the-diet-plan.com

Obesity is “socially contagious” and so is thinness. A new article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine with lead authors from Harvard Medical School and the University of California at San Diego says so. They studied data from over 12,000 adults covering a period of 32 years. Seems like a pretty good sample size to me.

They found that if a person becomes obese, their friends and family, especially those of the same sex, have a greater chance of becoming obese themselves.

If your friend puts on the pounds, your own chances of doing the same go up 57%. If two or more of your mutual friends are large, your chances go up 117%! If your brother or sister or spouse is obese (a score of 30 or more on the Body Mass Index scale), your likelihood increases around 40%.

It wasn’t that the obese or non obese people were just finding similar types to hang out with. Nope, there was a causal relationship. This was also not just due to similarities in lifestyle or environment, like eating the same things or exercising (or not) together. People, especially friends, who lived a long way away from each other were just as likely to share being obese or non-obese. The researchers wrote that the effect might be from how we establish/confirm our idea of what is “OK and “normal” with respect to body size.

“What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most
likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate
body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since
those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads,” said
Nicholas Christakis of HMS.

“This is about people’s ideas about their
bodies and their health,” James Fowler, of UCSD, said. “Consciously or unconsciously,
people look to others when they are deciding how much to eat, how much
to exercise and how much weight is too much.”

A lot of what we have been reading about in the past has dealt with looking at the physical processes involved in becoming obese or thin and looking for genes that might have some effect. Now we know we also have to look at a person’s social networks - their friends, their friends’ friends, and their immediate family. (Didn’t see anything in this article about parents. Wonder what effect their weight state might have.)

The good thing is, that when one person moves out of obesity, they also help a lot of others do the same thing. So now we owe it to our friends and family to become the healthy, active, slim person we all are, deep down inside.  –Di

To read more about this: Obesity Is ‘Socially Contagious,’ Study Finds

technorati tags:obesity, weight, loss, social, networks, obese, friends

In my recent series of articles on ways to dampen the appetite between meals, I thought about including the often-repeated advice to go drink some water whenever you feel hungry.

But the fact is, for me, water doesn’t do anything useful about my hunger pangs. But, I thought, it’s probably something one should do anyway. At least 8 8oz glasses of water a day, right?

Well, not so fast. Dartmouth Medical School professor Heinz Valtin, M.D. just had an article published in the online version of the American Journal of Physiology that says there isn’t good scientific evidence to support the old advice to drink the 8 x 8 of pure water, at least, every day. He says the water in other things you drink, including coffee and tea, does count and there is also a lot of water in real fruits and vegetables. Furthermore, he says, drinking too much water can be really bad.

He says the body has perfectly good mechanism for regulating your hydration status. When you’re thirsty, drink. Seems like a good message to me. –Di
Dartmouth Medical School - ‘Drink at Least 8 Glasses of Water a Day’ - Really?

Tags: weightloss, drink water, hydration, hunger

Recently my workplace started a sort of club to support employees trying to lose weight. Guess word of the obesity epidemic got to the powers that be.

Anyway, for one of the meetings they brought in an internal medicine doctor who’s been on the staff here for many years. She said quite a few employees come to her for help with losing weight and she noticed that many of them seemed depressed. That’s “mildly depressed” in a clinical sense. Serious depression requires serious treatment.

She said that she had noticed that when some people took over-the-counter herbal aniti-depressants like Rhodiola, they felt more optimistic, more in control of things, and could manage their weight better. She said she has many friends who swear by the stuff. This is not hard scientific evidence, of course. This is definitely anecdotal. But I thought I would pass it along in case my dear readers might want to give it a try. Might help, probably won’t hurt.

The name of the plant involved is Rhodiola rosea. This stuff is cheap, readily available and has a very long history of not being harmful. It’s the root and/or its extract that you want, with at least 10.2 mg of Rosavins per capsule. You take one of those a day and see what happens. Will go have a look and see what else I can dig up abut this herb. –Di

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Let’s say you’ve been following along with the tips I gave you already. You’re eating often, but not much, making sure you’re chewing thoroughly, and including a good bit of protein in each little meal.

