SERIOUS about losing that post-Summer holiday flab? Laurence Toime, a PhD graduate from Cambridge University and former Wellingtonian, investigated the fundamental processes thought to play a role in diseases like ageing, obesity and diabetes. The findings may help you.
His PhD, with the splendid title: ‘The role and regulation of mitochondrial uncoupling proteins’, uncovers secrets of how the body transforms the food we eat into useable energy.
“The cellular machinery used in this transformation is central to many biological processes, and we’re only just now beginning to understand how these different processes inter-relate,” Toime says.
“If you’re serious about losing weight, unfortunately all the evidence shows that for most people it’s extremely hard. Our bodies use a number of different mechanisms to try to resist changes in weight, and even if you do manage to lose weight in the short-term, these mechanisms will work to try and put weight back on. This means that it’s much harder for adults who were overweight as children to lose weight than it is for people who have only recently gained weight.  Added to this, sugar is extremely addictive, and a number of studies have shown that cutting it out of a diet can lead to withdrawal symptoms similar to those seen with smokers, alcoholics or heroin addicts.  All this means that losing weight is no simple task for most people, and needs a concerted effort for a long time.”
After Wellington College, Toime completed a semester at Victoria University, and then moved to England in 2000 where he studied at Cambridge, obtaining a 1st class BA and MSci, specializing in biochemistry. He now works as a patent attorney in the UK.
“Obesity is proving particularly difficult to manage, and one possible line of treatment is to develop a drug that safely makes the body extract less energy from food. This would make it possible to lose weight without having to change our diet.  With all the interesting research going on, this field seemed an obvious choice for a PhD topic,” he says.
In the 1930s, an effective weight loss pill was developed based on a chemical called dinitrophenol a “cellular metabolic poison” which has been used in wood preservatives, explosives, and pesticides. Needless to say the stuff was dangerous if not used very carefully and its use discontinued when they found it caused cataracts. The laboratory Toime experimented in was working on a number of chemicals that act in a similar way to dinitrophenol.
“They are much harder to overdose on, and so could one day provide a safe treatment to combat obesity,” he says.

Five simple steps to get started:
1)  You have to reduce your calorie intake significantly, and there’s lots of advice out there for how to do this.  Exercising is fantastic for general health, but if you exercise more, and then eat more to compensate or as a reward, studies show you’re very unlikely to lose weight.
2)  Try to eat less meat – vegetarians tend to weigh significantly less than meat-eaters.
3)  Trick your body into thinking its full by drinking water.  Studies have shown that people naturally feel more full and eat fewer calories if they eat soup rather than dry food, or if they drink a couple of glasses of water before each meal.  
4)  Get lots of sleep.  Numerous studies have shown that not sleeping enough leads to weight gain, as well as raft of other health problems.
5)  Make friends with skinny people.  OK, this one sounds a bit strange, but recent studies have shown that your eating habits and overall weight are influenced by your social network of friends.  This means that spending time with people who aren’t overweight, or other people who are also trying to lose weight, could make all the difference to whether you can lose weight, and keep it off.