[CyberTOPS] 9 Hard cold facts on Weight Loss

[Kathy Eanes]

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Nine Cold, Hard Weight Loss Truths

By: Brie Cadman (View Profile)

Even if youre not trying to lose weight, chances are youve seen some ideas
on how to do so:

Eat what you want and lose weight!
Lose thirty pounds in thirty days!
Finally, a diet that really works!
Lose one jean size every seven days!
Top three fat burners revealed
Ten minutes to a tighter tummy!

But these claims are readily rebuked by anyone whos tried to lose five, ten,
or one hundred pounds. Losing weight aint that easy. Its not in a pill, it
doesnt (usually) happen in thirty days, and judging from the myriad plans out
there, there is no one diet that works for everyone.

Looking past the outrageous claims, there are a few hard truths the diet/food
industry isnt going to tell you, but might just help you take a more
realistic approach to sustained weight loss.

1. You have to exercise more than you think.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends getting at least
thirty minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week; this includes
things like shoveling snow and gardening. And while this is great for
improving heart health and staying active, research indicates that those
looking to lose weight or maintain weight loss have to do moreabout twice as
much.

For instance, members of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR)a group
of over 5,000 individuals who have lost an average of sixty-six pounds and
kept it off for five and a half yearsexercise for about an hour, every day.

A study published in the July 28, 2008 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine
supports this observational finding. The researchers enrolled 200 overweight
and obese women on a diet and exercise regimen and followed them for two
years. Compared with those that gained some of their weight back, the women
who were able to sustain a weight loss of 10 percent of their initial weight
for two years exercised consistently and regularlyabout 275 minutes a week,
or fifty-five minutes of exercise at least five days a week.

In other words, things like taking the stairs, walking to the store, and
gardening are great ways to boost activity level, but losing serious weight
means exercising regularly for an hour or so. However, this doesnt mean you
have to start running or kickboxingthe most frequently reported form of
activity in the NWCR group is walking.

2. A half-hour walk doesnt equal a brownie.
I remember going out to eat with some friends after a bike ride. Someone
commented on how we deserved dessert because we had just spent the day
exercising; in fact, we had taken a leisurely twenty-minute ride through the
park. This probably burned the calories in a slice of our French bread, but
definitely not those in the caramel fudge brownie dessert. Bummer.

And while its easy to underestimate how many calories something has, its
also easy to overestimate how many calories we burn while exercising. Double
bummer.

Even if you exercise a fair amount, its not carte blanche to eat whatever you
want. (Unless you exercise a ton, have the metabolism of a sixteen-year-old
boy, and really can eat whatever you want). A report investigating the
commonly-held beliefs about exercising, published in the Journal of the
American Dietetic Association, concludes that although exercise does burn
calories during and after exercise, for overweight persons, excessive caloric
expenditure has limited implications for substantially reducing body weight
independent of nutritional modifications. In other words, to lose weight, you
have to cut calories and increase exercise.

3. You have time to exercise.
If you have time to check email, watch a sitcom or two, surf the internet,
have drinks/coffee/dinner with friends, go clothes shopping, and on and on,
then you have time to exercise. Yes, sometimes you have to sacrifice sleep,
TV, or leisure time to fit it in. Yes, sometimes you have to prioritize your
exercise time over other things. But your health and the feeling you get after
having worked out is well worth it.

4. Eating more of something wont help you lose weight.
The food industry is keen to latch onto weight loss research and spin it for
their sales purposes. A prime example is the widespread claim that eating more
dairy products will help you lose weight. However, a recent review of
forty-nine clinical trials from 1966 to 2007 showed that neither dairy nor
calcium supplements helped people lose weight.

This ideathat eating more of a certain type of product will help you lose
weightis constantly regurgitated on supermarket shelves (think low-fat cake,
low-carb crackers, high in whole grain cookies, and trans fat-free chips), but
is in direct opposition to the basic idea behind weight lossthat we have to
eat less, not more.

5. Calories in = calories out?
There is a fair amount of controversy over the basic question of how people
gain weight. Is it simply a matter of energy intake being greater than energy
expenditure? Or is there more too it; do the type of calories we eat matter
and can avoiding certain types help to lose or prevent weight? The low-fat,
low-carb, and glycemic index advocates cant seem to agree on which it is.

However, most can agree, and logical sense would tell us, that drinking 500
calories of soda is not equal to eating 500 calories of chicken and broccoli.
One is simply empty caloriesthose that provide no real nutritional benefit
and dont do much to combat hunger. Whether you ascribe to the simple idea of
trying to burn more calories than you take in or focus on avoiding certain
types of calories, you want to minimize intake of empty calories, and maximize
nutrient-dense calories.

6. Your body is working against you.
Most people have noticed that its hard to lose weight, but easy to gain it.
This is a relic of harder times, when food was not as abundant as it is today.
Our genetic taste buds made energy-dense food desirable because it was
necessary to pack away calories so we could make it through the thin times. We
feasted when we could, in preparation for the famine.

But now that we live in a time of abundance, that system predisposes many of
us for weight gain and retention. And for obese dieters, this system is even
harder to overcome; after weight loss, they become better at using fuel and
storing fat, making it harder to keep weight off. However, this isnt to say
that many havent lost weight and kept it off successfully. It just means you
have to be diligent.

7. Our cultural environment is also working against you.
Lets face it, American society does not make it easy on those trying to eat
healthfully and exercise. According to Linda Bacon, associate professor of
nutrition at UC Davis, We get a tremendous amount of pressure to eat for
reasons other than nurturing ourselves, and over time, people lose sensitivity
to hunger/fullness/appetite signals meant to keep them healthy and well
nourished. Its hard for people to come to a healthy sense of themselves given
the cultural climate, and nutritious and pleasurable options for healthy food
are not as easily accessible as less nutritious.

That doesnt mean this cant be overcome, but it does require maybe putting
other parts of your life on a diet. TV would be the biggest culprit, since
many food advertisements, especially for childrens junk food, come during
this time. Other areas to put on a diet are chain and fast food restaurants
(where portion sizes are distorted), a bad-influence friend, or driving, which
may help increase walking and biking.

8. Maybe you dont need to lose weight.
Some feel that the medical problems associated with excess weight are
exaggerated. Gina Kolata, a New York Times science writer questions the notion
that thin is a realistic or necessary objective for most. In her book,
Rethinking Thin, she asserts that weight loss is an unachievable goal for
many, and that losing weight isnt so much about health as it is about money,
trends, and impossible ideals. Recent research also challenges the idea that
being overweight is bad. A study in JAMA found that being twenty-five pounds
overweight did not increase the risk of heart disease and cancer, and may even
help stave off infections.

Its true that people can be fit and healthy and not necessarily be thin, just
as its true that thin people may not necessarily be healthy. Good health,
rather than weight, should be our focus; too often, its not. Striving for an
unhealthy level of thinness may be detrimental to our health, but
understanding the health repercussions of obesity is also critical.

9. This is not a diet; this is your life.
The diet industry would have us all think that we can lose weight fast, and
thats that. But most people who maintain their weight understand that eating
and exercising are not temporary conditions, to be dumped once a pair of jeans
fit. Instead, they are lifestyle choices, and ones to be made for the long
haul

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