Okay, so the holidays are over, so what’s next? Well, maybe checking your weight might be a good idea. Check if those Christmas hams were deposited exactly where you wanted them to be, like over your tummy or around your arms. See if those season’s sweets are preventing you from wearing those fit pants that you looked so sexy whenever you wear them. It is a known fact that Christmas season is the time to celebrate and to cheer the sacrifice of our Lord for us, but sad to say, it doesn’t come with a “divine guaranty” that you will be spared from gaining weight after all the merriment and the food… ah, the food.

Why do we have to even care about our weight? Simply because overweight people have more chances of getting heart diseases and other conditions like diabetes than those people who have adequate weight. There’s no doubt that certain conditions also follow once your weight is uncontrolled, like pain on the knees and ankles due to the poor weight-bearing capacity of these joints, causing them to have severe pain.

Different people have different reasons for wanting to lose weight; some people want to lose pounds in order to remain as healthy as possible, while others simply want to shed some inches in order to become sexier and more pleasing in the eyes of others. Whatever the reasons may be, losing fat is the primary goal that almost all are yearning to achieve.

For most of us, it has been such a great struggle, which has even become a popular topic among talk shows, magazines and even billboards, although I don’t know if you’re aware that almost everything that we do leads to gaining weight. In this day in age, where everything comes in the form of “instant” and ‘convenience”, we have been racking up all those pounds simply because our body wasn’t designed to be used to doing less, or for some… doing nothing.

Our body naturally thinks this way: Food is fuel; hence if there is extra food, then we store it for future use in the form of fat. Well, it’s a grand design that has been with our body since the time of our creation, making our ancestors survive the harshest climate and starvation, but it has not changed in order to fit our changed lifestyle.

Some people say that in sailing, “We can never control the wind, but we can always adjust our sails in order to get to where we want”. The same is true in weight loss, we can never tell our body to stop doing what it was originally designed to do, but we can, however, adjust our lifestyle.

In this article, we are going to tackle some tried and tested ways in losing those inches off your belly. We are going to start off with the natural ways and then leading to the medically assisted methods.

 

Doing it the Natural Way

A Harvard Medical Center research has published an article which basically outlines the food that we can eat a lot of or in moderation. The following is a summary of the article:

Fruits and vegetables – Fruits and vegetables— raw, cooked, fresh, frozen, or canned. Avoid any packaged fruits that have added sugar. Otherwise, the more fruits and vegetables you eat, the better. During our training overseas, we were taught to stay away from bananas or ripe mangoes, since the high sugar content causes earlier skin aging, so just take note of this.

Soups – They are filling; a bowl of soup can be an entire meal. They are satisfying. For many people, they are more satisfying than raw vegetables, while many give you all the benefits of veggies (if you choose the soups full of vegetables). They are inexpensive, convenient, easy, and quick to make. Soups don’t make you feel like you’re on a diet. Above all, soups are versatile. They can serve as a snack, as part of a meal, or as a cooking ingredient.

Sauces, Condiments, and Marinades – They’re invaluable for adding flavor, moisture, texture, and versatility to every food and every meal. Salad dressings (oil-free or low-calorie like the labeled light or lite). Mayonnaise (fat-free or light). Sour cream and yogurt (fat-free, plain, or with low-fat non-dairy substitutes). Mustard, tomato puree, tomato paste, and tomato sauce. Olive oil, garlic, or vinegar (balsamic, cider, wine, tarragon, and others). Tomato ketchup. Onion and Garlic (fresh, juice, flakes, and powder). Herbs (including basil, oregano, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, dill, chives, sage, and bay leaves). Spices (including cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cumin, nutmeg, coriander, curry, paprika, and allspice). Extracts (vanilla, almond, peppermint, maple, coconut, cocoa powder, and others).

Dressings and Dips – Fat-free or light dressings and dips. The light category (low-fat, reduced-fat, and low-calorie) is midway between totally fat-free and regular, and it’s often more pleasing to the taste than fat-free. They can be used as all-purpose condiments, dips, toppings, even cooking liquids. They already contain a mixture of ingredients, so just slather them on vegetables, seafood, and pretty much anything else. Or cook with them to make up for the lack of butter or oil. Try brushing a light creamy dressing on seafood, then broiling; the dressing adds moisture and flavor.

Candy – Yup, candy. The real thing, not the dietetic variety, is best when your sweet tooth starts asking for sugar. Dietetic candies have almost as many calories as regular candies, often lacking in flavor, and cause more weight gain because they are an incentive to eat more since you think they are sugar-free. Stick to the real thing. Chewing gum or gum balls (any and all). Hard candy (including sour balls, candy canes, lollipops such as Tootsie Pops or Blow Pops, Jolly Ranchers, etc).

