Study says that vigorous exercise burns fat....

Today's Post: Friday, 5-28-2010

The study found that when fit people exercise they burn fat well and even found the blood biomarkers that are part of the process. And, the most fit burned the most fat.

But, what are fit and very fit people? They are those who began with short and doable spurts of extra effort in some kind of exercise followed by rest or a lower effort and then gradually did more of these each time and gradually increased the extra effort and exercise done each time. The most fit often do such exercise five, six, or seven days a week. They also tend to have done it the longest in the number of years they’ve been doing it.

Recent research has found that even 60 second sessions or even a bit less at first begin to do the job.

We did a blog post on this not long ago. And, well before that research came out, Dr Al Sears, who had seen some of the earlier and similar research, came out with his PACE program that uses this principle. Many people do his PACE program in 10 or 12 minutes a session.

Also research was done showing that as little as two 60 sessions of vigorous exercise improved insulin function enough to lower the very accurate HBA1C measure of blood sugar.

Similarly, the people who have used Dr Sears PACE program or other similar strength training or interval cardio program have reported fat loss and often FAR MORE fat loss than from longer and less vigorous exercise sessions.

This literally means that 10 minute sessions of such vigorous and fitness creating exercise will burn and remove more fat than half an hour sessions of less vigorous or varied exercise!

In addition to that, people who become fit using these methods increase their protective HDL cholesterol and lower their LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Even better, we recently posted that they have found the longer you do such exercises regularly each week, the more of this effect you get!

These effects prevent or often turn off type 2 diabetes; they prevent heart attacks and strokes & other kinds of cardiovascular disease.

Last, and far from least their resting heartbeat rate goes down. Because we know that people with a low resting heart beat live far longer than those with a high one, that’s also a great benefit.

Now, here’s the recent research that came out this week.:

Yesterday, Thursday, 5-27-2010, HealthDay News online published a story they titled:

“Fit People Release More Fat-Burning Molecules During Exercise.” It was written by Jenifer Goodwin, their “HealthDay Reporter.”

This new study found that: “Fit people have more fat-burning molecules in their blood than less fit people after exercise.

And the very fittest are even more efficient, on a biochemical level, at generating fat-burning molecules that break down and burn up fats and sugars….”

This study went far beyond previous ones due to a much more comprehensive way of measuring these blood biomarkers.

“Previous studies had investigated changes in metabolites generated by exercise, but researchers were limited to viewing a few molecules at a time in hospital laboratories.

But in the new study, a technique developed by the MGH Heart Center in collaboration with MIT and Harvard allowed researchers to see the full spectrum of the fat-burning molecules in action. They used mass spectrometry -- which can analyze blood samples in minute detail -- to develop a "chemical snapshot" of the metabolic effects of exercise.

To trace the fat-burning molecules, the researchers took blood samples from healthy participants before, just following, and after an exercise stress test that was about 10 minutes long. Then they measured the blood levels of 200 different metabolites, which are released into the blood in tiny quantities.

Exercise resulted in changes to levels of more than 20 metabolites that were involved with the metabolism of sugar, fats, amino acids, along with the use of ATP, the primary source of cellular energy, according to the study.

After running on a treadmill for 10 minutes, people who were relatively more fit had a 98 percent increase in the breakdown of stored fat, sugar, and amino acids, while less-fit people had only a 48 percent increase.”

The people they used as their most fit were measured just after a very challenging exercise and had an even larger increase –MUCH larger for some of the biomarkers.

“The researchers also found that exercise boosted levels of niacinamide, a vitamin derivative that enhances insulin release.” (That last part also may mean that taking some extra niacinamide, which is very common in B-complex vitamin supplements, may help turn insulin resistance down or off in addition to the effects of doing the exercises.)

“The study was published in the May 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine.”

Clearly the evidence is in and from many, many sources. Even short sessions of vigorous exercise in which you gradually build up from not being very fit to being quite fit indeed have truly massive health benefits.

Doing such exercises regularly every week makes it MUCH easier to lose excess fat and even removes it directly. They do this in part by overcoming insulin resistance which lowers high blood sugar AND average insulin levels.

And, they protect your heart and cardiovascular system. All this results in both longer life and far more years of healthy life.

Whole grains NOT good for type 2 diabetics....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-27-2010

Dr. Al Sears wrote in the email from Total Health Breakthroughs last Tuesday, 5-25-2010 that,

"The American Diabetes Association’s (ADA’s) recommended diet is like pouring gas on a wild fire. It’s ironic how it sets out to help people with blood sugar issues, yet it just ends up hurting them."

He notes that the ADA recommends high fiber foods but does NOT caution about....whole grains. "You might be surprised to know that whole grains spike your blood sugar more than sugary foods."

He says that studies show "that low fat and high carb diets like the one recommended by the ADA just don’t work."

"For example, in a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 210 patients with blood sugar concerns followed either a low carb/low glycemic diet or a high cereal/high fiber diet. Those on the low glycemic/low carb diet saw a larger reduction in blood glucose levels and even cholesterol levels compared to those who were on the high cereal/high carb diet."

He also says that, "Fat and protein are not the bad guys. The key is to eat the right kinds of fat and the right kinds of protein.

The last thing you want to do is follow the diet advice of the ADA for a low fat diet full of whole grains, or you’ll surely suffer with diabetes for the rest of your life.

The best thing you can do is to eat the right fats and proteins and kick out the starchy carbs. Here are some tips to help you make the right choices.

Don’t be afraid of fat. Avoid trans fats (partially or fully hydrogenated oils) which are found in processed foods. Get healthy fat from lean proteins (grass-fed beef), wild fish, olives/oil, ….avocados, and nuts.

Avoid starches like grains including corn, potatoes, and rice.

Choose good quality protein – it’s “guilt-free” food. It won’t raise your blood sugar and helps handle insulin better, build muscle and repair tissue – all essential for staying lean and preventing diabetes. Grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, cage-free eggs, and wild salmon are all good choices.

Choose vegetables that don’t spike your blood sugar (low glycemic). Those that grow above ground are good choices – cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, mushrooms, green beans, leafy green vegetables, and tomatoes.

Eat fruits such as berries and those you can eat with the skin on. ....

Avoid processed foods. They are loaded with bad fats and carbs, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives.

Avoid high fructose corn syrup. It contributes to insulin resistance. Fructose is converted to fat more than other sweeteners. In fact, HFCS has been linked to obesity. And limit natural sweeteners like sugar and honey."

For more information on and from Dr. Sears visit http://www.alsearsmd.com .

I don’t agree with everything he says. But those things he says that I agree with, he often states very well and cites research or studies that prove his point.

Here are some other key points to consider that either add to his points or make important points he leaves out.

1. The ADA DOES have some science in its suggestion to limit fats and protein.

BUT, the research ONLY supports that for the bad fats and oils and the protein foods that contain them.

Omega 6 oils like corn, soy, and saffola, partially hydrogenated oils of this kind that also have trans fats, and excessive saturated fats from animal sources often from the meat of animals fed grain and purposely penned up to make them fatter --increase inflammation and/or small particle LDL both of which cause heart disease and make the health harm of type 2 diabetes on your blood vessels and heart far worse. The omega 6 oils also lower your protective HDL

So avoiding close to ALL that kind of fat and those oils IS a good idea period for everyone and is essential for type 2 diabetics.

Dr Sears is correct however, that moderate amounts of extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocados ARE good for you.

And, since most fast food meals have some or all of the above BAD fats and oils, limiting your consumption or stopping it for fast food hamburgers and fries is a great idea. Protein from those sources has the fats and oils you are wise to avoid.

Similarly, so is NOT drinking any of their soft drinks at all.

(Note that this is much less true at Subway. IF you pass on the refined grain bread and the soft drinks and the sugary and refined grain loaded treats and eat an Atkin’s style “sandwich” you can add several kinds of veggies to one of their meat choices to have a pretty health OK lunch.)

Similarly, protein from wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils like salmon and sardines beans, and lentils, and the other health OK choices Dr Sears lists are good choices and NOT harmful for people with type 2 diabetes.

2. In addition to strictly limiting sugar and whole grains, it is ESSENTIAL for everyone who values good health AND even more critical for type 2 diabetics to avoid ALL refined grain foods and both regular and diet soft drinks.

White rice, white refined grain bread, and treats and snacks made from refined grain flour are very high glycemic foods. Try your very best to avoid ALL of them! (If you have a blood sugar testing kit, you can see this for yourself after you eat these foods. Do yourself a favor and don’t keep eating them!)

Regular soft drinks also spike your blood sugar, add calories that make you fat AND both do not turn down hunger but DO cause rebound hunger when the sugar crash stops! Too many people think they are safe to consume and normal to have often. As a result, they are fat and much more likely to get type 2 diabetes.

Unfortunately, diet soft drinks have very similar effects in most people despite not have the sugars. They make you considerably hungrier for sweets and make your body stop counting calories from real sugar as food. Plus people tend to consume them with the same fast food, treats, and snacks that cause these problems.

3. Regular and vigorous exercise even in sessions as short as one or two minutes lower high blood sugar and tend to turn off insulin resistance. Doing such exercises nearly every day each week is critical for type 2 diabetics to do.

Vigorous calisthenics, strength training, and interval cardio all work great and have been shown to lower HBA1C and glucose levels immediately after doing them. (If you have a blood sugar testing kit, you can see this for yourself.)

4. If you feel you must have foods like potatoes or brown rice or whole grain foods, NEVER eat them by themselves. Only eat them with much lower glycemic foods such as extra virgin olive oil, or nuts or nonstarchy vegetables or a health OK protein good. Doing that will cause the overall meal to not be so horribly high glycemic.

For example, combine brown rice, pecans, and wild rice with some extra virgin olive oil instead of eating plain brown rice. Or, instead of doing hash browns cooked in canola oil and its high omega 6 content, try a potato pancake cooked gently in extra virgin olive oil that contains eggs and chopped onion in addition to the potato.

