Rethinking the Rules of Weight Loss
Forget what you’ve been told. Forget
what you think you know. Forget the old rules — and you might just
start making some headway.
Feeling confused by all the weight-loss advice out there? No
wonder. Diet trends, infomercials for exercise gadgets, ads for pills,
and even the latest medical breakthroughs all promise to help you shed
unwanted pounds — and they often contradict each other.
With so much weight-loss “wisdom” to wade through, many people simply
throw up their hands and decide they might as well just eat whatever’s
in front of them.
No surprise, then, that we just keep getting fatter: Today, nearly 69
percent of American adults are either overweight or obese, according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the heavier our
nation becomes, the greater our collective risk for many deadly
diseases, including type 2
diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and breast, colon, and prostate cancers — to name just a few.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that we’re not powerless. We needn’t let our
confusion concerning nutrition and fitness prevail over our common sense
and our desire to live healthy, happy lives.
We do, however, need to rethink what we
think we know about dropping pounds and keeping them off.
For starters, we can forget about finding instant fixes and miracle
cures for what are essentially pathological lifestyle habits. “We must
stop falling for the myths that keep us fat and perpetuate an endless
cycle of weight loss and gain,” says
Mark Hyman, MD, best-selling author of
The Blood Sugar Solution and other books, and medical director of the Center for Functional Medicine at Cleveland Clinic.
We all might like the idea of a magic bullet, yet most experts agree
with Hyman that healthy, sustainable weight loss doesn’t come from
extreme measures or single-faceted diets. Nor does it come from relying
on low-fat or low-carb foods and “diet” drinks — which, in fact, have
been shown to hinder weight-loss efforts by messing up metabolism,
contributing to cravings, and undermining energy levels.
If you really want to lose weight and keep it off — or if you just
want to maintain your current weight and stay healthy for the long haul —
start by putting aside fixations with your clothes size and appearance.
Instead, focus on the space between your ears: Weight-loss
misconceptions not only pose an immediate danger to your success, they
can also undermine your metabolism for the long haul.
To help you sort through the tangle of mixed messages to discover
what’s wise, what’s helpful, and what’s not, we’ve identified some of
the most common weight-loss myths, and gathered up the best, most
up-to-date advice for moving beyond them.
Simply putting your focus on eating fewer calories than you burn is a
losing strategy, because this oversimplified numerical approach treats
all calories as equal — which they are not, says David Ludwig, MD, PhD, a
Harvard Medical School professor and internationally respected obesity
researcher. It’s not so much the
quantity of calories we eat that drives weight gain and loss, he asserts, but rather the nature and
quality of those calories.
Why? Because our bodies require a consistent balance of healthy
macro-nutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates), as well as
micronutrients (vitamins, minerals,
antioxidants, phytochemicals), plus adequate phytonutrients, enzymes, fiber, water, and so on in order to function optimally.
When we are missing these elements, our energy levels drop, our
hormones and neurotransmitters get imbalanced, and our metabolism stops
working efficiently. Our vitality suffers, and our bodies don’t regulate
much of anything (including our weight and body composition) as they
are designed to.
The health of our metabolism — the machinery that dictates how we
burn fat and produce muscle — requires whole, “real” foods and the
complex, synergistic blend of nutrients they contain in order to
function properly.
This is why replacing whole foods with “diet” fare (or foods selected
exclusively on the basis of their low-calorie, low-carb, high-protein,
or low-fat characteristics) generally works against long-term weight
loss.
A diverse, whole-foods diet will also naturally offer a relatively low glycemic load (GL) and a high phytonutrient index (PI).
A low-GL meal slows the rate at which carbs turn to sugar in the
bloodstream. And this slow burn allows your body to digest sugars, says
Hyman, “without triggering the metabolic signals that promote hunger and
weight gain.”
Phytonutrients, meanwhile, are powerful healing agents and metabolic
regulators necessary to the body. (For more on phytonutrients, see
“Full-Spectrum Eating”.)
To make the most of the calories you ingest, emphasize foods with a
low GL and high PI, including vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds,
olive oil, whole-kernel grains, teas, herbs, and spices. Say no to diet
plans that emphasize caloric quantity over nutrient quality.
While calorie-restricted diets can and do trigger temporary weight
loss, they also tend to have some unfortunate long-term consequences.
Among the most maddening: They can put the body into a hunger-creating
“fat-conservation” mode.
When you take in fewer calories than are necessary to fuel your
resting metabolic rate (the base amount of caloric energy your body
requires at rest), your body simply compensates by reducing your
metabolic rate.
Goodbye, caloric burn. Hello, weight rebound.
“Your body thinks it’s starving to death,” explains Hyman. As a
result, it not only cuts back on the energy you need to be active and
alert, it also “sets off chemical processes inside you that trigger
cravings and compel you to eat more.”
The net result is a lack of appetite regulation, a reduction in physical activity, and an increase in fat storage.
You can get a rough estimate of your resting
metabolic rate,
says Hyman, by multiplying your weight in pounds by 10: If you weigh
150 pounds, for example, your resting metabolic rate would be
approximately 1,500 calories per day.
