The world loves a bit of gossip. Especially when it involves a celebrity. Shane Warne, whether you call him a celebrity or not, is dominating the media gossip columns because of his recent weight loss. Since much of media gossip seems to revolve about celebrities being too fat or too thin, or being photographed with a minute tummy bulge suggesting they could be pregnant rather than post-prandial; maybe the question should we be taking any notice of all the hoo-hah at all?

In this case I think yes, only because some of the columnists are saying that Shane attributes his significant weight loss to drinking an organic diet shake, which he has now become “addicted” to.

This raises several issues. Firstly, once a celebrity endorses a particular product, sales of this are likely to escalate as others seek the same results. Outcome? Increased sales profits for the company and many people undertaking yet another unhealthy yo-yo method looking to achieve weight loss.

Yes, there probably is a role for some of these diet drinks for a few obese people who require rapid weight loss because of an impending surgical procedure. But unless these shakes are part of an overall eating plan designed to encourage a person to adopt life long healthy eating habits, then they are likely to be short-term gains only. The major loss will be to people’s wallets.

Admitting to being “addicted” to a diet shake is a worry too. How can you adapt back to regular foods if still craving a “diet” product? Fast food has contributed to our addiction to sugar, fat and salt. We crave “hot chips” not because we are hungry but to feed our addiction.

We live in a modern world where obesity is a major health issue. As a brain fitness advocate, I believe it is vital that we attempt to address this through promoting healthy eating in a number of different ways.

Food is an essential part of our life. What we eat and how much, can either help keep us fit and well, or make us sick. Our rapid change in eating habits over the last couple of decades has seen the role of food diminished from something we enjoy and savour to something that that is either an inconvenience to our busy world, or something that we indulge in to feed an addiction or as a substitute for our emotional needs.

One bright light on the horizon in all this madness of fast food, weight loss fads and ever increasing obesity is the popularity of some TV reality shows. These have focussed on the love of good food and the creativity of an individual’s passion for creating great dishes. We watch and improve our awareness of just how easy it can be to eat well and more healthily. Masterchef Australia has done so much in this role; even our kids have become more interested in different foods and how to cook.

Another bright light is the inimitable Jamie Oliver. Love him or hate him, he is doing his very best to wake us all up to the fact that we can choose a better way in what we choose to eat and how we eat.

The goal of losing weight is to achieve a healthy weight for our particular height and frame. The way to maintain a healthy weight is through appropriate food choices, looking to “add in” healthy foods and doing adequate exercise.

Dieting alone does not work and diet is such an ugly word. It conjures up deprivation, self-denial and misery.

Healthy eating is just part of an overall healthy living plan that includes regular daily exercise and enjoying our life.

So forget the shakes and diet bars. Let’s get back to understanding food and just how good it can be to enjoy healthy meals with fresh fruit, vegetables, meats, seeds and nuts.

“Bon appetit”.

It’s Friday night, it’s been a huge week, you are exhausted and just looking forward to getting home. The last thing you want to do is think about cooking dinner. The thought of just putting your feet up, maybe watching a movie and ordering takeaway becomes really attractive. When we are stressed, our emotional drivers are likely to lead us to eat high fat foods such as pizza and ice cream.

Dieting is a stress too.
Have you ever been on a crash diet, successfully lost some weight only to find that it all goes back on (with a little extra!) in a relatively short period of time?
Though if we continuously starve ourselves over an extended period of time, this restriction of calories or kilojoules will actually lead us to live a longer life (just hungry). There are people in the world actually experimenting on themselves to achieve this. I’m not suggesting you do too.
Most if us choose not to live with calorie restriction. Life is meant to be enjoyable too isn’t it? Unfortunately if you have some excess kilos you want to lose, your experience is more likely to be one of the merry-go-round of weight off, weight on, weight off, weight on.
It is this type of dieting stress, which alters our brain.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania put a group of mice on a diet for three weeks. They lost weight. They also showed increased levels of stress hormones and displayed depressive behaviour. An epigenetic* change was noted and that this change persisted even when the mice went back to a normal diet.
The mice were then subjected to stress, which resulted in them choosing to eat higher fat mouse food compared to a control group who had not previously dieted.

This outcome suggests that in humans, dieting alters our brain, making it not only more difficult for us to lose weight in the first place but also reprograms our brain on how we deal with future stress and our emotional food choices.

So in order to lose weight successfully, it comes back down to healthy food choices and exercise.

Have you noticed it’s Friday today? How are you going to respond to “what’s for dinner tonight?”

• In epigenetics, an experience can alter the form and structure of the DNA in certain genes.

Ref: Society for neuroscience (2010, Dec 1) Yo-yo dieting alters genes linked with stress

A good friend of mine has been battling with her weight for years. She has been on every diet known to man kind, read all the diet books, cooked all the diet recipes for herself and her family and yet her weight bounces up and down like the veritable yo-yo.

I don’t think her partner has ever dieted in his life. He works hard, plays hard, exercises. He enjoys his food and stays slim and trim.

Unfair?

Perhaps. But now scientists may have discovered why repeated dieting fails.

Most dietary advice indicates that it would be prudent to cut down on known “fattening” foods and increase exercise. And yes this may produce the desired effect until the diet is stopped, old eating patterns return and so does the weight along with a bit extra for good measure.

We also know that comfort eating to deal with stress, accounts for much obesity.

Increased levels of obesity and increased levels of diabetes put us at greater risk of developing dementia as we get older.

In this research, Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute in Boston took two groups of rats. One group as the control just had their regular rodent food. The other group was fed “normal” food for 5 days and alternated with 2 days of “sweet” food, the equivalent of us enjoying a few servings of high fat, high sugar desserts.

The dieting group on their normal diet ate less and avoided stress related situations (What that is in rat terms I don’t actually know!)

When on the high sugar diet they coped better with anxiety provoking situations, but also ate more. Plus those in the diet group when on “normal” food were found a much higher level of a stress neuropeptide CRF x5 that of the control group. This stress hormone returned to normal when the rats went back onto the high sugar diet again.

Aha!

How often have you heard the excuse of people tucking into a huge bowl of ice cream or consuming that family bar of chocolate because they feel stressed?

OK I confess, I’ve done it too.

But maybe we do it not because we actually are stressed. It’s that our brain is telling us we feel stressed (by having a higher level of the stress neuropeptide CRF in our system) because you are showing withdrawals to the high sugar/fat foods that we have intermittently.

In other words, frequent changes to our diet being “good” for a period of time followed by going back to our usual eating patterns works against us big time because of the changes that occur as a result of this, in our brain.

So sadly for my friend until she can lose the diet books and choose to implement a healthy eating plan she will continue with her vicious circle of dieting and overeating. Her continued efforts of deprivation and compensatory binge eating will not only deprive her of continued successful weight management but more importantly make her at risk of heart disease and poorer cognitive function, particularly as she gets older.

The key to deactivating the stress response by our brain is losing the idea of dieting, as that for most of us conjures up deprivation and not being allowed to eat certain foods that we like. And for most of us what we know we “mustn’t have” is instantly more desirable!

By eating a varied diet including all the fabulous brain foods such as fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts we can work towards maintaining a healthy weight, enjoying  mood stability and better thinking.