Millions of Americans are on a diet right now. Every January, nearly 50% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions, and more than 40% of those resolutions involve dieting. Most dieters are trying to lose weight; about 40% are trying to maintain their weight. To reach these goals, the annual expenditure in the U.S., across the entire weight-loss industry, is somewhere between $20-60 billion, depending on who’s counting. Sadly, most of this is wasted money; a full 80% of dieters regain their lost weight within a year.
What are 80% of dieters doing wrong?
Most dieters attempt to do one or another version of ‘calories in vs. calories out;’ the counting of calories consumed vs. those being burned through activity. This can work in the short term, especially for someone who’s been temporarily overeating, and not exercising, but who still has the physical capacity to exercise. One problem with this method is that just counting calories doesn’t take into account the quality of food being eaten, which often has a much higher impact on both weight and overall health than the number of calories eaten might indicate.
Often, dieters make the mistake of skipping meals to lower caloric intake. This puts the body into starvation-mode, causing it to store calories rather than burning them, essentially slowing down metabolism in light of the “famine” it’s experiencing. Such a habit, which initially facilitates weight loss, also creates a slower metabolism, which makes keeping the weight off even harder. Eventually, this dieting style will cause a person to gain weight on very little intake. A cycle of hunger and food cravings tips the person toward binge-eating and an ensuing feeling of failure, which can create emotional havoc and set the stage for another round of starvation.
Another problem with trying to balance incoming and expended calories comes for the morbidly obese (who need to lose the most weight), and those with joint issues (who need to lose weight in order to reduce pain). For these folks, it’s sometimes impossible to actually exercise safely or without making symptoms worse; they need a way to start to lose weight that doesn’t rely on exercise.
So, what about exercise?
The health benefits of regular exercise are hard to ignore—exercise can help control excess weight and increase bone density, combat high cholesterol and blood sugar, increase red blood cells, slow resting heart rate, lift mood, and improve sleep, energy and libido. However, most dieters attempt to exercise off their excess pounds, going from zero to excessive in their zeal for reaching their New Year’s resolutions. It’s important to realize that constant or immoderate aerobic activity is catabolic, which means it breaks down tissue, rather than building it up; it interrupts protein synthesis, retards muscle growth and can even reduce existing muscle mass.
Too much exercise is stressful and causes the release of cortisol, a stress hormone that can be incredibly damaging in unnaturally large amounts. In ancient times, a fight-or-flight response (and its corresponding cortisol) would elicit the utmost in focus to attend to an immediate threat to survival. But nowadays, stress comes in all forms and from all angles. Our bodies don’t differentiate between artificial stress (like deadlines, taxes or traffic) and real threats. We react to excessive exercise just like any other unnaturally stressful situation, releasing cortisol, which can work against the goal, storing calories as fat reserves, and eating away at lean muscle.
Abnormally-stored fat
Many weight loss programs promote the loss of weight itself, over the loss of abnormally-stored fat, and without regard to body composition. Abdominal obesity has been linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, so the optimal weight loss program should also assist the body in targeting the stored fat that carries the most health risks: that spare tire. It’s not enough if the scale shows an overall loss, when that loss often comes from water weight, or at the expense of lean muscle mass, leaving the stubborn cellulite or saddlebags.
Replacement meals
Some diet programs will have you use replacement meals or buy prepared foods. This can be an attractive option for the dieter who lacks time, the skills to cook, or the knowledge of what to actually eat. Convenience makes these programs do-able in the short-term, but there are several problems with programs consisting solely of prepared foods and meal replacements for the long-term. These commercially prepared foods are usually highly processed, and often contain artificial sweeteners and additives. Quality of ingredients is usually sacrificed in order to make meals that are inexpensive enough to sell at an attractive price point, while keeping profits high. And the person who is most likely to opt for this type of program (the dieter who had no cooking skills before the diet), won’t have increased their skills during the program, and will be hard-pressed to maintain their goal once they reach it, often resulting in a weight roller-coaster.
In fact, most weight-loss programs usually involve going on, then off, a diet once the goal is reached. Many people find that they eventually gain back more weight than they originally lost. This is because there has been no customization to the individual, no education about how to choose and prepare food, and no instruction on eating to promote slenderness and overall health.
So, what are 20% of dieters doing right?
