Spotlight on yo-yo dieting

If you feel that you’ve spent most of your life going from one diet to another, all the while staying the same weight or even worse gaining weight then let’s face it, you’ve got something in common with most of the world’s female population.

Every year millions of women embark on countless weight loss regimes, usually touted as the answer to all their prayers by celebrities and ‘weightloss gurus’ alike. How many of us have cut out carbs, eaten only grapefruit for a week, chewed gum before meals to curb our appetites or even more worryingly, cut out meals, smoked cigarettes or drunk coffee to stop us feeling hungry?

Ultimately though, these fad diets don’t work and in fact, can actually lead to weight gain when we start eating normally again.

Even sensible diets can be restrictive, boring and hard to follow, leading to many a despondent dieter falling off the wagon and into a pit of self hatred where they feel like a failure for not sticking to their new plan for longer than a week.

So what’s the answer to long term and healthy weight loss?

Is there really a secret to success, or is permanent weight loss actually simple and straightforward once you have the right support and attitude?

Log on to our web TV show where we will hear from Tony Ferguson, a qualified pharmacist,now renowned for his own successful weight loss plan in Australia after watching women struggle for years. Also on the couch will be health professional.

Tony Ferguson and health professional join us live online to discuss yo-yo dieting

H: Lis Speight, host

A: Sue Baic, nutritionist

B: Tony Ferguson, Tony Ferguson Weight Loss programme

H: Hello and welcome to the Healthcare show, I’m Lis Speight. Do you feel like you’ve spent most of your life going from one diet to another, all the while staying the same weight, or even worse, gaining weight? Every year millions of women embark on countless weight loss regimes, ultimately though these fad diets don’t work, and in fact can actually lead to weight gain when we start eating normally again. Coming up in the show today, how to beat the problems of yo-yo dieting, the real advantages of healthier eating and we’ll be answering all of your questions here live in the studio. Well I’m joined here today by Sue Baic from the British Dieticians Association, and by Tony Ferguson, a qualified pharmacist now renowned in his native Australia for his own successful weight loss plan. Welcome to you both, lovely to see you. Now don’t forget this is a live show so if you have any questions or comments for Tony or Sue please use the box on our screen, click send and if you’re Tweeting whilst watching the show please use the #StudiotalkkTV and we’ll try and give you a mention. Right well let’s get cracking - Sue just how bad is the problem often referred to as yo-yo dieting, particularly among women?

A: Well it’s very common as you said in your introduction, but the problem with it is it’s very demoralising, you think you’ve put all that effort in going to some sort of crash diet and then you come off it and you regain the weight you’ve lost and sometimes more. The statistics show that often people regain extra weight

H: Why is that then, it’s bizarre isn’t it?

A: Yes I don’t know what the physiological reason is but statistically it seems that people put that weight on plus a bit extra

H: So it’s pointless and very demoralising

A: It is

H: What’s the long term effect then for women?

A: Well it’s also not very good in terms of health because obviously for that period of time when you’ve been crash dieting you’ve missed out on putting all the good nutrients say from fruit and vegetables, from calcium from dairy foods or iron, if you’ve been restricting your diet you’ve missed out on all those other nutrients that your body needs

H: So osteoporosis, particularly for women, that sort of thing

A: Exactly so you’ve restricted your diet and you’ve failed to put all those other nutrients back in, and you’re back to where you were even heavier than before. So I think it’s incredibly demoralising and it’s no wonder people you know give up on the whole thing

H: So is it worse for women do you think? I mean are women particularly prone to this?

A: Not especially, I mean I’ve worked with a lot of men where that’s happened as well but yes –

H: Oh dear. But there is an answer – we hope. Tony you’ve had a lot of success with your weight loss programme, you’ve come in from Sydney for us today so thanks very much, lovely to see you. How did your programme come about?

B: It came about because we wanted to do something more proactive in my industry which is pharmacy. I got sick and tired of dispensing medication to people who are just basically overweight. I was dispensing medication for diabetes, for cholesterol and blood pressure and depression we also found was driving a lot of obesity because when people get depressed they comfort eat, and comfort eating is like a merry-go-round, you can’t get off.

H: Yes so that was why it was developed but how was it actually developed though, how did you go about it?

