DIET FACTORS

As spring approaches, the problems of being overweight and diet once again become pressing ones for many women and even men. This is not accidental. In the winter the body is inclined to "amass" fats and stores them up, since the body needs much more energy to keep warm in winter than in the summer, but the consequences of this "keeping warm" often means that these stocks exceed requirements. Everyone knows what the facts are: life style with insufficient exercise, stress, the habit of grabbing a snack instead of sitting down to a meal, fast foods, drinking alcohol, and a love of sweet things… 

As a result, the "spare tyres" that have formed around the hips not only trouble their owners, but may be the cause of serious health problems. 

Stressed out by the kilograms

Women and quite a few men as well prefer different ways of losing weight. It is good that there is plenty of information on the Internet, but the latter abounds with advertisements for super fat-burning remedies, as well as quick-fix exercises and physical work-outs to help you to lose weight quickly. There is no one-size-fits-all remedy, but many people become fanatical in their quest for a panacea, swinging back and forth from despair to hope and, on the contrary, replacing one method by another in the process. It is not superfluous to say that the striving for "fitness" by a number of members of our society, of which there are quite a few, may often become a source of manipulation on the part of unscrupulous people. 

Considering that the average consumer rarely likes to seriously work upon himself, the contemporary pharmaceutical industry is offering an extremely wide range of remedies aimed at quick weight loss. These are both bio-additives, as well as the advertised "diet pills and teas that burn up the body's wastes". The marketing in many companies is set at an unattainably high level, while the promotion of achievements is very effective. For example, one of the well-known companies dealing in bio-additives, "disguises" its activity as a school of diet science, offering body check-ups to determine the ratio of fats to muscle mass to fluids on a special body weight analyser. But this set test cannot give a detailed result and produces an extremely approximate picture of the client's body. Then, for a fairly moderate price, you are offered a three-day course on "eating the right diet"; then you already join a "team" and are introduced to bio-additive consumption, naturally for an unspecified sum, which, although it is not big, amounts to quite a lot, considering the length of the course. 

Weight loss depends on our build  

First of all, the question naturally arises of why we need to lose weight at all. According to the doctor, cosmetician and dietician Rana Barnes, sooner or later being overweight will affect your health. "Not to mention the fact that it is often not very attractive to be fat and makes people look older and an overweight person may subsequently begin to have problems with their heart and suffer from shortness of breath," Rana xanim [mark of respect in addressing a woman in Azerbaijan] told Regionplus. "Imagine what it is like to drag a heavy suitcase around with you all the time."

According to the doctor, the criterion for determining the ideal weight is a person's build. There are known to be three basic types. There is the astenik (mainly thin and well-proportioned, with little fat and a fast metabolism); then the normosthenic (characterised by a thick-set figure, with a developed muscle tone, agile, but insufficient exercise can lead to ensuing weight gain); and the hypersthenic (the most "rounded" of the types with a sluggish metabolism and quick to put on weight). As a rule, it rarely happens that a person only belongs to just one type.

It is primarily the dietician's job to determine a person's build and select the right exercise programme to correct and strengthen the "strong" points in the figure.

The ideal weight is usually calculated by a simple equation called the BMI (Body Mass Index), which shows the ratio of the body to the height and is defined as the ratio of the body mass in kilograms to the squared growth in metres. In keeping with the WHO recommendations, the following BMI classification has been adopted: up to 16, there is a pronounced lack of body mass; 16-18.5 underweight; 18.5-24.99 is normal; 25-30 - overweight, pre-obese; 30-35 obese, Class I; 35-40 obese, Class II; 40 and above, obese, Class III.

According to Rana xanim, the main criterion for the right diet, is primarily correct nutrition. This completely rules out all artificial products, such as crisps and fizzy drinks. Besides this, meat, especially chicken should be organic [from the countryside]: "The chicken in the shops is very often packed with growth hormones which do not have a very good effect on the body," the doctor says.

Another element, almost the most important, is to determine and eliminate the reasons why the person is overweight.