Stay healthy longer and live longer....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 5-25-2010

There are many, many ways to do this. The more of them you know and use and the sooner you begin, the better it works.

1. Regular moderate exercise works. Many people who live into their 90’s in good health have been walkers all their lives. Even three to five miles of walking, or 60 to 100 minutes total each week helps.

2. Regular, vigorous, exercise works extremely well. Strength training and interval cardio work well and can even be time efficient and done at home. Three alternating sessions of each for even 15 minutes each for a total of 6 sessions a week is doable and effective.

Such exercise has dramatic health benefits and protections. People who do such exercise look younger and live longer – as much as 20 years longer. They also avoid many diseases or get them only decades later if at all. So they have an even bigger edge in HEALTHY years lived.

3. Some supplements may help.

There is some evidence that taking 100 mg a day or more of resveratrol in its trans form may slow aging. And, it has been tested to help your heart stay healthier in particular.

Taking over 500 mg a day of vitamin C was shown in one study to result in longer telomeres. Since in large part, having your telomeres shorten CAUSES aging. That’s impressive.

Taking at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and one capsule a day of curcumin or turmeric that it comes from in combination helps prevent most cancers and also protects your heart and tends to prevent Alzheimer’s disease! The D3 also helps keep your bones healthy, intact, and strong. They sharply increase your years of healthy life.

Lastly, taking the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 has been shown to be effective even in older people in increasing the health of your mitochondria. When your mitochondria begin to stop working, your cells have less and less internal energy. You feel less energetic and may begin to lose interest in life. And, your heart stops working as well. Taking 50 to 200 mg a day of ubiquinol helps to prevent or reverse this.

One animal study quoted by Dr Al Sears found that animals fed CoQ10 aged more slowly than those who did not get any. And, those fed ubiquinol aged so much more slowly, they did not seem to age at all.

4. Avoid tobacco smoke. If you smoke, quit. Your life, health, and freedom from future medical bills depend on it. You can’t quit too soon. But many have quit too late. Also avoid all second hand smoke. Even a few minutes exposure is bad for you. And we also now know that exposure to tobacco smoke not only causes heart disease, it triggers heart attacks in people who otherwise would have escaped them. Many smokers don’t know this. But every one they smoke causes some heart disease!

Smoking’s little problem is that it causes about 30 % of all cancers too.

Last but far from least, smoking speeds up aging and helps cause early wrinkling of your skin.

The bottom line is that smokers die 10 to 20 years younger, look older, and have 10 to 30 years fewer healthy years than nonsmokers.

They also pay for this out of pocket in cash every week. This is craziness. Don’t go there or stay there!

5. Don’t get fat or stay fat.

Being fat, eating and drinking the junk that causes it, and the NOT exercising that helps cause it, together cause type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, increased risk of heart disease and attacks, and acid reflux.

In addition to exercise, and NOT eating or drinking fattening junk, knowing how to cut back calories without reversing the process or creating excessive hunger can get this done.

The one thing most people need most today is to NOT eat snacks or treats made with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, salt, and refined grains and to drink NO soft drinks of any kind. The average American would be more than 30 pounds less fat from doing this one single thing!

6. Eat foods that are good for you that don’t fatten you instead.

Today NewsMax had a story on 8 of these it titled,

“8 Potent Foods for Healthy Aging”

They listed these 8. (I’ve added my comments. Some of these foods are even better for you than their info suggests!)

a) Berries.

Blueberries, raspberries, black berries, strawberries and related fruits such as cranberries and grapes contain phytochemicals known as flavonoids. Eating blueberries has been shown to improve brain function. Strawberries and I think raspberries contain ellagic acid, which slows tumor growth. They are also low in calories and high in good taste while containing natural vitamin C and massive amounts of antioxidants.

You can also take bilberry supplements that have fewer calories and added eye benefits.

b) Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables.

Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, including cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts are all nonstarchy vegetables which fill you up and help turn off hunger with almost no calories. Newsmax also said that these cruciferous vegetables “…according to Dr. Russell Blaylock, author of The Blaylock Wellness Report, can help neutralize the cancer-causing effects of pesticides and herbicides.”

Eating them raw has been shown to help prevent cancer and may work even better at preventing the most dangerous and deadly kinds of it.

Dr Al Sears also states that eating these foods helps men to be sexier and have less prostate enlargement by removing excess estrogen and estrogen like chemicals and normalizing your body’s testosterone.

Last but far from least, broccoli also has carotenoids despite its green color. And those keep you healthy and may also fight some cancers.

Eating more vegetables also has been shown to turn down or prevent high blood pressure.

So eating cruciferous vegetables keeps you young, trim, and healthy all in one pass.

c) Fish.

Oily fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids that fight inflammation. Newsmax added: “People who eat fish regularly have lower rates of Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease. A recent study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that omega-3 fatty acids keep the DNA of heart patients from unraveling. The American Heart Association recommends two servings of fish each week.”

Water packed sardines are a very cheap way to do this. Wild caught salmon tastes better but costs more. Lastly, do NOT eat farmed fish. They have far less omega 3’s and DO have enough contaminants they should never be eaten!

Note that you can and likely should also take one or two capsules a day of omega 3 supplements from purified fish oil or algae.

Lastly, the reduction in inflammation and lowering of triglycerides from omega 3’s protects you from heart disease. And, getting enough omega 3’s makes you less irritable and reduces or prevents depression!

d) Garlic.

Newsmax had this: “A study found that women who ate a clove of garlic at least once a week lowered their risk of developing colon cancer by 50 percent, and a study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that people who eat garlic have half the risk of stomach cancer and two-thirds the risk of colorectal cancer when compared to people who avoid it.”

Raw, crushed garlic or deodorized garlic supplements can help thin your blood like aspirin but without harming your stomach lining or causing bleeding there.

Getting garlic this way also tends to make your blood vessels more responsive and may prevent or reverse plaque build up despite not lowering LDL cholesterol that much. In some people it lowers high blood pressure by doing this.

Lastly, garlic in soups, vegetable dishes, and salads along with extra virgin olive oil and other spices makes them taste good and has other health benefits.

e) Grapes.

Newsmax had this: “Rich in an antioxidant called resveratrol that is an anti-inflammatory and anti-coagulant, red grapes have been shown to extend the life span of test animals. Grapes also contain the bioflavanoid quercetin, which works with vitamin C (also found in grapes) to fight cancer, including cancers of the breast and colon.”

Drinking grape juice has been shown to make your blood vessels more responsive and to lower high blood pressure a bit.

Lastly, you can also take grape seed extract and drink red wine.

Just be moderate, restrained, and careful to avoid overdoing too much grape juice and red wine. If you do, you’ll add fat you could have avoided. And with red wine, more than 14 glasses a week begins to cause health and safety problems where half that much causes health benefits.

f) Nuts.

Unfortunately, some people are allergic to nuts.

But people who can and do eat nuts daily add as many years to their lives as smoking subtracts according to one source I read!

Newsmax had this: “Nuts contain high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids that lower inflammation and are great for your heart as well as your brain. They also contain B vitamins and minerals, including selenium and magnesium.”
The minerals help keep you healthy in many ways. And, eating nuts increases HDL cholesterol which is heart protective.

Nuts also make a great snack that is both good for you and tastes good. Even better, studies show they are not fattening! Apparently they turn off hunger so well, you automatically eat less of other foods.

Note that these great benefits come ONLY from raw or dry roasted nuts. Nuts that have been coated with salt or cooked in junky oils are NOT good for you, unfortunately.

g) Tomatoes.

Newsmax had this: “The generous amounts of the antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes help skin maintain its youthfulness, and may reduce the risk of developing heart disease, as well as several cancers, including breast, lung, and colon. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that men who ate 10 servings of tomato-based foods each week lowered their risk of developing prostate cancer by 45 percent.”

Note that cooked tomatoes when eaten with extra virgin olive oil deliver far more lycopene to your body than raw tomatoes.

However, raw cherry tomatoes and sliced tomatoes that are raw have another heart protecting compound and natural vitamin C. Plus they are a nonstarchy vegetable that helps keep you trim and taste good!

Lastly, you can take lycopene supplements.

h) Tea.

Newsmax had this: “Green and white teas contain large amounts of EGCG, a powerful antioxidant linked to a lower risk of heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and numerous types of cancer. In addition, tissues in the eye absorb antioxidants from tea called catachins that may protect aging eyes from glaucoma.”

Even better, green tea and black teas have some caffeine but are milder and less sleep disruptive than coffee. And, when you drink them without milk, they increase your circulation.

Best of all, taking a couple capsules of green tea extract supplement on an empty stomach each morning can remove something like 5 pounds of excess fat by increasing your metabolism and also is a great way to get the other health protections from green tea.

To increase your odds for a long and healthy life, do as many of these methods as you can!

In this case, more IS better and ALL of the above is the best answer!

Snack and lose weight too....

Today's Post: Monday, 5-24-2010

Recently, I found something called the “Couch Potato Diet.”

Our advice has been to not eat virtually any commercial packaged snacks or treats or drink any soft drinks. We also strongly advocate sharply limiting TV time.

But that may not work for some people. It seems that if you are one of those people but still want to lose weight, there IS a resource that has some doable ways to have some snacks and still lose weight.

We’ve already posted that there are some snacks that are both health OK and safe for people losing weight to have on occasion. We do that post just before the Super Bowl each year.

Here are some of those snacks.

Raw pecan or walnut halves or dry roasted almonds with no salt or junk oil added are all great tasting snacks that tend to turn off hunger so well, most people can have them and gain no weight, despite their fat content. They also taste good. Surprisingly, unless you are allergic, nuts are very good for you. Their fat is monosaturated like olive oil or mostly so. Eating them increases your protective HDL; & nuts have magnesium and other minerals in easily absorbable form.