B: We developed it because I was working on a programme that was devised by a multi-national company, but they ran out of stock. We did so well and sold so much of their product, they were air freighting it in from Germany to Sydney Australia, and you can appreciate that they ran out of money, they couldn’t keep it up, and that forced me to do my own thing, so we found a manufacturer in Australia who helped out and that’s how my brand came about

H: And sum up for us how it actually works then, what is the Tony Ferguson plan?

B: It works on a principal of depriving your body of enough energy so that you have to start burning your own fat store. Once you start burning your own fat store to create glucose for energy, it’s inevitable that you lose weight. What we’ve done with a balanced diet, it’s not a total meal replacement, it’s only partial, so that we maybe suggest breakfast or lunch with assorted fruits as well in between as a snack. And in the evening you can have your steak or your fish or your chicken, and the thing that we also recommend highly is unlimited green leafy vegetables

H: Oh ok

B: And some people have never seen a green leaf vegetable. Some people just live on fast food in Australia and we’ve found over here that’s very similar, the American fast food culture has infected both of our countries and people just go for these highly processed foods and get hooked on them

H: Yes. Because of the salt content and what have you I suppose

B: Well it’s the high glycaemic index of the highly processed food and the higher the glycaemic index the faster it hits your bloodstream and it’s very hard for people to get off that sort of food, it becomes addictive

H: Yes. But we tend to think of Australians as being really healthy don’t we, living in bikinis, all sunny all the time eating lettuce, so there obviously was a demand for it in Australia

B: Well I know a guy in Australia who claimed he ate 6 family-sized pizzas in one sitting

H: Wow

B: Now that’s an extraordinary amount of carbohydrate and – but he is addicted to it. That’s not untypical. Or atypical

H: So you helped him with your plan then?

B: Yes we’ve taken 100 kilos off that man already

H: Wow

B: Which is equivalent of 200 pounds

H: So it is a sort of global problem then really obesity isn’t it?

B: Oh yes

H: What are your fears then, it’s very bad for you to be obese isn’t it, but it is manageable

B: Well the problem is that there’s so much money being thrown at the fast food culture in this country, in our country, wherever you take the television you find the fast food operators are spending more money on advertising and unfortunately it becomes a habit

H: Ok well not good for any of us is it. Well if you’re trying to lose weight and also trying to keep that weight off then we’ve got some really good tips for you, so stay with us

Break

H: Well if you’ve just joined us we are live and interactive today so if you have any questions for our guests on the important issue of healthy dieting then get them into us now and we’ll be taking some of those questions a little bit later. But Sue what are the important guidelines for us to follow when it comes to weight loss programmes? We don’t want the yo-yo dieting – there are a few pitfalls that people can fall into aren’t there? What sort of things should we be avoiding?

A: Well I suppose the most dangerous thing is to think of losing the weight quickly, and of losing too much weight. For most of us the weight doesn’t go on overnight so we can’t really expect it to go off overnight, so any sort of crash diet using some sort of fad like a cabbage soup diet or a grapefruit diet, anything that sounds nutritionally unbalanced is not a good idea as well. Because we’re evolved to need lots of different nutrients in our diet so if you try and live on only one food it’s going to be boring and it’s going to be nutritionally unbalanced as well

H: Ok so Tony moving onto you, how does your programme differ from other well-known diets such as Weight Watchers- I mean we’ve all sort of tried these things and sometimes been successful. Explain to us how your programme actually works?

B: It works on the principle of the low glycaemic index of the food, and the lower the gycaemic index the longer it takes to dissolve in your blood, so that’s essentially what we focus on. Every recipe in every one of our cook books, and we have so many cookbooks in Australia, we’ve just released two here, but every recipe is based on a slow release of the food in that cookbook

H: And what sort of foods are we talking about then, give me some examples?

B: Ok we’re talking one in particular I’m talking about is cauliflower

H: Ok

B: There’s not enough cauliflower being eaten by our kids, and it’s a great way to introduce kids to a green leaf vegetable, so we have a recipe for cauliflower popcorn

H: Oh wow

B: Which tastes great, you add a bit of seasoning to it, the kids love the flavour and they can eat an unlimited amount of it while they’re watching telly or doing their homework

H: Oh wow so cauliflower – would you actually have to eat the green leaf as well or is it just the white head?

