Dear Readers,

Jasmine from Rockfort, Kingston, asks Lifeline for help with her renewed efforts to not only lose weight but to keep the weight off. Jasmine says she seems to lose the added pounds without two much difficulty. Recently, between December 2006 and May 2007 she lost 22lb but she has already regained five pounds. Jasmine says that she is tired of the 'yo-yo' effect where she is either gaining weight or losing weight.

After we women adopt weight loss diets for a particular purpose, e.g. to fit a dress for a wedding or to look good on a holiday to the beach! even when this is not the case and the weight loss effort is a healthy lifestyle choice to promote good health and help prevent and combat life-style illness like hypertension and diahbetes, the dietary restrictions imposed in order to lose the weight are often extreme and are not feasible for the long term. How many of us can stay on a cabbage diet, Atkins diet or most types of popular dietary programmes permanently? But essentially, this is what is necessary to keep the weight off. A dieter cannot choose a diet to lose weight then, when the weight loss is achieved, revert to previous eating habits. After all, those previous eating habits are what caused the weight gain in the first instance. Instead, when a person chooses a diet, they should be comfortable with the diet, it should be a style eating that, with minor modifications, they can pursue for a long time, even permanently.

The diet should be healthy, allowing for some amount of all the food groups, that is fats, carbohydrates and proteins and should involve a balance of the food groups that the participant is comfortable with, and no total elimination of any food group, otherwise, it is doomed for failure in the long run. As the dietary restrictions all fall by the way side and the old eating habits return, so too, does the weight.

Nutritional and metabolic effects

If the problems of weight gain and weight loss seem to be chronic then perhaps the help of a dietician or nutritionist should be obtained. The advice from this specialist not only helps us to know more about foods and their nutritional and metabolic effects on our bodies, but they become someone to share goals, failed or achieved with and they provide advice and encouragement.

Most diets if followed properly, will work. Weight will be lost. The difficult part really is keeping the weight off and statistics show that over 70 per cent of individuals will regain all the lost weight in under five years. This stresses the need for a long term diet and exercise programme with permanent lifestyle changes.

Lifestyle offers a few 'tips' to help replace old habits with new ones which are more conducive to a healthy lifestyle.

• Do not eat alone

• Do not read or watch T.V. while eating

• Do not keep junk food at home

• Eat small servings on a small plate. Use a breakfast plate, rather than a dinner- sized plate at all meals.

• Eat slowly and chew food thoroughly.

• Reinforce weight loss efforts by sharing them with friends and family and other dieters like all respond well to praise.

• Reward yourself at intervals (e.g. purchase new clothes) for the achievement of keeping the weight off.

Do not completely eliminate from your long- term dietary programme food items which are particularly special moments. Instead, schedule these food types into the diet at intervals and in moderation. For example, a bar of chocolate will not hurt someone on a stable diet if it is introduced into the diet at moderate intervals and will tend to prevent the total 'giving in' to the urge for chocolate, i.e., the 'chocolate binge'!

And remember to exercise. No healthy lifestyle weight loss and maintenance programme is complete without exercise!

Write Lifeline

P.O. Box 1731

Kingston 8

A dieter cannot choose a diet to lose weight then, when the weight loss is achieved, revert to previous eating habits. After all, those previous eating habits are what caused the weight gain in the first instance.