The pandemic trapped us in our homes, chained us to computers and caused effects completely unrelated to the coronavirus. Extra pounds jumped in, it is not known when. Meanwhile, weight loss is additionally not favored by reduced activity, closed gyms and fitness clubs, and snacking during remote work. In this situation, the method of maintaining a healthy weight may be to build motivation based on the pleasure that comes from the weight loss process. Is it possible? The psychodietician says yes.
- Joanna Gerwel: “We are constructed in such a way that we relieve stress and improve our mood with food”
- The psychodietician begins slimming with an analysis of the patient’s eating habits
- When we set a goal, e.g. losing 10 kg, we must be convinced that we are able to achieve it, otherwise the weight loss will not be successful
- If we plan to lose weight and we love sweets, let’s look for another product that is less important to us and let’s give it up – advises Joanna Gerwel
- Joanna Gerwel: “Snacking is cravings, not hunger. So if you have cravings, make a bet that you will move them to the time of the meal “
- More information about COVID-19 can be found on the TvoiLokony home page
Joanna Gerwel, psycho-dietician, consultant in the field of psychology and psychodietetics in the Bariatric Complex in Ełk.
Monika Zieleniewska, MedTvoi I have heard that since the beginning of the pandemic, the weight of an average Pole has been growing by one kilogram per month. I can’t believe it is that much.
Joanna Gerwel, psychodietetic: This alarming statistic looks absolutely real. Let’s try to make some simple calculations. A kilogram of body weight that we want to gain or lose is the equivalent of 7. kilocalories. If we take an additional 250 kcal per day above our regular needs and we do not try to burn them, it gives just 7 per month. kcal, or kilogram.
And how can you picture these 250 calories?
These are, for example, 2 fairly low energy cookies, two DayUp sachets or one sandwich with a higher fat content or a few small snacks during the day. And during a pandemic, snacks appear more often, because most of us work remotely from home and have easier access to food.
- The doctor ate mainly junk food for a month. “The consequences are catastrophic”
Yes, there is always some chocolate or cookies next to the computer …
Research says that if we have easier access to food, we eat it more often, for example out of boredom. So enriching your diet with 250 calories a day is really easy. You also have to add a decline in activity. During an hour’s walk, we burn about 300 kcal. And when it comes to work-related activities, such as going to a bus stop, walking around the office and going home, there are 300 – 400 kcal calmly, which we do not use when we stay at home. The sum of a few extra snacks a day, even those that look harmless, and a minimal decrease in activity allows us to gain weight a kilogram per month. It should also be remembered that it will not always be 250 kcal per day. You have to take into account the weekly and monthly balance – sometimes we eat 300 cal more than our energy needs, and sometimes we eat 300 less. For example, a regular hot dog with mayonnaise sauce from a gas station has about a thousand calories. So if someone in a month allows himself to eat four more than his energy requirements, he may gain unknowingly one pound.
If we do not burn it or lower the calories of other meals, we will put on weight. Do you have many such pandemic patients?
Losing weight is not a priority for Poles at the moment, but as we have been putting on weight since March, more and more people are starting to perceive this process as something permanent and want to stop it.
You can describe the mechanism of such a pandemic weight gain.
Changing your lifestyle is key. One of my patients switched to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, and so far has been very active because she worked in the field. From March to November, she gained 15 kg, i.e. less than 2 kg per month. Translating this into calories, we have 11 – 12 thousand. additional calories per month. Before the pandemic, she was a person who ate more or less enough to cover her caloric needs, i.e. not gain weight. When she started working remotely, she started overeating after children, which is a very common mistake of women. In addition, in stressful situations, she reached for the cupboard where the sweets were lying. She ate the extra calories completely without realizing it. She realized in August when her husband pointed out to her that something was wrong.
She ate stress?
We are constructed in such a way that we relieve stress and improve our mood with food. In this way, we meet our emotional needs, but from a physiological perspective, we are hurting ourselves. The basic activity that this lady did in the office was to visualize which eating habits she had changed from March to now in relation to what was happening before the pandemic.
It worked?
She applied in early November and has already lost a kilo and a half. It was only necessary to give up sweets as a method of coping with stress and devise a different method instead.
What else do you focus on when working with the patient?
The source of overweight and obesity is the lack of awareness of dietary decisions, irregular eating, without mindfulness. Lack of awareness is lack of control. Just mindfulness and thinking about eating regularly (when), not to overeat (how much) and choosing better quality products (which) makes us regain control and, consequently, we lose weight.
- «My patients are veterans of ready-made diets who think they will not lose weight anyway. And then it succeeds »
Sounds convincing …
Recently, I had a patient who ate very well, eating 4-5 meals a day, large amounts of vegetables, small amounts of bread and fried products. However, at the end of the interview, I found out that he likes alcohol. He drank about 200 ml of vodka every other day, in drinks with the addition of Coca-Cola. This is a good example because no one thinks that alcohol is high in calories. 50 ml of vodka has about 100 kcal, so the 200 ml is 400 kcal. For this sweetened drink, another kcal. If he did it every 2 days, we have about 1800 a week, and about 7 – 8 a month. kcal (extra kilogram). This patient had never been on any diets and when he came in he said he had gained 9 kg or 90 kg a year in the last 10 years. He is a cook, cares about the quality of food, so there is a good chance that it was alcohol that caused such a drastic increase in weight.
