Susan, 43, has been dieting since her early thirties. Every six to eight months, she goes on a strict diet combined with vigorous exercise. She loses between 10 and 15 kilograms (22 - 33 pounds). She then quits her diet and regains all her weight within the next few months.
Susan, like a lot of yoyo dieters, has three sets of clothes: fat clothes, skinny clothes and a few in between. Her fat clothes are baggy and tasteless; her skinny clothes are elegant and glamorous. Susan lives for the magic moment when she will be slim once and for all.
But she finds it more and more difficult to lose weight and no matter how hard she tries, the figure on the scale won't budge. She now weighs 82 kilograms (180 pounds), and it's the fattest she's ever been. She eats little during the day, and has a late evening meal. She avoids carbohydrates as she thinks they're fattening.
Susan has lost all hope to lose weight. Her metabolism is too slow and her body won't burn fat. She still wants to lose weight, but she doesn't believe she can do it without a magic wand.
Metabolism includes all the processes that occur within the body and that are designed to keep us alive. Our basal metabolism is the energy we require to function while at rest, and we use up a lot more energy when we are active. Weight loss is difficult because we have to spend more energy than we take in, and while we aim at losing fat, we want to preserve and develop our muscles. When there's not enough muscle tissue, we burn less energy, which is a good reason to exercise moderately and to tone our bodies.
When our metabolism is too slow, the body refuses to burn fat. As time goes by, the problem only seems to get worse. The older we get, the less food we need to survive, which is unfortunate, as we often develop a keen interest in food when we get older!
Our need for dietary fat diminishes with age, and children require a higher percentage of fat in their diet than adults do. Because they grow, they need more concentrated supplies of energy in the form of fatty acids. Fat is also important for the development of the nervous system (brain and nerves), especially in babies and toddlers, and human breast milk is surprisingly high in fat.
Our metabolism slows for other reasons besides old age, and some of them are:
- lack of exercise;
- fasting (while eating increases our metabolism, fasting decreases it);
- menopause (the change of life);
- chronic stress (stress can either increase or decrease our metabolic rate);
- alcohol consumption;
- giving up smoking (it's not a good reason to keep lighting up!)
- certain pharmaceutical drugs;
- certain organic diseases, like disorders of the thyroid gland.
A medical check-up is a good way to eliminate physical causes when all your weight loss efforts seem to be in vain.
Excessive dieting has a harmful effect on our metabolism, because we are programmed to conserve fat, not to eliminate it. The body rings the "alarm bells" as soon as our caloric intake becomes too low. The less we eat, the less energy we burn, especially when we reduce our carbohydrate intake.
Because of strong peer pressure and the ideal of a model-like figure promoted by the media, teenage girls often diet even though they're already slim. When I was a teenager I was convinced I had to be as thin as a model or a movie star in order to be attractive. Not only do a lot of models suffer from malnutrition or anorexia, which is not something we should strive for, but dieting when not overweight drastically reduces our metabolism. We end up fat, even though we were slim in the first place.
Frequent changes in weight (the yoyo effect) are also detrimental, and crash diets have a rebound effect. Towards the end of a diet we experience intolerable hunger, as well as a slow metabolic rate. The ideal combination to have a big feast and gain back all the hard-lost kilograms! Dieting makes us fat.
Moderate exercise will stimulate a sluggish metabolism, but over-exercising has the opposite effect. If you exercise too much, your body will only burn a minimum amount of calories, in order to conserve energy. There is a rebound effect after discontinuing strenuous exercise. Your metabolism will slow down if you revert to your couch potato lifestyle, after exerting yourself regularly for a period of time. The combination of strenuous exercise and strict dieting has the worst effect on your fat-burning mechanism, as it conditions your body to hang on to its fat stores.
Certain foods don't enhance weight loss. Eating hard-boiled eggs and salad doesn't work, because the lack of carbohydrates will make you feel hungry and deplete your brain of serotonin, leaving you anxious, nervous and irritable. Carbohydrates are the body's favourite fuel. Of course fat and protein can provide caloric energy, but complex carbohydrates help increase your metabolism, as they stimulate all active processes, especially fat burning.
