Monday, November 8, 2010
#12 Managing Weight with Mood Swings
I have frequently been accused of making my patients obese. Reports of patients eating almost no calories yet gaining or maintaining weight while on my medications is a daily event. In my defense, clinical practice has required keeping my knowledge of nutrition current since my college days at Cornell. So what has been my observation about weight loss? It appears that emotional eating is alive and well in my practice.
When quizzed, my patients often reveal that they have quirky diets or they eat too much and do not exercise. Consider my favorite question, “What did you have for breakfast yesterday?” Most often I am told that my patient does not believe in eating breakfast or had consumed coffee and a carbohydrate such as a bagel or toasted bread with butter. The bread selection was white, which has minimal nutritional value. Meanwhile, that same patient will complain of a lack of energy. Many of my patients are befuddled by the knowledge that the brain needs nutrition in order to function in the morning. Caffeine alone will not provide the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins required for optimum performance.
So what is the latest information in the weight loss world? The answer seems simple but may be very hard to do: write down the calories you consume during the day. A Kaiser Permanente study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reports that participants who wrote down their daily food intake lost the most weight. Weight Watchers has been aware of this simple well known fact since their inception, requiring members to write down their intake for optimal results.
The Kaiser study included an ethnically diverse racial population of 1,685 people who were designated as obese or overweight at age 25 or older. It discovered that the most powerful predictor of weight loss was how many days per week diary entries were recorded. The author, Stevens, concluded that visualization of food intake allows for accountability and awareness of said intake.
What does this mean for you? Writing down everything you eat in a disciplined fashion requires determination as well as identification of a method that works for you. I have heard that some patients use colorful index cards placed in their pockets. Others have identified online sites for recording on the internet. Still others use pocket composition notebooks found at local office supply stores. Whatever method you use, just use it consistently in order to have the best weight loss success story.
http://www.mypyramidtracer.gov/
When quizzed, my patients often reveal that they have quirky diets or they eat too much and do not exercise. Consider my favorite question, “What did you have for breakfast yesterday?” Most often I am told that my patient does not believe in eating breakfast or had consumed coffee and a carbohydrate such as a bagel or toasted bread with butter. The bread selection was white, which has minimal nutritional value. Meanwhile, that same patient will complain of a lack of energy. Many of my patients are befuddled by the knowledge that the brain needs nutrition in order to function in the morning. Caffeine alone will not provide the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins required for optimum performance.
So what is the latest information in the weight loss world? The answer seems simple but may be very hard to do: write down the calories you consume during the day. A Kaiser Permanente study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reports that participants who wrote down their daily food intake lost the most weight. Weight Watchers has been aware of this simple well known fact since their inception, requiring members to write down their intake for optimal results.
The Kaiser study included an ethnically diverse racial population of 1,685 people who were designated as obese or overweight at age 25 or older. It discovered that the most powerful predictor of weight loss was how many days per week diary entries were recorded. The author, Stevens, concluded that visualization of food intake allows for accountability and awareness of said intake.
What does this mean for you? Writing down everything you eat in a disciplined fashion requires determination as well as identification of a method that works for you. I have heard that some patients use colorful index cards placed in their pockets. Others have identified online sites for recording on the internet. Still others use pocket composition notebooks found at local office supply stores. Whatever method you use, just use it consistently in order to have the best weight loss success story.
http://www.mypyramidtracer.gov/