The Drift away from Heart Attack

Tu Tangata, Issue 32, 1 October 1986, Page 25

The Drift away from Heart Attack

na MICHAEL ROMANOS

Diet and Exercise

ARE you overweight £ The road to successful permanent weight control for a slimmer happier way of life begins with a sensible diet plan and incorporates a regular daily exercise programme.

training, diet and other factors that might affect marathon race times. He accertained that size and weight accounted for 17 percent of ability to perform in a marathon which means that to a degree, the smaller and lighter you are, the faster you are likely to be able to run.

Reasonable balanced diets are always preferable to potentially dangerous fad-diet plans. Exercising allows you to get a handle on your body’s metabolism and perhaps even more than dieting, physical activity can influence your level of body fat.

An obesity researcher in the United States has come up with five behavioural steps that will help many overweight people in effectively losing weight.

STEP ONE: Keep daily records of your eating habits and exercise behaviours. By examining your records you can pinpoint troublesome habits and situations requiring change.

STEP TWO: Alter your patterns so that the triggers for overeating are eliminated. This means examining your current lifestyle to determine eating habits. For example watching television can stimulate high calorie snack eating and drinking.

STEP THREE: Change the act of eating. Start making your meals the relaxing, enjoyable experience they are meant to be. For instance, by wolfing down a meal in one minute you are left with 19 minutes to stuff more food in before you realise that you are over-full because it takes something like 20 minutes for your body to notify your brain that you are satiated.

STEP FOUR: Reward yourself for changing undesirable behaviours, which can assist you in continuing to change - this is not a reward of chocolate or such things but rather the “gold star” reward like a gift, perhaps smaller clothing. STEP FIVE: Developing a positive attitude by focusing your energy on the maintenance of an optimistic outlook. In other words, talk yourself into succeeding.

If you are interested in running or jogging, the skinnier you get, the faster you get. One can run faster when one is not carrying a bag of groceries. What one is carrying in extra body fat could be equated to three or four bags of groceries. In other words, carrying extra weight which almost always means fat, slows a runner down considerably. Therefore weight reduction makes exercising and faster, longer running easier.

Don Hagan of Dallas tested 50 marathoners both men and women for frame size and weight, lung capacity, level of

garines, animal fats, meat fat and butter but a lot of our dietary fat comes in “invisible” form like ice cream, salad dressing, chocolate, cream, full fat cheeses, peanut butter and deep fried takeaways. Fat doesn’t only cause body fat says Hamilton, it can lead to Western diseases like gall stones, coronary heart disease and cancer (mostly of the breast and bowel).

“When starting a slimming programme it is important to make sure you have a balanced diet,” said Hamilton.

“Problems start arising when a large category of food is excluded. When counting calories it is also important to look at nutrition.

“While the medical definition of overweight is changing and different people can carry different weights, one can judge their own body for it to be in tune. A bit of padding around the hips, waist or bottom is not always a cause for alarm.

“Exercise needs to be regular but not necessarily drastic. Activities like walking and climbing stairs are still important.”

An American lecturer on preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr William Castelli said half of New Zealand’s men and women need to change their diets to save their lives.

Dr Castelli said most doctors here accepted high cholesterol levels in patients and were allowing them to “drift onto heart attacks.”

Diet, he said was the key to preventing heart attacks. “We want people to eat less of the saturated animal fats and lower their cholesterol.”

“The big six for heart attacks were smoking, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, excess weight, lack of sufficient exercise and diabetes.”

None of the 50 marathoners tested had weight problems so the inference is that excess fat or body weight would account for a considerably more than 17 percent of your ability to perform as a runner or jogger.

Fat distribution is not like a bag of groceries that can be conveniently carried in balance. Fat is in places like the arms and legs and must be lifted over and over again with each stride and each swing of the arms. One should realise it can be dangerous to lose too much weight too fast if you are involved in vigorous exercise or sport. Steadily and safely is the road to the fast lane.

Wellington nutritionist, Vicki Hamilton said there has been a swing over the last two years towards “healthy” foods like yoghurt, fruit juices, muesli, brown bread, cottage cheese, beans and white meat. At the same time chocolate consumption has risen and a quarter of our potato intake is in chips and chippies.

New Zealanders have been proclaimed as a nation of overweight people. Hamilton says some people can eat what they like and not put on weight but for most people energy that is eaten but not needed, is stored as fat. Fats in the NZ diet can be visible as in oils, mar-