I’m asked these questions numerous times: “How do I figure my ideal weight? How do I measure it?”
We’ve used two terms in this book: BMI (body mass index) and ideal weight. BMI is a good number to look at for overall purposes, especially if you’re doing a medical study. But if you’re looking at your individual specific goal weight, a better target is to determine your ideal weight. Let’s look at the difference between BMI and ideal weight.
The National Institutes of Health uses BMI as the defining line of whether your weight is in a normal, overweight, or obese range. It’s calculated using your height and weight. Medical studies use BMI to compare people who are of normal weight or above normal weight. The normal category is below 25 BMI, overweight is 25 to 30, and obese is over 30. The problem is these ranges don’t identify an ideal weight for a particular person because of a twenty- to thirty-pound variance. You can be twenty to thirty pounds above your ideal weight and still fall within the “normal” range, but being at a normal BMI doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at your ideal weight.
Two-thirds of Americans fall within the overweight or obese category, but only 12 percent are at their ideal weight. Your goal should be to reach your ideal weight.
How to Figure Ideal Weight
First, be more precise than the BMI scale. Everyone is different. Some are heavy boned or heavily built. Some are much more muscular than others, and muscle mass weighs more than fat tissue. Some are petite. No absolute way to state your ideal weight in exactly x number of pounds exists, but there is a scale more exact than BMI.
The formula I like best is one that fine-tunes the BMI scale. It’s based on your height and weight, and I call it the ideal body mass index. It gives you a much better idea of where to aim.
Men use 105 pounds as the base weight number for five feet. For every inch over five feet, add five pounds. Ideal weight for a five-foot-seven-inch male would be 140 pounds.
Women use 95 pounds as the base weight number for five feet. For every inch over five feet, add four pounds. Ideal weight for a five-foot-seven-inch female would be 123 pounds.
Using the ideal weight scale, you must consider personal body build differences you may have and add pounds accordingly. This is especially true with men. So adding five to fifteen pounds to your ideal weight number may be appropriate. My best advice when you get near that ideal weight number is to stand in front of a full-length mirror and turn sideways to see if you have a lower abdominal pouch sticking out. The image in the mirror tells it all. (That’s what I tell my overweight friends who tell me they’re at “normal” weight, and there’s a lot of truth to it.)
As you begin to move toward your ideal weight, you can be encouraged by the effect of weight reduction on the health of your heart arteries and the disease of the heart in individuals with type 2 diabetes. The Look AHEAD Trial, presented in Diabetes Care, consisted of 5,145 individuals with type 2 diabetes with a BMI over 25. In other words, they were all either overweight or obese. Their goal was to lose 7 percent of their initial body weight. The study was first reported one year after the trial began, and then again after four years of follow-up. One group had individual meetings to achieve and maintain weight loss through a decrease in the number of calories eaten as well as increased physical activity. Their main exercise was walking.
The second group had only support and educational meetings, information concerning diabetes, and did not do the physical activity.
The exercise group lost an average of 8.6 percent of their initial weight, while the non-exercise group lost only 0.7 percent. That factor alone speaks loudly about the importance of including exercise in your decision to lose extra weight.
While those stats affirm the importance of weight loss, the focus of this study was on health issues of the heart, which are related to diabetes. The group that lost weight through diet and exercise not only had improvement in blood sugar, but also had a reduction in high blood pressure, better cholesterol numbers, and improved kidney function numbers. The medications for their diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol were all reduced. Overall, researchers concluded there was a 21 percent improvement in the condition of the heart and arteries in the group that exercised. The authors concluded, “The modest increase in physical activity, primarily walking, had a very beneficial effect on weight loss and diabetic control.”
That shows the choices you make can significantly influence the heart and artery risk factors associated with diabetes. The study also showed that any weight loss led to improvements. The report supplied substantial evidence that even modest weight losses of 5 to 10 percent of initial weight produce significant, clinically relevant improvements in the associated heart risks. Even those who lost just 2 to 5 percent of their weight had significant improvement in their risk factor numbers. Those who lost 5 to 10 percent had even greater odds of improvement than those who lost the 2 to 5 percent, and those who lost 10 to 15 percent had even greater odds of improvement than the group that lost 5 to 10 percent.
The greater the weight change, the greater the improvement of their glucose control, drop in blood pressure, and increase in their HDL cholesterol.
Are You Committed?
Now comes the real question that will determine whether you do all you can to physically develop a different you, from a weight standpoint.
Are you committed? No one else can make that determination for you, no matter how much they would like to see you succeed. Commitment doesn’t come in stages; you’re either in or out. You either will or you won’t. It’s pretty black and white.
I tell you, if you wholeheartedly commit, you’ll indeed reach your ideal weight. There is a tremendous difference between deciding to lose weight and committing to lose weight.
