Sustainability

You’ve likely heard this term before, often involving environmental issues. But the same concepts can be applied to many aspects of our lives, including weight maintenance. Can we continuously support our dietary, exercise, and other healthy lifestyle habits?

I’m not writing about eco-friendly eating here, though it’s definitely a concern. I want to keep this blog politics free. Caring for our planet shouldn’t be political, but with the realities of life in the United States, it is.

I first became aware of this type of sustainability last spring, when it came up several times at multiple doctors’ visits at the Mayo Clinic. Here are some of the ideas from those appointments:

• If I had continued at my obese weight, good health was not sustainable.
• Eating too few calories was not sustainable – I needed to actually consume more than my initial diet had recommended.
• Walking is a good, sustainable exercise.
• Without doing some strength training, my muscle mass will not be sustainable as I age.

Let’s look at each of these. For those of us who have reached our goal weights, we have likely already seen health benefits. There are objective measures, like test results, that support this. But if we continue to be in an overweight, obese, or underweight range, particularly as we age, our health cannot be sustained. We would find ourselves on an ever-increasing number of medications. Eventually, we would be able to do less and less, which is not sustainable.

For weight management – both loss and maintenance stages – we must take precautions to keep our diet sustainable as well. Adopting severe restrictions in terms of caloric intake, elimination of entire food groups, and omitting meals are generally not sustainable (1). As an example, a dietician instructed me to increase my calories from 1,400 daily to 1,800 on days that I exercised. I had told her that I was hungry often and that I was going to bed hungry every night. She replied that this was not sustainable. We both felt that I could not go on this way indefinitely.

I firmly believe that the best exercise is the one you will do. Certainly some are better for your heart health, or calorie burning, but this matters little if you won’t actually do the exercise! For me, it’s walking, and always has been. I recall walking for miles as a child, and it’s still something I love. So I’m not really even looking to improve here, though I bet I’d get lots of disagreement about this. Do you feel like me, that you were made for walking? Or is there some other form of movement that really clicks with you?

While I’m good at getting my walking in, when it comes to strength training, not so much. I’ve been advised several times to include this into my plan, even just a few times weekly, yet I resist resistance exercise. I hope you’ll share your experiences here, and motivate me to do more!

There are several reasons why strength training is important, especially for dieters and those of us over age 35: it increases muscle mass which increases your caloric needs, the exercise itself burns even more calories, it can rebuild muscle mass lost through aging and/or dieting, it prevents bone density losses, it improves balance and mobility which are key in injury prevention, and it can add years to your independent lifespan (most of these ideas are from (2)).

And yes, that really is age 35, not a typo! Muscle mass begins to decline at this age, slowly at first, but more rapidly as age increases.

Here is an excellent excerpt from Defining the Optimal Dietary Approach for Safe, Effective and Sustainable Weight Loss in Overweight and Obese Adults by Chrysi Koliaki et al that summarizes what we should be looking at:

The ideal weight loss maintenance diet should be continuous, easy to comply with, and of low energy density. Predictors of successful long-term weight maintenance after initial weight loss involve frequent self-monitoring of body weight, medical supervision for psychological support and positive feedback, consistency of food intake, eating breakfast, low-fat intake, low intake of unhealthy snacks, and high levels of regular physical activity. It has been further suggested by preliminary evidence that the space of a meal consumption (fast vs. slow) may also affect body weight control and maintenance (1).

We will look at these maintenance predictors in upcoming blog posts. For now, let’s keep them in mind daily: frequent self-monitoring, medical supervision, consistent food intake, eating breakfast, low-fat intake, avoiding unhealthy snacks, high levels of physical activity, and slower food consumption. Let’s learn how to make our weight maintenance journey sustainable!

(1). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163457/

(2). https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/how-can-strength-training-build-healthier-bodies-we-age#training