Basic Facts

The facts of weight control and weight loss are not only simple, they are unbreakable. The first three are:

• Your body consumes a given amount of energy.
• If you eat and digest more than this amount, you will gain weight.
• If you eat and digest less then this amount, you will lose weight.

There are no miracle cures or ways around this. Consequently, there are only three ways to lose weight:

1. Increase the amount of energy your body burns, or
2. Reduce the amount of energy (food) you put into your body, or
3. A combination of the above.

Any weight loss or weight control programme that is not based on one of these three methods will not work. Following is a review of each of these three approaches.

Option 1: Increase energy consumption

 The recommended way to increase energy consumption is to exercise. The amount of energy you consume during exercise is determined by:

• Duration. The longer you exercise, the more energy you burn.
• Intensity. The harder you exercise, the more energy you burn. For example, running will burn energy faster than walking for the same period of time.
• Muscle size. Large muscles burn energy faster than small ones. This is why running (using the large leg muscles) burns energy much faster than push-ups (which use the much smaller arm muscles). Related to this is the fact that if you use multiple muscle groups, you burn energy faster as it is the sum of all the muscle mass that is being used (in combination with Duration and Intensity) which is important. This is why swimming, which uses all the major muscles in the body, is quite effective at burning energy.

There is a lot of talk about 'fat-burning exercises'. Most of it has little basis in fact and the remainder has limited importance. For example, one can argue that exercises that build muscle mass and tone give a greater contribution to post-exercise energy consumption. However, 90% of the potential energy consumption associated with exercise is covered by just these 3 principles (duration, intensity, muscle size) so chasing after the lastest 'specialised weight loss exercise' is a waste of time and energy.

In particular, a common myth (especially among men) is that if one wants to lose abdominal fat, one should exercise the abdominal muscles. This results in people doing large amounts of sit-ups in the hope of getting a flat stomach. Unfortunately, this is not very effective, for two reasons:

• The first is that exercising muscles in a given area does not consume the fat next to the muscle but rather consumes energy from the body as a whole. This is because energy is moved around the body by the blood stream, which circulates through the body as a whole rather than in localised areas. Consequently, in terms of losing fat from a given area, it doesn't matter if you exercise the muscles in this area or muscles elsewhere in your body.
• The second is that the abdominal muscles are smaller than the leg muscles and are less able to maintain duration and intensity of exercise than the leg muscles. Consequently, on all 3 criteria (duration, intensity and muscle size), a brisk walk will increase your energy comsumption (and thus weight loss) far more than sit-ups.

With any exercise program, one should use common sense. If you do not exercise regularly, start slowly and gradually increase. Suddenly increasing your amount of exercise can lead to pain and minor injuries which can easily discourage one. If you have any medical conditions or concerns, it is wise to discuss these with your doctor before starting or increasing an exercise programme.

The 'Miracle' Alternatives to Exercise

There are many products on the market which claim to provide an alternative to exercise or claim to increase your body's energy consumption without exercise.

Many of these are in the form of pills, liquids, potions or chemicals. The majority of these (many of which come out of Asian 'alternative medicine') are ineffective and a waste of money.

A few of them will actually increase your energy consumption somewhat but at a risk (for example, healthy people have been known to die of sudden heart failure). One must carefully consider how they are increasing energy consumption. For example, some drugs will case the heart to beat faster and since the heart is a muscle there is a corresponding increase in energy consumptions. Unfortunately, the benefit achieved through such methods is limited and short-term, while the risks are substantial.

Another popular alternative is a machine with pads which attach to the body and send small electrical currents through the body, causing muscles to twitch. Theoretically, there is some extra energy consumptioin associated with this twitching (although I do not believe that the slim and muscular models they use to demonstrate the machines achieved their physique in this way). However, one will notice that the people demonstrating the machines do not show any of the symptoms of substantial exercise (e.g. perspiration, shortness of breath) so one has to ask how much energy the muscles are actually expending.

Our advice is that before using any of these 'miracle' alternatives, that you discuss them with your doctor. You may find that not only do you save money, but in some cases you might be saving your health as well.

