Overweight & obesity – how nutritional counselling can help you lose weight

The obesity pandemic….

The topic of obesity & overweight divides the nation. Or to be more precise, it divides the nation into three: there are those of normal weight, those who are overweight or pre-obese (BMI 25-30) and those who are obese (BMI >30). Obesity has been categorised as a disease by the WHO since 2020.

But how bad is it really to have a little too much flab on your ribs? And to what extent can nutritional counselling help you lose weight?

According to the RKI, overweight and obesity affect a total of 53.5% of the population in Germany (46.6% of women and 60.5% of men). Obesity is present in 19.0% of adults.

BMI calculators for the body mass index help with the initial categorisation of your own weight.

The same applies to abdominal circumference: it becomes critical for women from 80 cm and for men from 94 cm.

Do you suffer from obesity?

You may already know from painful experience that being overweight or obese can cause you health problems: increasing breathlessness, joint wear and pain, heartburn or increased sweating are just a few examples. In addition, those affected often face considerable social problems and social exclusion: obese people are seen as lazy, comfortable, inflexible and sometimes even uneducated.

After an unsuccessful odyssey to combat the risk factor of obesity, you are now seeking competent medical help.

It is possible that secondary diseases such as type II diabetes mellitus or high blood pressure have already developed as a result of the increased body weight. You feel your health spiralling downwards and would finally like help with losing weight.

Now you are looking for competent and, above all, targeted nutritional counselling to help you finally shed the pounds.

An important note at this point:

Nutritional counselling and nutritional medicine may sound confusingly similar, but their services differ significantly. ‘Nutritional counsellor’ is not a protected professional title and therefore the qualifications of the counsellor can vary greatly.

The aim of nutritional counselling is primarily to prevent illness and provide general advice on healthy eating.

How does overweight or obesity develop?

How does obesity come about? And what factors lead to more and more people suffering from obesity today?

Many causes can be listed here. To summarise, you could say that we eat differently, more often and more, are more stressed and move less. But perhaps the devil is in the detail. Let’s take a closer look.

Sedentary behaviour has actually increased significantly. Food is available everywhere and in abundance all the time, and this has a not insignificant influence on our eating behaviour.

The more food we have in front of us, the more we eat. But even more important than how often and how much we eat is undoubtedly WHAT we eat. And what we drink.

We all know that the trend towards convenient food, soft drinks and unbalanced diets has an impact on our health.

So what happens in our bodies when we eat one (or more) white flour toast with margarine and cheese every day, or alternatively a doughnut or yeast plait?

To answer this question, let’s take a brief excursion into the topic of metabolism.

What does metabolism actually mean and what effects does metabolism have on weight?

Metabolism means: substances are ‘exchanged’. This metabolism takes place in our body cells at all times and serves to generate energy (>90%) and synthesise building materials (<10%).

For a well-functioning metabolism, we need nutrients: macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins, trace elements, etc.), which are then converted into energy and building materials via complicated conversion processes.

So at this point it remains to be said:

It is not a good idea to simply stop eating or to eat far too little.

How could the process function without starting substrates? Since substances are exchanged during the so-called metabolism and ‘waste’ is also produced in the process, it requires not only the supply of nutrients, but also the export of ‘residual substances’ or end products.

If both processes function optimally, this inevitably leads to health.

Unfortunately, in today’s diet and lifestyle, a high-quality supply of nutrients is rarely available.

There is also another disruptive factor:

Too many carbohydrates, too many accompanying substances and toxins.

What to do with this ‘too much’? At some point, the cells are ‘saturated’ and refuse to absorb any more sugar. The stores in the liver and skeletal muscles are then filled. If these stores are also fully utilised, the fat cell is the last to step in. The fat cell converts glucose into fats (triglycerides).

And now watch out:
The storage capacity of fat cells is unlimited. And at some point the liver is also overloaded with the breakdown of toxins. Where do we put the excess toxins? Exactly: the fat cell readily absorbs them.

