FAQ

Being over weight is bad for your health. It increases your risk of health conditions such as heart problems, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer. Being overweight can also increase your risk for osteoarthritis, sleep apnea or other respiratory problems. Being overweight may also affect a person’s mood.

You can eat a variety of foods and still lose weight at the same time. In fact, following a healthy diet can help you to eat fewer calories and stay healthy. Below are a few ideas for a healthy diet:

• Eat whole grain foods more often, such as whole wheat breads and pastas, oatmeal, brown rice and bulgur.
• Eat a variety of fruits vegetables every day. Eat a variety of fruits every day. Choose fresh or canned fruit canned in its own juice.
• Eat low-fat dairy foods. Drink fat-free (skim) milk or one-percent milk. Eat fat-free yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese. Try low-fat cheeses such as mozzarella, or other reduced-fat cheeses.
• Choose protein foods that are lower in fat, such as fish, turkey, poultry or leaner cuts of red meat. Trim the fat from your meat before cooking.
• Use less fats and oils. Try baking instead of frying, add less fat (eg butter, oil or sour cream) to your meals, and try to limit your intake of ‘junk foods’ such as French fries and sweets.

Drink at least 1.8-2 litres of water every day. You should replace every cup of coffee you drink with a glass of water on top of this.

Dieting has led to many unhealthy misconceptions about weight loss. There are no magical foods or ways to combine foods that melt away excess body fat.

To reduce your weight, you need to make small, achievable changes to your lifestyle. You need to change the way you eat and increase your physical activity.

Fats contain approximately double the amount of kilojoules (calories) per gram than carbohydrates or protein. They are a very concentrated form of energy. If you eat a lot of fat, you are more likely to put on weight than if you eat a lot of carbohydrates.

In the short term, very low carbohydrate diets can result in greater weight loss than high carbohydrate diets but, in the long term, weight loss differences appear to be minimal. Very low carbohydrate diets can be unhealthy if too much animal fat is consumed and if plant foods are overly restricted. The long term safety of these diets is unknown.

It was once thought that the key to weight loss was eliminating all high carbohydrate foods, including pasta, rice and potatoes. We now know that carbohydrates are the body’s preferred energy source. Eating a potato, or any type of carbohydrate rich food, won’t automatically make you fatter. However, if you are watching your weight, enjoy potatoes in moderate quantities and be careful of how you eat your potato (for example, butter and sour cream are high in fats).

You have to regularly eat more energy than your body needs to put on weight. This is harder to do with high carbohydrate foods when compared to high fat foods. Eating a diet high in carbohydrate (and also fibre) is likely to push fat out of the diet.

There are plenty of diets based on the belief that the digestive system can’t tackle a combination of foods or nutrients. Commonly, carbohydrates and proteins are said to ‘clash’, leading to digestive problems and weight gain. The opposite is often true. Foods eaten together can help the digestive system. For example, vitamin C in orange juice can increase iron absorption from a meal like chicken or beef.

Very few foods are purely carbohydrate or purely protein; most are a mixture of both. The digestive system contains enzymes that are perfectly capable of breaking down all the foods we eat. Food combining diets should be avoided.

Not any more so than when drinking and eating separately. In fact, evidence suggests that drinking water with your meal improves digestion. Kilojoule-heavy drinks such as alcoholic beverages can be fattening if consumed in excess, but drinking them with meals doesn’t make them more so.

Unfortunately, we cannot target areas of our body for weight loss. This goes for men and women. Men tend to accumulate fat around the belly (giving them a higher risk of experiencing heart disease) while women tend to accumulate fat on their hips and thighs. Dieting may remove some of this fat however it is important for women to retain body fat in these areas as it has been found to be vital for:

• Fertility and breastfeeding
• Prevention of osteoporosis
• Healthy skin, eyes, hair and teeth.