Weight Loss – Behind The Food Nutrition by Veronica Lim

Category: Weight Loss

7 Reasons Why It’s So Hard To Lose Weight…

7 May 20198 November 2020
by Veronica Lim

I have to confess that the last year has been more sedentary for me, with hours of full on research and report-writing, and If you’re like me, then you will most likely have noticed how much harder it is to keep weight off during the menopausal years. And if not, then you probably know someone else who has this challenge. The things that worked in our 20s or 30s and maybe even early 40s no longer have the same effect.

Why do so many women at menopausal age struggle?

It’s not just about “calories in, calories out” or “eat less, exercise more”. If it were, we would all be sorted. Here are seven reasons why it can feel so hard to lose weight at menopause.

(1) Dieting or not eating enough

This is the most common issue I see with many clients. They may not “be” on a diet and they may not think they are undereating, but they are, which ironically, is stopping them from losing weight. This is especially pertinent for those of us who have consistently been on and off diets or yo-yo dieted in the past.

Consistently undereating reduces your resting metabolic rate or RMR. Your resting metabolism is what your body does when you are doing absolutely nothing – like beating your heart, growing your nails and hair, digesting your food, replacing cells, processing your pee and so on. When you don’t eat enough over a period of time, your body lowers your RMR. Basically, it powers down, just as your mobile phone does when running low on battery, going onto low power mode. The trouble is, it isn’t so quick to bring it back up again, which means that when you return to the same intake of calories as you did before, the pounds pile back on, and more.

Quite simply, your body now needs less to function, so it stores the rest away. I know, that’s really annoying. But all is not lost, because it’s possible to work with your body, to raise its RMR again, but it’s not just about the calories.

(2) Prolonged stress

When our bodies experience stress, it releases a stress hormone, known as cortisol. Cortisol has a few functions in our body and one of them is raise blood sugar levels, to help to handle the stressor. Your body does this because it thinks that you need the energy to either fight or flee. This kicks insulin, another hormone, into action, because your body doesn’t like to have too much sugar in the blood.

So to keep it in a narrow range, insulin tells the cells in your muscles to take up the sugar and use it for the energy you need to fight or flee. But, if you’re under prolonged and chronic stress, resulting in elevated cortisol and insulin at the same time for an extended period of time, the muscle cells can’t take up any more sugar as you’re not using up that energy by fighting or running, but simply sitting at your desk… so fat cells come to the rescue.

Yes, the body makes new fat cells if it has to, so it can store all that excess energy. Worse still, cortisol breaks down muscle, so over time, you can end up with less muscle and more fat.

Now here’s the thing. It’s not just mental and emotional stress that does this. It’s also physiological stress – things that cause your body to be stressed – like skipping meals or under-eating, or not getting enough sleep. What’s more, during menopause, fluctuating hormones add to the load. That’s why it’s even more important at this time to reduce stress levels as much as possible, and reduce your cortisol levels.

(3) Eating the wrong foods

You possibly know about this one and may even have tried to address it already – high sugar foods and highly refined carbohydrates. These are converted very quickly into sugar, which can sharply spike your blood sugar levels, which cues insulin to bring the blood sugar levels back down again.

We’ve already seen that insulin tells cells in the muscles to take up the blood sugar, and any excess gets turned into fat. This is even more significant during menopause, when oestrogen levels start to drop. The process is not well understood, but it is known that oestrogen plays a role in helping to regulate blood sugar and the sensitivity of the cells to insulin messaging, known as insulin sensitivity.

So, less oestrogen means reduced insulin sensitivity, means cells not taking up the sugar, and hence, the making of fat cells to store that excess energy. In other words, once we hit the menopause, our bodies become more susceptible to the effect of eating food high in sugar and/or highly refined carbohydrates.

Instead of high-sugar and highly refined carbohydrates, eat unprocessed “smart carbs” such as sweet potato, lentils, chick peas, or butternut squash, as examples, which provide a slower and steadier conversion to blood sugar.

