PRINCIPLES OF LOOSING WEIGHT

When it comes to losing weight, the
details don't matter much. It's the
principles that count.
Every legitimate nutrition expert,
whether a popular diet guru or a
representative of the medical nutrition
establishment, agrees that there are
some fundamental principles of healthy
weight loss that apply to everyone. No
matter how much they are disguised,
these principles are at the core of every
good diet plan, be it a dietician's plan or
a bestseller's. And nobody achieves
permanent weight loss and optimal
health without obeying these principles,
consciously or unconsciously. While
there appears to be no single right way
to eat for health and weight loss (on the
level of details), you need to be aware of
the basic principles. This will help you
avoid those diet plans that do in fact
break them and choose the specific plan
that is best for you.
"It's the people who understand the
principles who do well long-term," says
Arthur Agatston.

1. Balance
Critics of popular diets frequently claim
that such diets encourage unbalanced
eating by declaring certain foods and
even whole food groups off-limits. The
example they almost invariably point to
is the infamous cabbage soup diet. But
that's a pretty extreme example.
What the critics overlook is the fact that
the average American diet is rather
unbalanced to begin with: heavy on
animal foods, processed foods, fried
foods, and sweets and light on fruits,
vegetables and whole grains. It's hard to
find a popular diet that doesn't
encourage dieters to consume a variety
of fresh, natural plant foods, and thereby
support, if not a perfectly balanced diet,
then at least a more balanced one.
In Cracking the Metabolic Code, James
LaValle, a pharmacist and naturopathic
physician based in Cincinnati, OH,
explains how nutrient imbalances of
various sorts can lead to weight gain,
and conversely, how improving nutrient
balance can facilitate weight loss.
To give one example, an underactive
thyroid gland is a common cause of slow
metabolism and, consequently, weight
gain. Among the many factors that can
lower thyroid function are high levels of
adrenal stress hormones such as cortisol,
and as LaValle points out, "Eating a lot of
sugar triggers the release of adrenal
hormones." The average American diet
comprises 18% sugar. The average
popular diet most certainly does not!

2. Nutrient Timing
A spate of recent research has shown
that when we eat is almost as important
as what we eat with respect to
optimizing our body composition. "We've
learned that it's essential to coordinate
energy intake with energy expenditure,"
explains John Ivy, Ph.D. and coauthor of
Nutrient Timing (Basic Health, 2004).
"Calories are put to their best possible
use when they are consumed at times
when there is a strong demand for them
in the body."
Morning is a time of relatively high
caloric demand. Calories consumed in
the morning are more likely than calories
consumed later in the day to be used for
energy than stored as fat. In fact, a
study from the University of
Massachusetts found that those who
regularly skip breakfast are 4.5 times
more likely to be overweight than those
who eat it most mornings.
Eating smaller meals more frequently
(five or six times a day) is another
proven way to better coordinate food
intake with energy needs. According to
statistical data, the average American
eats three large meals per day.

3. Self-Monitoring
Research has shown that simply paying
attention to what you eat is one of the
more effective ways to reduce your
caloric intake. Self-monitoring strategies
are a key habit among members of the
National Weight Control Registry, a
research pool comprising several
thousand men and women who have lost
an average of 66 pounds apiece and
kept the weight off an average of 6
years. "They're very conscious of their
eating," says Suzanne Phelan, Ph.D., a
spokesperson for the NWCR. "About half
of them report that they are still
counting calories and fat grams."
Another useful self-monitoring habit that
is common among both the NWCR
subjects and those pursuing weight loss
on popular diets is weighing. According
to Phelan, this habit allows the subjects
of her study to avoid the insidious
upward creep that is the undoing of
many initially successful diets. "Because
they are weighing themselves as often
as they do, they can catch these slips,"
she says. "If they do something about it
right away, they're much more likely to
be successful in the long term."

