'I'll never be slim,' you sigh, as you read this article. 'I've tired so many diets but they never seem to do the trick... I was born to be fat.' It's easy to make excuses. It's tempting to blame your genes, your metabolism, your lifestyle, other people, even diets themselves. But at the end of the day you have to face up to the fact: you will only lose weight when you open your mind to the possibility that you can lose weight. If you believe you can, you will. If you believe you can't, you probably won't. It's a case of changing your mindset.
In fact when it comes to losing weight, your mind is the most powerful tool you have. It controls the way you think about food, how you feel about your weight and the way you look. It determines your whole relationship with food. And it is central to your weight-loss journey.
By changing some of your beliefs about food, you can begin to change the way you eat. And lose weight. Where your mind goes your body follows. Need proof? Well, remember when you were learning how to ride your bike? At first, when you wobbled and fell off, you probably felt like giving up. It seemed so hard! But you kept getting back on, you persisted. You changed your mindset from 'I can't' to 'I can.' And, hey prestol! You finally learned how to co-ordinate balancing and pedaling - you succeed! If you didn't believe you could ride a bike, you probably would never have been able to. That's how powerful you mind is.
Your beliefs and attitudes about your weight can either hold you back or set you free. The first step is about thinking yourself slim - how to change the way you think and take control of your weight. This will allow you to take the first crucial steps towards being a slim person.
How did you learn your eating habits?
The biggest clue as to why you are a particular size comes from the way you were brought up and the way you learned to think and feel about food. If you can understand how this worked in your family as you grew up, you'll find it easier to change your eating habits. You'll also find it easy to pass on positive messages about eating to your children and ensure they have a healthy attitude towards food.
Did you learn to overeat?
Were you made to finish everything on your plate even when you were full? Were you forced to eat your greens with the promise of a sticky pudding? Most parents worry about their children not eating enough. Mealtimes are often a battleground as parents coax their children to eat. But making a child eat when they are genuinely not hungry overrides their natural inbuilt appetite cues and can cause weight problems later on.
Did you pick up your mother's weight worries?
Was your mother always on a diet or worrying about her weight? Psychologists say that children's attitude to food and their body image may be passed down from their parents. Children learn by example. If you saw your mother shunning snack foods or counting calories you are likely to do the same.
Learn to listen to your body's natural appetite cues
In other words, learn to eat only when you are hungry and stop eating when you are full. Try keeping a food diary, noting down when you are hungry, exactly what you ate and how you felt before and afterwards. This will help you become more aware of your appetite cues and untangle any unhelpful food messages you received as a child.
Don't ban any foods
Try not to attach values of any kind to foods - nothing should be referred to as 'good', 'bad' or 'forbidden.' Don't ban any food - as soon as you restrict a food it becomes more desirable.
Pass on healthy attitudes about food to your children
It may take time to change your negative feelings about food, but in the meantime make sure you don't pass them on to your children. Stop dieting and let your children see that you enjoy healthy food and regular exercise.Share mealtime as often as possible and eat the same foods.
Don't weigh yourself every day and don't let your children see you on the scales. It's important children learnt to eat according to their appetite and enjoy their food, rather than become preoccupied with their weight. Try replacing 'finish your food' with 'eat until you are full' or 'eat as much as you wish.' If they insist on not eating something because they are full, don't allow unhealthy snacks later on. If they are genuinely hungry provide only fruit (or other healthy snacks). Don't ban any foods; just don't have certain items like chocolates and biscuits every day (not having them in the house helps). Allow them on special occasions.
Did your genes make you fat?
Lots of people like to blame their genes when it comes to justifying a bulging waistline. Indeed, fatness often appears to run in families - if you're overweight, chances are one or both of your parents are too. Children with two obese parents have a 70 per cent risk of becoming obese, compared with 20 per cent in children with two lean parents. Genes could even make you prefer fatty food or stop you feeling full when you have eaten.
But diet, activity and other lifestyle habits also 'run in families' - they have nothing to do with genes. These are behaviors children pick up from their parents and carry into adulthood and then pass down to their children. If your family has a habit of eating high-fat food and sitting around, that probably explains the 'family fat,' If, on the other hand, your family is physically active and do lots of sports, you may all be slim and fit.
You cannot change your genes, but you can change your eating and activity habits. Even if the genes are stacked against you, you can be slim - you may have to just eat a little less than others or exercise a bit more.
Whatever your genetic make-up, you still have to eat more calories than you need to put on weight. In the UK, the number of obese people has doubled in the past twenty years. This, in spite of the fact that we all have the same genes we had twenty years ago. Clearly, it is changes in our behavior, rather than our genes, that are responsible for making us fat.
Not just genes
Many populations in the world seem prone to obesity. But they only became fat when their natural diet and traditional lifestyle completely changed. For example, the Nauru Polynesians in the South Pacific are the fattest nation in the world, with one in three suffering from diabetes. They became very obese when mining companies moved them off their home island and paid them pensions to sit around all day and eat imported (calorie-dense) food. Their traditional diet of local fish, fruit and vegetables was replaced by a high- fat Western diet of cheap processed meat and refined carbohydrates. Their genes made them especially vulnerable to obesity, but they were not overweight until forced into a couch-potato lifestyle.
Do overweight people have a slow metabolism?
Why is it your slim friend eats what she likes without putting on weight while you only have to look at a cream cake to start piling on the pounds? It's tempting to conclude that she must have a faster metabolism than you. In fact, the opposite is true: the larger you are, the higher your metabolic rate (the amount of energy your body uses at complete rest) will be. This is because, when you body is at complete rest, larger people need more energy to pump the blood around the body and to keep moving. Just as bigger cars use more fuel than small cars, so bigger people use more energy than small people. The hard truth is slim people don't burn up calories any quicker - they just don't consume as many.
What exactly is metabolism?
Metabolism is the term given to all processes by which your body converts food into energy. The metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which you burn calories on essential body functions, such as breathing and blood circulation, i.e. when you're doing nothing. It accounts for 60 to 75 per cent of the calories you burn daily.
Why are slim people slim?
Some people seem to have an inborn ability to regulate their calorie intake. They're able to sense when they have had enough to eat and don't overstep the mark. It's controlled by a gene, which is responsible for giving the brain the message, 'You're full, so stop eating' or 'You need to increase your activity, so exercise more'. That way you don't get fat. A lot of the time people think they can get away with eating a lot without gaining weight - but the truth is likely to be that they don't actually eat very much compared to overweight people.
