Metabolic Disorder & Weight Loss

Metabolic disorder is so common in the United States that it has three different names–metabolic syndrome, syndrome X or dysmetabolic syndrome. The American Heart Association estimates that metabolic syndrome will soon beat cigarette smoking to become the number-one cause of heart disease in the United States. Weight loss is key to treating metabolic disorder.

What is Metabolic Disorder?

A person who has metabolic disorder typically is overweight, sometime obese, and has a higher risk for heart disease, according to the Medicine Net website. Symptoms common to metabolic syndrome are abdominal obesity, where the waist is more than 35 inches for women and more than 40 inches for men; high blood pressure; an elevated fasting blood glucose level; high triglyceride levels and low HDL (good) cholesterol levels. You can get all of these levels checked by a doctor to find out where you fit in. People need to have a cluster of symptoms to have the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). If you have three or more of these symptoms, your doctor will probably diagnose you as having metabolic syndrome.

Eat a Healthy Diet

One of the best ways to combat metabolic syndrome is to change your diet. Although many high-protein, low-carb diets are popular and people can lose weight on them, they are not the recommended course of action for metabolic syndrome. These diets can pose serious health risks because of the emphasis on saturated fat, according to The University of Chicago Medical Center. If you intend to fast or go on a liquid diet to lose some initial weight, do it under a doctor’s supervision, but this would only be for the short term. You will still need a maintenance plan.

DASH Diet

The Nutrition Journal, an open-access, peer-reviewed online journal, tested people on weight loss using the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet recommended by the NHLBI, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The DASH diet recommends keeping your calories down to 1600 for women and 1800 for men who are trying to lose weight. Foods emphasized on DASH are vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low fat dairy foods and lean meats.

Vegetable Juice

In the controlled study published in the Nutrition Journal, participants were divided into three groups. All groups were on the DASH diet, but two of the groups drank low sodium vegetable juice as well. One group drank 8 oz. a day of vegetable juice, and the other group drank 16 oz. a day. The findings were that the two groups who drank the vegetable juice lost more weight than the group who did not drink any vegetable juice. The 8-oz. group lost the most weight. The conclusion was that the group drinking 8-oz. a day was able to sustain that level of juice consumption, whereas the 16 oz. group had more trouble doing that. So, another case of “less is more”; less juice led to more weight loss.

Importance of Vegetables and Fruits

Vegetables and fruits help people to reach and maintain a healthy weight, which will improve metabolic disease. Vegetables and fruit are low in calories and can make you feel full. No doubt, it is difficult to eat enough vegetables and fruit in your daily diet. The National Journal learned from the study that even though people are educated and know that they should eat five servings a day of fruit and vegetables, knowledge alone often doesn’t translate into actually eating them. That’s why drinking vegetable juice is so important. It is the easiest way, along with following the DASH diet, to increase your vegetable intake and improve your metabolic syndrome.