dairy products, especially cheese, as well as sardines and green vegetables.”

…because I have a dairy intolerance.

Though apart from the dairy thing this whole section seemed to have some good advice, but it did seem to be good general advice like Vitamin C can help if you suffer from frequent colds and viruses.

Finally we get to the section A New Way Forward and I find I could have written the first paragraph. It’s good advice. It’s the sort of thing I say to my patients, but I don’t think they all have a Capricorn Moon Sign (though since I don’t check I couldn’t be sure).

So Sharon has some good health and nutrition advice, and I would certainly encourage having a look at what she suggests for you. If you find it resonates with you and you feel some connection to what she says then follow the advice.

For me, the Jury is still out.

 

Don’t forget to post your thoughts below.

Michael

My thanks to:

Lauren Torrisi for the inspiration for this article.

And Sharon Ward. You can also discover your moon sign at the side of Sharon’s page. You need to do this before you check your weight/diet/nutrition advice.

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Weight Loss – How Much Easier Can It Get?

There is an obesity epidemic. It is at its worst in the US, but Western Europe is close behind. The overweight epidemic is even worse. Obesity is the top end of the overweight scale. The massive quantity of excess weight, along with the social pressure to be slim, is spawning a rash of ‘celebrity’ diets, ‘fat clubs’, surgery, magic herbal – and magic pharmaceutical – tablets. However, there is an easy and often overlooked solution to the weight loss problem.

But the biggest part of the problem is the lack of willingness to take personal responsibility for how we treat our bodies. This is evidenced by the fact that we want ‘magical’ solutions in much the same way that we turn on the tv and are provided with instant mind-numbing ‘entertainment’.

Working towards a goal and experiencing a wonderful sense of achievement for having accomplished something quite challenging no longer seems important.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that it is easy to take personal responsibility. I’m not suggesting for a minute that life hasn’t conspired to train you into bad habits with food. Neither am I suggesting that you shouldn’t watch tv if you enjoy it. What I am suggesting is that taking responsibility doesn’t mean that losing weight has to be difficult. It does mean getting real and stopping looking for magical solutions that do you more harm than the excess food you eat.

Losing weight is simple. Eat less… exercise more…

That’s all you have to do.

Notice that I’m not suggesting you eat very little and spend all day on the treadmill.

You eat a little less and you exercise a little more and you weigh yourself once a week.

At some point you’ll notice that your weight stabilises. When that happens you’ve found the balance between the fuel you eat and the energy you use up during the day. From this point if you eat a little less and exercise a little more you will start to lose weight. When you cut down food intake and increase exercise a little bit at a time it’s no big deal and you quickly get used to eating less and being more active. Once you’re used to that you can eat a little less and exercise a little more again and it will be no more difficult than the first time.

When you make small changes and wait until you get used to that change – that is the change becomes normal for you, then no change you make is ever harder than the first small change you make. It is only when you contemplate the total shift you need to make (all those small changes added together) that it becomes overwhelming and self-sabotage sets in because the task seems too big.

Now pretty much all the exercise I get is walking at a pace that’s comfortable for me and gets my heart rate up a little. I manage to walk between 5 and 10 miles a week, sometimes a little more. When I keep up the exercise my weight drops slowly, and my fitness increases. When I allow life, or the weather, get in the way of my exercise routine my weight increases and my fitness drops.

Loretta Moore dropped 69lbs in 24 months by walking and making some changes to her eating patterns. She also no longer has a blood pressure problem for which she was receiving medication.

Jodi Davies lost 162lbs in 16 months. She walked for exercise and made some changes to her eating habits.

I know that the bigger the weight problem the harder it is to exercise. But exercising is something that gets a little easier every time you do it. The biggest problem is overcoming the resistance to getting up out of the chair. This is why it’s really important to get into a routine. When you do something at the same time each day, even walking the same route, it becomes a habit and once it becomes a habit it’s easier to do than not do.

So make that commitment to yourself now that you will eat a little less and exercise a little more. In fact why not get up now and take a few steps.

It’s a start.

My thanks to:

The Detroit Free Press for the examples.

MIchael