(4) Under- or over-exercising

Along with the under-eating, this is also a common issue. Exercising is important, we all know that, and the idea of under-exercising is not likely to be a surprise to you. But did you know that over-exercising could sabotage weight loss?

Exercise improves insulin sensitivity, and as we have seen, less oestrogen means reduced insulin sensitivity. That’s why exercise becomes even more important during the menopausal years. But there is a fine balance in terms of how much exercise is needed and at what levels of intensity. Exactly where this balance is, is individual.

Exercising for too long or at too high an intensity, increases cortisol, which can lead to less muscle and more fat (see Prolonged stress at 2 above). Ouch, that’s just the opposite of what one might expect. The key then, is to start off with a moderate intensity aerobic or cardio-exercise for at least half an hour, five days a week. Examples of this include brisk walking or walking uphill, or cycling, and you can gauge if you are at moderate intensity by the “talk test”, which means that you can comfortably chat while doing the exercise. If you can’t, you’re going too hard. To preserve muscle mass, you need to also include some resistance training twice a week. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean using weights, as you can do bodyweight exercises, using the weight of your body as resistance.

(5) Overloading your liver

The liver is an incredible organ which we cannot live without. It lives just under our ribcage on the right hand side, and it plays a key role in processing fat, which makes it a crucial organ in the context of weight loss. Another of its key jobs is neutralising chemicals and toxins and getting them ready for excretion.

The truth is, our livers really have their work cut out for them, because the world that we live in today, is filled with toxins – from pesticides and plastics, to chemicals in our foods, cleaning materials and personal toiletries and cosmetics. To give you an idea as to how much our liver potentially has to contend with, consider that there are over 80,000 chemicals in commerce that are registered for use with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Further, excess oestrogen is a bodily chemical that the liver is also responsible for detoxifying and getting ready for excretion. But if the liver is overloaded, it can’t do this its job as effectively, and this may result in excess oestrogen, which may contribute to oestrogen dominance and related menopausal symptoms. What’s more, oestrogen itself plays a role in supporting liver health and its ability to process fats. With reduced oestrogen levels as a result of menopause, looking after your liver health becomes even more important.

With all that to contend with, perhaps it’s no wonder that our liver may deprioritise processing fat loss! To support the liver, eat plenty of vegetables of all colours of the rainbow, including dark leafy greens, steer clear of high-sugar foods and refined carbohydrates as already mentioned, and hydrate well.

Also reduce and limit your exposure to toxins from cleaning products, plastics and personal products.Yes, alcohol too. Limit your intake or quit completely, saving it for special occasions, as it places a burden on your liver, because the body sees it as a toxin which the liver has to handle first, above all else. Some people like kombucha as a replacement.

(6) Ignoring your gut microbiome

Research in the gut microbiome and its role in health has been burgeoning over recent years. It is now known that gut bacteria play multiple roles, including supporting our immune system, and turning carbohydrates into short-chain fatty acids which are used by the intestinal cells as a source of nutrients and energy for repair and maintenance. An imbalance between friendly and unfriendly bacteria can therefore have a significant impact on our health.

While this is important, no matter what stage of our lives we are at, it can become more noticeable at menopause, because the gut microbiome can also impact oestrogen levels. These gut bacteria are referred to as the estrobolome. These bacteria produce an enzyme called β-glucuronidase, which frees up oestrogen that the liver has already bound up ready for excretion, allowing it to recirculate. This translates to increased circulating oestrogen levels which may contribute to oestrogen dominance, and… weight loss resistance.

The good news is that the food that we eat greatly influences the composition of our gut bacteria. Eat foods that are rich in fibre (such as beans and legumes), polyphenols (deeply coloured fruits and vegetables) and prebiotics (which are foods that the bacteria love, and include Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus, oats and apples. Eat fermented foods to help maintain your gut bacteria also, such as kefir, sauerkraut and kimchi. Finally, ditch any intake of artificial sweeteners which can encourage the growth of unfriendly bacteria.

