Why Natural Weight Loss Is Healthier: A Diabetic's Perspective

Okay, raise your hand if you think a natural weight loss method is better for a diabetic than an "un-natural" one. Good, almost everyone raised their hand.

Now, I cannot find where anyone has properly defined the term natural weight loss, so I have to give you my definition. Simply put, it is the opposite of natural weight gain.

This consideration excludes the loss of weight gained during pregnancy or removal of heavy clothing or jewelry (if that's possible). Even though shedding the weight gained by those means could be considered "natural," we will confine this argument to the process of reversing obesity without surgery, pills, or potions.

By natural weight loss I also mean much more than the temporary results implied and delivered by many Internet weight loss programs. People with real life issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease, do not need temporary weight loss. We need long term results.

If you just want to lose some weight so you can appear on the Oprah Show, or American Idol, then health may be secondary. A natural weight loss approach may not get you there in two weeks, so the claims of the quick weight loss diets on the Internet might look more appealing.

If you need to change your lifestyle, you're talking about a change in life habits. For long term or permanent benefits, your diet should pattern the way we were created to eat. You should follow the natural laws of health.

Don't take the circular route

Many popular weight loss products and programs work on a cycle. It's like going around in circles. The result they produce is cyclical.

Unlike natural weight loss methods, they make you lose weight by stimulating hyperactivity. You then expend more energy than you would normally. So you burn more calories and you do lose weight.

The problem with this is that it's not normal to be stimulated like this all the rest of your life. After you lose some weight you are still left with your eating habits and the process of weight gain repeats itself. It's like doing circles, and the older you get the more difficult it is to break the cycle.

Then again, if you need to lose weight just for improving body image, or to get on a TV show, then the intermittent weight loss may not matter. Realize though, that being overweight is a health risk at any age.

If you already have some lifestyle health issue, such as diabetes or hypertension you shouldn't even give those temporary weight loss fixes a thought. Use a natural weight loss approach.

What is needed

For natural weight loss you really don't even need a book; although if you insist, my recommendation would be Health Power: Healthy by Choice, Not by Chance; (2002), by Luddington and Diehl.

You get much more than weight loss information from this practical and colorful 252-page best seller. What other health manual would I have read through more than once? None.

You do not need a celebrity-endorsed diet or an expensive fitness program to lose weight naturally. If you need motivation, you can get that for nothing.

The encouragement I needed was the realization that, being diabetic meant, every cell in my body was starving (see What causes diabetes?) because glucose could not get to them.

Then I learned that exercise (as in walking one hour every day) and a high fiber, complex carbohydrate diet will help improve my insulin resistance syndrome. You bet, that motivated me!

When I saw the results that was more motivation. I could not be stopped. Now I exercise six days per week.

Using my own experience then, there are two things you need for natural weight loss to work.

• Admit that you need to lose weight. For each extra pound overweight it "shaves about one month from your life span."
• Commit to losing the weight. It's not the popular diets, pills, and programs that will do it for you. It is your commitment to being healthy that will let it happen for you.
• Be consistent in your effort. You don't need special diets, you need the tortoise mindset.

Popular weight loss product advertisers would have us think we must use drugs, surgery, or ready-made diets to successfully lose weight, while keeping our habits and blaming our genes. This way we can help them keep their enterprise alive.

In the majority of cases, a change in eating habits, regular exercise, and (maybe) a natural food supplement would bring much more health benefits than just losing weight.

Oh yeah! We all have different genetic (pre)disposition to bodyweight, height, and everything else bequeathed to us by our parents. I do hear you. But look at the trend over the past few decades! Has the fat genes just decided to "wake up"? We can see possible effects of our lifestyle even in boat disasters. In 2005, a boat built to carry 50 people sank in Lake George, N.Y. carrying 48 people, stirring speculations that the assumed average weight of 150 lbs might need to be changed. We are getting bigger than we were in 1966 when the boat was built. That's not genetics - that diet.

Why natural is better for diabetics

Given the already long list of potential complications that diabetics face, we should minimize health risks from the use of drugs, surgery, and food group exclusions (as in no-carb diets, low carb diets, high protein diets, etc.)

People can actually eat more and weigh less when they eat the right foods. It isn't all genetics why some people have no problem maintaining a normal weight while others do not.

A lot has to do with habits too. In fact, the habits and behaviors might be genetic traits themselves, but we can always change behaviors with our freedom of choice.

References:

Donnelly J. E., Smith B., Jacobsen D. J., Kirk E., Dubose K., Hyder M., Bailey B., Washburn R. (2004).  The role of exercise for weight loss and maintenance. Best Pract Res Clin Gastroenterol. 2004 Dec;18(6):1009-29.

Luddington, A. and Diehl, H. (2002), Health Power, Hagerstown: Review and Herald Publishing

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