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10 Strategies for Effective Weight Managment
If you’ve heard or read Graham’s story, you’ll know that he lost a considerable amount of weight in his late 40s and into his early 50s. You’ll also know that he’s sustained the weight loss into another decade which is possibly the most remarkable part of his story.
He didn't follow any weight loss plan or diet, in fact he’d already tried several to no avail. We assumed the key to his ultimate success was the food he was eating and that was certainly a significant part of his story, but we’ve since realised there were other factors involved, even if we weren’t aware of them. And there are a few more factors that might have made the process even easier, but we just didn’t know about them.
What follows here is a collection of some of the practical keys to weight loss which may not be immediately obvious or well-known. We invite you to take a look at the 10 strategies and see if any of them could be applicable to you. It goes without saying that there is no single formula that works for everyone, how could there be when the reasons for weight gain will be as complex and diverse as the individuals who seek to address it? It’s well beyond the scope of this list to consider emotional factors, however, we would certainly assist as much as possible with those issues in a Lifestyle Coaching program.
1. The Challenge of the Pleasure Trap
There's good reason to list this one first. Without an understanding of the pleasure trap, addressing one's diet can include the added torment of guilt and / self reproach. These are not just unhelpful, they're almost entirely misplaced.
We are quite literally programmed to seek out foods that are sweet, fatty and salty. As a species we wouldn't have survived without a desire for the first two: we needed the sweet fruits for day-to-day energy and we needed fat to ensure that we had calories we could store and use when the fruits were less available. The reason we seek salty foods is less clear, but salty tasting foods were likely to have correlated with mineral rich foods. In this regard, our physiology hasn't changed, but our food has. Dramatically. We have 24/7 availability and masses of processed and ultra-processed foods, some of which are so new, they've appeared in our lifetime, making it impossible for our ancient physiology to adapt. And, of course, the food industry knows what drives us and they drive their businesses accordingly. They need to stay afloat and manipulating our drives (nowadays seen somewhat inappropriately as weaknesses) is a sure fire way to achieve it and thus generate shareholder-required profit.
We urge you to keep this in mind, not as a reason to give up on your goals, but to understand why it's sometimes so challenging. So be as resolute as possible, but never unkind.
If you want to know more, The Pleasure Trap is the title of an excellent book by Doug Lisle Ph.D. and Alan Goldhammer D.C.
2. Calorie Density
Knowing about calorie density is likely to serve you better than calorie counting. It’s important when you’re attempting to achieve healthy weight loss that you don’t go hungry. Will-power has its limits and frequently experiencing hunger is likely to sabotage your efforts. There are two categories of food to focus on to feel satiated whilst reducing your caloric load. They are foods with a high water content and foods that are high in fibre. Both water and fibre contribute to feeling satiated but neither water nor fibre has any calories. This means that an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables can help with weight management whilst providing excellent nutrition. These plant foods don’t all need to be consumed in their raw state, but the cooking methods make a difference. Using water for cooking e.g. steaming, will ensure that the food still has a high water content whereas frying, for example, removes the fluid. An easy-to-visualise example is the transformation of a potato into crisps. Water-based cooking is also valuable for cooking wholegrains and pulses. These would usually be boiled. Some expand significantly with the fluid they soak up eg rice, quinoa. Denser foods such as nuts and seeds, whilst they are beneficial components of a healthy diet and contain health-supporting fatty acids, need to be eaten in smaller quantities than fruits, vegetables, grains and beans. Their lower water content and higher fat content makes them more calorific since the macronutrient fat is 9 calories per gram whilst carbohydrates and protein each provide just 4 calories per gram. This means that dried fruit is a little less calorific than nuts and seeds, but the removal of water means that they too are best eaten in modest quantities.
