4 myths about weight loss

You want to lose weight. You know it would be good for your health; you want to fit into smaller size pants; you want your family to be proud of you; you want to play sports with your friends and win, but ... you’ve failed in the past and you just don’t have the faith that you can! The thoughts that go through your mind are likely similar to the four common myths that Dr.Prochaska et al. describe in "Changing For Good":

Myth #1 “People don’t really change”

People do change. In our everyday lives we meet people who quit smoking, eliminated their alcohol dependency or rid themselves of unhealthy eating habits! People change their lifestyle, lose weight, learn how to eat right and get fit! It may take several tries, but to say that people don’t change is to admit defeat in the face of facts to the contrary!

Myth #2: “I’ve tried everything – nothing works”.

In this day and age, it seems that everybody is trying to lose weight and everybody and their uncle knows how to do it. Everyone wants to sell you that pill, detox and ab machine that will get you there in a flash. If you tried one of those, I’d say you have tried the wrong thing. Do your research again and this time make sure your main criterion for lifestyle change is your health. Choose a diet that you can maintain for the rest of your life. Choose the exercise program to go with it. Once you chose the system, stick with it for the recommended length of time and beyond – I guarantee you will have the results you want! I did!

Myth #3: "It takes willpower to change".

Yes, if by willpower you mean “a belief in our ability to change behavior, and the decision to act on it.”

Willpower does not however represent each and every effort towards weight loss. If that were the case, yeah, you’d commit to your goal of weight loss and, bam, you are done and wearing size Small jeans. The reality of change is that if you rely only on your willpower and you fail, which can happen for reasons outside of your control, you’d have a hard time trying again and again until you were successful. “Failure to change when relying only on willpower just means that willpower alone is not enough”.

Myth #4 “Change is simple”

When you are feeling down about your seeming inability to lose weight, somehow that notion that someone somewhere can change at the drop of the hat lodges itself in your mind! You think - I am struggling and it should not be hard, it should be easy!

Losing weight, like any self-change, is not simple. Most of us go thought several stages of change, and not once. We start at the stage of denial (“Pre-contemplation stage”) Then we move to the Contemplation stage, which is followed by Preparation, Action and Maintenance. Sounds like quite a process, indeed. In my next posts I will be considering each of these individually, so that some of you, who tried to start a weight loss regiment in the past but fell of the wagon for one reason or another, may realize that it happened not because you cannot change, but because you were not in the right stage for self-change. This may help to re-evaluate past “failures” as a learning experience and renew your efforts of finding a fitter, lighter, healthier you!

The sugar fix – more than a weight problem!

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So, yeah, if the diet high in fructose was only affecting the expanding waist lines, that would be half as bad.
But the weight problem leads to high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, kidney and liver disease, and metabolic syndrome which is a cluster of all health problems mentioned above.

How does fructose cause this terrible damage?

Apparently, high fructose has sneaky habits.
High fructose does not satisfy your appetite. Dr Johnson explains: ”When you eat most types of sugar, your body responds by producing appetite hormones, which signal your brain that your body has consumed enough food to meet its energy needs. As this occurs, the feelings of hunger subside. But unlike other sugars, fructose escapes the attention of appetite hormones. Because of this phenomenon, your brain never gets the message that your body has consumed a load of calories. “
No wonder I felt hungrier after eating McD than I was before (It was a looooooooooooooong time ago, but I remember being puzzled by that and avoiding McDs as a plague!)

What’s more – high-fructose foods may interfere with the signaling system that controls your appetite for all foods. “Chronic consumption of sugary foods seems to promote biochemical changes that prevent the brain from receiving messages from appetite hormones – even when you are not consuming fructose”!

Studies show that fructose is not metabolized in the same way as other sugars, and because of that causes rapid weight gain. Once conditioned this way, it may very well sabotage the weight-loss effort, because the body becomes ultra-sensitive to even small amounts of high fructose and resists weight loss!

I am convinced more than ever that the clean diet is the way to go - all the more reason to stay away from the highly processed foods and eat foods from the top of Michi’s ladder!

Bring it in the kitchen, people!

The Sugar Fix - you think you are safe?

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Seems like my little thing about HFCS piquet some interest amoung my own family.
My cousin sent me the reply “We have not bought a soft drink for about 10 years....”
You think that makes you safe from Fructose overload?
Think again!
According to the Corn Refiners Association, food processors may use high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the following products:
Asian-style sauces
Baby foods
Bacon
Beer
Biscuits
Bologna
Brandy
Breads and rolls
Breakfast serials
Breakfast meats
Cake and dessert mixes
Cakes
Candy
Canned fruits and fruit fillings
Canned vegetables
Caramel Coloring
Carbonated beverages (nondiet)
Cat and dog foods
Cheese spreads
Chewing gum
Chicken products
Cocoa
Coffee creamer
Cookies
Cordials
Crackers
Dessert toppings
Diet foods
Doughnuts
Dried meets
Egg products
Fish products
Flavorings
Frosting, icing, glazes
Frozen dinners
Frozen puddings and custards
Fruit drinks and juices
Fruit sweeteners
Peanut butter
Pickles
Salad dressings
Sauce mixes
Sausage
Seasoning mixes
Vinegar
Wine
Yeast
Etc. etc…

Check your labels!

The Sugar Fix - Introducing HFCS

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One rainy Saturday my husband and I were caught in the rain and went to the Dunkin Doughnuts that was separated only by a glass window from the hallway leading to the adjacent Pathmark supermarket. As we were sitting drinking our coffee the people with full shopping cards were marching down to the parking lot allowing us a perfect view of some of the content of their shopping carts and their not too slim figures. It seemed too much of a coincidence that almost every person’s shopping cart contained soft drinks.
As a nation today 32% Americans are obese. Add to that 1/3 of Americans that are overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Weight problem reached epidemic proportions; it affected rich and poor, adults and children, people form every educational and racial background.
The epidemics seemed to occur in the last 3-4 decades.
Could all of us at one acquire bad genetics?
Or did something drastically change in our environment?
Richard J Johnson, MD, the author of the new book “The sugar fix” thinks that the reason for the epidemics lies with increase in high fructose consumption. “Americans consume 30 percent more fructose today than in 1970. Our rising consumption of this sugar begun at roughly the same time that obesity rates in the United States were climbing sharply”.
Dr Johnson goes on explaining that fructose consumption increased due to the wide spread usage of the controversial sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS):”which is used in wide variety of processed foods and beverages. If you were to start reading product labels, you’d find that HFCS is also in many foods that might surprise you, such as pasta sauce, yogurt, soups, ketchup and other condiments, and sandwich bread.
In 1970, the average American consumed less than ½ pound of HFCS per year. By 200, per capita consumption of the corn-based sweetener had risen to more than 42 pounds per year”
42 pounds per year of stuff that should make you fat and does not fail to! That’s the figure I’ll leave you with until the next time when we explore the health threats that HFCS contains, other than obvious increase in bulge.
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