A balanced diet

"Being overweight is most often linked to a disrupted metabolism, which is the cause of endocrinological problems, and stress, as well as insufficient exercise when living in an urban environment," the dietician asserts. "Take a look at those people who live in the countryside; they eat what they like, fatty foods and bread and cakes and meat, but they are moving about all the time, they don't spend their lives behind the driving wheel, they eat natural produce and they maintain a normal weight."

Any diet does, according to the doctor, mean that you have to restrict your food intake in some way. When you have to constantly restrict yourself in what you eat, this requires a great deal of will power and there is no guarantee that at any moment a person will just get fed up and begin to overeat. Besides this, the human body needs a daily intake of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, i.e. your diet needs to be balanced. Therefore, any single-food diet (consuming only one type of food, for example, the Kremlin diet, which encourages complete rejection of carbohydrates and replacing them with protein foods); even if this turns out to produce results to start off with, the diet needs to be constantly watched, for this type of "warped variant" is not at all good for the body, as mentioned above. You see, our body is a complicated system which is striving to achieve a balance and to obtain all the substances it needs, so that, when we are "fasting", our body strives to "store up reserves" and everything that is eaten is saved up around the hips twice as fast.

When it comes to healthy food, microwave ovens need a separate mention. This is a very convenient domestic appliance not only needed for heating food up quickly, but also for preparing a number of dishes. Note that on the packaging of infant formula it always states: "Under no circumstances heat in a microwave", and there is a good reason for this," the doctor says, for the microwave changes the structure of the dish, destroying it." Considering that, according to one expression on which opinions vary, a person is what he or she eats, then it is hard to overestimate the role of food in our lives. The introduction of new directives into our gastronomical tastes, has not remained unnoticed by the body. The vegetarianism and veganism which was at one time fashionable in certain strata of the population, is in the view of traditional medicine not too beneficial to the body, since we need animal fats, and proteins rich in irreplaceable amino acids and substances that are not found in vegetable foods.

Disguised as a diet

In the quest to lose weight quickly, many prefer the well-advertised bio-additives, which promise to get rid of the unwanted kilograms in a record short time. "All these additives are nothing more than an advertising ploy," the dietician thinks. Firstly, in order to achieve a sustained effect from them, you need to take them all the time. Secondly, let's take a look at what is in them. More often than not, they are simply laxatives, which can cause dehydration of the body and leeching out of such necessary microelements as sodium, potassium and other minerals. Other preparations which are taken with water, swell up in the stomach, creating the sensation of being full and quickly leave the body, so the person feels even hungrier."

No diet will be sufficiently effective unless it is combined with a well-designed fitness schedule. Fitness coach Gulnara Karimova says: "The choice of exercises should be made depending on the individual body features. For example, in spite of the view that has taken shape, heavy athletics does not really help you to lose weight, since it does not burn off fats, and only increases muscle mass." According to the instructor, the most effective exercise for the heart and lungs is jogging, swimming, and riding a bicycle. They improve the blood circulation and speed up the metabolism, which facilitates the burning off of fats best of all.

Even those overweight people who like to "build muscle", lose weight by doing light athletics like running or riding a bicycle, what is in professional jargon called "drying out the fat". People who are overweight are recommended to exercise on an exercise bike, since it does not put any strain on the joints, and jogging is counter-indicated for people weighing more than 90 kg. If you are doing exercises, then a number of conditions need to be taken into account. Firstly, do not eat for an hour before and after exercising. Secondly, once you have sat down on the exercise bike, you must not stop, you must keep turning the pedals. In actual fact, as the trainer comments, that is not that difficult, since it doesn't take a lot of effort to keep the pedals turning.

It is important to check your pulse. For people in the 30-40-year age group, their pulse should range from 120 to 140 beats per minute during the exercise session. Besides this, you should not drink carbonated water while training and should only breathe through your nose. You should keep your back straight, unlike the position on a bicycle. After you have been doing the exercises for a week or two, when you've got into the routine and feel comfortable with it, you can extend the time spent exercising. Whereas you should start off by training for no more than 20 minutes, now you can increase the time to one hour. The fats only start to burn off after half an hour of exercise. After another two weeks, your exercising can already be made more effective by beginning to alternate the pace of the exercises, half a minute fast, five minutes slow.