Can You Be Fat and Healthy?
Do you think you can be above your ideal weight and still healthy?
I was having a fierce argument with a close friend earlier today about this idea.
Her argument was to point out those overweight athletes who still compete highly competitively. She said it proved that it must be possible to be fat and fit. She also reckoned that being fat put something in reserve if you became ill. Interesting thing is that at one time there was debate amongst scientists about some very similar ideas. In fact some studies seemed to suggest that people who are a bit overweight often outlive many of those who are within an ideal weight range.
But don’t go and grab the ice cream from the freezer just yet.
See that early work on this got it quite wrong. And the reason is simple as pie. People who are ill or smoke tend to lose weight. Take any sample of the population and some people will be thin for these reasons. Ignore this in the statistics and the numbers will point to a very wrong conclusion: that fat is not so bad after all.
Adjust the numbers to take this factor into account and the picture is transformed. You actually increase your chances of an early death greatly if you are overweight. The more overweight you are the more you risk your health and life. In truth diabetes and cancer can be waiting just around the corner as your weight soars up.
But look on the positive side: what a great incentive to start losing some pounds right away…
Sleep Well and Shed the Pounds
A few months ago Doug O’Brien told me that a high proportion of people who attended his weight loss seminars had a problem sleeping. On a show of hands typically 50% would indicate that sleep loss was a problem.
The line “Eating right helps you sleep, which helps you eat right, which helps you sleep” certainly seems to be right on the nose with this.
But if you dig deeper there can be a startling direct cause in the relationship. One that is vital for many of us to understand. You see lack of sleep can actually be the direct reason you are packing the pounds. If you don’t sleep it disrupts the chemical messages that tell you that you have eaten. So you just want to go on eating and eating.
Solution: get a good night’s sleep. Now that may be more easily said than done. On the other hand by making a few small adjustments to ensure that you sleep well (such as having a comfortable bed, going to bed at a regular time, and not exercising immediately before hand) may all be a whole lot easier than the hassle of dieting.
If you are overweight and have difficulty sleeping start to think about ways you can improve your sleep pattern. It really could be one vital and unexpected key in the war to shed weight.
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Diet Drinks Can Make You Gain Weight
This is something you may find really important. For weeks I have been going on and on about Fructose (HFCS). It seems like a big enemy in the war to shed the pounds. Not so many people I have spoken to about diet know this.
And the reason the stuff is so bad is interesting. You see the natural human diet contains very little of the sweetest of the sweet sugars. When it does occur it is in small amounts in foods that contain loads of really good micro nutrients: honey for example.
Problem is our body is not very good at metabolizing it. And the out-come is that it fools around with the signaling system that tells our mind how much we have eaten. So drink HFCS laden sweet drinks all day and you will never feel full – but you actually will be in danger of taking in loads of calories while you are totally unaware.
Now we find another problem. Move to diet drinks and you may actually put on weight as a direct result. A team at Purdue University has found that by using artificial sweeteners it is like you “announce”to your body that loads of calories are on their way “prepare your gastric juices!” Then when you don’t get them you are disappointed. The Purdue team concluded “Thus, people may eat more or expend less energy than they would otherwise”.
Now that is a big blow for dieters. And it is no good saying “let’s go back to non diet drinks”because who knows which of these does the most harm- we just know both do loads of harm.
Real problem is that we are eating all these things that are not natural. We underestimate how much our physiology has geared up to ensure we eat a balanced diet from natural sources. Then we eat all this stuff that our body has not evolved to digest and it does us untold harm. Punch line is if you want to lose weight then cut out all soft drinks and replace them with water!