3. Hara Hachi Bu
You don’t need to speak Japanese in order to get the most out of this strategy for managing weight. Put simply, it’s a strategy that’s come from the study of the Blue Zones, areas of the world where healthy longevity is not unusual. The Japanese island of Okinawa, one of these Blue Zones, is where we’ve come to know of hara hachi bu. If you employ the principle behind this Japanese phrase then you eat until you’re 80% full. That’s it. Of course it’s another of those things that’s simple, but not necessarily easy. It requires a mindful approach to know when you’ve achieved satiety, i.e. hunger has been dealt with, but you could still accommodate more. It may also be one of the few times we would suggest calling on will power. Will power, as a long term strategy is potentially doomed to failure or conversely, to stress, but for the few minutes that it takes for your body’s feedback messages to kick in, it may be a viable option for some. The rewards are significant. This is not just a weight loss strategy, it typically feels better (after the initial challenge of stopping eating at 80% fullness). It’s often referred to as calorie restriction, but we’ve learnt to approach it more positively by calling it calorie optimisation … if you’re eating good nutritious food, then you’re optimising your nutrition and avoiding overeating. It is without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most potent tools for longevity, and the science supports this. Remarkably, it tends to lead to more energy; did you know that digestion requires a huge amount of energy and that when we overeat, the demands on us are significant? In the west, we appear to have a mentality of recognising something as good e.g. nutritious food, and assuming therefore that more of it must be better. The Okinawans seem to have a better grasp of balance. If you only put this into practice for one meal a day, then the last meal of the day is probably the best choice so as to avoid high digestive energy demands when we lay down at night in the hope of getting restorative sleep. Give it a go. See what it feels like. What do you notice?
4. The Question of Speed
It’s likely that this one serves primarily as a reminder. Too many of us eat too quickly irrespective of weight issues. And it matters. Digestion begins in the mouth, or at least it should. There are enzymes in our saliva that have a role in breaking down food when we produce saliva by the action of chewing. If you’ve ever chewed a highly carbohydrate food for long enough, you’ll have noticed that it’s almost completely broken down before you swallow. This is due to the enzyme amylase. Some lipase is also present in the mouth, and this begins the breakdown of fats. As a result, the mechanics of digestion further down the digestive tract don’t have to work so hard which means that less energy is lost in converting food into usable nutrition for the body to use. Digestion is very energy intensive. Does it make sense therefore, to provide energy for our bodies by eating and simultaneously make more demands on digestive energy than is necessary?
There are a few tips we can offer for slowing down and chewing more:
Consider your posture, are you sitting upright when you eat or does your eating position tend to resemble the ‘hamburg posture’, ie where you bring your mouth closer to your food rather than ensure that your food is brought to your mouth?
Become as mindful as you can of how quickly you introduce a mouthful of food after the previous one. Do you chew and swallow it first, or do you quickly add another mouthful to some of the remaining one? Do you effectively hurry yourself by having a forkful waiting, almost impatiently, for the earliest opportunity to dive in? If you do, it can be useful to put your fork down between mouthfuls.
Additionally, observe how you feel especially after a meal eaten more slowly. There’s a good chance you feel more comfortable and you may have even eaten less because you’re more likely to have allowed the messages from your digestive tract to get to your brain signalling that you’ve eaten enough. Faster eating can blunt these messages.
5. The Timing of Meals
Breakfast yes, or no?
The timing of meals does appear to make a difference in the context of weight loss. A study from 2013 showed that eating the main meal of the day late had a negative impact on weight loss.¹ And another study demonstrated that those eating breakfast had better outcomes in respect of weight than those who missed this meal and ate later in the day.²
This is starting to sound like the well-known mantra inviting us to breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper, and of course there’s recognisable logic to this strategy. By front-loading our calorie intake, we have the rest of the day ahead of us in which to use up those calories whereas eating a big meal late in the evening is inevitably challenging on both digestion and sleep quality, neither of which makes weight management easy. The impact on overall health may well also be significant. BUT whilst this rule of thumb does make a lot of sense for a lot of people, we’re all different and we don’t all respond the same way to the same strategies. The most important factor is really acknowledging what works best for you which sounds like a very good proposal and it is, but there is one significant question that needs to be taken into consideration: does how you eat work best for your personal physiology? This can be a challenge. Modern society has us eating our main meal in the evening (so that we can work during the day), and this is clearly unsuitable for many people. At the other end of the calorie spectrum there are studies telling us we really must have breakfast, and this too is unsuitable for some people. Eating is far more complex than an opportunity to refuel, the associated social elements are potent forces persuading us to forgo our physiological needs and instead align with the crowd. We know this well and definitely sympathise with the challenges. We would add that it is often easier than one might imagine to do right by ourselves and doing so can definitely help us reap the rewards that taking real care of ourselves can bring.
