Weight Loss: There Is A Better Way

If you've been following my "weight loss" series (Why bother? and Why is it so hard?), I've now got to the point where I'm going to be even more blunt and opinionated.
  
When it comes to the matter of body weight/fat there are two types of people; people who have a metabolic/endocrine problem and people who don't.  I previously thought the former group was vanishingly small, but I've been reading and learning a lot and I've changed my mind.  People with genetic, pre-existing endocrine problems -are- rare; people with acquired metabolic problems are pretty common and it's usually varying degrees of insulin sensitivity from the sensitive to bordering on type II diabetes and mainly due to battering the body with high levels of (refined) carbohydrates until it starts to give up.  Some bodies are more susceptible than others to running into problems with this.  Some take a long time to show any effects.  Some never have a problem at all.

Gary Taubes, Tim Noakes, Steven Phinney, Jeff Volek, Peter Attia, Aseem Malhotra, Yoni Freedhoff and many others have researched, thought, read, and digested (pun intended) on the topic and have come to the conclusion that the modern obesity pandemic is caused by cheap, freely available, highly processed, large amounts of carbohydrates in the human diet.  Not just Western society; but increasingly across the whole of the world and as the availability of cheap, highly processed carbs increases, any given country will see an increase in obesity, diabetes and a number of other chronic diseases.

If you put on weight quite easily, are slowly gaining weight as you get older, have a high waist-to-hip ratio, struggle to lose weight or maintain healthy weight, crave foods, get hungry a lot of the time, think about food a lot (in terms of when/where is your next meal coming, or how you can justify eating X or Y, not in terms of a recipe you'd like to try 'cause it looks interesting or it's your job etc.) you are probably along the path to insulin insensitivity/resistance.  If that is the case, you would probably benefit from a low carbohydrate diet for general health reasons and a side-effect of a low carbohydrate diet could well be weight loss.  When I say "diet" here, I do not mean it in the sense of "going on a...", I mean it in the sense of what you eat for now and forever.

If you don't put on weight easily, have a relatively healthy waist-to-hip ratio, don't vary much in body weight with time, have no problem losing a few pounds (maybe for the racing season?), don't get food cravings, don't have "intrusive thoughts of food", then you're probably towards the "no problem" end of the insulin sensitivity scale.  You're quite lucky.  Also, a low carbohydrate diet will probably have little effect on your weight.  That said, there are a good few reasons why you might want to move to a higher fat (and, logically, lower carb) diet (have a read of Why We Get Fat and what to do about it and/or The Great Cholesterol Con).  I don't mean to the extent of this...

...but golly-gosh there are a lot of good things in some of them thar fats like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, beef fat (grass fed), salmon (wild), mackerel, herring, butter and milk (grass fed), eggs (free range, organic), macadamia nuts, brazil nuts etc.

So if you are away from the lucky end of the insulin sensitivity scale and want to change, take a look at your diet.  See how much white flour, potatoes, sugar, white rice etc. you eat, or even how much brown rice, brown flour, brown pasta, bananas, fruit juices etc. if it's more than 200g or so per day.  If you are struggling to lose weight, suffer unpleasant hunger/cravings, can't make it work on a calorie counting diet (usually low fat), CHANGE THE STRATEGY.  Swap low fat for low carb.  Eat real butter, milk, cheese, eggs, meat, fish and feel less hunger.  If you go low enough carb for a few days you'll stop getting cravings, stop the constant thinking about food, stop the horrible hunger sensations.  You'll enjoy what you're eating!  You'll start to find that things like strawberries are insanely sweet-tasting without adding sugar because you can actually taste them properly.  You'll start to find that you don't need a huge plate piled high with pasta, rice, potatoes, bread etc. to feel satisfied after a meal.

And if you think it's all too much like hard work, there are so many quick and easy things you can make/cook/grab on the go.  And if you think low carb is too restrictive and all you'll be eating is bacon and eggs... well, there's a lot of help and ideas and once you get going it's really really easy.

And it's a change for life.

Weight Loss: How NOT to do it!

(If you're looking for "how to do it" go to this post.)

Part I - But I'm eating practically nothing!