Take a wholemeal lettuce and tomato sandwich to the family picnic, rather than nibbling solely on hard-boiled eggs. While nothing stops you from eating carrot and celery sticks as well, the carbohydrate-rich bread will stimulate your metabolism, and you can use a low-fat filling or spread. For the same reason, eating only steak and salad doesn't work, as the lack of complex carbohydrates only worsens your hunger feelings, and you end up a nervous wreck.
To prevent hunger attacks and help your body burn fat, have several small meals, rather than three big ones. Small meals ensure you have a constant supply of energy your body can burn. To spread your calories throughout the day is a more balanced way to eat, and it speeds up weight loss.
Our metabolism is not the same throughout the day, and most diets don't take into consideration that we burn more calories in the morning than in the evening. If we know how to take advantage of this important fact, we will be able to eat more and lose weight at the same time! It is not so much what we eat that counts, but when we eat it, and we would lose weight more easily if we ate our meals earlier.
A lot of overweight people are night-time eaters. They eat most of their calories late in the evening, when the fat-burning factory has closed down. They usually skip breakfast, missing out on a time of the day when most calories are burnt instead of being stored as fat. Because they eat too late and have big meals at night, overweight people are not in harmony with their body clock and sabotage their own weight loss efforts. This eating pattern creates an imbalance and their metabolism slows down.
Your biological clock has a tremendous influence on your health and how your body burns calories and fat. Different hormones are released into your bloodstream at different times of the day and night, affecting your mood, your wellbeing and your metabolism. When you're not in tune with your biological clock, your metabolism becomes sluggish.
Eating a piece of chocolate at 10 a.m. is not the same as eating it at 10 p.m. Your body is programmed to burn energy in the morning, but at night, the system shuts down to prepare you for sleep. Everything slows down and calorie-burning stops, which is why all the calories you eat at night are stored as fat, especially those from fat. In the morning, the process is reversed: your body is programmed to burn energy, and everything you eat before mid-morning will be used up as fuel.
We have to take advantage of the body's natural ability to burn energy in the morning. If we starve all day, a big splurge is almost inevitable in the evening. Some people eat non-stop from the time they come home to the time they go to bed!
A lot of us complain we can't lose weight, even though we don't eat much, which is probably true, if we only look at the number of calories. But we eat at the wrong time of the day and our metabolism slows down. Of all meals, dinner is the most fattening, especially if it is a late dinner, with lots of animal protein, fat and sugar. If possible, dinner should be eaten earlier in the evening, and it should be a light meal.
A few suggestions for light evening meals:
- Low-fat cottage cheese, raw vegetables and wholemeal bread;
- Prawns, lightly cooked vegetables and brown rice;
- Chick pea salad and wholemeal bread;
- Home made tomato soup with noodles;
- Grilled cheese sandwich and lettuce;
- Broiled fish, baked potato and cooked carrots;
- Fruit salad, yoghurt and low-fat crackers;
- Chicken with oriental vegetables and brown rice;
- Roast breast of turkey, green peas and broiled tomatoes;
- Lean beef, brussel sprouts and sweet potato;
- Tofu burger and salad;
- Lentils (cooked with onion, garlic and tomato) and rice;
- Home made pumpkin soup.
- Minestrone.
We believe that starving all day is a good way to lose weight. We feel so hungry at night because we haven't eaten all day. After a hard day at work on an empty stomach, we are ravenous and eat a heavy, fat-loaded meal. Then we wonder why the kilograms won't come off, even though we're trying so hard.
The kilograms would come off more easily if we ate most of our calories before the sun goes down.
Strategies:
Avoid strict diets and too much exercise.
Don't be a yoyo dieter.
Have carbohydrate-rich meals.
Spread your calories throughout the day.
Eat a light dinner.
If possible, eat all your calories before the sun goes down.
