Tuesday 24 August 2010

Quench your thirst

Forget cramming in your eight a day, diet researchers have found that drinking two glasses of water before each meal time could really pay off at the scales.

A study has revealed how participants in a 12-week calorie-controlled study who drank two cups of water before each meal lost - on average - 5 pounds more than those who followed the identical diet without the water. 

While diet experts have asked us to drink more water as part of our diet plans, this is the first time it's been clinically proven to increase weight loss.
I have to confess that I drink very little water - preferring cups of tea and pepsi max.  With these results in mind, I'm going to try to change introduce 2 glasses of water at breakfast time this week and roll it out slowly over the next month.

Weigh in tomorrow, so it makes sense to begin my own personal 'study' then.

PS: The Volumetrics diet draws on the importance of water in weight loss. Want to know more? Check out the book below!

Saturday 14 August 2010

Humiliation: The key to weight loss?

Put down the cereal bowl, ladies.  That two bowls a day is so last month. Tweet What You Eat is the net's latest diet craze. Forget maple syrup, low GI and baby food, this Twitter-based food and weight diary is the must-have this year for any discerning diet junkie.

Rather than restrict your food with insane rules, the diet programme is said to encourage healthy eating and exercise with the threat of humiliation - albeit self-humiliation.

For many of us our weight is a personal and often emotional issue. So, is humiliation the answer? And, if so, should it come from ourselves? Weight and health awareness is crucial, but I'm not sure that this is the perfect way forward.

A scan of sample diets on the site isn't great reading.... Dunkin Donuts... McDonalds... cookies and milk. And that's the bulk of some people's diets. The focus is on the calorie count, rather than the fat and sugar levels.  From this angle, it seems like a quick fix and a diet that definitely hasn't been designed by anyone with a long-term weight issue.

The idea of self-humiliation is enough to send me reaching for the Krispy Kremes. There's every likelihood that this could prolong the vicious cycle of gains and losses for participants. After all, low self esteem is often the best way to work up an appetite.

While I do post my weight on a regular(ish) basis on this blog, I'm doing so to illustrate my journey rather than just try to force myself to lose weight by putting it out in the public forum.  If posting your weight was enough to force you to lose weight, all of us weight loss bloggers would be writing our happily ever afters by now.

Want to get started? Check out this book...

Thursday 12 August 2010

What do your waist size hold in store for you?

According to BBC News, it could be a premature death. This article is really harsh reading for me as my waist - while on the retreat - currently measures 43 inches.  Hopefully I won't be in the danger zone for much longer, though! I have to shrink my waist by about 4 more inches.

So, how am I going to do this? I'm totally addicted to the show Bulging Brides and love the results that Tommy Europe generates. It is about time that I work that core as it will make the greatest impact on my shape.  I've been sticking to the cardio since getting on this journey, albeit at a less-shredding pace.

With this in mind, I'm going to set a WEIGHT LOSS CHALLENGE to shrink myself by 3 inches on the bust, 3 on the waist and 3 on the hips by 23/09/10.  My new measurements - should I choose to accept them - will be:

Bust: 44
Waist: 39
Hips: 47

I'm hoping this will generate some big weight losses in that time, but I'm realistically hoping for a stone (14lbs). My new weight will be 17 stone 5 lbs (243lbs).

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Atkins vs. Low Fat

Researchers at Temple University have pitted the at-times contraversial Atkins Diet against a standard low-fat diet. And the winner? Each generates the same level of weight loss. While Atkins was praised for its ability to raise HDL cholesterol, researchers pointed out that this benefit came with a number of nasty side effects (e.g. meat breath).

To me, it seem that whatever way you look at it, the dieter wins. Studies like this illustrate the point that restricting your diet in any way will see results on the scale. The challenge, of course, is sticking to it. 

In my world of diet, the weight is slowly coming off. I've been successfully avoiding sugary snacks, crisps and generally anything which would have made me go 'mmmm'. I weigh in tomorrow, so I'll post my numbers then.

Saturday 7 August 2010

A (diet) patch on the rest?

Hollywood's latest diet craze has been reported in The Daily Express. Forget baby food, low carb or even maple syrup, the Slimweight patch is apparently the dieter's equivalent of the nicotine patch. THe patches are the latest celebrity must-have - with the likes of Paris Hilton sporting one on her bottom at a recent LA party.
How they were spotted is a totally different blog, of course.

The list of ingredients in these herbal patches reads like the nutritional information of recent fad diets:
  • Bladder Wrack
  • L-Carnitine
  • Guarana
  • Zinc Citrate
  • Lecithin
  • Flaxsee oil
  • Yerba Mate
  • DHEA
  • Zinc Pyruvate
  • 5 HTP
Interestingly, the diet patch phenomenon is by no means new. I've found evidence of diet patches being sold back in 2004... of course, I've also found evidence that they're no more than often empty promises - medically unfounded.  DietFraud.com. lists a number of legal actions taken against other diet patch products in recent years.