Option 2: Reduce the amount you eat

An effective technique, but unfortunately (except for the iron-willed) easier said than done. Here are some ideas that may help:

• Remove Temptation. If you eat too many sweets, simply do not buy them. If they are in the house, they are a constant source of temptation. Think about the foods that you are eating too much of and try to remove them from your environment and replace them by healthier alternatives.
• Eat Slowly. There are a number of mechanisms that the body uses to tell itself that it has had enough to eat.
  • One factor is chewing; if you chew your food well (the traditional rule is to chew each mouthful 20 times), then your brain is more likely to get the message that you've had enough to eat.
  • Other factors are how full your stomach is and how high your blood sugar levels are. However, there is a delay between when you swallow your food and when your brain receives these messages. Consequently, if you eat fast, you tend to go from 'I could eat a horse' to 'I am so stuffed, I ate so much'.
  • Eat slower, and you will get the full message sooner that you've had enough
• Stop when you are no longer hungry. Everything you eat after you've had enough goes straight to fat. Even if you can eat more, if you're not hungry then stop. Many of us have been taught as children to eat everything on our plate, either to avoid affending the cook or because "there are millions of hungry people that would be happy to have that". However, making yourself fat will not mean any more food for the starving millions.
• Avoid hunger extremes. Skipping meals or eating as little as possible in an effort to lose weight doesn't work. In fact, starving yourself usually makes your fatter, not thiner:
  • For most people, making yourself really hungry means that when you do eat, you eat too much. Skipping one meal and then stuffing yourself at the next is neither healthy nor productive. Also, when you skip meals, your blood sugar drops and your body's instinct is to find and eat high-calorie food, which is why at these times one often has the strongest craving for foods with sugar and chocolate.
  • A really good tip I've come accross is to think of your hunger on a level of 1 to 10, where 1 is extremely hungry and 10 is couldn't eat another bite, then try to keep your hunger between 3 and 8. Avoid being really hungry as that leads to binge eating and sugar cravings, avoid the opposite extreme of eating too much for obvious reasons.
  • Related to this, it is better to eat often and small than seldom and big.

Metabolic Rates and Food Consumption

Your metabolic rate is the amount of energy which your body naturally consumes (without exercise). This rate varies with a number of factors, including your general health. One of the most important factors is whether your body believes that food is plentiful or not. If your body decides that food is scarce, as an instinctive survivial reaction it will reduce your metabolic rate.

Extreme and inconsistent food intake can disrupt your metabolic rate, something which it is important to avoid as this tends to cause long-term weight issues. We can illustrate this with an example:

• Suppose your metabolic rate is 2000 calories per day.
• If you eat exactly 2000 calories per day, you will neither gain nor lose weight as your energy intake is the same as your energy consumption.
• Suppose that for a week you go on a diet where you eat only 1000 calories, after which you are so hungry that you binge eat the next week, consuming 3000 calories per day.
  • Over the 2 weeks, your average would still be 2000 calories per day. However, unlike the first example, at the end of the 2 weeks you will have put weight on.
  • The reason for this is that starving yourself for a week will tell your body that food is scarce and it will drop your metabolic rate. Assume that it drops to 1500 calories. So during the week you will have eaten 7000 calories but consumed 10 500 (7 * 1500).
  • The second week (when you binge) your metabolism will gradually go up again. However, your body reacts to insufficient food quicker and more extreme than to too much food (this is becase for millions of years evolution has reacted to the fact that food shortages were more of a threat to survival than food surpluses). So during the second week your metabolism may only be 1900 calories per day but you are consuming 3000, so at the end of the week you will have eaten 21 000 calories (7 * 3000) but burned off only 13300.
  • Averaged over the 2 weeks, you've eaten a total of 28 000 calories but burnt off only 20 300. This means that you've eaten 7 700 calories more than you've burnt off and consequently will have gained approximately 1 kilogram (over 2 pounds) in weight. Not a very good result for having starved yourself for a week.

It is hard to lose weight by dieting alone, because you need to reduce your food consumption not only by the amount you want to lose, but need to maintain this reduction for an extra period of time to compensate for the reduction in your metabolic rate. Combining dieting with exercise, which keeps up the rate at which you consume energy, is more successful.

It is not just the total amount that you eat which is important, but also how you eat it. Extreme diets tend to drop your metabolic rate and also lead to post-diet weight gain. It has also been observed that frequent extreme diets can lead to a permanent reduction in metabolic rate, which is a major long-term obstacle to maintaining your weight.

Option 3: Diet and Exercise Combination

Most people find that the combination of diet and exercise is more successful than using just one or the other. However, one should be careful not to lose weight to fast. Health professionals advise that one should not lose more than a kilogram (about 2 pounds) per week, as losing weight faster than this can result in sudden and extreme health issues.