Frozen Desserts – Any fat-free frozen yogurt, frozen non-dairy substitute, or fruit sherbet is a fine addition to the freezer. Try the lower-calorie choices. Cream-sicles, Fudge-sicles, Pop-sicles and any similar that is containing up to 45 calories per bar. Individually packaged frozen bars summing up to 110 calories each, including FrozFruit, Hagen-Dazs bars, and Starbucks Frappuccino Blended Coffee Bars.

Beverages – Tomato juice (V8 juice, and lemon or lime juice). Avoid beverages labeled “naturally sweetened” or “fruit-juice sweetened,” but help yourself to these: Unsweetened black coffees and teas; Diet teas and juices; Non-caloric flavored waters (orange, chocolate, cream, cherry-chocolate, root beer, cola, and other flavors). Check the calorie count if the product is labeled “naturally sweetened,” since this usually means that the product has sugar in one form or another. Hot cocoa mixes: 20 to 50 calories per serving, including Swiss Miss Diet and Fat-Free and Nestle Carnation Diet and Fat-Free; avoid cocoa mixes with 60 or more calories per serving.

Cereals – Cheerios (a whole grain cereal with 110 calories and 3 g fiber per cup). Kellogg’s All-Bran with Extra Fiber (50 calories and 15 g fiber per 1/2 cup). Original Shredded Wheat (80 calories and 2.5 g fiber per biscuit). Fiber One (60 calories and 14 g fiber per 1/2 cup). Wheaties (110 calories and 2 g fiber per cup). Whole Grain (total of 110 calories and 3 g fiber per 3/4 cup).

Spreads – Peanut butter, low-sugar or sugar-free jams and jellies with 10 to 40 calories per tablespoon.

Breads – Light breads with 40 to 45 calories per slice (oatmeal, premium white, wheat, rye, multigrain, sourdough, Italian). Whole grain regular breads or rolls.

Rice and Pasta – Whole wheat / whole grain pastas, brown rice, pearled or hulled barley, other whole grains.

Beans – All beans, dried or canned. Low-fat or fat-free re-fried beans.

Snacks – If you will have starchy snacks, make it a point to eat starchy, crunchy snacks only in conjunction with a filling dish. For example, if you want to have popcorn, add fruits… if you want to have crackers, add soup. Fill up on the former, and go easy on the starchy snack.

Protein Foods – Legumes (beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, soy products: bean curd / tofu and meat-replacement products). Seafood: fresh (do not fry!), smoked, canned, or frozen.

 

In My Practice

Overall, the objective is to make losing weight seem like it is effortless. We merely changed the food that we eat but the quantity and the quality may be equal, or probably, even more healthy. It is my dictum with my own patients that weight loss shouldn’t be a hard task, but rather, must be an easy one. Another natural way that I employ for my patients is I allow them to go to the mall as often as they can, because this makes them walk as much, which is a good form of exercise and making their mind busy, which also makes them burn more fat. This, however, comes with a strict instruction of the only allowable restaurants and certain foods that they can eat during their mall time.

Be aware also that even if the above mentioned natural foods are for weight loss, they may be contraindicated for your other medical conditions, so kindly see your doctor should you have other impending medical problems before losing weight.

A very good friend has come up with what she calls as a “Dieter’s Food” which she made out of mixing tomato paste, corned beef, diced potatoes, green and red bell peppers, and water. She did all the calorie computations for all of us and showed that it does work as she lost all the weight she ever wanted.

 

Medically Assisted Weight Loss

For patients where weight loss the natural way has not worked, or is not enough, then medically-assisted weight loss is the best option. A lot of techniques and medical machines have been made that are targeting the right areas that need to shed some inches. Some of these techniques involve the use of doctor prescribed medications in order to increase the metabolism and burn the fat; also ultrasonic fat dissolving machines (a method of using high frequency sound to penetrate the skin which melts the fat without the need for surgery or diet which makes the patient able to go home after the procedure, which lasts a few minutes only, without any pain and yet losing those lumps); we also do hormonal treatments to increase the fat-burning capacity of the body; and finally, laser liposuction (a minimally invasive surgical procedure where the unwanted fat is actually taken out of the body, or the conventional liposuction, which, by the way, the patient may be given the option to have the fat transferred to the other parts of the body like the breast or the cheeks to have a sexier figure or younger appearance).

 

How to Start

I like the quotation, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”, this reminds me that even if we know all the methods and the ways on how to lose weight, the first step is always the yearning to start and eventually taking the necessary action to the path of losing weight. Start with the natural methods, try to stay focused and you will lose those bulges. In case that you think that the natural method is not enough, you may see us at the Britannia Medical Center to have your medically assisted weight loss. All of the described techniques are available at our center.