Lifestyle Choices

Why do you want to reduce? Probably for two reasons. You are not happy over what you see when you look into the mirror, and you don’t like what your friends are saying. But do not be in too much of a hurry to get those pounds off. This is where you might have failed before. It is usually better to reduce more slowly. It is not a temporary low calorie diet that you need, but rather an entirely new pattern of living.

Most likely you will not need to make any drastic changes in your diet. Just be sure it is well balanced. Begin by taking smaller amounts of foods you usually eat. Don’t cut out any single item except, perhaps, those rich desserts that you don’t really need. But remember, some foods high in calories may also be necessary to maintain good health.

Potatoes and whole-grain cereals are excellent foods. They should remain in your diet. Just be careful about the amount of food that you take. Omit those that are especially high in fats and carbohydrates. It is so easy to take more than you actually want. Watch this carefully. (more…)

Step Four: Take a Look at How Fast You Eat

Overweight people tend to eat much faster than their slimmer friends. When you eat too fast you bring about two negative effects, both of which should be eliminated from any weight-loss diet. First, eating fast makes you unaware of both the taste of what you are eating and also how much of it is going down. You eat a lot simply because you have no real idea of how much you are taking in. This, and the fact that you will not be able to digest fully the starches you eat unless you chew them thoroughly, make it important that you slow down. (more…)

Behavioral psychologists begin with the notion that eating behavior is learned and maintained as a result of interaction between you and your environment. And their definition of environment includes everything around you—people, events, things you see and respond to. These psychologists are not very interested in deep-seated motives for compulsive eating and they acknowledge that there is nothing you can do to change your genetic inheritance. But what you can do, they say, is to get to grips with overweight by looking at it as a voluntary disorder brought about by habit and environmental stimuli (remember how the habit of eating at certain times or the sight of food triggers hunger in overweight people). Change your environment, they say, and you will alter your habits and your eating patterns so you lose weight and keep it off. (more…)

Are you really? In an overweight society someone who is lean can feel like a freak when there is nothing wrong with her. And there can be real advantages to being thin. For instance, you are likely to live longer, be healthier, and excel in sports that demand skill. You also probably look great in your clothes.

If you are genuinely underweight, gaining weight is not just a matter of eating more jelly doughnuts. Many factors figure in why someone is excessively thin and all of them must be taken into account if you are going to do something about it. (more…)

The only way to lose weight is to change your eating habits permanently so you follow a life regimen of eating moderate quantities of good, wholesome food, which provides a full complement of nutrition for lasting health and beauty. This means reeducating both your palate (to expect different tasting, lighter foods) and your appetite so that you lose weight gradually. This way you also do not have any of the diet shock that leads to going off a regimen and defeats its purpose. Two pounds a week weight loss should be your goal, not more. Then you can keep it off. (more…)

Let’s Look at Food Combining

First developed by Dr. William Howard Hay, the theory behind careful food combining is simple: don’t mix protein or acid fruits with carbohydrates at the same meal. If your enzyme system is not as good as it should be, eating concentrated proteins and starches at the same meal can play havoc with digestion, increasing the number of incompletely broken down food particles that find their way into the bloodstream to cause trouble. Concentrated proteins such as cheese, eggs, fish, and meat need an acid medium for digestion. If there are any concentrated starch or sugar foods in the stomach at the same time this can interfere with or even neutralize the acid medium so that the proteins are incompletely digested. (more…)

They do exist, particularly among women who have been on the weight seesaw for many years through crash dieting. Sensitivities to specific foods such as milk and milk products or grains (the two most common culprits) can make reducing almost an impossibility, for in the allergy- prone woman, the foods to which she is sensitive are invariably those that she craves and also those that, when she eats them, increase her appetite and lure her into giving up her weight loss program. For instance, I knew one woman who was allergic to wheat (although she wasn’t aware of it at the time). She would go on a reducing diet and stick to it conscientiously until the third day, when the diet called for a piece of toast. (more…)

If your clothes are getting too tight, do not go out and buy a bigger size. Resolve absolutely to make those clothes comfortable again. Analyse the situation and think of all the things you could do. You could get out your Picture in Words and remind yourself of all the reasons why you started this process and how you do not want to be back at the beginning again.

