Guest Author - J. Claire K. Niala

THE AFRICAN GUIDE TO WEIGHT LOSS:

Losing weight is easy. In fact it is much harder to gain weight than it is to lose it. When dealing with patients who have to either lose or gain weight I know which is much more of an uphill battle and it is for those who have to pile on the pounds rather than to shed them. What is difficult is cultivating the habits that are needed to initiate and then maintain weight loss.

Part of the problem starts with the fact that we do not use our bodies the way we should. We were designed for expending a lot of energy either ‘hunting and gathering’ or following the agricultural revolution working in the fields. We certainly are not designed for sitting in cars and spending the whole day sat at desks in front of computers barely using a muscle. In fact most of the world still does not live like this.

In the majority world, obesity, heart conditions, diabetes are still diseases of the urban economically affluent. Our rural cousins who live more ‘natural’ lifestyles do not share the same afflictions. When looking at ways in which people can lose weight I usually turn to their ancestors - going back several generations can give clues as to natural and effective ways of losing weight and staying healthy.

Why not? The major diet gurus already twigged onto this - try the Atkins diet - basically meat and milk, very little vegetable matter and the pounds fall off. Sound familiar? Try the Maasai of East Africa. These well known pastoralists are known for their love of meat and milk. Especially milk mixed with some fresh blood taken from a cow. What traditional Maasai also do, however, is walk great distances and boil the root of a particular tree which it has since been discovered has cholesterol reducing properties. Might go some way to explaining why despite this type of diet traditional Maasai people are not succumbing readily to coronary episodes.

I tried this myself over a decade ago. After several failed attempts to lose weight I decided to follow my grandfather’s traditional diet. He gave me lots of pointers and in the end I found myself eating a sorghum based porridge for breakfast, walking everywhere (this included the 45 minute trek to and from my University at the time), and having a complete (nutrient wise) meal between 4 - 5pm.

Something strange started to happen. After a couple of weeks I needed less sleep (towards the end of the diet I was refreshed after just 4 hours), I had more energy and yes the weight literally fell off. It wasn’t until I was a postgraduate studying to be Naturopathic Physician that I came across what is now commonly termed the ‘Warrior Diet’. Amongst nomadic peoples all over the world it was common to eat just one proper meal a day. The net effect of this was that your body was kept in a ‘permanently primed’ state. Less sleep was required (the body was expending less energy digesting lots of food) and the body also used its calorific intake more efficiently making obesity rare.

I couldn’t keep up this diet forever as I was not living like my ancestors who took several hundred years to wander down the shores of the Nile but in modern Britain. What I did learn from my experience though is that our bodies have evolved and been primed over centuries to respond to food (and certain foods) in a particular way - the way we live now is interrupting that defined pattern and is causing us all sorts of problems.

One common example is the number of African people and people of African origin who have difficulties digesting the milk sugar lactose from cow’s milk as for many it has not traditionally constituted a part of their diet but is a recent more modern addition. I began to develop a system of working out what I should eat based on my genetic heritage whilst also taking into consideration the amount of activity that I was doing each day. I started to use this system with my patients whether African, European or even of mixed heritage and the results were startling. Not only did people lose weight but they became more aware of their food and rediscovered aspects of their culture. In the end it came down to the 10 guidelines listed in the article weight loss african style - the guidelines.