So if we want to prevent fat build-up, it makes sense to reduce our intake of carbohydrates and toxins. In this context, it becomes clear why both nutritional counselling/therapy and detoxification therapy make perfect sense.

Countering cravings with nutritional counselling – Do you suffer from food cravings?

Insulin is needed so that glucose (sugar) can enter the cells. This means that whenever glucose enters the bloodstream, insulin is released by the pancreas. This is important to know:

The faster a glucose level rises, the more insulin is released.

And if (too) much insulin is released quickly because we eat white flour toast with jam, for example, then after the glucose level has normalised, excess insulin remains in the blood and continues to prompt cells to eliminate glucose.

As a result, glucose levels fall below normal and the nervous system reacts with ALARM. The result: cravings, nervousness, restlessness, lack of concentration, tiredness.

And what do people logically do? Exactly, they compensate by eating carbohydrates again. A vicious circle.
The logical thing to do would be to avoid a rapid and sharp rise in glucose levels.

This is where the often-mentioned glycaemic index or glycaemic load comes into play. There are various tables on the internet that show exactly how much the consumption of a certain food affects the glucose level.

The short summary of these tables is as follows:

If you want to prevent or combat overweight and obesity, consistently avoid white flour and industrial sugar, favouring wholemeal flour and whole cane sugar instead.

Disturbed hunger-satiety regulation

In addition, a deficiency of certain nutrients (e.g. omega-3 or fibre, protein deficiency or B-vitamin deficiency) can also lead to cravings.

This makes it increasingly clear why it is sometimes difficult or even impossible to free oneself from the overweight or obese state alone and without medical support. At the THERA Praxisklinik in Berlin, we work with the best laboratories to analyse your personal nutritional status.

Stress as a factor favouring obesity

And there is another factor that promotes obesity to a large extent: Stress.

More precisely, permanent stress. If we are constantly stressed, e.g. under great pressure or suffering from persistent anxiety, then more cortisol is released and the liver is constantly encouraged to break down glucose reserves (glycogenolysis). The glucose ends up in the blood and, as with the consumption of white flour, this also leads to an increased release of insulin (-> cravings). Cortisol also likes to dock onto abdominal fat cells and thus inhibits the breakdown of fat (lipolysis). In short: as long as there is a lot of insulin and cortisol circulating, fat burning will not work.

10 factors that favour or cause overweight and obesity

• Constant stress and chronic lack of sleep
• Environmental toxins (storage in fat cells and shift in hormonal regulation)
• Overeating and incorrect nutrient ratio (lots of sugar and white flour)
• Frequent consumption of dairy products (leucine, casein, oestrogens, IGF-1)
• High meal frequency
• Disturbed microbiome
• Genetic predisposition
• Taking certain medications such as antidepressants, antidiabetics, glucocorticoids, beta blockers
• Chronic illnesses such as hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome, depression (hormonal changes) or joint problems/arthritis (restricted mobility)
• Consumption of industrially manufactured products with additives and trans fatty acids

How harmful is being overweight or obese really?

Both overweight and obesity are the prime suspects as the cause of most chronic diseases. Even if overweight is initially only a variant of normal physiology (and serves as a precursor to obesity), obesity can certainly be considered a life-threatening disease. Nevertheless, in conventional medicine obesity is often seen more as a secondary diagnosis. However, impaired metabolic regulation and high fat mass have immense physical consequences. Overweight and obesity multiply the risk of dying prematurely from a secondary disease.

Specifically, a lot of belly fat also means a lot of inflammation. This is because a lot of fatty tissue is inflammatory to a certain extent, partly due to the adipokines (= proteins) released, which have pro-inflammatory properties, especially when weight is gained. Proinflammatory cytokines are produced, which can not only be partly responsible for silent inflammation, but also further promote insulin resistance.

Ultimately, being overweight means that all organs have to work harder all the time and the joints and bones have to carry more weight.