• To identify excess adiposity, use your waist-to-height ratio. Your waist should
measure less than half your height.
• The typical American lifestyle and diet is not healthy and leads to overweight
and obesity. We are too sedentary, and our food choices contain too much
saturated fat, meat, refined grains, sodium, added sugars, highly processed
foods, and too many calories. Among these nutrients, high consumption of
sugar and other refined carbohydrates make the greatest contribution to
overweight and obesity.
• Some nutrition experts assert that an optimal diet for attaining and
maintaining normal weight is whole-food plant-based because it is high in
fiber, not calorie-dense and reduces hunger by the elimination of refined
carbohydrates, e.g., white bread, white rice, cookies, crackers, and sugar sweetened
beverages, and the fats in highly processed foods. The Ornish
diet comes the closest to this, and the Mediterranean diet is a close second.
• Successful weight loss requires behavior changes, especially the adoption of a
reduced-calorie diet for losing no more than one pound a week and provide at
least 1,500 calories a day for men and 1,200 calories a day for women.
• To avoid lean body (muscle) loss when losing weight, consume adequate
protein and engage in aerobic (e.g., biking, jogging) and resistance (e.g.,
weight-lifting) physical activities.
• Maintaining weight loss usually requires a high level of physical activity.
Many people who successfully keep weight off exercise an hour a day.
• Many successful dieters have found that consistent monitoring of weight, food
intake, and physical activity is an essential strategy.
• Adherence to a calorie restricted diet, regardless of its macronutrient
composition, is an important determinant of successful loss of weight.
• All weight-loss diets work by limiting calories, regardless of their
composition, and most will provide a short-term improvement in metabolic
biomarkers, but only healthy diets should be considered for long-term
nutrition.
This blog presents opinions and ideas and is intended to provide helpful general information. I am not engaged in rendering advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures and suggestions in that are presented are not in any way a substitute for the advice and care of the reader’s own physician or other medical professional based on the reader’s own individual conditions, symptoms or concerns. If the reader needs personal medical, health, dietary, exercise or other assistance or advice the reader should consult a physician and/or other qualified health professionals. The author specifically disclaims all responsibility for any injury, damage or loss that the reader may incur as a direct or indirect consequence of following any directions or suggestions given in this blog or participating in any programs described in this blog or in the book, The Building Blocks of Health––How to Optimize Your Health with a Lifestyle Checklist (available in print or downloaded at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble and elsewhere). Copyright 2021 by J. Joseph Speidel,
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