I was sitting in church one Sunday when the pastor asked everyone who had ever decided to go on a diet to lose weight to raise their hand. I couldn’t believe how many hands went up. Maybe all but about 5 percent of the congregation admitted to dieting (and I bet those 5 percent didn’t tell the truth about other things either). There was some laughter as so many people who were overweight raised their hands, probably because their decision hadn’t produced results. It wasn’t the same as commitment.
If you commit to something, you must concentrate on some big things as well as on some small things to be successful.
I weigh myself every morning, and I’m surprised at the variance from one day to the next. My eating is mostly consistent, I exercise six days a week, and I have been within one to two pounds of my goal weight for years. I have a few rules I follow to keep my weight consistent. If I’m a half pound above my ideal weight, I go back to my “weight loss” eating habits. I don’t eat anything between meals or after dinner. My meals will typically be salads for both lunch and dinner, with some fish or grilled chicken on the salad. Of course, I consume no calories from beverages.
I admit that I may get a twinge of hunger sometime during the afternoon, so I apply “the ten-minute factor.” I fill my stomach with a noncaloric drink and begin doing something else with my time. I may send a text or email or call someone, but the point is I get busy doing something that gets my mind on anything besides wanting to snack.
I have practiced this plan for years to control my weight day by day. I didn’t want to weigh only once a week and then realize I was three pounds overweight and had to go back to my weight-loss lifestyle for many days to catch up.
I developed this plan on my own, and I had not seen anything similar until I read an article by the National Weight Control Registry. Researchers selected a group of over three thousand members who had lost over thirty pounds and had kept it off for over a year. This successful weight-loss group typically reported that they ate a low-fat/low-calorie diet. Four-fifths of them ate breakfast every day. They exercised and reported watching less television than the norm. They reported that those who weighed themselves daily had a decreased risk of weight regain. The main reason for this is that frequent weighing provides an opportunity for positive reinforcement of weight control for that day.
These individuals were placed into one of three groups. Thirty-six percent of the group weighed themselves daily, 42 percent at least weekly, and 21 percent less than once a week. The bottom line of the study was that “those individuals who weighed themselves daily were 82% more likely to maintain their weight loss compared with those who weighed less often.” In addition to that, they found that starting to weigh themselves less frequently was associated with greater weight regain.
Those who weighed daily were able to identify small weight gains and immediately make appropriate changes. For those whose weight was maintained, daily weighing was a positive reinforcement.
The Secret to Maintaining Your Weight Loss
You’ve heard that the most crucial factor in defeating diabetes is weight loss. But that’s not the whole truth. The most crucial factor in defeating diabetes is maintaining the weight loss. I have many overweight friends and acquaintances who are working on losing the excess. It’s so exciting to see someone after several months who’s lost a significant amount of weight. On the other hand, it’s close to depressing to see anyone regain their weight.
Almost any weight-loss plan “works,” usually temporarily. The challenge is keeping the weight off. One of the saddest statistics in medical literature is that only 2 to 20 percent of people who lose weight maintain that weight loss. Weight loss is your first step, but the key step for optimal health is maintaining your ideal weight.
Here is the secret to the eating plan in this book: develop eating habits as you lose the weight that you can continue for the rest of your life. Remember, food is an addiction. The bad foods that play havoc with diabetes are foods you have become addicted to, like desserts.
One diabetic told me she ate only one bite of her husband’s chocolate cake at a party they attended. “One bite. That satisfied me.” I didn’t want to go into sermon mode, so I didn’t explain that she didn’t realize she was addicted to chocolate. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I would have bet anyone in the room that she would be eating a whole piece of chocolate cake sometime down the line. My favorite analogy is that saying one bite of a “bad” food you’re addicted to is like someone who smokes saying one puff of a cigarette will satisfy them for a week. Addiction doesn’t work that way. Abstinence is essential to beating addiction. As I’ve mentioned before, if you abstain for sixty days, the desire for that particular food will be greatly diminished to the point that you can control it. Remember that number—sixty days of abstinence to beat the food addiction.
Let’s look at some more information from the National Weight Control Registry. To join the program, you must have lost at least thirty pounds and kept it off for at least a year. The average participant has lost sixty-six pounds and kept it off for five and a half years. Ninety-eight percent of the participants report that they changed their dieting lifestyle in some way to lose weight. Ninety-four percent increased their physical activity, and the most frequent form of exercise was walking. Diet and exercise were the keys to success.
Most of them state they’ve kept weight off by maintaining a low-calorie/low-fat diet and with high levels of activity. Ninety percent of the participants exercise, on average, about one hour per day. Seventy-eight percent eat breakfast every day, and seventy-five percent weigh themselves at least once a week.
