16 Aug 2010 at 06:00
uzoma
Weight Control
2 Comments
It appears that many celebrities are now leading the way with a new eating regime purported to be ‘good for weight loss’. First of all, there are many, many people who are following a gluten free diet because they are actually allergic to gluten. If they eat even small quantities of it they will suffer with painful stomach cramps, diarrhoea, and malabsorption of important nutrients. These people are allergic to the protein found in wheat and suffer from coeliacs disease.
Gluten is not only found in pasta, bread, cakes, cookies and biscuits, it has been isolated and added to other products, often as a binding agent in certain brands of sauces, food coatings, crisps(potato chips) and even lipsticks! You can imagine that after eating a diet free of this allergen, all coeliacs tend to gain weight or maintain a healthy normal weight…Thus indicating that gluten is not an evil scale breaking, metabolism slowing ingredient. In fact, a lot of the gluten free products on the supermarket shelves contain more sugar in order to improve the taste.
I suppose what I am trying to say is, don’t fall prey to yet another gimmick when you already know that the healthiest formula for weight loss is to burn off more calories than you take in (regular exercise) and to choose foods that are nutrient dense (less processed, more organic) especially since you will be reducing your portion sizes. After all, you still need the same amount of fibre, vitamins and minerals even as you reduce in size.
This topic is currently being discussed in The White House and I know it is difficult to come up with one solution that will work for all but we do need to address this before we completely reverse our mortality rates.
I think that we need to start at the beginning of life. Women should think very carefully about having children before they do and be prepared to be responsible mothers. In my opinion, all babies should be given breast milk for the first 6 months of their lives unless there is a medical reason why they are unable to. NO baby should be given the milk of another animal just because its mother doesn’t feel like breast feeding. Children deserve the best start in life and milk made specifically for individual babies should be the nutrition of choice every time.
Breast feeding will help the mother get back her pre- pregnancy figure much more easily while at the same time allowing the mother time to bond with her ‘special gift’. Breast feeding on demand allows the baby to regulate their own nutrition whereas bottle feeding takes that away from the baby and can easily lead to over feeding and, in my opinion, early programming to over- indulge. Let’s promote breast feeding for all babies and encourage shops, restaurants and other businesses to provide suitable ‘feeding’ rooms for nursing mothers.
Having recently finished reading this book, I must say that despite her very ‘wordy’ expressions of what could have been said in fewer sentences, Geneen has done well to simplify a subject that occupies over eighty percent of female conversation. Her guidelines for eating are not new but, what I refer to as ‘assertive eating’, is such a common -sense concept that until now, the diet industry has preferred to go down the gimmick route in order to make women feel ‘no pain, no gain’ about their weight loss journey.
I would like to hear from anyone who has been brave enough to abandon the diet of the day in favour of intuitive or assertive eating. What touched you the most in Geneen’s book? For me, it was three lines right at the end of the book that state “In each moment of kindness you lavish upon your breaking heart or the size of your thighs, with each breath you take-God has been here. She is you.” In other words, if we substitute the word ‘God’ with ‘love’, any act of love is a reflection of you at your best. Being kind to yourself means that you value yourself and when you value something , you look after it and keep it safe.
24 Jul 2010 at 00:15
uzoma
Weight Control
2 Comments
Recent research indicates that after you have lost weight, you have an increase in your emotional response to food. The research also indicates a decrease in activity of the area of the brain that is involved in restraint. One of the hormones that play a role in controlling appetite in the body is called leptin. After significant weight loss, leptin levels drop. This seems to signal to the brain a need to seek more food.
In a recent study, overweight volunteers followed a calorie-restricted diet aimed at shedding 10 percent of body weight. Using MRI scans, the researchers looked at changes in how the volunteers’ brains responded to seeing food after weight loss. Leptin levels dropped and there was more blood flow to areas of the brain known to be involved in the emotional control of food intake. Lowered leptin levels signal the areas of the brain associated with reward-seeking .
This evolutionary programming is out of sync with what is healthiest for our bodies today. The signal evolved over thousands of years when food was scarce. It was the brain’s way of telling the body to seek food and protect fat stores. Many people, particularly those who are prone to gain weight easily, have retained more genes that program us to seek food.When the researchers restored leptin by giving injections of the hormone, the brain response changed. With leptin levels restored, there was more activity in brain areas associated with conscious decisions.
This adds evidence to the fact that crash dieting, or severe restricting of food intake for extended periods of time are not productive methods of weight loss in the long term. So, until the pharmaceutical industry invents a drug that can stimulate leptin signaling , our best option is to make small changes to our habitual energy intakes and aim to lose weight in stages, not all in one go! Patience is key.
05 Jul 2010 at 23:46
uzoma
Body Image
9 Comments
It is estimated that 1.1 million people in the UK suffer from eating disorders. The numbers are higher in the USA. The majority are females
aged between 12 and 24 years, although women of any age can develop a problem. The media is a wonderful communication and effective marketing tool but perhaps the same media that allows us to feel closer to one another is also a master manipulator of its captive audience.
We are bombarded with images of what we should eat, how we should dress and what we should look like and even when we should act on impulses planted in our heads. No longer do we have to turn on the television or radio to get our ‘fix’, we are fed a steady diet via our social networks, our emails and now our mobile phones. It is no wonder that our youth are confused.
Celebrities are photographed as much for their talent as for their weight. Even those in the ‘healthy’ weight range are air brushed and photo shopped to ‘perfection’. The trend setters become the victims of their own industry.
These powerful influences serve to fuel a sense of personal and almost infectious collective body dissatisfaction amongst young girls and women in particular, and have contributed to the rise in the use of eating disorder behaviours such as obsessive dieting, calorie counting, over-exercising, self-induced vomiting, diet pill and laxative abuse.
Parents have a much greater responsibility these days to protect their children from the attacks on self esteem. Who do you think is to blame and what are your views?
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