Pants Pinch? Try these Tips to Stave off Unwanted Pounds

Face it, we live in a high-calorie world where it's increasingly difficult to maintain a healthy weight, despite unrelenting and unrealistic pressure to look like a supermodel.

What’s a girl to do?

Sure, there are good reasons to not pack on the pounds, but for most of us, it’s easier said than done. In fact, most of us put on an average of two pounds a year, every year, after age 21.

If you do the math, that’s a whopping 58 pounds by age 50.

In a perfect world, we could eat anything we want without facing a litany of health concerns.

We would never face diseases ranging from developing cancer of the colon, kidney, breast, or endometrium. We wouldn't have to worry about heart disease and diabetes, sleep apnea, gallstones, cataracts and even premature death.

Instead we live in an untamed world where inexpensive and readily accessible high-calorie, high-fat, overly processed, heavily marketed foods are part of our daily lives.

Renowned psychologist Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, calls this our “toxic food environment.”

So the real questions here are how do we co-exist with the constant pumping of unhealthy foods without starving to death or driving ourselves loco? And how do we stop the pudge from taking over our lives?

It turns out it might not be as hard as it seems.

The first — and easiest goal — is to not put on any more weight. Start by banning those new two extra pounds that could be all yours come Dec. 31. If you are overweight now, start whittling yourself down to a healthy weight, based on your personal body type, height and waist to hip ratio.

Luckily, we have a road map based on what has worked for more than 5,000 other men and women who’ve enrolled in the National Weight Control Registry .

These individuals have successfully lost 30 pounds or more and kept the weight off for at least a year.

So what’s their secret? Here’s a rundown, thanks to the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in Boston.

• Ban the strange diets

They may work in the short term, but almost any extreme diet is doomed to fail eventually. When it comes to losing weight — and keeping it off — you should be choosing whole, healthy foods and eating smaller portions, slowly.

If you need help in choosing which food to eat, checkout the Healthy Eating Pyramid for ideas.

• Be more active

If there’s one “best” weight loss mantra it’s “exercise, exercise, exercise.” Choose activities you enjoy and do them every day. Exercising with a friend can help keep you on track.

• Turn off the television

Watching less TV can give you more time to be active — and less time to be enticed by junk food ads. Here are two easy ways to cut back on TV-watching. Take the TV out of your bedroom, and make sure it’s off during meals.

• Skip the sugary drinks

Drinking sugared soda, fruit drinks, or juice can give you several hundred calories a day without realizing it. Research suggests children and adults who drink soda or other sugary drinks are more likely to gain weight than those who don’t, and that switching from these to water or unsweetened drinks can reduce weight.

One word of caution: Avoiding sugar with sugar-free soda may not be a sure bet either. A 2008 University of Minnesota study of almost 10,000 adults found just one diet soda a day is linked to a 34 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome, the group of symptoms including belly fat and high cholesterol that puts you at risk for heart disease.

• Think before you eat

Before you mindlessly reach for a snack, pause and ask yourself a couple of questions.

"Am I really hungry?"

“Is there a healthier choice?“

It’s easy to lose sight of good food choices in today’s ad-crazy world. Asking yourself these simple questions can help keep you on track.

• Get enough sleep

Adults who get less than seven hours sleep are 30 to 80 percent more likely to pack on the pounds, develop diabetes and heart disease and to die prematurely, the famous Nurses’ Health Study found.

“It turns out that when we are sleep-deprived, our appetite hormones actually go up,” said Frank Hu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at HSPH, who studies the prevention of obesity and type 2 diabetes through diet and exercise.

“One appetite hormone, ghrelin, is a hunger signal that leads to eating more high-calorie, sugary foods. Another hormone, leptin, goes down with loss of sleep and boosts feelings of hunger.

“In addition, sleep deprivation elevates cortisone, a stress hormone that can promote weight gain and obesity – especially abdominal obesity, a risk factor for diabetes and heart disease,” Hu said at a 2012 HSPH forum on sleep deprivation.

Lynette Summerill is an award-winning writer and Scuba enthusiast who lives in San Diego with her husband and two beach loving dogs. In addition to writing about cancer-related issues for EmpowHER, her work has been seen in publications around the world.

Sources:

Diet Soda Intake and Risk of Incident Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Jennifer A. Nettleton, Pamela L. Lutsey, Youfa Wang, João A. Lima, Erin D. Michos, and David R. Jacobs, Jr. Published online before print January 16, 2009, doi: 10.2337/dc08-1799 Diabetes Care April 2009 vol. 32 no. 4 688-694
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/32/4/688.short

How to get to your healthy weight. The Nutrition Source, Harvard School of Public Health, online at
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight-full-story/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Nutrition%20newsletter-January%202013%20%281%29&utm_content#general_strategies

“Fighting the Clock: How America’s Sleep Deficit is Damaging Long-Term Health” HSPH and Huffington Post Forum. 6 March, 2012. Online at :
http://theforum.sph.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/downloads/briefings/briefing-20120306.pdf

Reviewed February 26, 2013
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith

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