More than ten thousand members are enrolled in the study, and they complete annual questionnaires about their weight, diet, and exercise. Their responses give us a good example of how a large group of individuals were able to keep their weight off. I like to study success and find out how it’s been accomplished. I think we can get a lot of good advice on losing weight and sustaining that loss in diabetics. Ninety-eight percent of the people reduced their intake of food. Some of this would be by reducing the size of portions, some by cutting out snacks, and some by eliminating desserts, which are all excess calories.
One number I especially like is that 94 percent of them increased their exercise. That says so much. Only 10 percent of them reported losing their weight by diet alone. Exercise is so important. That’s why it’s step one in our plan.
Since weight is such a factor in causing and preventing diabetes, I like to dig into what has been successful with weight loss and apply it to diabetes. Let’s look at a report the National Weight Control Registry published in an article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study focused on long-term weight-loss maintenance. The weight is lost. It’s not found again.
Here are some practices that made them succeed. They engaged in high levels of physical activity for approximately an hour a day. The majority ate a low-fat/low-calorie diet and ate breakfast every day. That diet is similar to what you’ve read about in this book, including fiber found in fruits and vegetables, beans, and whole grains, while avoiding the saturated fat in red meats, cheese, butter, cream, and fried foods.
Participants also weighed themselves frequently.
Finally, they were consistent in their dieting. They ate the same way on weekends and holidays as they did the rest of the week. In other words, they developed eating habits they could continue day after day and year after year. They didn’t “reward” themselves on weekends or holidays with “bads.” They developed a good diet and made that their habit. The ones who stuck to their habits, including weekends and holidays, were one and a half times more likely to maintain their weight over the subsequent year than participants who allowed themselves to change their diet on weekends and holidays. The authors of the study summed up the findings by stating that “individuals who allowed themselves more flexibility on holidays had greater risk of weight regain.”
Allowing flexibility in your eating lifestyle creates more opportunities for loss of control. If you don’t develop eating habits that you’ll follow consistently, you’ll slip back into old eating styles. This study confirms that. Very few of the participants who neglected their eating habits and regained even small amounts of weight were able to recover from the slip. The study also stated, “Individuals who maintain a consistent diet regimen across the week and year appear more likely to maintain their weight loss over time.”
There’s More to Excess Fat Than Looks
Because you’ve been reading this book, you already know most of the bottom lines the following studies reveal. But every study should make you more and more determined to commit to fighting your diabetes with lifestyle changes. They should help you get past the idea that losing weight is mostly about looks, if that’s what you’ve been thinking for years.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine said it best: “Excess body fat is the single most important determinant of type 2 diabetes.” Many diabetic patients are told they should reduce their weight, but that’s about as far as it goes. Doctors know the significance of excess body fat in the role of diabetes. The physician feels obligated to explain this to their patient, but then the need to treat diabetes immediately comes into play. Rather than beginning the patient on exercise, a healthy eating program, and weight loss, the doctor usually starts with medication to control the patient’s blood glucose immediately. This can create a false sense of security, and the patient begins relying on whatever medication the doctor prescribes.
There’s another way. Yes, your doctor must go to work on controlling your glucose, but I’m emphasizing that you must go to work changing your lifestyle habits to beat the disease.
Excess weight is one of the major factors in developing insulin resistance. Adipose tissue produces and secretes certain chemicals that cause an inflammatory response at the cell surfaces that prevents insulin from being able to function properly. Without going too deep into the medical process, a protein is found in the blood whenever an inflammatory response is going on in the body, which can measure this inflammation. This protein is called the C-reactive Protein. This is one of the proteins elevated in overweight patients who are prediabetic or diabetic. With more inflammation is a greater amount of C-reactive Protein, showing the relationship of excess weight and inflammation, resulting in insulin resistance.
Being overweight and developing diabetes are connected. The journal article mentioned above points out that obesity and weight gain, along with being physically inactive, dramatically increase the risk of diabetes. The study included over eighty-four thousand women who did not have diabetes or heart disease at the beginning of the study and followed them to see which ones were more prone to developing diabetes.
The researchers set up a guideline for diet as well as exercise. They pointed to earlier studies that showed a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in people who had a higher intake of cereal fiber and polyunsaturated fat and an increase in diabetes in those who ate saturated fat and a high-glycemic load. This report emphasized eating high-fiber carbohydrates, where the glucose is released slowly or not at all, as well as eating good polyunsaturated fat found in fish, nuts, and olives rather than the bad fat found in red meat, butter, cream, and fried foods. The participants who ate more of the bad foods and were overweight had higher C-reactive Protein in their blood, which pointed to higher amounts of inflammation.
This study took an even stricter range on body mass index. Most studies use a BMI below 25 as delineating the normal range, 25 to 30 as being overweight, and above 30 as being obese. The results of this study showed that a BMI at the high end of the normal range of 23.0 to 24.9 was associated with a substantially higher risk of diabetes than a BMI less than 23.0. Being overweight increases inflammation.
