DietPsyche: Making Life a Healthy Habit » Nutrition

Does your risk of death increase as you get fatter?

Anita — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:29:54 +0000

Sadly yes. Your risk of death does increase as you gain fat weight, and this goes for both men and women.

Many researchers use Body Mass Index (BMI) to assess your degree of overweight. To calculate
your BMI divide your weight in kilograms by your height in meters, squared. The normal weight
range is considered to be in the range 18.5-25. Overweight is 25-30, and anything over a BMI of 30 is
considered obese.

The biggest cause of death is coronary vascular disease, and obesity amplifies this. When you get
fatter your blood pressure and cholesterol levels increase. And, if you smoke as well, then the
situation becomes even worse. If you are a normal weight smoker (>20 cigs daily), your mortality
rate (risk of death) is the same as being an obese non-smoker! Smoking and obesity amplify risk
of death. People must give up smoking, and even if they gain weight it is better than continuing to
smoke.

High cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking are the three big factors contributing to heart
attacks. And, obesity makes all of these worse.

Even gaining a modest amount of weight can precipitate chronic disease, making it even more
important to watch your waists.

The normal weight range is a BMI of 18.5-25, but even at a BMI of 21 there is an astonishing increase
of Type 2 Diabetes. The risk of all the obesity related health conditions begin to increase before you
get out of the normal weight range (eg increased risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease
and colon cancer. So don’t kid yourself that you can escape obesity related conditions because you
are in the normal weight range. A BMI band can be up to 16kgs, making it possible to actually be
fat, in the normal BMI range! Asians and Mexicans tend to get obesity related health conditions at
a lower BMI than Caucasians which is why experts are thinking of reducing the top of the normal
weight range for these populations to a BMI of 23.

So, what’s the moral of the story?

The more fat we have, the more likely it is to contribute to our eventual cause of death. Keeping our BMI in the lower part of the normal range optimizes our health and longevity.

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The Pros and Cons of Measuring Fat

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Why We Put on Weight & How Managing Hunger is the Key

Anita — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:54:38 +0000

The most common cause for obesity is eating too much and not exercising enough.

Over the years the energy density of foods has increased markedly. Take a look at the journey of the humble corn cob.

Stage 1: Cob of Corn (146gms), 155kcals, 3.4gm fat, 32gm carbohydrate

Stage 2: Corn Tortilla (42gm), 100kcals, 1gm fat, 18gm carbohydrate

Stage 3: Change the consistency of the tortilla, deep fry it and load it up with everything from refried beans, to cheese, guacamole and cream. The calories/kilojoules explode. And, this is what fast food “joints” are giving us. They are part of our obesogenic landscape.

The kilojoules or kilocalories per gram has increased at least 5-fold!

What research has shown us is that regularly consuming high energy dense foods can lead to a vicious cycle.

This vicious cycle shows how other systems get triggered by weight gain such that the more weight you gain– the hungrier you get and the more you eat. This is a type of feed forward mechanism that drives your weight up. People who are gaining weight appear to get hungrier! The process is complex and not fully understood but appears to be related to a hormone called leptin.

If you can get off the weight gain cycle and get onto one of weight loss then the benefit appears to be that many hormones (such as leptin) are reduced 40-50% when people lose 10% body weight. This weight loss leads to a reduction in the inflammation that causes other risk factors and a reduction in leptin.

Leptin is the hormone in charge of fat storage and appetite. The problem with obese people is they have an overproduction of leptin but the leptin is in their blood and doesn’t get through to the brain to tell it to regulate appetite. Subsequently, the brain assumes you are hungry because it can’t gauge the level of leptin, and you eat more. This is called leptin resistance. What this means is that if you are obese, you are going to have to go through a withdrawal period of perceived hunger until you lose enough weight for your leptin levels to reduce and begin working in the way that more accurately regulates your appetite.

This is an important message so I will say it again. If you are obese, your brain will send strong hunger messages when you decrease your food intake. Just like the withdrawal symptoms one experiences when giving up smoking, you will have to maintain the self-discipline to work your way through the hunger and psychological withdrawal. All the pain will be worth the gain. Keep telling yourself, “What do I want? Trim body or a fat body?” We all know the answer.

