Tag Archive for: weight

Three Tips for a Healthier Year

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Most people look at the New Year as a time to make some changes to eating and exercise habits to accomplish health goals. For many, it’s reducing their body weight; for others, it’s getting fitter. But health is more than body weight and fitness. Many of us want to improve our diets, lower our blood pressure or cholesterol, become more flexible, or

take better care of our teeth, and for some, managing pain and other health conditions is a goal. Here are three tips to help you become healthier by the end of the year.

Tip 1: Use Available Technology

In a blog from the business builder Seth Godin about using technology, the final line was, “Working harder is rarely a better plan than finding better tools.” The quote was related to business, but it applies to health as well. Sometimes the tool is information; I hope that’s one of the reasons you read the Memo. I’ll have a lot more info coming to help you get healthy in 2024 from webinars, courses, and maybe some live events.

Sometimes, the tool is a device like a smart watch or a specific type of monitoring technology. I recently got a Kardia ECG monitor to collect data on my ECG. With other tools, you can monitor your blood pressure, oxygen level, and blood sugar to determine your patterns. But you must master the use of that technology for it to be helpful. The same is true for any exercise equipment you choose to use. That leads to the second tip.

Tip 2: Know Why You’re Doing What You’re Doing

If you’ve ever heard me speak in a seminar, I always tell people when it comes to taking a dietary supplement, you should know exactly why you’re taking it. Some are non-specific for overall health like a multivitamin-multimineral, but you may be taking a supplement for a specific reason, such as taking ginkgo biloba for increasing blood flow or coenzyme Q10 for more energy. You should know the reason for anything you’re taking.

This is my addition for 2024: you should also know why you’re taking every medication you’re taking. Have a thorough discussion with your physician or your specialist to determine why you’re taking each medication, what its purpose is, and whether you’re taking the lowest dose to get a positive effect. And then you must be able to test that impact somehow. Either you’ll have less pain, more flexibility, lower cholesterol or blood pressure, or some measurable benefit, or it’s time to change things.

You could apply that to foods and exercise as well, but supplements and medications are usually more purposeful.

Tip 3: Be Consistent

It seems I’ve talked about this forever, but you must try a change in lifestyle for at least 90 days to know if it works. You have to be consistent and track the health benefit somehow. Weight and blood pressure are easy; I still use a small notebook to track calories as I work to get to a normal body weight. For pain and digestive symptoms, you can find pain and symptom scales; this pain scale is on drchet.com. Then find a way to record the results every day—electronically on your computer or smart phone, or pencil and paper. I track workouts and total calories on an Excel spreadsheet; Paula has recorded her weight in a paper calendar most of her life.

You have to be able to go back and see any changes or patterns. How will you know you get fewer migraines if you aren’t tracking each one you get? That applies to every change you’re making.

If you can use these three tips, your 2024 will be less frustrating. Not everything works for everybody, but there’s always another approach. If one doesn’t work, go to the next. As long as you pay attention, you’ll finish the year healthier than when you began.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

The Bottom Line on the Blue Zones

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The docuseries on Blue Zones demonstrated that it really isn’t complicated to live to 100: find a purpose, a reason to get up every morning, remain physically active, eat reasonably with a focus on plant-based sources for food, and develop a social group that can provide support through the various stages of life.

The docuseries ended with the writer working to create Blue Zones in different cities throughout the USA. That part is complicated because it involves community buy-in from government, health and healthcare officials, as well as professionals from nutrition, exercise, and community planning.

The Most Important Thing

After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important thing that anyone can do to live well to 100 is this: get to a normal body weight and stay there. Not everyone who actually was 100 years and older was thin, but they had already made it to 100.

Getting to a normal weight reduces your risk of just about every degenerative disease and reduces the stress on your joints; Paula adds that it also greatly expands your clothing choices. You may never be able to do the splits like the man in the photo, but you’ll be able to do more than you do right now. Genetics is always there to blindside us, but even with that unknown, we can be in a better position by being a normal body weight and maintaining it.

The Blowback Was Instant

I spent last weekend with several thousand people, and I enjoyed every moment. I was asked many times what is the most important thing to be healthy, and my answer was always the same: find a healthier way to eat that you’re willing to stick to for the rest of your life, get to a normal weight, and stay there.

