What you MUST do first before trying to lose weight

I will not be home Tuesday night to listen to this - http://doctorstevenpark.com/ask-dr-park ... mal-health

Do you think he is saying all overweight people should have a sleep study?

Hopefully someone will listen and tell us what this doctor says.

I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with DR. Park. Do have it in my calendar to watch. Hope he's interesting.

I imagine this is an outline of Dr. Park's show - http://doctorstevenpark.com/sleep-the-m ... eight-loss

Kairosgrammy wrote:I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with DR. Park. Do have it in my calendar to watch. Hope he's interesting.

You probably would enjoy reading his blog - http://doctorstevenpark.com/

Dr. Park has mentioned before the correlation between Leptin and sleep. Leptin is a hormone which helps to regulate food and energy intake in our bodies. When we are sleeped-deprived, and have high cortisol levels, leptin is off, and that can affect the insulin system as well. It's hard to lose weight when these hormones are not working properly.

So getting sleep apnea under control certainly helps with weight reduction. Moreover, if you are getting enough rest and oxygen to your body all night long, your overall health improves, you can be more active, which helps too.

Finally, I feel a lot better on CPAP. Less skeletal pain, which indicates to me less inflammation in my body. A diet doesn't have a fighting chance if you have all these other issues to contend with.

I personally think it's a good idea to get a sleep study done if you are overweight especially if you have tried to lose weight but can't. I've lost 50 lbs with untreated apnea and it will be interesting to see if it is easier once I start treatment. However I could also see some people may use apnea as an excuse to eat unhealthfully. Intense exercisecould be very difficult with a sleeping disorder but anyone can eat healthfully even if weight los is slow.

Hea83ther wrote: However I could also see some people may use apnea as an excuse to eat unhealthfully. Intense exercise could be very difficult with a sleeping disorder but anyone can eat healthfully even if weight los is slow.

It is not an excuse as much as it is a coping mechanism. Chewing seems to keep one from falling asleep at ones desk pre -cpap. Also one is more attracted to carbs and sweets when one is tired.

I find when I'm tired that I want sweets and junk food and my will power isn't too nifty. I guess I'm basically, just too tired to care. Add on top of that that I eat compulsively when I'm tired, upset, stressed, bored, upset, stressed. I was a 2 pack a day smoker until I quit in 1990. I weighed 130 lbs. I used food for what I used smoking. At first, it didn't bother me. I was like okay, when I get past the nicotine addiction, I'll eat better. Wrong. My weight has spun completely out of control. My sleep apnea has gotten worse with my weight gain. It seems I get one issue under control and something else happens. I'm trying harder right now since apnea is more under control and I'm not exhausted all the time. Still need to get better about exercise.

BlackSpinner wrote:

Hea83ther wrote: However I could also see some people may use apnea as an excuse to eat unhealthfully. Intense exercise could be very difficult with a sleeping disorder but anyone can eat healthfully even if weight los is slow.

It is not an excuse as much as it is a coping mechanism. Chewing seems to keep one from falling asleep at ones desk pre -cpap. Also one is more attracted to carbs and sweets when one is tired.

Emotional Consumption... it is a vicious circle.

1) we consume to feel good not necessarily due to hunger
2) the scales or belt reveals a weight gain which makes us feel bad
3) then we start over with consuming to make us feel good even
though that will result in #2
4) the cycle starts again

Losing weight is as much the emotional battle as it is actually
consuming the appropriate food and exercise... this is why there
are weight loss clubs for folks to provide each other with support.

So very, very true. It is a cycle, a viscious cycle. I was talking to my doc about weight loss and he was telling me that the most recent research showed eating a diet heavier in protein and fiber would keep you full longer. I love the man but at that point, I wanted to wring his SKINNY little neck. You can't explain to people who don't have and never have had a weight problem that it's not about hunger. It's about emotions and baggage etc.


https://www.cpap.com/productpage/respir ... achine.htm https://www.cpap.com/productpage/respir ... chine.html

Paul56 wrote:Emotional Consumption... it is a vicious circle.

1) we consume to feel good not necessarily due to hunger
2) the scales or belt reveals a weight gain which makes us feel bad
3) then we start over with consuming to make us feel good even
though that will result in #2
4) the cycle starts again

Losing weight is as much the emotional battle as it is actually
consuming the appropriate food and exercise... this is why there
are weight loss clubs for folks to provide each other with support.

Kairosgrammy wrote: You can't explain to people who don't have and never have had a weight problem that it's not about hunger. It's about emotions and baggage etc.

Kairosgrammy, you raise some interesting points. Like you I used to be a 2 pack a day smoker as well. Was also heavily into the sweets and caffeine. Looking back now I think MOST of that was fueled by untreated sleep apnea, trying to keep my energy level up. After I quit smoking got very depressed so substituted exercise for smoking, which also helped the depression a little. Kind of like trading one addiction for another. Slowly loosing the chocolate addiction now because my energy is improving with xpap therapy. It can be a vicious circle, especially if you don't know WHY your doing what your doing.

If your diet is high in carbs, your blood sugar runs like a roller coaster. After you ingest the carbs, the blood sugar goes up and so does your mood, your alertness, your productivity. Eventually your insulin levels catch up with the carb load and start to drop your blood sugar. This is particularly dramatic in people with insulin resistance, whose blood sugar starts to drop like a stone. Often these are people who have so-called "reactive hypoglycemia". The result is feeling, tired, sleepy, foggy, achey, hungry, and miserable. And instant relief can be obtained by eating carby foods, especially sugary foods. Which starts the cycle all over again.