4. Selective Restrictions
Just about every popular diet has a
"forbidden foods" list. The specific foods
and food types that make the list and
how strictly they are forbidden differ
from one program to the next. The
Atkins diet forbids virtually all high-
carbohydrate foods. The Ornish diet
forbids animal foods. Peter D'Adamo's
blood type diet forbids a long laundry list
of seemingly unrelated foods for each of
the four basic bloods types.
No weight loss diet can succeed without
restriction of the foods that are most
responsible for creating large body fat
stores. A majority of mainstream
nutrition experts agree that the "bad
fats" found in many processed foods and
animal foods and the "bad carbs" in
sweets and processed foods are the
primary culprits. Interestingly, nearly all
of the members of the NWCR choose to
restrict intake of high-fat foods. "Only
seven percent are on a low-carb diet,"
says Phelan.
Mainstream nutrition experts warn
against taking food restrictions too far,
however. "To eliminate specific foods
and food groups, especially those people
enjoy, is a recipe for disaster and can
lead to feelings of deprivation, not to
mention nutritional imbalances," says
Elisa Zied, M.S., R.D., a spokesperson for
the American Dietetic Association.
James LaValle prescribes only "soft"
restrictions to his clients and in the many
nutrition books he's written. "You get
gurus who say, 'You can never eat
another dessert again,'" he says. "That
sets up a guilt complex in people." When
the options are all or nothing, there is no
happy medium between being on the
diet and miserable and being off it
completely.

5. Low Caloric Density
The concept of caloric density, or energy
density, refers to the number of calories
per unit volume in a given food. A food
that packs a lot of calories in a small area
is said to have high caloric density.
Because water and dietary fiber are non-
caloric, foods that contain a lot of water
and/or fiber tend to have low caloric
density. Generally speaking, processed
foods are calorically dense, while fruits
and vegetables, with their high water
and fiber content, are less dense.
Caloric density is important for those
seeking to lose weight because research
has shown that people tend to eat a
consistent volume of food regardless of
the number of calories it contains. In a
Penn State study, women were fed
either a high-density, medium-density,
or low-density meal three times a day.
The subjects in all three groups ate the
same weight of food, but the women
eating the high-density meals took in
30% more calories than the women
eating the low-density meals.

6. Consistency
Healthy eating is not like a vaccine: one
shot and you're covered for life. Instead
it requires a daily, lifelong commitment.
There is growing evidence that the more
consistent you are in your wholesome
eating habits, the greater your chances
of maintaining a healthy body weight.
Again, the members of the National
Weight Control Registry set an example.
"One of our most recent findings is that
they do maintain a very consistent
eating pattern," says Phelan. "Unlike
many dieters, they tend to eat the same
during the week as on the weekends.
The same holds for the holidays versus
the rest of the year. They tend to have a
consistent eating pattern throughout the
year."
A persistent myth of dieting is that those
who achieve long-term success start off
with a more moderate, slow-and-steady
approach than the crash dieters who
take on severe restrictions only to bail
out after a few weeks or months and
regain their weight. According to Phelan,
there is no evidence that the long-term
successes start off differently. The real
difference is that they simply keep doing
what they started doing!

7. Motivation
Why are some dieters able to maintain
their healthy new lifestyle indefinitely
while most others peter out after a few
weeks or months? This is currently one
of the hottest questions in weight loss
research. As yet there is no definitive
answer, but there are indications that
it's mostly about motivation.
Certain types of triggers for weight loss
diets are more likely to yield long-term
success than others. For example, "One
thing we've found is that people who
have medical triggers for their weight
loss are more successful in the long term
than people who don't," says Phelan.
There's nothing like a near-death
experience to keep you on the straight
and narrow path of healthy eating!
More evidence for the motivation
explanation comes from the fact that
just about every other explanation can
be eliminated.
It is often assumed that successful
dieters have more inherent willpower.
However, most members of the NWCR
actually failed in several weight loss
initiatives before they finally succeeded,
indicating that something about their
circumstances rather than their
psychological makeup was the key.
"Bad genes" that resist weight loss are
also frequently blamed. And yet, says
Phelan, "Many of [the NWCR members]
have parents who were overweight or
were overweight themselves as children,
which suggests they may have a genetic
predisposition to obesity, but they still
manage to lose weight."

Finding the Perfect Fit

Each of us is unique – metabolically,
psychologically, and circumstantially. For
this reason, there's no single diet plan
that works well for everyone. "Each
person needs to find what works for him-
or herself," says Zied. But there are
underlying principles of healthy nutrition
and dieting that do apply universally.
Understanding these principles is
essential to finding the right plan for
you.