Here I am the owner of a weight loss site and a clinical researcher, someone who for over a decade has been helping people lose weight and keep it off, and yet for the last 5 years I've been suffering from slowly increasing weight, until I stood at 68 kg, a whole 19 kg over my normal, healthy weight for my short and slim frame.
At first I blamed the trauma of nearly dying twice after a medical emergency. I developed sick euthyroid syndrome and my whole endocrine system crashed. It was a lousy time and I put on weight despite a loss of appetite, as well as suffering a pile of other distressing symptoms.
Then menopause dropped in on top of that, and it made sense to blame hormones for a further drop in metabolic rate, and even more of those cruddy symptoms.
The fabulous "ageLOC Vitality" supplement gave me my life back, and 6 months later HRT solved all the menopause symptoms except for heat intolerance. I was feeling so much better, but I was still fat and very physically uncomfortable.
So being in the fortunate position of having absolutely zero food cravings, and having no unhealthy food in my diet whatsoever, and having portion sizes that met guidelines, I decided I simply needed to reduce what I ate, in line with advice from so-called experts that as the metabolic rate declines with age, we need to eat less.
So I cut my meal size by about a third. Nothing happened for 3 weeks. So I cut my meal size again, cut out milk and sugar in my tea and coffee, cut out dairy, and cut out all alcohol, all while continuing to play competitive tennis 2 or 3 times a week. I gained weight and my energy level took a dive, along with my sleep quality. A further 3 weeks and I was beside myself.
At this point the scientist in me screamed "enough is enough!" and I went looking for answers. I believe I have found them, and certainly if you Google to identify the latest research projects around obesity and overweight, you'll see that scientists are actually moving in this direction. All I can say is "Thank God".
We now have pretty conclusive proof that the weight gain of middle age is NOT related to over-eating or not getting enough exercise. This may be hard to believe but do read on and I think you'll be convinced, as I now am, that the true story makes a lot more sense.
Previously I've made the statement that the reason for middle-aged women's inability to lose weight was that they'd "stuffed up their metabolic rate" by yo yo dieting. After these long months of tracking a particular research trail, I've come to see that this is not the whole story.
It turns out that from middle age the weight difference between thin people and obese/overweight people does NOT correlate with the number of calories eaten, or the amount of exercise taken. And yes, while muscle mass does increase metabolic rate, even that is NOT enough to account for the disparity in weight gain between individuals.
The factor which DOES correlate with weight gain, is reduced fecal fat. I never thought I'd be so delighted talking about fecal fat! The fact is that skinny people excrete a lot more fat in their poos, while fat people retain fat.
Now if you're thinking "Chitosan" think again. Studies show clearly that supplements like Chitosan have NO EFFECT on fecal fat. The idea that this type of supplement will bind to fat and keep it from being retained in the body turns out to be a load of bunkem.
So why is it that we lose the ability to shed fat via the faeces? Is it that this is genetic and we can't do anything about it, or is it that we've been tricked into diets that prevent fat excretion? Well it's most likely a bit of both. The genetic problem is well along the way to being solved, so look out in 2013 or 2014 for commercialization of a product that will do exactly that. Meantime, luckily, there is a WHOLE LOT we can do right now to get fat excretion happening and improve our nutrition and quality of life at the same time.
I'm so excited about this new direction that obesity research is taking - finally we middle-aged women have an answer to why we couldn't lose weight even on starvation diets and beating ourselves up with excessive exercise! Yahoooooo!
Here is what you can do, very easily in your own home, without any cost whatsoever, to get your body working properly again:
1. If you've cut full fat dairy from your diet, put it back. Research clearly shows that a diet which is 30% fat is actually good for us, and substantially increases fecal fat, so that we're excreting fat instead of storing it. Of course you want quality fat, not fast-food junk fat! Eat yoghurt and cheese, oily fish, good-quality red meat with a decent amount of marbling, olive oil in your cooking, and yes, even CREAM in your sauces!
2. Vitamin K binds to fat so that it is excreted instead of being stored. You can get your entire day's requirement of Vitamin K from 2 cups of black coffee (white coffee destroys the Vitamin K, so leave out the milk and don't have your black coffee along with any meals that include milk). You also get Vitamin K from leafy green veggies, and from cruciferous veggies. People on blood thinning medication still need Vitamin K, but need to be VERY careful that they get a regular supply, and definitely do not get heaps of Vitamin K one day and little the next. That would disrupt that life-or-death specific window on their coagulation rate.
3. Cut out excess sodium. You might want to add salt in SOME cooking, but definitely stop shaking it over your food. Salt leads to water retention, particularly in the abdominal cavity and in veins and tissue. A LOT of excess weight is actually excess water. Get your salts naturally - bananas are a great source of potassium.
4. Drink more water, a couple of litres a day, and more if you're an elite athlete or an ordinary athlete sweating like a pig in the sun. A good way to get more water is to eat water-rich fruit like apples, pears, oranges, and watermelon.
5. Get more sleep. We're so often made to feel guilty or lazy for sleeping, and yet particularly in the years where our hormones are taking a nose dive, we usually need a lot more. Get to bed earlier, sleep in later and tell anyone who criticizes you to take a flying leap.
6. Be active, but make it fun. If it ain't fun, don't do it. Demand your play time, with great friends, and do it as often as you can.
7. If you need HRT, don't suffer, with your doctor find one that actually assists you to lose weight. That will DEFINITELY have progesterone in it and WILL NOT be estrogen only.
There are other things you can do as well, like dealing with the things that have been causing you stress, improving the quality of your relationships and your sex life, having an active brain, being creative and learning new things, etc etc.
Finally, to have more physical energy and be incredibly fatigue resistant, to regain your sharp mind with the power to concentrate, think clearly and make decisions, and to get your libido humming again, consider doing what I did and get hold of ageLOC Vitality supplement. That stuff saved my life and I literally cannot recommend it enough.
Of course if you're obviously over-eating like crazy, or you don't realise that you're getting way too many calories, or you have an addiction to any food and can't control your eating, or if you're pretty much sedentary, those things are going to cause overweight!
Since adding dairy back into my diet, going black on my tea and coffee, adding back the booze, increasing my portion sizes back to guidelines, and eating a banana a day so my body can use the potassium instead of water-hugging sodium, I have dropped 2 kg. And I'm feeling great with it.
Christine Sutherland is a Perth clinical researcher, and a
clinician specialising in weight loss. She is the author of Beat
Cravings, Shift Fat and the founder of Weight Choice, on how to achieve permanent, easy weight loss...
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