Feb 09 2010
weight loss plan
Sources: weight loss diets
Losing weight and getting fit preoccupied Americans in 2009:
- Nearly one out of two American women, including high school girls, were on a diet.
- Over 40 billion was spent on branded diet plans.
- Children as young as 9 to 11 years old were sometimes or very often dieting.
Yet an epidemic of obesity continues to affect more people than ever before:
- Less than a third of adults enjoyed normal weight.
- Children were two to three times more likely to be overweight today than they were 30 years ago.
Can we begin to reverse these worrisome trends in 2010?
We can if we update our old views with new ways to look at fitness in the coming year.
Old View: It's hopeless! Efforts to lose weight are inevitably doomed to fail. Even if a person manages to lose weight, he or she will eventually regain the weight and add back even more.
New View: You can do it! Strategies for making healthier choices involving diet, physical conditioning and improved self-care are available to you and can be learned. Championing this view is Kelly Brownell, Ph. D., who heads the LEARN Program for Weight Management at Yale University. And thanks to widespread access to the Internet, peer counseling in online communities is expanding. Internet support may include food and exercise diaries, weekly counseling, online weight-loss lessons and motivational phone calls.
Old View: Thin is in! Most individuals, especially women, seek to lose weight because they have internalized the media's ultrathin ideal.
New View: Healthy is in! Health is replacing vanity as the primary reason for pursuing fitness and weight loss. In 2009, researchers reported that four healthy habits could reduce or eliminate 80 percent of major medical problems: eating a healthy diet, not smoking, exercising regularly and maintaining a normal body weight. This insight, combined with rising medical costs, is triggering a focus on fitness.
Old View: If you are fat, you are a bad person. Obesity is a personal problem caused by a lack of willpower.
New View: Obesity is a disease that is treatable. The cost of providing medical care per person has skyrocketed from $356 in 1970 to $8,160 in 2009. Moreover, in 2009, the cost of treating obesity-related medical problems reached $147 billion. Given these costs, obesity has become a public health concern requiring a multifaceted community-based approach. In response, community leaders in Albert Lea, Minnesota, implemented a comprehensive lifestyle program to improve the health and longevity of the city's residents. To increase employee productivity and reduce health insurance costs and absenteeism, corporate wellness programs are proliferating.
Old View: Low-fat diets are required to lose weight. Eating fat makes a person fat. To lose weight, a dieter needs to stick with low- or no-fat foods.
New View: Total calories actually determine weight. The total calories consumed by a person, whether from carbs, fats or proteins, determines weight. Since the goal is a balanced diet, the Mediterranean diet, which includes healthy fats, is recommended by the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association as a nutritionally sound and healthy eating plan. Nuts, which until recently were on dieters' “do not eat” lists, are making a comeback because of their health benefits, especially almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans and macadamia nuts. Momentum is growing for mandating information on the caloric content of fast foods and food products.
Photo courtesy of everystockphoto.com
Old View: Medical intervention is needed. Weight-loss drugs or bariatric surgery can solve the problem of surplus pounds for many people, and advances in medicine can address obesity-related problems such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer.
New View: A healthy lifestyle is the best way. Prevention, rather than treatment of obesity-related medical problems, will move to the forefront because of the rising cost of medical insurance and healthcare. While the number of bariatric surgeries will continue to skyrocket, family physicians will increasingly write exercise prescriptions in lieu of drug prescriptions.
Old View: Ignore overweight children. Children who are overweight will outgrow their chubbiness, so kids' surplus pounds can be ignored.
New View: Help overweight children now! Dr. Robert Murray, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health, is alarmed that nearly half of kids and teens are overweight or obese and, as a consequence, children's life expectancies are lower than their parents'. Treating childhood obesity is a serious medical problem that if ignored will place the child at risk for heart disease, diabetes and other serious medical conditions.
Old View: Don't ask, don't tell. Asking employees to modify their unhealthful behavior is an invasion of privacy and violates employees' right to choose their own lifestyle.
New View: Offer help, incentives and access to experts. In 2008, medical insurance premiums reached a record $15,609 for a family of four. Employers are proactively seeking to reduce costs (medical insurance, workers' compensation claims and absenteeism) by restructuring benefit programs. In increasing numbers, employees are being offered incentives to quit smoking or lose weight. They face penalties if they refuse to change habits that drive up the cost of healthcare.
Old View: Hard-core exercise one hour daily. Going to a gym daily for a 60-minute workout on a treadmill and resistance equipment is the best way to exercise.
New View: Diversity, fun and enjoyment. Thanks to popular television programs, dancing for fitness is back, particularly Zumba, a one-hour workout that fuses Latin rhythms with calorie-burning dance movements. Exergaming, such as Wii and Dance Dance Revolution, continues to grow in popularity with young and old alike. Michelle Obama has made the Hula-Hoop popular once again. The use of technologically sophisticated feedback gadgets, from pedometers to heart monitors, will expand. To attract members to the gym during tough economic times, more fitness centers will offer cardio cinema so members can watch a movie while exercising.
Will we continue to get fatter until 2018 when, according to research by Kenneth Thorpe, PhD, of Emory University, 40 percent of us will be obese (and another 33 percent overweight)?
