Ideal Weight - 009

SPEAKER A The following program presents principles designed to promote good health and is not intended to take the place of personalized, professional care. The opinions and ideas expressed are those of the speakers. Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions about the information presented. SPEAKER B Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Weight loss is a multi billion dollar industry, but going on a diet isn't effective in long term. So what's the answer? Stay tuned for lifestyle strategies that are sustainable, nourishing and enjoyable. SPEAKER C Healthy Living is a 13 part production of three ABN Australia television, focusing on the health of the whole person body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER B Here to discuss this weighty issue, we have Jenifer Skues, a health psychologist, and Dr. John Clark. Welcome, John. Welcome, Jenifer. SPEAKER D Thank you. SPEAKER B And would you like to lead out in this one, John? SPEAKER E Why, certainly. The gentleman that I want to use as our example today I met in North Carolina, in the United States. He weighed 200 kg. He had an ankle that was suffering post traumatic arthritis, and he had an addiction to caffeine. He literally drank two liters of soda that was caffeinated a day, and it wasn't the diet kind. And so he came to my meetings and after a short time he realized that the caffeine in these sodas was not his best friend. It wasn't helping him. And so he quit, unbeknownst to us. Cold turkey. So this is two liters of soda with caffeine. Stopped overnight. And the next day my wife met him at the post office. He had a splitting headache. He was going through withdrawals, which a person will do for about 36 hours. Well, my wife encouraged him and he wasn't able to make it to the meeting that night. But the next night he came and we had a discussion in our meeting of obesity. And he definitely realized that he wasn't at his ideal body weight. And yet he knew he couldn't walk for exercise because his ankle was so sore and so traumatized. So I set him up with a program where he could do some hydrotherapy on his ankle. Now we're going to do another program on arthritis, but this will sort of be a preview. I had him doing hot and cold treatments. He'd put his foot and ankle into a bucket of hot water for three minutes. And then after that he would take it out and put it in a bucket of ice cold water for 1 minute. And then he would repeat that contrast five times and end with cold. Well, in doing that, he lowers the inflammation in his ankle, he improves the circulation. He made it so he could start walking. And he did. And he started walking for health. Started walking in order to improve his weight. Our friends who were living there and were the hosts for the meetings emailed us from time to time. Ten months later he was still walking up and down the road out in front of their house for about 3 day, and he had lost ten pounds, or about four and a half kilos per month for ten months straight. So he'd lost 45 kilos in ten months. SPEAKER D That's quite an achievement, isn't it? SPEAKER B I suppose. Of course, the calories in the sodas or the soft drinks, as we call them, would have played a role in that, but the exercise would have been a significant thing too. Isn't that interesting? Did he make other changes that you know of besides cutting out the soft drink and walking? SPEAKER E He certainly did. And we promote a whole lifestyle program that includes a good diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables and the low in refined processed foods. And he had adopted that and this contributed to his success as a weight loss. SPEAKER B Oh, isn't that absolutely wonderful? Yes. The World Health Organization says that one of the things we really, really need to do for having a good diet, the first recommendation they make is to eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and you know, it's just there, wherever you look. That is such a good recommendation. Well, what a wonderful outcome. Do you know this is an interesting piece of information. The number of overweight people in the world has now exceeded the number underfed more than a billion. So it is a really significant problem and it's one we need to really have a good understanding of. So Jennifer, what's your take on this? SPEAKER D Well, I deal with a lot of people with weight problems. As a health psychologist, I help change unhealthy habits to healthy habits and deal with things. But I see the extreme end. So I'll see someone who actually hasn't been able to lose the weight, they haven't been able to give up things. This man had certainly a good willpower to just stop like that. So I go from extremely overweight people who are their health is being threatened, their doctor sent them to me to help them. The other end of the spectrum then is the anorexic, the person who sees food as their enemy and doesn't want to put on weight. And even though they're so skinny, their perception is that they're actually too fat, too overweight. So when you look at the extreme ends, and they've been doing this for many, many years, it takes a lot to help them to change it around. And sadly, with the anorexics, they can't always do that and their weight is less than ideal, but you can get them to a good functional level. So I do a lot of changing lifestyle habits, helping them with the psychology of food and eating, and that can help to make a big difference, but it's often a prolonged process for these people. SPEAKER B Just thinking about your recommendations there, John, in