WEIGHT CONTROL: WHY DIETS DON'T WORK

Dieting is a losing battle. As you reduce your food intake or skip meals, your body puts itself on 'famine alert'. It gets the impression that food is scarce and therefore it slows down your metabolism to get the best use of the small amount of food. If you crash diet for a week and then go back to your normal pattern of eating, you will be consuming your normal diet with a slower metabolism so you will end up putting on weight far more easily. If you eat little and often, your body 'knows' that food is plentiful. It doesn't need to store any excess in case there is a shortage and it can keep your metabolism at a good level.

The conventional approach to weight loss has involved reducing calories.

In scientific terms, a caloric is a unit of heat and the energy-producing property of food. The idea has been that if the calories going in are less than the calories being used up, then the person will lose weight.

Food can be converted into fat or energy. We can either store what we eat or use it to do what we want with our lives. This happens through a number of chemical reactions which arc activated by enzymes which are dependent in turn upon vitamins and minerals. Not all types of foods are easy to convert into energy.

You can eat more and weigh less. Some foods have a so-called 'negative calorie' effect and eating them actually helps you lose weight. Starchy foods, complex carbohydrates, boost your metabolism so you burn up calories more quickly and the body fat comes off. They do not add directly to body fat but they help you keep a good level of energy because they keep your blood sugar in balance. These foods include grains such as wheat, rice, oats, barley, rye and foods made from these such as bread and pasta. Potatoes are also classed as a complex carbohydrate.

Carbohydrates are broken down into a number of different sugars within the body. These sugars trigger the release of insulin which then produces two hormones, noradrenalin and thyroid-stimulating hormone. Both of these help to stimulate the metabolism. This means that your food is burned more effectively and less is turned into fat. This is the negative-calorie effect. A portion of beef and a portion of rice may have the same amount of calories but they have can have a radically different effect on your weight because of the body biochemistry involved.

By eating brown rice, whole-wheat bread and pasta, as well as a good selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, you are also increasing the fibre content of your diet. In cultures where they have a diet high in fibre, they do not seem to have so many weight problems. Fibre helps to:

-     improve blood sugar balance,

-     improve digestion and absorption,

-     increase the excretion of fat in the stools,

-     create a feeling of fullness, so you can feel satisfied more quickly without feeling the need to eat more.

So:

-     eat more starchy foods;

-     cut down on fatty and sugary foods - meat, poultry, all dairy products, margarine, cakes, pies, ice-cream, chips, sugary sweets and commercial salad dressings;

-     don't count calories;

-     avoid alcohol.

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