Home
>
Weight Loss
>
How to Lose Weight: Food for Thought

How to Lose Weight: Food for Thought

When it comes to weight loss, most of us would like to engage in what psychologists call "magical thinking." We'd like to believe that some easy trick or ritual would allow us to shed pounds while eating anything we liked. Wouldn't it be nice if consuming all our food before 6 p.m., doing yoga, or hopping on one foot for five minutes would allow us to chow down with all our favorite goodies and still lose weight?

Unfortunately, despite what legions of people with a book or a product to sell might claim, it's just not so. Yet it really is possible to come up with a system for losing weight. The real secret is this: It's all about the calories.

Most of us have heard that sensible weight loss involves some combination of diet and exercise. As a physician, I'm surely not going to tell people to avoid exercise. For most people, exercise is a very healthy thing to do. But when it comes to losing weight, unless we're training for the Olympics, the effect of exercise is minor. What matters most is how many calories go down the hatch.

This bears explaining. Our bodies use the calories we consume to fuel our basic life-processes. The heart needs lots of fuel (calories) to beat its usual 100,000 times in 24 hours. The brain, liver and kidneys also require lots of fuel to perform their many chemical reactions and metabolic tasks. Most of the calories we burn in 24 hours (about 1500 for women and 1800 for men) we would still burn even if we were in a coma.

It's true that working the muscles in our arms, legs and trunk requires fuel (calories) as well, but you'd be amazed how long you would have to row, jog, swim or walk to burn off the calories in one slice of cherry pie. (Answer: In order to burn the 486 calories in a slice of cherry pie a 175-pound person would need to row for 35 minutes, jog for 37 minutes, swim for 41 minutes or walk briskly for 63 minutes.) For most of us it would be more practical to just not eat the pie.

Each of us has a calories-per-day figure for maintaining body weight. If, on the average, we eat that many calories, then we will maintain body weight, neither gaining nor losing. If we consistently eat more calories than our break-even number, then we will gain weight. The unused calories have to be stored somewhere, and will probably go into our body's fat cells. If we consistently eat fewer than our break-even number of calories, then we will lose weight. The body will get its fuel somewhere, and will burn off calories that have been put into storage in fat cells.

This is how it is. We just can't get around the basic biology and physics.

So, if we're trying to lose weight, how do we choose what we do or don't eat? Well, sometimes, our choices are haphazard. A useful analogy concerns shopping. How in the world could we do a good job of shopping without knowing the prices of the items we're putting in our shopping carts? Without knowledge of the prices our choices in merchandise could easily exceed our budgets.

The same holds true when it comes to eating. If we wanted to budget our calories, how in the world could we make good choices if we didn't know the calorie count of the foods we eat? We just couldn't do a good job. Our calorie intake per day would probably exceed our break-even point for maintaining body weight, and we would gain.

So, in order to make sensible choices, it's crucial to know the approximate number of calories in the foods we eat. An easy way to do that is to buy a paperback book in the check-out line of your grocery store that lists the calorie content of usual portions of commonly consumed food and beverages. (Or look them up online.) We don't necessarily need to check the list each time we sit down to eat, but knowing typical figures for our favorite foods will enable us to know if we're keeping or exceeding our daily calorie budget.

This is not as awful as it sounds. In fact, there can be pleasant surprises. Suppose I typically get the munchies in the evening, and I roam the house in search of goodies to snack upon. Here is where knowledge of calorie contents can pay off. If I satisfy my munchies by eating cookies, French fries, potato chips or candies, then I'll blow my daily food-budget in just one sitting. But what if I substitute pretzels or unbuttered popcorn? They might be just as satisfying, yet contain fewer calories. So these alternative choices might spare my daily calorie budget at no loss of satisfaction.

As a physician I often encourage my patients to lose weight. Being overweight can increase blood pressure and cholesterol which, in turn, increase the likelihoods of heart attacks and strokes. Heart attacks and strokes are the number one and number three causes of death in the U.S., respectively, and strokes are the number one cause of disability. So we're talking about real conditions that afflict real people. Moreover, our overweight bodies put more stress and strain on our spines and our knees, making them wear out earlier, hurt more, and interfere with quality of life.

Some patients with whom I have this conversation look at me like I'm crazy. They're eating barely enough food to keep a small bird warm, they say. The problem-or the solution-couldn't possibly lie with the food they eat.

The incentives are clear. The choices are ours to make. We shouldn't blame our metabolism. And we shouldn't delude ourselves that we consume barely enough to keep ourselves alive, and yet still, unaccountably, gain weight. We need to take our health into our own hands and start making choices that increase the quality and quantity of our remaining years.

Gary Cordingley, MD, PhD, is a clinical neurologist, teacher and researcher. For more health-related articles see his website at: online

emergency cleaning services Northbrook ...

In The News:

Identity theft can hide in phone accounts, medical records and utility bills long before it shows on a credit report. Eight places to check now.

JR East's towering ZIZAI ZX-3 chainsaw robot tackles dangerous branch-cutting along Japan's Koumi Line while a trained operator controls it remotely.

A massive DHS data leak exposed records of over 41,000 employees, revealing links to undercover ICE operations, Palantir tools and AI platforms.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

UCLA's PhoneBot turns old Android phones into the brain of a two-legged humanoid robot that walks, follows people and stands up after falling.

A fake Amazon invoice charging $988.18 for an iPad lists the same customer support phone number three times to steer panicked victims into calling.

A handful of food delivery robots from Uber Eats and other platforms have gotten kicked and knocked over in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Data broker opt-out forms may not protect your family. People search sites can still expose your info through a spouse's or parent's profile.

Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 with a PROLED XDR OLED display, but the non-touch M6 model costs $900 less at $1,999.

Black Friday deals are already drawing scammers who use fake delivery notices and gift card payment requests to steal your personal financial information.

Apple's iPhone Duo reportedly outlasted the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 by over three hours in battery tests, but its weight and repair costs raise concerns.

Florida Polytechnic University's Jetson ONE eVTOL police vehicle named Astro still awaits FAA authorization before officers can fly operational patrols.

OpenAI's new locked chats feature lets you protect ChatGPT conversations with a PIN, Face ID or Touch ID, but there are key privacy limitations.

A phishing email disguised as an Evite fooled a man even after he emailed his friend to verify it, revealing how compromised Gmail accounts aid scams.

Microsoft's AI diagnostic system identified 83% of complex medical cases in a study, more than doubling the 36% accuracy of generalist doctors.

Account takeover threats go beyond stolen passwords as criminals exploit session cookies, SIM swaps and MFA fatigue to bypass your login security.

SpaceX is reportedly pursuing access to 80,000 cell sites to turn Starlink into a major wireless carrier rivaling Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Tech advocacy groups warn that foreign nationals at AI companies like OpenAI and Google pose a national security threat amid a lack of federal oversight.

Singapore researchers built the world's first touchscreen woven into clothing, surviving 50 machine washes while displaying images and responding to touch.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

A startup founder woke to $449 in unexpected OpenAI and Anthropic charges after stolen API keys were exploited during the "Black October" cyber wave.

Educational Testing Service hackers stole millions of California student records, but families who moved out of state years ago may also be affected.

Apple's iPhone Duo screens are cracking near the hinge just days after its $1,999 launch, and iFixit's CT scans may reveal what's going wrong.

Travel expert Katy Nastro says 50,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles vanished from her account after someone redeemed them without permission.

Google AI Overviews can't be permanently turned off, but adding -AI to your searches and using the built-in Web filter can help bypass AI summaries.

How to Lose Weight: Food for Thought

Weight Loss