It's a common cry; "I'm eating practically nothing, I'm starving, why am I not losing weight?", most usually heard part-way through a weight loss regime that involves reducing calorie intake.

Quite simply, the human body is pretty clever.  Have you seen those documentaries on anorexics who survive on 600-800 kcals a day?  They, even though they weigh very very little, exist on way below the number of calories required to maintain their weight and yet it takes significantly longer for them to lose any further weight than it should do given the deficit they're in.  OK, they're a pretty extreme case, but it does illustrate what the human body can do when put under those kinds of conditions.

If you restrict calories significantly for a period of time (the length of which appears to be dependant on the individual) your body starts to become more creative about using those calories.  The one I noticed more than anything else while I was losing weight was that I got cold.  Not just because I had less fat to keep me warm but because my metabolism slowed down!  My body decided that rather than using up fat (oh yes, and muscle too!) to fuel my needs, it would cut down on generating warmth.  It wasn't a huge amount of temperature drop and I was still losing some weight but there was certainly a trade off there and I got oh so very very cold and had to wear many layers more than I was used to just to stay warm.

Other ways your body will adjust to the continued lower calorie intake is to stop laying down as much glycogen for ready energy for your muscles, so you'll get fatigued more quickly when doing anything physical; like getting out of bed in the morning perhaps... And you'll just not feel like being active, your brain will stop you from wanting to expend energy; you'll feel lethargic and unenthused by activity.

Part II - Complete deprivation is rarely the answer

One of the main reasons many people "fall off the wagon" on a calorie restricted diet is because they have placed extreme restrictions upon themselves in their quest to lose weight.  How many times have you heard "I'll never eat cake again" or similar?

But calorie restricted diets usually dictate denial of some form or another.  I don't mean just cutting down on the overall calorie intake, but cutting out specific foods completely; diets that tell you to cut out all carbs, all fats and sometimes (but vanishingly rarely) almost all protein.  These are just crazy and pretty bad for you if you follow them for any long period of time.  But there are the ones that -seem- sensible, like not eating any butter, fried foods, chocolate, cake, biscuits, chips, red meat, bread, potatoes...

Intolerance-finding diets aside; the problem with completely denying yourself something you really like is that the cravings get stronger and stronger and at some point it's very likely that you'll crack, give in, and binge.  Because we are only human after all and there's only so much denial you can take.  And then, because you've binged, the common thought is "well, I've ruined it all now so I might as well give up" or "I clearly can't do this diet thing, I'm so rubbish, I give up", maybe not right away, but certainly drifting that way and all of the hard slog to date is pretty much for naught; if not worse.  So have a little bit of what you fancy every now and then, plan to have it and plan to have a small bit of the best kind of whatever you really really like maybe once a fortnight or once a week or, if you're one of the lucky people who really like something that's not all that calorific, plan it in as even a daily treat!

For me, I thought it was going to be cheese.  I LOVE cheese.  Really.  Lo-o-o-o-ooooove it.  But, I didn't get cravings for it at all during my weight loss phase.  What I really REALLY wanted after some time of not having it was bread.  Crusty, fluffy, white baguette, to be specific.  Remember, I was on a calorie restriction diet when I lost weight.  Having stopped having sandwiches for lunch; as I just couldn't keep my daily kcals down low enough and still have sandwiches for lunch and a meal in the evening that meant my partner at the time didn't waste away totally as I liked to have the same meal together in the evening (though he always had twice the carb portion as I had and still lost weight!); I changed to salads for lunch.  The salads were tomato based with some tangy bits added for flavour.  But no bread or crutons with lunch salads and no bread or crutons with any soup, as bread is pretty calorific for the portion size.  After 3-4 weeks of that all I wanted to do was buy a whole baguette, or even just a baton, and stuff the whole thing into my face.  Thankfully, I nipped that in the bud by having a small piece of baguette with salad or a soup at the weekends for lunch.  Yes, I still wanted bread with a vengeance, but I got a little top-up of bread every weekend which I'm pretty sure helped me not to go nuts with a baguette at any point.

