Ten things about weight loss: Part 1

There was a documentary on channel Four last week, I think it was called "Ten things you never knew about weight loss". Over the next few days I will post some comment on those 'ten things' and relate the advice to my own experience.

The programme focusses on Dr Michael, a middle aged GP and TV presenter. The programme begns when Michael finds out that he has a significant amount of visceral fat - much more than he thought. He is actually quite a slim looking man so he is surprised to discover his health is endangered. Visceral fat is internal fat located around the liver and kidneys. This fat does not accumulate in a way that is visual, initially, but can eventually lead to the development of a pot belly. Men tend to develop a higher proportion of visceral fat than women. It is dangerous because it is linked (in fact there is a direct correlation) to the onset of type 2 diabates. Visceral fat also releases a chemical that contributes to both heart disease and cancer. It also affects the ability of the liver to process fat. The good news is, that visceral fat is the first fat to go when you lose weight.

As a result of finding his visceral fat levels are a little on the high side, Michael sets out to discover some truths about weight loss - and to distinguish them from myths. His aim is to apply some of those truths to his own lifestyle and to lose five pounds over the next few months - AND keep it off. He discovers ten key lessons about weight loss:

1.Don't skip meals

An experiment is conducted whereby on day 1, Michael eats a normal breakfast, and on day 2, he skips breakfast. Each day he has an MRI scan to find out how his brain activity is affected by (a) eating breakfast - i.e. where his stomach is full, and (b) skipping breakfast - i.e. where his stomach is empty and he is experiencing hunger. What is discovered is really interesting. The MRI scans show that when he is full (after a normal breakfast), there is very little brain activity when he is shown a plate of low calorie salad-type food, OR when shown a plate of high calorie, sugary, fatty food. However, on the day when he skips breakfast, while his brain activity does not respond to seeing a plate of low calorie food, it shows considerable activity when shown the high calorie food. What this experiment demonstrates is that when we are hungry our brains drive us to eat high calorie food - this powerful urge is nature's way of compensating for a lack of food in the stomach. The lesson here is simply to avoid getting hungy in the first place - and a key solution is to never skip breakfast!

I used to skip breakfast all the time until a few years ago when I heard something along the lines of the above. When I skipped breakfast I used to get really hungry about mid-morning and I simply solved that problem by heading off to the vending machine. I'd have crisps and chocolate at about 10.30pm, and then went for lunch with colleagues at about 12pm!! Nowadays, I always eat breakfast and keep going till lunch without too much trouble. I don't eat a large breakfast though and still think I need to eat more in the morning though - remember the old adage "breakfast like a King, lunch like a Lord and dine like a pauper"? There's probably quite a lot of truth in that!

More tomorrow......