Guacamole made from avocado or avocado slices are also monosaturated. And, avocados are so nutritious with so many vitamins and minerals they could almost double as a vitamin pill.

In addition, hummus makes a great dip and is good for you.

And, nonstarchy vegetables are great health OK snacks. Raw Broccoli florets, raw cauliflower, radishes, tomato slices, cherry tomatoes, and carrot sticks all work. Together with hummus or guacamole, they make a great snack.

But what if you still want to include some sweet treats or more traditional snacks?

One writer found a way to be able to eat such snacks and still lose weight that worked so well for him, he added some extra info along the same lines and wrote a book.

His methods have worked as well for many of his readers since his book came out.

If it sounds like what you need, check out his website:

http://thecouchpotatodiet.net/ .

Exercise has even MORE health benefits....

Today's Post: Friday, 5-21-2010

Last week, Prevention Magazine posted an article they titled,

“17 Ways Exercise Sends Health Soaring”

Why schedule several sessions of exercise that are doable for you into your week and be sure you do each session 95% of the time or more?

For starters, since recent studies found only 5% of Americans do this.

In my opinion, besides the competing pressures on their time, most of the other 95% neither know how incredibly much exercise actually will do for them or even close. They also don’t know how badly they will suffer from what being sedentary and NOT exercising will otherwise do TO them.

So I thought I’d summarize their 17 points in yesterday’s post.

But, I only had time to do the first 7. So here are the remaining 10.

8. “Slash Cold Risk 33% Build up your body's defenses”

“Moderate exercise doesn't just rev your metabolism--it boosts your immune system, too, helping your body fight off cold bugs and other germs. Women ages 50 to 75 who did 45 minutes of cardio, 5 days a week, had a third as many colds as those who did once-weekly stretching sessions, a University of Washington study found."

Sessions of briefer and more vigorous exercise also work. Regular exercise that you recover from moderately easily of any kind boosts your immune system.

But if you compete in athletics or sometimes train or work out that hard, you will often get LESS immunity. So, if you do either, also take a multivitamin and an additional 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. That will make the impact of that kind of physical effort lower your immune system less. The extra vitamin D3 recent research found is quite effective in boosting your immune system’s killer cells that do away with bad bacteria and viruses.

Taking an extra 1,000 to 2,000 mg of vitamin C and a good probiotic supplement have also resulted in getting colds less often.

9. “Improve Vision
Carrots are great, but exercise might be better

What's good for your heart is good for your eyes. An active lifestyle can cut your risk of age-related macular degeneration by up to 70%, according to a British Journal of Ophthalmology study of 4,000 adults. This incurable disease makes reading, driving, and seeing fine details difficult, and it's the most common cause of blindness after age 60.

Do this: Protect your eyes during all outdoor activities (if you're a walker, shoot for a mile a day). Be sure to wear UVA/UVB-blocking sunglasses all year long.“

Wearing a broad-brimmed hat can also help. So does eating blueberries and taking bilberry supplements

10. “Reach the Deep-Sleep Zone
Decent shut-eye is not a far off dream

Say good night to poor sleep. Women age 60 and older who walked or danced for at least an hour, four times a week, woke up half as often and slept an average 48 minutes more a night than sedentary women, according to a study in the journal Sleep Medicine. That is good news for the many women who toss and turn more as they get older. As you age, sleep patterns start shifting, so you spend more of the night in lighter sleep phases, says Shawn Youngstedt, PhD, an assistant professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina.”

Regular exercise works wonders in making it easier to fall asleep and get decent sleep quality.

Since being too fat can cause sleep apnea that trashes restful sleep. If you have excess fat to lose, do be SURE to exercise regularly & also add several kinds of moderate and doable calorie restriction that you practice doing every week.

Don’t drink soft drinks at all; don’t eat things containing high fructose corn syrup or refined grain flour; cut back a good bit on regular sugar; and keep adding nonstarchy vegetables until you eat 3 or more servings a day.

11. “Never Get Diabetes
Walk to keep your blood sugar in check

Walking 2 miles 5 times a week may be more effective at preventing diabetes than running nearly twice as much, report Duke University researchers. Because fat is the primary fuel for moderate exercise, walking may better improve the body's ability to release insulin and control blood sugar.

Do this: Start a walking program” the Prevention article suggests.

Do it if you can find time for it. But much shorter sessions of strength training and/or interval cardio also work well. In one study even two one minute sets of interval cardio a day lowered blood sugar as measured by the very accurate HBA1C test.

12. “Eliminate Belly Bloat
Shrink the muffin top

The next time you feel puffy around the middle, resist the urge to stay put. A study from Spain's Autonomous University of Barcelona suggests that mild physical activity clears gas and alleviates bloating. That's because increasing your heart rate and breathing stimulates the natural contractions of the intestinal muscles, helping to prevent constipation and gas buildup by expediting digestion.

Do this: Walk or pedal lightly on a bike until you feel better. “

You can also get this effect with running or jumping rope or jumping on a minitrampoline.

Losing belly fat can be done also. But you need more exercise to do it. And, you need to do well on eating right with some calorie restriction for it to work at all.

13. “Clear Out Brain Fog
Build your mental muscle

Exercise is linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease among older people; now, new research shows it can prevent brain fog at a much younger age too. Japanese researchers assigned sedentary young adults to two groups; one took aerobic exercise classes, and the other did not. After 4 months, MRIs revealed that the nonexercising group experienced shrinkage of gray matter in some areas of the brain, while the active participants had no change.

Do this: Try a new fitness routine, or sign up for a new class at the gym. Besides the obvious benefit of getting a workout, trying something fresh can help stimulate the growth of brain cells.”

Virtually all exercises grow new brain cells. Strength training and interval cardio also release growth hormone to your whole body.

And, eating a heart protective diet such as the DASH II or Mediterranean diets plus taking certain supplements AND doing regular exercise sharply increase blood flow to your brain. It then tends to work a LOT better and be much more likely to keep working.

Taking both at least 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 and taking a curcumin or turmeric supplement every day and eating curried foods several times a week cuts your chances of getting Alzheimer’s disease dramatically.

So does taking omega 3 supplements, particularly DHA.

14. “Save Your Heart
Reduce dangerous inflammation

Sedentary, obese women age 50 and older who began exercising lowered their levels of C-reactive protein-an inflammatory blood marker linked to heart disease-by 10% after 1 year, found research recently published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. “

See our other posts for the many other ways to lower inflammation.

15. “Add Years to Your Life
Stay healthy and active for years to come

Being physically fit can actually change how your body works. Vigorous exercisers have longer telomeres-cellular biomarkers that shorten as we age-compared with healthy adults who rarely work out.”

The end result has been tested recently and the research was published. Regular exercisers look younger and live longer than the very similar people who don’t do any regular exercise at all. And, the effect is quite large -- the exercisers lived more than 10 years longer on the average.

16. “Ease Your Ailments
Heal your body with yoga

Yoga has a well-earned reputation as a surefire stress reducer (particularly when combined with meditation), and new studies show the simple stretching regimen can also help treat and prevent a number of other ailments, from back pain to diabetes. Other research reveals regular yoga practice can put an end to mindless eating by creating an outlet for emotions that can lead to binging. Unfortunately, less than 15% of women over age 35 say they do yoga frequently, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. “

Tai Chi also works to lower stress and ease joint pain; it increases your ability to control your body and be physically coordinated; it burns more calories than yoga usually; and the injury rate for Tai Chi is MUCH less than for yoga. With yoga, it’s quite common to get injured from overdoing the stretches. Besides muscle and tendon injuries people injure their backs doing yoga.

Our recommendation is to either do Tai Chi instead OR be extremely careful and gentle ONLY if you do yoga stretches and positions.

17. “Survive Breast Cancer
Increase your defenses against the disease

Exercise not only reduces breast cancer risk, it can also save your life if you're diagnosed. Overweight women who were exercising more than 3 hours a week before they were diagnosed were 47% less likely to die than those who exercised less than a half hour per week.”


The Prevention article closed with this.:

“Do this: Sneak in mini bouts of exercise. Take a quick walk when you get the morning paper, hit the stairs before lunch, or knock out a few pushups and crunches while watching TV. Just two to three 10-minute workouts a day is enough to fill your quota for the week.”

If you do it regularly, even starting with three five minute sessions of exercise a WEEK will get you started and is WAY better than no exercise at all.

That’s particularly true if the sessions are vigorous strength training such as doing as many pushups as you can until you can’t do the next one and then doing 100 crunches or doing an interval cardio exercise such as several 30 second rounds of jumping rope. You do have to begin where you are and add more gradually. But you can literally start only able to do one or two push ups and build up to doing over 40 or 50. The same is true of crunches or jumping rope.

One woman who used Dr Sears’ advice began with ONE set of a 45 second walk! She gradually improved until she did enough more in each session to lose 45 pounds!

Exercise has MANY health benefits....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-20-2010

Last week, Prevention Magazine posted an article they titled,

“17 Ways Exercise Sends Health Soaring”

Why schedule several sessions of exercise that are doable for you into your week and be sure you do each session 95% of the time or more?

For starters, since recent studies found only 5% of Americans do this.

In my opinion, besides the competing pressures on their time, most of the other 95% neither know how incredibly much exercise actually will do FOR them or even close. They also don’t know how badly they will suffer from what being sedentary and NOT exercising will otherwise do TO them.

So I thought I’d summarize their 17 points in this post.

1. Be more productive at work.

Prevention quotes a study done in the UK. People who exercise think better and get more done than people who don’t.

They also only usually take about half the sick time of people who are more sedentary.

Exercise increases blood flow to your brain, makes you less depressed, and grows new brain cells. Small wonder it improves productivity.

And, doing regular and moderate exercise, along with taking curcumin and at least 2,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day dramatically increases the effectiveness of your immune system. In later years, you are also far less likely to get heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. So you have fewer doctor visits to cause you to leave work.