So, if your thing is cake and you're trying to lose weight by calorie restriction and stay on the wagon; have some cake!  Really!  Just make sure it's a small piece of really nice cake and only do it once a week, tops.  And savour it; enjoy every tiny morsel and lick the plate at the end!  Doing that isn't going to ruin your overall progress and it is very likely to stop you wanting to buy a whole Victoria sponge and scoffing the lot then hating yourself and potentially convincing yourself you can't do this weight loss thing.  But be careful that your definition of a small piece doesn't drift bigger and bigger ;o)  (And make sure you log it in your food diary and that it doesn't put you over maintenance calories for the day.)

But, if you're looking to lose/manage your weight by the carbohydrate restriction method, you will find that you don't get cravings.  Once you have gone through the first few days (which varies from person to person) of adaptation, the cravings simply don't come.  Period.  If you find you are getting them after a couple of weeks, then you've not managed to sufficiently lower your carbohydrate intake, or done it for long enough.  Check what you're eating and if you're not making it yourself, double check the labels for the nutrition information and ingredients.  If you're seeing any of the below in the ingredients list, or if is it labelled "diet" or "low fat", it's likely to have too much carbohydrate in it for your purposes.

Ingredients watch list:-

• <anything> starch  
• Sugar 
• <anything> syrup
• <anything>ose
• Potato
• Sweet potato
• Most root vegetables (except turnip and celeriac)
• Rice 
• Flour (except coconut, almond or other nuts [remember peanuts are not nuts!]) 
• Couscous
• Wheat
• Semolina
• Any other grains
• Any fresh fruits (except berries, an then only in small quantities)
• Any dried fruits

I was accidentally right all along?

Thanks to Dr Tamsin SportieDoc, I am currently half way through reading a very interesting book indeed.  Since I decided to try to lose weight back in 2006, I've been very interested in food, nutrition and the sciency bits behind it.  And it seems like we've (Western society) been swinging to and from the more useful answers over the years: "fatty food is bad!" -> "carbs are bad!" -> "eating fat makes you fat" -> "refined sugars are more evil than crack!" -> "low fat diets!" -> "low carb diets!" -> "nuts are too fatty and make you fat!" -> "eat a handful of nuts a day!"...

When I decided to change my lifestyle and eat differently to firstly lose weight and then keep it off, I reduced my energy intake in the understanding that if "energy in > energy out", you put on weight and the converse of "energy in < energy out" and you lose weight.  And, in the process of doing that I accidentally did something right.  I ended up quite dramatically reducing the amount of carbohydrate I was eating (almost no bread, no pasta pretty much ever, not much potato/rice/starchy veg) and lost a load of weight.  Yes, I also reduced the amount of cheese, butter, oil I ate and had almost no nuts or seeds ever, but I also almost completely cut out alcohol and sugar too.  I also ended up eating quite a lot of nuts and seeds at the tail end of last year, in an attempt to get some more variety and hard-to-get minerals into my diet, which co-incides with another drop in weight and body fat levels.

This is not an image from the book,
but illustrates one of the main points
that insulin inhibits lipolysis (part of
how fat changes from stored
to usable fuel in the body)

I can't explain the theory in the same way as Taubes and nor could I in a few lines of blog post even if I were good at reducing things to simple facts.  The thing is that there's a lot of scene setting and examples that he gives in the book that get you thinking and questioning before he explains what (he and a number of people) believe to be going on inside the mammalian body with what goes in and the effects on body composition and overall body-weight.

I can recommend that you get hold of a copy either in print or digital form and read it.

Having listened to MrTOTKat talking about some of the endurance sports podcasts he listens to, where they've covered topics like ultra-runners running on very little fuel which is mostly not carb-heavy and teaching the body to use fat as a fuel for endurance sports, I was finally given that push by Taubes' book (though I'm only half way through so far) and I'll be testing out some of the theory over the next few weeks, in a very unscientific way, to see if by tweaking and refining my existing pretty reasonable diet I can better control my body fat and then maybe even reduce reliance on carbohydrate as a fuel in the longer term.  Let's see!  If the theories hold up, I should be able to do it with no genuine hunger at all (though I may well have cravings, but that's tough boobies and I can deal with that just fine).  If the experiment yields a positive result, I may well have to go and re-write a bunch of my pages on weight loss and maintenance.  I sincerely hope that is the case!

