Myth no. 1: If I skip dessert, wine is fine. Photo / 123RF
Myth no. 1: If I skip dessert, wine is fine. Photo / 123RF
From counting calories to cutting carbs, beware these comforting fibs that can sabotage your health goals.
I don’t touch puddings, but wine is fine
“Many of us make these sorts of trade-offs, but this one doesn’t really add up,” says Dr Saira Hameed, consultant in endocrinology and diabetes at ImperialCollege Healthcare NHS Trust and author of The Full Diet Cookbook.
“Both pudding and wine contain a large amount of sugar, so from that perspective we are choosing one high-sugar food or drink over another,” she says.
“However, wine is more likely to lead to weight gain, because the disinhibition of drinking alcohol often leads to eating food we would otherwise try to avoid, like crisps or chocolate.”
It also disrupts sleep and increases stress, both of which impact on weight gain.
Counting calories is the only thing that matters
“For every 100 calories of protein you eat, you only absorb 70, because 30 are used to metabolise it," says Giles Yeo, Cambridge University geneticist and author of Why Calories Don’t Count.
“The guidelines are 1900 kcals for men and 1400 kcals for women per day for weight loss. But there’s a big difference between eating 1900 calories of sugar, or of fat or of protein,” says Giles Yeo, Cambridge University geneticist and author of Why Calories Don’t Count. “They each have a different energetic cost to be metabolised, and that hasn’t been taken into account in any of the calorie counts we see.”
Take protein: “For every 100 calories of protein you eat, you only absorb 70, because 30 are used to metabolise it. Which means protein calorie counts are 30 per cent wrong.”
Fats, on the other hand, are easy for the body to metabolise, “so if you eat 100 calories, you absorb 100″.
“Grazing healthily in small amounts throughout the day is fine,” says Yeo. “But snacking in the ‘high-sugar, low-fibre’ form, sold to us in packets on supermarket shelves, is something else.”
The less fibre and the more sugar your “health” bar contains, the more it becomes – in essence – a biscuit or sweet.
I’ve been to the gym, so I can eat whatever I want
“It is true that you’ll burn more energy in the aftermath of a high-intensity workout,” says Frances Mikuriya, founder of Frances M Fitness in Chelsea. After exercise, your body is still working – repairing damaged muscle tissue and cells and, as a result, carries on burning through calories in what’s known as the EPOC effect – “excess post-exercise oxygen consumption”.
“The effect can last for 24 hours after you do the exercise,” explains Mikuriya. That said: “The mindset of allowing yourself to wolf down an ice cream just because you have finished a high-intensity workout is dangerous.” If you eat more calories than you burn, you will still gain weight.
The only way to lose weight is to give up carbs
Carbs are broken down rapidly by the gut, becoming sugars that quickly enter the blood. But that doesn’t mean you need to cut them out altogether.
There’s some sense in this, says Catherine Sharman, founder of Après Food: “Provided you are eating fewer calories than you are expending, the main reason for not being able to lose weight is insulin control.”
Carbs are broken down rapidly by the gut, becoming sugars that quickly enter the blood. As blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas produces insulin, prompting cells to absorb blood sugar for energy or storage. But that doesn’t mean you need to cut out carbs altogether.
Instead: “Don’t eat carbs on their own. Pair them with small amounts of essential fats like avocados, peanut or almond butter, as these slow down the absorption of glucose and fructose into the blood and keep us feeling full for longer.”
Adding protein helps as it takes longer to digest, so slows the emptying of the stomach.
“Weight loss can be harder for women post-menopause, but it’s certainly not impossible,” says Dr Louise Newson, GP and menopause expert.
Reasons for weight gain at this stage are multiple, but hormones play a role. “During the perimenopause and menopause, our bodies look to combat falling oestrogen levels by trying to obtain it elsewhere, including a different form of the hormone produced by fat cells.
“You might find you start to develop a ‘spare tyre’ in response to this and might also have strong cravings for foods high in sugar or unhealthy fats, which the body will, in turn, lay down as oestrone-producing abdominal fat,” says Dr Newson.
The most important step is to implement healthy and sensible eating, exercise and sleep habits, but HRT can also help. “Often in my clinic women taking HRT (often also with testosterone) find that they lose weight. Some of this is related to the metabolic changes that occur and improve with HRT, and some is due to the women feeling better with HRT so they exercise more.”
Everyone gets a bit of a belly
“As we get older most people experience weight gain,” says Dr Neil Srinivasan, a Consultant Cardiologist. “But abdominal adiposity – the presence of excess fat deposits in the abdominal region – is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality.
“It’s also closely associated with raised cholesterol (which can cause heart attacks and vascular dementia), and systemic inflammation (which may influence the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cancers).” So not as harmless as you might hope.
It’s only leftovers…
One spoon of pasta here and a few chips there. It all adds up.
Before you know it you’ve eaten an extra 100 or more calories without noticing. Adding an extra 120 kcal to your normal diet can increase body fat by 2–4kg over one year.
“All of this is extra food for the body to metabolise,” says Hameed. “An hour later there will be more sugar in your blood. Insulin will be doing its work to push that extra sugar into fat storage.”