2. Improve your learning skills

In one study noted in the Prevention article, “Exercisers who ran just two 3-minute sprints, with a 2-minute break in between, learned new words 20% faster than those who rested….” They also said that exercise tends to produce, “new growth in the areas of the brain that control multitasking, planning, and memory.”

3. Natural pain relief

It may seem surprising; but exercise lowers pain in several ways. It boosts endorphins that effectively block pain signals. It increases circulation and helps lubricate joints. And exercise also LOWERS excess inflammation. Best of all, exercise causes your body to release growth hormones that repair damage to you before it causes you pain.

Prevention’s article had this: “Healthy adults who did aerobic activity consistently had 25% less musculoskeletal pain than their couch-bound peers, says Stanford senior research scientist Bonnie Bruce, DrPH, MPH, RD.”

They also say that Tai Chi is an excellent kind of exercise for this. Tai Chi as usually done is super low impact and done in a slow and gentle manner. It also provides such strong stress relief, it lowers blood pressure better than most drugs in those who have high blood pressure.

So what pain exercise fails to turn off will bother you less. And, it also turns off pain that sedentary people get too!

4. Exercise increases your ability to engage in sex. It makes you feel better about yourself. And, you look and move better too.

Prevention’s article had this:

“A good workout practically ensures a better body image. The simple act of exercising-regardless of your weight or fitness level-can make you feel positive about how you look, possibly due to the release of feel-good hormones, finds a review of 57 studies on exercise and body image.

Working out can also boost your libido by increasing blood flow to the genitals. University of Washington research found that just one 20-minute cycling workout enhanced sexual arousal up to 169% in women. And the benefits stand the test of time: A Harvard study of swimmers found that those over age 60 were as satisfied sexually as those decades younger.”

5. Lower Dental Bills

Exercise increases circulation and lowers excess inflammation. So it’s no surprise it helps keep your gums healthy.

What you may NOT know is that gum disease, besides causing heart disease and horrible bad breath, costs a LOT of money to treat including pulling teeth that your gums become too weak to hold onto and buying false teeth to replace them.

Prevention had this:

“Flossing and brushing, it turns out, are not the only keys to a healthy smile, says Mohammad Al-Zahrani, DDS, PhD, a former associate professor at Case Western Reserve University. Exercise plays an important role, too. In his recent study, Al-Zahrani discovered that adults who did 30 minutes of moderate activity 5 or more times a week were 42% less likely to suffer from periodontitis, a gum disease that's more common as you get older. Working out may thwart periodontitis the same way it does heart disease--by lowering levels of inflammation-causing C-reactive protein in the blood.

Do this: In addition to staying active, get a twice-yearly dental cleaning (or more often if your dentist says you are at high risk for gum disease). “

6. If you need more wake up at work than you get from coffee, try going on a short walk.

Prevention’s article had this:

“University of Georgia researchers who analyzed 70 different studies concluded that moving your body increases energy and reduces fatigue. Regular exercise boosts certain fatigue-fighting brain chemicals such as norepinephrine and dopamine, which pep you up, and serotonin, a mood enhancer.

Even a brisk 10 minute walk will help.

7. Stop weight gain due to stress and anxiety.

Those things tend to cause you to gain belly fat -- which is both ugly and dangerous to your health.

Prevention’s article had this:

“Just two 40-minute workouts a week is enough to stop dangerous belly fat in its tracks, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham research. The waistline of those who worked out less expanded an average of 3 inches.”

Exercise lowers excess levels of cortisol and insulin. Both of those actions help prevent your body from adding to your belly fat.

And, because it lowers stress, exercise also cuts your cravings for comfort foods that tend to be fattening.

Note that 80 minutes of walking or working out in a week can also be done with 8 ten minute walks or four 20 minute walks. For many people, that flexibility makes it a lot easier to fit in.

Out of time today. I’ll finish the list tomorrow.

GMO foods can harm you and your health....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 5-18-2010

There may be some GMO foods that are safe. There is very clear and scary evidence that many if not most are NOT safe for human consumption. They are not tested at all or the bad results are only available to their makers and not released much of the time.

(GMO stands for “Genetically Modified Organisms” & is now commonly used to refer to Genetically Modified foods and usually to Genetically Modified plant foods.)

Many GMO foods essentially contain internal and artificially added pesticides or herbicides you can’t wash off. That saves the farmer from having to pay for pesticides and herbicides and for paying the labor to apply them – OR it saves them from having to pay a lot more for the labor it takes to weed plus it cuts the risk of and amount of crop damage. So farmers can sell for less and still make money by using these GMO plants.

And, many cheap foods today are made from corn and soy that is increasingly GMO corn and soy for these reasons. (Unfortunately for those who think well of canola oil, so is the rapeseed used to make canola oil.)

The problem is that eating these pesticides and herbicides is likely not a great deal better for you or your kids than it is for the bugs or competing plants that they target.

Quite the contrary. They can cause cancer. They can cause nerve damage and behavior problems. And they very likely & usually cause many allergies.

The internal herbicides and pesticides organically grown plants have evolved naturally over thousands of year our bodies have evolved with and actually use to support our health. The problem is that our bodies are NOT evolved to use the chemicals in things like our chemical pesticides and herbicides. And, it’s those or other pesticides we are not evolved to process that are added to GMO plants.

Allergies are caused in large part when our immune systems are exposed to things our ancestors were not. So our bodies react as if they are invaders from outer space. In fact, they over-react to the place it causes us quality of life or health problems.

GMO foods are almost custom designed to do exactly that. Something toxic that has not existed in nature before is purposely added to the GMO plant’s DNA.

For example, the common use of GMO soy may well be the cause of the sharp increase in dangerous peanut allergies over the last several years. (Soy infant formula today is most likely made from GMO soy.) Later in this post Dr Al Sears reports on some research that suggest this is highly likely in fact!

I decided to feed our daughter soy formula to help ensure she would not become allergic to milk without realizing the soy might not be safer and might even be deadly instead.

She became allergic to soy and peanuts by the time she was a toddler. Later, only brilliant work by her ER doctor plus very good luck or divine intervention spared her life when she went into anaphylactic shock and her breathing tube swelled shut. (I also recently found out the bill she and her husband had to pay off was over $60,000 for the ER and subsequent hospital bills.) It seems a cookie handed to her by a co-worker at her job had some peanuts added for extra crunch.

I had heard of this problem with GMO foods but was unaware of just how widespread their use is or how deadly they can be at their worst.

Dr Al Sears sent an email yesterday with some key points on this subject that I did not yet know and which inspired me to share his points with you in this post.

He says that people in the United Kingdom (UK) decided to create a new kind of GMO potato that would be resistant to all insects.

They decided to genetically modify the DNA of potatoes so each one would release a lectin similar to similar natural insecticides found in foods like beans, seeds, and grains.

This GMO potato caused serious organ damage when fed to animals. Researchers found pre-cancerous growths in their digestive tracts and the potatoes also seriously harmed to destroyed the animals’ immune systems. They also rapidly became sick and weak. Plus they had smaller brains, livers, and testicles.

There was a huge cover-up that it took an act of Parliament to bring out into public view. Since then, Europeans have banned genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from any product used for human consumption.

Dr Sears said this next after reporting this

“If this potato had been created in the U.S., you could be eating it in the French fries you get at McDonald’s.

Unlike the UK, our government has taken the stance that GMOs are safe.

Mega-giant seed corporations like Monsanto want to prevent any bad news about GMOs getting out to the public. They require anyone who buys genetically modified seeds to sign what they call a “technology stewardship agreement.” What does that mean? It prohibits the buyer from doing any research on the seed.

In other words, no one who has access…. is allowed to find out if they’re safe.

But evidence of the dangers is leaking out from Europe, Russia, and many other countries around the world.

Here are just some of their findings: “ (His email included the studies done and where they were published.)

“Allergies increased. When GMO soy was introduced, allergies jumped by 50%. Allergen proteins were 7 times higher. Some were unique only to GMO soy.

It wreaked havoc on digestion and the absorption of nutrients. Digestive enzymes plummeted, and GMOs caused lesions in the digestive tract.

Proteins that control stress response and energy creation in cells changed. This resulted in faster aging of cells.

It caused reproductive problems. Sperm cells had trouble developing, and embryos showed altered genes. Offspring were smaller, and many more died.
Now, here’s the second part of our problem in the U.S. Food manufacturers don’t have to tell you when products have GMOs.

About 75 percent of American farms grow GMOs. Almost 90% of the soy… more than 60% of the corn… 75% of the canola, and 50% of the Hawaiian papaya crops.

So, what can you do?

First, I recommend you avoid all non-organic soy, corn, and canola products:

Next, eliminate commercial beef and poultry from your diet. They are raised on GMO corn, soy, and grains.

And, if you eat out, eat at restaurants that cook from scratch. Avoid suspect GMO foods like corn chips, tortillas, soy sauce, and sweet corn. If they use oil to cook, ask them to use a non-GMO oil such as olive….”

Dr Sears has often recommended grass fed beef for this and other reasons. Without the GMO worry I will only eat beef now that is grass fed for those reasons alone. This new GMO information certainly strengthens my resolve to follow this policy.

Another very widely spread way GMO soy may be in your kitchen is because soy oil is so widely used because it’s so cheap.

Mayonnaise is by definition a food made from egg yolks and olive oil as just one example.

You can buy dozens of versions in stores of what is labeled as mayonnaise. But if you want to eat mayonnaise made from egg yolks and olive oil, you have to make it yourself. The stuff in the stores is all made with soy or canola oil instead.

Since those now are likely made with GMO foods, that’s problematic if you happen to like mayonnaise.

Prepared salad dressings are much the same. At least you CAN find versions with olive oil instead. But most have soy or canola.

Soy protein and soy oil are also listed as ingredients all over grocery stores in snack foods, ice creams, and breads.

