Lose weight fast without dieting

The Hormone Balance Diet, the Gabriel Method, the Soup Diet. At this time of year we are again enticed en masse to follow a new miracle diet. In the hope that this will finally be the trick we’ve all been waiting for, we keep trying. But in the meantime, despite one waste hype after another, we are getting fatter. About half of the Dutch population is overweight. What can we do to make a new line attempt successful?

Professor Martijn Katan is professor of nutrition at the Free University of Amsterdam and author of ‘What is healthy now? Food myths and facts. He tells you what is really certain about the best way to get the pounds off.

Why are we all getting fatter? We now know that losing weight is a matter of eating less and exercising more.

Martijn Katan: “It is not due to our perseverance or our willpower; losing weight just goes against our nature. Our instinct is to stock up on fat as soon as food is available. After all, you never know when you’ll get to eat again. That has long been a valuable instinct. In the days when food was scarce, a few pounds of fat could more or less mean the difference between life and death. But our world has since turned into a lazy country. There is no longer a famine. We live in an unnatural situation with something tempting to eat on every street corner. However, our instincts are unstoppable now that the calories are everywhere. It is a primal urge that is even stronger than sex. You can’t compete on your own.”

So how slim you can be depends mainly on the living environment?

“Yes, our primal instinct becomes a disadvantage in a fattening environment with too much food and too little exercise. So the environment has to change. For example, you can move to a less fatiguing environment, where you can cycle to work, for example. In northern France, entire villages have successfully taken up the fight against obesity. Everyone cooperated, from the doctor and dietician to the supermarket. But also the mayor and the alderman for traffic. They have to ensure that the infrastructure invites you to take your bike or park your car a hundred meters from your house.”

But what if you live in a fattening environment and you still want to lose weight?

“First of all, you have to determine whether it is necessary to lose weight. Because sometimes it is precisely those who fanatically throw themselves into a diet that are not too fat at all. On the other hand, it also happens that people are not overweight according to the scale, while they are still too fat because they have too much belly fat. A good way to determine if you are overweight is therefore to measure the circumference of your waist. To do this, place an inch around your bare stomach between your ribs and your hip bones. For men, less than 94 centimeters is ideal and 102 centimeters is really too much. Women remain the healthiest with a waist circumference of less than 80 centimeters and are overweight at 88 centimeters. Check your waist circumference regularly, so that you know in good time whether things are going in the wrong direction and you need to make adjustments.”

What is the best method to lose weight?

“Losing weight is best done in small steps. If you eat a hundred kilocalories less per day, you will eventually lose five kilos. That just takes years. You can also start with 300 kilocalories less per day, then those five kilos will be lost after six months. After that you have to eat 100 kilocalories per day less than now for the rest of your life, otherwise the kilos will come back on. If you eat fewer calories than you expend, you will lose weight. It’s that simple. You do not lose more weight from certain foods, because it is the amount of calories in them that matters. A calorie from brown beans makes just as fat as a calorie from chocolate, only brown beans do not eat away as well. The second thing you can do is figure out for yourself how you can get more exercise. And I’m not talking about devices such as a rowing machine that is in everyone’s attic at some point. No, it’s about daily exercise: cycling to the supermarket instead of by car, walking with others, but also cleaning or gardening. All movement counts. If you walk, cycle, vacuum or garden for half an hour more every day, you consume exactly the 100 kilo calories extra that you need to not gain weight again after losing weight.”

Isn’t there some simple trick to lose weight?

“What helps is getting rid of the television. People fall off that. We don’t know why. Perhaps because they automatically move more. Or because they no longer mindlessly eat a bag of chips at a movie. But what we do know is that it works. If it is too big a step to stop watching television at all, you can limit the number of hours you spend in front of the television. For example, put a time lock on it. And of course computers count too.”

Can dieting help?

“Anyone can lose weight from a diet. By following a diet and going full throttle for a few months, you can lose a lot of weight. It does not matter which diet you follow. Bread, no bread, lots of proteins or more carbohydrates, it doesn’t matter. It is not the special composition of a diet that makes you lose weight, but the commitment with which you follow the diet. You lose weight because the diet forbids certain things, so that you can no longer spontaneously eat when and what you want.
But losing weight is unpleasant. Because it means you can’t eat what you like. The longer you follow a diet, the greater the resistance becomes. You will crave a nice piece of pastry or a plate of spaghetti. After about three months, the stoppages kick in and the diet is over. After that, four out of five people revert to their old eating habits. And then the lost pounds come back.”

How can you make sure you stay slim?

“It is certainly not simple. You have to realize that you have set yourself a hard task if you want to lose weight permanently. A certain way of moving and a certain way of eating comes with a certain weight. Even after fat has been sucked out with liposuction, that fat will come back if you don’t eat less or exercise more. If you want to fight the pounds, you must be prepared to permanently change your lifestyle. That is not impossible, but it is difficult. That is why it is important to have a plan ready in advance so that you do not fall back into old eating habits after following that diet: which calories do you cut out, which foods do you leave out? You have to immediately face what it takes to maintain the weight you have achieved after the diet or even to lose weight slowly. Staying slim means eating a little less throughout your life.”

The reward of exercise