"Lose to Win" on Channel 5

Finally!! A variety show that spreads all the physiologically and nutritionally correct messages about weight loss! Kudos to Mediacorp and Health Promotion Board!! (can’t help but wonder what took them so long to realise that TV shows are the best channel to spread messages…)

Anyway, the show is called “Lose to Win”, on Channel 5, every Wednesday, 9pm, premiered on 21 October 2009. They feature a group of overweight participants who signed themselves up to this 12 weeks program to compete to be the “biggest” loser. Much like the US reality show “The Biggest Loser”.

Throughout the show, individual participants were interviewed and methods to keep slim were shared here and there by experts like dietician, fitness instructors, and nutritionist.

If video above doesn't work, you can check out the video from the original site at HPB:

Here are some messages they’ve mentioned:

1. The basic principle of weight loss is to exhaust more energy than consumption through food. The message was taught to the participants by making them participate in routine exercises and learn the right ways to eat in order for deficit of calories to occur.
2. Eating late at night is the same as eating at any other time of the day. It’s not the timing of consumption that makes us fat, but the type of food that we eat. As a matter of fact, should we have the habit of eating dinner early and sleeping late, the period of foodless time is longer than between our lunch and breakfast, which could potentially lead to starvation response (a lowered metabolism). What’s worse is to skip breakfast!! ‘Cause that will only make our body increase the possibility of conserving the next meal.
3. Fast food is more fattening than normal outside food due to the high calories content, which is caused by the high processing and deep fried nature of some fast food.

Do tune in to the show! It’s definitely more worthy of your time than some commercialized slimming show that gives you iffy information (which could potentially kill you…).

Calculating my Daily Recommended Calorie Needs

It is of importance that we calculate the Daily Recommended Calorie Needs (DRCN) so that we know exactly how much our body needs. Weight-loss is not as simple as ensuring the loss of calories, we also need to ensure that we do not "over-lose"hence enabling the 'starvation response'.

The formula below can look menacing at one glance but it's really simply primary school mathematics, all you need a calculator or MS Excel to do the calculation for you.

In order to get the DRCN value, we need to calculate our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR):

Harris Benedict Equation:
Formula for women:
BMR = 655 + (9.6 x wt/kg) + (1.8 x ht/cm) - (4.7 x age/yr)

Formula for men:
BMR = 66 + (13.7 x wt/kg) + (5 x ht/cm) - (6.8 x age/yr)

Using the value you've gotten, multiply it with the value assigned to your activity level to get your DRCN.

Example:

I am a woman, weighing 54 kg, 165 cm tall, 28 years old and lightly active.

Using MS Excel, I'll key in "=655+(9.6*54)+(1.8*165)-(4.7*28)" to get my BMR as 1338.8 cal.

My DRCN is therefore = 1338.8 x 1.375 = 1840.85 cal

To give you an idea of how much you can eat a day, a plate of Char Kway Teow (something like fried noodles for the foreign friends) is about 700 cal and a Mac Fish Burger Meal (Upsized) is about 850 cal... so... have you been over-eating??

In order not to reach the "starvation response", we should not cut more than 20% from our DRCN. Which means, in order to lose weight, I should try to consume only (1841x0.8=)
1472.8 cal per day. Note that you calorie intake should increase with each increase in activity level, and also note that this 20% range will take you at least 3 mths to lose a mere 4kg (estimate, varies from person to person due to difference in age, weight and height). If you really can't wait, the lowest level of DRCN a women need is 1200 cal, but you'll have to take care of the health consequences that will follow (e.g. sharp increase in weight the moment this low-cal diet is stopped, muscles degenerate, low metabolism, lethargic, dizzy-spells etc.)

Why is it so easy to gain back the weight I've lost?

There are many reasons why weight lost are so easily gained back, but we can safely generalise them under one principle, which is the loss of METABOLISM. Allow me to illustrate that by listing the reasons one by one:

1. When you lose weight, your body naturally doesn't metabolise as fast since you don't need so much energy anymore for basic movements, so, your metabolism slows down, resulting in an increased demand to reduce your calories intake or to increase your metabolism.

2. People who engage in dieting (cutting down on more calories than recommended) tend to fall into the natural body process known as 'starvation response', where the body starts conserving energy in order to allow the body to last long enough without food intake in the next few hours/days. This is done by decreasing metabolism.

3. People who engage in dieting (cutting down on more calories than recommended) without appropriate amount of exercise will find themselves losing their muscles, which are the key component in our body which drives metabolism. Thus, a loss of muscles will result in a decrease of metabolism.

Once the metabolism drops drastically, all the initial loss of weight will be regained with every extra calorie consumed. Therefore, it is important that we know how to lose weight correctly, if not, all the loss will be regained eventually, wasting all your initial efforts.