the recommendations that you do make in your programs. I was just noticing in the China Diet Project study that Dr. T. Colin Campbell headed up, and it was noticed that the Chinese eat 30% less calories than Americans, and yet they weigh 30% more, 30% more calories than Americans and weigh 20% less. SPEAKER D Okay. SPEAKER B And so he's looking for reasons for that. Now, true, the Chinese are more active, and so they took the ones with the lowest activity in the Chinese, which is equivalent to office workers. And still that figure would have so, mind you, he did say that even the office workers ride a bicycle to work. But even allowing for that, it's because they have a predominantly plant based diet, and that's what they're looking at. So that's really a good reinforcement for what you're saying. And it's certainly borne out in this story that you've just told of this gentleman, and wouldn't all our people tuning in love that to be true for them that ten months later you could have lost 45, 50 kilos. SPEAKER E Wow. SPEAKER D But it is an achievable goal. SPEAKER B It's an achievable goal. SPEAKER D People want to do it. SPEAKER B But that is right. SPEAKER D Some of the dynamics psychologically for people, if they can't achieve it, they try and they give up. Or they try and the body weight doesn't shift. It's very discouraging. And often they give up, and then they become very depressed, and then they become anxious about eating social events. So it can impact a whole range of things. It's not just about eating, then. SPEAKER B Yes. So you've got someone in the situation that you just described, and then what would you be saying to them? SPEAKER D Well, with a person who is overweight, they have spent and often had a lot of input as a very young person. And I often talk to people about, well, what's your life been like and how come you've put on all this weight and what were your eating habits as a child? And often they get messages from parents, from society as to what's acceptable and not acceptable. And this is where the stress factor comes into it. Then they have a lot of stress. And when the brain has learned a habit and it's done it over and over again, it's like they have a freeway in the brain. And for women particularly, food is the comforter. And they've often had a parent or a mother who eats emotionally, and we call it emotional eating, and therefore they follow the pattern. So what I have to do is help them to recognize what's happening when they're eating two things. One, recognizing the emotional content at the time, what might have triggered it or sustains it. And the other one is getting them to recognize when they're actually full, when they've had enough, instead of going beyond that. So they have to do some self reflection and sometimes using a diary and journaling things and setting a realistic goal. Yes, and I find often for these women, you have to take very small steps because if you go too quickly, they'll sabotage too much. SPEAKER B Yes. And everyone has to do it in their own way. It has to work for that person. SPEAKER D Yes. SPEAKER B I'm always impressed by people like the gentleman you spoke about who can just go out there and just see what's got to be done and just do it. There's not a lot of people who will actually be able to do that. Yes, but there are people like that. And for those who feel they need to just take the journey a bit slower, it's good to have absolutely that good advice and do it in small steps. SPEAKER D Food can act like a placebo because what we think translates to every cell of the body. And I know women often said, all I have to do is look at a cream cake and I put on a pound. And I know they haven't, but they feel like they have. But a placebo is where when the brain perceives something and believes it, the whole system responds as if it's really happening. We've heard of the sugar pill factor and there was an interesting story, and this is to do with the caffeine factor, where how powerful it is with food is that he came to work, he had to really concentrate for a couple of hours. He asked his receptionist to get him a coffee, and she got him the coffee and he drank it. And he could feel himself pepping up. And he was focused, concentrated. He said, oh, I had to go to the toilet a few more times because that's what caffeine does to me. And at the end of it, he thanked her. He said, oh, thanks for getting me that coffee, because it really helped me. She said, well, it was actually decaffeinated. Right. So you can see but his belief, his body and his brain responded to the belief. And this is what happens with food. We get very set in it and we can look at something and have that effect. And I find people who are anorexic have that placebo effect and food becomes an aversion then, because they believe they're taking and it's putting on weight when it isn't, but they see themselves or the body can do that, then that. SPEAKER B Mind body connection is just amazing. I've heard other stories like that, and the first time you hear it, it's like, oh, is that possible? SPEAKER D It really does. SPEAKER B I just had an idea. If someone was wanting to give up coffee and having trouble and they had a wife or a husband who could just sneak decaf into their normal jar, they could probably give it up and never know. SPEAKER D Well, they wouldn't give it up. They would just drink decaffeinate. No, but what I know that's not always good for you either. SPEAKER B No, but I'm saying if he really thought that that was normal coffee and it did all the things for him, it should you know what I mean, he'll