But even before the ol’ clock says it’s time for refueling, the ol’ tum is saying “feeeed me.” “Just a little.” Well, we all know how much “just a little” can turn into.

I read this tip a while back and didn’t think much of it. But recently I did it for other reasons and it had the desired effect so I thought you should know.

Just go brush your teeth. Do a good job with toothpaste if that’s how you would normally do it. Do this right after every little meal or whenever you start to feel a hint of wanting to have a snack. For some reason, the psyche doesn’t want to mess up that clean feeling in your mouth and so you don’t want to put any junk in it any more. Or maybe the teeth brushing is something you normally do right before you go through a period of not eating and so it’s linked to “not eating time” in your mind. However it works, I was astonished at how quickly and completely my desire for a snack went away.

Try it and let me know how it works for you.  –Di

Tags: loseweight, diet, hunger

Make sure your meals and snacks include a good bit of lean protein. This is a big help to reducing appetite.

People have noticed for a long time that if they had meals that had a noticeable amount of protein in them, they weren't hungry so soon.

Back in 1999, there was a report in The International Journal of Obesity about 65 overweight folks were put on one of two low-calorie diets. One diet had 12% of its calories from protein and the other was 25% protein. Nobody was asked to exercise. After six months, the higher protein group had lost more weight.

There are a lot of people who think that's why the Atkins diet works. People who are on this diet for more than a couple of days start to eat less than they did before, even though they can have unlimited amounts of protein and fat. Their calorie consumption goes down into the 1200 kcal range, which is where most people will lose weight, at least until they hit plateau. It was discovered that it was the protein that was suppressing their appetites, not, surprisingly, the fat.

In May of last year, Science had a report that injection of a very small amount of one of the building blocks of proteins, an amino acid called leucine, into their brains caused starved rats to eat less than their brothers who got no such injection. And, in December, there was a report on the positive effects of high protein diets on levels of a biochemical appetite suppressor protein called PYY and weight loss in mice in the journal Cell Metabolism. Of course, humans aren't rodents so the mechanism by which we feel fuller longer after protein-containing meals will still have to be worked out.

It seems pretty clear, though, that one very good natural way to rein in the appetite is to make sure our meals and snacks get somewhere between a quarter to a third of calories from proteins. My own opinion is that the ratio shouldn't go higher than that, on average, because we need the vitamins, phytonutrients, fiber, and so on from fruits and veggies, too, for our overall health. There is also some evidence protein stimulates the metabolism a little. It is also muscle-sparing, meaning we don't have to turn into skinny fatties after dieting for a while. –Di

technorati tags:high, protein, diet, weight, loss, appetite, suppression

Eat lots of small meals spaced 2 1/3 to 3 hours apart. The point here is that you are feeding yourself so often you don’t actually get hungry and, if you do, you next meal is so close it’s not a problem to wait until then. If there are large gaps between meals you can build up quite a hunger. Also, eating often keeps the metabolism revved, which is a good thing in itself.



You could eat 5 or 6 sort of equal-sized meals (calories do count) or you could have three larger meals with two or three healthy “snacks.” Some people seem to think that means you simply add more meals to what is already a full day’s allotment of food. Or that “snack” means chips or cookies. Then they wonder why they aren’t losing any weight. It means you plan so that your daily allotment is divided into 5 or 6, rather than 1 to 3 segments. Some people do fine grazing all day and evening on roughly equally sized 200 kcal small meals. Others feel deprived if they can’t have at least one larger meal that has all the macronutrient components in a delicious recipe. So maybe 3 300 kcal meals and 3 100 kcal snacks would be better for them. Or maybe even cut out one snack and make one meal a 400 kcal one. This is flexible but you have to be firm about sticking to your plan and be consistent so you don’t see every meal edging up on the calorie scale.



