Tackling obesity is about establishing good eating habits that you can stick to for the rest of your life.
Being overweight or obese can contribute to a range of health problems including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, strokes and even psychological disorders. Whether you are already obese or overweight, or at risk of becoming so, it is important to make healthy food and lifestyle choices. We spoke to Tabitha Hume, a registered dietician, about simple, healthy food swaps to make, to combat obesity while keeping up energy levels throughout the day, every day.
Being overweight or obese can contribute to a range of health problems including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, strokes and even psychological disorders. Whether you are already obese or overweight, or at risk of becoming so, it is important to make healthy food and lifestyle choices. We spoke to Tabitha Hume, a registered dietician, about simple, healthy food swaps to make, to combat obesity while keeping up energy levels throughout the day, every day.
Before she outlined the food swaps, Tabitha explained her approach to tackling and preventing obesity:
- Follow a diet that is consistent and that you can stick to for the rest of your life. Yo-yo dieting helps people to lose weight quickly, then when they return to normal eating, they gain all the weight that they lost and find it even harder to lose it.
- Eat the right carbohydrates. These must be low GI, which means that they deliver a slow and gentle release of energy into your body. High GI carbs deliver a fast release of energy and cause a spike in the hormone insulin, which encourages your body to store fat. However, going carb free is unsustainable and dangerous in the long term.
- Reduce the amount of fat and oil that you eat. We do need a small amount of good oils, but unfortunately, 90% of the fast food available today is way too high in fat.
- Reduce the animal products that you eat – including meat, fish, eggs or dairy. We should be eating few if any animal products. Where you can, substitute animal proteins for plant-based proteins such as quinoa, beans, lentils, soya and chick peas. Also, Half the volume of your plate should be fruit or green or yellow vegetables
- Find ways to spend your day moving. We don’t move enough – we don’t walk to work, cut down trees or hoe a field. It’s not about doing a hectic gym session every day, it’s about taking regular breaks from your desk to get your heart rate up and your muscles moving.
- Address the emotions that drive you to overeat. Many people seek food as their sole source of joy. Try to find other things in life to bring you happiness, and you might be able to break that bad relationship with food.
- Dieticians no longer focus on calorie cutting. Instead we encourage our patients to eat a diet that’s incredibly low in fat and high in the right carbohydrates and plant-based food. With this approach, you naturally restrict calories while still eating frequently and satisfyingly.
Whether you want to lose weight, or just to eat more healthily, food swaps are a great way to go. Changing your eating habits in this way means you get more nutrients and less of the bad stuff, without feeling deprived. Happy swapping!