Catch yourself early. Most people manage their weight, but the difference is that people with a weight problem tend to let it go much further and have to take far bigger and more drastic action later on. They do not tend to take early action, whereas people who tend to be successful at managing their weight take action much sooner, at the first sign of their clothes getting a little bit tight. (more…)

The behavioural treatment of obesity is based on changing daily habits and behaviours to reach the desired goal. The basic premise of behaviour therapy is to reward beneficial behaviours and discourage detrimental ones. However, state of the art behavioural treatment has a wider perspective and focuses on eating behaviours, social support, exercise, attitudes and nutrition. The aim is to modify the situations which promote eating and to evaluate the consequences of eating behaviour. Behaviour therapy involves specific processes which are aimed at modifying behaviour.

Self-monitoring

The client is asked to monitor when she eats, how much she eats and why she eats. This increases self-awareness so that eating cannot ‘just happen’, and enables her to evaluate her success and whether any changes have occurred. put their eating into context and to learn to say ‘I am not useless, the odd slip is inevitable and I will now return to my diet‘. This eradicates an ‘all or nothing response’ which can often result in the client abandoning the diet. (more…)

Dieting changes your mood and mood changes can cause overeating. Dieters often report feeling positive and motivated at the beginning of a diet. It provides a structure and a goal, and a way to confront life’s problems. However, dieting can also cause misery and feelings of inadequacy.

Women set themselves targets. They aim for a specific rate of weight loss and decide that all they have to do is eat less! However, it is not as simple as this and not losing weight or diet-breaking is depressing. Not being able to achieve these goals can make you feel a failure. Diet-breaking is understood in terms of being weak-willed, and this idea is promoted by the dieting industry which suggests that weight loss is a sign of control, thinness is a sign of control, and not sticking to its diet sheets is due to weakness and not the fault of its diet. (more…)

Dieters become preoccupied with the very substance they are trying to avoid — food. Not all foods, but those which are forbidden and outside the limitations set by the diet. Dieters see these foods as more exciting and pleasurable, and they become increasingly so if they are not eaten for a while.

A well-documented behaviour shown by dieters suggests that if they do actually eat a forbidden food, such as a chocolate bar or a piece of cake, they will then eat more food after it than if they had not eaten that piece of chocolate in the first place. You would expect them to eat less.

Many studies have been carried out both in America and Britain to illustrate this paradoxical behaviour, during which dieters are asked to consume a high calorie food. This is often very hard for the experimenter to do, although not as unethical as it may seem since the dieters always have the choice to say no. (more…)

Choosing to change your diet and lifestyle doesn’t just improve your health; it also changes your life. Even so, it can be a challenge to get started, and hard to stay on track. The keys to success are effective planning — and developing self-belief.

To be successful, you need to plan ahead and set goals, to give yourself time to prepare, both mentally and practically, for your lifestyle change. Deciding in advance what you are going to do and what you want to achieve will build your enthusiasm and help you to commit to the diet, to see off the temptation to stray beforeyou get started.

The most important tip of all is: Believe you can succeed. Your self-belief and the way you talk to yourself will influence your ability to stay the course. Supporting each personal ‘wish’ with a positive programme of action will help you to maintain momentum. (more…)

Lasting weight-loss success is related partly to your understanding of food and what it does to your body, and partly to your mind and how you think. What kind of relationship do you have with food?

Do you live to eat, or eat to live? Are you able to control your diet quite easily, or does food rule your life? Whether you are interested in low-GL as a way to improve your health, lose weight effectively, or both, my Holford Low-GL Diet will help you to listen to your body and to learn the difference between your true hunger signals and your cravings. Importantly, it will also reintroduce you to the taste and flavour of food.

Eating is essential for life and we crave food from the moment we are born. For most, the early months of feeding are connected to feelings of comfort and safety. (more…)

Foods (and drinks) that are ‘out’

Avoid sugar in its many disguises and foods that contain fast-releasing carbohydrates with a high-GL score.

