Does Loving Yourself Lead to Weight Loss?

Posted on April 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

love yourself

(This article first appeared in The Huffington Post)

I’ll bet that you’ve heard that you must first love yourself to lose weight. So many of us hate being overweight, even hate ourselves for it, and we think that we need to lose weight to be able to like ourselves. But we’re told that we have it backwards, that to lose weight, we need to first love ourselves the way we are. Well, how is that possible when you don’t like yourself or if you hate yourself and what you’ve made of your life? How can you just decide, “I love me!” when everything inside you says it’s a lie? It’s impossible.

I don’t remember who first told me that I had to love myself the way I was, to love my fat body, as it was, in order to get better. It seemed crazy. She told me to hug my enormous thigh and say “I love you, thigh.” How could I do that? I hated it.

Soon after we are born, we discover that we must “measure up” to be OK, to be praised and rewarded. Often, when we don’t, we are scolded and punished. Then, later, we discover that to be accepted by our peers, we have to be a certain way, act a certain way, and look a certain way. Otherwise, we are rejected, or worse, teased and tormented. If we are good at “making the grade”, we are showered with acceptance and love, and assisted in life. If we don’t, we are punished by parents and teachers, and rejected, teased and tormented by our peers. Instead of being loved, we are not only disliked, but hated -scorned. We get abused rather than showered with affection and given opportunity and assistance by those in our world.

This is the system most of us learn. It is “the way things work” that we learn to deal with, and it never occurs to us to change it. How could we? It’s reality. It’s the way the world works.

So, we adopt this system ourselves. We judge everything we encounter, and if it measures up, we accept it. If it doesn’t, we reject it. If it’s really wonderful, we love it and shower it with praise and whatever we can give it. If it’s awful, we treat it with scorn, withhold our love, and maybe even trash it, kick it to the curb. This is how we regard everyone and everything we encounter. This is the way we think and treat everything in our lives — including ourselves.

It is the unusual person who encounters something ugly and rotten and hugs it, who forgives those who have committed the sins of our society. We want to punish! Sure, there are those who preach about loving our enemies and forgiving those who have committed the worst sins, but nobody except saints takes that seriously. Those who break the rules and fail to live up to our standards deserve to be scorned and punished. That’s just the way it is. They deserve it. And in our culture that worships physical beauty and success, there is hardly anything worse than a big fat failure. And that’s what I was at age 33 at 320 pounds, a diet failure for 25 years.

The weight loss industry preys on people who hate being overweight and often hate themselves for failing to fix it. Most people believe that the way to earn their self-respect and like themselves is to correct this flaw, to lose the weight and become a weight loss success. Then they would be able to like themselves. And this idea is promoted and accepted. And the truth is that it is wonderful to become successful at it. You feel so much better about yourself. It can’t be denied. However, to maintain the belief you must succeed in order to be OK and lovable, that only success and beauty should be loved while ugliness and failure should be hated, is a trap. It’s a trap I was caught in until I changed what I believed.

The problem is, we don’t take good care of things we hate. We throw them out, or under the bus. However, we bend over backwards to take care of the things we love. If we have an adorable little puppy that we love, we give it everything it needs and more. We lavish it with love and toys. But if we are given a snarling mangy stray to take care of, we are more apt to take it to the pound and leave it. That’s the way we’ve become. It’s normal. It doesn’t make us the devil, but the truth is, we don’t help things we hate recover from whatever affliction they suffer. When we confront ourselves and our faults and failures, we tend to hate. We are more apt to beat ourselves up or let ourselves go without what we need to get better.

If we are to thrive and get better, to recover from our flaws and failures, we need to be nurtured and helped, not neglected and abused. That loving behavior has to come from a conscious decision to be loving and forgiving when confronting those things that are not beautiful and successful, instead of judging and punishing. That doesn’t mean that you let the mangy stray sleep in your bed and bite you, but that you realize there is probably a reason it’s the way it is and you start treating it right instead of abusing it, and you see that it gets what it needs to thrive. That means that you make a conscious decision to not only be loving and forgiving to others, but to yourself as well, to love yourself like the puppy, not because you earned it, but because it needs it to be OK, because you need it to be OK.

