Dieticians at Tambo Memorial Hospital focus on healthy lifestyles
Two seminars on different dates were held at the hospital's Villa Nerina Hall, where topics such as exercise and weight loss, sport nutrition, bioelectrical impedance analysis and more were discussed.
Dietitians at Tambo Memorial Hospital recently hosted an informative nutrition and obesity seminar.
This was in line with National Nutrition Week, observed from October 9 to 15, and National Obesity Week, observed from October 15 to 19, to create awareness of obesity and the importance of eating healthily.
Attendees included staff from the hospital as well as other health-care professionals from various hospitals across the region.
Lezanne Schoeman, Tambo Memorial Hospital senior dietitian, said, “We decided on educating health professionals and staff about the importance of eating healthily because we believe in a holistic approach to health-care. By informing health professionals, they then can be able to help patients on their road to recovery by disseminating the information that they received.”
Dietitian Ntsako Mathye spoke about food labels and serving size.
Mathye said the answer to weight loss is to have healthy eating habits, exercise regularly and eat balanced meals.
She said people wrongly starve themselves and deprive themselves of nutrients to lose weight. “Some of the effects of starving yourselves is having headaches, poor concentration and weakness.
“When you starve yourself you are only slowing down your metabolism, which makes it harder to lose weight and when you return to normal eating you’ll gain more weight than before.”
Mathye shared that living a healthy lifestyle entails eating healthy food and being active.
In terms of nutrients, Mathye highlighted that there are six groups of essential nutrients in food, which are carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water.
She added that all of these six groups have different functions and they are all needed for one to be healthy.
She said a ‘serving’ is the amount of food recommended by food manufacturers, while a ‘portion’ is the amount of food you choose to eat at any one time which may be more or less than a serving.
Some of the tips of controlling portion size is to eat from a plate, not a package, so you know how much you eat.
“Use a smaller plate, don’t overfill it. Only dish up once. Limit meal time distractions by turning off the television while you eat. Gradually make portion sizes smaller.”
In terms of beverages, Mathye suggested if you want to lose weight you must drink still, sparking or soda water.
“Limit sugar in your tea or coffee, drink low-fat milk and low-energy beverages, such as light, zero and diet beverages.
“When shopping, read labels, avoid or eat less food when labels on the food are written ‘fat, oil, lard, butter, cream, shortening, trans fat, salt, sodium, sugar, sucrose, glucose, maltose, dextrose, cane sugar, corn syrup and fructose,’ Mathye said.
Mathye advised attendees not to go grocery shopping hungry and they should always go with a list.
According to Bo Coutts from Ghetto CrossFit Boksburg, the term ‘weight loss’ causes people to believe that when they get on the scale the numbers will decrease but that’s not always the case.
“If you are losing muscle mass you are not losing fat. In order to lose weight when exercising, you need to burn more calories than you are consuming.
“Starting to exercise will help you reduce fat in your body and you should do exercises that make you happy. If you hate weight lifting and I’m forcing you, you won’t stick it out and in the next few months you’ll stop.
“If you love running then do it. If you want to burn fat, build muscle with resistance training. The more muscle you have in your body the less fat you’ll have in your body. Your muscle needs energy to be sustained,” Coutts said.
Dietitian Ashleigh Solomon engaged the audience on the topic of ‘Fad diets’ -Truth or Myth?
In regards to the Banting diet, Solomon said according to Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town meta-analysis, a lower carbohydrate is no more effective for producing weight loss than a balanced ‘higher carb’ diet.
Solomon said by removing carbohydrates from the diet one will obviously decrease calorie intake.
“Studies show that when carbohydrate levels are low, glycogen from the liver glucose depletes stores, resulting in a five per cent weight loss, and glycogen from muscles stores depletes stores result in a one per cent weight loss.
“Due to low carbohydrate content, your body enters a state of ketosis. Essentially, ketosis occurs when there are no carbohydrates available to use as energy so fat is used as an energy source.”
Meanwhile, Solomon highlighted that ketosis affects bone mineralisation because kenotic anions require cations which are drawn from the bones.