(7) Inflammation

Inflammation is part of our immune or defense system, and is our body’s response to stress or injury. Inflammation can be a good thing. For example, when you sprain your ankle, you feel pain, there is swelling, redness and heat, which are signs of inflammation and your body attempting to protect and heal the area. After doing its job, inflammation should then subside, but if it doesn’t and carries on to become chronic, it can contribute to health issues, such as hormone imbalances (e.g. insulin resistance), cardiovascular disease, diabetes or obesity. While fat itself contributes to inflammation, inflammation itself can also contribute to belly fat and weight gain. It then becomes a vicious circle.

But what else can cause inflammation? In short, our modern lifestyle. We’ve already covered a number of these – such as eating the wrong things (sugar, unhealthy oils and fats, hidden food sensitivities), nutrient deficiencies, stress, poor sleep, imbalance in the gut microbiome, hidden infections and environmental toxins.

The role of oestrogen in the body is wide-reaching and complex. It has both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory roles. In menopause, oestrogen levels fall, and this may have an impact on how inflammation persists in the body at this time. Start tackling inflammation by eating an anti-inflammatory diet and anti-inflammatory foods, and implementing the other tips mentioned earlier.

If you’re suffering from fat loss resistance, there may be different reasons for it, and this can be different for different people. It isn’t just about “eat less, exercise more” or just about calories or low fat, as you may have been led to believe. Fat or weight loss resistance is multi-factorial. But it is possible to address, steadily and step by step.

You can be trimmer and healthier.

Let’s get you feeling better.

Much love.

References

Brady, C.W. (2015) Liver disease in menopause. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 21(25), pp. 7613–7620.

Morello-Frosch, R., Cushing, L.J., Jesdale, B.M., Schwartz, JM., Guo, W., Guo, T., Wang, M., Harwani, S., Petropoulou, S.-S.E., Duong, W., Park, J.-S., Petreas, M., Gajek, R., Alvaran, J., She, J., Dobraca, D., Das, R., and Woodruff, T.J. (2016) Environmental Chemicals in an Urban Population of Pregnant Women and Their Newborns from San Francisco, Environmental Science and Technology, 50 (22), pp 12464–12472

Palmisano,B.T., Zhu, L. and Stafford, J.M. (2017) Estrogens in the Regulation of Liver Lipid Metabolism, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, 1043, pp. 227–256.

Rock, K.D. and Patisau, H.B. (2018) Environmental Mechanisms of Neurodevelopmental Toxicity. Current Environmental Health Reports.5(1), pp. 145-157

Energy, Thyroid and Adrenals

Chances Are You’re Sitting Too Much And Why You…

4 May 20198 November 2020
by Veronica Lim

If you’re reading this, it’s more than likely that you sit too much – in the car, at your desk in the office, during your commute, in the evenings after work. Even playing games these days is usually done sitting down, in front of a computer. It’s no wonder that most of us spend between 55 and 70 percent of our day sitting down, with some estimates putting this figure at closer to 90 percent when sleep is included in the equation.

Studies from Canada, Australia and the US show an association between a sedentary lifestyle and premature mortality. But before you stop reading this article thinking that this doesn’t apply to you because you work out regularly, think again. Studies have differentiated between too much sittingand too little exercise, whereby one can be an “Active Couch Potato” – someone who’s physically active (spending at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most days of the week), yet sits for extended periods of time.

“Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death,” says Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative.

Coined as “the new smoking”, prolonged sitting can compromise our metabolic health and here are some reasons why you should care.

Reduced Brain Function & Depression

Activity increases blood flow and releases mood-enhancing and cognitive chemicals. With inactivity comes reduced blood flow throughout our body, leading to a slowing down of brain function. The result is brain fogginess. One study also suggested that sitting for more than seven hours a day increased the risk of depression by 47% when compared to sitting for four hours or less per day.