The journal Diabetes Care put it succinctly: “If you are overweight, your odds for developing diabetes are two-fold greater than a normal BMI and if your BMI is in the obese range, you will have a four-fold greater chance of developing diabetes.”
The study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, which used stricter BMI than the usual, is just a reminder that if you use BMI as your gauge, there can be a twenty- to thirty-pound variance with your particular height and body build. A report in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes pointed this out concerning the significance of weight as related to BMI. They did a collective review of medical reports covering over 900,000 adults and concluded that for each five points body mass index above 25, there was an associated approximately 30 percent higher overall mortality. The more overweight you are, the more chance you’ll come to the end of life before you should.
Their findings showed it wasn’t just BMI overweight that increased your chances of diabetes and early mortality; a lack of exercise also was associated with a significantly increased risk of diabetes even when excluding BMI.
The next sentence may be the most important sentence in this book: The main factor they highlighted in their concluding remarks suggested that 87 percent of the new cases of diabetes that developed during the study might have been prevented if all the women had done what the women in the low-risk group had done. That should get your attention and encourage you to develop the same lifestyles of eating and exercising to lose weight as the low-risk group did.
One of the focuses of the study was to see how many of the individuals could have prevented becoming diabetic by weighing less. Remembering that an overweight BMI is from 25 to 30, approximately half of the individuals in this category could have avoided diabetes. In evaluating those who were in the obese category of a BMI of 30 and above, they could have reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 24 percent if they had followed the eating and exercising guidelines in the control group.
Their overall conclusion was astonishing. They stated that weight control was the most effective way to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. Another important conclusion says these same guidelines of proper eating, weight loss, and exercise were associated with an 83 percent reduction in the associated heart disease found in diabetics.
To emphasize this correlation of excess weight and diabetes, consider this review from The Obesity Society publication. The opening sentence caught my eye: “The single best predictor of type 2 diabetes is overweight or obesity.” The medical community doesn’t fully understand the cause and workings of diabetes. For instance, most diabetics are overweight or obese, but some people who aren’t obese have diabetes. So when we look at the numbers of how weight affects you if you’re diabetic, remember to focus more on how you personally fit into those statistics. In other words, if you’re overweight, look at what studies say about the connection between being overweight and becoming diabetic or having diabetes. This report puts it succinctly: “Almost ninety percent of people living with type 2 diabetes are overweight or have obesity.”
This report studied individuals who were overweight, and the researchers state being overweight causes an added pressure on the body’s ability to use insulin to properly control blood sugar levels, and those who are overweight are therefore more likely to develop diabetes.
Whether you have diabetes or prediabetes, this report should encourage you to get to an ideal weight, especially because the study concludes, “Type 2 diabetes is largely preventable.”
This article pointed out that many other studies have shown repeatedly that even a modest amount of weight loss in the 5 to 10 percent range can delay or even prevent the development of type 2 diabetes among those who have associated risks that go along with diabetes. Even moderate weight loss plus moderate exercise, such as walking for thirty minutes a day, five days a week, reduced the development of diabetes by 40 to 60 percent in studies that lasted three to six years.
This statement summarizes the above article well: “Weight management is the best thing you can do to prevent the development of diabetes.”
Whether prediabetic or diabetic, managing your weight must be foremost in your mind, along with the knowledge that exercise is the one best lifestyles you can develop. Exercise will not only allow you to accomplish that weight loss, but allow you to sustain your ideal weight for years to come.
Are you convinced yet? It’s not just about looks. It’s about your health. You can do many things to improve your life if you’re prediabetic or diabetic. Remember, we’re not simply talking about extra years to live; we’re talking about extra active years to enjoy life to the fullest. You don’t want to go through the rest of your life fighting the complications associated with having diabetes. Commit to change your lifestyle today so you can have those enjoyable future years.
Six Secrets to Losing Weight
You’re committed to getting to an ideal weight. How do you do it? So many weight-loss books and advertisements show people losing weight, telling us the “real secret” to losing and keeping it off. I will admit that such weight-loss schemes can work. You will lose weight with any of them, but only 2 percent of the people who lose it are able to maintain the loss. If you want to maintain your good work, develop the kind of eating lifestyle in losing your weight that allows you to continue those same eating habits after you’ve reached your ideal weight. You stay on the same basic diet out of habit from then on.
To lose weight, your body must expend more energy than it takes in. You may be relieved to know that, with the approach you’re learning in this book, you don’t have to count calories, but you do have to learn which foods have the fewest calories and which ones contain the most. You’ll also need to know how many calories you burn as you exercise.
Carbohydrates and proteins contain four calories per gram, while fats contain nine. That’s why diets high in fat can lead to a greater weight gain. That’s why a plate full of carbohydrates and protein will lead to less weight gain than one full of fatty foods. We will get into more detail, but that’s a good start for our discussion.