All of the meals should have at least some protein. We’re not talking Atkins here. Just a bit of cottage cheese or plain yogurt or a few soy nuts with a piece of fruit for a snack, for instance. You want to avoid the sugar spike that a purely carb meal can give you, which will leave you hungry again before your next meal. Follow the diet plan you have chosen for each meal but miniaturize it a bit. With just a little bit of planning and preparation, you can make a big difference in keeping your appetite in check, keeping your metabolism active, and keeping your weight plan on course.  –Di

technorati tags:healthy, weight, loss, appepite, suppression

Losing weight is harder than many of the changes we decide to undertake for ourselves because you can't just give up food altogether. When you quit smoking or drinking alcohol or gambling, you have some hard moments over several weeks or months for sure. But ultimately, you can feel sincere in saying "I don't need that at all" and just not let it into your body or do that again. But with weight loss, the key is moderation, portion control, taking just what you need and no more. Much trickier, I think. So let's talk about some ways that help keep the appetite from being a ravening beast that incites us to fill up and out ever and ever wider.

Of course there are pills that are supposed to reduce your appetite, but I believe the key is in learning to manage your own self. Sooner or later you will need to stop taking them, because none of them are made of things nature intended for us to ingest forever. In my experience, when I stop taking them, I get REALLY hungry and have a hard time stopping myself from eating anything and everything I can get into my mouth. Not a pretty thought.

Today's tip is to chew every mouthful of food around 30 times before you swallow it. Yes I do mean count, at least until it is such a habit that you can tell when you have done that. This includes soups, smoothies, and other forms of liquid food. This does a number of things.

One is that it makes us eat more slowly, giving ourselves more time to notice when we are no longer actually hungry.

Another thing is that it breaks up the food and mixes the food with our saliva, which is supposed to happen in the course of digestion. It allows the enzymes to get in there and start breaking the molecules in the food into smaller ones so that your body can truly use what's there.

Also, your saliva has antibodies, which are part of the immune system. Thoroughly mixing your food with the saliva allows this immune response to neutralize or bind up agents that might not be good for you.

You get a chance to really taste the food. You get more pleasure out of less of what is really good and, if it doesn't really taste good, you will have a chance to notice that and maybe decide not to even eat it. Altogether, it makes eating a much more sensuous experience. There's nothing wrong with savoring the food which also nourishes us, especially if it's worthy. If you really enjoy what you are eating, you don't feel deprived and so you can stick with the program more easily.

A practical consideration: It reduces the chance of choking, which can happen when you try to swallow huge chunks of things that might get stuck in the wrong place.

All in all, aside from the phsiological benefits this gives you, it helps you learn to eat consciously, rather than just bolting down whatever while you're doing something else. I've gone through a whole package of roasted almonds that way and didn't even really enjoy them. Definitely felt like a stuffed animal later, though. Hope you will give this a try if you're not doing it already and let me know how it goes for you. –Di

technorati tags:natural, appetite, suppression, weight, loss, lose, weight, eat, less

Why is it so easy to gain weight and harder to lose weight after menopause?

Excuse us for this post, guys. You can go discuss your favorite interval training tips amongst yourselves for now.

This will deal with something many generations of women have noticed. The naive among us put it down to less activity, less muscle mass, things like that. Those could be involved, but Yale researchers have shown that there is an independent pathway in the brain for suppressing appetite that is turned on with estrogen.  It works a lot like the leptin pathway but is turned on by estrogen. So now we know.

But what’s a body to do? Should we all run out and start taking those hormone replacement therapy pills again? Just when the breast cancer incidence went down a lot because we older ladies stopped taking HRT? No way! The key is in finding a form of estrogen that only works on the brain, not on other tissues and organs. That’s probably a long way off but the Yalies are on it.

