Achieving Your Weight Loss Goals - Dr. Shmuel Shields

I [Music] hi my name is dr. shmuel shields and I'm delighted to have the opportunity today to speak for his herb route I want to thank Iran for coming to film and I want to thank you that brute for the wonderful work they do and so the tremendous outreach they do all over the world I am actually a nutritionist I've been in the field of nutrition for 25 years I do have a private practice and I'm also an educator I've taught classes and nutrition at NYU New York University and for many many other facilities and places also the author of a book called lehayim 18 chapters to live by which is a wonderful book teaching about nutrition and health and how to protect one's health one of the things I wanted to cover today is how to achieve your weight loss goals and I would like to just thank my wife Miriam for suggesting the topic and also for reminding me that today is a very special day today is pesach shany and because its pace I shany that takes on even more significance because pesach shany is a day that really commemorates the fact that people back in the time when the korban pesach was brought were unable certain people were unable to bring the korban pesach because they would tummy and they weren't able to and they felt very badly about it and they brought it to moshe rubinos attention and lo and behold it was determined that there would be a pesach shany to give these individuals a second chance to be able to bring the korban pesach so one of the principles I want to talk about today is this concept of a second chance we know in Yiddish guides in Judaism we we have a concept of chuva coover is an incredible incredible gift that the RIBA nish lamaze it also gives us a second chance and even more than that before you can do to ver something has to be there first what has to be their first sin and the revenge them knew that people were going to sin and that's why he gave us a special gift of chuva so we can see that human beings are not perfect many times we have very high expectations and when we're following a weight loss program or whatever it might be sometimes we fall off the wagon and then what usually happens is we throw in the towel and give up and say forget it it's not working I can't do it we're very hard on ourselves and so on and so forth so I want to reassure you that we have a pesach shany we have a rebuttal oil and that gave us the concept of chuva so we also have to consider in our own personal lives when we're trying to achieve our own goals that we could flip back a little bit but we also have the opportunity for a second chance and and to move forward having said that I want to get into the topic today and I know that the listening audience there are many people in the listening audience today that have tried and made attempts at weight loss and many people have to have succeeded and they've lost weight unfortunately it's usually inevitable that many people will regain the weight they lost and I want to discuss why that might be and some of the things you might be able to do to make your weight loss efforts more successful so the first thing I'd like to mention is this one of my patients a few weeks ago brought to my attention a very interesting program called the biggest losers and there was an individual who actually weighed about 400 and 30 some-odd pounds and in the course of seven months this individual brought his weight down to a hundred and ninety-one pounds ultimately he regained the weight and it was determined that his metabolism was running slow for his body size and that seemed to be a factor but I think there's another factor that was overlooked in order to lose that amount of weight to go from 430 pounds to 191 pounds in seven months means that the person lost approximately a pound or more than a pound every single day now that is very very unusual that is very unusual for someone to lose weight that fast and I believe that that had a detrimental effect on the metabolic rate and probably returned was one of the causes that may have helped to return the weight that was lost so one of the things you got to keep in mind is that nobody gains a pound or a pound and a half every day so we can't expect to lose that amount of weight at that rate so one of the things I want to tell you in terms of one of the tips to making you more successful at your weight loss goals is you have to lose slowly but consistently slowly means a pound one to two pounds a week if you lose it slowly and sensibly the ability to keep the weight off will be much greater than if it's lost rapidly that's tip number one the next tip I'd like to tell you about is the tip of transitions it's very hard to go from whatever your current eating habits might be into a full-blown weight loss program that might demand changes that you're not ready to make so I want to encourage you to take it slow the truth of the matter is if a person is going out for lunch every single day of the week in ordering two slices of pizza they could instead of giving up the pizza that they like to eat technically they could go out and bring it down to one slice of pizza they will cut their calories by half they'll still be eating the pizza they enjoy and they'll lose weight without giving up next favorite foods they might want to replace that other slice of pizza with maybe a salad or soup of something like that just to round out the meal and make them feel a little bit fuller obviously they'll still be saving calories but that's one option is just to simply cut your calories by cutting your portions now that is a one approach I'm not saying it's the best approach because usually when I work with my patients I try to encourage them to change their food choices as well which is very very important having said that I'll just tell you a little clinical review of a patient I've been working with for the last 16 months I was we're also working with the patient that when I first met him he was 405 pounds and about 15 16 months later he's now down to 250 which is a much slower rate of weight loss but this particular individual is continuing to lose sometimes three or four or five or six pounds a month and he has brought his weight down significantly in a much longer period of time but he has not regained at all in those last 16 months that is continuing to lose so it's a very interesting observation i made about the importance of slow and consistent weight loss another tip I'd like to give you is that you have to think of the kind of foods that the rebuttal um has given us he's given us whole foods foods that have not been processed foods that have not been tampered with along came a food industry and food scientists and food engineers that have done things to the foods haven't manipulated the foods have taken certain ingredients out of the foods and have