Weight Loss and Weight Regain
According to the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, about 68.5 million adults (34%) in America are overweight or obese. This is not a new health trend as the prevalence of overweight and obesity in this country has been steadily increasing for decades. This is true for all ages, genders, races/ethnic groups, and educational levels.(1)
Why is maintaining a healthy weight important? Aside from the appearance, peer- acceptance, and self-acceptance issues, physical health problems are abundant among those who are overweight. Overweight and obese people have a 50-60% higher risk of cancers than those of normal weight. Overweight and obese people have increased risks for diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, gallbladder disease, joint degeneration, and sleep apnea. Obesity may also lead to increased mortality, increased surgical complications, depression, incontinence, excess body hair, menstrual problems, and complications in pregnancy. (2) Clearly, a decreased quality of life can be found in those who are overweight or obese.
It is important to understand what food eating habits you have that will prevent weight loss from occurring or cause regain in those who have lost weight. Simply eating less or dieting has been found to be problematic strategy for losing weight or keeping it off. You might be able to do it for a while, but eventually your body’s survival mode kicks in and you overeat. This is similar to holding your breath. Even if you get very good at holding your breath for a long time, eventually you have to take a breath.
Making a change in the types of foods you eat, rather than in limiting the amounts, is a much more effective strategy. Changes in lifestyle and food habits are the key to a healthy body weight. For many people, understanding that they often gravitate towards high calorie yet low nutrient foods on menus is an important realization. Once they start making different choices than this one, they have found a key toward realizing their healthy body weight.
Research shows us that changing lifestyle habits is an exercise just like training a muscle is. Eventually the muscle learns to do an activity better by continually practicing it. The more you exercise the new habit, the stronger that part of the brain becomes to enable you to make that new habit a lifelong habit. For example, the more you say no to ordering a soft drink with your meals and having water with lemon instead, the easier it becomes at future meals.
Nutrition for weight loss also must have disease prevention factored in. There are many ways that people lose weight. Not all of these ways results in a healthier person. The heroine user may lose lots of weight but has not gained health, vitality, and the ability to keep chronic diseases at bay such as cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Other diet fads have helped people lose weight but have also increased their risks for other disease. The low-carbohydrate diets are examples of these.
Fad diets also do not teach strategies for practical lifelong weight maintaining habits you can stick to. A 2007 study found that among a small group who lost at least 10% of their body weight regained much of the weight they lost within a year.(3) The authors found that sedentary lifestyles with very little physical activity and more time in front a screen (tv, computer, video) were associated with weight regain. Perhaps if those people who had regained their weight had also learned and practiced new lifestyle habits such as better nutrition and physical activity, their weight regain would not have happened.
These factors show that physical activity, is an important part of maintaining weight loss. But focusing only on physical activity instead of also combining nutrition changes to maintain weight loss or lose weight is a futile battle. Frequently people who train to run marathons find that they have not lost any weight as their appetite increased and their eating habits did not change. In studies comparing exercise, diet, and diet plus exercise, diet plus exercise and diet alone resulted in the most weight loss.(4) Exercise can not be the only strategy. Nutrition is the much bigger piece of the puzzle.
Sources
(1) Mokdad AH, Ford ES, Bowman BA, Dietz WH, Vinicor F, Bales VS, Marks JS. Prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and obesity-related health risk factors, 2001. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2003; 289(1):76–79.
International Journal of Obesity 21(10), 1997