To achieve your weight loss dreams, make lower energy food choices and put up with hunger symptoms during the early weight loss stages. The hunger is your hormones. None of us are starving to death to in this supermarket, fast food society!

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http://www.sxc.hu/photo/812172

8 Key Guidelines for Weight Loss

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What else are scientists looking at as causes of obesity?

Anita — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:44:44 +0000

While the most common cause for obesity is eating too much and not exercising enough, a number of other causes and factors associated with obesity are being looked at and these include:

The role of micro-organisms (the bugs that live in your gut change with your weight and scientists are investigating why this occurs and what impact it has on appetite and weight gain)
Epigenetics(the search for genetic factors relating to obesity – not looking too positive)
Increasing maternal age (pears turn into apples as we age!)
Sleep debt (inadequate sleep is associated with weight gain; the brain associates physical tiredness with low energy levels and can respond with an increased appetite to replenish energy)
Endocrine (hormone) disruptors
Medication (e.g. certain medications promote weight gain)

Whatever the cause, nothing happens to the body without the mind’s permission. If it is to be, it is up to me, has to be your mantra. What you eat and how much you exercise is your choice and managing your food intake and physical activity levels is currently the most effective way to lose weight and keep it off.

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Fightening Facts About Fat

Anita — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:34:19 +0000

We used to think fat cells (also called adipocytes) were passive little things whose sole purpose was to store fat. However, fat had us fooled until about a decade ago when we discovered that fat was an active endocrine organ that influenced important events like vascular tone regulation and appetite, to mention just a few of its functions.

Fat cells can enlarge to three times their size but when they do the profile of chemicals they secrete alters and ends up in places like the liver, muscle, pancreas and endothelial tissue as depicted in the picture of the blood vessel. This causes problems. Take fatty liver for example. In the US an increasingly common reason for liver transplants is not because of cirrhosis caused by alcoholism but by Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). Refer to http://www.acg.gi.org/patients/gihealth/fld.asp.

Fat cells on a body are not just aesthetically unattractive when deposits are high it has been linked with the following medical and psycho-social conditions:

Psychosocial complications of obesity include but are not limited to:

Obese children and adults are targets for societal stigmatization – peers, educators, parents, health care professionals
It hinders social emotional and academic development
It effects self-esteem (your self-worth as compared to others)
There is an association between weight and exposure to bullying
Depression

Medical complications of obesity include but are not limited to:

Metabolic conditions: insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes, blood pressure, high blood fats
Heart disease
Nutritional deficiencies such as vitamin D and iron
Orthopaedic complications – knee and other joint pain, higher incidence of fractures, bow legs in children
Osteoarthritis
Endocrine complications e.g. polycystic ovarian syndrome
Some forms of cancer. Research suggests that in both men and women, higher BMI is associated with higher death rates from cancers of the oesophagus, colon and rectum, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and kidney. The same trend applies to cancers of the stomach and prostate in men, and cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovaries in women. Obesity (BMI>30) is also associated with breast cancer in post-menopausal women.
Gallbladder disease
Heartburn and reflux
Sleep apnoea

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The Pros and Cons of Measuring Fat

Anita — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:59:10 +0000

Body Mass Index or BMI is probably the most common measure for assessing your weight range. To calculate your BMI your body weight measured in kilograms is divided by the square of your height in meters. For example, if you are 70kgs and measure 170cms (1.7m) in height your BMI would be as follows:

70/1.7 x 1.7 = 70 /2.89 = 24.22 (normal weight range)

The ranges vary according to ethnicity (covered in another blog) but are generally:

Severely underweight	less than 16.0
Underweight	from 16.0 to 18.5
Normal	from 18.5 to 25
Overweight	from 25 to 30
Obese Class I	from 30 to 35
Obese Class II	from 35 to 40
Obese Class III	over 40

Unfortunately, BMI can be misleading. Take the two people above. Both have a BMI of 40 (obese range). However, the man on the left has a BMI of 40 because he is solid muscle and muscle is twice as heavy as fat. He should not technically be in the obese range. However, the man beside him, should be.

So, while there is usually a good correlation between body fat and BMI there are exceptions such as the one depicted above.