Healthy living: My Vitality

There are a bajillion diets and self-help books and web sites on how to lose weight out there and they're mostly the same; do this thing or that thing, count this or that and you'll lose weight and feel better etc. etc.  If you've read any of my stuff on weight loss, you'll know my views on all of that.

So, when I was asked if I'd like to try a new site, I thought "bah, it's going to be more of the same old crap", but thought I'd try to have an open mind and read the press release at the very least.

It’s Not All About Weight Loss

With the New Year comes a national obsession with trying to get rid of those ‘extra few pounds’, we all put on over the Festive period, as quickly as possible. It sees thousands of us signing up to gyms, weight loss groups and websites and sales of supplements, promising instant weight loss, soar. In the rush to drop weight however many of us forget that it’s not all about losing weight and let the rest of our health slide. A new ‘healthy lifestyle’ website hopes to counter this trend by offering a member’s site with a difference…

MyVitality.com ‘can’ certainly help you lose weight, but it is so much more than that and is a must for those whose New Year’s resolution isn’t just to drop a few pounds, but to give their general health and wellbeing a boost.

MyVitality is effectively a nutritionist, life coach, beauty therapist and chef all in one. When you sign up to the site you fill in a health questionnaire that asks about your lifestyle and symptoms. It follows this up by asking what your health aims are over the coming months; it’s ok if you just want to lose weight, but what about wanting to get a better night’s sleep, clearing up your skin, beating that bloated belly or having more energy when you come home from work?

Designed by health experts, the system then creates a 24 page profile created specifically for you.  This is no common profile shared by hundreds of people, because the experts behind the site understand that someone who wants to lose fat, but also has issues with energy is going to need a totally different diet plan to someone who wants to get fitter for sport, but struggles with stress.

The profile that is created tells you what your nutritional priorities should be, which foods to eat and what supplements could help you achieve your goals. Alongside these dieting tips the site also helps with ‘lifestyle actions’, whether that’s getting more sleep, deep breathing exercises or getting a better sleeping regime.

Alongside this the site also has a huge resource database to help you achieve your goals and suggests recipes that can help, provides information on herbs, spices, supplements and herbal teas, has a ‘daily action log’ and a ‘hunger scale’ to print off, and even sends you e-mails to steer you in the right direction.

It still looked a bit "we're different from all the rest, honest!", but why not give it a go?  So I filled in a few details and signed up for an account.  The first thing that I was initially confused by was the fact that there was a one month signup after which your account expires, but you could choose to sign up for a rolling monthly subscription thereafter.  Odd, so I thought.  How on earth can you track things and get trends and all the lovely statistics I usually love?  Again, swallowing my preconceptions, I got on with getting started.

The first thing you do is fill in some basics, name, height, weight, measurements and then there's a mahousive, long, long, long questionnaire.  The questions cover all sorts of topics in fine detail... form how often you eat cruciferous vegetables, red meat, dairy, nuts etc. to "do you have loose stools or get diahorrea?(sic)", "do you remember your dreams?"

There are questions about how you feel, physically, mentally and emotionally and whether you're happy with certain things or have feelings of guilt...  in all, somewhere around 200 questions to profile how you are doing in general.

Once you've waded through the quite extensive questions, you are rewarded with the results and a full profile. (I've completed four over the last month; you'd normally only see one listed after your first run through the profiling).

The summary gives you a nice precis of the full 24 section/page report:-




And then you can dive into the full report.  I did get confused at this point as all there is on the site is your report(s), some daily action log sheets to print out, the ability to take a new questionnaire and access to the (rather pathetic) recipe database.  I was expecting other things to log and track, like what I ate or weigh or -something-.  There isn't though.  But... this site is different, so it doesn't matter.  They're proposing a different way of looking at things.

The full report covers a huge range of topics.  All the way through there are reminders that the recommendations on each section don't need to be worried about in isolation - some will say "do more of $x" where the next section says "do less of $x", so in the conclusions at the end there is a final recommendation as to what to do about $x on balance and that's the one you need to take heed of.

