To Your Health
May, 2008 (Vol. 02, Issue 05) |
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Lose It the Safe Way
By Dr. Donald L. Hayes
Undergoing surgery to alter the way you digest your food in the hopes you'll lose weight - not a decision to take lightly. The most common surgeries today for obesity are gastric bypass and a procedure known as adjustable gastric banding. But gastric bypass and banding procedures have many associated risks and long-term consequences. These procedures tend to work best if the patient also agrees to lifelong behavioral and dietary changes, including lifelong vitamin supplementation.
You might be thinking, "If I'm going to commit to lifelong dietary changes and vitamin therapy anyway, why should I add the pain, expense and risk of either having my stomach surgically divided into two parts using a stapler or an operation whereby a restrictive band goes around the top of my stomach?" Good point.
Most "Diets" Don't Work
A panel of weight-loss experts from the National Institutes of Health Nutrition Committee agreed that most diets don't work, suggesting only 3 percent of those who lose weight on a diet keep it off for five years. They went on to say that the yo-yo pattern of going on a diet - losing some weight and then adding it back on - may be more harmful to a person's health than losing weight in the first place. People who fail on diets tend to blame themselves for lack of willpower, when the problem clearly is insufficient scientific information to help them make better and more successful eating and lifestyle choices.
A Natural Alternative
A better alternative to starting a diet and then stopping when you hit a desired weight is to develop a healthy and natural way of eating on a consistent basis. The average American consumes almost 40 percent of their daily calories as fat. Leading commercial diet companies reduce their clients' fat consumption to approximately 30 percent by reducing portions sizes, but these small meals often leave people feeling hungry and deprived. The truth is if you simply reduce your daily fat intake to about 20 percent or less, you can eat more frequently, eat a greater quantity of the right types of foods, never feel hungry and still lose weight.
Not a "Low-Fat" Diet
Oddly enough, I am not recommending a "low-fat" diet. Americans have managed to become really fat over the past 30 years on low-fat diets. In fact, many scientists date the current epidemic of obesity and diabetes to 1977 dietary guidelines that gave a take-home message of "Eat more low-fat foods."
And that's exactly what Americans did. They began binging on low-fat processed and refined foods as a way of avoiding the evils of eating too much fat. Unfortunately, they never cut down on their total consumption of fatty meats and dairy products - they just ate in addition to their extra "low-fat" foods. What the guidelines should have said was, "Eat less high-fat meats and consume fewer fatty dairy products."
But because the guidelines weren't clear and Americans love to be given a guideline to eat more of anything (except fruits and vegetables), most of them ate like crazy, resulting in 66 percent of American adults being overweight and only 9 percent eating the recommended five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day.
We don't exercise enough. We overeat. We eat more of the foods that are horribly unhealthy, and we are getting fatter because of it. As no surprise to anyone, total health care costs associated with being overweight exceed $90 billion a year.
