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This article has the following sections - so either read on, or click on a heading to go to the relevant section
WILL I SHED FAT IF I STOP EATING FAT?
I HARDLY EAT A THING - STILL I'M OVERWEIGHT
MY WORK INVOLVES A LOT OF ACTIVITY - ISN'T THAT ENOUGH EXERCISE?
DOES OBESITY RUN IN FAMILIES?
Two rather overweight sisters who were patients of mine once remarked that obesity
"runs in our family", and cited this as the reason why they could not lose
weight. This happened at a time when the TV news was full of pictures of
famine in Ethiopia. It was obvious that there didn't seem to be any obese
families in Ethiopia at that time.
The truth is that if you have no food, you can't become fat.
Hunger is a sensation that most of us do not even allow ourselves to feel. We fill ourselves up at regular intervals with a large variety of readily available foods when we start feeling the slightest signs of hunger. Yes, all of us do miss meals once in a while and feel "really hungry" - but this is an exception. Hunger, to most of us, is an unpleasant sensation that we must not feel. Strange as it may sound, this may not be the right attitude to have if weight loss is the goal.
Eating is such a regular part of our daily routine that many people fail to recognise hunger when it does occur, and complain of headaches, irritability and weakness instead and some feel they are able to "cure" these "symptoms" by eating.
This is a sad state of affairs because it leads to overnutrition and obesity.
Many overweight people intend to lose weight, but feel that they cannot. They have often tried and failed, and some fall for the many irresistible but bogus offers to cause slimming without exercise or dieting.
Unfortunately there are no drugs or magical remedies for weight reduction. And despite what many weight loss regimens state, you cannot really be on a diet without feeling hungry. Hunger is a sensation that one must learn to recognise and come to terms with.
All animals, and this includes humans, are perfectly capable of coping with hunger. Along with the sensation of hunger, the body undergoes chemical changes which help it to melt the excess fat that is stored in the body for the purpose of coping with hunger. If the body is supplied with a continuous assured supply of food, it converts and stores away the excess food as fat in case hunger should occur. Overweight humans never give hunger a chance, and the body never gets the opportunity to gear up and burn off excess fat.
Feeling hungry is *essential* (see cautionary advice below) for one to lose weight successfully. One may find people who have lost weight and say that they never felt hungry, but this cannot hold good for everyone.
A WORD OF CAUTION: Diabetics who are on anti-diabetic medication may feel weak or hungry when their blood sugar is getting low, and need to be careful about overdoing "getting hungry". Dieting should be done under supervision of a qualified person.
DIETING Exercise and dieting are important for weight reduction - but there are some people who are unable to exercise much because of injury or disability. Also, weight reduction based solely on exercise, with no dieting, is bound to fail.
When we buy a kilo of sugar or a litre of milk we make sure that the weight or volume is either checked or clearly marked. We may maintain very accurate accounts of our income and expenses - accounting for every penny. Then why is it that we measure our food intake so innacurately? We always eat a "bit of this" and a "bit of that" or a "lot of this" and a "bite of that"? We would never accept this kind of rough measurement while buying something.
Some degree of "measurement" of what one eats is necessary for dieting.
Most overweight people insist that they don't eat much. This may be true - they have put on weight because they have overeaten in years past, and now eat just enough to keep away hunger and maintain their weight. The best way to assess how much you eat is to have a chart or a diary where you jot down everything that you eat or drink every day for a period of a week or more. A brief review of the record after a week will give a rough idea of how much food you are eating in a week. It is dead easy to forget the little bites that one has - all these add up to the overall intake, and unless you have a photographic memory maintaining a chart is useful.
The diet starts from here - one must reduce a little bit from each meal that one has. The aim is to feel just a little bit more hungry than usual every day, and then have a measured smaller meal than usual and then "fill up" with really low-calorie foods such as salads. One must try to allow oneself feel just a bit hungry every day - knowing that your body will use this opportunity to burn off some of your fat.
WILL I SHED FAT IF I STOP EATING FAT?