BMI ranges span large weight zones. For the example of the person who is 170cms above when they have a BMI of 20 there weight is 57.8kgs, but when your BMI is 25 (the top of the normal range) your weight is 72.25kgs which is a 14kg difference! Now some people who are 170cms and weigh 72kgs look fit, healthy and muscular, while others may look overweight. To help you interpret your BMI look in the mirror and give yourself a pinch test. Allow common sense to prevail in determining whether you need to lose a few kilos or not.

Interestingly, there is a group of low BMI individuals that researchers call thin-fat. Although their BMI indicates they are lean, when their fat percentage is measured it can indicate that they are actually overweight or even obese. Studies suggest that as many as 29% of people in the normal weight range are obese, and up to 80% in the overweight range are obese. Those who already fall in the BMI range for obesity are usually obese (except for weight lifters and elite sports people).

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The CO$T of OBESITY & National Guidelines for Curbing It

Anita — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 05:57:28 +0000

The Foresight Report (2007) was commissioned in 2005 to look at current obesity trends and to identify how they could be stopped.

“The Foresight Report argues that understanding and preventing obesity is complex. There is no example anywhere in the world where the obesity trend has been reversed. The solution to reversing the trend is more complex than just helping individuals change their diet and take up exercise – although this is a part of the solution.”^[1]

The report found that obesity is still increasing. In fact, obesity is overtaking tobacco in incidence.

The report predicts that by 2032 the increase in myocardial infarction by coronary heart disease will rise because of obesity related disease.

The Foresight Report outlined the following economic burden of obesity:

medical costs for obese patients were 6% to 45% higher than their normal weight peers (this information was drawn from 32 articles across 12 countries)
obesity has been estimated to account for 0.7% – 2.8% of a country’s total health care expenditure
a small change in BMI has an impact on disease burden. A 1% reduction in BMI will drop 6.86 billion in health care cost.

While there are numerous examples of good practice in obesity management, not everyone is practising them. At the European Congress of Obesity held in Istanbul recently (May 2011), a number of speakers commented that while many countries have put forward guidelines for tackling obesity, few of the health professionals working with obese patients read these guidelines! In fact, many professionals when asked what would help them work more effectively with obese patients cite further training as something that would help them.

Below are links to the Foresight Report and Obesity Guidelines from the UK, USA and Australia:

Tackling Obesity: the Foresight Report

http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=8267926

National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) – UK Obesity Guidelines

http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg43

National Heart, Blood & Lung Institute (NHBLI) – Obesity Guidelines from the USA

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/ob_home.htm

National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) – Australian Obesity Guidelines

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/obesityguidelines-index.htm

^[1] Source 1 ↩

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What you should know about nutrition in pregnancy, and the impact it can have on your baby

Anita — Sun, 29 May 2011 09:49:15 +0000

Eating Healthy during Pregnancy

Our development, particularly in utero (during pregnancy) affects the risk of obesity.

Of all the mammals we are the fattest at birth. And yes, that means that at birth we are fatter than seals and whales!

Evolutionary scientists believe we are probably fatter than other mammals at birth because we need an energy supply to enable brain growth post birth. Most of our brain growth occurs after birth because women have small frames that prevent giving birth to babies with big heads!

Scientists propose that the baby having a large fat store at birth may have been useful in situations (such as in primitive times) for mums who couldn’t cope or didn’t have enough nourishment to feed their babies.

Lower weight babies don’t fare better than bigger babies when it comes to health issues later in life. While mothers with inadequate diets during pregnancy may have smaller babies, it has been found that these babies still have higher abdominal fat levels. They just have lower levels of skeletal muscle. Because of the higher abdominal fat levels, the babies of mothers with inadequate diets during pregnancy are at risk of Type 2 Diabetes when they get older.

However, just as a low birth weight puts a baby at risk of diseases like Type 2 Diabetes later in life, so does high birth weight. In a study of Pima Indians both low and high birth weight predicted the development of Type 2 Diabetes between the ages of 20 and 39.

It’s a frightening fact, but the current generation of children and adolescents will have shorter life spans than their parents due to the prevalence of lifestyle diseases contributed to by obesity.