You CAN avoid the stuff. But you do have to always read labels and pass on most brands of many foods to do so.

Because mostly that I know canola oil and soy oil and corn oil are high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils that also lower the protective HDL cholesterol while extra virgin olive oil does not, I’ve been buying only extra virgin olive oil and passing on canola and soy and corn oils for quite some time.

But all this bad news may be new to you.

The simplest guideline is to pass on buying or eating it if it has any other oil but olive oil in it.

My only wish is that meat and eggs from pasture raised chickens was much more widely available. At least grass fed beef is becoming available.

Meanwhile, if you have an opportunity to support changing our policy to that of Europe, please do so.

My weight loss progress this month....

Today's Post: Monday, 5-17-2010

As many of you know, in late December I decided to make a strong and focused effort to lose the 14 pounds I’d gained back of the 30 pounds that I initially lost.

So, my New Year’s Resolution and main health goal for 2010 was to do that by the end of the year.

I also wanted to do this to make progress towards a goal I knew might take longer which was to lose 4 inches off my waist.

So, I set up a plan with over 10 small strategies to cut calories without increasing my hunger or reducing my nutrition -- each of which would help a bit in my loss of that many pounds of fat. I also decided on another 4 or 5 other strategies to help add muscle, burn calories, and remove more belly fat.

I’ve followed the calorie restrictions faithfully. And, I’ve built up to about 25% of my goal in the jump rope sessions I added for just a few minutes twice a week. But I’ve not yet gotten to the other 3 or 4 added exercise goals.

Here’s how I’ve done so far.

Since I lost another 2 pounds since last month, I’ve done great on my fat loss goal as shown by the weight on the scale. I’ve lost 13 of the 14 pounds already in just 5 months. So, when I lose one pound or more by next month, I will have reached my weight loss goal for the whole year in just six months.

Last week was Mother’s Day. Our daughter was really great to her Mom. But my wife initially was upset with me. I was able to turn that around by the end of the day. But it was more than a bit stressful. So, although I restrained my wine consumption some and was sure to eat plenty of the raw vegetable snacks, I did wind up consuming enough more wine than I planned and ate enough more, I likely gave up losing between half a pound and a pound I would otherwise have lost.

BUT, there were two pieces of good news this month anyway.

Because my multipart program was still in place every other day of the month and even part of Mother’s Day, I still lost two pounds.

The other news is better, I lost a whole inch off my waist since last month!

(Now, I’ve lost 1.75 inches of the 4 off my waist that I set out to lose.

That IS very encouraging. So, I may even have a shot at losing the whole 4 inches by the end of the year after all.

The only bad news is that the way my belly looks, I may need to lose 4 inches from here to really get rid of my pot belly -- for a total of 6.25 inches from where I began.)

I think much of that inch off my waist was from my gradual improvement in my jump rope sessions. My initial start was one set of 14 that it took me a few tries to do.

Now, I do four sets each time: 49, 42, 35, & 28. Even better, I now do all or most of each set without a miss. Last time, if I remember correctly, the set of 49 was 41 without a miss and then 8 more; I did the 42 set without a miss; I did the 35 set as 33 without a miss and then the last two; & I did the 28 set without a miss.

My hope, goal, and intention is to build up to 6 sets of 98 at each of my two sessions a week by the end of the year.

Between the jump rope sessions and the loss of 13 pounds, I can tell my power to weight ratio is better. When I want to walk fast, it takes about a third of the mental energy to do than it did at the start of the year.

The really nice thing is that this new jump rope program only takes 10 to 12 minutes twice a week now. And, it will only take 15 to 18 minutes twice a week at the end of the year when I do more at each session.

(This is in addition to the other exercises I’ve been doing the other days of the week before I added the jump rope. So I started out lighter and less fat than many people who haven’t yet begun any exercises at all.)

I also follow virtually all the fat loss tips I posted last time with much the same result.

I’m posting these monthly results for two reasons. It helps me stay motivated. And, I hope many of my readers will be encouraged by my good results and do likewise.

Short diet tips....

Today's Post: Friday, 5-14-2010

I do many long posts.

Another web based fat loss source asked for some diet tips.

That person & site, www.thecouchpotatodiet.com, has 3 principles that in themselves are diet tips.

1. Increase protein-fiber

2. Decrease saturated fat-cholesterol

3. Significantly reduce sugar.

For starters, I’ll add these two:

4. Drink NO soft drinks other than plain, carbonated water.

5. Do some vigorous exercise virtually every day.

Now let’s do more tips in these 5 categories >>>>>

1. Increase protein-fiber

a) Eat health OK protein foods because they both turn off hunger best and longest. And, IF they eat enough protein, even people who cut back on calories a bit too much often can avoid poor health and triggering the shut down the fat loss famine response.

b) Eat lots of nonstarchy vegetables because they have hardly any calories but tons of fiber so they allow you to cut calories without being too hungry PLUS both cooked and raw nonstarchy vegetables such as tomatoes and cauliflower and broccoli, particularly if organic support your health in dozens of ways.

c) Eat lots of nonstarchy vegetables because you automatically eat less of the more fattening foods than you otherwise might with virtually no willpower needed at all!!

d) Eat more fish: eat two or three times a week of health OK, high omega 3 fish such as wild caught salmon, fresh or canned sardines, herring, and the smaller kinds of mackerel because their protein turns off your hunger while the omega 3 oils in them protect your brain, improve your mood and make you less irritable, AND turn off inflammation and lower triglycerides both of which protect your heart!!

e) Eat cooked lentils and beans most days every week because they have both fiber AND protein without excessive calories so they turn off your hunger well
-- plus their soluble fiber helps lower your bad LDL cholesterol. It also helps that you can cook up a batch on weekends to eat servings from during the work week. Last, they are CHEAP per serving since they cost so little in bulk.

f) I’ve found that cooking up a batch of boiled eggs on weekends and then eating one for many of my breakfasts is a great way to get convenient, fast and good quality protein in my breakfast each day. (The yolks increase total cholesterol a bit; but the choline in them ensures that it's virtually all the protective HDL that increases.)

g) Want to avoid prostate or breast or ovarian cancer? Eat one serving a day of raw and organic broccoli florets or cauliflower. One study found it cut the dangerous kind of prostate cancer in HALF to do that and they hardly have any calories either.

2. Decrease saturated fat-cholesterol

a) Make a strong, focused, and consistent effort to eat just as close to absolutely ZERO foods made from refined grains. They have very little fiber or nutrition and boost your blood sugar and insulin and INCREASE your fat stores. Guess what? They found out that doing this also lowers your LDL cholesterol; lowers your triglycerides, and increases your protective HDL cholesterol. So, doing this is fat loss leverage and heart protection in one pass. Eat nonstarchy vegetables, beans, or a smaller serving of only 100 % whole grains instead.

b) Eat red meat twice a week or less since this cuts back on your levels of saturated fat and saves you money.

c) It costs more which helps you eat it less often; but when you eat red meat, insist on ONLY eating meat from animals fed only grass because they have less fat and less than half the saturated fat as meat from grain fed animals.

d) NEVER, EVER voluntarily eat foods containing trans fats OR which contain ANY hydrogenated oils. Those are heart attack starters and have been found to boost your dangerous small particle LDL cholesterol that is a major cause of heart disease. Why waste your calorie allowance or your money on any of this junk? Always read labels to check; never eat foods with shortening; and simply refuse to buy or eat foods with this junk in them.

e) Do vigorous exercises virtually every day. That’s been found to lower LDL cholesterol; lower triglycerides; increase your protective HDL; and the effect gets better and better the longer you keep doing them! It also lowers high blood sugar, lowers your fattening insulin levels, and burns calories too!!

3. Significantly reduce sugar.

a) One great way for many people to eat less sugar is to simply never eat any foods or drink any drinks that have ANY high fructose corn syrup in them. At best these foods have a kind of sugar and if you eat none, you’ll be far less fat. But this also protects your brain, nerves, and health too. It was recently found that 30% of the high fructose corn syrup in many of the foods that contained it was contaminated with mercury. I’ve found knowing that makes it really easy to motivate myself to avoid it. Always read labels and don’t buy, eat, or drink anything that contains it.

b) The average American today eats or drinks about 10 times too much sugar and they wear the difference in the fat they carry around. Here are some ways to cut back on sugar I’ve used myself. Always buy only apple sauce labeled no sugar added. Cut back some on how many times a week you eat a food with sugar; cut back just a bit on how much sugar you have when you do; then cut the number of times you eat sugar in every two week period in half.

c) Remember that cutting back on sugar cuts down on your fat deposits with little increase in how hungry you are. In fact, refined grains and sugars cause a rebound hunger effect that causes you to feel MORE hungry. To put it bluntly, cutting back a lot on sugar improves your fat loss double or triple as much as the effort required.

d) Never, ever eat a dessert or sugary treat that’s not a favorite that you really like. Refuse to use the sugar you do allow yourself on things you don’t really like anyway.

e) Drink NO soft drinks other than plain, carbonated water. The average American gets over half his or her excess sugar from this one source. Worse, the sugary soft drinks don’t turn down your hunger despite adding calories and THEN they cause rebound hunger to make you MORE hungry later. They are quite literally fatteners and fat loss sabotagers. Simply refuse to spend your money or sugar allowance on this junk.


4. Drink NO soft drinks other than plain, carbonated water.

a) The average American gets over half his or her excess sugar from this one source. Worse, the sugary soft drinks don’t turn down your hunger despite adding calories and THEN they cause rebound hunger to make you MORE hungry later. They are quite literally fatteners and fat loss sabotagers. Simply refuse to spend your money or sugar allowance on this junk.

b) One source calculated that you can multiply your average number of soft drinks a day by 15 pounds to see how much fat you carry that drinking them supports. THINK about that! It means that if you are 40 pounds too fat and drink two a day average, you can lose 30 of the 40 pounds by simply drinking carbonated water, tea, water, or coffee black or with a bit of 1% lowfat milk instead.

