«حمد الطبية»: العادات الغذائية السيئة وراء الإصابة بـ «السمنة»
DOHA: The key to healthy weight loss is making and maintaining lifestyle changes, says Dr Monica Skarulis (pictured), Director of Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) National Obesity Treatment Center.
The major function of the National Obesity Treatment Center is educating patients and helping them balance calorie intake with activity levels.
“The food choices we make have an important impact on our health. Qatar and other developed countries suffer from the easy availability of high-calorie delicious foods. In most cases, people who suffer from obesity are looking at the effects of a mismatch between the actual energy needed to fuel their body and the energy they consume from food on a daily basis,” says Dr Skarulis.
Now open six months, the National Obesity Treatment Center was established to provide a comprehensive weight management program for patients seeking to lose weight, specifically those most at risk of weight-related diseases.
Dr Skarulis says while genetics and pre-existing health conditions may play a role in obesity, poor diet and a lack of physical activity are the major contributing factors. She says nutrition labels are part of the problem, noting they can be confusing.
“There is an abundance of energy-dense foods for consumers to choose from and many of these pre-packaged, convenience foods have confusing labels. It is hard for most people to look at a food and know the energy content (usually given as kilocalories or kilojoules per 100 grammes),” says Dr Skarulis.
She says the availability of discount foods and quick-service restaurants are also major contributing factors. Dr Skarulis says we’ve moved from people who eat to live to people who live to eat. She says most people have lost touch with the brain-body connection that tells us when we are hungry and when we’ve had enough.
Part of the care plan for patients at the National Obesity Center involves helping them re-learn how to hear those cues. She says educating patients about their calorie requirements is an essential component in both reaching and maintaining a healthy weight.
“As a guide, an average man needs around 2,500 calories a day to maintain a healthy body weight and an average woman around 2,000 calories a day. We need much less food than most of us think and when we eat and drink more calories than we expend, our bodies store the excess as body fat. We used to speak of the average 70kg man, in Qatar it is more like the average 85kg man,” says Dr Skarulis.
أكدت الدكتورة مونيكا سكاروليس -مدير المركز الوطني لعلاج السمنة في مؤسسة حمد الطبية- أن الفرد بحاجة إلى 2500 سعر حراري (2000 سعر حراري للأنثى) للإبقاء على الوزن الصحي للجسم، مشيرة إلى أن معدّل وزن الفرد في قطر قد ارتفع من 70 إلى 85 كيلوجراماً.
ونوهت بأن الجسم يحتاج إلى كمية من الطعام أقل مما يعتقد الكثيرون، حيث يقوم الجسم بتخزين الفائض عن حاجته على شكل دهون.
وأضافت أن العادات الغذائية السيئة لدى الفرد، وقلّة النشاط البدني الذي يمارسه تعدّ من العوامل المسببة للسمنة، وأن من العوامل التي تزيد من فرص الإصابة بالسمنة تنوّع الوجبات السريعة، لافتة إلى أن المركز الوطني لعلاج السمنة يقوم بمساعدة المرضى على استعادة القدرة على التمييز الواضح بين الجوع والشبع، وتثقيفهم حول احتياجاتهم من السعرات الحرارية، باعتبار أن ذلك من الخطوات الضرورية نحو إنقاص الوزن إلى المعدل الصحي، والمحافظة عليه.