Meanwhile, there’s always the wonderful adpatable soybean with its estrogen mimicing constituents. No, I don’t mean running out to buy some pills with soy things in them or even they soy shakes that have huge amounts of sugar or high fructose corn syrup in them. Try a salad with some cooked shelled edamame (green soybeans) on it. Tofu stir fry anyone?

And then there’s always the tried and true watching of the diet and scaling up of activities. Those always work and have only good side effects.   –Di

ScienceDaily: Estrogen Curbs Appetite In Same Way As The Hormone Leptin

technorati tags:weight, loss, menopause, appetite, estrogen, leptin, diet, lose, weight, soy

Losing weight by just popping a pill or two is an enormously popular myth. Huge amounts of money are spent by hopeful weight losers to buy pills from companies that promise you can lose weight in your sleep just by taking their products.

Some of the more common ingredients in these pills, since ephedra has fallen into disfavor, are caffeine, a green tea constituent  abbreviated EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), and bitter orange. The brand names, the false claims made by the manufacturers and how the deceptions were carried out are detailed in the FTC report below. 

I love the quote from FTC Chairman, Deborah Platt Majoras: “You won’t find weight loss in a bottle of pills that claims it has the
latest scientific breakthrough or miracle ingredient”…  “Paying for fad science is a good way
to lose cash, not pounds.” Amen!!

Gotta go. Have some interval work to do.  Come with me!  –Di

FTC Reaches “New Year’s” Resolutions with Four Major Weight-Control Pill Marketers

technorati tags:weight, loss, pills, lose, weight, FTC

Got your resolutions all set for the upcoming year? I used to make lots of resolutions and sometimes, some of them got done, eventually. It turns out that there are methods you can use that help you move smoothly towards your goals almost effortlessly. Almost, I said.

Here are some wise thoughts from the author of one of the most effective weight loss systems ever written down. As a scientist, I appreciate the years of research that have gone into the seemingly simple steps he outlines here. I hope you enjoy it and find something of use in it.

Brain Science And New Year's Resolutions
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.burnthefat.com

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said, "I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they plan their lives. Perhaps it's because escape is easier than change."

Success psychologists say that 95% - 97% of the people in the world do NOT have written goals and fail, while 3-5% have written goals and succeed.

If these statistics are correct, then Mr Rohn's observation really IS quite fascinating isn't it?

Unfortunately for most people, the odds for success are actually even lower, because out of the few people who do set goals, most don't take goal setting seriously, they don't do it scientifically and they only do it once a year.

Goal setting is so important, that I always teach goal setting and mind dynamics first, and only THEN, do I teach nutrition and training second.

It doesn't matter how much you know about nutrition or exercise. Until specialized fitness knowledge is linked with goals and directions, the knowledge is useless and you won't accomplish very much or keep the changes long term.

In fact, I devoted the entire first chapter of my book, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle (www.burnthefat.com) to the subject of goals and constructive "mind programming" for successful, permanent behavior change.

I've also studied neuro linguistic programming (NLP) for many years and more recently spent many months researching the latest information about neuroscience to see just how much of the traditional self help and goal setting wisdom is actually backed by brain research.

As you start thinking about your goals for 2007 right Now, I'd like to help you start the year off right by sharing two very valuable, science based tips on achieving your goals:

SCIENTIFIC GOAL SETTING TIP #1: Repetition is an effective way to "plant" a goal in the non-conscious mind

Why don't most resolutions stick? Psychology and neuroscience today are giving us the answers.

Thanks to new technologies in brain imaging, such as PET scans, SPECT scans and functional MRI's, we can now actually see your thoughts as electrochemical impulses and we can see the formation of new neural connections in real time right before our eyes.

We can also see where, geographically, in your brain, a particular type of thought is occurring.

most importantly, we can see how long it takes to form strong neural patterns and what types of stimuli cause the patterns to form more quickly

Here's what we've discovered:

Setting a goal once is a conscious activity. Willpower is also a conscious activity. But research has shown that at least 5/6 of your brain power is in the non conscious mind and that the information and instructions that reach the non conscious mind are responsible for your automatic behavior.