5. Do some vigorous exercise virtually every day.

a) Even two minutes of at home vigorous exercise such as a minute doing fast pushups and a minute doing fast crunches has been shown to lower blood sugar and insulin. Since those are each fattening when high, even that much makes fat and weight loss MUCH easier.

b) Even that much vigorous exercise turns down depression and improves your mood and the effect is virtually immediate. No legal drug known can do that.

c) Slow exercise can be boring; but vigorous exercise demands your attention. And, doing just a bit more every week becomes an interesting challenge you can overcome.

d) Vigorous exercise burns more calories for up to several hours after you stop.

e) Both interval cardio and strength training add to your muscular weight. Muscle burns more calories than the fat it replaces and is smaller in size. So you burn fat in addition any calorie restrictions you practice. And, you begin to look smaller and lighter. This also ensures you lose only fat instead of parts of you that you’d be better off keeping.

f) You don’t have to be good at vigorous exercise AT ALL to start doing just a tiny bit. Even better, by just doing a bit more each week for a couple of years, you can get astoundingly good at it. Best of all if you make progress slowly over a long time like that, it’s one of the very safest ways to exercise.

g) Virtually everyone who loses fat and weight and keeps them off does regular exercise.

h) Regular, vigorous exercise has also been shown to improve your sex life and grow new brain cells and slow aging. That’s in addition to helping you lose fat and keep it off!

What to look for in a Weight loss plan....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-13-2010

Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter had an article today on the HealthDay News online on this subject: “You know you need to lose weight. And you know you're ready, which is more than half the battle. But you still have to pick from a seemingly endless array of weight-loss plans.

How to decide?”

I decided to list some of her points and add my comments.

“ "Are you an online type who likes to chat?" she said. "Or do you want a formal meeting?" “

Me: Weight Watchers offers both. Their overall system is pretty good and their support in their in person meetings is excellent, particularly for those who are emotional eaters and need help staying in control.

Their track record is better than most too.

For my taste though they do some things wrong. So you need to get your help with those things from other sources.

They tend to set more restrictive limits on how much you eat than is wise which does help get fast results at first but can backfire and often does. (If you go, set limits 5 to 10 % less than what you normally have been eating and not more unless you have literally been stuffing your self with more than you need to eat.) They do NOT stress exercise as much as they should and are less knowledgeable about it than I think they should be. They include more starchy foods and allow more refined grains and sugars than I think produces the best fat loss and health results. And, they tend to underdo including some health OK oils and be a little too much on the slightly outdated low fat only plan.

“Some people find that plans that offer prepared meals help them stick to the plan because it takes the whole portion-control task out of their hands, said Suzanne Farrell, a registered dietitian in Denver who also is an association spokeswoman. “

Me: These plans tend to be a bit inflexible but can work very well for some people. If you need someone else to set it up, are short on time to fix food, and can afford the extra cost, they do work well. Some plans have more health supporting menus and it’s hard to tell how well they do without signing up.
I’d like these plans a lot better if you could check those points more easily ahead of time and upgrade any problem areas you find both before signing up and after.

“Key factors to look for:” (according to one expert consulted for the article)

Does the plan include a variety of foods?

Does it include high-fiber foods?

Does it educate you on the value of foods that are low in saturated fat?

Does it tell you about "good" fats, such as olive oil?”

And, “ "look for a plan that emphasizes physical activity and encourages eating regularly throughout the day."

“And watch out for claims and promises that sound too good to be true, Farrell added. A common one, she noted, is rapid weight loss. "It should be no greater than two pounds a week," she said.”

She's also skeptical of plans that say no exercise is needed. Weight loss means a lifestyle change, she said, and maintaining the loss is best done by keeping an eye on food intake and on staying active.

Another red flag, Farrell said, is a plan that totally eliminates foods or food groups.”

“The bottom line? The experts agreed that if your diet plan is suited to you, chances are you'll follow it longer, take the weight off at a slow but steady pace and maintain the loss.”

My comments on the set of guidelines:

1. A variety of foods should be recommended in the plan

& “Another red flag…. is a plan that totally eliminates foods or food groups.”

A plan should stress nonstarchy vegetables of many varieties, organic if possible. (The more kinds you try and know and the more kinds you include most weeks, the easier it is to eat as much as you should and it’s more likely that you will find some kinds you like or are at least OK eating.)

It should include health OK protein foods such as beans and lentils, nuts for people not allergic to them, wild caught fish, naturally raised meat but not a large or frequent amount, eggs, and very lean or lowfat dairy products, poultry, and only very lean and fat-trimmed grain fed meats if you must have grain fed meats and then not at all often. (This keeps saturated fat intake quite low.)

And, besides the fats and oils in those foods, ideally it should include some extra virgin olive oil and some purified fish oil supplements for omega 3 oils. Avocados and guacamole are also OK in moderation.

It should include some whole fresh fruit eaten several times a week but not in excess. And, for those who must have some, it can allow whole grain foods only but not too much.

However, for protecting your health and for best fat loss results it MUST exclude certain foods or food groups.

They include these foods.:

Any food containing trans fats and any hydrogenated oils at all. (These are MUCH worse for your health than saturated fats. Any calories of these you ingest you could have had some real food instead! Do NOT eat foods that have any.)

Most to all fats from grain fed animals. They are high in excess saturated fat, omega6 oils, and bioconcentrated herbicides, pesticides, and even have antibiotics you are better off not eating.)

All oils high in omega 6 oils such as corn, soy, safflower, and canola.

To the maximum extent possible, all food made from refined grains.

As little sugar as you can manage. Less is better! It’s simply fattening and most people who need to lose excess fat eat more than 10 times too much.

No high fructose corn syrup.

And, no soft drinks whatever except water that has been carbonated only and has no sweeteners of any kind.

Foods and drinks on this list that MUST be excluded either help make you fat or make you sick in some way. So one super great way to cut calories is to no longer eat or drink them.

The list of things that should be included have a lot of fiber particularly vegetables, beans and lentils, and many kinds of whole fresh fruit.

The list of things that should be included does have extra virgin olive oil and other sources of health OK oils. In moderation these foods do NOT slow fat or weight loss and including them has been shown to make it more likely you’ll keep eating right and keep off the fat you lose.

A plan should do far more than offering mild encouragement to stay physically active. The right kinds of exercise help lose fat with less need to eat so little you feel deprived. They dramatically improve and protect you and your health. And, by doing them, you help ensure the weight you lose is only fat and NOT parts of you that you’d be better off keeping.

So the best plan would give you a lot of information on these kinds of exercise and tips and help getting into it if you aren’t already.

About “No Dieting Needed”:

All the most effective fat loss plans include some kinds of calorie restriction. So one that’s good must have some version of that. So if by no dieting no calorie restriction is meant, that IS a VERY poor plan.

But if by no dieting it means no need to be eating so much less that you feel hungry all the time or temporary starvation, that may be a very good plan indeed. Those things are obnoxious to go through and tend to backfire anyway.

If a plan says you can succeed and you can lose fat and keep it off, that’s NOT hype or too good to believe.

If you follow a good plan well enough and eliminate any roadblocks such as medicines that have weight gain as a side effect, you can do it too.

New studies show exercise strongly protects your heart & slows aging....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 5-11-2010

Not one but two studies were on the Healthday online news today with this information.

The first one lists evidence that regular exercise slows aging; but it’s main focus is on how powerful it is in protecting your heart.

The second found evidence that healthy distance runners avoid a biomarker of aging almost entirely as if the aging process had been turned off. (This may mean that exercise lengthens or protects your telomeres as well.)

In the posts here I already listed a study done on regular exercisers at Stanford University who started out initially as runners and compared them to a matched group economically and professionally who did not exercise and did so over many years.

The regular exercisers got far fewer degenerative diseases, they looked and acted younger, and fewer of them died during the study.

Also, I found out that regular exercise increases HDL. Then I found out that regular exercise directly lowers the amount of small particle LDL that causes heart disease. And, it’s known that when that happens HDL goes up and triglycerides go down. Exercise also tends to prevent insulin resistance, high blood sugar levels, and type 2 diabetes. And, it tends to lower inflammation.

Each of these effects is strongly heart protective.

But even knowing all that, I was surprised at the effects described in these studies.

For example, now that it’s known high triglycerides are a risk factor for heart disease, drug companies are trying to find a drug to lower them.

It seems regular exercise already does a superb job of doing that and has no side effects. In fact, it has all the other heart protecting things it does and other benefits instead.

It seems the longer you are a regular exerciser, the more protection you get according to this first study.

“With Long-Term Exercise, Being 80 Is Just a Number

TUESDAY, May 11, 2010 (HealthDay News) HealthDay Reporter by Jenifer Goodwin”

Apparently in 1977, Lawrence Golding, now 81, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, started an exercise class for men, each weekday at lunchtime in a building on campus.

Many of those men, who were 30 to 51 when the class began, stuck with the program for over 20 years.

They now have cholesterol and triglyceride levels that are better than when they were younger.

And their aerobic capacity, flexibility & strength have not shown the age-related declines non-exercisers get in these measures of fitness and ability.

Golding, who led the exercise class until it was disbanded a couple of years ago said this: "People who exercise regularly continue doing the things they used to do when they were in their 20s."

The class Golding led was 45-minute class weekdays from September to May. Golding counted repetitions from the front of the room. The regular class members did three sets of 50 sit-ups and three sets of 20 push-ups as part of this program.

“The men, all white, all sedentary and most mildly overweight, quickly showed improvement. Within two to three years, participants, regardless of their age, on average performed better on tests of flexibility, strength and aerobics than incoming freshman, Golding said.

Among the 20 who continued coming to class -- 3½ times a week for more than 20 years -- low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the bad type, dropped 27 percent after the first year and 60 percent over 20 years. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the good type, increased by 60 percent after the first year and continued to improve for the next 15 years, according to research published in 2009 in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.

