Is Weight Loss Surgery the best Option to Stop Diabetes?

In todays news we are being informed about ‘type two diabetes ‘cut’ after weight loss surgery’
(you can read about it here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13052309)

After reading about this I felt a mixture of emotions, frustration, sadness and excitement.... why all these different emotions I hear you cry!

You see first of all was the immediate response of frustration, I felt angry that the medical profession seemed to be promoting a drastic surgical procedure to help people lose weight and to reduce the diabetes epidemic that has swept our nation over this last couple of decades when there are much healthier and safer options.

I felt sad because for a lot of people they may feel that surgery is their ONLY option because they feel that they have tried every diet going, these generally being the well known diets in our industry today, unfortunately a lot of these low fat/low calorie diets on the market don’t provide our bodies with the vital nutrients needed to function properly and end up doing more harm than good. Sadly when we look into these issues the foods we eat are generally dismissed as having a link with the diseases that have spread across western civilization.

I believe that our food has a MASSIVE impact on how we feel and our over all health and vitality, the body as a whole is a massive jigsaw puzzle and whilst the foods that we eat may make up a huge part of that jigsaw there are several other factors to take into consideration, stress (family and work for example), exercise choices or lack of them, sleep patterns, external pollution, pollutants used in the household – cleaning equipment, air fresheners etc. You see in today’s modern world EVERYTHING has an impact on our body and our health.

I felt excited because as a health and fitness professional I could see the bigger picture of the article and hope that myself as well as hundreds of other health and fitness professionals can help to spread the word about a safer and healthier way to combat the problems we are facing with obesity and the increase of type 2 diabetes (and a lot of other health related issues too). I love my job and I love educating everyone about the wonders of healthy eating, regular exercise and much more.

You see the point that was raised in the article that diabetes is linked to our size and weight so to combat it we want to be losing weight and getting into shape, this is great, now we know that we can combat diabetes by losing weight and regaining our health, but to resort to surgery to achieve this – really?

The article is written from a medical approach yet I feel that medical professionals do not get educated fully where nutrition is concerned and feel that there should be a LOT more emphasis put onto this subject. I remember as part of my nurse training (yup I was training to be a nurse before I changed paths into the Personal Training field) I only received a few days of nutrition training, this is nowhere near enough.

When faced with a health issue the medical profession seem to treat the problem without actually finding what the cause is, treat obesity with surgery or pills to lose the weight rather than finding out the reason this person has become obese these people may need counselling and health education rather than the 'quick fix', when someone’s in pain they’ll give pain killers and a name for the problem rather than finding the root cause of the pain and treating that instead.

I hear about so many people who do resort to surgery and claim that they have ‘tried everything’ but I can bet that they haven’t. You see the diets that really make a MASSIVE difference to our body and HEALTH are the ones that take discipline to follow which may include several lifestyle changes.

Lots of people think you need to exercise to lose the weight when actually it’s NOT the most important factor, what you put into your mouth is NUMBER ONE when it comes to getting into shape but there are several other factors to consider.

Our body is just a part of what makes us, you could have the most beautiful body in the world but if you have lots of stress at home or are unhappy what good is having a great body going to do for you? Sure you might look good but you’re still not likely to be completely healthy because of the other factors in your life. Sadly a lot of people believe that their problems will disappear once they are slim which isn't always the way, if it has taken several years for you to get out of shape it's going to take some time to reverse that effect.

On another note however, as a health and fitness professional who has spent the last few years studying a LOT on these subjects it would be silly of me to expect you to understand everything immediately (unless you study the subject yourself). You see sometimes we can take our knowledge for granted and forget that we have trained for years to bring us to where we are today. This is why I have written this, I hope to be able to point you in the right direction and hopefully ignite something within you to want to learn more about your own health.