Some psychologists believe that 95% of our behaviors are unconscious and automatic… more commonly known as habits.

Long term behavior changes don't take place when you set goals one time as with most new years resolutions. There's an old saying in "self help" circles that it takes at least 21-30 days to form a habit. This has now been prove to be fairly accurate on a neurological basis.

New neural patterns begin to form only after they've been repeated enough times. They continue to strengthen with further repetition. If you make resolutions on January 1st and you don't continue to repeat and reinforce your desire for those "goals," no new neural connection is formed, no new habits are formed, no new behaviors are formed….

Your resolutions wither away and die and any results obtained through willpower (trying to force the new behaviors through conscious effort), are quickly lost when you slip back to your old ways.

What you repeat over and over again is programmed into the subconscious mind and begins to take root. On a practical level, this means RE-writing your goals everyday and thinking about them in positive terms and in mental pictures, every day, repeatedly until the habit is formed and turned over to "auto-pilot."

In 1956, when Earl Nightingale wrote "The Strangest Secret is that we become what we think about most of the time," we didn't know what we know now about the brain.

Nevertheless, Earl was right.

You don't change your body by trying to change your body. You change your body by creating new habitual patterns of thinking and visualizing.

Trying to force new behaviors with willpower while continuing with your old ways of thinking will always fail because your automatic behavior is mostly under non-conscious control.

Its not the resolution you set once… its the goals (mental thoughts and images) you focus on all day long that create the long term (and automatic) behavioral change… when you change your behaviors, you change your body and your life…

SCIENTIFIC GOAL SETTING TIP #2: Emotion is a goal-turbocharger

Is there any way around this tedious process of "mental programming" through repetition? Not really. The fields of NLP and hypnosis have given us some tools for creating more rapid changes, but ultimately you have to begin to "run your own brain" and change your habitual way of thinking. No one else can do it for you and there's no way around it.

there is however, a scientifically proven way to to speed up the process and that is with the use of strong emotion.

Since modern imaging technology can see activity in the brain and scientists have located the seat of emotions in the brain, we know that the strength and number of neural connections associated with a thought or behavior are increased when you're in a highly emotional state.

The neuron connections are also stronger, longer lasting and it takes longer to lose a neural connection when it was formed with great emotion.

With this knowledge, we see another reason why new years resolutions fail: They are set casually with no emotion and no strong emotional "reason why" that gives you the leverage to you need to make a change permanent.

On January 1st, you may think you're setting "real" goals, but if you're like most people, you're not only doing it a mere once a year and then losing focus, you're also likely to be making flimsy, wishy-washy, emotion-less "resolutions."

Zig Ziglar once said that, "A goal casually set and lightly taken will be freely abandoned at the first obstacle."

You might want to back up and read that quote again, maybe even write it down or print it out, because this one hits the bull's-eye!

This truly explains why New Year's resolutions almost never work, and why so few people can keep off the pounds after they get rid of them.

Goal setting should not be casual or lightly taken. Goal setting is an important and serious matter. This is not a game - this is your life, and you only have one life to live.

Goal setting is also not a one time event - it is an ongoing process of literally "re-wiring your brain." With the discovery of brain plasticity, we now know that this is science fact, not self-help fiction.

Make the time to set REAL goals, today! Take it seriously, do it scientifically, re-write your goals every day, think about them constantly, and then take massive action

Do it and this will be the most successful year of your life!

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder and author of the #1 best selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to burn fat without drugs or supplements using the little-known secrets of the world's best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and turbo-charge your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com.

I'll be writing more about aligning the inner self with what you really want so you can actually enjoy the process of becoming slimmer and healthier from time to time. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, do go have a look at the Burn the Fat website. He's got some neat reports there just for the asking. –Di

technorati tags:weight, loss, resolutions, burn, fat, goal, setting, lose, weight