Archive for the ‘Weight Loss’ Category
WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY Part 2: Paving the Way for Long-Term Success
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011Paying attention. Learning to choose wisely. Planning. Coping with stress. Not eating when sad or mad or lonely. Exercising. Picking yourself up after slipping. Sticking with it. It sounds like a plan for weight loss, right? It’s also how to avoid gaining weight, and a good map for self-care overall. It is, finally, the path to long-term success after weight loss surgery, too.
Weight loss surgery, as Dr Oz’ book You, On a Diet says, is not “the easy way out”. Nor does it mean “you never have to worry about dieting again”. Losing weight (and not gaining it, for that matter), requires just about everyone in today’s world to pay attention to what and how they’re eating. If you have weight to lose, it’s going to take a lot of attention, and the often uncomfortable work of making lasting habit change. That’s really the only way.
That said, the effort it takes to reach and maintain a healthy weight rewards you. Better health, more energy, a longer life: these are among the rewards. And for some—especially those facing the most difficulty–bariatric surgery offers a viable way to lose weight. The surgical change prevents overeating for a time. However, people can and do eventually regain (at least some) lost weight unless new habits are firmly rooted. The best way to think of surgery, then, is as a tool to help weight off relatively quickly, while you learn and practice and reinforce the habits that will keep it off for good. (more…)
WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY Part 1: Neither Nightmare nor Magic Wand
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011Mention weight loss surgery, and you’ll get some strong reactions. “Surgery!?” , some will exclaim, as if you’ve suggested amputation for a scraped knee. People just have to eat less, or deal with their emotional problems, is usually the thinking here. At the opposite extreme, there are those who believe their lap bands will finally free them from diet struggles. “At last I’ll be like everyone else, not always thinking about food.” Both of these surprisingly common views distort reality and don’t support real solutions.
Recent statistics suggest that about two thirds of American adults qualify as obese (with children’s rates catching up). Nearly 250,000 people had bariatric (weight loss) surgery last year alone. Increasingly, the overweight turn to surgery as procedures become safer, insurance-covered, and effective against illnesses like diabetes. Given these facts, a discussion of sane eating, and how to achieve it in life, must make room for these realities. To fit them into the discussion, we first must confront those harmful misconceptions. (more…)
Why You Should Cook More to Weigh Less
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011Look for Dr. Katz’ articles, and more on staying fit, at http://www.hivehealthmedia.com Check out the front page, guest posts, and weight loss entries.
COOKING TO EAT MORE SANELY
Friday, October 21st, 2011Yes, it would be great to adopt all those habits that lead to better weight loss and health. But here’s one to tackle that you might underestimate in your search for diet solutions. Simply put: Cook more often.
Cooking can check weight and improve health even if you’re no expert low-cal chef. When we cook at home, we can avoid the added salt, sugar, and fats contained in take-out, fast-food, or restaurant fare. We can control portions better. We can up the vegetables, shrink the starches, make more of those foods we don’t gorge on. We can make extras for dinner to bring for lunch and thereby avoid the cafeteria. We can get used to, and develop preferences for, real fresh foods that are good for us and our waistlines.
Two myths can stand in the way of our cooking more, however: (more…)
IF SELF-CONTROL’S A MUSCLE, WHY CAN’T I EXERCISE IT?
Friday, September 9th, 2011A new book on willpower asserts that it’s a muscle. That is, you can strengthen it with practice, and you can exhaust it with stress and overuse. This makes sense, and years of research back the idea. For those trying to eat differently—to lose weight or simply to choose more wisely—the strength of this muscle can determine whether change occurs or not. As with physical exercise, many of us struggle to start and stick with it. However, even those who can flex the muscle in other situations can find it too weak to budge when it comes to food. So if self-control’s a muscle, why can’t you exercise it here, too?
The book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, draws on Baumeister’s work on self-control. The benefits of self-control have been documented for decades. And studies have established that practice indeed bolsters self-control (even if people vary genetically in that trait). Baumeister’s work goes farther, finding that self-control can fizzle out—when people’s minds are taxed and fatigued, when they’ve been struggling at self-control for too long a stretch at once. Here is more solid evidence against restrictive dieting. And here is support for the idea that small, persistent efforts will become habits. That’s all good news, and helpful for those working to lose weight.
It can be hard to see, though, how this applies to those who say “It feels like a force comes over me”, as they head for the ice cream. Or: “I just wasn’t thinking,” as they pull into KFC. “I knew I was doing it but didn’t care,” as they attack the brownies.
And what’s going on when a person’s done well for months, then suddenly finds herself slipping into old ways, regaining every lost pound? These are the stories of many, maybe most, overeaters. (more…)
FALL CHANGES
Monday, August 29th, 2011Sometimes I think we should make resolutions in September instead of January. After all, this is when we’re shifting anyway—returning to work or school, getting kids ready for new routines, adjusting to cooler weather and shorter days. It’s a time of transition, usually to busier days that are nevertheless more structured and predictable than in the looser summer months.
By resolutions, I’m not referring to grand declarations of sweeping change once and for all. I’m thinking more of those smaller, much more realistic adjustments–changes or additions to a routine, say– that may not sound dramatic but lead to solid results that tend to last over time. These are the kinds of changes that can join your new, or reestablished, fall routines without too much pain.