Some replied that “if I got to that weight, I’d look like a skeleton.” Then they would tell me what weight they think they can get to; I gave no quarter, no permission to say that’s good enough. How long that takes you to do could be one, three, maybe ten years. If you’re 43, that means you’ll be 53 and that’s just when everything begins to decline body-wise. You’ll be better able to handle it.

Here’s a simple way to start that you can begin this minute: cut out sugary and ultra-processed foods as much as you can. Then you can go on to find more vegetables you like, learn to cook with less fat, and so on, but you can say no to that donut or cookie right now.

What should you weigh? Here’s a link to the BMI chart at drchet.com. Note that there are guidelines to determine whether you’re big-boned or small-boned, and that affects your goal weight.

The Bottom Line

I would ask nothing of others that I wouldn’t do myself. Getting to a normal weight within a year is my goal; redistribution of that weight may take another couple of years. So what? I don’t know if I have the genes to live to 100, and I don’t know whether that’s my goal. I just want to be able to live like I want every day I’m alive.

No matter your age today, you can help yourself live well longer, and it starts by getting to that normal weight. I know you can do it.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Childhood Obesity: A Family Thing

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I hope you took some time to scan the Executive Summary of American Association of Pediatrics Guidelines for Physicians. If you couldn’t, here are the three things that stood out to me.

Screening by Pediatricians and Primary Care Physicians

The focus of the guidelines was to assess risk factors for degenerative disease such as heart disease and diabetes in children who exceed the 85th percentile of the normal growth charts, indicating overweight, and 95th percentile, indicating obesity. The guidelines recommend beginning at 2 years of age and continuing through 18.

Were there recommendations for the use of medications and bariatric surgery in children over 12 and 14 respectively? Yes, but they were referrals to specialists for evaluations, not a blank invitation to write prescriptions.

It Must Be a Family Thing

Without exception, the guidelines recommend intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment. “Health behavior and lifestyle treatment is more effective with greater contact hours; the most effective treatment includes 26 or more hours of face-to-face, family-based, multicomponent treatment over a three- to twelve-month period.”

That’s not the same as giving Mom and Dad a diet for the child and sending them on their way. Family-based programs have demonstrated great success, but it has to be a family thing.

It’s All About the Money

The summary also talked about obstacles to the family-based treatment approach. The major obstacle is money:

  • Money for training pediatricians and family practice physicians on how to assess childhood obesity.
  • Money for training more people to teach and work with families—it’s labor intensive.
  • Money for public health and community programs that can support the family-based approach.

It’s a situation we’ve seen many times: Everyone knows how important preventive healthcare and early treatment is, but no one wants to pay for it. But maybe we shouldn’t always look to government to foot the bill; maybe schools, community organizations, and churches could offer programs for their members. If what we’ve always done isn’t working, let’s try something different.

The Bottom Line

The guidelines introduce a couple of new approaches for those with the most severe weight problems, but the focus is on intensive nutrition and behavior-change training for the entire family. That’s not just “Here’s a diet and exercise program, and I’ll see you next year.” The guidelines give a reasonable approach to help the future health of the nation. The approach is simple: Eat less. Eat better. Move more. What they’re saying is that healthcare professionals need training to be able to do that effectively as a team in a reasonable family-based approach. That’s the right approach as I see it.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Pediatrics e2022060641.https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-060641

New Guidelines on Childhood Obesity

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If you pay attention to health news, you know the American Association of Pediatrics issued new guidelines on how to treat childhood obesity. Depending on where you read or listened to how those guidelines were presented, all you may have heard is that kids over 12 can get medications to help with weight loss and teens over 14 can have gastric by-pass surgery.

Then the experts weighed in (no pun intended). One pediatric physician predicted doctors would just pull out the prescription pad and not address the root cause of obesity. Psychological experts said this is going to cause increases in disordered eating, which includes anorexia and bulimia.

This story hits home for me because food was love in a Polish household like mine. I’ve been overweight since I was around eight years old, and it’s been a life-long struggle to get to a normal BMI. But even at my heaviest, I was nowhere near the weight many kids are today.

Is that all that was in the guidelines? You can read the summary at the link below. Then on Saturday I’ll break them down to get the bottom line.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Pediatrics e2022060641.https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2022-06064

Aging Stressor: Excess Body Weight

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The last major stressor that comes with age is excess body weight. The first book that I ever bought in grad school was about obesity. In it, there was a chart of almost 100 health issues that were linked by research to carrying extra body fat and one that was not. In the 40 years since then, the list of negative effects of obesity has grown.

