This will probably be be a slightly unusual post because I have 2 confessions to make:
1. I'm a doctor (GP) and see overweight people all day, and do my best to help them; and
2. I've never been overweight (as measured by BMI) but I tried following my own advice and dieting for the first time in my life in the last few months, with mixed results.
First the back story: I have seen more overweight people than I can count in my medical office, and several thousand times I have had a conversation like this:
OWP (overweight patient): How do I lose weight?
Me: You need to eat less, and maybe exercise more, but with the emphasis on the eating less.
OWP: But I hardly eat anything doctor (then OWP lists all the things which s/he does NOT eat, which takes a long time because there are seemingly an infinite number of them)
Me: Logically, all your weight has come from what you have eaten. Therefore, it logically follows that if you eat less than you are eating now, you must eventually start losing weight.
Fast forward a few decades, and I find for the first time in my life that my trousers are getting too tight and my kids are joking that I am developing a double chin. This is not good. I assess the situation. I am not overweight - my BMI is a theoretically healthy 23.2 - but all my life I have been on the light side of average, and now I am on the heavy side of average. This is definitely not good and I need to do something about it.
So I follow the advice which I have been giving to my patients for many years and put myself on what seems like a reasonable diet. I cut out my weekly visit to KFC, get diet pepsi instead of regular pepsi, cut down the snacks and use the stairs every day instead of the elevator in my apartment building. This should do the trick.
I do this for a few weeks and weigh myself every week. Nothing happens. I don't gain any more weight - that's good - but I don't lose any weight either.
So more action is called for. I cut out the hot chocolate which I normally drink at work, and drink 1% milk instead. I put myself on what seems like a near starvation diet which is little more than a bowl of cornflakes in the morning, a boiled egg at lunchtime and a small tin of salmon in the evening. If I have a snack, I compensate for that by missing out a whole meal (if you can call a boiled egg a "meal"). And at last, I start to lose weight at a rate of about a pound a week. So far I have lost 9 pounds and got down to a BMI of 21.9 which is pretty close to where I want to be.
I think there are four lessons to be learned from this:
1. My OWPs are correct when they tell me they hardly eat anything
2. I am correct when I tell my OWPs that if they keep cutting down what they eat, they will eventually start to lose weight
3. The amount of food actually needed to keep the human body going is astonishingly tiny. Our bodies have evolved to be very efficient, which was a good thing in days gone by, but works against us in today's society.
4. The key to losing weight is to weigh yourself weekly so you get real-time feedback about whether what you are doing is working or not. If you are a pound lighter this week than you were last week, that's great, keep doing what you are doing. If you are the same or heavier, what you are doing is not working and you need to do something different. I have very little patience with OWPs who say they want to do something about their weight, come to my office once every three months to be weighed, but don't weigh themselves in between times. This seems to me to be a sure-fire recipe for failure, and suggests that they are not really trying / not really interested.
Good luck, and I'd be interested to hear what people think about all this!
1. I'm a doctor (GP) and see overweight people all day, and do my best to help them; and
2. I've never been overweight (as measured by BMI) but I tried following my own advice and dieting for the first time in my life in the last few months, with mixed results.
First the back story: I have seen more overweight people than I can count in my medical office, and several thousand times I have had a conversation like this:
OWP (overweight patient): How do I lose weight?
Me: You need to eat less, and maybe exercise more, but with the emphasis on the eating less.
OWP: But I hardly eat anything doctor (then OWP lists all the things which s/he does NOT eat, which takes a long time because there are seemingly an infinite number of them)
Me: Logically, all your weight has come from what you have eaten. Therefore, it logically follows that if you eat less than you are eating now, you must eventually start losing weight.
Fast forward a few decades, and I find for the first time in my life that my trousers are getting too tight and my kids are joking that I am developing a double chin. This is not good. I assess the situation. I am not overweight - my BMI is a theoretically healthy 23.2 - but all my life I have been on the light side of average, and now I am on the heavy side of average. This is definitely not good and I need to do something about it.
So I follow the advice which I have been giving to my patients for many years and put myself on what seems like a reasonable diet. I cut out my weekly visit to KFC, get diet pepsi instead of regular pepsi, cut down the snacks and use the stairs every day instead of the elevator in my apartment building. This should do the trick.
I do this for a few weeks and weigh myself every week. Nothing happens. I don't gain any more weight - that's good - but I don't lose any weight either.
So more action is called for. I cut out the hot chocolate which I normally drink at work, and drink 1% milk instead. I put myself on what seems like a near starvation diet which is little more than a bowl of cornflakes in the morning, a boiled egg at lunchtime and a small tin of salmon in the evening. If I have a snack, I compensate for that by missing out a whole meal (if you can call a boiled egg a "meal"). And at last, I start to lose weight at a rate of about a pound a week. So far I have lost 9 pounds and got down to a BMI of 21.9 which is pretty close to where I want to be.
I think there are four lessons to be learned from this:
1. My OWPs are correct when they tell me they hardly eat anything
2. I am correct when I tell my OWPs that if they keep cutting down what they eat, they will eventually start to lose weight
3. The amount of food actually needed to keep the human body going is astonishingly tiny. Our bodies have evolved to be very efficient, which was a good thing in days gone by, but works against us in today's society.
4. The key to losing weight is to weigh yourself weekly so you get real-time feedback about whether what you are doing is working or not. If you are a pound lighter this week than you were last week, that's great, keep doing what you are doing. If you are the same or heavier, what you are doing is not working and you need to do something different. I have very little patience with OWPs who say they want to do something about their weight, come to my office once every three months to be weighed, but don't weigh themselves in between times. This seems to me to be a sure-fire recipe for failure, and suggests that they are not really trying / not really interested.
Good luck, and I'd be interested to hear what people think about all this!