The Federal Trade Comission takes the claims made by fad diets seriously. Awareness is key, so if you're looking for further advice visit Who Cares. to see whether there are any health concerns about a diet you're considering.

Weight loss reduces urinary incontinence

Never has there been a better reason to finally lose weight... British researchers have discovered that even a minimal amount of weight loss can reduce the severity of urinary incontinence. Over half of study participants who lost weight over an 18-month period following a calorie-restricted diet  reported a signnificant improvement in the state of their urinary health. What's more, if you've never ever had the experience of urinary incontinence, reducing your weight has been shown to reduce the risk of you suffering from this problem.

Sunday 25 July 2010

Dieting is a numbers game...

New research reminds us of the importance of calorie counting! And I've just determined that my magic number (at the moment, of course) is 1912!

Who would choose a high sugar diet? Look at any low fat diet before you answer!

Perhaps the easiest weight losses I've encountered in recent years have been thanks to low-fat, no-nonsense eating plans like Weight Watchers. But then again, I'm 18-plus stone now... What is that telling you?!?

Your modern low-fat commercially produced food isn't just low calorie, it's tasty to boot! Weight Watchers chocolate mousses are my personal favourite. They really hit the spot, fulfil my sweet cravings and they're low fat, too. Their low calorie and saturated fat levels mean they weigh in at just 1.5 points.

But, according to Australian professor Kerin O'Dea, of St Vincent's Institute in Sydney, everything isn't quite as healthy (or non-addictive) as it might seem.  In 2008 she cautioned that food manufacturers are using increased amounts of fructose - a cheap, sugary corn syrup - to enhance flavour of 'diet foods'.  High levels of fructose can be found in: 
  •  Breakfast cereals
  • Low-fat yoghurts
  • Cereal bars
  • Juices
  • Low-fat peanut butter
  • Salad dressings

 Prof O'Dea warns: "The argument that obesity is driven by high fat intakes has led to a proliferation of low-fat processed foods... but many of the low-fat products, especially the `99 per cent fat free', are loaded with sugars and kilojoules." 

Prof. O'Dea explained that reducing the level of a fat in a product has a direct effect on the levels of carbohydrate or protein. These would need to compensate by increasing. 
 
She warns that fructose is most dangerous as it doesen't stimulate insulin secretion or leptin: the two crucial hormones that help make people feel full.   

 
She explains: "You can consume fructose and not feel like you have eaten much. It does not make people feel full and it is getting under the radar... and if you are well nourished and don't need it, then the fructose goes through the liver and is converted into fat. While fructose was added to low-fat products to improve the taste, food manufacturers found the holy grail because people started consuming more of it because they thought it was healthy and they were still hungry."

  
The professor goes as far as to say: "People would be better off eating a full-fat plain yoghurt than a low-fat yoghurt."

 

Fructose appears under many names on food labels. These include:
  • corn syrup
  • hydrolysed corn starch
  • sucrose 
And if you're still stuck for a reason to ditch the sugar? (Besides the obvious diabetes risk, of course!)

Researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of California at Berkeley found that people on weight maintenance diets which were low-fat but high-sugar had an increased production of saturated fat (1996). 

 

 "Our study suggests that low-fat diets designed to maintain - not lose-weight could be a hazard for people who also eat lots of simple carbohydrates, mostly sugars," says Lisa Cooper Hudgins, M.D., assistant professor in the Laboratory of Human Behavior and Metabolism at Rockefeller. "Current public health recommendations suggest that people should reduce fat in their diets and increase their carbohydrates. However, too great a reduction in fats and too much of an increase in simple carbohydrates may prompt the body to make the sugar into saturated fats, which could harm the heart and blood vessels."
 
 

Monday 19 July 2010

More than 3 years since I started...

And, well, I think I may - finally - be on the right track! After months and months of weight fluctuations, I seem to be on the downward slope to health. Christmas 2009 saw my weight peak at 20 stone. That's a figure that is both shocking and upsetting for me. Firstly it was my highest ever weight to date. Secondly, when you hear stories of extreme obesity, that figure in stones is never in the teens.

Worse still, my son was on the same path. At 10, he weighed 9 stone 4lbs and lived on junk (like me). Luckily for us both, we started a 6-month healthy eating/ healthy living programme called Mend and the results have been phenomenal for him. While he's still got a way to go, he's down tbelow 8 stone and is full of energy and eats healthily.

The changes we've made to our food intake and activity levels have seen my weight drop, too. Starting the year at 20 stone, my weight's now down to 18 stone 9lbs. It's nowhere close to the drops I made previously, but I haven't officially been dieting. This is just from modifying the foods I've eaten while at home. As for exercise, this is only just being reintroduced as I'm recovering from an impinged shoulder which cramped my activity levels a bit.

Every day in this blog I aim to examine one of the changes we've made or are going to make. I also hope to uncover where the fad diets are going wrong for the average Joe (but right for the diet creator).

It's the same journey... just on a new path!