For example, we often return to more predictable mealtimes in the fall—even if schedules vary from day to day with kids’ activities or work meetings. Busy as we may be, we can at least look at the week ahead and know where we’ll be when. Healthy weight maintenance and sane dealings with food relate directly to how we approach mealtimes. To move closer to those goals, pick one mealtime to improve on a regular basis. Try the change for a week, fine-tune and problem-solve as you go along, then try it a second week. If you veer off your plan for any reason, resume as soon as you can and go from there. (more…)
HE’LL LEAVE YOU IF YOU GET FAT? Really?
Friday, July 29th, 2011Here is another article recently posted at http://www.yourtango.com/tereseweinsteinkatz
As the Huffington Post said, “It’s been a rough year for women struggling with their weight.” That followed a new survey where half of men polled said they’d leave a mate who got fat. Wait a minute, though….it’s really not that simple.
We already know a few discouraging facts. It’s well established, for example, that overweight women have more trouble being hired. Their weight also biases the care the health care they receive. And, there are the increased health risks. There’s the hassle of finding nice clothes. What’s more, while all married people, statistically speaking, gain more weight over time than singles, women gain more than men—and partly for biological reasons. Now this latest. (more…)
Deprivation is Not Good
Thursday, July 28th, 2011This article recently appeared at http://www.yourtango.com/tereseweinsteinkatz
Isn’t deprivation a built-in part of losing weight?
Maybe. Yet people report feelings of deprivation as a primary reason for abandoning weight loss efforts. Often these feelings lead to overindulging in sweets, high-fat, and junk foods and in binge eating. To lose weight, to make changes for the better, does require eating less of such things. Is feeling deprived, then, inevitable? I think to make changes that last, that become part of us, the answer has to be “no”.
Part of what has to happen, I think, is a change in perception, in how you think about and conceive of these foods in your life. People who come to successfully manage their weight start to recognize the role of choice. Their inner dialogue will tend to some form of: “Yes, of course I can have that slab of mud pie…but do I really want all that goes with it—feeling stuffed, guilty, and then struggling forever after with the weight?” Taking care of themselves, then, is doing what leaves them feeling more peaceful and on track with longer-term goals, not what immediately pleases the senses.
This change in perception doesn’t happen overnight. Many only come to it after years of struggling with diet. It can help, though, to consider the following. (more…)
MORE HELP FOR SANE EATING
Monday, June 27th, 2011Regular visitors will notice some streamlining in the EatSanely website (and later this week: a new easy-to-access format for the monthly newsletter). These tools are meant to help you succeed in eating more sanely. This journey, as I often say, usually requires trial-and-error. It doesn’t necessarily proceed in a straight line. What works for one person may not work for the next. And the world we live in isn’t always helpful. As you review the tools available to you, look again at the working definition of “sane eating” first offered here:
Sane eatingis eating in a way that maintains a healthy-enough weight, for good, without constant worry or guilt. In other words, without short-term or extreme diets that cause frustration and regain. This doesn’t mean one way of eating fits all. It also doesn’t mean that this is easy, or that it happens all at once. Given the world we live in, though, it does mean that we each have to find some way of reaching that sane eating path—because our food world isn’t going to change overnight. Finding your own path to sanity can take trial and error, and time and attention, given that we live in a world of fast food, fake food, 300,000 diet books, and 1,400 calorie hamburgers.
To eat in a way that keeps your weight where you want it, and makes you feel good, you may need to tackle how you think about food, how you deal with stress and relationships, and how you take care of yourself generally. I hope the tools offered here lead to solutions that will work—and keep on working for years—for you.
“I WANT WHAT I WANT”: Taking Responsibility and Weight Management
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011I’m reprinting here a recent post from my Psychology Today blog:
Recently, a reader posted this question: “Why is there such a lack of ownership when it comes to food?”
This reader noted that people express such unhappiness with their bodies, yet don’t necessarily do much to “learn about food”. The outpouring of weight loss books and shows might suggest otherwise. And yet….we know that many face medical crises, live with poor self-esteem and worse, while remaining loyal to “I want what I want.”
To some extent, this is the air we breathe. We go to the market, we buy what’s there. What’s there often contributes to weight gain. We then go on diets with no real shifts in how we live our lives and think about food. Almost always, diets don’t work for long. Understandably, many people stop trying, even if they gear up for another diet on occasion. Thinking about “diet”, too, in the sense of something to be endured for a time, leads to feelings of deprivation that no one likes to live with.
Much of my writing has focused on how to eat more sanely in a “food crazy” world—which includes this no-win diet cycle. Recently I posted a 3-part blog on the subject. But what does this shift from food craziness to sane eating look like in real life? I can tell when someone’s reached that better place when: They report choosing healthier foods more often and more consistently. They notice they’ve bypassed something once irresistible, and not only because they’re “dieting”. They feel more capable of using conscious coping strategies to stay on track when stressed. They deal with anger or sadness or fear without food. Also, they realize “I want what I want” doesn’t necessarily make sense anymore. (more…)
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