Heart Disease

With blood pooling, blood flow tends to get sluggish allowing fatty acids to build quicker resulting in plaque, elevated cholesterol and eventually heart disease. If we are up and moving, fatty acids are better flushed from the circulatory system.

Colon cancer

Prolonged sitting for a good portion of your work day can also increase the risk for certain cancers. While not fully understood, scientists think the lack of movement could be linked to an inflammatory cascade of metabolic processes, triggering overactive cell growth, particularly in the colon and also linking to endometrial cancer.

Muscle degeneration and tightening

When we are up and moving about, standing or even sitting up straight, our abdominal muscles support our back. But when hunched over, the abdominal muscles relax and hang loose. As a result of this lack of use, the muscles weaken and extra pressure is transferred to the back muscles. This muscle imbalance can eventually lead to a condition called sway back, resulting in back pain.

In addition, sitting for extended periods can also lead to a shortening and tightening of the hip flexors. Over time, this reduces the range of motion in the hips, increasing the risk for imbalance and instability, leading to an increased risk for falls.

Herniated discs are also a common condition brought about by prolonged sitting. The psoas muscle – the muscle running from the hips to the spine that provides stability – tightens. Over time, it shortens up from non-use and pulls the lower spine forward putting excessive pressure on some of the intervertebral discs. Eventually these disks, which function as sponge-like shock absorbers in between the vertebrae, squeeze out, causing pain and sometimes surgery to correct the condition.

So, should you race out and invest in a standing desk?

Not necessarily, because standing still for prolonged periods is not without issues either. It can bring on blood pooling also, along with heart disease, varicose veins, joint pain in the knees and muscle fatigue. However, standing is more active and therefore better than sitting on its own, with a UK study finding that there is a significant increase in heart rate and energy expenditure, when comparing the two.

A sit-stand desk may therefore be of benefit, but the bottom-line is that it is neither standing nor sitting per se, but intermittent movementthat is the key.

In other words, the solution is to frequently move around and not sit or stand for too long at a time. In fact, studies have found that positive changes to metabolic biomarkers were associated with breaks in sedentary time. This included transitional movements, from sitting to standing, or from standing still to walking.

The bottom-line then is to think how you can make your day more active. The ideal would be to move between 5 and 10 minutes out of each hour. What simple changes could you make to your day?

Here are some suggestions.

Get up and get a cup of coffee or glass of water
Hand deliver a message or walk over and talk to a colleague instead of emailing it
Take a walk for 15 minutes after eating lunch
Take the stairs instead of the elevator
Park further away from your office building or get off one stop sooner than usual and walk in the rest of the way
Use the loos that are further away from your desk
Stand and stretch every now and again
Combine your movement breaks with the “pomodoro” technique – a productivity strategy that uses short, frequent breaks
Stand up during a meeting or have walking meetings when possible
Pop out to get your own lunch instead of asking a colleague to get yours when they’re out to get theirs
Set your timer at intermittent intervals to remind you to take a break, or download an app like the Dejal Time Out which dims your screen when it’s time for a break

Adopt the curiosity that comes with a youthful mind and experiment to find what works for you. It’s not always easy when you start but like any habit, it becomes easier with both time and practice. And the next time that colleague who’s been annoying you, because they seem to take such frequent breaks, goes for yet another walk? Rather than getting vexed again, take that as your cue to take a leaf out of their book and do your health a favour!

Balance Your Hormones

3 Quick Tricks To Make Drinking Water A Simple…

4 May 20198 November 2020
by Veronica Lim

Most of us know that we should drink at least 8 eight-ounce glasses of water per day as part of our good health strategy. According to the European Food Safety Authority, adequate water intake for sedentary individuals needs to be 2 liters/68 ounces per day for women and 2.5 liters/84 ounces per day for men. This amount increases, depending on the weather, level of physical activity and if pregnant or not. What’s more, as women get older, thirst sensitivity to changes in the level of fluid in the body reduces, and risk of dehydration can increase, due to drinking less fluids.