Earlier I told you the secret to fighting your diabetes with how you manage food is to develop an eating plan you can follow not only as you lose weight, but for the rest of your life. Now let’s look at some specific secrets for losing weight. In them, you’ll see some of the same factors and advice in the book thus far, but in six simple steps.
Secret #1: Skip Snacks
Snacks are extra calories. In the weight-loss phase of your plan, they’re completely excluded. Learn what to eat at meals so you won’t crave a snack between them. If you’re on medication, discuss with your doctor how to regulate that specific medication when you develop a habit of eating three meals a day and no snacks in between. Your doctor may lower the dose so you won’t have to eat between meals because your insulin dose was more than needed.
Why is a snack so detrimental to weight loss? Without going into detail about what takes place in your body, here’s a quick explanation.
Let’s say three hours or so after eating a meal your blood sugar drops below its normal level because your insulin has allowed your body to use some of the glucose. Your body is going to get the needed glucose one way or another. It will either begin throwing switches that break down fat-energy and other substances in your body to convert them to glucose, or you will eat a snack your body quickly absorbs and converts to glucose. Your body will begin burning calories from the snack rather than breaking the stored energy down into the needed glucose. You don’t have to be a physician to understand you’re going to burn more calories from your body if you don’t eat the snack.
Later in this chapter we’ll talk about snacks and “fake hunger.”
Secret #2: Employ the Ten-Minute Factor
How do you avoid snacks? The secret is the ten-minute factor. I told you earlier that this is one way I control my own weight, and this is how you can train yourself in self-control too. Willpower is a learnable skill. Each victory adds up to new eating habits.
Again, food is an addiction. It must be addressed the same way you would control any other addiction. To beat an addiction, you must beat the desire. You can’t decide to stop eating snacks by just wanting to stop. You can’t control the desire to eat a particular snack at a particular time simply with self-control. But you can control that desire for about ten minutes.
Here’s the ten-minute secret to avoiding snacks:
Step one: tell yourself you’re not going to eat that particular snack you want for the next ten minutes.
Step two: drink a glass of noncaloric liquid: a glass of iced tea, a cup of coffee, water—anything that has zero calories. Get some liquid into your stomach.
Step three: do something else. Make a phone call or read something. Take your cup of coffee to a colleague’s desk and talk about your work or any other item of interest. Go outside for a short walk. Do anything other than taking a bite of that snack.
You’ll beat that desire for that snack for at least ten minutes and then be able to resist completely. The first few times you employ the ten-minute factor, it may be a little difficult, but it is doable. After you do it several times, it will become easier and easier to break that snack habit. Before long, you will be practicing the ten-minute factor out of habit. Each time you do it, you’ll be developing small actions that will change your habits related to snacks. The accumulation of ten-minute factor victories will give you a sense of success.
Secret #3: Forgo Desserts
Desserts are first cousins to snacks. In the weight-loss phase, your decision about dessert must be to never have any. Again, you have an addiction, and to beat an addiction, you must beat the desire. As I’ve said, it takes sixty days of abstinence to break the desire pattern of your mind. After that time, it doesn’t mean you never desire the particular food you’ve not eaten for sixty days, but it does mean that after sixty days you’ll be able to control that desire. Before too much longer, that desire for dessert will grow weaker and weaker. I assure you, the day will come when you’re eating out with friends when dessert time comes, and you’ll order a cup of coffee or tea and just enjoy the company while they eat dessert.
You can’t beat the desire for desserts with moderation. Eating only one or two bites of chocolate cake won’t work. To lose weight, avoid every extra calorie you can, and avoid desserts like the plague.
Secret #4: Choose the Right Foods
As I’ve mentioned before, carbohydrates and protein contain four calories per gram and fats contain nine calories per gram. Knowing that formula makes it easier to avoid fats. The heart of our weight-loss plan is learning which foods fill you up with the least number of calories. These are the foods you want to get into the habit of eating. A simple rule of thumb is to choose vegetables as your primary food, with beans and peas secondary, and then adding high-fiber fruit. Beans have as much protein per weight as beef. Salads will become a mainstay for your meals, with the addition of fish or chicken. A vegetable plate for lunch or dinner is perfect.
Vegetables, high-fiber fruit, whole grains, beans, and peas give you that full feeling. You can fill up on them and yet be ingesting fewer calories, which allows you to lose weight.
At the same time, avoid the bad fats that come with red meat, cheese, butter, cream, and fried foods, not to mention avoiding fatty salad dressings and the creamy sauces they pour over food in restaurants.
Again, I remind you to talk to your physician as you develop your new eating lifestyle to ensure your glucose levels stay in proper proportion. You’ll be checking your blood glucose between meals. With your physician’s help, rather than having too much medication on board and having to take some sugar to get your glucose level back up, you will be taking less and less medication and not eating between meals.