Avoid bad fats, which occur in foods high in saturated, hydrogenated, processed fats or damaged fats, such as sausages, fried food and junk food.

Stop eating any foods you’re allergic to, and find alternatives. Avoid alcohol during the first two weeks to a month on your diet, as its effect on the blood is similar to sugar.

Limit or avoid caffeinated drinks. Ideally, avoid coffee altogether and have no more than two cups of weak tea a day. Caffeinated fizzy drinks are very bad news as they play havoc with your blood sugar levels and will leave you craving more. (more…)

This is a complicated subject because mild depression can make you fat, severe depression can make you thin, while being thin or fat can make you depressed.

Occasionally, weight gain can be due to a particular medical problem (see, for example, Hypothyroidism, opposite), which also causes a depression. (more…)

Total fasting is dangerous as are crash (fast) diets. Crash diets that bring about weight loss by dehydration of only 5 percent in forty-eight hours have been shown to reduce the individual’s working capacity by as much as 40 percent. The practice of making weight in athletics, whether by dehydration, induced vomiting, or starvation diets, is dangerous to health and should be condemned (see Concept 13 on weight control and Concept 19 on dehydration). Much of the weight lost on such fad diets is valuable lean muscle mass.

Pill popping, hormone injections, and powder and liquid diets havt little value in long-term weight control programs and present many health hazards. When in doubt, avoid diets that: (more…)

The first step in fat control is establishing realistic goals.

Too many teens and adults, both men and women, establish unrealistic goals for their physical appearance. Fat weight, and body proportions are all factors that can be changed, but people often set standards for themselves that will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. It is important that goals be set for fat and weight control that can be accomplished for both the short term and the long haul. This necessitates developing an understanding of your own body proportions as well as your body fatness. Unrealistic goals may result in eating disorders (see Concept 20), failure to meet goals, or the failure to maintain fat loss over the long haul. The measurement procedures used in Labs 13A and 13B should help you establish realistic goals.

Goals that emphasize the behavior of eating less and exercising more are more effective than those emphasizing a specific outcome such as weight or fat lost (or gained).

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There are many different positive life-styles that can contribute to optimal health and wellness.

Life-styles are behaviors that are partially or totally in your own control. Some healthy life-styles are listed in the following. Only those considered to be very important to optimal health will be discussed in this concept.

Exercising Regularly

As noted throughout this book and particularly in Concept 3, regular exercise is associated with the reduced risk of many different diseases. Regular physical activity is a positive addiction. It is habit-forming but the result of the habit is positive, not negative. Regular exercise can be fun and can improve the quality of life. It is interesting to note the fact that people who exercise regularly are likely to adopt other healthy lifestyles. For example, regular exercisers are more likely to visit a physician for preventive examinations, practice preventive dentistry, and wear seat belts than sedentary individuals. (more…)

There are some guidelines for controlling the work environment to aid in fat loss.

• Take food from home rather than eating from vending machines or catering trucks. Even snacks should be brought from home where they can be prepared based on guidelines listed above.
• Avoid the use of snack machines. Most snacks from machines are high in calories and low in nutritional value. Fresh fruit from machines is an exception.
• If you eat out, plan your meal selection ahead of time. Write it down and know its calorie content. Be aware that many fast foods are high in caloric content and fat.
• Do not eat while working.
• Avoid sources of food provided by co-workers; for example, food in work rooms such as birthday cakes or candy in candy jars.

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There are some guidelines about shopping that can help people interested in fat control.

• Shop from a list. This helps you avoid the purchase of foods that contain empty calories and other foods that will tempt you to overeat.
• Shop with a friend. This is another way to help you avoid the purchase of unneeded foods. For this technique to work, the other person must be sensitive to your goals. In some cases, a friend can have a bad, rather than a good influence.
• Shop on a full stomach to avoid the temptations of snacking on and buying junk food.
• Check the label for contents of foods. If the calories are not listed, be wary of buying them. Many so-called weight reduction foods have caloric contents equal or in excess of normal foods.

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