Obesity
is on the rise in the developed world. In the USA 20% of all males are
obese and so are 25% of all females. This amounts to a staggering 39
million seriously overweight people in one country alone! One third of the
people living in Europe are overweight, and 10% of these are obese (this
figure includes children), representing an increase of 40% the last
10 years. In Britain 17% of males and 20% of females are obese,
making it the fattest nation in Europe. In South Africa the levels of obesity
are much the same as those in Britain.
The
cost of obesity should not be underestimated. Health care for overweight
Americans amounts to $238 billion annually, and that’s not taking loss of
productivity into account. In Germany $19,4 billion is spent each year on
treating the many diseases that arise from obesity (these include the three main
killers in the Western world, namely heart disease, cancer and diabetes)
Professor
Phillip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force believes
that one of the reasons for the alarming increase in obesity is inactivity
due to changed lifestyles. Widespread reliance on computers and cars is
certainly to blame. On top of it, we do less physical work nowadays and we
fill our leisure hours with passive rather than active entertainments.
But
people are not only doing less, they are also eating differently and eating
more. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the average person’s diet is
ready-made and pre-packaged. So what with the traditional sit-down family meal
rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and with the ready availability of rich
fast foods at any time of the day, our eating patterns have changed beyond
recognition.
The Diet Industry
With
so many people experiencing weight problems world wide, it is no wonder that
weight loss has become big business – large profits are reaped from people
grasping at straws. The diet industry in the United States is worth $35 billion
a year and is growing fast! This is not much different elsewhere; just take a
look around and see how many local, national and international products,
services, clubs and support systems are available to the dieter. In a small
country like South Africa, one weight loss organisation alone had a turnover of
R60 million for approximately 4 million economically active people
in the year 2001. But if diets and diet products really worked, surely this
picture would be a whole lot different?
There
are so many weight-loss aids available today and the sheer number of different
products and their many contradictory claims make it very confusing for the
desperate dieter. It seems that everyone is after a slice of you (or should I
say, of the contents of your wallet). In response, most people just throw up
their hands and tuck in!
Some
of these dietary approaches actually may work from a weight loss point of view,
but most have serious health consequences. I get emails from people almost daily
saying that they lost weight on such-and-such a diet, but the minute they went
off the diet or stopped taking the weigh-loss product, the kilos just piled back
on again, and that what they really want help with now is their health.
(Problems like extreme fatigue, constipation, allergies, digestive disorders,
skin upsets, sleep disturbances, menstrual irregularities or fertility
difficulties are most commonly listed.)
Ultimately,
without your health you have nothing, and as I have pointed out before, your
focus should be on health gain rather than weight loss. Don’t
forget that one of the many benefits of vibrant health is a slim, toned body!
Let’s
take a quick look at the most common and popular weight-loss approaches touted
today, and let’s see what the associated problems and possible benefits are.
1.
The Prevention of Fat Absorption Pill
This
product is designed to block the absorption of any fat contained in your food,
based on the theory that all dietary fat will make you fat. But the reality is
that, in the process, this product also prevents the absorption of the important
fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K (and in fact tends to flush them out), as
well as the essential fatty acids that are so vital to overall health.
Vitamin
A is necessary for many important processes: it is vital for growth, clear
vision, reproduction, healthy skin and cells, and helps your body repair wounds.
So without this vitamin you could become infertile, your skin could show signs
of rapid ageing, wounds could take a long time to heal properly, and on top of
it you could experience poor eyesight!
Vitamin
D helps your body absorb and use calcium and magnesium for healthy bones, heart
and nerves, for energy production and kidney function. So where are you with a
heart and kidneys that don’t do their job, or poor energy levels or possibly
even a nervous breakdown? And did I mention osteoporosis or brittle bone
disease?
Vitamin
E helps the heart use oxygen, prevents thrombosis and slows down and prevents
ageing and degenerative diseases. So to put it bluntly, without vitamin E you
could be dead, Bud!
Vitamin
K is essential for blood clotting, so how about losing weight and just bleeding
to death at the same time!
Essential
fatty acids are vital for correct endocrine function and part of this function
is to maintain body weight, metabolism, appetite and water retention. So without
these healthy, natural fats you don’t stand a change of achieving and
maintaining correct body weight. In addition, blood pressure, blood sugar
levels, sleep patterns and heart, liver, kidney, skin and bowel function are all
dependent on sufficient essential fatty acids in the diet.
So
if you are still in any doubt about the value of this product, let me put it
plainly – all the body’s important functions could simply pack up and in the
process you could actually gain weight too!
2.
The Diet Pills
These
pills work by suppressing the natural appetite and are probably the most popular
form of dieting aid. Just one well-known pharmaceutical company brings in
$215.7million a year from the sale of this product.
Appetite
suppressants may seem like the answer to eating less, but there are numerous
unpleasant side effects associated with these pills: dry mouth, headaches,
constipation, insomnia and raised blood pressure. These symptoms show clearly
that the tablets are upsetting the endocrine (or hormonal) system, the very
system that controls and maintains healthy body weight.
The
sad truth is that these drugs produce a weight loss of only 5 - 10%
and impact negatively on your health on top of it.
