Eating Healthy and Weight-Loss
are two separate issues.

 Aligning Nutrition, Calories and Enjoyment 
           
                 by Dr. Arya Sharma, Obesity Management Professor

Healthy eating (at least in the conventional sense) and weight management are actually two different issues - related perhaps, but different!

We only need to remind ourselves of Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, who for 10 weeks sustained himself on a “convenience store diet” consisting largely of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Dorito chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, thereby losing 27 pounds and reducing his BMI from 28.8 to 24.9 - all of this, with no exercise (accompanied by a 40% reduction in triglycerides and a 20% increase in HDL cholesterol - go figure!).

Haub conducted this “experiment” to illustrate one simple point: when you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight - even on the “unhealthiest” diet imaginable (he limited himself to 1800 Cal, well below his estimated requirement of about 2400 Cal).

Conversely, although, I am not sure that anyone has done this, I am completely certain that you could eat the healthiest possible diet (orthorexic organic vegan if you chose) and yet gain weight by consuming more calories than you need.

Thus, the “healthiness” of your diet and the “caloric content” of your diet actually have little to do with each other.

“Healthiness” is a matter of nutrients - ensuring that your diet delivers the appropriate amount of macro and micronutrients to your body to ensure its “nutritional balance”.

However, whether or not you gain or lose weight on that nutritionally balanced “healthy” diet, ultimately depends on its caloric content.

In other words, it does not matter how healthy or unhealthy your diet is - if you don’t cut calories, your weight stays the same. (as 85% of weight management is about calories “in” - let’s not worry about physical activity in this discussion)

Ideally, a “healthy diet” would ensure both “nutritional” and “caloric” balance - i.e. give you all the nutrients you need to be healthy AND exactly the number of calories you need to maintain your weight.

There is, however, a third characteristic of a diet that plays into this discussion - the feeling of enjoyment (pleasure, happiness, excitement, satisfaction, comfort).

Enjoyment is elicited by features like taste, smell and texture, which together make up the palatability of foods. Enjoyment, also involves evocation of pleasant memories and experiences that may be related to certain foods or beverages.

Think of these properties of a “healthy” diet as a triple Venn diagram - the perfect situation would be when all three circles (nutritional balance, caloric balance and enjoyment) completely overlap.

The challenge we often face is of course the fact that, enjoyment (even if it lasts only a brief instant) will often trump both nutritional and caloric balance.

There are of course other factors that may influence dietary decisions including cost, convenience, environmental concerns, ethics, religious beliefs, traditions, etc. but in the end, the challenge is to find a diet that maximizes health and enjoyment while ensuring caloric balance.

                Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes at www. drsharma.ca

Changing is hard.

 When we’ve done something the same way for all our lives, it’s not easy to do it differently. Getting used to changes takes a long time. But if we want a different result in life we have to change what has been – up to now - our normal. When we try to exchange new habits for old habits, we can feel anger and sadness, even when those habits are no longer useful.
We need to take a realistic look at our past and present mistakes,  and come up with some compassionate solutions that will make a difference. Having an open mind means embracing the constantly changing nature of everything. What was good for us yesterday may not be right today. What is right today, may be wrong tomorrow. Change never stops. Many people fall into the trap of thinking they must find A WAY and stick to it forever. But the reality is that everything in life is constantly in a state of flux.

 We need to always be willing to learn something new and adjust our actions accordingly. This is a basic secret to success in anything. It is also one of the most difficult because being open-minded means admitting to the possibility of being wrong, and we prefer being right. Learning involves making mistakes, but mistakes can teach us things.

Exercise will make us FIT, and
If It causes us to eat more,
it will ... indirectly ... cause us to be FAT

The 3 Most Dangerous Words in Weight Management
                               By Yoni Freedhoff

"Because I exercised."

For folks trying to lose or maintain their weight, those three words are dangerous. Our perception of the virtues of exercise often makes us feel as if we deserve or have earned more—an extra helping, an indulgent sweet, or, in my case, a beer or two.

But at what cost?

The calories burned through exercise are anything but fair. To be blunt, you simply can't outrun your fork. What you can consume in minutes might easily take you hours to burn off, yet many people consider exercise to be the bigger player in weight management.

Perhaps the belief comes from television shows like The Biggest Loser. Each episode ends with a "last chance" workout—as if a few hours of overly aggressive gym work will immediately translate into weight loss.

Perhaps it stems from the food industry, which goes out of its way to explain obesity as a consequence of a lack of exercise.

Wherever it comes from, the belief that weight is something you can simply burn off if you hit the gym hard enough is firmly entrenched in the gospel of public perception.

Truth be told, unless you make a living through exercise, for the average Joe or Jane, exercise is likely responsible for—at most—20 to 25 percent of their weight, leaving diet responsible for the lion's share.

While there is no behavior more conducive to good health than regular exercise, if weight's your concern, food is where it's at, and there are two incredibly straightforward things you can do to help.

1. Keep a food diary. I do. In fact, I'm on my longest streak ever, at 550 days without missing an entry. It takes a few months to get good at, but once you're there, it'll take you fewer than five minutes of work a day; five minutes of work that clinical studies have proven will double your weight loss. You can keep food diaries old school with a pad and paper, or download one of the dozens of apps that'll do the math for you.

2. Cook from fresh, whole ingredients. Don't worry about low this or low that, just focus on transforming raw ingredients into homemade meals and you'll be playing it far safer than you would be by dining out or eating a highly processed, but healthy sounding meal.

At the end of the day, if weight's your concern, you're far better off spending time in your kitchen with a pen, than time in your gym with a barbell. And if "because I exercised" really translated well, the gyms that fill up in January wouldn't be empty by March.

 I don't try to follow Rule No 2. Although  I cook a lot, I often eat processed foods. Sometimes I choose to cook with "fresh" "whole" ingredients, and sometimes I choose not to do so.
However, I totally agree with Rule No 1.  I've been keeping a food diary now since September 2004.  I use a computer software program called DietPower,  This morning it tells me that during that 3044 days, I have no missing data.  This means that for the past consecutive 3044 days, I have logged all of my food intake into that computer food diary.  THIS is what helped me lose weight, and I know that it is the primary reason that I'm now beginning my 8th year of maintaining my  weight-loss.

           


While it's a good thing to follow your heart,
it is important to keep Dreams grounded  in Reality.

The 5-year cure rate for obesity is less than the 5-year cure rate for the worst cancer.
This has been the view of the American Medical Association’s Council on Scientific Affairs for the past 25 years. If dieting were a drug, it would have failed the regulatory process due to the fact that it is, generally, not a long-term success.

Are there any successes?
Yes, but these require life-long adherence to a restricted food intake.

Basically speaking, when we gain weight and retain that gain for some time, that new weight is recognized biologically as a new norm. When we lose weight, that same norm -- our new higher weight -- is constantly there and constantly wishing to re-establish itself. Comparatively, losing weight is easy.  It is retaining that weight loss which is a huge challenge.

Rule number one in weight management: If you are at your High weight... whatever it is now, don’t gain any more.