In my early thirties, I had failed so many times at permanent weight loss that I gave up on the idea. I left that dream behind. But then I bought into this way of thinking that embraced love and forgiveness instead of judging and punishing. I decided that not only others needed to be loved regardless of their conditions, but that I also was worthy of that consideration, even though a big fat failure. I decided to love that body, the poor thing, and be kind about my faults and failures instead of mad and mean. Coincidently, I started being able to make changes and get better.

It’s been 30 years now since I lost my excess 140 pounds, which is a wonderful thing. But I’ve come to know that the more important change I’ve made is the way I think and the way I am on the inside. The outside counts for something, but it’s not the end-all, be-all, and often times we can’t change those conditions we find ourselves in. What makes us better is deciding to love ourselves no matter what. We need that. And when we do that, sometimes we open the door to miracles.

Read my book and maybe a miracle will open for you!

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Diet Drinks Shown Superior to Water For Weight Loss and Weight Control

Posted on March 14, 2016 | 4 comments
Diet Drinks For Weight Loss

Diet soda or water?

I have been highly criticized for advocating the use of diet drinks (artificially sweetened zero-calorie drinks) and artificial sweeteners, and I’ve been maligned for contradicting claims that diet drinks actually interfere with permanent weight loss, adversely affecting metabolism and increasing hunger. Now there’s solid scientific proof that validates what I’ve been saying. New research published in the February 2016 scientific journal Obesity confirms that diet drinks are an effective tool for permanent weight loss.

A team of researchers from the University of Colorado, University of Florida and Temple University followed 303 overweight and obese people for a year, half of them instructed to drink at least 24 ounces of water per day (but no diet drinks) and half of them instructed to drink at least 24 ounces of diet drinks per day. At the end of the year, the researchers concluded that diet drinks were “superior for weight loss and weight maintenance” and that they “can be an effective tool for weight loss and maintenance within the context of a weight management program.”

For years I have strongly recommended diet drinks, along with the behavioral techniques I used for my own 140 pound loss, now maintained for 30 years. I and my patients have reported that diet drinks are a big help for permanent weight loss and been scolded for it. But we were right all along.

Among the findings:

1) During the initial 12-week weight loss period, the diet drinkers lost over 50% more than the water drinkers.

2) During the 40-week maintenance period, the water drinkers regained more than twice as much as the diet drinkers, so that at the end of the study, the diet drinkers lost almost 3 times as much as the water drinkers, and avoided the big regain.

3) Waist circumference in both groups decreased, but the diet drinkers lost significantly more girth than the water drinkers.

4) The diet drinkers experienced a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure while the water drinkers saw no change.

5) Subjects in the water group reported feeling significantly more hunger while the diet drink group reported no increase in hunger.

These results debunk the theories that diet drinks somehow cause weight gain instead of weight loss and that they interfere adversely with metabolism or increase hunger.

All study participants engaged in the same comprehensive cognitive-behavioral weight loss intervention, but half followed instructions to drink 24 ounces of diet drinks per day, and half followed instructions to drink water instead. The diet drinkers could drink more than that if they wanted (water too), and the water drinkers could drink more water, but not diet drinks. A computer-generated randomization schedule assigned participants to the groups, stratified by sex, to assure equal distribution of women and men to each group.

Both groups attended meetings that were led by registered dietitians or clinical psychologists and were instructed on behavioral weight loss strategies. The meetings and program that both groups followed were exactly the same, except for the difference of diet drinks. They attended 12 weekly meetings at first, during the weight loss period of their study, followed by 9 monthly meetings during the maintenance portion. Examples of topics include self-monitoring, portion sizes, reading food labels, physical activity and insights into weight loss maintenance from the National Weight Control Registry.