3.
High Fat, High Protein and Low Carbohydrate Diets
Any
diet that emphasises one type of food at the expense of any other should be
avoided at all costs. High fat and protein diets are extremely dangerous and
have been shown to contribute to heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes,
arthritis and osteoporosis. A high protein diet will put huge strain your
kidneys and digestive tract, contributing to disease in these areas.
It
is a physiological fact that the human body needs a high alkaline-forming diet
to maintain health. The only way to achieve this is on a plant-based diet where
at least 75 per cent of your food intake consists of raw fruit and vegetables. A
high alkaline-forming diet promotes a healthy endocrine system (the system that
is responsible for weight control), and it is only in the correct alkaline
environment that fuel (food) will be converted efficiently into energy. If fuel
cannot be converted into energy, it will be stored in the body and weight
problems are the obvious result.
The
Natural Way lifestyle’s Five Steps towards achieving the correct alkaline
environment are outlined in Chapter One. This is the only permanent, safe route
to a healthy, slim body.
4.
Stimulants
These
can be in the form of good old apple cider vinegar or a more sophisticated
tablet containing caffeine and (or) alcohol. They rely on the premise that these
substances will stimulate the thyroid and, in turn, the metabolism.
The
thyroid gland is part of the endocrine (hormonal) system and therefore plays an
important role in maintaining weight. It can only achieve this naturally and
correctly if your diet and lifestyle are both in healthy balance.
Although
you may experience some weight loss when first taking stimulants, in the long
term your metabolism can (and usually does) slow down. In the meantime, if you
interfere unnaturally with one of the glands of the hormonal system, any of the
other glands that work together with it can be thrown out of balance. This could
result in anything from heart disease to cancer, and of course in sleep problems
and impaired skin, kidney and liver function, to name just a few!
5.
Low Fat and No Fat Diets
I
cannot emphasis enough how extremely dangerous these diets are. These diets are
a tempting option to the desperate dieter because measurable weight loss is
experienced, but at what cost to your health? If you remove fat from your diet,
there will firstly be no (or very little) absorption of the important
fat-soluble vitamins, and secondly your diet will not provide the essential
fatty acids that your endocrine system needs to function at an optimum level.
As
I have mentioned before, the endocrine system is involved in almost every aspect
of body maintenance, from the function of your heart, lungs, liver, skin,
kidneys and digestive system, to the regulating of blood sugar levels and blood
pressure. It is of course also responsible for achieving and maintaining perfect
body weight, and for controlling metabolism, appetite and water retention. So it
is vital that the diet provides the nutrients necessary for this system to
function properly.
Another
reason why you should steer clear of these diets is that they often allow
unrestricted access to many processed, additive-laden foods such as fat-free
sweets and baked goods made from refined, white flour. They also encourage the
consumption of low and no-fat branded foods, to which various fillers,
thickeners, artificial flavourants, preservatives, colourants and who knows what
else, have been added. Many of these flavour enhancers and adjusters have not
been tested adequately. These non-foods will never be able to sustain health.
Something will only go wrong in time and you will pay the price dearly with your
health.
6.
The Blood Group Diet
Based
on your blood group, this diet promotes the use of unprocessed foods but at the
same time excludes large groups of really important natural foods like avocados
and mangoes. This diet flies in the face of all credible nutritional research,
which concludes that we are designed for a high alkaline-forming, plant-based
diet, regardless of the individual’s blood type.
Many
people are attracted to this approach because it seems to single them out and
makes them feel unique. The only diet that is of any benefit, is the one
recommended for the A-type blood group, but this is because it is plant based
and largely excludes animal products. Many people will, of course, benefit
tremendously from removing gluten from their diets and most of the blood groups
are encouraged to do this. Consider that the biggest blood group is O-type,
followed by A-type, which together make up over 90 per cent of the population.
This means that over 90 per cent of dieters will benefit from gluten removal and
nearly 50 per cent of these will also benefit from changing to a plant-based
diet. However, the high protein diet recommended for O-type people is extremely
dangerous (refer to my previous comments on high protein diets).
Many
recognised researchers feel that the Blood Group Diet is a hoax.
John Robbins, in his book The Food Revolution, says that basing your diet
on blood groups makes as much sense as basing it on eye colour.
I believe the only reason that anyone benefits from this diet is that most blood
types are encouraged to remove gluten and processed foods from their meals, but
unfortunately the exclusion of so many other natural foods can only be
detrimental to your health in the long term. And imagine the chaos in the
kitchen if each family member had to follow a different dietary programme!
7.
Meal Replacements
These
drinks or shakes are usually highly processed, containing many unnatural,
artificial ingredients. (They are often soy or whey based which encourages
constipation and mucus.)
Meal
replacement products are expensive and futile. Even if you do lose weight
initially, if you have not re-educated your taste buds or changed your eating
habits, the weight will come back with a vengeance once you go off the diet.
This is true of all short-term diet solutions.
8.
