Stop yo-yo dieting and start laughing

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One in three Canadians struggles with their weight. And most who do have done some yo-yo dieting.

One of world’s leading obesity researchers is in Hamilton tonight. He wants people to stop yo-yoing, and start laughing. Arya Sharma is part doctor, part comedian. He’s in town for a no-holds barred show about obesity. And while he wants to get people laughing and talking, he also wants to change the way they think about weight loss.

Dr. Arya Sharma, Obesity professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, knows extreme diets almost never work long-term: “If you’re doing something crazy to lose the weight, well you’re going to have to be crazy for the rest of your life because that weight is coming back.”

At his comedy show, he’s trying to convince plus size people to rethink weight loss. He says focusing on a magic number just doesn’t work — and that yo-yo dieting can do long term damage, causing you to gain more weight in the end: “You might be better off if you’re healthy, just staying the weight you are rather than going on some crazy diet, lose the weight, put it back on, then start having problems because now, you’re not feeling good about yourself and now you think you’ve failed.”

That’s exactly what happened to Joan Minnery: “So you lose 30 pounds. And what do you do? You celebrate. And what do you celebrate with? Food.”

Years of failed dieting buoyed her to 300 pounds. Morbidly obese with liver and pancreas problems. Until a health scare changed her reason for weight loss: “It became about health at that point. It wasn’t about looking good, it wasn’t about ‘I need to lose weight’. It was, ‘I need to stay alive’.”

She lost nearly half her body weight and has kept it off for four years.  She teaches Zumba and focuses on eating well and exercising instead of the scale.

And according to Doctor Sharma, that’s the key. Paying too much attention to the numbers leaves people hopeless and less likely to lose weight: “When you talk about BMI or you talk about the number on the scale, that’s just a size. That’s not a measure of how healthy you are and it’s not a measure of how you feel about yourself.”

According to BMI, or body mass index, which is a ratio of weight to height, Minnery is still technically overweight. But she’s in great health.

Dr. Sharma feels we get too caught up in that number — and that in many cases you can be overweight and healthy.

If you’re constantly trying to get below a certain number, you’re more likely to regain what you’ve lost. Plus more. so in some cases, you may be better off just keeping those extra pounds.