Weight creep can strike at any age, but it’s particularly common after 40. A more sedentary lifestyle, the accumulation of bad habits over time and hormonal changes can all play a role in midlife weight gain, experts say.
But a simple food swap can help. It broadly comes down to focusing on “carbohydrate quality” — swapping certain carbs for others, researchers reported Wednesday in The BMJ.
People who limited their intake of added sugar, sweetened drinks, refined grains and starchy vegetables while eating more whole grains, fruits and non-starchy vegetables gained less weight in midlife than their peers who indulged in a sugary, starchy diet.
The link between these habits and greater weight control was particularly strong among women, and people who were overweight or had obesity before making the changes.
“One of the interesting things in our study was that we found that the starch was actually a bigger problem overall than sugar itself,” Dr. Walter Willett, study co-author and professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, tells TODAY.com.
“Clearly, too much sugar is not a good thing either, but huge amounts of refined starch are even a bigger problem when it comes to weight control.”
Carb sources matter
The study is based on data from more than 136,000 nurses and health professionals who were 65 years old or younger, and regularly shared their medical history and eating habits in a series of surveys starting in the 1970s and ‘80s. They were followed for at least 24 years.
The authors of the present study looked at the participants’ self-reported diets to see how many carbs they were eating from sources including:
- Added sugar and sugar sweetened beverages, such as soda.
- Refined grains, including white flour, white bread and white rice.
- Starchy vegetables, which are “mostly potatoes. That’s the biggest villain,” Willett says. That includes fried, baked, boiled or mashed potatoes. Sweet…
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