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Nonsense slimming diets
Part 3: Facts & fallacies about fat
After money, the topic that consumes people's thinking most is their weight. People worry about how they ought to look, whether they are too fat (they never worry that they may be too thin), and about where their fat is on their bodies. Then there are people who are already very lean but who perceive themselves to be fat and try to lose more weight until they may become seriously malnourished. Some of these anorexics may even die. We have tremendous distortions about concepts of fatness and, according to prominent obesity researcher, Dr. Alan Martin, who spoke at Health Action '92 , a tremendous amount of misinformation.
All fat is not equal
According to Martin, what is important is not total body fatness but the way fat is distributed on your body.
Fat in different places on the body acts differently, metabolises differently, and has different implications for health and different body functions.
A French researcher, named Vague, described two general types of fatness, the gynoid and the android . The gynoid is typically female with a predominance of hip and thigh fat, and the android is typically male with excess abdominal fat. We now refer to the two as 'pear shaped' and 'apple shaped'. The difference between the two types turns out to be extremely important.
Fat cells do not behave the same in the region of thighs and buttocks as they do around your tummy. When fat is taken from these regions and put into test tubes, it may look the same, but that's where the similarity stops. Being very overweight can be a hazard to health depending where on your body that excess fat is. On your hips and thighs isn't a health risk; it's upper body fat that is dangerous.
Abdominal fat cells give up their fat more easily than the fat from the hips and thighs. In other words it is easier to lose the fat from your abdomen than from your hips, something that most women will know intuitively. It is quite natural that this should be so. Abdominal fat is excess weight in both men and women that serves no purpose other than to provide a store against lean times in winter. Fat around a woman's hips and thighs, however, has a completely different role: it is there naturally as long-term storage to provide energy and nutrients for a baby. It is designed not for pregnancy but for lactation. That fat has to be adequate to provide the energy required during at least six months' breast-feeding. Nature tries to preserve it. It is for this reason that upper body fat is shed much more easily than fat around hips and thighs.
There is a problem with weight loss from upper body fat - the faster rate at which fat comes out of the abdominal cells can lead to a fat overload at the liver. This is why it is so important not try to lose too much too quickly.
Slowly does it
When most people start a diet, they want to lose weight quickly. If weight loss is slow many lose interest and go onto something else.
Unfortunately, practically every popular commercially available slimming diet is sold with the promise of weight losses that are unrealistic and unsustainable. Women regularly fall prey to these claims, particularly if they want to look good on the beach or have a special occasion coming up. They may slim in this way to fit a favourite dress that they haven't been able to get into for a couple of years. They may indeed be successful this time, but weight lost in this way usually means that afterwards even more is put back on. The next time you try to slim to get into that dress, you won't be able to.
The secret is not to rush things. You simply cannot lose weight at a rate of several pounds a week. The more you try, the worse it will get. No, the correct way is to aim for an average weight loss of no more than 1 kg (2 lbs) a week. A realistic average, a goal you can set with the confidence that you can maintain it, is nearer 0.5 kg (1 lb) a week when spread out over a year.
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