10 Things You Need to Know About Losing Weight

There was an interesting program called "10 Things You Need to Know About Losing Weight" on the BBC last night (Wednesday 27th May 2009) .

It looked beyond the old counting calories approach to weight loss and outlined ten different approaches to shedding the pounds. Some of the tips have been around for a long time and are very simple indeed; for example switching from a 12inch diameter plate to a 10 inch.

The program also vindicated the Atkins approach to weight loss but backed it up with science. It seems that a high protein meal tends to turn off the chemical messenger signal for hunger, longer than the same amount of calories eaten as fat or carbohydrates. In effect meat, fish, beans and eggs are a better hunger suppressant than bread, rice, potatoes or pasta.

Some ideas were surprising, the program split a team of soldiers into two teams. Each team was fed the same meal, the first team ate the meal as usual with a glass of water. The second team had the same meal but it was liquidized with a glass of water, in effect creating a soup.

The suprise was just how much longer the soup version of the meal stayed in the stomach than the regular meal. As a consequence hunger was staved off for much longer with the soup meal.

Dairy fat is often given a wide berth by dieters yet it seems that those who want to lose weight are missing a trick. It seems that eating low fat dairy products can actually increase the amount of fat that is excreted from the body. The calcium in the milk or yoghurt binds with the fat in the gut and then passes through the body rather than being absorbed.

The program had other tips but one thing that I am very familiar with is the way that people record what they eat. I have worked with many people to help them lose weight and the accurate recording of what they eat is a real challenge. An actress on the program was certain that she ate a healthy and moderate diet, she thought that a slow metabolism was to blame for her excess weight.

She was tested in a research lab and found that her metabolism was absolutely normal. So back to the food then. It turned out the lady was under recording her food intake on video camera by some 60% and even when she wrote a food diary she under recorded by over 40%. Her food intake was over 3000 calories per day instead of the 2000 required on average for a woman. No wonder she was overweight.

What this program did not cover was the emotional reasons why people tend to over eat but it is worth a watch using the BBC iPLAYER through the link above.