How do some people succeed in losing weight when so many fail? And how do they manage to keep the weight off? The ideal weight loss plan starts with a process to support the body’s organs and processes of elimination. The body uses its excess fat accumulation as a kind of warehouse to store wastes and toxins that it cannot efficiently eliminate. This is safe in the short term, but once the body begins to shed excess adipose tissue, the toxins that are stored there are released for processing and disposal. This requires the organs of elimination (the liver, colon, kidneys, lungs and skin) to be working efficiently. Otherwise, the body will recirculate those waste products, and restore them, making it difficult for the dieter to empty those fat cells.
Once the body is eliminating effectively and efficiently, what’s the best food plan?
The ideal diet should help build, or retain, lean muscle mass, and help the body to regain proper hydration. To retain muscle mass, a diet must contain enough high-quality protein to prevent the body from metabolizing its own muscle tissue for energy and tissue repair. Americans generally eat plenty of protein, however, the key lies in improving protein quality: organic and grass-fed meats and free-range eggs have significantly higher omega-3 fatty acids than factory-farmed.
To increase hydration, the plan needs to include plenty of pure water. Aiming to drink one half your body’s weight, in ounces, per day, is a good goal. Many who are overweight tend to retain fluid, and will shy away from drinking water, thinking they’ll gain water weight. In fact, the opposite is true. Although lingering fluid retention, such as swollen limbs, can be a sign of serious disease that should be checked out by a physician promptly, a little retention (often noticed by women as bloating in the week before their period, or as a transient puffiness by those who overindulge in alcohol), usually signifies that the body is dehydrated. The most effective way to eliminate the kind of retention caused by dehydration is to flush the body with plenty of pure, clean water.
The healthiest eating habits focus on eating minimally processed whole foods, and avoiding anything genetically modified. The smartest weight loss plans do the same, and as such, automatically reject diet products, and for that matter, anything artificial, including artificial sweeteners.
Typically, when eating foods closest to how they’re found in nature, there is very little, if any, concern for the calorie count of those foods. For instance, it’s pretty hard to overeat green salad, tossed with olive oil and lemon, because you’ll be full long before you eat too many calories. The Mediterranean and Paleo diets are two examples of whole-food, minimally processed diets. Eating this way also tends to be anti-inflammatory, which automatically brings down the risk of chronic, degenerative disease, and helps a person to slowly and naturally reach and maintain their optimally healthy weight.
Does this mean weight loss must be slow and steady?
Not necessarily! An obese person undergoing a short-term, medically-supervised weight-loss program, can safely lose body fat surprisingly quickly; 5-10 pounds a week is possible. Someone with less to lose should count on about 1% of body weight per week for the long haul.
Ketogenic diets
One of the fastest ways to burn fat is to push the body into ketosis, the physiologic state of utilizing fatty acids, as opposed to sugars, to fuel the body’s energy needs. A ketogenic diet is one that’s high in protein and fat, with little to no carbohydrates. The Atkins and Paleo diets can be pushed in this direction. The benefits of a ketogenic diet are numerous. Ketosis allows the body to utilize and metabolize the most unhealthy, centrally-deposited fat. Burning ketones blunts hunger; it also has a protein-sparing effect, as long as enough protein is eaten. Another great thing about ketosis is that the body will excrete unneeded ketones through the urine; essentially, allowing you to urinate out your excess body fat!
Utilizing fat as fuel is an inefficient process; normally, a gram of fat contains 9 calories; when fatty acids are converted to ‘ketone bodies’ for energy, that same gram offers only 7 calories. What this means is that, with the correct utilization of ketosis in weight loss, a normal pound of fat, which has 3500 calories, can be burned up in only 2700 calories!
Dangerous Risks and Pitfalls
It sounds a little like magic, but a ketogenic diet is not without its risks and pitfalls. Initially, while the metabolism shifts into ketosis, some will experience fatigue and foggy thinking. And, though most will actually see an improvement in their overall lipid profile, some can see a temporary increase in cholesterol levels. Also, whenever an unnaturally restricted diet is maintained for an extended period, there’s danger of nutritional deficiencies.
Importantly, a ketogenic diet also carries an inherent risk of ketoacidosis, a process in which the level of ketones in the blood rises steeply, lowering blood pH and increasing acidity to dangerous, even fatal levels. This is generally not a concern for a non-diabetic, because low blood-sugar levels only allow so many ketones to be manufactured and utilized by the body at once. And an uncontrolled diabetic is always at risk for ketoacidosis, dieting or not.