¹Garaulet M, Gómez-Abellán P, Alburquerque-Béjar JJ, Lee YC, Ordovás JM, Scheer FA. Timing of food intake predicts weight loss effectiveness. Int J Obes (Lond). 2013 Apr;37(4):604-11. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2012.229. Epub 2013 Jan 29. Erratum in: Int J Obes (Lond). 2013 Apr;37(4):624. PMID: 23357955; PMCID: PMC3756673.
²Purslow LR, Sandhu MS, Forouhi N, Young EH, Luben RN, Welch AA, Khaw KT, Bingham SA, Wareham NJ. Energy intake at breakfast and weight change: prospective study of 6,764 middle-aged men and women. Am J Epidemiol. 2008 Jan 15;167(2):188-92. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwm309. Epub 2007 Dec 12. PMID: 18079134.
6. Eating Out
Before we even consider any possible strategies for this one, since eating out is typically a social event, it’s really worth bearing that in mind. A social event is first and foremost about connecting with others, the food is secondary. Will what you choose to eat (or avoid) ruin the occasion? Most probably not, especially not if the venue is a public place such as a restaurant rather than someone’s home. We have two tips here which can work well to help with the potential to otherwise overeat. We definitely recommend pre-loading. This is quite simply eating something first before you go out in order to avoid being so hungry that you’ll eat almost anything! The best foods for doing this are typically fruits as they can take the edge off your hunger but not completely ruin your appetite or interfere with your digestion. A bit of trial and error will guide you towards whatever works best for you. The other strategy is to eat low density foods when you first arrive at the restaurant. The obvious ones are salad, soup, or fruit. These are generally speaking the most water-rich foods that help to remove the desire to opt for a heavy main course that may become a source of regret later on.
Eating at someone else’s home will likely fall on a spectrum somewhere between ideal and challenging. In some cases you may be surprised to find that talking to the host about your goals and eating preferences can be far more helpful than you might have imagined. After all, most hosts want you to enjoy what they prepare for you and if they have the know-how, they may well be glad to ensure that you leave feeling happy. If your diet has particular requirements due to allergies or personal convictions (as is the case for veganism), then your host may need a little help. Are you willing to make suggestions, offer some practical help, or bring something? Of course, interactions such as these are dependent on a number of factors which can be influenced from as far back as the cultural upbringing of the host. But to reiterate what we said above, YOU have been invited to their home, not your stomach and digestive tract. Some of these occasions are more challenging in our imagination than reality.
7. The Microbiome!
This is an enormous factor for weight as well as both physical and mental health. It’s also an incomplete field of study so there’s more to know. What we do know is that fibre is essential to our health and wellbeing. It’s already considered by some to be the 4th macronutrient and not without good reason. Put simply, fibre feeds the gut bugs that are supportive to our health. Industrialised nations have a problem with this; fibre consumption in these countries is way below what is useful and even necessary for a good quality of life. Our ancestors ate around 3 to 4 times more fibre than us. Depending on your age, you may have been around long enough to witness a visible increase in weight in the surrounding population. There are multiple reasons for this, ultra-processed food being high on the list and guess what is generally low or even completely lacking in these foods? Fibre, of course. Fibre is in whole plant foods, all of them. A diet that limits whole plant foods cannot cultivate a healthy gut microbiome because the ‘good guys’ have nothing to feed on meaning other microbes take their place. These microbes will bring about changes in our bodies that can lead to poor health, a change in mental state and weight gain. They can be so potent that THEY start to determine the food we will eat so that THEY get to survive and thrive. If you experience a longing for unhealthy food, it may be your gut bugs clamouring for it, making you nothing more than an intermediary, a means of satisfying their needs whilst you believe you’re exercising free choice … but are you?