It is important for mothers to have a healthy diet during pregnancy to ensure normal weight babies. Giving birth to larger babies is problematic because once a baby is born it is on a trajectory of fatness. Studies show that fat babies usually stay fat through life.

Don’t kid yourself that diseases like Type 2 Diabetes are due to genetics. There is only a small genetic contribution to diseases like Type 2 Diabetes. The problem is FAT.

A mother’s body composition, her diet and her lifestyle teach her baby about the world she lives in. The mother’s body influences her child’s development from the moment of conception. This means that the mother influences her child’s risk of disease for the rest of her life. Your baby’s health is in your hands, or should I say in your mouth!

What a mother eats during pregnancy is crucial. Low carbohydrate diets that are high in protein, particularly dairy products, are associated with fatter kids at birth. And, this is regardless of the mother’s weight during pregnancy (ie whether she is normal weight or overweight) and the baby’s weight at birth (whether it is high or low). Notwithstanding, research shows that fatter mums have fatter kids.

So, what is the moral of this story? Ensure you eat a healthy and balanced diet during pregnancy, and if you can, attain normal weight before becoming pregnant.

Gestational Diabetes – 2009 International Diabetes Federation Guidelines

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Does eating six small meals a day produce more weight loss than eating three meals a day?

anita — Mon, 10 May 2010 10:24:54 +0000

So, does eating six small meals a day produce more weight loss than eating three meals a day?

Well, the bottom line is that eating 6 meals a day does not lead to more weight loss than eating 3 meals a day.

While some studies have shown that having a higher meal frequency reduces food intake because you are reportedly less hungry, and that this in turn encourages fat loss, other studies have not been able to confirm this relationship. It appears that fat loss is only higher in situations where ‘dieters’ are also exercising more restraint over what they eat, and are also doing more exercise.

A study released this year by the British Journal of Nutrition, suggested that eating small frequent meals did not impact on appetite factors either.

So, what’s the moral of this little story.

a) eat the meal frequency that suits you and your lifestyle, whether it be 3, 4, 5 or 6 meals. For example, many people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and a snack at around 3-4pm. As long as you are not going over your required energy intake by eating the snack, the afternoon snack may ultimately help you manage your hunger and prevent you from “pigging out” at your next main meal

b) if you have diabetes type I or II small regular meals are recommended to optimize blood sugar and insulin management

c) maintain your eating routines from day to day because your body and your lifestyle will adjust to it.

d) always eat breakfast

e) don’t eat food because it is there, or because someone offers it. Unless you are hungry say no to unscheduled food opportunities

f) avoid tiredness because the brain misconstrues tiredness as low energy levels and will stimulate a sensation of hunger causing you to eat more when you are tired. People tend to have less self-discipline when they are tired and eat more high sugar, high energy foods or “junk food” when they are feeling tired and fatigued. Eating non-nutritious foods when tired only makes your body feel more tired because it is not getting the nutrients it needs to run optimally. This sets up a cycle of poor eating habits and food cravings

g) regardless of the meal frequency you choose, you will need to exercise restraint over your food choices and to maintain a reasonable activity level, preferably at least 60 minutes of moderate activity a day.

Never forget, weight loss at its most basic is a maths equation. Less in, more out – eat less, exercise more.

Reference: Cameron, J. D., Cyr, M-J, & Doucet, E. (2010). Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet. British Journal of Nutrition, 103, 1098 – 1101.

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Post tags: meal frequency, six meals a day, weight loss

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How to Break Bad Diet Habits Forever

Anita — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:58:04 +0000

You can break bad dieting habits and get the body you want

Changing behaviour and ways of thinking is not easy, but it is not impossible either.

We have all heard the saying:

“If you keep on doing what you are doing, you will get more of what you’ve got”

Well, nothing could be truer than this sentence when it is applied to weight loss.

We all know what we need to do to get the body we want. We simply don’t lose weight if we don’t exercise our body or exercise self-discipline over our mad monkey minds and the bad eating habits that prevent us from losing weight.

Behaviors become habits when we do them over and over again. Similarly, thoughts become beliefs when we think them over and over again. Habits and beliefs become so well practiced that we relocate them to the automatic part of our minds and allow them to operate without thinking. Unfortunately, many of our habits and beliefs are what sabotage our weight loss attempts.