B: No, no just the cauliflower itself. You make it into a floret, and you bake it in the oven and it’s delicious

H: I never eat cauliflower; you’re making me feel really bad now. Maybe I should eat some cauliflower popcorn, I should look that one up, it sounds like fun. But perhaps the biggest issue for most of us is how we keep that weight off when we’ve lost it. How do we stop those pounds creeping back on? Any tips Tony?

B: Well if you continue to eat a low glycaemic index food, and you serve your family with a low glycaemic index meal, then you’ll never put the weight back on, it’s impossible. It’s only when you go back to eating the highly processed foods like pizza, and mud cake, cheese cake

H: Right

B: The list is endless of all those products that are available in coffee shops right through every shopping centre in the western world, but once you go back to the yo-yo style you’re going to put weight back on, but if you live by the low glycaemic index, which is the good quality protein and lots of green leaf veg and good fruit, you will keep it off

H: Then you’re sorted. But what about exercise, presumably you’ve got to – that goes hand-in-hand as well does it?

B: Well of course, yes. But having said that my best friend is quadriplegic

H: Ah

B: He has to be lifted into his wheelchair in the morning and put back into bed at night, but he had this huge belly and he’s got use of his hands, couldn’t even reach his shoes he was so big in the belly, so what I suggested to him was that he should just go on a programme for a couple of months and improve the quality of his life, so that’s extraordinary the difference it’s made to him, he can actually now drive a modified vehicle.

H: That’s amazing isn’t it?

B: So you can do it as long as you change what you put on your table

H: Yes

B: But exercise of course is important

H: Yes so Sue is it sort of changing your mindset really just to what you should be eating, because I know that if you eat a lot of chocolate and what have you, you do feel like all your sort of blood is toxic, that’s how I feel and you feel like you need an apple, and it’s just sort of changing the way that your brain works I suppose?

A: It is, I think it’s really important to look at now just what we eat but how we eat, so how quickly are you eating, are you eating just in front of the TV, so you don’t have time for your brain to register it, all those sorts of things can really affect how we feel about our food and whether we actually acknowledge that we’ve had something to eat. So try and slow down your eating, try and maybe if you can eat with other people, make it a family meal so that you’re actually registering that you’ve done something.

H: Ok that’s a good point actually. Well we’ve reached that point in the programme when it’s time for your questions and we’ve certainly had plenty of them coming in. It’s obviously a subject that many of you identify with, I think we all do really; we’re always dieting in this country. So let’s have a little look, we’ve got one in from Lizzie, a question in from Lizzie, she said “I’ve had success using diet pills in the past, what’s the problem with using pills occasionally to regulate my weight?” What’s the problem with diet pills then? Are they the devil’s food?

A: There are two problems with diet pills really, first of all there’s the safety, and there are quite a lot of unregulated diet pills on the internet that have got quite unpleasant side-effects, and there have been deaths as well in the United States from things like heart disease but also psychiatric disturbances from some of them. So the first one is safety, and the second one is really there’s a lot that are really ineffective so really that’s just money down the drain. It’s money you could be spending on actually buying healthier foods or maybe doing some activities as a family, so they can really be a drain on your purse. There’s only one diet pill that’s actually effective and safe and that’s available from the GP but even from that one, will only lead to a little bit extra weight loss because it affects the enzyme that we use to digest fat, so even that’s not a magic bullet

H: Try and avoid those if you can. So Tony your weight loss plan is the one to go for I should imagine. Emma from Tunbridge says “I tried so many different diets but always but back on any weight I’ve managed to lose.” Which is what we were saying earlier. “How will this diet be different?”

B: Because I will teach her that she has to change what she’s putting on her family’s table, it’s as simple as that, and if you move from the processed white floured foods down to the low glycaemic index foods you will never put the weight back on

H: Ok well it’s worth a try then isn’t it? Well thanks very much for coming in then, both of you. It’s been really interesting to talk to you and you can find much more information about Tony’s diet on the website, and there’s loads of information on there, there’s recipes, there’s a forum – it’s nice to have support from other dieters isn’t it when you’re doing these things? There’s jokes, it’s brilliant so please do go to the website for more information www.tonyferguson.com. Thanks to my guests and good luck all of you out there, you can do it. See you next time. Bye bye