Physician Supervision and
Monitoring
Bottom line: before embarking on a ketogenic diet, find a doctor to work with who is very familiar with this type of weight loss plan. Your physician should do a complete physical and nutritional assessment to determine if you’re a good candidate for a ketogenic diet. If so, you should be prescribed a high-quality multivitamin and monitored closely throughout the program.
A ketogenic diet isn’t appropriate for everyone; indeed, there’s not one weight loss plan that is. But fortunately, there are some proven guideposts to help you find your own personal best food plan, one that helps you lose weight, and keep it off. Eliminating food sensitivities, eating according to your blood type, and following a way of eating that more closely honors the way our ancestors ate, are three of the best.
Food Sensitivities
Today, people are increasingly discovering that they have food sensitivities, and that those sensitivities cause cravings, weight gain, and a litany of other symptoms from depression and fatigue, to irritable bowels, skin conditions, chronic pain…even arthritis. The gold standard of uncovering food sensitivities is to go on an austere “elimination” diet, followed by food challenges wherein suspicious foods are added back one-by-one, while monitoring closely for symptoms.
The elimination phase typically consists solely of a few hypoallergenic foods such as lamb, pears, and possibly a non-gluten grain such as rice, millet, quinoa or amaranth. The body’s allowed to adjust to the absence of suspected (or commonly eaten) foods, which can take several weeks or months, before those foods are systematically added back in, and any resulting symptoms recorded. When a reaction is found, that food is set aside, the body is allowed to adjust again, and the process continues. This method is the most comprehensive and accurate, but takes time, discipline, and is difficult for most people to adhere to.
An easier way is to get tested for food sensitivities. A simple blood test checks for delayed-hypersensitivity reactions to foods eaten most often. As opposed to true food allergies, which are immediate hypersensitivity immune reactions (such as to shellfish or peanuts—which can land a person in the hospital), delayed-hypersensitivity reactions are much milder and can take 2-3 days to manifest. These are the sensitivities that can relate to weight gain and food cravings. Completely avoiding those foods goes a long way toward allowing a person to reach and maintain their optimal weight.
Blood Type
Another method to finding your personal best eating plan is to eat according to your blood type. The theory, predominantly researched and disseminated by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, is that specific proteins in foods react differently with each of the different ABO blood types. The premise is this: Blood Type Os are ancestrally the original blood type, the classic hunter-gatherers, and they are still the best equipped to digest a higher-protein, meat-based diet; Blood Type As are thought to descend from the more agrarian cultures, and have digestive systems most suited to a vegetarian diet; Blood type Bs are our more modern ancestors, sometimes more tolerant of dairy than other types; and ABs are treated, dietarily, as an intermediate between types A and B.
The theory, published in 1997, still stirs up controversy. But interestingly, a food-sensitivity test often reveals reactions that correlate closely to foods that person should avoid according to the blood-type theory.
The Skinny
In summary, the ideal weight loss plan would start with a process to support the body’s organs and processes of elimination. It should help build, or retain, lean muscle mass, help the body to regain proper hydration, and focus on burning abdominal fat. It should kick-start and reset the metabolism. Finally, it should teach some basic healthy food and lifestyle habits that promote optimal health, and help the dieter find an individualized best lifetime eating plan, in order to maintain an ideal weight and body composition, thereby lowering the risks for chronic degenerative disease. The best kind of weight loss plan is nearly identical to a plan designed for optimal aging.
Based in Simsbury, CT, Dr. Dana Lapointe is a naturopathic doctor and member of ProNatural Physicians Group. She specializes in obesity, diabetes, food sensitivities, Crohn’s and chronic pain. She can be reached at Sustainable Health & Wellness, 860-217-1171.
About ProNatural Physicians Group. To learn more about naturopathic medicine, or to find a licensed naturopathic doctor near you, visit ProNaturalPhysicians.com. Most ProNatural Physicians Group N.D.s are providers for major insurance carriers. ProNatural Physicians Group, LLC is a network of naturopathic doctors that serve patients throughout Connecticut. Based in Milford, Dr. Yvette Whitton is a Naturopathic doctor and member of ProNatural Physicians Group. She specializes in oncology and chronic disease. She can be reached at Adonai Optimal Health and Wellness at (888) 655-8489. naturalhealthpractitioner@gmail.com.