Rather than searching for the quick fix and wanting slim straight away why not look at the bigger picture and see what you can do to improve these areas:

What does your current daily dietary intake look like?
How much exercise do you get?
How is your life at the minute?
What work stress do you have? Can this be improved?
Are you happy within yourself?
Are you happy with your partner/family life etc?
Are you getting enough sleep?
Have you been through a traumatic experience yet not dealt with it yet?
What other external stressors might you have? How can you make it easier to deal with these?
Will being slim solve all of your problems?

When we start to take everything into consideration we can start to understand ourselves and our body much better and start to improve each and every factor of our life and achieve overall health and wellbeing, getting slim will be a byproduct of this. Sometimes just writing it all down or talking about it to someone can be a massive help.

I could go on forever about this subject but I feel I have now gone on for long enough other than to try to explain the best way to combat obesity, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and live a healthy and happy life but remember nothing ever comes easy and a bit of hard work and discipline is needed:

Number one – sort out what you’re fueling your body with

Foods that could be causing you to be miserable and gain weight these include:

Cut out these:
Sugar (including sweeteners), Wheat (bread’s out of the window!), dairy (with the exception of a small amount of butter, natural yoghurt and eggs), Alcohol (yup it’s a depressant and like drinking a glass of sugar), caffeine (ditch those cups of tea and coffee you need to function on a morning!)

Severely restrict the following:
Processed foods – Ideally cut them out completely but if you have to then always check the label, if you cannot pronounce the ingredients or don’t know what an ingredient is then its best to leave it.

What you should be eating (and drinking):
At LEAST 2 litres of filtered water per day, herbal teas,

Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables (berries and green leafy veg especially), nuts and seeds, lean cuts of poultry and meat, good fats such as olive oil and coconut oil aim to choose organic where possible.

Try to keep the fruit and vegetables to as natural state as possible which means assessing cooking methods – stir fry and steam veg rather than boiling them.

Add a good quality multivitamin because it’s hard to get all of the nutrients from our foods due to poor quality soil and air travel to get it to the supermarket shelves (this is where farmers markets can be fantastic).

Number two – Get moving:

Start to do a little bit of exercise each day, whether you have a bad back or not you can still walk right? (if not then please feel free to email me at Debbie@dj-personaltraining.co.uk and I’ll see if I can help you with a solution) Walking is a fantastic form of exercise and the most natural for our body. Once the weight starts to fall off you might find that aches and pains start to disappear so you can do more. Your body quickly adapts so after about 6 weeks you will need to either increase the intensity or make changes to your exercise program (or both). This is where a health and fitness professional might be able to help you.

Number three – Chillax!

Focus on relaxation – especially if you suffer with stress, relaxation is a HUGE part that is completely overlooked by a lot of people yet can have a MASSIVE impact on your health and wellbeing. Start with just 5 minutes a day of gentle breathing exercises, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for five minutes, close your eyes (if you wish) and concentrate on rhythmic- diaphragm breathing, try to focus on your breathing and switch off your thoughts, by just doing this exercise each day you could see massive improvements as it helps to re-oxygenate the blood and get the nutrients from our foods passed around our body.

Number four – Sleep:

Getting a good nights sleep – our sleep patterns have a massive impact on our health and our body so you want to be getting as good a nights sleep as you can. Start by limiting computer usage and reduce how much TV you watch after 9pm at night, ideally you want to be in bed by 10pm as that is when the body starts the process of repair and re-growth. Get rid of the TV in the bedroom! Your bedroom is where you sleep so get rid of that TV, in fact cut down on all of the electrical equipment in the bedroom, Electro Magnetic Forces (EMF) have a significant impact on the quality of sleep that we get so before you go to bed make sure that you have no electrical items on and if possible place your mobile phone as far away from you as possible (if you use it for an alarm clock make sure it’s within hearing distance – don’t want you to get the sack now)

A Long post I know but the world of health is absolutely MASSIVE and we have only touched the tip of the iceberg here. Please give some of the above a try and let me know how you get on, if you’d like a more detailed nutritional plan please send me an email to Debbie@dj-personaltraining.co.uk and I will send you a copy.

Chase health and Thin Will Follow.

Have a great day and stay healthy,

Debbie