Sometimes, it can be a little confused...

There are additional factors that it takes into consideration, such as whether you are involved in heavy exercise:-



Having had a lot of information from you on a range of subjects, there are calculations and decisions made to give you your top 3 areas to target.  God knows if you try to tackle too many things at once, you're quite likely to fail, so it's good that the report gives you the priority areas overall.

The results of the first questionnaire I took targeted these as my highest priorities...

As you can see, it's really not about weight loss, gain or the basics for someone who is very much adrift with the state of their physical health in terms of being heavily overweight.  There is a strong focus on reducing stress factors, getting more sleep, incorporating relaxation and "me time" as well as hitting any areas of nutrition that are weak.



My main recommendations from the first questionnaire were to eat more nuts and seeds, drink peppermint tea and liquorice tea (thanks to TeaPigs and the delicious mint and liquorice tea for hitting the spot there!), and take some time to relax in every day.  It also suggested some supplements (which there's no questions about so there's no data for it to know whether you are or aren't taking them already - which I was for the main one suggested, EFAs or CLA).  There does seem to be a lot of clevers behind the suggestions in each category.  I get the feeling someone has paid for a lot of data and science to populate "the system" with good algorithms and data,

In the report there were suggestions on which were nutrients to hit by priority:-

And where to get them from, naturally, i.e. which foods.

There does seem to be quite a focus on reducing wheat... though I eat very little of it anyway as we only eat bread at the weekend, we almost never eat pasta - sticking to unpeeled root vegetables, couscous, wholegrain rice sometimes.

And the usual red meat hatred, though, hilariously, it's also in my "superfoods" recommendations.

It's nice to see that herbs and spices are also included in the profile recommendations as important and powerful sources of nutrients.  Often when people make the choice to cook as much as possible from raw ingredients, they forget about herbs and spices and they not only make a heck of a difference to the flavours and variety in dishes, they can be pretty handy for plugging some of the vitamin and mineral gaps for minimal effort.

The weakest section, I think, is the recipe and meal suggestions.  It feels half-hearted and a bit of an after-thought.  You can't search on particular ingredients, nor my recipe name.  A bit of a waste of time really and I'd have left it out completely if I were the guys behind myvitality.

So once you've finished the questionnaire and read through the report to learn what the recommendations are and how to improve your overall score and hopefully your wellbeing, you then get motivational emails in your mail box once a day.  They are reminders of things to do and try and a little "uplifting" thought for the day.  Sounds a bit twee, but I quite like them.

Sometimes there are ones with nothing related to food/eating:-

Over time you may well feel differences.  I wasn't expecting to, but I was good and I followed a couple of the main target recommendations... I've added 20-30g of nuts into pretty much every day's eating and I've started to drink mint and liquorice tea and a few other of the recommendations and over the first 2 weeks I -did- notice feeling perkier.  I took a new questionnaire and the score had gone up!

And if you look at the individual factors, you can see where the changes have been made:-

Checking in periodically every couple of weeks, with the little changes I had been introducing, I could see improvements:-

Each time following a couple more of the recommendations and... well... after 4 stages of adding in little changes, I've gone from a pretty good start:-

...to a really strong finish:-

I really do feel better, less prickly in the head, my skin wasn't bad but it's almost great now, I feel perky even when I've not had enough sleep and mentally really rather positive (though there are a couple more reasons for that to be the case).

In conclusion, I think this is a great resource for people who already have an open mind to food, nutrition and lifestyle changes.  Someone looking for a quick way to lose weight, or a quick fix for their life problems really isn't going to get far.  And that's why I think it's ahead of it's time to make a great success of itself.  The market is certainly there, but I don't think it's all that big.  There are plenty of people in the world who are a lot more tuned in to the "diets are not the way" modern thinking.  There are lots of people who understand that in order to look/feel better/different you really have to make long term, permanent changes.  This site really is for those people.  I'm just not sure there are enough of them who need or want to pay for the sort of help this site provides for it to make a whole lotta money.