Weight Reduction

Weight reduction

Strapline:

A healthy weight will help you to feel more active and feel good about yourself.  There are many resources available to help you to get started on a weight reduction regime.

Headline/overview

If you are overweight and you would like to improve your fitness, weight reduction is something you can do, safely and successfully and there may be significant benefits for you.  Weight reduction is really about is trying to find a healthier balance by reducing the amount of fat we are carrying without compromising overall health and wellbeing.

Approval score:

We gave this our maximum approval score of 4 stars, meaning there is good evidence of benefit.

How does this work?

Body weight is a delicate topic: we do not want to cause unnecessary negative feelings or feed unhealthy body image preoccupations.  That said, if you are overweight and you would like to improve your fitness, weight reduction is something you can do, safely and successfully and there may be significant benefits for you.  Carrying excess fat puts extra strain on the circulation, the metabolism and skeleton.  Reducing body fat towards a healthy target relieves these stresses and improves your level of fitness.

In addition, getting control over your weight will hopefully give you a psychological boost, improve your self-esteem and give you a well-deserved sense of achievement.

What are the benefits?

You will:

• Feel more active
• Feel good about yourself
• Feel more in control
• Have lower blood pressure
• Have a lower risk of developing diabetes or improved diabetic control

What is the evidence?

There is good published evidence that being overweight comes with risks to our health and active weight management can avoid these risks and lead to a more healthy life

Who would this be good for?

If you are overweight and would like to slim down

If you have gained weight due to treatment for example, with steroids

Who should be careful?

·         Obviously, avoid weight reduction if you are already at or below a healthy weight.

·         If you are having treatment which could cause appetite loss

·         If you have a diagnosis of diabetes, weight reduction could be particularly good for you but needs to be carefully done – with the help of your diabetic nurse or doctor

What do I need to do?

First you will need to work out what your healthy weight should be.  (see chart)

If you are particularly muscular (for example, if you have a very manual job or are an athlete) then you may need to adjust this figure – probably best done with a health care professional

Second, complete a careful food diary for at least one week (two weeks may be better).  Don’t change what you eat yet but be honest about recording exactly what you do eat.

If you use an app such as MyFitnessPal, you will be able to analyse how many calories and the make up of your diet and this may immediately show you ways you can cut calories out of your diet easily.  Obvious things to look for are snacks, sweets and alcohol.

There are various diets you can follow.  We are not going to review them all here.  Slimmer’s World and Weightwatchers both use the motivation of being part of a group and this is popular and quite successful.

The 5:2 diet has the additional benefits that it is quite easy to do and can be kept going even when you are at your target weigtht.  It may also have other health benefits.

In addition to restricting calorie intake, increasing your physical activity at the same time is advisable.  Firstly, this will increase the calorie deficit and assist in you losing unwanted weight.  Secondly, without physical activity, there will be disproportionate loss of muscle rather than fat which is not the goal weight reduction.  Note that if you are increasing your physical activity, you may actually gain some muscle and this will offset the weight loss you are achieving.

Setting goals and monitoring your progress

Set yourself a reasonable target for weight reduction – this should not be more than 2lbs or 1 kg per week.  Continue to record what you eat to help you keep on top of your diet.  Weigh yourself each morning, and record your progress.

Summary

·         A healthy weight will help you to feel more active and improve your overall health and wellbeing.

·         There are many resources available to help you to do this.

·         Remember to keep track of how well you are doing in your PlanBe diary.

Resources

Apps such as MyFitnessPal can help you to track your eating habits.  Visit the Christie’s online resources on diet and nutrition.  In addition, Macmillan's resources on diet and cancer are helpful as are those of Cancer Research UK.