If you remember my answer to the question from last week’s Memo about what one thing would I do differently in my life, that’s the reason I chose getting to a healthier weight and staying there. Pick a body system, any system, and you’ll find the deleterious impact of excess fat on that system. Immune system? Yes. Joints? Yes. Liver? That too. Pancreas? Yes—and on and on and on. That’s why it’s important to get to a healthy weight as young as you can and stay there.

But what about now? It’s been a 50-year fight for me, and I still have not succeeded to the extent I would like. Getting to a healthy weight is not about a specific diet or foods or anything other than one thing: the quantity of food we eat.

I’m going to give you the simplest approach to losing excess body fat I can with two ways to do it.

  • Use a smaller plate when you eat meals and fill it only once. Moving from a dinner plate to a salad plate will cut off about 20 to 25% of the calories you eat. You can use the same logic with smoothies or cereal or soups. Smaller portions yield fewer calories.
  • As an alternative, reduce your caloric intake by 250 to 500 calories per day if you already track your food intake. That’s it.

Can you work on the quality of food? Sure. How about fewer carbs or less fat? If you want. What I’m saying is that to attack the excess body weight you carry, you have to attack your number of calories and eat fewer of them. Start with the sledgehammer to break down the wall. You can get to the chisel later on to fine-tune your lifestyle.

That one benefit of being overweight? It reduces the risk of osteoporosis. I don’t think that’s worth the hundreds of other risks it increases.

Aging with a Vengeance

The first Aging with a Vengeance webinar will be on Super Bowl Sunday; the topic will be increasing muscle mass. I’ll be covering a specific strength training program together with nutrition approaches including diet and supplements. The approach is based on the practical application of the most recent research. The first Memo of 2023 will give details on how to sign up for the webinar and the materials you’ll get.

Have a Very Merry Christmas from all of us at DrChet.com! Talk to you again on January 1, 2023.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Worst Stressor: Split Decision

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I intended to talk about the single most negative stressor that we face as we age, but I couldn’t pick just one. When I say stressors, I mean things we have to deal with every day, not a singular event such as an auto accident. Smoking would be the easy choice, but it doesn’t impact as many people as it used to. Here are my two choices.

Too Much Weight

Someone asked me a simple question before an Insiders Conference Call: if you could do one thing differently when you were young to improve your health, what would it be? Without hesitation my answer was I would have gotten to a normal body weight and maintained it. Being overfat impacts you as soon as you try to get out of bed: you have to overcome gravity. And it doesn’t stop there.

Every system, every organ, and every cell in your body is impacted by excess fat. Some effects are worse than others, but every cell is impacted in some way. If you can avoid gaining the weight to begin with, that’s ideal. If you’re like me and you didn’t, it’s a lifetime challenge to get to a normal weight and maintain it. I’m still working at it.

If you’re still a youngster in your 20s, 30s, or 40s, don’t postpone weight loss. Do whatever it takes to get to a normal weight (short of drug abuse or eating disorders), then develop a healthy lifestyle to keep your weight down. Even if you’re older, you can still lose weight just as my mother-in-law did in her 80s.

Chronic Pain

There are some people who don’t know what it’s like to face pain every day, but the majority of people face the daily challenge of having their lives impacted by pain as they get older. It may be joint pain in the knees. Lower back pain afflicts many. It may be nerve damage from prior accidents. But as we age, pain is the stressor that may be present all day, every day.

There is no magic wand for this stressor. For some people, if they didn’t have to think about pain, they could do so much more. Instead, it’s trying to find the right everyday changes that can make life bearable.

The Bottom Line

I think you can understand why it was a split decision. In addition, these two stressors affect each other: being overfat can make the pain worse, and having pain can prevent us from exercising to help with weight loss. It doesn’t mean there are no stressors of aging we can deal with—there definitely are. That’s what we’ll talk about in my upcoming program Aging with a Vengeance.

On next week’s Insiders Conference Call, I’ll talk more specifically about the stressors of aging and what we can do about them. Become an Insider by 8 p.m. Wednesday, December 14, and you can join the Insider call at 9 p.m.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

What Not to Do When You Want to Lose Weight

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How did my mother-in-law lose 30 pounds when she was completely sedentary? I’ll tell you, but let me tell you first what not to do. Why begin there? Permanently changing your weight (or any other significant health goal) takes a lifetime commitment. You don’t know what life will bring, so the best way to attack the problem is by doing the best you can every day until you really have changed your habits permanently.