The word "fat" unfortunately has led to a lot of confusion. Admittedly, the fat that you eat and the fat that is stored in the body are similar - but stuff that you eat other than fat can also be converted to fat in the body - so you can actually put on weight even if you eat no fat.
We tend to talk of food in terms of fat, carbohydrate or proteins , but the body "talks" calories. Any of the categories "protein, fat or carbohydrate" present in food can be converted to and stored as fat in the body if consumed in excess.
The human body needs energy to survive - that is, for the organs to do their work and for us to breathe, think and move. This energy is measured in "calories". Any of the food categories - namely protein, carbohydrate or fat, can be converted in the body into energy in the form of calories. The average adult female may need 1500 - 2000 calories per day and the normal adult male may need 2000 to 2500. It's a pity that the body has no "meter" to indicate how many calories you eat and how many it has burnt up. The only indicator that one has eaten less than the body desires is hunger and the only indicator of excess eating is when one puts on weight.
Putting on weight is a slow, insidious process. If one eats just one slice of bread more than the body actually needs in a day, one eats about 75 Calories extra which would be stored as fat. If this amount extra is eaten every day, one would have eaten about 27000 calories extra in 1 year and 270,000 extra calories in 10 years. These calories are stored in the body as fat and those 270,000 extra calories would amount to approximately 20 Kg (3 stone) of flab!
Imagine trying to burn off this extra 270,000 calories collected over 10 years. Walking one mile burns off about 100 calories so one has to walk 2700 miles to shed the flab put on by eating 1 extra slice of bread a day for 10 years. If you walk an hour a day (4 miles) and use up 400 calories, and eat nothing more than you normally eat it would take 675 days of walking, or nearly 2 years to lose 20 Kg.
I HARDLY EAT A THING - STILL I'M OVERWEIGHT
This is a very common perception. The truth is that the body actually requires surprisingly little food to survive - and weight that has been put on over years is maintained or even gradually increased with the intake of little food.
Exercise does more than just burn up calories and has far reaching beneficial effects, and is highly recommended even for people who do not need to lose weight.
For someone who doesn't exercise at all - starting *any* form of exercise is useful. The simplest thing to do is to start walking, although swimming, work-outs or other sports may be preferred by some. For people who are overweight and unused to strenuous exercise, walking may be the best exercise to start with - in general - the more vigorous forms of exercise put a greater strain on the joints and back and may cause injury in people who are unaccustomed to that form of exercise.
MY WORK INVOLVES A LOT OF ACTIVITY - ISN'T THAT ENOUGH EXERCISE?
Probably not. It is important to set aside some part of one's day specifically for exercise - to make exercise a habit that one sticks to even when the nature of the job changes.
1) GET TO KNOW HOW MUCH YOU EAT NORMALLY: Make a note of everything you eat or drink over the period of a week or more to really get to know exactly how much you eat.
2) REDUCE YOU FOOD INTAKE: Once you know what your normal food intake is, make a conscious effort to reduce your food intake. Eat less of everything, and try to eat as little fried and sugary stuff as possible. You may find yourself getting hungry and irritable between meals - but putting up with this will be rewarded by a gratifying reduction in weight and compliments to this effect from people around you. The intensity of hunger also gradually reduces as your body copes with the decreased food intake.
3) START EXERCISE: Any exercise, as much or as little as you can tolerate and keep it up.
4) DON'T BE IN A HURRY: Do not try to lose weight quickly: Weight loss is like a long-term relationship. Go slowly and stick to your aim. You may have put on your excess weight over 5 or 10 or more years, so try to shed the weight over 2 or 3 years. Take it gently.
5) MODIFY YOUR WARDROBE: When you do lose weight - quickly get a set of tighter clothes or alter your clothes to fit you. A previously well fitting garment that has become loose after some weight reduction feels uncomfortable and may encourage more eating by giving one a false sense of achievement of weight loss. A properly fitting garment gets tight and makes you uncomfortable if you eat too much or start regaining weight.
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