Contributed by Stephanie Figon, MS, RDN, LD
This is the time of year clothes are getting tighter and many people start making plans to lose these extra pounds along with the ones from past holiday seasons. This year may be particularly tough if pandemic baking has become a part of your life.
Soon the ads will start popping up promising effortless weight loss with the “before” picture showing a gloomy overweight person contrasted with their beaming happy self about 4 months later and 50 pounds lighter. These ads are part of “diet culture”, an unjust and sometimes infuriating cultural belief that equates a person’s body size and food choices with moral virtue and value as a human being. For some, it drives a relentless pursuit of thinness that distracts from everything that is truly important in life.
But, when a third of Americans have a BMI of 30 or more (the point at which health problems really start showing up), it’s time to recognize that there’s a lot more going on than a couple of months of dieting is going to solve. Stress hormones, sleep cycles, gut microbiota, hunger and satiety hormones. All these are playing their part in influencing a person’s food choices and making a person’s weight go to where it does—for most people, that would be up, and then, up further. It can feel like your weight is on autopilot and, just like your blood pressure and cholesterol, sometimes it just goes where it wants to go and doesn’t ask your permission.
But just because the body makes it difficult, that doesn’t mean you can get out of the rigged weight management game. The body you’re in needs to last you a long time, and carrying extra weight is just too costly. Whether it’s hunting, hiking, or playing with kids or grandkids, weight affects your ability to do the things you want in life.
What the dieting ads won’t tell you is that most people who start a diet won’t stay on it long enough to lose significant weight, because it’s darn hard to follow all rules of a diet long term. Any calorie-restricted diet will produce weight loss; the real problem with the dieting approach is that it’s actually a lot easier to lose weight than it is to keep it off. Dieting is a temporary solution to a very permanent problem, that the body always wants to go back up to a higher weight.
Since your body has such a predisposition to defend its highest previous weight, dietitians recommend putting a lot more emphasis on preventing overeating during the holiday season and rejecting the popular, but flawed idea that the new year's diet will fix things later.
By all means—enjoy every bite of these special holiday foods, but focus on mindful eating and adapting your food environment *now* to help prevent weight gain.
Here are our top recommendations:
1. Put those tempting foods out of sight. Research has found that cluttered kitchens cause overeating.
2. Jot down everything you eat (when you are eating) in a small notebook. This will cause you to unconsciously plan ahead.
3. Be mindful of physical signals of hunger and satiety. Stop and ask yourself if you are really hungry, and then stop when you feel full.
4. Take time to thoroughly enjoy each bite.
So, whether you ultimately decide to try that new year’s diet or decide not to, the research clearly shows that maintaining weight loss and preventing next year’s holiday weight gain is going to depend on long- term mindfulness and figuring out what habits are really causing that upward weight trend. At Alaska Weight Management and Diabetes Counseling, we’ve found that this is often a very eye-opening discovery process for our clients.
For dietitians, weight management counseling is all about equipping clients with all the positively proven tools for achieving long-term health. Many people are surprised that their private health insurance preventive care benefits cover nutrition counseling at 100% for anyone with a BMI above 30. Find details at Nutrition907.com. As always, we wish you a happy Christmas and wellness in the New Year.