Total cholesterol (LDL, HDL and other lipid components) dropped nearly 18 percent after year one and 40 percent over 20 years, the study found. Triglyceride levels decreased every year, including 23 percent after the first year and 61 percent over 20 years.

The men also lost an average of 27 pounds, though the improvements in cholesterol profiles were independent of weight loss, according to the study.”

In short, they not only got strong heart protection their first year, by continuing to be in this regular exercise group, their heart protection kept increasing the longer they remained in this moderately strenuous regular exercise program!

The second story was titled:

“Strenuous Exercise May Stop Cellular Death

TUESDAY, May 11, 2010 (HealthDay News)

Strenuous exercise appears to stop the body's cells from killing themselves as they're programmed to do, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that cells of people who had just run a marathon didn't engage in what is called apoptosis -- the natural death of cells.

"Apoptosis is a normal physiological function dependent on a variety of signals, many of which can be modulated by strenuous exercise. Here, we've shown for the first time that exercise modulates expression of the sirtuin family of proteins, which may be key regulators of training," study lead author Gabriella Marfe, of the University of Rome, said in a news release.

Marfe and colleagues took blood samples from 10 male athletes who'd taken part in a 42-kilometer run and found a shift in the balance between expression of pro- and anti-apoptotic genes after the race.

The researchers think that proteins in the sirtuin family may play a protective role in preventing cell death through exercise.

So should you go out for a run? Be careful if you haven't been training, Marfe said. "Untrained amateur athletes often do hard training without professional advice. Such intense and exhaustive exercise can be harmful to health," she said. To achieve beneficial effects, the authors recommend that exercise be part of a lifelong regimen with expert medical advice and supervision.

The study was published May 10 in the journal BMC Physiology.”

In fact, Marathon running has a bad track record for tending to overstrain the heart and not everyone who does it survives the experience.

It also places very large time demands on those who do it.

However, much, much shorter sessions of vigorous regular exercise do not have that problem and seem to get very similar positive health effects.

And, fitting in 15 to 45 minutes a day of such exercise as the first group did is far more doable without making it your only hobby as Marathon runners often do.

But it’s quite clear.

As long as you don’t overdo it in the early stages, do a reasonable amount each week, build up to more intensity gradually AND you do vigorous exercise regularly every week as a normal practice for many years and keep doing it, you will have superb heart protection that keeps getting better

AND you will stay young, healthy, and able in a way you simply otherwise would not.

Outstanding resource for preventing & helping cure cancer....

Today's Post: Monday, 5-10-2010

I found a book recently that I’ll report on in more detail later.

I’ve only begun to read through it. But the quality of what I’ve found so far caused me to believe I should refer you to it right away because some of you might well want access to its information sooner.

In my part of the country, we have one of the best bookstores in the country, Keplers, in downtown Menlo Park, California.

I often scan their best selling nonfiction books for those that both interest me and look well done.

My hope is to find books like the one I’m posting on today.

The book is “Anticancer, A New Way of Life, New Edition” by David Servan-Schreiber.

This book is by a doctor who was doing unrelated brain research when as a subject for his own research, his colleagues found a significant cancerous brain tumor in him!

Western medicine was of some help in getting rid of his tumor. But it apparently came back. And somewhere in this process, he became interested in finding methods that worked to prevent cancers and those that worked with conventional medicine that also worked in addition to the first group that prevent cancer.

In what I read of his book, I was quite impressed to find that he covers almost every way to prevent cancer that I’ve listed on the subject over every post I’ve done and usually with much more information on each method.

In addition, he apparently has found many ways to boost the effects of conventional treatments using similar methods.

Some sources for this information suggest using such natural methods OR conventional medicine and deplore the harsh and even deadly side effects that conventional medicine’s treatments often have.

But, this ignores the fact that conventional methods have worked decently well for some people. And, if you and your doctors want to combine the best of both kinds of methods, it’s hard to do from such sources.

THIS book’s approach is NOT like that. This is a book you can share with your doctor since it gives conventional medicine recognition for what it DOES do well.

In fact, he gives the source of his wisdom on the subject in his book. He found some doctors who had experience with both natural methods AND Western medicine and asked them which kind of medicine they thought best was and why.

Their answer was quite immediate and definite; and he got the same answer from each of them.

They said that if the problem was acute and the patient would die or be harmed unless something effective quickly was done, the best system by more than ten to one was the Western kind of medicine.

But if the problem was chronic and you needed something that was powerful and effective over a much longer time, Western medicine was often clueless or worse while some of the natural cures really DID do the job well.

So, it was no contest in either case, the choice depended on what the patient’s problem was.

The bottom line is that this may be the best source ever written on preventing, surviving, or even recovering from cancer.

So, if you would like all its information or the parts you most need or want to know right away, you need not wait for me to finish reading it and doing smaller reports here, get yourself a copy and read it right away.

You may find a copy of this new edition in your local bookstore today as I did initially.

Or, you can buy it at online at www.amazon.com .

You can even reward the bookstore where I found the information by going to:
www.keplers.com and looking under “shop local.”

Study says fast fat loss helpful--False, BUT it is worth looking at....

Today's Post: Friday, 5-7-2010

I found an article online by LiveScience.com which has many very interesting articles.:

“Surprising New Diet Tip: Lose Weight Quickly LiveScience Staff livescience.com Thurs, 5-6-2010

The key to long-term weight loss and maintenance might be to lose weight quickly rather than gradually, at least in the initial stages of dieting, a new study suggests.

More research is needed to determine the best approach, however.

Successful weight loss in obese individuals is defined as a reduction of 10 percent or more of initial body weight maintained for at least a year. The jury is still out, however, as to whether fast or slow initial weight loss is the best approach for weight control over the long-term.

On the one hand, there is evidence that starting off a diet losing weight slowly results in continued weight loss, reduced risk of weight gain later, and successful long-term weight loss maintenance. On the other hand, it has also been shown that the greater the initial weight loss in obese people, the larger the total weight loss observed longer-term.

The new study, conducted by Lisa Nackers and colleagues, from the University of Florida, looked at data from 262 middle-aged obese women who took part in a six-month weight loss program.

Participants were encouraged to reduce calorie intake and increase physical activity to achieve an average weight loss of just under a pound (0.45 kilograms) per week for the first six months. Then during the following year, participants got weight-loss support that involved contact twice a month in the form of group sessions, telephone contact or newsletters.

The researchers found that some of the women shed pounds quickly, while others did so relatively gradually, and others were slow to lose weight during the first month of the study.

Women in the fast weight-loss group lost over 1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) per week; those in the moderate group lost between 0.5 and 1.5 pounds (0.23 and 0.68 kg) per week; women in the slow group lost less than 0.5 pounds (0.23 kg) per week. They then looked at the women's weight loss at six and 18 months, as well as any weight regain at the end of the follow-up year.

Those in the fast weight-loss group shed more weight overall, maintained their weight loss for longer and were not more likely to put weight back on than the more gradual weight losers. At the end of six months, women in the fast group lost an average of around 30 pounds (13.5 kg), while those in the moderate group lost around 20 (8.9 kg), and those in the slow group lost about 11 pounds (5.1 kg).

Women in the fast group were five times more likely to achieve the clinically significant 10-percent weight loss at 18 months than those in the slow group. And those in the moderate group were nearly three times more likely to achieve this milestone than women in the slow group. “

Does this mean that making a special effort to lose weight really FAST is a good idea?

That depends; but the answer is mostly NO.

And, that’s NOT what I think they found in this study either.

1. Note the article writer or the people who ran the study said this.:

“…there is evidence that starting off a diet losing weight slowly results in continued weight loss, reduced risk of weight gain later…..”

The people who cut back from 1700 calories a day to 700 to lose weight and are aiming for MORE than the moderately high 6 pounds a month this study reports invariably trigger their famine response. This response has been honed over tens of thousands of years in our ancestors who survived famines multiple times to be virtually fail safe and the resulting famine response almost always is.

The person who has a triggered famine response begins to feel too lazy and tired to exercise and their metabolism goes way down. That’s too be sure they burn less calories and that’s what happens. Then they begin to crave MORE food and to crave the most fattening and high calorie foods most! That’s to help be sure the person survives the famine their body reads them as being in, they are virtually certain to find they have no sufficient will power to keep them eating so little. And, they wind up eating even MORE fattening foods than they did before.

Or they slam into more exercise so much too fast and too hard they get injured or over-train to the point they are exhausted and feel too bad to continue.

Or, they take lots of some kind of drug that is a kind of speed or powerful stimulant but experience such bad health problems after a while that they have to stop, or go to the hospital or even wind up in the cemetery.

So, never, ever try to starve yourself thin to gain more than 2 to 6 pounds a month or slam into more exercise too fast or take lots of stimulant drugs with no medical oversight.

It’s a sure way to fail at weight and fat loss and can even kill you.

2. But this the study IS interesting. The lessons from it may be unusually valuable.

Here are the two things I think may be the real explanation of what this study found.

The great news is that both of them suggest some real potential for getting good results with weight and fat loss.

a) The main one is that I think the people who lost closer to 6 pounds a month and a total of 30 pounds likely had three things going on.

They were the heaviest and fattest to begin with. They also eat or drank the largest amount of the most fattening things at the start. Then, the ones that succeeded at all, gave up all or most of the very fattening foods and drinks.

That resulted in their more robust weight loss per month and the most at the end of the study.

Last – but far from least – they NOTICED their good results and apparently decided that giving up soft drinks and junky treats really was worth it after all. So they tended to keep doing it.

People may not believe what you tell them and often don’t. But if something very, very noticeable happens to them for real, they tend to believe it.

Here’s a simple example to illustrate this.

One study found that for every daily soft drink people drank, they weighed about 15 pounds more than if they drank water or tea plain and by itself or coffee black or with just a tiny bit of 1% lowfat milk instead.

