Reconnecting with our body’s signals is a way to reduce overeating and maximise health.
Question:
I am permanently in a wheelchair and wonder if there are dietary techniques to help me from gaining weight. I use my arms a lot, but it is my waist/hip area I would like to control.
Answer:
Weight gain around the waistline may seem merely a cosmetic concern, but because so-called belly fat is often more than skin deep, abdominal fat has a dark side.
Subcutaneous fat is the padding located just below our skin and is not of particular concern from a health perspective. It’s the visceral fat that lies deep inside the abdomen – large fat deposits around our internal organs – that pose a significant health risk.
When excessive amounts of visceral fat accumulate, they produce hormones and other compounds that increase blood pressure, alter cholesterol levels and impair our insulin usage (leading to insulin resistance), thereby increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and more.
But what can we do, given that weight-loss diets invariably fail in the medium to long term for almost all dieters?
For women, the issue is complicated by their midlife transition. The hormonal changes that occur around perimenopause contribute substantially to increased abdominal obesity, according to a 2012 review in the journal Climacteric. So, irrespective of wheelchair use, hormonal changes will likely contribute (or have already contributed) to abdominal weight gain for you.
Hormones aside, the question remains: how do we eat in a way that optimises health and overall wellbeing? Rigid diets with fixed rules are still common, but in reality, they produce only short-term weight loss. Almost all dieters eventually regain all their lost weight, and in some cases, more weight than they initially lost. So, clearly, weight-loss diets are not the answer.