8. What About Fluid?
Fluid intake isn’t only a matter of how many cups or glasses of liquid you consume a day. It’s entirely possible for two people to have vastly differing numbers of drinks and still be well hydrated. How? Because the person who eats a large quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables is effectively consuming their drinks in the form of food, and there’s no better fluid than that which is in a whole fruit, cucumber or tomato .. or in fact any vegetable, they’re all a good source of water. A diet that is drier sets the scene for dehydration unless large intakes of fluid are factored in. There’s no getting around it, water is by far the better choice in terms of health, and if you drink a glass before a meal, you may find you’re less hungry. We’re lucky where we live currently that the tap water isn’t subjected to any chemical treatment which means there’s no chlorine or other added chemicals. If this were not the case, we would drink bottled mineral water, ideally from glass bottles because the tap water chemicals whilst doing a great job to kill off pathogenic bacteria, are most likely unable to differentiate between the microbes we don’t want and those in our gut microbiome that we need. And there are other drinks that certainly count. If you enjoy freshly made juices or smoothies then you’re getting some excellent hydration. In the context of weight management, other drinks eg tea and coffee will vary immensely depending on what else is in them: milk? Sugar? And at the risk of making ourselves unpopular, alcohol is calorific, more calorific than carbohydrates or proteins (but a little less than fats). Some people are also aware of the link between alcohol and the ‘munchies’, a kind of alcohol-induced desire for food. This is often comfort food as we remember well from our student year here in Germany, an evening in the pub was typically rounded off with Bratwurst and Pommes, or Currywurst and Pommes, in other words, German sausage in some form and chips!
9. Movement
It will come as no surprise that movement is relevant, not just for those who wish to lose weight, but for everyone. Whilst we’re not fans of a calorie-counting approach, it’s undeniably the case that if our body consumes more energy than it uses, there will be left-over energy (calories) and these must be stored somewhere, and they will be stored as fat. Notice we’re not saying ‘sport’ here, or even exercise. If either of these appeal to you, then you probably have no need to read any more of this section, you just need to make time to do what you enjoy. The rest of us simply need to move, possibly more than we currently do and maybe more vigorously if that’s possible (the obvious example here is walking at a good pace). BUT there are two considerations here: one is that although movement is incredibly important for reasons across the spectrum of both physical and mental health, used in isolation it is not a strategy for weight loss. You may have heard the saying that you can’t outrun a bad diet. The other consideration is for those who shy away from exercise or more movement because it feels so uncomfortable. If there’s excess weight, the reason may seem obvious, but there’s also another factor and it forms the basis of our final strategy.
10. The Most Overlooked Factor?
We all know how vital breathing is in terms of keeping us alive, what’s much less known is the important role it plays in our health and even our happiness. It may be compromised breathing, specifically breathlessness, that deters us from the movement, exercise or sport that could otherwise be so enjoyable. And did you know that there’s a strong correlation between poor diets and sub-optimal breathing? Certain foods, particularly processed foods and animal foods, when eaten frequently, tip the pH of the blood towards acidity. This represents a life-or-death situation for the body which has to bring the pH back into the narrow range that it needs to be in and it can do this by rapidly exhaling the acidic gas carbon dioxide. Over time, breathing can become habitually too fast such that too much CO² is exhaled. This is a characteristic of dysfunctional breathing. Could then a subconscious response to addressing the persistent swing towards excess alkalinity be to eat the processed and animal foods that bring the pH back towards acidity?
There’s another factor concerning weight and breathing. Where breathing is suboptimal, for example simply a bit too fast for the body’s metabolic needs, a major knock-on effect can be poor sleep as the faster-than-needed breathing tells the brain that there’s a reason to be alert, on guard and certainly not asleep. Disrupted sleep influences hormones, one of which is ghrelin, known as the ‘hunger hormone’. More of this hormone is produced as a result of the sleep disturbances and this stimulates the appetite leading to eating more and typically to gaining more weight. This can then be part of a vicious circle if excess belly fat accumulates as this will impede the movement of the diaphragm with the result that muscles in the upper airway are less effective. This can make a person more prone to sleep apnoea, thus bringing us back to sleep disordered breathing, and so the cycle continues!
The last strategy alone should tell us that the reasons for weight challenges go beyond the over-simplified notion of excess calories = excess weight. That said, there is also a degree of simplicity (if not ease) around healthy weight maintenance. Again and again, we’re getting the message, if we choose to heed it, that our current norms don’t necessarily align with what is natural for us. There has been no other time in history when our lifestyles have been so misaligned with our natural physiology. If any of the strategies listed here help to restore balance then our natural bodies will likely stand a better chance of supporting us to good health. The body wants nothing less, so why not help it?