I'm lucky. About three weeks ago, I celebrated my 70th birthday surrounded by family and friends. My efforts over the past several years have resulted in a weight loss of eighty pounds. Now, I'm just "overweight" and no longer "obese". Ain't that grand. I still have twenty more pounds to lose to reach my personal goal. I'm not alone...my entire family is committed to losing weight. It's not that we just want to look better, although that would be nice. We all want to be more healthy and avoid complications that accompany being overweight. Some family members have diabetes, and one has survived breast cancer. Some struggle with Lupus and others just feel the burden of carrying extra weight around every day. Some are young, or middle age or seniors...all of us plan to make dietary and lifestyle changes this new year.
Let's sift through some well-known and lesser know facts about obesity. Did you know that 70 percent of the over 60 population in America is overweight? More than 40 percent of those 65 to 74 are classified as obese. Complications from obesity cost the United States $190 billion dollars in medical expenses every year. We all know that obesity shortens lives: An Oxford University study found that an obese person's life span is three to ten years shorter than that of someone age weight.about the same loss of life associated with smoking. Knowing all these things should give motivation to resolve to the problem.
We know that losing weight gets harder as we grow older. Slowing metabolism, a loss in muscle mass and declining hormones...all of these things cause your body to store fat more easily. Did you know that adding to the challenge, our body actually sabotages our efforts to lose weight and keep it off. A recent New England Journal of Medicine study examined overweight adults who lost an average of thirty pounds by reducing the number of calories they consumed. Here's what they found. Two hormones that suppress appetite, Leptin and peptide YY, dropped significantly after the weight loss and stayed low for a year. This isn't good- we need more leptin and peptide YY so we don't get hungry. Researchers found also that ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger, rose and remained high for up to a year. Decline in appetite suppression and and an increase in hunger...talk about making things harder.
So what's a midlife dieter to do? Personally, I say forget about dieting and focus on changing your dietary and lifestyle choices. The thought of dieting makes one feel that this is something you'll do for a while, achieve your goal and return to past habits. I had to realize that I needed to make changes that I would embrace for a lifetime. In short, we need to know how certain food choices affect our bodies, so we can adjust our dietary choices accordingly to stay healthy and lose weight.
Watch for posts that continue my personal journey.
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