keep using. I wonder if that would work. Might be worth a try. SPEAKER D I won't ask who. You're going to try this? SPEAKER B No, actually, I can't think of someone. Yeah. SPEAKER E What else are you going to slip into their coffee? SPEAKER B What did you have in mind? SPEAKER E And you know, when he quit his sodas? Sodas drive food consumption. Even switching to a soda that is supposedly low fat or low calorie or diet drives food consumption. The fast food industries have figured this out, where they go ahead and give you a free refill or the 64 ounce soda or whatever, and there's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no such thing as a free soda. You will go ahead and eat more food for having drunk a soda and so soda. So in quitting his sodas, he was actually setting himself up for better diet control. Also now thinking about caffeine and things that manipulate your brain, a lot of the foods out there are more than just fattening. They are actually addictive. For example, restaurants will put more oil into their foods. It drives food consumption. In America, the Surgeon General of the United States came and looked at all the fast food restaurants, calculated the amount of fat, and said, you folks are not contributing to the health of America. Please, for the sake of everybody's health, reduce the amount of fat. Two years later, he came back and looked. No restaurant had reduced fat, and some of them had increased it. You see, fat overcomes your food satisfaction signal and makes it so you are more likely to eat more food. SPEAKER D Well, sugar is another one that they do that with burnt sugar onto products, and you crave more and you eat more. SPEAKER E And this is an interesting history in America. We have a breakfast cereal company called Kellogg's. Maybe you've heard of Kellogg's Cornflakes. SPEAKER B Maybe we have, yes. SPEAKER E And these were created in Battle Creek, Michigan by a couple of brothers by the last name of Kellogg. One was a doctor and one was a businessman. And the doctor was very health conscious, and he wanted to make sure that the breakfast cereal was healthy. But the brother, who was the businessman, started putting sugar into the cornflakes to drive sales. The doctor was so upset, they parted their ways. The businessman left the area. The doctor turned around and sued him. One brother suing another because of the bad health effects of putting sugar into the original recipe. And today we put sugar on everything, including Kellogg's Cornflakes. You see people spooning it on, including Kellogg's Cornflakes. And so why do I say this? I say this because you may be making choices in foods that are actually overpowering your will, making it so you're more likely to eat. It's not just you, it's the chemical properties of the foods you're choosing. SPEAKER D It actually weakens the will. Like sugar will weaken the will. So that means I've got to get people off the sugar to try and strengthen their will. SPEAKER E And what happens when you eat sugar is it raises the dopamine in your head, and the dopamine is the feel good hormone. And in fact, sugar will raise dopamine more than street drugs such as speed or cocaine. And so it's more addictive than cocaine. SPEAKER D And harder to get off at times because it's so acceptable in our society, whereas something like cocaine isn't. So the availability can drive it, and it's driven by the media. SPEAKER B Isn't it interesting that they are prohibited drugs, and we buy the other buy sugar in the supermarket, and it's not even worse perceived as doing as being something that could become so addictive and so difficult. What about MSG, John? Does that play a role in any of this? SPEAKER E Definitely. Now, MSG is monosodium glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid. The problem with MSG is that the glutamate is separated from other amino acids that would normally make up a oh, okay. And so you're ending up with a free amino acid. What happens in the brain is the amino acid acts like a false neurotransmitter, overstimulating the brain. It also overstimulates the taste buds. All flavors are more flavorful. And so what you have is a society that wants a wow in every bite. You go down to the fast food joint, you want a wow in every bite. And these super flavors overpower your sense of how much you should eat or shouldn't eat. It tastes so good, you have to have more. I mean, I ask folks, how do you decide how much food to eat? Well, if it tastes good, eat more, right? Well, that doesn't work. I'm not making a case for bad tasting food. But on the other hand, if I'm selling food and my whole income depends on food, and I could care less about people's health, I want it to taste maximally. I want to wow in every bite so people will come with their wallets open and handing me cash. But I haven't done the obese person any favors, because a person who eats food with MSG in it has twice the risk of obesity as somebody who isn't getting MSG in their food. SPEAKER B Say that again. SPEAKER E Twice the risk of obesity with eating foods with this. And people don't realize what it is when they go to the supermarket, because you go to the supermarket and you. SPEAKER D Don'T look for you don't read the label. SPEAKER E Yeah. You're not trying to find a food with more MSG. Oh, I just got to have more MSG. Can somebody help me find a package here with MSG? What number is it? No. You kind of realize this might not be good, so you avoid this. So they give it other names natural flavors, yeast, extract, hydrolyzed, vegetable, protein. SPEAKER D And number it. SPEAKER E