Losing weight is a marathon, not a sprint

Social media trends can land you in hospital. Many are not recommended by health professionals or qualified nutritionists. Over the years there’ve been many trends that people have claimed will help you lose weight faster and with the minimum of effort. At one point people ate just grapefruit for breakfast. Then came the Atkins diet where people cut out carbohydrates and increased their intake of fats and proteins. Then it shifted to eliminating fats altogether and sticking to high proteins and limited quantities of carbohydrate.

Then came intermittent fasting followed by cutting out dairy products and the ‘eat this, not that’ buzz phrase. Rice and bread have always been demonised by dieticians because they are carbohydrates that eventually turn into sugar in the blood. Now people are focusing on high protein, low-calorie diets that include lots of fibre, high amounts of proteins in their many forms, trending grains and plenty of water.

Yes, rice is a grain but not a trending grain. Grains that are now trending were never heard of around 20 years ago. Grains such as spelt, quinoa, flaxseeds and chia seeds are now seen flying off supermarket shelves at exorbitant prices. Included in a balanced diet, these grains can be very helpful to maintaining a decent weight and, the latter, apparently for dropping a few pounds, if consumed correctly.

So, none of this sounds bad, right? But there is a point at which people take trends too far without really understanding the risks involved to their health from what they’re doing. There is now a dangerous trend in which, for 7 - 40 days, you drop two spoonsful of chia seeds into a class of water and immediately chug it down your throat.

The premise is that it will fill you up making you want to eat less during the day, thereby helping you stay fuller longer. That means you won’t want to snack in between meals. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this except for the way it is being consumed. Chia seeds work by expanding and becoming gelatinous upon contact with moisture which they rapidly absorb, whether that moisture is in a glass of water or your body.

There’ve been numerous reports of Emergency Room visits by people who’ve done this challenge but ended up choking because the chia seeds formed a gelatinous mass inside their throat. That lump has had to be removed by endoscopic means.

TikTok and Instagram creators love a good challenge to get views. But unfortunately people also love shortcuts to losing weight quickly rather than gradually and in a more healthy way. They’ll try anything if it means losing a few pounds in a few days.

However, if they applied logic and did some serious reading about how their body works, they’d understand that without cutting anything out they could manage their existing weight or lose a few pounds in a healthy way.

The key is to create a calorie deficit. This means that as long as you eat less than your normal caloric intake, over time you will lose weight. But how do you create that deficit? Well it’s not by trying a TikTok challenge. You need to eat low-calorie foods that fill you up so you don’t resort to snacking in between meals.

Snacking isn’t necessarily bad for you but it can make you consume extra calories if you didn’t eat the right foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Proteins and foods rich in fibre fill you up. That being said, not all proteins are the same. For example, 50 grams of protein in peanut butter is much less satiating than 50g of protein from a chicken breast. So it’s better to eat the latter than the former.

Think about this fact. Several researchers have found that even when they ate burgers, fries, chocolates, milkshakes and a bunch of snacks for every meal, they still lost weight because they ensured that they ate fewer calories. Of course, I don’t advise having a diet solely consisting of junk food because it’s dangerous for your heart. But if you eat moderate amounts of snacks in between your healthy meals, you’ll still be able to meet your weight goals.