So let’s take two people. They both are somewhat active but have desk jobs and are middle-aged.

But one never drinks soft drinks as we just described just as I currently do not & is only 15 pounds of fat overweight.

The second person drinks 3 soft drinks every day all seven days of each week and is 60 pounds overweight.

The both eat a bit better and gradually add some exercise which causes them to lose about 15 pounds over a year’s time.

But, the second one ALSO completely stops drinking soft drinks and loses the extra 45 pounds they were feeding by the end of the year.

So the person who started out not drinking soft drinks only lost 15 pounds with an average of 1.25 pounds a month. But the person who had 45 more pounds to lose and gave up soft drinks to lose it, lost a total of 60 pounds with an average weight loss of 5 pounds a month.

And, since losing 60 pounds gets your favorable attention more than losing 15, they might even be more likely to keep up the things that worked for them.

I think that something like 90 to 98 % of the explanation of what this study found came from this source.

But there IS a valuable lesson here! In fact, it has a very large upside.

If you or someone you know is pretty darn fat and too heavy and now eats junky foods and always drinks two or more soft drinks every day,

And-- if you or that person completely stops doing so and does a decent job of following a low pressure but effective weight loss program too, you or they WILL lose a lot of weight in the first year and will lose enough weight almost every month to make it fun and enjoyable to do.

The other possible explanation is just as valuable; and, although the article does not include evidence it had an effect in this study, it may have had some effect on some of the people who succeeded.


This is the easiest way to see it.

Suppose one person does 4 small things that average helping them lose a half a pound a month each and loses 2 pounds.

Then suppose a second person who is a good bit more determined and did more research into ways to lose excess fat does 12 things that average helping them lose a half a pound a month each and loses 6 pounds.

If none of the methods used by either person triggers the famine response, the second person will lose more fat, and more weight, and lose it more reliably.

That’s why I have so many parts of my own fat loss plan for this year and still plan to add more.

I wanted to lose 14 pounds in 12 months and have lost 11 pounds in 4 months.

So by simply continuing all the doable steps that have done the job, I not only am almost guaranteed to reach my 14 pound goal this year, I may wind up losing far more fat and weight than I ever expected to lose. (In fact, the math suggests I may lose 22 pounds more for a 33 pound loss when I aimed for 14!)

Since I’ve only lost ¾ of an inch off my waist when I wanted to lose 4 inches though, I may well have started with MORE than 33 pounds of fat that I needed to lose.

That also means that I’ve lost some muscle since I was younger; & I also need to do something more than my current strength training to add some or all of it back.

I do have several such things planned; but am only about half started on one. So I have some work to do!


The bottom line is this.

1. Do NOT try to lose weight so fast, more than 6 to 8 pounds a month, with methods like excessively low food intake that trigger your famine response or methods that might cause you to be injured or damaged. People who do almost always fail at long term fat loss. Resolve NOT to join them!

2. The closer you come to drinking no soft drinks and eating no junky snacks or treats, the faster you can safely lose weight and excess fat. And, if you haven’t done that yet, you will be pleasantly surprised how fast your excess fat will disappear once you do

3. The more small and effective methods you use that are doable and sustainable, to lose weight, the faster you will lose it safely and the more reliably you’ll lose it.

Successful strategies to lose fat and keep it off....

Today's Post: Thursday, 5-6-2010

I found an article in my incoming health emails, I think in the Everyday Health service that Jillian Michaels is connected with.

It had 5 things that people did who succeeded in losing enough weight to make a difference and who kept it off for a year.

But I noticed that some of the points were partly incorrect and that even the correct ones could be upgraded to work better or be easier to do.

This post is the result.

I quote what I found for each one & then list my upgrade which I believe to be better for helping you lose fat.

“Studies show that people who lost at least 10% of their body weight and kept the weight off for more than 1 year share several characteristics:”

1. “Exercising for at least 1 hour each day”

OR for 2100 calories of exercise a week which with vigorous exercise can take less than an hour a day & often works better.

You CAN walk an hour each day and burn 300 calories.

OR you can do 15 minutes of strength training and 10 minutes of interval cardio in a bit less than half an hour and burn 200 calories directly and another 200 from the calories you burn after you are done from the directly increased metabolism and from the increase in calories used by the new muscle you will add.

Of course, if you have a whole hour and can to the 15 minutes of strength training and the 10 minutes of interval cardio and then do a half an hour walk for another 150 calories each day and burn a total of 550 calories that IS better. But if you only have half an hour, you can do the job well with interval cardio and strength training alone.

And, if you only have 10 to 15 minutes a day, doing strength training 3 days a week for 15 minutes and doing 10 minutes of interval cardio on the alternate days, you can get some results for fat loss and a LOT of boost for your health.

The hour a day idea makes fat loss look undoable for busy people. Brief sessions of interval cardio and strength training, particularly if done at home, WILL do the job. So such exercise IS doable for most people.

2. “Eating a low-fat, low-calorie diet”

OR, better, eliminate all junk carbs and oils + eat more nonstarchy vegetables + include other planned calorie cuts + do eat health OK oils and protein foods & some fresh fruit and for some people some 100% whole grains.

Our knowledge of fat loss is a good bit better and more comprehensive than it was when the “low-fat” craze was at its peak. But the most critical lever on fat loss IS some kind of sustainable and consistent calorie restriction.

However, foods such as partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats), oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy and canola AND high fructose corn syrup, foods made from refined grains, more than a tiny bit of sugar and drinks such as regular AND diet soft drinks make you fat and sick or MORE hungry instead of less.

So, simply eliminating all of those foods and drinks will cut calories and do so without making you more hungry IF you have some health OK oils, protein, and nonstarchy vegetables instead.

In fact, people who have some health OK oils each day, such as nuts, avocados or guacamole, omega 3 supplements or wild caught fish, and extra virgin olive oil, have been shown to be MORE successful at fat loss instead of less. But this is true if and only if, they have eliminate ALL the bad things and control their overall caloric intake by eating mostly lean protein, spices, and nonstarchy vegetables the rest of the time.

3. “Eating breakfast each day”

BUT only eating health OK foods & be sure to include some health OK protein and fruit.

For women particularly or for people exposed to junky treats at work that lack of breakfast can make it harder to turn down, always eating breakfast is a HUGE help.

In addition, it seems that eating breakfast increases your metabolism all day so you can literally eat MORE in a day you eat breakfast and still lose weight and fat. People who always eat breakfast take in more calories a day and weigh LESS than people who do not do so because of this!

Plus, you can get away with eating some sugars and carbohydrates at breakfast when they would tend to fatten you later in the day.

That means if some days you want a whole grain food such as “Old Fashioned” oatmeal or shredded wheat, breakfast is the meal that is by far the best meal to use to eat such food.

In addition, one glass a day of some kind of fruit or vegetable juice has been shown to improve your health and even to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, having a serving of whole fruit once a day also boosts your health, particularly if you often eat berries as they are so nutritious.

Eating those foods at breakfast can enable you to have and enjoy them without preventing your fat loss.

Lastly, many of the traditional breakfast foods such as cooked eggs are very high in protein which cuts your hunger the most and longest of the different kinds of foods. So always eating some kind of health OK protein at breakfast helps you avoid morning cravings for junky treats.

4. “Weighing themselves regularly and often”

OR weighing and measuring very regularly and reliably + take extra actions on bad readings but do it less often such as every other week or once a month instead of daily.

The regularity and reliability of always measuring and weighing are important. So is making an extra effort if you don’t lose some weight or inches between times.

But I’ve found, personally that doing it more often can be de-motivating since you may not see a change day to day when you are losing a tenth of a pound a day that will total 3 pounds at the end of the month.

Similarly, if you do all the things in your list of strategies to use every day, you may still have days when a special event or something causes you to be upset by your weight going up for a few days. But, you’ll still lose just fine at the end of the month by doing the right things all the other days. By only measuring at the end of the month, you avoid worrying about the short term uptick. Even worse, some people see that uptick and quit thinking their program isn’t working or is undoable when that’s not the case.

My preference is to avoid that and save the time and grief of doing that every day.

In addition, I tend to make a consistent effort every day to be SURE I get good results at the end of the month.

But it is also true that if you don’t measure regularly at all even once a month, and if you don’t make some kind of extra effort if the results aren’t good, you’ll lose control of the process.

5. “Eating the same diet on weekends as they do on weekdays”

OR eating mostly the same but eating only health OK other things and do NOT pig out on quantity of the other foods.

Other than the special Sunday Brunch my wife likes to fix, I find it works well to have the same kind of breakfast on Saturday that I do on weekdays.

And, unless we go out to dinner or to a special event, I eat the same kind of lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday that I do during the week.

And, if we go out to dinner, I ask for two servings of vegetable instead of a vegetable and a starchy item like potatoes or rice; I order a small salad as an appetizer instead of eating the bread served when I’m most hungry; and if we order a dessert as we usually do not, we often will split one.

If we go to a special occasion, I make sure to eat the protein dish, some of the salad, any fresh fruit, and ALL the vegetables and pass on all or most of the bread, potatoes or rice, and some of the desserts.

And, I hardly ever pig out. Even better, though I do eat much more at Thanksgiving, by using my eating style I eat far fewer calories and carbs than most people do even then.

This strategy works for the end of the year holidays too. One year that I was doing well on my exercise program, I remember stuffing a bit at the holiday meals; but my weight stayed exactly the same. I’d just lost 30 pounds then and I gained NONE of it back. My weight and measurements were the same in December and January that they had been in November before the holidays.

So, if you eat a bit differently on occasion but you usually eat the same and you eat the right things when your meals are different, you will sustain your fat loss on weekends.

Conversely, the reverse is DEFINITELY the case. People who eat right on week days and eat large amounts of bad things on week-ends lose no weight or fat at all on such weeks.