'Fat day? This is a fat decade'

07 October 2015 - 02:02 By Nivashni Nair

You can follow the exact diet and exercise plan your parents used in the 1980s but you will still be heavier than they were at the time. A new study suggests it is harder to lose weight now than it was in the 1980s.Analysing data of nearly 36400 Americans, Toronto's York University researchers found that adults today were 10% heavier despite eating the same amount of food and following the exact exercise plan as their counterparts in the '80s.The researchers concluded that other factors such as chemicals and hormones in food, the rise in use of prescription medication, and stress made it easier to put on weight but harder to get rid of it.Johannesburg dietician Tabitha Hume yesterday said stress was a major contributor to weight gain."As a result of the increased pressures and our inability to control stress, we produce more cortisol in our bodies."If you have more cortisol, it makes you hungrier, slows down your metabolism and makes you store fat quicker."In the 1980s, women and teenage girls' waists were thinner. That is not the case now and that screams cortisol," she said.Even with the increased availability of weight loss aids in the market today, dieters in the 1980s still lost more weight.Hume said there was a "much more structured and normal approach to weight loss in the '80s"."Nowadays it has become much more extreme. When you go extreme, you've got bewilderment so you have people hitting one side or the other."They will start carb-free or fat-free or everything free and not be able to sustain it and then go the other direction and binge eat."Every time you starve and binge eat, your body metabolism changes. So back then they would say let's eat a little less junk and carry on."But today we have the need for immediate gratification so people are doing the extremes."Hume said people also "moved" a lot more 30 years ago than today."I am referring to informal exercise. Today people are sitting in front of screens. People are not moving as much as they used to on a minute by minute basis."..

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