Lifestyle Choices

Stomachs very commonly sag after pregnancy, sometimes after one, certainly after several. They also sag as we age or after significant weight gain followed by significant weight loss. Abdominal surgery of various kinds may often leave the stomach muscles slack and the skin covering flabby. Whatever the cause, the effects are very commonly distressing. In western culture, a flat stomach is perhaps too much prized and admired but prized and admired it is, if more by women than by men. Abdominoplasty, surgery to reduce the stomach, restores muscle tone and smooth stomach appearance. The cost, however, inevitably, is extensive scarring. (more…)

Fat suction, known technically as lipolysis or suction assisted lipectomy, is still a relatively new procedure. It was developed in France in the last decade and now is a very common cosmetic surgery procedure in the United States and increasingly common here. It has been the cause of a great deal of excitement and raised hopes for those in a permanent struggle with their weight but, while it is indeed a successful method for removing some excess fat, it is not a procedure that is suitable for those who are most overweight. It is not a surgical alternative to dieting. (more…)

Most people who are plump are jolly and good natured. They are pleasant and easy going and not at all hard to get along with—until perhaps they take it into their heads to begin to reduce! Most of them are full of alibis and reasons for their extra weight. Except in rare cases there is only one reason why any of them are plump and well padded. They just love to eat! (more…)

Most people who are plump are jolly and good natured. They are pleasant and easy going and not at all hard to get along with—until perhaps they take it into their heads to begin to reduce! Most of them are full of alibis and reasons for their extra weight. Except in rare cases there is only one reason why any of them are plump and well padded. They just love to eat!

“What’s the use?” they wail. “Everything I eat turns to fat. I just can’t lose weight.” This is probably true, partly because of the way they are going about it.

Going on a reducing diet is no new experience for most of these people. Usually they have tried all kinds of diets, liberal and otherwise. For a time they succeed, but in the end they often find themselves back at the same old level, far above the average for their height and age. Sometimes they are the butt of unfortunate jokes among their friends. In desperation they determine once and for all to lose weight. They are invariably in a hurry to do this. Some abandon food altogether for a time, only to return to their former eating habits with a vengeance and perhaps add a few more pounds. This is not a sensible way to lose weight. (more…)

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…)

Lean is supposed to be beautiful. As a result, some women spend most of their adult lives trying to get thin and stay that way. For, in our society, thinness has become a symbol of loveliness, success, self-control, and social acceptability—and being overweight the twentieth-century bete noire of womanhood. You know the kind of thing: “Lose that nasty twenty-five pounds with our super new slenderizing regimen and it will transform your life into a wonderful world of bliss.” Well, don’t believe it. (more…)

About 5 percent of overweight is considered to be the result of a metabolic disturbance. But most often the cortical or hypothalmic dysfunctions on which overweight is blamed are the results of overweight rather than the cause. Sometimes a tendency to be fat originates in infancy. Bottle feeding and the early introduction of solid foods often result in overfeeding, which probably sets up eating patterns that are carried over into childhood and adult life. Some authorities believe too that when a baby is fed too much, it develops an excessive number of fat cells and from then on will always have a tendency to be fat. (more…)

Going on and off fad diets is an ineffective way to lose weight. It can also be dangerous, for you risk creating subclinical vitamin and mineral deficiencies that will not only affect your physical well-being and your emotional stability, but in the long run can also make your weight problem even worse. Fad diets upset your health in another way as well— because of the inevitable weight gain that follows each. When your weight seesaws up and down your skin ages more rapidly and serum cholesterol builds up in the cardiovascular system, making you more susceptible to heart disease. (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…)

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…)

The average member of Weight Watchers is 2¹/2 stone overweight. However, this number is high owing to the few obese members who push up the average. Most members have only a stone to lose. Do most of their members need to lose this weight or are they responding to media pressure to be thin?

Slimmer Clubs accept people with only a few pounds to lose. These women are encouraged to see these few pounds as a problem and something to get rid of. They are not asked why they want to be that little bit thinner.

The Cambridge diet is recommended for use by the severely overweight only, i.e. those about 50 per cent above the average weight for their height. Yet it is available to anyone who wants to lose weight — even if that person just sees themselves as fat.

Women who are not obese or even overweight also want to lose weight. They believe that if they could shed a few pounds their lives would be better and they would be happier people. These women also attend slimming clubs and read the dieting literature. (more…)

The results from this suggest that things are not quite as gloomy as predicted. However, even when women are involved in a strict regime with supervision and support, weight loss and in particular maintaining this weight loss is very difficult. Other studies have also investigated weight loss in the obese and have found similar results. In 1986 Dr Kramer and his colleagues found that 70 per cent of his obese dieters regained all the weight they had lost and a further study suggests that up to 81 per cent of obese dieters may weigh the same as they did before dieting.

This would suggest there is still no hard and fast set of rules for weight loss if you are obese. Dieting may result in initial weight loss but maintaining this loss is problematic. However, this does not mean that the obese and overweight should necessarily give up or stop asking for professional help. (more…)

A survey carried out in Britain suggests that about one in ten members of slimming clubs such as Weight Watchers and Slimming Magazine reach their target weight. However, it is difficult to understand what these figures actually mean. The clubs do not keep any information as to the weights of these women initially so there is no way of knowing how much weight they had to lose to be regarded as successes. In addition, the clubs cannot provide any information as to whether this includes all the women who drop out from lack of weight loss and whether it accounts for those who leave and then return for another try. It is possible that a woman who left and joined several times could be counted as many members.

One of the problems with assessing how successful dieters are at losing weight is evaluating how much these dieters wanted to lose in the first place. (more…)

The second obvious change which happens to dieters is that they become preoccupied and obsessed with their weight. The original motivation to lose weight is complex and yet the main focus is to feel and look more attractive and to feel in control.

Yet dieting shifts the focus from feeling and looking better to what the scales say. Weight/height charts do not say that your ideal weight is when you feel good about yourself. They say you should weigh 8 stone 31/2 pounds or 9 stone 2 pounds. They precisely select and advise a weight for you. Every women has a different bone structure, a different facial structure and is a different age. What may suit a 30-year-old would make a 45-year-old look scrawny, and yet the dieting industry sells us a specific weight as if we are all the same. (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…)

What if you have made it to the end of week three, can see improvements but you are just not losing weight. What has gone wrong?

I can understand how frustrating this must feel. No single diet works for everyone, as there are many different causes of weight gain. The possible reasons below may explain what is holding you back.

Are you losing inches rather than weight?

This is good news. It means that you are making lean muscle, which is heavier, but has the capacity to burn more fat. Keep going. The weight loss will follow.

Are you are still drinking alcohol, sugary drinks and/or caffeine? If you are and you’re not losing weight, it is time to bite the bullet and give them up. (more…)