A New Year, A New Diet?

The eternal search for the perfect figure – and the perfect weight loss programme!

I have yet to meet the person who has not considered their weight to be an issue at some point in their lives – generally because we feel we weigh too much or are concerned that we might weigh too much at some point in our lives, but occasionally because we weigh too little and can’t seem to keep our weight at a healthy level.

Either way, it is a never-ending subject that can dominate dinner parties and other social occasions.

Being January, we are once again bombarded with dietary advice and how we can lose those unwanted pounds we have piled on at the end of last year. And from my, my family’s and many friends’ personal experiences I know that none of those diets don’t work – not really, not long-term.

The ‘yo-yo’ effect of dieting – losing some weight only to find we have put on more afterwards – is only too well known.
As we all know and keep being told, more and more of us are overweight and the potentially resulting health complications are serious. Whether it is type 2 diabetes, many cancers and heart disease are all related and it is costing the NHS £1 billion per year. Current estimates indicate it could be £50 billion by 2050. These figures from the Telegraph online earlier this month only refer to the financial implications; they do not even begin to express the emotional ones.

There are a few key facts that are beginning to emerge around weight and how we can manage it better. We have known for many years that too many calories, foods with high sugar or high fat contents and lack of exercise are all causes for weight gain.
What has begun to emerge over the last few years is why conventional diets don’t help us manage that effectively. In fact, many of them have the exact opposite effect of increasing our weight gain long-term, as they send a message of ‘starvation’ to the body. By radically reducing and altering our food intake, our body is being given the message that it has now entered a period of starvation. In a starvation period, the body goes into self-protect mode and re-programs itself to store as much fat as possible. While we might find our weight shifting down during the diet (not always – how many people do you know who say they keep dieting and the weight just stays on?), the reason we put weight on again afterwards is that the body is storing all it can for the next starvation period. It apparently goes back to our hunter/ gatherer days when food was not a regular commodity.

So, what do we have to do to shift our unwanted weight and to get to that figure we all dream about – once and for all?
Over the last few years, the glycaemic index has become increasingly important and breaks the above down into far more detail for us. The glycaemic index (GI) was developed to rank different foods according to the extent to which they increase blood glucose following ingestion.

Foods that are assigned a higher GI score generally contain higher levels of rapidly digested carbohydrates and produce a larger rise and fall in blood glucose. High-glycaemic foods provide quick energy, but it is usually short-lived and hunger soon returns. High-glycaemic diets have been linked to obesity, type II diabetes, insulin resistance, and heart disease. Many convenience foods on the market today are high glycaemic.
Foods with a lower GI score generally contain lower levels of carbohydrates and/or carbohydrates that are digested more slowly and produce a more gradual and relatively lower rise in blood glucose. Low-glycaemic foods provide greater satiety and sustained energy. By virtue of their slow digestion and absorption, low-glycaemic foods can help control appetite and delay hunger.

This means that if we change our diet to permanently eating low GI index foods, we avoid those sudden cravings and manage to eat in a more balanced, healthier way all the time.

Quite often, the problem people face is the changeover period. Not only are we trying to break old habits, but also initially it can often take tremendous effort to overcome those carbohydrate cravings and to adjust our body systems.

The one thing that I have found that helps me manage these cravings without a fight and that keeps me feeling satisfied all day long is a product range by a company called USANA. USANA Health Sciences are an American company founded by a microbiologist and immunologist and they produce a range of nutritional supplements.

Their aim is to provide the body with balanced, healthy nutrition and to keep the body healthy by providing it with sufficient vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants to avoid many common, degenerative illnesses. They have been researching the subject area extensively for a good 20 years and have been rated one of the world leaders in nutritional supplements.

One of their ranges, the ‘Macro-Optimizers’ are meal replacement shakes and bars that are produced to help us overcome our cravings. All their products are nutritionally finely balanced to provide the body with everything it needs. Their intention is not to provide weight loss products, but to provide the best nutrition. Their aim is to make us all healthier – and if that means we get thinner along the way – so much the better.
Their shakes and bars ensure that your body receives the full amount of nutrition it needs to function well and your body feels full and satisfied all the time while being given a very low calorie content. If you are anything like me, then you will have an instant dislike of replacing any meal with a shake. I did for two key reasons: firstly, I like eating and I like being able to chew my meal. Secondly, I always felt that if I have a shake, I am not tackling the problem, because I will eventually go back to eating and things then go back to the way they were.

However, I have to ‘eat my words’ – apologies for the awful pun, but the USANA shakes work for several reasons:
The first one is their 5-day RESET programme, which consists of a combination of shakes and bars, which will help your body to ‘reset’ itself and overcome those unhelpful cravings. Weight loss over that 5-day period varies completely but its intention is to help start you off on a longer-term ‘Transform’ programme. They provide a pack that includes enough shakes and bars to last you the 5 full days plus some nutritional supplements to support your body and keep it fully nourished. In addition, they include an exercise CD, which is an ideal start for those of us who have managed to avoid exercise for some time and need to start again slowly. So during those 5 days I had the bars to eat plus one portion of fruit and one portion of vegetables per day – plenty to make you feel like you have had ‘proper’ food!

I also found it to be a wonderful detox and came out after just 5 days feeling refreshed, clearer and full of energy – it is often recommended for that reason alone.

The second reason is that my usual bread and chocolate cravings, which plague me most of the time, had disappeared and it was easy for me to continue with a slow, but steady weight-loss programme over a sustained period – I replace between one and two meals a day with a shake and eat healthily the rest of the time. This way, you gradually change your body’s needs and wants so you don’t have to fight the cravings anymore.
And for those of you, who struggle with keeping weight on – this system helps you bring your body back to its ideal shape, so if you need to put weight on, it will help you do that too.

For further information, you can contact Sandra Clarke on +44 1451 832 206, +44 774 703 5208 or via www.smadarhealth.usana.com.