How to Maintain a Healthy Weight Range

Every day of our lives we either add to our weight, maintain our weight or reduce our weight, depending on a number of factors.

Despite a growing number of personal trainers, reality health TV shows and online fitness gurus in your social media feeds, why do many of us still struggle to maintain a healthy weight range?

There are a number of factors that contribute to your weight and in this article we discuss a healthy weight range, not just from an exercise perspective but in terms of diet, health, wellness and fitness as a whole.

From your environment, family history and genetics through to your metabolism, behaviour and habits - your body weight is often a reflection of your current situation.

Reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is vital for your overall health and can prevent many diseases and health conditions. If you are overweight or obese, you’re are at a much higher risk of developing serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and certain cancers.

This is why maintaining a healthy weight is so important: It helps you lower your risk for developing problems, to feel good about yourself, and gives you more energy to enjoy life.

Why’s important to maintain a healthy weight range

We all know that maintaining a healthy weight is important, but sometimes pain, injury and disability can get in the way of being able to exercise. 

It might be your back, hip, knee or ankle pain, all of which are weight-bearing joints that are put under extra load by an increase in body weight. 

Did you know that every extra kilogram of body weight puts an extra 7kg of pressure through your knee when jogging?! Read more about that here.

Maintaining healthy weight without exercise

A vicious cycle can occur when you are unable to exercise due to joint pain.  You exercise less and you can gain weight.  The pressure on your joints increases, resulting in more pain, which further restricts your ability to do weight-bearing exercise.

This is often the pattern seen by physiotherapists, as injured clients struggle to maintain a healthy weight. 

Physiotherapists are skilled at helping you overcome this pattern of weight gain, and with a holistic approach, can help you to choose the right type of exercise for your current weight and body type to avoid injury and pain. 

This is crucial for you to continue to exercise day-to-day and achieve a healthy weight.

Tips for starting out exercising

If you have any pain or injuries stopping you from exercising get these assessed by your Back In Motion Physiotherapist and find out what you can and can’t do.  Even if you don’t have any injuries, a physiotherapist is skilled at helping you to decide what is the best exercise for your body type and lifestyle.

• Increase slowly – 10% increase per week will ensure that you don’t overload your joints.
• Walk before you jog- jogging has a 14x greater load on your knees than walking
• Consider low impact exercises such as cycling, swimming and rowing which puts less stress on your joints.
• Doing some resistance training also burns calories and has the added benefit of helping to support your joints, preventing injury and increasing bone density.

In summary, Back In Motion Physio Debbie Crawford advises that your physio can help you to maintain a healthy weight, even if you are struggling to recover from a niggling injury.

What else affects a healthy weight range?

Exercise is one piece of the puzzle, but what if there is something else that might be contributing to your weight gain?

We asked naturopath and nutritionist Kasey Willson to shed some light on what other things we should be considering.

Tips from Naturopath Kasey Willson

As a Naturopath, I look at several factors that play a role in maintaining (or preventing) healthy weight, all of which are driven largely by your movement, thought and diet.

The main health players that could be causing difficulties in maintaining a healthy weight are your thyroid and adrenal gland function, hormone levels, digestive health and of course blood sugar regulation.

What healthy weight means to me

When I discuss the term 'healthy weight', instead of focusing on the scales, I refer to your body being free from an accumulation of dangerous visceral fat, better known as abdominal fat. This type of fat is dangerous due to its ability to drive inflammation levels, which cause tissues in the body to in-effectively respond to insulin.

Insulin is the important hormone produced by the pancreas when blood glucose levels rise, commonly occurring when foods containing sugar and starch are consumed. Insulin helps to transport this glucose from the foods we eat, into the cells of the body, to be burnt as energy, or in times of inactivity, stored as fat.

Your diet may be causing painful joints & also a hormone imbalance

A continued diet that is high in sugar can lead to a condition of insulin resistance, where the body no longer responds to healthy levels of insulin. Instead, higher and higher amounts of insulin are required, which contributes to abdominal fat production and greater levels of inflammation in the body, which can lead to painful joints!

Another source of an insulin spike is through high fructose containing foods. Although our liver is designed to process small amounts of fructose from fruit sugar and honey (back when these were rare treats for our hunter gatherer ancestors), now days we are overloading the liver with fructose from all directions, such as the unlimited supply of unnatural processed junk foods and drinks in the typical westernised diet.

Poor diet & lack of exercise affects important glands

When you combine inflammatory food intolerance with other physical, mental and emotional stress, it leads to a disruption in your adrenal gland health, thyroid health and interrupts the delicate balance of your sex hormone levels. These imbalances also contribute to weight gain, among many hormone related health issues.

A few examples include when your adrenals glands are stressed, more of the hormone Cortisol is produced, which is a main contributor to mid section weight gain.

When discussing weight management, the health of the thyroid gland must also be considered, as it controls your metabolism along with energy production and body temperature. If your adrenal and thyroid health is compromised, levels of Oestrogen can rise leading to a greater production of unwanted visceral fat. You are probably familiar with the term - love handles!

How to manage blood sugar, hormones and inflammation through diet

Blood sugar levels and the resulting insulin contribute to imbalances in all the factors that control our weight, so you should aim to include foods in your diet that support healthy levels.

Foods to Avoid:

• Processed foods
• Refined carbohydrates (bread, biscuits, cakes, lollies, soft drinks)
• Any foods and drinks containing high fructose corn syrup & agave
• Gluten containing grains
• Heated vegetable and seed oils

Foods to use occasionally:

Also limit your use of other fructose containing sweeteners such as honey, real maple syrup and coconut sugar. Stevia and rice malt syrup are fructose free alternatives. 

Foods to include:

Wholefoods, such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, meat, fish, eggs and poultry.
Include fats with all meals, as they will help to slow your release of glucose and insulin. Coconut products, olives, olive oil, avocado, animal fat, ghee, butter, nuts, seeds and cold pressed nut oils are some examples.

Other support for health weight management:

Try reducing stress through activities, such as yoga, Clinical Exercise, walking, stretching, meditation, adequate sleep and undertaking in any relaxing activities, such as gardening, will help to nurture your stress glands, the adrenals.

High intensity, short duration exercise is hugely beneficial for balancing blood sugar levels and therefore insulin. So activities such as cross fit and interval training, are good activities to try.

Tests to address underlying factors of weight management

If is often a good idea when you’re struggling with weight management to get some blood tests done to ensure that there are no serious underlining conditions that are causing you to gain weight.

Some recommended tests to ask your health care professional for, are:

• Fasting Glucose (blood test)
• Fasting Insulin (blood test)
• Thyroid health: TSH, T4, T3, RT3, Thyroid Antibodies (blood test)
• Vitamin D (blood test)
• Food Intolerance Testing (IgA and IgG through a Naturopath, or Integrative GP)
• Adrenal and Sex Hormone Saliva Testing (through a Naturopath, or Integrative GP)

Conclusion from Physio Debbie and Naturopath Kasey

In summary, it is important to address your movement, thought and diet patterns holistically to support all areas of weight management and not just focus on one area.

If you have an injury and your physical activity is lowered, adjust your diet to match your activity levels and keep moving with small physiotherapist recommended movements until you start to gain your fitness again. And remember – maintain a positive outlook! Your thoughts are important to getting back on track too.

When you have a nourishing diet, regular exercise and your mindset is positively nurtured, reaching a healthy weight and therefore healthy joints your ability to maintain a healthy weight is achievable!

 

Co-authored by:

Debbie Crawford - Physiotherapist and Director, Back In Motion Hobart on Murray and Back In Motion Rosny Park

with

Kasey Willson ND - My Health, My Happiness