New Year’s resolutions are now a distant memory, but the weight gained during those two weeks of annual festivity and feasting lingers on for many of us. Weight loss attempts all too often suffer from the law of diminishing returns where, despite our best intentions, the effort made never seems to match the amount of weight lost. And as soon as we stop making the effort, the weight just creeps back up. The diets don’t work
But why is that?
As anyone who reads my articles in Kent Bylines will know by now, there isn’t much about nutrition that is simple. Even the advice to eat real food and boost your fibre intake is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds.
Weight gain isn’t just about calories in/calories out: it’s a complex interconnected web of issues that includes (among other things) our relationship with food, how we physically eat, when we eat, our mental health, how our bodies (and their inhabitants) function, and our genetic makeup and predispositions.
The modern world almost discourages activity. We sit at desks staring at screens, we order food from those screens and then we sit in front of other screens to entertain ourselves during “down time”. All too often the “calories out” end of the equation suffers from a significant deficit.
Our relationship with food…
…is one of the most complicated, deep-rooted relationships we will ever have, which makes changing it extraordinarily difficult.
It starts even before we are born. What a mother eats during pregnancy informs the likes and dislikes of her children throughout their lives. Eating patterns developed in childhood, based on how, what, and when a family ate also tend to be lifelong. In adolescence, eating habits are influenced by our peers and (these days) social media and influencers. As adults, we tend to eat differently if we are alone or in company, whether we have children, whether we are single, how much money we have. But the underlying early influences continue to prompt and shape our food choices.
Food links to our sense of self; self-worth, self-loathing, it connects us with others. It reflects family, loneliness, love, stress, happiness, grief, energy, exhaustion, contentment, misery. We celebrate with it, and we console ourselves (and others) with it. We use it to welcome new life into the world, and to say farewell to those who have passed through the door before us. In many ways, food defines who we are. It is about way more than just eating.
But dieting?
Dieting requires making significant changes to our patterns of eating, what, when and how. And those changes can be difficult to sustain. Because our relationship with food, the what, when, and how, is so fundamental to us.
Restrictive diets
Diets can restrict what we can eat, like the cabbage soup diet, or cutting out certain foods, like full fat dairy. Even if you love cabbage soup, eating nothing but cabbage soup for days is going to get very boring very quickly. And the restrictive nature of the diet means that, although you may be getting plenty of fibre, other nutrients (protein, a lot of vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids) are likely to be in short supply.
As for low fat dairy products…they taste disgusting, the good stuff in dairy is primarily in the fat (skimmed milk is mostly white water with sugar in it), and actually, dairy fat is really good for our cardiovascular and metabolic health.
Limiting diets
Some diets restrict food intake in certain ways or to specific times. The 5:2 diet allows ‘normal’ eating for five days but restricts calorie intake to only 800 calories on non-consecutive days (current recommendations are 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 a day for men). The 16:8 diet allows ‘normal’ food intake for eight hours during a 24 hour period and no food at all during the other 16 hours – although water, coffee and zero-calories drinks are allowed (don’t even get me started on artificial sweeteners!).
Unfortunately, many people subconsciously ‘cheat’, eating more calories than normal during non-fasting periods. And some of the less pleasant side effects of fasting (headaches, constipation, bloating, irritability) mean that the diet can be difficult to maintain over any length of time.
Meal replacement diets
Some diets change how we eat. For example meal replacement diets; low-calorie drinks, soups, shakes and smoothies that contain protein, some carbohydrate and fat, and a percentage of some of the vitamins and minerals we need on a daily basis. They are often low in fibre and high in additives which are intended to make the products more palatable.
And because they are drinks, we don’t need to chew them.
What’s chewing got to do with anything?
Chewing food when we eat triggers a whole cascade of biochemical and physical responses. It stimulates the pancreas to release insulin (for blood sugar management) and enzymes that digest and absorb fat (remember, fat is not the enemy, see below). It stimulates the release of hormones that control hunger and satiation (the feeling of being satisfactorily full) which regulate our food intake.
Chewing a lot slows down eating, giving the stomach time to notice that it is full, which can cut down our food intake. And recent research has found that chewing also increases heat production within our bodies, which burns calories (it’s called diet-induced thermogenesis for anyone who’s interested).
If we don’t chew the food we eat, none of this happens.
So what does work?
It’s worth remembering that many diets are sold by companies with a vested interest in maintaining weight – because skinny people won’t buy their products! Because when a diet is ‘over’ and normal eating patterns resume, it doesn’t take long for weight to creep back up again. Anyone serious about losing weight needs to think about changing their relationship with food on a permanent basis.
Do it slowly. Make one small change at a time, something you think you can manage. Reduce portion sizes, particularly in the evening, as our metabolic rate (how fast we burn calories) falls by around 15% during sleep. So you need fewer calories at night than you do during the day. When that small change has bedded in for a month or so, and you feel that you can carry that pattern for the rest of your life, make another equally small change. Like reducing your sugar or refined carbohydrate intake. Or drinking water instead of having a snack. The water will make you feel full but contains no calories.
Making too many changes that are too big, or too fast, means nothing will stick, and will simply perpetuate the endless cycle of diet, weight loss, weight gain, diet.
But remember: rules should always be flexible, because bending the rules now and again makes life worth living!
Editor’s note
T C Callis’ articles are very well researched, and always come with a wealth of references. If you are interested in following up anything in the article, don’t hesitate to contact us at Kent Bylines for more information.