This is a good time to train yourself to remove the wrong foods from your kitchen and anywhere else you might have them. Don’t have the wrong food within sight or reach. The best example I know came from a gentleman who made the commitment to begin eating the right foods and not eating the bad. I had explained the foods that harmed his arteries—the red meat, cheese, cream, butter, and fried foods. He seemed serious about changing his eating habits, but I knew he was earnest when I saw him the next day.
We were passing in the hallway when he stopped me and said, “Last night I got to thinking about what you explained concerning the danger of saturated fat.” He looked me square in my eyes and continued with a half-smile, half-smirk. “I just want you to know what I did. I took a gallon container of ice cream out of my freezer and threw it in the trash. It was my favorite ice cream; 28 percent butterfat type. But I threw it away.” He laughed and started walking away, but then he looked back at me. “Just wanted you to know.”
I encourage you to do likewise.
Once you get your cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer free of bad foods, the best way to keep them that way is to be specific when grocery shopping. You’ll be surprised at the difference you can make by making the right decisions when you shop, especially if you have a list you stick to. Choose the foods that don’t harm your arteries. Avoid those saturated fats.
As you develop your new eating habits, you will also realize the role fiber plays in controlling your blood sugar. Remember that high-fiber carbohydrates keep the sugar contained. The fiber is like a woven cage that lets the glucose out a little at a time. That’s why eating whole-grain steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast will keep you from getting hungry before lunchtime. The fiber in the full-kernel oats gives you a full feeling and lets the carbohydrates break down slowly throughout the morning. Similar is the difference between whole-grain breads and white breads. They both release sugar, but the whole-grain has the fiber that will release the sugar more slowly and not give that spike in your blood sugar level. The slow release is similar with the vegetable plate you eat for lunch or the large salad with beans, peas, nuts, or vegetables you eat at dinner.
In the weight-loss part of your new lifestyle, think of bread as extra sugar. Once into your weight-maintaining diet, you’ll begin eating whole-grain foods, including bread, but in your weight-loss phase, cut out all breads. I saw a diabetic order a sandwich and French fries for lunch. The bun on the sandwich was huge. It was so thick that they stuck a knife through, from top to bottom. It stood straight up with the handle sticking out the top of the sandwich. I’m sure he was taking the proper amount of medication to cover such a lunch. But even after you get to your goal weight, you shouldn’t eat foods similar to eating sugar, and white bread and potatoes are two such foods. If you’re going to eat dry toast with your steel-cut oatmeal after you get to your ideal weight, eat whole-grain toast.
The bottom line is that rather than counting calories, learn the proper foods. Write down each basic meal for the day and build your eating habits around a core of healthy meal options.
Secret #5: Eat Nothing Fried
Frying a food adds about a third more calories. You get not only extra calories from the fat in the oil, but the oil will most likely be animal fat, which will cause your LDL cholesterol to increase. If you’re going to use a cooking oil at home, use olive oil or canola oil, which are good fats despite giving you extra calories.
Secret #6: Exercise
You get more benefit from exercise in losing weight than simply burning a certain number of calories. A rule of thumb is that you burn one hundred calories per mile, whether you walk or jog. Of course, it will take longer to burn a hundred calories if you’re walking, but walking is a hundredfold better than not exercising at all. Once again, remember the study performed at Brown University, which divided a group of women into two groups. Both groups were placed on the same weight-loss diet. One group exercised, and the other didn’t. The outcome said a lot: the group that exercised lost almost twice the weight as the group that only dieted.
It’s true that exercise burns calories, but it also does more. Exercise takes a lot of commitment, even more than it takes to not eat a certain food.
Exercise is the ultimate commitment you make to yourself when you decide to lose weight. If you commit to exercising five to six days a week, it will affect all the other factors that result in weight loss. As I’ve said before, exercise tells your mind that you’re serious about the new lifestyle you’re undertaking. Exercise reinforces all the other weight-loss factors. So whether you decide to walk, run, swim, ride a bicycle, or begin strength training, you’re on the right path to success. I’ll say it again: exercise is so important that I place it as step number one in beginning your victory over diabetes.
These six simple secrets are all attainable, and you will see weight-loss success as you replace your old habits with new ones based on these secrets. Before long, you’ll be eating a routine breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal or a high-fiber cereal with some fruit. If you eat lunch out, it will take only a minute to find a vegetable plate or a salad with grilled chicken or salmon. Your dinner will become fairly predictable. It may not sound all that exciting, but once you beat the desire for bad foods and begin eating good foods, your food addictions will be of the past, your tastes will change, and you will enjoy your new, healthier lifestyle.
