The Dangers of Dieting
Based on evidence from a recent Webinar by Dr Nick Fuller
As a Physiotherapist and health practitioner helping people is at the forefront of every consultation. Discussions around weight and weight loss can be sensitive so I thought I would learn more on the topic so I can help educate and empower you with the knowledge you need to make sustainable decisions.
Excess body weight has a cascade of effects including joint health, pain management and an increase in chronic diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, non alcoholic fatty liver etc).
About 2 in 3 Australians are struggling with their weight currently and are left confused on what to believe with advertisements on social media showing the latest diet or magic pill that will fix their weight problem. On average a typical person will try 5 different diets per year, spend 30 years of their life dieting and by mid age have tried more than 60 diets!
Back in the 70s and 80s the neural pathways in our brain could control our eating habits. Hormones like ghrelin would let us know we’re hungry and Leptin would let us know to terminate food consumption when we were full. In today’s society our external environment overrides our internal homeostatic environment. We rely on transport more than ever and high calorie foods are readily available that leads to our hedonic pathways (rewards based eating) overriding our other pathways. Think when you’re full at the dinner table and always able to say yes to dessert even though the energy stores are full.
So why is it that our diets continue to fail time and time again and there is a cultural obsession of weight loss? Why is it that we can succeed short term and fail long term and go back to a place worse off then when we started.
Apart from the unrealistic, unhealthy and unsustainable cutting of food groups (think the no carb diet where we just strip body water content and the scales go down purely from a loss of water) there is a much greater issue which is our body defending its ‘set point’.
Sadly, through dieting we are actually driving up our set point through the physiological effects weight loss has on our body. Our body actually responds to dieting and weight loss as a threat and increased stress which leads to protection and in fact increases our set point over time. When we go back to normal eating following a period of food restriction we end up creeping back to our set point and more often than not our set point goes up each time.
Below are a few of the ways dieting actually drives our ‘set point’ up:
◦ Our metabolism slows down during the diet and then when we stop food restriction our weight goes back to normal but our metabolism is now still at the reduced capacity.
◦ Our body goes into survival mode – during weight loss the diet is actually putting our body into stress, our adrenal glands pump out more cortisol in response to stress which leads to more weight gain
◦ Dieting causes an increase in Ghrelin (hunger pains) and suppression in appetite regulating hormones so our internal system Is out of whack and not letting us know when to eat for hunger and when we are full.
With that being said what does the evidence say for successful weight loss management ?
During the webinar by Dr Nick Fuller, the evidence suggests an interval weight loss approach. By approaching dieting in intervals it allows us to switch off the negative biological responses. He suggest following 4 week cycles where we have maintenance months followed by stricter months. Ease off the intensity and enjoy your favourite meals in those less strict months and focus on being stricter with your dietary intake in the following 4 weeks.
Remove addiction to devices – poor quality sleep and not enough sleep can be attributed to our devices and the impact they have on switching off for sleep. Try to have a period before bed without devices to optimise sleep. By avoiding sleep deprivation, we can avoid poorer lifestyle choices.
Sustainable exercise & getting moving each day – The more sustainable your exercise plan the less risk of injury and greater chance of consistency.
Although this all relates to diet and as a Physiotherapist this doesn’t come within my scope to give food advice it does for sure relate to how best to help a client from a holistic health perspective. If we can start having conversations around weight and how to address weight loss sustainably, I think we are far better off than leaving the topic unspoken.
For any questions on the exercise side of weight loss please feel free to get in contact or book an appointment to discuss starting a Physio designed exercise plan.
For more information based on the above information please visit:
Thanks for reading,
Chelsea