Typically, a person caught in this cycle finds that they need to eat roughly every two hours during the day. Breakfast is followed by a "coffee break" at work, often with a sugary pastry treat. 2 hours later it's lunch time. Aroud 3 p.m. most people complain of getting sleepy at their desks. This is low blood sugar again, and sadly my favorite relief for too many years was a bag of peanut M&M's (WHAT? It has protein! ). Often I needed a second late afternoon sugary snack to hold me to dinner time.

In the book Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis refers to this as the “desparate cyclic scramble for food every two hours”. It’s caused by METABOLISM, not weakness in character or deep-seated emotional distress. No amount of willpower or psychological counseling is going to overcome it. It requires a complete makeover of your diet, limiting the the carbs to healthy, low starch vegetables, and getting enough protein and fat in your diet to switch over from the glucose roller coaster to an effecient, ketogenic metabolism. It's quite amazing that my need to eat every two hours has disappeared entirely by changing my diet, and I sometimes have to force myself to 6 or 7 hours after my last meal. I hate roller coasters, and I'm very glad to be off that one!

I should add that sleep apnea further messes up the hormonal feedback loops that control insulin levels, so getting apnea under control can only help normalize insulin resistance and metabolism, permitting weight loss. Likewise, getting insulin levels under control can help your sleep because some of those arousal during the night may be from insulin secretion to try to normalize the out of whack blood glucose levels.

I think sometimes weight gain is emotional, but not always. I think it was mentioned above that it's a vicious cycle. For me, I drank caffeine and ate sugar all day to stay awake. Every time I felt sleepy, I would grab junk food. Personally, I did use sleeping problems as an excuse not to eat healthfully or exercise. At the time, my apnea was not yet diagnosed, but I already knew I had other sleeping disorders. I did not research other ways to help myself stay awake and didn't try anything else either. My neurologist at the time suggested that if I lost weight, the sleeping disorders may cure themselves. It took me over a year after he told me this to do something about it. It has not been easy by any means, and people have mentioned most of the difficulties I have had above. However, with a little creativity, I think most of those difficulties can be solved.

Obviously, the hormonal problems created by apnea are not the fault of the patient. Someone above mentioned the need to chew to stay awake-gum would be an option, as would something crunchy like popcorn. Natural sugar can replace processed sugar. I do eat every two hours, and if I don't, I feel terrible. I just try to make sure that 90% of what I eat is reasonably healthy and that I'm not consuming an outrageous amount of calories. I also eat protein for breakfast. I do drink coffee in the morning and a can of pop in the afternoon. My diet is by no means perfect, but I have lost fifty pounds using this method. Exercise is tricky for me, and it is hard to progress. It will be interesting to see when I get started on CPAP whether I will start to progress more quickly.

Janknitz seems to be getting this discussion going in the proper direction.

Earlier posts talked about "emotions" and seemed to be saying personality is a big driving factor in obesity. I believe this is an incorrect view and a dangerous view. Dangerous because it blames the "patient" for something they did not cause and tends to get them doing things that will fail. After all the title of this thread is "What you MUST do first before trying to lose weight".

That "MUST do first" is not to eat less and exercise more. It is not to cut down the carbs and eat more protein.

The "MUST do first" is to sleep well and sleep an appropriate amount of hours. Appropriate means enough and it means not too much.

This is important and here is why. It has to do with gherlin and leptin.

In simple terms gherlin is a hormone that stimulates appetite. When you don't get enough sleep the body produces excess gherlin. Thus you feel hungrier than you should.

Leptin is a hormone that creates a feeling of satiation from food. When you don't get enough sleep the body underproduces leptin. Thus you need more and more food to feel satiated.

So sleep affects the gherlin/leptin balance which then affects your eating habits.

Boys and girls, obesity at the root is not about emotions or personality or character or laziness or will power. In the context of discussions in this forum, obesity is about getting good quality and appropriate quantity of sleep. It makes a world of difference in your lives.

Kody wrote:

Kairosgrammy wrote: You can't explain to people who don't have and never have had a weight problem that it's not about hunger. It's about emotions and baggage etc.

Kairosgrammy, you raise some interesting points. Like you I used to be a 2 pack a day smoker as well. Was also heavily into the sweets and caffeine. Looking back now I think MOST of that was fueled by untreated sleep apnea, trying to keep my energy level up. After I quit smoking got very depressed so substituted exercise for smoking, which also helped the depression a little. Kind of like trading one addiction for another. Slowly loosing the chocolate addiction now because my energy is improving with xpap therapy. It can be a vicious circle, especially if you don't know WHY your doing what your doing.

I think back in those days, I was strictly a stress smoker. I don't think I had sleep apnea although I wouldn't rule it out. I was eating well, exercising and felt great and weighed a nice, pleasant 130 lbs, right in the middle of my weight range, not too skinny and not an ounce of fat. *sigh* If I could go back to the day I quit smoking, I would have substituted pushups for smoking. Stress is a horrible thing and it has to go somewhere. Then you add sleep apnea and constant exhaustion,depression from the sleep apnea and all the health problems we end up having and many of us eat to compensate for stress, upset etc. I'm a very emotional eater. I just need to find another outlet for my feelings then in eating!