What does the psychodietician therapy start with?
Determine what minor changes in eating habits result in the extra pounds. You need to look at, for example, the habit of regular snacking between lunch and dinner. Patients and patients, because men are also in this group, are starting to pay attention to it. Nevertheless, the approach to the subject is unfortunately inappropriate.
Meaning?
Most patients try to find some very specific solution. He makes a plan and sets goals that are related to weight loss. However, according to my observations, 95 percent. on the one hand, it looks for motivation, and on the other hand, it takes actions that reduce this motivation to a minimum. It must be remembered that each person consists of two systems – rational and emotional. The rational system manages, plans, sets goals for itself, while the emotional, dominant ones are our feelings – pleasure, joy, satisfaction, as well as the opposite ones, such as anxiety, stress or depression. When planning a diet, we focus on rational actions. We set a goal, for example, that we want to lose 20 kg and we give ourselves 2 months to do so, expecting a specific result. However, we completely ignore the emotional sphere, how we feel on the way to achieving the set goal.
My guess is that the results are deplorable and I don’t manage to lose weight.
Every day our stress and anxiety increase, we feel undervalued, because the loss of body weight is not what we assumed. It lowers your motivation. It is difficult to achieve a goal by considering only what is rational, without how we feel as we strive to achieve it. The second issue is the ability to set realistic goals and observe the feelings associated with it on an ongoing basis. Patients make one fundamental mistake – they want quick and clear changes, setting a goal of 20 kg, which is unrealistic because it is too high. When carrying out a task, we must, on the one hand, have the need to achieve the goal, but on the other hand, we must be convinced that we are able to achieve it. If we feel fear or uncertainty, even if the goal is the most honorable, we will not succeed. However, if we make this goal realistic and it will be, for example, a kilogram per month, the emotional sphere will suggest: I will definitely succeed, it’s a breeze, it makes sense – then the motivation will start to grow. In other words – with tiny steps, but steadily forward. After a month, because we will feel satisfaction that we have achieved the goal, our motivation will be built and we will want to continue acting.
But, as you mentioned, we often destroy this motivation ourselves.
Comparing yourself with others. This is demotivating at every stage. We tend to compare ourselves with people who seem better than us. Thinking that we are inferior at something, we automatically start to demotivate ourselves. The brain has nowhere to get the pleasure that drives motivation. Losing weight is always an individual matter. People who are slimming often do not accept that it is also a changeable process, depending, for example, on physiology and genetics.
Do you want to say that the path to the goal, i.e. losing unnecessary kilograms, is the most important?
The goal, i.e. the final reward, is related to external motivation, but the pursuit of the goal itself does not have to give us pleasure. On the other hand, internal motivation appears when the performance of activities results from our needs and desires and provides us with satisfaction in itself. Internal motivation always increases the desire to do a given activity better. So we have to create habits that reduce energy supply, which in itself is pleasant to follow.
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I don’t know if, for example, putting off a sweet tooth can ever be pleasant.
If someone likes sweets and wants to give up 250 or 300 kcal a day, they should not start by eliminating this group of products from the diet. Earlier, the rational system tells us that this is the best method, but at the same time the emotional system experiences only negative feelings. The patient should look for a different product that is less important to him and give it up without feeling sacrifice or loss. If sweets give us the greatest pleasure, then by putting them aside, the emotional sphere will begin to veto. In the long term, slimming will not work, because the emotional zone always wins over the rational one. Sooner or later, strong will disappears and our basic needs are revealed. If you want to lose weight and you love sweets, eat them consciously and look for other products that you can eliminate. Maybe you will eat one slice less a day, or maybe you will go for a 20-minute longer walk, even around the house. This is already 100 kcal additionally on the minus, and together with three slices of bread it gives 250 kcal, which we want to reduce. We must plan weight loss so as to eliminate things that are most indifferent to us, and add those that we enjoy.
Should we count all these calories?
Most people who maintain a healthy body weight do not know about energy values. Of course, to broaden your knowledge, you can learn about the caloric value of the basic products from our menu. If someone eats a hot dog at a gas station, considering it a snack before dinner, and finds out that it has 1000 kcal, maybe he will give it up.
How to build awareness?
There is no point in paying attention only to the dietary recommendations that say we will be thin if we give up sweets or fried foods. Even the best foods, but eaten irregularly or eaten in too much, will make your weight incorrect. Let’s focus on eating regularly and not snacking between meals. Snacking is craving, not hunger. So if you have cravings, bet you will move them to the time of the meal – lunch or dinner. Eat a slightly smaller meal to fit your whim. If it is larger, eat a whim instead of a meal. If you choose a sweet roll over lunch, it will do less harm than if you had it between lunch and dinner as a snack. We eat 4-5 times a day, and between meals we give the body time to digest it calmly.
What else can you advise those fighting pandemic kilos?
I would advise anyone who wants to lose weight to start a food diary that records when we eat and what we think. You have to do it on a regular basis, because we don’t remember about snacking at the end of the day. And it may turn out that between lunch and dinner, we use the fridge 4 or 5 times. These several times together give a specific caloric value, which translates into body weight. Experience has taught me that realizing my eating habits by keeping such a diary is a big surprise for almost every patient. The most important thing is to be aware of your own habits.
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