What You Don’t Have to Do

When you’re ready to make a change in your lifestyle, especially to lose weight, you don’t have to announce it on social media. If you want to keep track of your progress and do something with that information later, fine. But not everyone responds the same way to social scrutiny and it can be brutal. The only person you ever have to be accountable to is yourself.

You don’t have to throw out everything that’s in your refrigerator or freezer or clean out your pantry. It’s a good idea to get rid of the food that’s two years or more past its “best by” date, but that’s it.

You don’t have to follow any specific diet or exercise program when you start. Eat a little bit less and move a little bit more.

Understanding How to Start

Whether you want to lose weight, lower your cholesterol, reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, you start slow and you add a little bit to it each day.

Think about this related to weight loss. You can’t fast (by the most common definition of fasting—abstaining from food) long enough to lose all the weight that you want to lose. It wouldn’t be healthy not to eat. Your body’s going to continue to produce waste products and you need nutrients, fresh nutrients, to help it do that.

What you can do is improve the quality of your diet a servings of grapes per day or a small salad before your meal to help suppress your appetite. Every small step is an important one. The catch is that you have to maintain it. So whether it’s a serving of grapes one day and strawberries the next and blueberries after that, add that serving of fruit every day. Or vegetables. Or nuts and seeds. You have to change your eating style permanently.

Turns out, losing weight that way takes some time. But let me ask you this question: did you sit down at a table one day and decide that you were going to overeat and overeat and overeat every second of every day so that you could put on 25, 50, or 100 pounds? Of course you didn’t. What makes you think you can take it off all at once? You have to do it one bite at a time, one meal at a time, one day at a time, just like you put it on.

The Bottom Line

I’m sure you’ve figured out why my mother-in-law was able to lose weight even though conventional exercise wasn’t an option: she consistently ate less than her body needed to maintain her weight. She stopped eating desserts and snacks and didn’t go back for seconds. Even though her body wasn’t as strong as it had been, she still had the mental toughness to stick to her plan, and it worked.

Consistency—what a concept! No fad diet, no keto or paleo, just consistently eating more of the healthier food and avoiding empty calories. I’ll say it again: it was, it is, and it will always be about the calories. It all comes down to a single question:

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

P.S. There’s a new Straight Talk on Health for Members and Insiders, and I’ve done something a little different. I took the Memos from the week and expanded on what I wrote. More about how my mother-in-law was able to lose weight while being sedentary and tips for other goals such as decreasing pre-diabetes and high blood pressure. If you don’t have a membership, this would be a good time to start.

Weight Loss Is Always Possible

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After last week’s Memos, you may think that you have to do something radical to address your body weight or some other health situation, but that’s not the case. You can lose weight under the most extreme conditions, even if you’re completely sedentary. Let me tell you about my mother-in-law, Ruth Jones.

My mother-in-law struggled with her weight for decades. I don’t know what her peak weight was, but I would estimate around 240 pounds. She maintained around 200 pounds for most of the time I knew her. She had severe arthritis in her knees and because she wouldn’t have been able to do the rehab, the decision was made to replace them both at once. She did great at lifestyle and occupational therapy, but she never quite got the complete mobility she thought she would get because the physical therapy was more of a challenge than she could handle. She was able to get around the house but used a wheelchair or scooter in public.

A few years later, she had a very bad reaction to a new statin that damaged a great deal of muscle mass, and she remained in long-term care until she died several years later. But here’s the thing. Even though wheelchair bound, she was able to lose 30 or so pounds; that’s discounting the last few months before she died when she lost interest in eating.

How? How was she able to do it?

How about you—are you ready to make a change in your weight? Blood pressure? Prediabetes? Then you really don’t want to miss Saturday’s Memo.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Three Ways to Really Reduce Your Cancer Risk

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In the last Memo before Spring Break, I said I’d cover ways to reduce your risk of getting cancer that really work. Every cancer website has lists, ranging from 10 to 15 recommendations. I’m going to give you my top three ways to reduce the risk of cancer of the items you can control. You can’t control your age or your genetic risk factors, but there are many elements of your health you can control if you work at them.