“If you eat less than that amount, your body will instantly perceive
danger and turn on the alarm system that protects you from starvation
and slows your metabolism,” says Hyman.
The deprivation diet — characterized by
“just-until-I-lose-this-weight” thinking — is another enemy of weight
loss. It causes us to alternate between extremes of “on diet” and “off
diet” behavior.
“Eventually you’re going to stop consuming less, and when you stop,
you will gain back more fat than you lost,” says Jonathan Bailor, author
of the
New York Times bestseller
The Calorie Myth.
“Because when you go back to eating your previous diet, you will be
putting that high-calorie, low-quality food into a destroyed metabolic
system.”
Overall, these experts agree, dieting sets us up to have an unhealthy
relationship with food that can turn weight management into a
miserable, lifelong struggle.
A better approach is to decide to eat healthy for life. Enjoy
delicious, whole, high-quality foods in ways that nurture your body for
the long haul.
Diet “dictocrats” have been pointing out the evils of fat for so long
that many of us can’t indulge in anything beyond low-fat yogurt without
guilt. But avoiding fat is a huge mistake, says journalist Nina
Teicholz, author of
The Big Fat Surprise. In fact, taking in an adequate supply of
healthy fats is essential to proper body composition, whole-body health, and long-term weight management.
The key is understanding the differences between bad fats (notably
the trans fats and unstable or rancid fats often found in processed
foods) and good fats (namely those found in fresh, whole foods like
nuts, seeds, fish, and wild or pasture-fed meats).
Biochemist and nutritionist Mary Enig, PhD, and nutrition researcher Sally Fallon, authors of
Eat Fat, Lose Fat,
specifically advise eating small to moderate amounts of saturated fat,
the kind found in real butter, cream, grassfed meats, and virgin coconut
oil.
Your body needs not only omega-3 fats, they say, but also some
plant-based omega-6s and a certain amount of the much-maligned saturated
fat in order to nourish your brain, heart, nerves, hormones, and cell
structures.
Fail to get these fats, assert Enig and Fallon, and both your health
and weight-loss efforts will suffer for it: “Your energy drops, your
nerves don’t fire efficiently, glands malfunction, and your hormones and
metabolism head south,” they explain. “With cells weakened from lack of
necessary nutrition, weight loss is an uphill battle.”
Eating a moderate amount of the good fats found in whole foods not
only helps our bodies stay healthy and vibrant, it also delivers the
benefit of controlling blood-sugar levels and appetite, both of which
have a direct impact on successful weight loss and maintenance.
Most nutrition experts suggest getting between 20 and 35 percent of
your daily calories from fat, and many now advocate for more. Be
vigilant about including fat in the form of nutritious whole foods
(think avocados, nuts, fish), healthy oils (cold-pressed olive, seed,
nut), and some appetite-satisfying saturated-fat indulgences (real
butter and cream, grassfed meats, coconut).
Yes, exercise burns calories, and burning calories can help you lose
weight. But exercising for improved fitness has many weight-loss
benefits that go beyond per-session caloric burn. Understanding this can
make a huge difference in how you approach your workout routine.
Being fit gives you a distinct metabolic advantage at a cellular
level. Fit people have a greater number of mitochondria — the energy
factories within our cells. Mitochondria handle the aerobic oxidation of
fatty acids (fat burning!) that occurs even when we’re at rest. Thus,
increasing the number of mitochondria through exercise helps raise our
metabolism so we burn more calories — not only with every workout
session, but also when we’re not exercising at all.
Performed at the proper intensities and intervals, both strength and
cardio training can help build lean muscle mass, increase mitochondrial
function, and, in turn, increase metabolic rate.
Fitness-focused exercise also improves your strength and endurance,
which makes activities of all kinds easier, and thus encourages you to
be more active overall. And, since regular exercise also improves your
energy level, confidence, emotional outlook, and self-esteem, it can
help you get through weight-loss plateaus, when you’re not seeing the
inches melt off as quickly as you’d like.
Weight loss starts with the brain, not the belly,” says psychotherapist Doris Wild Helmering, MSW, coauthor of
Think Thin, Be Thin.
For many people, achieving a healthy weight is possible only once
certain mental and emotional issues have been addressed. Why? Because
many of us overeat or avoid exercise for reasons we don’t entirely
understand — or that we feel powerless to control.
Maybe we make poor choices when we’re stressed out, sad, ashamed, or
angry.
Maybe we make unconscious choices when we’re tired, distracted, or
numbed out. Whatever the reason, says Helmering, the excess weight we
carry on the outside is sometimes the symptom of an unresolved problem
on the inside.
In such cases, the first step is to turn inward and ask some
questions. “‘What am I really hungry for?’ Perhaps you need a hug or a
word of encouragement from a friend instead of that piece of leftover
chocolate pie in the refrigerator,” she says. Perhaps you need to bust
out of a stressful job, destructive relationship, or self-abusive
attitude to make your health and well-being a priority.
Ultimately, for your weight-loss efforts to be successful and sustainable, both your body and your mind have to be on board.
Anika Christ is a senior program manager of Life Time Weight Loss