Water makes up about 60-70% of our body, and is present in our cells, tissues and organs. It is absolutely essential for life; while we can get away without eating any food for an extended period of time, we can only go for a few days without water. Maintaining the balance of water in our bodies is so important, that we have numerous amazing mechanisms to monitor and adjust the physiological functioning of various organs in our body to make sure we remain in a state of “euhydration,” defined as “the absence of absolute or relative hydration or dehydration”.

This diagram gives you a simplified indication of what actually goes on in our body to do this. No need to read all the detail unless you want to, but it’s good to glance it over to get a sense of how hard our bodies work to keep us alive through regulating our hydration.

Source: Je’quier and Constant (2010)

Reasons to Drink Plenty of Water

We get our water from what we drink, what we eat and what we produce internally. But we aren’t able to produce enough water through our metabolism nor is there enough in the foods we eat to fulfil our body’s needs, and so, we need to make sure that we consume sufficient water.

Water is needed as a building material; more is needed when the body is growing. It is also needed for the metabolism of the food that we eat (being involved in hydrolysis of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and other nutrients), as well as being a transport medium for carrying nutrients to cells and removing waste products or toxins from them. It is also the main constituent of blood and is essential for the proper functioning of our organs and our body systems. It’s no wonder that too much loss of water in our body is life-threatening.

Water also provides lubrication for our joints, mucus, saliva, gastro-intestinal secretions, and helps our cells maintain their shape and function – just think, water is taken out of our cells when we are dehydrated and this causes our cells to shrink. It also helps us regulate our body temperature, through adjusting how much we sweat or pee.

Water also helps keep you mentally alert. Studies have shown that even mild dehydration (1-2% of body water) can affect alertness, the ability to concentrate and short-term memory function, and can also affect mood and feelings of anxiety and irritability.

Further, dehydration can lead to the development of headache, as a result of reduced total blood volume and dehydration in the brain tissues. Some observational studies further note that this can also trigger migraines and prolong them. For those with water deprivation-induced headache, relief from consuming water was experienced within 30 minutes to 3 hours.

Water can also help you maximise your physical performance. Athletes commonly lose about 6-10% of body weight in water during high intensity exercise, but it was found that even with mild dehydration as low as 2%, physical performance was reduced. Intense exercise or high heat can lead to experiencing more fatigue, reduced motivation, an altered ability to regulate body temperature and reduced endurance. It can also affect the perception of difficulty, making exercise feel more challenging, both mentally and physically. Thankfully, replenishing our level of hydration can reverse this and also reduce oxidative stress that results from high intensity exercise.

What’s more, water can also boost your metabolism and assist with weight loss. In two studies, consuming just half a liter (17 ounces) of water increased metabolic rate by 24-30% for up to an hour and a half. Some of this effect was a result of the body heating the temperature of the water to body temperature, and hence, it is more helpful to drink the water cold. Remember though, that drinking water alone will not increase your metabolism enough to show any appreciable weight loss by itself, but when added to your other weight loss efforts it will help, plus it will keep you from being dehydrated – a major nemesis to weight loss.

Sadly though, the majority of us do not drink nearly as much as our body needs to function at optimal efficiency.

3 Tricks to Make Drinking Water a Simple Healthy Habit

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” – H. Auden (1907-1973)

Due to the way in which our thirst mechanism works, the feeling of thirst disappears before water balance is reached. So, how can you tell whether or not you’re dehydrated? Here’s a list of signs and symptoms:

Signs of mild to moderate dehydration	Signs of severe dehydration
Dry, sticky mouth	Extreme thirst
Sleepiness or tiredness	Extreme fussiness or sleepiness in infants and children; irritability and confusion in adults
Thirst	Very dry mouth, skin and mucous membranes
Decreased urine output	Lack of sweating
Few or no tears when crying	Little or no urination – any urine that is produced will be dark yellow or amber
Muscle weakness	Sunken eyes
Headache	Shrivelled and dry skin that lacks elasticity and does not “bounce back” when pinched into a fold
Dizziness or light-headedness	Low blood pressure
	Rapid heartbeat
	Fever
	Delirium or unconsciousness