added other things back in such as sugar and things like that and basically God gave us foods that have breaks that tend to fill us so we could stop eating at a certain point because we feel full once these food engineers have moved those components from the foods the foods no longer have breaks and it's like a roller coaster that's sort of like out of control ole let me give you an example most people in the audience that are listening to this film right now watching this film I should say could easily sit down and polish you off their favorite box of cookies or they can eat a big bag of chips no problem but can you easily sit down and eat six or seven or eight apples probably not what about five or six sweet potatoes becomes a little bit difficult you certainly can't easily polish off a head of cabbage because these foods have breaks in them the same breaks that God put in them still there and they have a filling effect they the fiber in these foods expands in your stomach and create the sense of sensation and and keeps you full by eating less because you can't really eat too much you can't really over eat these foods so if you want to be successful in your weight loss goals you must switch or transition over into a primarily Whole Foods diet and by the way I'm going to encourage you never to use the word diet diets don't work people lose weight but they feel deprived they feel hungry they don't feel right they want to revert back to their old eating habits and that's ultimately what they do another thing you can keep in mind about the word diet it's just look at the first three letters of the word what does it spell di e die not a good connotation so I would say forget about using the word diet never put yourself on a diet don't think that you're on a diet look at lifestyle instead you want to promote a healthy lifestyle if you if you view it as a lifestyle then you will make the appropriate changes you need to do to promote better health a very important thing also keep in mind it's a mitzvah it's a mitzvah to guard your health and to take care of your body because your body is the vehicle that allows you to grow spiritually it allows you to accomplish it allows you to do mrs. we need the body for local locomotion the body is really the vehicle that allows the soul to express itself in this world and if that vehicle is not healthy it's like a car with a flat tire you need the car Iran needed the car to get here from Brooklyn if it's caught how to flap or broke down along the way it wouldn't serve his purpose so it's the same thing with the body we have a tremendous obligation to express a car as a toast to our Shem for giving us a body and for blessing us with a miraculous body that does things for us that a mind-boggling and if we really knew how intricate the body was and how filled with wisdom it is we would probably take better care of it it's often said that people take better care of their cars and they take care of their bodies so I'm hoping to emphasize that we we do take better care of our bodies so we can fulfill God's will and hopefully do more missus for a longer amount of time by having good health I just want to give you a few other tips before we close today another important goal or thing you need to do to achieve your weight loss goals is to stay well hydrated a lot of times people are eating when they really should be drinking I try to make sure that you drink an adequate amount of water throughout the day maybe a cup of water every hour so you feel satiated and you will feel better with more water in your in your meal plans many times you'll feel you won't need to eat as much sometimes drinking water before a meal a half hour before is a good idea as well ok so we spoke about whole foods we spoke about staying well hydrated and we want to try to avoid things that will destabilize our blood Sugar's things like sugar things like white flour things like beverages that a loaded with sugar and sweeteners and so on these kinds of things these kind of snacks and foods spike our blood sugar and then drop it to very low levels and set up cravings and and set up greater amounts of grrrrrr so we want to try to stick with Whole Foods proteins healthy fats healthy fruits and vegetables healthy fats could include some avocado extra virgin olive oil extra virgin coconut oil the oil that's found in fish the oil that's found in nuts and seeds these foods are healthy they have healthy oils that should be used in a good healthy meal plan in moderation of course if a food is caloric has a lot of calories you want to control the amount of the portions of those foods but they should be used to keep a satiated and to provide these healthy fats of the body needs ok those are some tips I want to share another tip with you that is very important speed many people eat tremendously fast it takes the brain 20 minutes to realize that the stomach is full if you finish even a large meal in a few minutes let's say a person throws down three slices of pizza in five minutes even though physiologically the stomach is full the person is going to still want to eat because the brain doesn't realize the stomach is full yet so the best advice I can give you is to schlep it out eat slowly try to make the meal last longer and you'll probably wind up being more satisfied with less food so you'll have to think of ways to do that maybe stop eating go away from the table open a safer learn a little bit come back continue your meal but try to find ways to slow down that would be a big big plus view the rambam says that one of the worst things a person can do is to overeat the rambam says that overeating stuffing the stomach is one of the main causes of illness and disease over eating and eating bad foods is one of the primary cause of the court according to the rambam for disease and illness as a matter of fact the rambam is so fervent on this point that he says it's better to eat a little bit of a bad food than too much of a good food so we can see how devastating overeating to be to the body it's almost like taking a machine and overusing it overworking it the pots heat up and eventually break down and we're out much faster same thing with the human body overeating requires the organs to work much harder and much longer and makes them more prone to to a breakdown so again under eating healthy food choices and snacks not going too many hours without eating try not to skip meals that will slow down your metabolic rate and of course getting inadequate water as we spoke about and physical activity to help burn some of those excess calories so in a nutshell no pun intended that would be some of the tips I'd like to give you today for achieving your weight loss goals I want again thank everybody for for listening I hope this was informative and I hope you've gotten something out of this talk today you