If we are to succeed in reversing the obesity trends and mounting medical care costs, we'll have to find new approaches. And the more readily we learn from the past and update our understanding of the complex nature and causes of obesity, the more quickly we can successfully move into a healthy future.
Some dieters want to drop a few pounds to look better in a bathing suit. Others are trying to undo years of bad eating and exercise habits and are in need of education. Still others seek weight loss on a doctor’s orders to avoid serious illness, such as heart disease or diabetes.
All of these people may find things to like about “The Mayo Clinic Diet,” a new book from the respected medical institution. But those in the last two groups could find its program –- the first diet developed by Mayo Clinic — especially helpful.
There are no claims to magic fat-burning ingredients in this book, no nutritional supplements to buy. “The Mayo Clinic Diet” offers sound, health-focused information on how to eat better, move more and change ingrained habits that contribute to overweight and obesity.
The book leads off with "Lose It," a quick-start plan to help dieters drop 6 to 10 pounds in two weeks. In this phase they add five habits (such as eating a healthy breakfast), break five habits (eating in front of the TV) and adopt five bonus habits (keeping food and activity records). The second phase, "Live It," is a lifetime plan designed for weight loss of a pound or 2 a week until the desired weight is reached and can be maintained.
The book offers the usual good dieting and exercise advice, but it goes further.
Mayo Clinic proposes its own healthy weight pyramid, making fruits and vegetables the foundation and putting exercise at the center. (Studies show that people who lose more than 30 pounds and keep it off for five years exercise an hour each day, mostly by walking, according to the book.)
One chapter gives strategies for getting through weight-loss plateaus and relapses. Another is devoted to sticking to the diet when eating out and includes suggestions on how to eat at ethnic restaurants (avoid the fatty spareribs at Chinese restaurants; go for the hot and sour soup). A photo spread on portion control shows common foods eaten at breakfast, with pictures illustrating typical serving sizes compared with Mayo Clinic-suggested servings (8 ounces of orange juice versus 4).
There's an illustrated guide to reading nutrition labels and a checklist of warning signs for when to stop exercising (pain in an arm or the jaw, an irregular heartbeat). An endocrinology specialist, one of several Mayo Clinic professionals who contribute essays to the book, explains in easy-to-understand language some of the science behind nutrition and weight control.
"The Mayo Clinic Diet" is written in a conversational, no-nonsense tone. It's colorful and graphically pleasing with lots of photos, sidebars and tips in bite-size chunks. Also available is "The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal," to use for tracking goals and progress.
– Anne Colby
Photo: “The Mayo Clinic Diet,” Mayo Clinic, Good Books, $25.99 hardcover. Not pictured: “The Mayo Clinic Diet Journal," Mayo Clinic, Good Books, $14.99 plastic comb binding.
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I'm a certified personal trainer and know for a fact that how a person approaches his or her weight loss attack, can create stumbling blocks that will prevent him or her from ever achieving their goals. Here are four wrong ways to start a weight loss plan.
Thinking that wearing what looks like a space suit will help you lose weight faster. The only thing a George Jetson suit will do is make you lose water faster, by causing you to sweat. You'll end up thirsty and gain back the sweat weight by drinking water. These suits look very uncomfortable, and probably are; uncomfortable attire will inhibit your work output, and you'll end up burning fewer calories.
Plus, these “weight loss suits” make you hot and may restrict movement, impairing your ability to work your hardest or run or step your fastest. Wear light, loose workout clothes (a simple tee shirt and lightweight sweat pants), and focus on a rigorous workout, and drink plenty of water.
Thinking that just because your 100-pound weight gain took three years in the making, that it should take three years to lose. A person can gain weight for a variety of reasons, and major weight gains usually do take time. A change in eating and exercise habits, due to unimaginable stress, can still take a few years to result in a 100-pound weight gain.
But with a complete turnaround in eating habits and a renewed commitment to rigorous strength training and vigorous cardio, a person can lose excess body fat in far less time than it took to put it on. But if a person dilly-dallies about exercising, and only half-way makes the effort to improve eating habits, then progress will come very slowly.
Thinking it's not safe to lose more than 2 pounds per week. One pound of fat = 3,500 calories. Suppose an obese sedentary person normally eats 5,000 calories a day. He or she then decides to eat only 3,000 nutritious calories a day (”only” is a relative term here), plus work out for one hour every day. A caloric deficit of 2,000 calories will be created every day. 2,000 X seven days per week = 14,000 calories burned per week, excluding the ones burned from the added exercise. 14,000 divided by 3,500 = 4 pounds per week lost. If this person's exercise burns an extra 500 calories a day, that makes the weekly weight loss total 5 pounds.
To say this is unsafe is to say that it is unsafe to consume 3,000 calories a day and exercise one hour a day! However, if a person goes from 3,000 calories a day to 1,000, then yes, this is very unhealthy and will ultimately screw up metabolism and cause other problems.
Thinking that you should avoid nuts if you're trying to lose weight. Nuts have always gotten a bad rap from the dieting camp. But nuts are super-healthy and improve cholesterol profile. And here's another reason dieters should eat nuts-just two tablespoons' worth can kill appetite for hours! So if you're fighting the urge to dig into the ultra-high-calorie ice cream or finish off the last three slices of pizza, which can be hard to fill up on, instead go for the cashews, pecans, peanuts or walnuts. After two tablespoons, you won't even want to think of eating anything else.