And number it. It's high in any product that's highly refined and has protein, soy, meats, soy sauce, bragg's, liquid, aminos, nutritional yeast, you name it. There's lots of this MSG and you go super flavoring your food with it and you end up with this appetite that you wonder, how am I going to overcome this appetite and get the weight to come off? SPEAKER D And this is where people then develop an appetite for that. They lose interest in what's healthy and what's good. It enhances the taste buds to a point. The taste buds don't want anything less than that. See how it sets up another pattern then, which needs to be broken? SPEAKER B And how would you talk to people about breaking an addiction, for example? SPEAKER D Well, what I do is, one, educate them, just like we're talking here. So there's two prongs, one with the emotional side we talked about and helping the person deal with the emotions drive the urge for food and then educating them on what they're putting into their system and what it's doing and how it's impacting their health. And setting up this craving, a food craving, we call it. So then it's introducing foods and again, it's that thing of these people can't just always go cold turkey. So we go, okay, well, what are you having that isn't so good? And let's have a look at what you can have that is good and you're willing to try. And so we then introduce new foods and take out others. SPEAKER B I like that because you're not focusing on what you don't want them to. SPEAKER D You'Re focusing on what you can, focusing. SPEAKER B On what they can have and something that they will enjoy that will automatically displace something else. And that's what's actually happened in reverse. These foods that we talked about in another program that have just swamped the supermarket that never existed years ago, I know, have displaced fruits and vegetables and whole grains and nuts and all that sort of thing, they've just displaced them. And we have to move the thing back the other way we do and displace foods. So a healthy alternative is going to be a good method to do. SPEAKER D Some people need help to do that. Fortunately, this gentleman didn't. Well, he did get help because he came and saw you, but he very quickly picked that help up. Whereas I often deal with people who've tried and failed and tried and failed and give up and do things to try and cope with their weight problem. And that means they get depressed, they get anxious, they get discouraged, their self esteem and worth is devalued and then they don't fit in, therefore they don't socialize as much. So again, you're looking at how it impacts their whole life, not just the fact they've got a bit of a weight problem. Yes. SPEAKER B I was just thinking too about social support or all kinds of support. Now obviously, if someone comes to see you, they're getting tremendous support because you're a professional. Yes, but I think I understood you to say that you also encourage them to look for other supportive environments. SPEAKER D Yes. What I do one, I get them to educate their families because I'm going to get all my husband will eat that and my kids won't like it if I do this. And I say, well, how about you get them all to try one extra thing? And so we work on how they can balance that at home. SPEAKER B So that's the home environment. SPEAKER D But there is another source of help that some of these people seek. And it's called, you've heard of all these anonymous groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. It's Overeaters Anonymous and they're a great support. And they actually work on a twelve step program usually, which gives a more spiritual element as well, where they look to God or something that has more power than them and they realize they're powerless over what they're doing and they hand that over and seek help to be empowered to do it. And that does have a very positive effect. SPEAKER B I don't know about so much about the Overeaters Anonymous, but I have been told that with Alcoholics Anonymous the program did not work until they introduced the spiritual element. SPEAKER D Yes. SPEAKER B And that's a resource that's there for people. SPEAKER D It has the best outcome. When a spiritual element is added like that, whether it be that or people who do it in other ways, like a prayerful way or whatever, they find that they have a much better and prolonged recovery rate than people who don't do that. SPEAKER B Yeah, they plug into that source of power. They do created us, and it's huge and it can miss out badly if we don't avail ourselves of that. So mental, physical, spiritual, social, all of those things help us. And that's what we like to focus on here at Healthy Living. John, more comments from you. SPEAKER E Yeah, one of the aspects of good diet is that it feeds your cells throughout your whole body. One of the problems with the modern diet that's refined is that when they remove things from your food, they remove things that help with your food satisfaction. For example, when they make white flour out of whole wheat flour, they remove the chromium. And so white flour has one 8th the amount of chromium as whole wheat flour. SPEAKER D What does chromium do? SPEAKER E Chromium is there for satisfaction, especially helps with carbohydrate digestion and assimilation. And if you're missing it, then your body goes looking for it. So we have totally obese people still hungry looking for this food. And just to put this in perspective, let's just say for argument's sake that if I ate one serving of a whole wheat product, whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread, and