Weight-loss myth busters

Charlyn Fargo, Contributor

Manuel Villacorta, author of Eating Free: The Carb-Friendly Approach to Lose Inches, Embrace Your Hunger and Keep the Weight Off for Good, thinks the prevailing wisdom on weight loss - low calories, no carbs, high-intensity exercise - sets dieters up for failure. Villacorta, a registered dietitian with a weight-loss practice in San Francisco, offers a new way of looking at eating.

"Not only are we sorely overweight as a nation, but we are also sorely misinformed," he says. "Most of the methods touted for weight loss in recent years are based on denial and personal hardship - something contrary to everything the science of nutrition tells us (and contrary to our very human nature). We need to eat. We want to eat. We should eat. And yet, everything in our culture tells us eating is like a dirty secret, a guilty pleasure that tempts us day in and day out."

Villacorta has done research on a little-known hormone, ghrelin, which controls hunger, drives appetite and works to manage metabolism and the ability to burn fat. To keep ghrelin and its power to provoke cravings in check, he advocates eating (beginning with breakfast) within an hour after waking and then every three to four hours. He also advocates getting enough sleep (six to eight hours a night) and welcoming carbs, a nutrient that is needed to control ghrelin spikes.

He's had an 84 per cent success rate among his clients by encouraging them to eat 45 per cent carbs, 30 per cent protein and 25 per cent fat, and to watch portion sizes.

"The older we are, the more careful we have to be with our portions," said Villacorta. "Every ounce counts."

Charlyn Fargo is a registered dietitian at Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists. Creators Syndicate website: www.creators.com.

Give up sodas

Q: Is giving up regular soda really enough to make me lose weight without going on a diet?

A: 'Going on a diet' is not associated with long-term weight loss for most people, whereas working on a permanent change in one particular habit, such as reducing or eliminating sugary drinks, could be a great start for weight management. Controlled studies show that when people consume more calories from drinks, they don't compensate for those calories by eating less of other foods, and total calorie consumption tends to be higher.

Changes in drink consumption alone can produce modest weight loss. In some cases, substituting water or diet (zero-calorie) beverages for sugar-sweetened soda is even enough to achieve the five per cent weight loss linked with significant health improvement.

Replace sweetened drinks

About 25 per cent of Americans consume more than 200 calories a day in sugar-sweetened drinks. If you are in this group, you are among those most likely to notice a weight change if you give up sugar-sweetened soda. Of course, this is assuming that you don't replace these drinks with juice or sugar-laden coffee or tea specialities or 'reward' yourself for giving up soda by eating more cookies or other treats.

Once your healthier drinking choices are an established habit, if you want to lose more weight, you can then look for other eating habits for which you can substitute lower calorie choices or smaller portions. On the other hand, if sugar-sweetened soda is something that you have only once a week or less, you can still focus on just one change in your eating habits to start losing weight, but you'll see more results by changing something other than soft drinks.

- Information courtesy of the American Institute for Cancer Research