Personal Fitness Professional - March 2008 - (Page 13) Those journals included, among others, New England Journal of Medicine; Obesity Reviews; American Journal of Preventive Medicine; International Journal of Obesity; Obesity Research; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; Journal of Nutrition; Obesity; Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology; and Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. What I found is that there are a very large number of factors associated with successful weight maintenance — 39, in fact. Some are intuitive, and some would not have come to mind, but all are “positively” associated with maintenance: QUALITY OF INTAKE — The better the quality of one’s intake, the more likely one is to maintain lost weight. And by “quality of intake,” we know all about veggies, fruits, whole grains, lean protein and low-fat (or no-fat) dairy. counterproductive in that we are probably sedentary when we are watching it, our brains are passive (more so than when reading a book or a magazine, which also involves turning pages), we are likely “mindlessly” eating, and our TV watching is crowding out the hours during which we might otherwise be moving our bodies in chores or exercise. DAILY WEIGHING — That is, daily weighing is positively associated with weight maintenance. That stands to reason in that one is more likely to “catch” a weight gain if one weighs daily rather than infrequently. 6 7 GREATER WEIGHT LOSS — One is more likely to keep the weight off if the amount lost was a sizeable number. There will be exceptions, of course. ➤ 1 LOW VARIETY OF CALORICALLY DENSE FOOD — A calorically dense food (sounds like a good thing, but it’s a bad thing) is a food that, ounce for ounce, packs a large number of calories. Visualize, for example, raisins versus grapes. Ounce for ounce, raisins will pack more of a calorie punch than will an identical weight of grapes. So, consuming a small variety of dense foods is positively associated with maintenance. 2 1 FACE-TO-FACE ACCOUNTABILITY — When my clients saw this one on the list of factors associated with maintenance, they probably figured I made this one up. I didn’t. It appears that folks attempting to maintain weight do better when they have face-to-face accountability. The “accountant,” though, doesn’t have to be a fitness trainer, I’d argue, but it does need to be someone to whom the “maintainer” will be accountable. 3 LOW VARIETY OF ALL FOOD GROUPS — Yes, to maintain weight loss, not only does it help that you have a low variety of calorically dense foods, but it helps to have a low variety of all foods. Practically speaking, I find that my clients who are successful in their maintenance tend to eat a limited, but nutritious, variety of foods. Part of what’s going on here is that eating the same foods makes calorie counting much easier. 4 LOW TELEVISION VIEWING — Television is a wonderful invention, and its offerings over the years have enriched our lives. Relative to maintaining weight, though, TV is 5 MARCH2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM 13 http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.