I ate that, that I got all the chromium I needed, my body said, oh, I'm satisfied. Thank you, that was a good meal. The question then would be how many servings of a white flour product would I have to eat to get the same amount of chromium? SPEAKER B I think I can guess must be eight. SPEAKER E It would be eight. And this is literally what happens. People eat until they've eaten all eight servings till they get their chromium, and now they're obese. They were hungry up until that time. And so obese people are not overnourished. They're undernourished, they're malnourished, and they're craving food. And so if you eat whole plant foods, your body will be happy. In fact, one study looked at whether a person could fast or not if they ate nutritionally dense foods from the fresh fruit and vegetable category, from whole grains and nuts and seeds, they could actually skip meals without feeling like they were hungry. And they did very well. I had a friend who was gaining too much weight. He'd gained about 100 pounds overweight, and he said, what can I do? We put him on a program, and then we asked him, Will you fast one day a week? He's like, no way. Is that part of the program. I said now. Come on. He's like, oh, you're going to push me? I said yes. And he said, okay, I'll do one day a week. Then I made him pick the day of the week. What day will you use, which will be your it was Tuesday. He said okay. And in about two or three weeks, we called him up on the phone. Hey, George. How's it going? Oh, good. Great. George, today's Tuesday. Are you fasting? He says yes. And in fact, I found when I eat this nutritionally dense food that I can fast without being hungry. I've been fasting two different days in a week, and I've lost 19 pounds in the last two weeks. SPEAKER D Wow. SPEAKER E And so when you eat nutritionally dense foods, your body isn't on the verge of starvation, on the brink of disaster. You can skip a meal without feeling overly tempted by food. SPEAKER B Oh, isn't that tremendous? I just think of something else that Dr. Campbell said, the one who led the China study. He said, there is no threshold or stopping point at which the benefits of eating plant foods stop. No threshold. They're just so packed with all those wonderful things you've talked about, the vitamins and minerals and the phytochemicals. I think that's such a powerful statement. I think of it often there's no threshold or stopping point. So it's good for so many things you're just saying about appetite control. But for all of the diseases we've discussed as well, they're just power packed. Yeah. SPEAKER E You know, for your person who's trying to stop smoking, we'll often try to give them something else in their pocket to reach for. It's sort of like a plan psychology of it. And when you think about this for food, it's often good to have a plan. If you know that every time you get off work and you pass that ice cream store, there's this huge sucking sound, and you feel yourself being drawn in there, and something takes money out of your wallet and you end up eating this stuff. You have to have a plan, maybe a different route you need to take. Maybe you need to plan on going to a different store that doesn't sell foods. It's like when you know you're going to be tempted most, you need to have a solution. It's like when you drive your car, you have a spare tire in case you have a flat. You need to be prepared for all those social situations which drive food eating, that you have a way of escaping the temptation. SPEAKER D And that's the sort of thing I do. I get people if they're going to go shopping, they're not to go hungry, for example. Yes, they do it at a certain time when they've already eaten, otherwise they're going to buy all the wrong foods. Or I do the same thing for addictions particularly. Where are your temptation points? And how can you redirect yourself and not go there and make it a safer route for yourself? SPEAKER B Maybe even have home delivery. Because just being in the supermarket and being confronted with all these things can be a problem. And especially if you have children with you. Yes, because the advertising is marketing or really relying a lot on what they call kids pester power. And they market to children, the children pest the parents, and the parents get it. And not just food, of course. SPEAKER D Kids love sugar, you see. And this is one of the problems, because people's blood sugar levels are a major problem with obesity and eating. Because when your blood sugar is low, you crave the carbohydrates. And instead of having what you need to stabilize the blood sugars, which are the whole foods we're talking about, you eat things that are going to boost your blood sugars and then they plummet. So it puts you on that roller coaster. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B So it's been a wonderful discussion and we've had some really good thoughts about that, about the foods that are going to help us, that's going to help us to be satisfied. We talked about no hunger. We promised that at the beginning this is a strategy, because diets don't work. SPEAKER D No, they don't. SPEAKER B And so we need to have a lifestyle approach. Well, that's all for today, but you can view our programs on demand by visiting our website, 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the Watch button. And you can also download our fact sheets. If you have a health concern you'd like to discuss with Dr. John Clark or Jenifer Skues, send an email to [email protected] And join us next time for more secrets of healthy living.