I want to emphasize that I encourage drinking lots of water to all my readers and patients but advise using diet drinks as a substitute for all soft drinks. Water is the most important of the six essential nutrients and consuming copious amounts of water is essential to good health.

I also want to emphasize that diet drinks or any of the products, medications or procedures I have advocated are not, by themselves, a “magic bullet” for weight loss or weight control. Behavioral change, accomplished by application of an eclectic blend of behavioral therapy technique, is the only “miracle cure” that exists, if personal change and permanent weight loss is thought to be a miracle. However, there are many tools in the tool box of success in permanent weight loss, and diet drinks are one of the most important.

William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in weight loss, eating disorders and addictions. He solved his own long-time weight problem, losing 140 pounds 30 years ago and has kept it off since. He is the author of The Anderson Method.

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Obesity’s Link to Cancer

Posted on February 19, 2016 | 1 comment

(Note: This article first published in The Huffington Post)

Does being overweight increase your risk of getting cancer? Does losing weight reduce that risk? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. In some cases, the risk is over 50 percent greater. I had no idea the link was so strong, and it turns out that more than 50 percent of Americans are not aware there is any link at all. I am so glad I solved my obesity problem 30 years ago. I knew it probably kept me from getting heart disease and diabetes but I was not aware of such a strong link to cancer.

In the winter 2016 issue of Your Weight Matters, the magazine of the Obesity Action Coalition, Taraneh Soleymani, M.D., teaches us that next to smoking, keeping one’s self at a healthy weight is the most important thing an individual can do to reduce the risk of cancer. If we didn’t have enough reasons to lose weight before, we now have probably the biggest reason ever, preventing cancer.

What kinds of cancers are linked to obesity, and how much greater is the risk?

Dr. Soleymani shocks us with the report by the American Institute for Cancer Research that states that 50 percent of colon and rectal cancers can be prevented by maintaining a healthy weight, balanced diet and physical activity. Half of these cancers are caused by the obesegenic lifestyle that we’ve adopted. Just as shocking, 38 percent of breast cancers, 69 percent of throat cancers, 24 percent of kidney cancers and 19 percent of pancreatic cancers are preventable through healthy weight management. If we are looking for the cure to cancer, here’s the preventive solution: lose the obesity.

Why does being overweight or obese make it easier to get cancer?

As it turns out, your excess fat is not just an inert mass of fuel you’ve stored. It is living active tissue that acts like an organ, manufacturing hormones (our body’s self-made “natural” drugs) that act on the rest of your body, in this case, making it more vulnerable to the generation and growth of cancer. Research reported by The Obesity Society, as well as Dr. Soleymani, points out that it produces chemicals that stimulate (cancer) cell growth, increase the overall inflammation in your body, which is associated with increased cancer risk, and produces excess amounts of estrogen, high levels of which have been associated with the risk of breast, endometrial, and some other cancers. Being obese is like having a factory in your body polluting you with cancer-causing chemicals every day. But get rid of the excess fat, problem solved.

What can we do to get rid of the increased risk of getting cancer?

Fortunately, there is no mystery to the solution. We need to lose the excess weight. And there is no mystery to that either. We need to develop a way of living so that we habitually take in fewer calories than we burn, so that we burn off the fat instead of storing it up. We need to learn new behavior, and instead of dieting, develop new habits of eating what we like in a way that makes us healthy. That’s done through behavior therapy. Believe me, it can be done.

William Anderson is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor who specializes in weight loss, eating disorders and addictions. He solved his own long-time weight problem, losing 140 pounds 30 years ago and has kept it off since. He is the author of The Anderson Method.

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ADHD in Children Linked to Adult Obesity. Treatment Prevents it.

Posted on February 5, 2016 | 1 comment

A new study conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic suggests that female children who suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are more likely to become obese later in life compared to children who do not have the condition.

Kumar and her team discovered that female participants who had ADHD experienced a twofold higher risk for obesity throughout their childhood and adult lives compared to those who did not have the condition.