I’ve mentioned them before, but let me throw in two sneaky little enemies to be on the lookout for as you develop your new eating habits. They both not only affect your weight, but your heart.
One is cheese—that beloved food I told you I eliminated from my own diet. If you eat at home, it’s easy to completely do away with eating cheese. But if you eat out, remember that cheese is added to a lot of what you order unless you specify “no cheese”—especially to salads. Unless you tell your waiter no cheese, you will invariably find they have sprinkled cheese on top.
I even had it happen to me when I ordered a veggie egg-white omelet. I thought I had covered all my bases when I told them I wanted dry whole-wheat toast—no butter. But I was surprised when I took the first bite of my omelet. They had placed cheese in the middle of it, which had obviously melted throughout all the vegetables. I don’t like to send back food at a restaurant, but that was one time I had to ask them to remake my order with no cheese.
Another item to be aware of as you lose that excess weight is salad dressing. Not only do salad dressings add extra calories, but so many of them are loaded with saturated fat. Make sure you’re using either a nonfat dressing or an olive oil or vinaigrette type. And be sure salads in restaurants don’t come to you with dressing already on them.
Once you get to your ideal weight, you can make some changes to your eating plans. Your portions may become a little larger, or you may want to have a snack, choosing a high-fiber fruit or some nuts. Those changes will come in the future, but right now, do all you can to beat the desire for wrong foods.
Does Skipping Breakfast Help You Lose Weight?
Skipping breakfast is an increasing trend in America, where over 25 percent of people do it. Some people skip breakfast because they believe they’re reducing their overall calorie intake and by so doing are helping their weight loss. But an article in the journal Obesity Research points out this may or may not be the case.
Researchers examined short-term studies on the role of breakfast and energy balance and found mixed results. Some of the studies showed lower total intake of calories in non-breakfast eaters while other studies supported that those who skip breakfast tend to eat more calorie-dense foods later in the day. In other words, if you skip breakfast, you tend to eat a heavier lunch because you’re hungrier.
As pointed out in this particular study, the National Weight Control Registry group of successful weight-loss maintainers ate breakfast most mornings. Seventy-eight percent ate breakfast every morning, but almost 95 percent ate breakfast most days of the week. Fewer than 5 percent never ate breakfast.
These statistics make me want to eat breakfast every morning.
The “Fake Hunger Syndrome”
Most people who lose weight eat three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and again, I recommend avoiding snacks completely when you’re working on weight loss. That’s why it’s so important to eat high-fiber foods where the glucose is released slowly over a longer period rather than a quick release and a spike in blood sugar resulting in a spike in insulin needed, followed by too large a drop in blood glucose, which may signal to you that you need a snack. And again, it’s important to check with your doctor about medication control as you develop your new eating habits.
Let’s look at what takes place in your body when you eat a meal. This will help you understand what happens when you have a slight hunger sensation a few hours after you eat and want to eat a snack to satisfy that hunger. That hunger feeling may be fake hunger.
Step 1. Soon after your first bite of food, some carbohydrates are digested and broken down into sugar. This increase of glucose in your blood signals the pancreas to begin producing insulin. The insulin is like the key that unlocks the door of your cells to open, allowing the glucose particles to enter the cell to be used as energy.
Step 2. Any excess sugar in the blood is stored in the liver or muscles as glycogen.
Step 3. As time passes, the glucose in your bloodstream is fully used and no more digestible glucose is available. At this point, you may begin to have a little sense of hunger because the sugar in the blood has been used up and your blood sugar level is lower. When this happens, the body turns the switch on in the liver to begin releasing and breaking down the stored glycogen back into glucose, which goes back into the bloodstream to furnish nutrition to the cells of the body. This process is called glycolysis, meaning the stored glycogen is beginning to break back down into glucose. At that point, our bodies feed off the stored glycogen rather than glucose from additional food.
Step 4. When the stored glycogen begins to be completely used up, the body must get glucose from somewhere. Now, many hours after your meal, true hunger comes into play. The glucose from food recently eaten has all been used, the glucose from the stored glycogen has been used, and a warning bell rings, telling you to eat some food to restart the cycle at step 1. If you checked your glucose level, you would find you were at a true low level of glucose. If you don’t eat now, a process called gluconeogenesis begins because the glycogen stores have been depleted.
Where does fake hunger fit into your body’s need for glucose? It’s important to understand how and when this happens so you don’t let a feeling of hunger make you think you need something to eat between meals. When you first begin changing your habits, you may have to check your blood sugar to make certain you’re still in the normal glucose range and that you haven’t given yourself too much insulin or other medication that dropped your glucose too low. Once you get that worked out, you’ll be able to balance your medications to fit a plan that will let you skip those extra calories in snacks, which prevent you from losing weight.
