Slim down on dieting advice

The figures are staggering. Statistics from the World Health Organisation show that one in four South Africans are obese. South Africa and Egypt reportedly have the highest overweight and obesity rates on the African continent.

Yet each day delivers a new nugget of weight-loss advice – whether it is to eat more grapes or that we plateau after 30 minutes of moderate exercise.

So what really works? We ask some weight-loss experts.

The healthy high BMI

BODY mass index (BMI) – a measure of body fat based on weight divided by the square of height was recently declared an inaccurate way of measuring fat and health.

British Dietetic Association spokeswoman Ursula Arens agrees it is only a “rough and ready” measure that describes the distribution of overweight people in a population.

So what works instead? “Bio-electrical impedance analysis (BIA) measures body composition by sending an electrical signal through the body via a monitor you stand on,” Arens said.

“It’s much more accurate in looking at body-fat levels.”

Mind the gender gap

WOMEN’S brains are wired towards fat, University of Aberdeen researchers have found.

“The wiring that regulates energy expenditure is different in males and females,” said University of Aberdeen chair in human nutrition Professor Lora Heisler.

Reduce your portion sizes, she advises. When it comes to exercise, one study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the optimum is doing five hours a week of moderate exercise such as walking or swimming.

Get protein balance right

PROTEIN keeps hunger at bay for longer than carbohydrates, says Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health specialist in obesity and metabolic health Dr Alexandra Johnstone.

Johnstone’s studies have found that people put on diets containing 30% protein (from animal or plant sources), 30% fat (such as olive oils, nuts, avocado) and 40% carbohydrates (such as rice, potatoes, bread, cereal and whole grains) at each meal lost weight and kept it off for up to six months.

Invest in a ‘skinny’ kitchen

OVERSIZED plates won’t help your waistline, say researchers from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab in the US, who reviewed 61 studies involving plate size and food consumed.

They found that eating off smaller plates could reduce calories on average by 527 a day.

Those using plates with a diameter of around 22cm ate about 22% less, researchers found.

Keep the temperature down

COLD temperatures can force the body into burning more calories, says Prof Heisler.

“Being cold leads to thermogenesis, the calorie-burning effect of the body, and activates brown fat,” she says. That’s metabolically active fat that burns calories as opposed to white fat that leads to disease.

“Allow yourself to be cold for a couple of hours a day to help you burn more calories.”

Eat slimming fruit

RESEARCHERS at Harvard School of Public Health followed 125000 people aged between 27 and 65 for 25 years and found that the more fruit they ate, the slimmer they were.

The biggest impact was from blueberries, strawberries, apples, pears, oranges and grapes, and the researchers hypothesised that flavonoid chemicals in the fruit might be responsible.

Calm down on exercise

RESEARCH published last month showed that after a moderate amount of exercise, people hit a plateau after which they didn’t burn any more calories.

“Blocks of five- to 15-minute moderate movement are as good as, if not better than, going to the gym for an hour,” says University of Birmingham professor of public health Peymane Adab.