Source: Mayo Clinic (2008) cited by Je’quier and Constant (2010)

Here are 3 tricks you can use to help get your daily water quota:

1) Eat water-enriched foods

About 80% of our daily water intake comes from drinking; the other 20% comes from the food we eat. Vegetables, such as lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes are 95% water. Fresh fruits like blueberries, apples and oranges are 85% water and are loaded with good nutrients and minerals; watermelon is 95% water. Supplementing your daily water intake with the recommend daily amount of fresh fruits and vegetables is a good way to ensure you are getting enough water.

2) Add flavour to your water

Adding flavour to your water does a couple of things. Firstly, it’s a simple way to make it taste better, which is not only great for a change, but also makes you more likely to drink it. And secondly, it can help provide some of your daily amount of vitamin C and replace electrolytes lost through sweating. You can add lemon to your water, for example. The juice of one large lemon has over 30% of your daily requirement of vitamin C and provides potassium, magnesium, sodium and calcium. You could also try lime, cucumber, strawberries, kiwi fruit, ginger, mint – let your imagination run wild and try different combinations, like strawberry, basil and cucumber.

3) Put a day’s worth of water in a bottle

If you don’t track what you’re drinking, you’ll most likely not drink enough. A really easy way to keep track of how much water you’re drinking is to fill up a 2 liter (68 ounces) bottle with water and keep that in the refrigerator. You could also keep it on your desk, and getting up every now and again to grab your bottle from the fridge gets you moving which is another simple healthy habit (read why here). Keep drinking and refilling your glass throughout the day until the entire bottle is empty. This way, you’ll know you’ll soon get into the habit of drinking at least 2 liters a day, and you can gradually increase it to your own optimal level after that. Once you get used to drinking this amount of water each day, you’ll really notice how much better you feel.

OK! All set? Drink up more water for the week and let me know how you go!

References

Boschmann, M., Steiniger, J., Franke, G., Birkenfeld, A.L., Luft, F.C. and Jordan, J. (2006) Water Drinking Induces Thermogenesis through Osmosensitive Mechanisms. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 92(8): pp. 3334–3337

Boschmann, M., Steiniger, J., Hille, U., Tank, J., Adams, F., Sharma, A.M., Klaus, S., Luft, F.C. and Jordan, J. (2003) Water-Induced Thermogenesis. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. 88(12): pp. 6015–6019

EFSA NDA Panel (EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies) (2010) Scientific Opinion on Dietary Reference Values for water. EFSA Journal 8(3): pp. 1459-1507.

Ganio. M.S., Armstrong, L.E., Casa, D.J., McDermott, B.P., Lee, E.C., Yamamoto, L.M., Marzano, S., Lopez, R.M., Jimenez, L., Le Bellego, L., Chevillotte, E. and Lieberman, H.R. (2011) Mild dehydration impairs cognitive performance and mood of men. British Journal of NutritionVol. 106(10), pp. 1535–1543Je’quier, E. and Constant, F. (2010) Water as an essential nutrient: the physiological basis of hydration. European Journal of Clinical NutritionVol. 64(2), pp. 115–123.

Paik, I.Y., Jeong, M.H., Jin, H.E., Kim, Y.I., Suh, A.R., Cho, S.Y., Roh, H.T., Jin, C.H. and Suh, S.H. (2009) Fluid replacement following dehydration reduces oxidative stress during recovery. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 383(1): pp. 103-107.

Popkin, B.M., D’Anci, K.E. and Rosenberg, I.H. (2010) Water, Hydration and Health. Nutrition Review 68(8): pp. 439-458.

Stachenfeld, N.S. (2014) Hormonal Changes During Menopause and the Impact on Fluid Regulation. Reproductive Science 21(5): pp. 555-561.