I’m not including smoking cigarettes or other tobacco products. That’s a no-brainer and shouldn’t even be mentioned, because no one should smoke. (I’m not saying that from my perch on Mount Olympus; I smoked when I was young and foolish, and quitting was one of the best decisions I ever made.)

Dr. Chet’s Top Three Ways to Prevent Cancer

  1. Eat more vegetables and fruits every day and the wider the variety, the better. They don’t have to be organically farmed; you just have to eat eight to ten servings per day. That seems like a lot, and I’m not perfect at it, but you get a new chance every day. Here’s a tip: weigh your produce instead of measuring it. Find out what constitutes a serving in grams or ounces. You may find out that a large banana is actually two servings. Do supplements matter? Yes, but the important point is to eat the fruits and veggies first, then add a multivitamin as backup.
  2. Exercise for 30 to 45 minutes per day. The fitter you are, the lower your risk of cancer. It doesn’t all have to be aerobic; yoga and strength training count as well.
  3. Reduce your weight until you achieve as close to a normal BMI (under 25) as you can; you’ll find all the info you need in the Body Mass Index article on the Health Info page at drchet.com, including how to adjust your target for your body type. We talked about caloric restriction in February, and that’s a way to slowly reduce your weight. My theory is that the older you are, the more movement matters, so if you are doing well at Numbers 1 and 2, you’re well on your way to accomplishing Number 3.

Those may sound very familiar: Eat less. Eat better. Move more. The reason these are my top three is that they reduce inflammation in different ways.

On Thursday, I’m going to cover a study on the relationship between a test for inflammation and cancer.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Aging with a Vengeance and Your Proteome

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This year’s Super Bowl Webinar focused on aging with a vengeance—becoming the best version of yourself, no matter your age. The study we just reviewed on the proteome suggests that the people were healthier who were biochemically younger than their actual age. Here are the actions I believe can help at the three critical phases of aging that were identified in proteome study. As I find out more, I’ll be more specific.

31 to 37

If you have weight to lose, now is the time to lose it. Take it from me and my decades of experience with weight loss programs: it becomes more difficult the older you get. Find a way to eat that will maintain a reduced body weight and stick with it.

Reduce your protein intake. That may seem a little odd, but this is a time to focus on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and quality oils.

Focus on your cardiovascular system by doing aerobic exercise on a regular basis. Use interval training to make the most of your time, and when you’re fit enough, you can add high-intensity interval training (HIIT) to your routine.

57 to 63

The kind of 80- to 85-year-old you’re going to be is dependent on what you do now. If you haven’t achieved a normal body weight, that’s a high priority just as it was in the prior age group. I know how difficult this is because it’s eluded me throughout my life; I lost a lot of weight and kept it off for years, but I’d still like to weigh less.

Increase protein intake to 1–1.5 grams per kilogram body weight per day.

Supplement your diet with essential amino acids. While the amounts are still not absolutely clear from the research, 10–20 grams per day is a good goal.

If you’re not already doing so, add weight training to your exercise routine. Start with using your own body weight, then add exercise tubes or light weights, and then use machines or free weights. Now is the time to retain or even increase your muscle mass.

75 and Older

If you haven’t achieved a normal body weight, there’s still time. My wonderful mother-in-law lost a significant amount of weight at this age, and she was an overweight diabetic in a wheelchair.

Increase protein intake to 1.5–2 grams per kilogram body weight per day. It’s difficult because appetite decreases and protein makes us feel full. It will help reduce the muscle loss that’s happening.

Supplement your diet with essential amino acids; the amounts are still between 10–20 grams per day.

Add weight training to your exercise routine. It will help you to retain or even increase your muscle mass. Stay within any orthopedic or other limitations, and get some help if you need to, but do it. Your primary caregiver will probably be glad to refer you to a physical therapist who can get you started safely.

The Bottom Line

For all that’s been written about healthy aging, we still don’t know very much. Healthy aging begins the day we are born, but we realize that only when it dawns on us that we’re aging. No matter your age, no matter your current state of health, it can be better. You can learn more in the replay of this year’s Super Bowl Webinar, but it will be available for only a little while longer.

The simple things I’ve talked about in this Memo are a beginning. When I know more, so will you. Inevitably, it comes back to a single question:

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Nature Medicine. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-019-0673-2