School of Weight Loss

By now everyone has heard that the way to lose weight is through a nutritional diet and exercise. Kissing the fast foods and the carbonated beverages good-bye is part of the process. However, what happens when you haven’t exercised for years and you really want that piece of chocolate cake?

Step 1: What To Do First
When you decide to start a weight loss plan think of it as something that you are doing for your health. It is going to mean a lifestyle change so you need a baseline to work form. In order to do this you will need two pieces of information: Your BMI and how it compares to a healthy weight and knowledge about your intake of food.

Many people may find this disturbing because they already think they know what they eat but keeping a food diary can give you more information. According to the Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, James O. Hill, PhD, at the University of Colorado in Denver, eating is something that most people do without thinking about it. A food diary can help you focus on those things that you eat that are adding calories to your body.

The next step is to make a commitment to yourself to lose the amount of weight you want to lose. This is difficult for some people especially when they want something that isn’t on their menu. This is an important step because without it people usually go back to their old habits.

Step 2: Making Better Food Choices
If you are someone who is very busy it can be difficult to think about eating better. The truth is that today many restaurants have healthy food choices that can be better for you than what you are used to eating. You can choose vegetables and fruit over fried foods and desserts.

You can also start to snack on nutritional snacks like popcorn (without butter), fruits, nuts and seeds. These can make a great in-between meal snacks and many are very tasty. You can also include more vegetables, especially leafy vegetables into your food choices. All of these things will insure that your body is satisfied and also gets the vitamins and other nutrients it needs in a natural way.

Step 3: Exercise
It can be difficult to go to a gym and get exercise while some people find it difficult to walk. You can choose the type of exercise that fits your lifestyle. Activities like dance, swimming, bicycling and tennis may be alternatives to stationary bikes and treadmills. You can choose an activity that makes you feel the best or go back to something you once did as a child. You can also choose to get a few pieces of equipment like a fitness ball and some resistance bands to workout at home; you can always get videos from the library to help.

For guidelines on what to do with nutrition and exercise you might try going to the Healthy Body Revolution website for more information.

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One of the most embarrassing things for anyone is incontinence. As people get older, both men and women can suffer from it. If you watch television you will now see several commercials about the problem and how drugs can assist with it. This is a nationwide problem for many people.

In a recent clinical trial that was funded by two departments in the National Institute of Health, it was found that obesity can be the cause of some incontinence. The suggestion is that if some people, particularly women, lose weight their incontinence will stop.

The clinical trial called, The Program to Reduce Incontinence by Diet and Exercise (PRIDE) was conducted with 338 women who found they were incontinent at least 10 times each week. They choose women in Providence, Rhode Island and Birmingham, Alabama. They assigned women to one of two groups: a 6 month weight loss program that included nutrition, behavior modification and exercise, or a group that only received information about diet and exercise with no training.

The results of the trial were stunning, but not surprising. The group that received the diet, exercise and nutrition training lost more weight than the other group and decreased their episodes of incontinence by 47%.

According to research on incontinence, more than 13 million women in the United States, suffer from it. According to the study a large portion of healthcare cost — $20 billion annually — is put towards treating incontinence. Up until this study the link between obesity and incontinence wasn’t known.

The researchers continued to monitor the women for six months and they found that the women in the first group that were trained around nutrition and exercise were more satisfied with their results than those who only received information. This is to be expected we would think since the second group wasn’t given a way to fix their challenge.

Behavioral Interventions and Weight Loss
There is a strong body of research that shows that weight loss responds to behavioral interventions. In most studies that interventions have to change with modifying the way that people think about dieting, exercise and food as well as learning to eat differently. Those programs that work actually help people understand the difference between eating well and eating poorly.

Within the process they are educated about diet and exercise and how the lack of it can lead to other types of health problems like high blood pressure, type2 diabetes and heart disease. With this information and changes in the way they think about diet and health many people are finding that weight loss is easier.

The bottom line seems to be that if people are going to lose weight they need more information about nutrition and exercise. They also need to modify their behaviors around eating and about the choices they make with food.

This study about obesity and incontinence also supports the fact that the more information an individual has about weight loss the better equipped they are to make behavioral changes.

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