Method description of weight loss

The most natural, cheap and without any doubt the healthiest method to lose bodyweight is to increase your hours of workout in the gym and reduce the number of calories you eat. Practically, it means to change your alimentation and practice more sports. The problem of this method is the overly long amount of time it takes to lose 10kg. The patient sees a small decrease of weight compared to the effort given followed by a lack of motivation and leading to a come-back to old habits in eating which lead him to obesity. Even though the percentage of “drop outs” is extremely high (it is estimated that 1 person out of 10 manages to lose 10+kg), this method remains the most natural way of weight normalization.

The most widespread category at the apothecaries and in stores selling food complements. From the medical point of view, one of the most problematic ways to face weight reduction. Their principle is to reduce the energetic consumption by exchanging the usual food with low fat meals. The organism – facing a sudden restriction in fat – consumes its own mobilized provisions – muscular and hepatic glycogen and proteins from its own muscular tissue. The stock adipose (fat) tissue is left almost intact by the organism, as it is the “most distant” source of stock energy. A regular concomitant phenomenon of those diets is hunger which usually leads the client – after a more or less long period of self-torture – to come back to the “normal” way of alimentation, understood by the organism as a temporarily improvement, leading it to stock the suddenly gained energy essentially in the adipose tissue instead of the muscular tissue. The result is a deterioration in the proportions of muscular: adipose tissue, the so-called yo-yo effect.

Definitely the most profaned and medically worse way of facing obesity. Only a very few branches of pharmacology have a past so over flown with side-effects such as those of “anorectics”. Nowadays we witness a major withdrawal of this form of treatment for obesity, which is surviving only because of the pressure of pharmaceutical business and doesn’t share at all the medical approach to obesity. De facto, only three molecules exist on sale. Some take effect centrally (on the centre of hunger and satiety situated in the brain), and everyone should be aware of the fact they were originally developed as an antidepressant. Others act peripherally with the system of the “antabus reaction” meaning they will take effect only when the client breaks their diet regime (any consumption of fat food is followed by diarrhea). Anorectics taking effects peripherally are less damaging then their centrally acting counterpart. The pharmacologic “therapy” for obesity should be refused for it completely leaves out the cause of obesity and leads the patients in error by letting them believe it is possible to loose weight only by swallowing a pill. This approach is, from the point of view of educative and preventive medicine, fundamentally wrong.

The market is nowadays over flown with hundreds of so called dietary supplements, becoming the object of many advertisements in which is described a biochemical piece of knowledge taken out of context, somewhat automatically projecting its virtues on the tubby organism. A laic cannot detect this trap without a sufficient knowledge of biochemistry. The television advertisement is generally set up in a way it cannot be legally attacked. Therefore, if the advertisement affirms for example that preparations containing chrome “contribute to weight loss”, they base themselves on the fact that chrome is a necessary component in the normal functioning of insulin. The cunning producer deduces from this fact that an increased consumption of chrome will “improve” the activity of insulin and thereby, somewhat automatically, improve the processing of sugar contained in the blood by which means – automatically again – the conversion of sugar in fat will be restrained… the medical foolishness of this structure should be clear even to a laic. 

An absolute majority of food supplements “works” in fact only with the support of diuresis (reduction of excess water in the body through an increased production of urine) or by mechanical filling (the content of fibres which swells up in the stomach suppresses feelings of hunger).

On the other hand, it’s important to mention that appropriately chosen dietary supplements (used only to complete an efficient procedure) can be a good auxiliary to a well guided weight loss. However they should be chosen by an experienced therapist who is able to judge their quality and the meaningfulness of their composition.

We encounter regularly brand new “guaranteed” efficient diets. Some of them are harmless and can truly lead a patient to weight loss (such as chrono-nutrition), others are so astute they prove to be medically absurd or even health damaging, usually because of the uniformity of their components (for example the grapefruit diet, the Hollywood diet…). Just as it generally applies not to abide by television advertisements, the same goes for not succumbing to fashion diets.

An entirely special position is held by the Atkinson Diet proposed by dr. Atkinson (sugar elimination, a minimum of vegetables, animal proteins in an unrestricted quantity). It must lead, from the biochemical point of view, to reduction of weight and is therefore – on the opposite of the above mentioned approaches – systematically effective. Nevertheless, it remains dangerous as it induces utterly wrong eating habits (an absence of fibres, vitamins, complete lack of sugar, a tremendous consumption of saturated fats etc.) For these reasons, it is necessary to avoid this diet.

A recent fashion is to buy “real” meals to warm up in microwaves and eat straight away. It’s a mismatched way of loosing weight, however they are useful and practical when it comes to maintaining a stable weight after a successful diet, therefore after the patient lost the desired amount of weight and needs to stabilize it. This sort of food is definitely more suitable than pizza or fast food! However don’t be mistaken by the wrapping and the country of the producer. Many of those diet meals of abroad provenance are in fact produced in the Czech Republic!

Physical methods are getting in fashion nowadays. Their goal is to help fight against obesity “externally”, by physically operating on cellules of fat. A variety of machines appeared on the market, promising an active reduction of the adipose tissue while reading a fashion magazine. From the medical point of view, these ways are neutral and acceptable and can truly take effect on cellulite for example. On the other hand, this method isolated cannot lead to permanent results and should be always combined with an appropriate “internal” approach.

Liposuction, stomach stapling and other invasive methods are, regrettably, more and more needed although dedicated to so-called “morbid” obesity, more precisely for individuals with lack of will and motivation to solve the problem of overweight otherwise. There is nothing to object considering the above mentioned case. The side-effects are considerable (recurrence is a possibility), risks and stress for the organism (chirurgical operation under general anaesthesia).

The reasoning behind high protein diets was clear: how should we do it to make the organism loose weight essentially on supply fats instead of burning proteins from its own muscular tissue… and is it even possible?

The problem was solved by dr. Blackburn (a future professor at Harvard, USA). In 1973, he formulated the protocol Protein Sparing Modified Fast, the basis of ketosis diets.

With a sufficient supply of proteins with the synchronous reduction of sugar consumption (without damaging the nervous system!) the organism gets into ketosis (from which the designation of “ketosis” diets) and reduces body weight from the adipose tissue which is objectified on the bioelectrical scale.

This way of losing weight has its indications and contraindications, therefore has to be prescribed and supervised by a nutritive specialist. Aside from obesity and overweight, this diet is used to treat patients with a high level of fat in blood (with excellent results as in lowering the level of cholesterol and triacylglycerol), high blood pressure, diabetes type II. (cured with diets or “pills”, excluding the type where the patient uses injection shots of insulin) and others.