Think about it.

How many times have you popped some ‘deadly’, high calorie morsel of food into your mouth before you have even thought about it? And, how many times have you looked in the mirror and automatically said to yourself, “I’m too fat?”

It’s not rocket science; it is cold hard reality. What we think and what we do becomes our reality, especially when we do it over and over again. We become fat because we think we are fat. We then cement the belief in that we are fat by doing the things that make us fat, like eating too much and exercising too little.

There is no magic pill to dissolve fat, and bariatric surgery, while it ensures weight loss does not necessarily teach you to change your behaviour or your beliefs, but certainly reduces your ability to eat an optimal food intake for good nutrition (refer to the blog on pros and cons of bariatric surgery).

The good news is, that with a bit of grit and determination you can change your thoughts and behaviors.

Think of a thoughts or behaviours as setting up neural routes in your brain. If you think a thought once, or do a behaviour once, it is only a track and will grow over and be difficult to find if you don’t walk down this path again. However, if you keep thinking the thought (e.g., “I will never lose weight”) or doing the behaviour (e.g., eating a chocolate from the dispensing machine every afternoon at 3pm) then you start to build a road, making it easier to repeat the thought or behaviour because the pathway is easy to find and travel along.

By repeating these unhelpful thoughts or behaviours we build a superhighway of neurones that entrench us in habits and ways of thinking that stop us from getting what we want. Basically, as we think, and as we do, is what we become!

So, how do we undo these beliefs and habits that don’t help us? How do we pull down these superhighways of automatic thoughts and actions?

We STOP travelling these pathways! What we don’t use falls away, it loses power. All bad habits need attention to be maintained.

So, practise resisting the urge to go to the snack bar and buy a chocolate at 3pm. Either learn to get by with a hot beverage or glass of water or bring a healthy alternative such as a piece of fruit.

Change the pattern! You weaken habits when you do something completely different.

Stop, and think before you act. Automatic thoughts and behaviours are just that; they are knee jerk reactions that usually don’t serve you. Make considered choices. We all have options. For example, we have an option to binge or an option to jump on our exercise bikes and watch half an hour of a favourite show. We all know which option our body would prefer.

The longer you practice NOT DOING the habits that don’t assist you in getting the body you want, the less power those habits will have over you.

And just like you repeatedly trod a path of thoughts and behaviours that turned into negative belief systems and bad habits that didn’t serve you, by treading paths of more positive thoughts and behaviours you will be more likely to get you what you want.

Practice makes permanent so make sure it is positive thoughts and behaviours you are practicing.

To get you started on changing the unhelpful beliefs and habits you have that stop you from getting the body and life you want, identify what needs starving, and what thoughts and habits need feeding. It will be different for each one of you.

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Some Scary Facts on Fat

Anita — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:06:26 +0000

Most Western countries have identified the fight against fat as their primary health protection target. However, many developing countries are suffering the same fate.

The top ten countries, from highest to lowest, in prevalence of obesity between 1980 – 1998 will probably surprise you.

They were:

1. Samoa

2. Kuwait

3. UK

4. New Zealand

5. Mauritius

6. USA

7. Australia

8. Germany

9. Switzerland

10. Netherlands

FACT: Obesity, particularly morbid obesity (BMI>40) may reduce life spans by up to 9 years.

FACT: Obesity also significantly increases the risk of diabetes type II, high blood fats and heart disease and high blood pressure, as well as some cancers, to name just a few.

The most shocking possibility however is, that if obesity trends increase at their current rate, children could die before their parents. Childhood obesity since 1998 has accelerated, and continues to accelerate.

Fat is expensive. In the UK it was projected that by 2010 (this year) the annual cost to their economy of the indirect and direct costs of obesity would be a whopping 3.6 billion pounds.

For your own sake, and that of your children, or the children of the planet, model the behaviour you wish to encourage and….

eat, think, speak, listen and do mindfully

master your mind

move more

mindfulness — mastery — movement

Reference:

Wilkinson, J. R., Walrond, L.J., & Summerbell, C. D. (3007). Obesity Reviews, (8, Suppl.1), 23-29.

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