When you experience fake hunger in step 3, this is not the time to eat snacks. Additional glucose will come either from eating a snack, from the glycogen breakdown, or through gluconeogenesis. Let your body work properly so that the needed energy comes from what you have already eaten rather than adding new food and additional calories to the equation.
I like to simplify the above example by looking at that fall in blood sugar a few hours after a meal when you feel a little hunger because the glucose level in your blood has fallen just below the normal level line. Taking it out of the multiple cycles that occur within your body, I like to simplify it with this reasoning:
After eating, your glucose becomes elevated and insulin drives it back down. It may go to a slightly low level where you sense the “fake hunger syndrome.” You’re going to get that glucose level back up to the normal line by one of two ways. Either you’ll take it in through eating some food, or your body will break down fat tissue to get it transformed into glucose. If you eat that snack, there will be no breaking down of that excess fat you’re carrying around. If you don’t take those extra calories in through your mouth, your body will provide them through fat breakdown. If you do supply them through some food, the fat stays where it is. What I just explained is not the scientific step-by-step way the body does it, but it is a simple way to understand how you can lose that excess weight. If you eat when you have fake hunger, you’re not going to lose any excess weight at that time.
A report in Nutritional Journal details how glucose is used in our bodies. The article points out that the sensation of hunger is one of the factors that drives people to overeat, adding additional calories that keep them from losing weight. The article points out that certain foods give a different perception of hunger. You eat them, and you don’t have that spike in glucose level nor the big drop that makes you think you need a snack. These foods are similar to the ones you’ve been encouraged to begin eating on a regular basis—vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains—while avoiding processed foods and animal products. The higher-fiber foods prevent that sensation of hunger you get during that fake hunger period after meals.
It may take you some time and effort to beat this fake hunger period, but it will be worth it to avoid eating those extra calories just because you think you have low sugar. In step 3, you may have “lower” sugar, but not “low” sugar. Avoid snacks, because most of the time you don’t need them.
Weight Loss That Lasts a Lifetime
Once you reach your ideal weight, what do you do differently to ensure that you maintain your ideal weight for the rest of your life? Nothing. Nothing at all. That is the primary benefit of this diet plan. Only 2 to 20 percent of people who have lost weight maintain that loss. That’s because most people haven’t beaten their addiction for certain foods. They return to their past habits and inevitably regain weight. If you don’t abstain and beat the desire, you will fail.
You’re different. By following this plan, you’ll change your eating habits while you lose weight and continue them for life. You may have a snack now and then if you want, but you will limit any snack to two food types: nuts and fruits. You’ll have beaten your desires for the wrong foods. You’ll maintain your weight loss.
Now that you know the secrets, act on them. Set your goals. Goals lead to habits, and habits develop into routines. The day will come when what you choose to eat at home or order in a restaurant will become routine. Begin seeing yourself as healthy. Think about it when you first get up and just before you go to bed. Picture yourself trim, with normal blood pressure and normal blood sugar. Think about becoming healthier as you plan what to eat today. Think of what you’ll do between meals if you want a snack, what you will drink in its place, what else you can do for the next ten minutes.
If you write down what you’re going to do, what you’re going to become, you will do it. Set your goals for success in defeating diabetes and write them down. As I’ve said before, writing down a goal is almost like magic. Get a notebook. Be specific. Write down your goal weight. Write down your menu for each meal for a week. Write down where you’re going to exercise each day and what exercise you’ll do. Write down when you’ll exercise and what clothes you’ll wear. Once you believe in setting your goals, you will believe you can change. Believe in it because it can work. I guarantee you will see a difference in what you do.
How Important Is Maintaining Weight Loss in Defeating Diabetes?
The three lifestyle changes—exercise, eating the right foods, and getting to an ideal weight—are intertwined. However, the most significant factor in defeating diabetes is getting to an ideal weight and maintaining it.
Let’s look at one more study.
An article published in the American Journal of Medicine makes the following attention-getting statement about the relationship between being overweight and diabetes: “Some 80% to 90% of persons with type 2 diabetes are overweight.” The study further emphasized the other medical problems that occur with diabetics who are overweight. These included an increase in their blood glucose, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and heart failure. The study mentioned that weight loss will improve your glucose control as well as your insulin sensitivity. It improves your blood pressure and your cholesterol as well as protects your heart. So any way you look at it, being overweight is bad and losing the excess is excellent.
Then they made a sad, sad statement: “The majority of obese patients regain most of the weight they lose.” Why does this happen? Because they didn’t lose the desire for certain foods as they lost their excess weight. So when they got to their goal weight, they still had the desire for the bad foods they previously ate, which caused them to gain weight in the first place.
The second reason so many people regain weight after going through the battle of losing it is inactivity. Your odds of keeping your excess weight off are almost nil if you don’t continue the exercise routine you developed in losing your weight.
Do what’s necessary to not only reach your ideal weight, but to keep it off for life.