Glycaemic Index Approach
Glycaemic
Index (GI) is the measure of how different carbohydrate foods affect blood
glucose levels. It is being touted as the answer to all our weight woes, but in
my view this approach is based on the somewhat flawed premise that all foods
that have a high GI should be avoided because they provoke a strong insulin
response. I say flawed because in practice this is not necessarily so, and on
top of it this line of thinking leads to some ridiculous conclusions, like
refined sugar being better than dates, and many processed foods (like
sugar-coated cereals and instant noodles) being promoted as healthier than fresh
fruit, simply because their GI is lower.
Time
and again the diet industry isolates certain aspects of nutrition and pronounces
various foods as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Very little thought seems to be
given to our total nutritional requirements and indeed to our overall state of
health. The tests in these controlled studies are often performed on a small
group of unscreened volunteers in an unnatural, stressful environment, like a
hospital or laboratory.
I
am unconvinced by the Glycaemic Index charts and suspicious of their
conclusions. For instance, spaghetti has been given a GI of 43 and spiral-shaped
pasta a GI of 68. Yet both are made from white flour (semolina) and water. How
can the mere shape of a food alter the rate at which the blood glucose is
raised? Could the result have more to do with the mental state of the volunteers
being tested? Perhaps they preferred eating spaghetti to spirals! Also,
according to the charts, refined sugar has a GI of 65 while many other natural
foods like pineapple and pumpkin have a much higher GI. I fail to see how foods
full of natural vitamins, minerals and valuable fibre can result in blood sugar
being raised faster than refined sugar. I am particularly alarmed because as a
result of these somewhat arbitrary measurements many healthy foods are slated
and numerous unnatural, processed foods are promoted (fried potato chips, for
instance, are deemed better than simple baked potatoes!)
The
food and diet industry’s obsession with charts is, I believe, a way of
manipulating the public into deferring to their superior knowledge - as long as
we follow their charts we’ll be OK. Well we’ve had the food group charts for
years, the low fat charts have enjoyed their moment of glory and now we have the
GI charts, but heart disease, cancer and diabetes increase year by year, as does
obesity and the many weight-related diseases.
The
Glycaemic Index approach to weight loss has identified a whole new syndrome,
dubbed ‘Insulin Resistance’ or ‘Syndrome X’ (we used to call it
hypoglycaemia or low blood sugar or a pre diabetes condition). Thousands of
people are being diagnosed with this condition and put onto either high
carbohydrate low fat, or high protein no fat, or high protein high fat diets,
and unsurprisingly just as many people are finding that their health is going
for a loop. Just recently I spoke to a 34-year-old woman diagnosed with
‘Syndrome X’ who was immediately put on a high protein no fat diet. This
consisted of egg for breakfast, fish for lunch, meat or chicken for supper,
accompanied mainly by vegetables and salads, but carbohydrates and fruit were
strictly forbidden. Yes, she lost weight but in the process she became severely
constipated and her menstrual period when from a normal flow over four or five
days to heavy bleeding over 10 to 12 days. She became anaemic and very irritable
and was placed on an antidepressant, and yet even with all these problems she
persisted with the diet. It was only when her weight started creeping back up
again that she spoke to me about changing!
In
my opinion, this syndrome is just typical of the manipulation that the industry
encourages, but somehow through ignorance or desperation we get sucked in and
pin all our hopes on whoever promotes the latest ‘thing’.
But
charts and ‘syndromes’ aside, for the sake of our health (and of course for
our weight!) we need to eat a wide variety of natural, wholesome, unprocessed
foods that are cooked without heated fats. Achieving vibrant health is a simple
and straightforward matter; you do not need a degree, a guru or a chart in order
to follow a healthy diet. It’s a well-known fact that eating a manmade diet
will result inevitably in manmade diseases, so get down to basics and use your
God-given intelligence. It’s as simple as that!
The Solution: Jumping off the Diet Merry-go-round
After
27 years of being passionately involved in and researching healthy living, I
have seen medical professionals and alternative practitioners swing from one
diet fad to the next, seemingly unmindful of the basic needs and functions of
the human body. The very same practitioners who had their patients on
high-carbohydrate low-fat diets are now avidly promoting the high-protein
high-fat option. Where does that leave the desperate dieter?
My
advice to you is simple. Forget the diets, the pills and the potions and
concentrate instead on getting healthy.
It
is very important to understand that when you have a problem with weight gain,
appetite control or blood sugar levels, it is because your endocrine (hormonal)
system is out of balance. Rather than focusing on your symptoms, you should try
to focus on the cause of your symptoms, and to sort this out you need to get
your hormones in balance. Unfortunately most people don’t like this approach
as it could take anything from three months to three years to correct an
unbalanced system through improved lifestyle and when you want to lose weight,
whether it be five or 50kg, you want to see instant results!
But
by focusing on your health, your hormonal system will automatically come into
balance and in time all your other problems (including your weight) will be
sorted out permanently. In another chapter I deal more specifically with
hormonal health and offer some useful pointers towards getting this intricate
system to function optimally.
Remember
that correct body weight is the direct result of true health. Only a healthy
body is the perfect weight; there are no miracle fast fixes or magic potions.
Your body itself is the miracle and it has been designed perfectly so that if
you treat it properly, it will correct the problem in time.
