The author of Interval Weight Loss Dr Nick Fuller has helped hundreds of people on their weight-loss and lifestyle journeys and investigated a broad range of topics including dietary and exercise programs, appetite hormones, commercial programs, complementary and conventional medicines, medical devices, and weight-loss surgery.
He completed his doctorate on the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of different obesity weight-loss treatments, and has also completed degrees in exercise physiology and nutrition and dietetics.
Here, The Carousel asks Dr Nick Fuller to talk about his new book and explain the secret is behind tricking your body into weight loss without dieting.
- How does the body’s fight or flight response apply to weight loss, and why is this important?
Whenever we follow any sort of diet we will lose weight but our body’s innate response is to fight that weight loss and get back to its set point, to defend its level of fatness. The set point is the weight that the body defends, and everyone has one – think of the weight you have been at for a long period of time. The problem with following all these diets is that not only do you regain the weight you lose on any weight loss diet, but you often put on more kilos than when you started, and hence redefine you set point at a higher starting point.
- What are the biggest mistakes dieters make and how can you avoid them?
Skipping meals or omitting food groups/certain foods (eg carbohydrates/carbs) is the biggest mistake. Such food eating practices or diets will result in short-term results for long term pain. You will lose weight but then you will put it back on when you reintroduce the foods you had been excluding. Diets are unhealthy, unrealistic and can be very dangerous for a person’s long-term health. It is important to follow a food eating plan that includes all food groups and keeps foods that are not nutritious to a minimum – but we should never exclude anything.
- What are some of your best success stories?
People that follow the Interval Weight Loss plan not only lose the weight but they keep it off for good. The reason being is that Interval Weight Loss helps a person redefine their set point. It prevents the usual response to weight loss where a person experiences a decrease in metabolism (i.e. the amount of energy burnt at rest) and an increase in appetite hormones telling you to eat more and hence driving your weight back to where it started, if not heavier.
People will succeed on the Interval Weight Loss plan if they follow the principles in the book and a stepped approach i.e. a small weight loss, followed by maintaining that weight loss for the next month, and so on, until their goal weight is achieved. People on this plan have shed 30 plus kilos and kept it off for greater than five years.
- What are some clever mind tricks you can deploy to motivate yourself to stick to the plan?
Everyone finds it easy to stick to Interval Weight Loss because you don’t have to omit any foods or food groups. You are also not required to restrict your food intake as what any diet will prescribe, but rather Interval Weight Loss encourage you to eat more -from wholesome, nutrient dense foods. The weight maintenance months also allow you to have a break and include more of those ‘treat’ foods you enjoy, or to engage in less structured physical activity. Interval Weight Loss is for everyone.
