New information to Double the fat you lose....

Today's post: Thursday, 7-10-2008

We’ve already posted many of the keys to losing excess fat and keeping it off here.

We’ll do a quick summary of those & then add the news from this week on a new study that shows a way to double the fat you lose on top of all that.

Then we’ll comment on it.

A. Quick summary of ways to lose excess fat and keep it off that we’ve already posted about.

1. Never drink regular soft drinks.

For the same reason, read the labels on EVERY packaged food you consider buying & do not buy & do NOT eat any that have any high fructose corn syrup in them. If you haven’t yet done this, you may be astounded at how many foods now contain this junk.

And, the data show you should also never drink DIET soft drinks.

Regular soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, & diet soft drinks either cause you take in calories but NOT feel less hungry or even worse feel MORE hungry.

So, they quite literally cause you to get fat if you eat or drink them & prevent you from losing fat even if you do many other things that would normally take off fat.

Not surprisingly they also tend to cause type II diabetes & heart disease.

2. Eat some nonstarchy vegetables at almost every lunch or dinner you eat. They have so few calories & so much fiber Weight Watchers rates them as having ZERO points.

Organic vegetables not only have less pesticides & herbicides, recent studies show they are also dramatically more nutritious.

And, if you eat raw cauliflower, raw broccoli florets, or other raw cruciferous vegetables every week, your risk of all cancers, particularly prostate, breast, & ovarian cancers drops like a stone.

Doing this makes you MUCH healthier, fills your tummy & turns down hunger with very little net calories.

It’s so effective that BY ITSELF it’s one of the secrets of successfully losing fat weight & keeping it off.

3. Do at least two sessions of progressive strength training each week with at least one day off in between.

Do at least three sessions of interval cardio each week that alternates moderate effort & very vigorous effort after you build up to it several times each session.

This has all kinds of extra health benefits --.including growing new brain cells and improving your sex life, which it does in BOTH men & women.

By doing this you lose fat in three ways: a) When you eat, you begin to feed the newly added muscle weight it develops & stop adding those calories to your fat stores. b) This kind of exercise boosts your metabolism for HOURS after you are done exercising; so for that time you burn a LOT of calories you otherwise would not. c) The weight you lose on the scale will all be fat; otherwise you tend to lose some muscle & less fat when you lose weight.

Each of these effects reduces the amount you have to cut back to lose fat & by continuing to exercise, it allows you to lose fat & keep it off without getting excessively hungry.

4. Eat health OK protein foods every day. This helps lose fat since eating protein turns off hunger better than eating fats & MUCH better than eating carbohydrates.

Stop eating refined virtually all carbohydrate foods; eat only moderate amounts of whole grain foods or less; & cut way back on table sugar and foods that contain it.

Carbohydrate foods, particularly those with no fiber, only turn off hunger for a short time and then they turn hunger back on.

These foods tend to cause type II diabetes & sabotage your fat loss efforts by making you hungry when you would not have been if you hadn’t eaten them.

5. Watch less TV. Try NEVER to eat while you watch it. And, never allow a TV into your bedroom.

The more hours people watch TV, the fatter they are according to the many studies done on it.

You burn less calories watching TV than you do sleeping,

There are a lot of adds on TV for soft drinks, diet soft drinks, and for snacks and dessert foods that are mostly refined grains, sugar, & high fructose corn syrup. And these foods often contain bad fats too.

And, the more TV you watch, the harder it is to fit the exercise you need into your week.

If you do a good job on these five things, you will lose a good deal of fat & keep it off. And, you will be a LOT healthier than you might otherwise have been.

B. The very good news is that you can at least double the fat loss you get by following this program by keeping a food diary of everything you eat.

Here’s the story that appeared just this week.:

“USA Today - Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Using food diaries doubles weight loss, study shows

By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Dieters in the study were instructed to follow the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which suggests consuming:

Nine to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

Two to three servings of low-fat dairy foods daily.

25% or less of total calories from fat.

A low-sodium diet, with 2,400 milligrams or less of sodium each day.

No more than one alcoholic beverage a day for women; no more than two drinks a day for men. One drink equals 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or half an ounce of 80-proof liquor.

Source: August's American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Dieters who write down everything they eat each day lose twice as much weight as those who don't, according to one of the largest weight-loss studies ever conducted.
This confirms the importance of keeping a food diary — advice that nutritionists and weight-loss programs have pushed for years.

Scientists at four clinical research centers recruited 1,685 overweight or obese adults who weighed an average 212 pounds. Forty-four percent were African Americans.

The participants were offered 20 weekly group sessions led by nutritionists and behavior counselors and encouraged to try to lose at least 9 pounds in six months. They were told to consume about 500 fewer calories a day, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, do about 180 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, and keep daily food and exercise records. The findings reported in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine:

•Dieters who kept their food diary six or more days a week lost an average of about 18 pounds in six months, compared with about 9 pounds for those who didn't keep food diaries.

•The biggest losers also attended most of the group meetings and did more exercise. Some did 300 minutes or more of physical activity a week, but the average participant in the study did about 117 minutes a week.

•69% of the participants lost 9 pounds or more, which is enough to improve some health measures such as blood pressure, joint pain and pre-diabetes.

•69% of black men and 59% of black women lost at least 9 pounds.

"There is a misconception that nobody can lose weight, but in this study, two-thirds of them lost enough weight to make a difference to their health," says Victor Stevens, senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute sponsored the study.

These weight-loss techniques work well with everybody, including African Americans, who are often underrepresented in studies and yet suffer from a high rate of obesity and weight-related illnesses, he says.

Food diaries are a "powerful self-management technique. They help you figure out where the extra calories are coming from," he says. It works best if someone else looks over your food record. "When you put yourself in a position where you are accountable for your behavior, it changes behavior."

Many people are getting lots of extra calories by eating large portions at restaurants, Stevens says. He is currently working with a client who was consuming 1,500 calories of fast food at lunch. The dieter is now bringing a 500-calorie lunch to work, saving 1,000 calories a day.

Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in Chicago, tells people that a food diary "is the best way to monitor every crumb, morsel, nibble, sip, swallow and bite you take."


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Note that the people who lost the most weight also kept a log of all the exercise they did each week.

Note also that keeping a food log each week is one of the key reasons that people lose weight & fat when they attend Weight Watchers meetings. And, it’s one of the reasons studies show that the Weight Watchers meetings are one of the most successful programs for losing weight & excess fat.