They also found that children who received stimulant treatment for their ADHD did not experience any increased risk of obesity as a result of the procedure.

Click on the link below or copy and paste the web address to read the article about this study.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/130905/20160205/adhd-in-girls-shapes-possibility-of-adult-obesity-study.htm

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U.S. Obesity Rate Sky Rocketing

Posted on November 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

(First published in The New York Times )

Obesity Rises Despite All Efforts to Fight It, U.S. Health Officials Say
By SABRINA TAVERNISENOV. 12, 2015

WASHINGTON — Despite years of efforts to reduce obesity in America, including a major push by Michelle Obama, federal health officials reported Thursday that the share of Americans who were obese had not declined in recent years, and had edged up slightly.

About 38 percent of American adults were obese in 2013 and 2014, up from 35 percent in 2011 and 2012. Researchers said the increase was small enough that it was not statistically significant. But to many in public health, it was surprising and disheartening.

“The trend is very unfortunate and very disappointing,” said Marion Nestle, a professor in the department of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “Everybody was hoping that with the decline in sugar and soda consumption, that we’d start seeing a leveling off of adult obesity.”

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study FindsNOV. 2, 2015
By the Numbers: More Details on Rising Mortality Among Middle-Aged Whites.
And compared with a decade ago, the increase was significant: In 2003 and 2004, about 32 percent of adults were obese, said the report’s lead author, Cynthia L. Ogden.

Health experts had hoped that gradual improvements in the American diet in recent years might have moved the needle on obesity. Consumption of full-calorie soda has dropped by a quarter since the late 1990s, and there is evidence that calorie intake has dropped for adults and children. Obesity began rising in the 1980s, but the rate flattened in the 2000s, and declines among young children in some cities had lifted expectations that the epidemic might be easing.

Obesity among young people was unchanged in 2013 and 2014 from the previous period, the report found. Seventeen percent of Americans ages 2 to 19 were obese, the same as in 2003 and 2004. Experts pointed out that far more work had been done to fight obesity in children, including changes in school lunches and the removal of sugar-sweetened beverages from some school systems.

The figures are from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the gold standard for federal health data, released every two years. For smaller slices of the American population — for example, women or blacks — researchers used four years of data, from 2011 through 2014, for the most reliable results.

Some of the most striking numbers were among minorities. About 57 percent of black women were obese from 2011 to 2014, the highest rate of any demographic. Next highest were Hispanic women, at 46 percent, and Hispanic men, at 39 percent. About 36 percent of white women were obese, and 34 percent of white men. The prevalence of obesity was lowest among Asians, who had a combined rate of about 12 percent.

Dr. Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, cautioned that the modest improvements nationwide were extremely unevenly spread, with most of them happening among more educated Americans. A paper he helped write, published this month in Health Affairs, found that Americans’ diets had improved in quality from 1999 to 2012 — with a reduction in trans fats, small increases in fiber and less soda consumption — but that most of those advances were not happening among lower-income, less educated Americans.

 

“In general, there’s been a big gap” between rich and poor, Dr. Willett said. “When we take the U.S. average, we are hiding a lot of detail.”

There were a few other surprises. Men had more or less caught up to women in obesity prevalence in recent years, but the new numbers showed that women had edged ahead again, Dr. Ogden said. About 38 percent of adult women were obese from 2011 to 2014, the report found, compared with 34 percent of men.

Middle-aged Americans were hardest hit. Adults ages 40 to 59 had the highest rate of obesity, 40 percent, followed by people 60 and over, 37 percent of whom were obese. About 32 percent of 20- to 39-year-olds were obese.

Kelly D. Brownell, the dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, said the new figures were a reminder that many risks, such as the prevalence and inexpensiveness of junk food, had not gone away, and a sign that policy makers needed to redouble their efforts to, for example, impose a tax on soda.

“The emergency flag has gone up,” he said. “We are not doing nearly enough.”

 

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