Our plans, your health: your questions answered
May is National Obesity Action Month, dedicated to raising awareness about the health issues surrounding obesity. Obesity is linked to a wide range of health problems and it’s well documented that reducing your weight by 5-10% can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. You can make a difference this month by taking ownership of your own health and encouraging others to make healthier choices.
At LighterLife we offer a weight-loss solution that goes far beyond a diet. It can really help you improve your health.
We’ve asked Dr Kelly Johnston, our Head of Nutrition and Research here at LighterLife, to answer some of the questions you’ve asked us about our range of plans and how they can help you improve your health.
Someone following the LighterLife Total plan, a very low calorie diet (VLCD), will take in around 600 kcal a day. There seems to be some confusion about this type of diet being somehow considered unsafe or unsustainable. What are your thoughts on this?
So, to answer the first part of your question, no, VLCDs are not unsafe. In fact, they are quite likely one of the safest weight-loss plans out there in that they are highly regulated and the products should meet strict nutritional criteria. The LighterLife VLCD provides people with all of the vitamins and minerals their body needs without the extra calories, something which is hard to achieve using conventional food restricted to this calorie allowance.
Above and beyond the typically minor side-effects experienced on a VLCD, data collected from studies in which people have consumed formula diets for weeks at a time have shown no adverse effects, providing the plan is used correctly and accordance with instructions. VLCDs have been consumed safely in Europe for over 30 years and are very much an integral part of dietary management of obesity.
As far as them being a sustainable option, published data from independent academic institutes as well as data obtained from our own clients shows that, contrary to popular belief, VLCDs are in fact a sustainable option for successful weight loss. Once clients have got through the first couple of days in which they switch to fat-burning (a process called ketosis), there is a marked effect on appetite which shows that, counterintuitively to the amount of calories being consumed, individuals simply do not feel particularly hungry and are completely sated with their four Foodpacks per days.
It sounds like there are lots of great health benefits associated with VLCDs. So, if someone has a condition like diabetes or high blood pressure, can they follow a VLCD?
We need to be clear about the type of diabetes we are talking about here. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) accounts for 90% of all cases of diabetes and is in a majority of cases a direct consequence of excess body weight. There is emerging data that, in many instances, it can be reversed through weight loss induced by diet, something which was previously thought to be impossible. In fact, there is currently a major multimillion pound study, funded by Diabetes UK and run by researchers in Glasgow and Newcastle, which is investigating the impact of VLCD usage on long-term remission of T2DM.
With high blood pressure, again this in itself will not prevent you from embarking on a VLCD and in fact there are rapidly reported improvements from people with high blood pressure who report needing to reduce their medications after a very short period of time.
However, we would always recommend speaking with your health care practitioner should you be recognised as having T2DM or high blood pressure and taking any medication for either of these, but definitely, our programmes are certainly an option for you.
Recent evidence reveals that the rise in type 2 diabetes also follows the rise in obesity. Is there anything people can do to check their risk of developing type 2 diabetes?
One of the most effective ways to identify your risk of developing or having type 2 diabetes is to measure your waist circumference, and it only takes 10 seconds.
You can find your waist by using your fingers to find the top of your hip bone and the base of your rib cage – your waist is midway between, roughly where your belly button is if you’re still not sure. Take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, then use a tape measure to measure your circumference at this point.
If you’re a woman with a waist circumference of at least 80cm or a man with a waist circumference of at least 94cm and have a BMI above 25, you’re at increased risk from developing type 2 diabetes. If you’re a woman with a waist circumference of ay least 88cm or a man with a waist circumference of at least 102cm and have a BMI above 30, then you’re at significant risk from developing type 2 diabetes.
That’s a pretty handy technique to know! Now, there are some people who think their metabolism will be damaged if they follow a VLCD due to the rapidity of the weight loss. Can you give us your thoughts on that?
Your metabolism will drop ever so slightly when you’re taking in less energy than your body uses and therefore losing weight – but this happens on every single diet that you go on, be it using conventional food and reducing your intake by 500 kcal per day, or using a VLCD like LighterLife Total.
When you reach your goal weight and increase your food intake again, your metabolic rate increases too, but it won’t be quite as high as it was when you were bigger.This is because your lighter body now needs less energy to function than it did when it was heavier, in the same way that a smaller house needs a smaller heating system to keep it warm than a bigger house.
So losing weight following a VLCD won’t negatively affect your metabolism. Just how much weight can you lose using a VLCD?
Well, the amount of weight loss will vary from person to person, but generally speaking on the LighterLife Total plan we advise that you can lose approximately a stone a month. Again, this figure will vary slightly depending on starting weight, but a stone a month is a typical amount of weight loss and certainly a VLCD will result in quicker weight loss than other diet-based weight-loss plans.
LighterLife provides weight-management solutions that focus on the psychological reasons that underpin people’s overeating and there is significant evidence that a therapeutic approach can provide most people with a much better opportunity to change and achieve a healthier, more fulfilled life. We combine a VLCD with weekly group sessions where trained counsellors use techniques such as CBT to help people find out more about themselves and their relationship with food. This also gives them the tools they need to maintain their weight loss in the long term.
If someone loses a stone a month, does that mean they will regain weight just as quickly when they go back to eating conventional food?
So, as already mentioned, what you do during the weight-management phase is key to helping prevent weight regain and maintaining that weight loss, and the journey is far from over once weight-loss goals have been achieved.
Once you’ve lost weight, you also need to re-educate yourself about healthy eating and nutrition and this process starts by moving onto our Management plan, which provides information about reintroducing conventional foods in a step-by-step fashion. You need to experiment with different foods, portion sizes and combinations and create a personalised healthy eating plan that works for you. Doing that and regularly attending our groups – for which there is evidence that it will help you to successfully maintain your weight – are key for keeping you healthy.
Ultimately, you need to be mindful of what you are eating and remember that, once you’ve successfully reintroduced food, you can either use our Management plan as described above or our intermittent fasting plan, Fast, in which you have four LighterLife Foodpacks a day for two days out of five and eat healthily for the other five days. Both are ideal solutions depending on your lifestyle and what fits in best with your schedule.
I saw on Twitter that you’ve just come back from the European Congress on Obesity where you were presenting research you carried out on intermittent fasting. What did the research reveal?
We presented a variety of data, which has been generated as a result of work with our academic partners at the University of Surrey and Kings College London.
One of these studies showed that after just four weeks of intermittent fasting in overweight participants with larger waist circumference, beneficial effects on blood pressure were seen. So, basically we showed that while participants on both a standard ‘continuous energy restriction’ diet or a 5:2 intermittent-energy-restriction (intermittent fasting) diet, in combination with adherence to healthy eating guidelines, resulted in equivalent weight loss and changes in body composition, the 5:2 intermittent fasting resulted in greater reductions in 24-hour and day-time systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and these were clinically significant reductions.
Furthermore, the same study also showed that equivalent improvements in insulin sensitivity were seen between the two dietary intervention groups and that there were benefits after two days on a VLCD for insulin resistance. So this is clear data that intermittent fasting is a credible alternative to conventional dieting and certainly further work needs to be done to determine if the effects on insulin sensitivity have cumulative benefits over the longer term.
So, you can see there are lots of life-changing benefits with VLCDs and intermittent fasting. In January LighterLife was proven best value £ for lb for fast weight loss on ITV’s Save Money: Good Health. So not only can LighterLife help you lose weight and improve your health, our VLCD combined with our unique behaviour-change programme could also be a fantastic, cost-effective solution for helping to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis.
To find out about our weight-loss plans and find your local group, visit lighterlife.com or call our friendly Mentors on 0800 2 988 988.
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