Do fat loss supplements work?....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-19-2012

There are several answers to this.

1.  First and foremost is that the best results and health protection come from lifestyle upgrades.

 Delete fattening foods and drinks, learn to enjoy and always eat health supporting and far less fattening foods, find a few ways to cut back on calories in a way that avoids triggering your fail safe famine response and avoids making you too hungry; do both strength training and interval cardio every week and do such vigorous exercise most days of every week; and, if you can manage it, also get several hundred calories of mild to moderate activity every week.

If you do each of these well, it may take longer than you’d like; but you will lose most of your excess fat and become far healthier and safer.

Getting that done and maintaining it does take effort.  But it IS both doable and sustainable.

2.  If you possibly can, avoid both supplements and drugs that are basically some form of concentrated “speed.”

The supplement ephedra was in this category but caused some strokes and triggered some heart attacks – and some people died. Similar substitute supplements have tended to have the same problems. 

Phentermine and the newly approved drug Qsymia that contains it also have similar problems and others.  Some of those problems can and sometimes do cause death.

These drugs aren’t THAT effective either and are usually not needed if you do the right things we list above and persist in doing them.

You are MUCH safer if you avoid potential solutions that don’t lose that much extra fat but harm your health and may even kill you.

Moderate or low power stimulants normally used to help people wake up and stay alert help do alertness etc but I’ve not found them to help my fat loss much if at all. 

I used to drink coffee before I got acid reflux.  I drink black tea and green tea and take green tea extracts and I’m trying guarana. On weekends I drink double strength unsweetened cocoa.  I find I’m mentally sharper by doing this and less sleepy while I’m working.  And, all of these except guarana have documented health benefits. 

The green tea extract may help prevent cancer and does have some caffeine.  But I’ve not experienced any noticeable fat loss effect from taking it.

The better news is that these in reasonable amounts are safe to use!

3.  There IS now a fat loss multiplier that does what people want in a fat loss supplement. 

It works to lose fat in addition to or in spite of what you eat or don’t eat.

And, it takes no net time from your busy life to use.

It’s a new category of product; it does take some getting used to; and the current versions are more expensive than I’d like.  But it does exist now.

And, it DOES work.

See my last post, Exercise at your desk to lose fat and keep your health….Tuesday, 7-17-2012.

4.  There are some safe drugs and supplements that help protect you from the health problems caused by being fat or the lifestyle that makes people fat.  Some even help lose fat a bit.

For elevated blood sugar safe choices include: alpha lipoic acid, chromium polynicotinate, berberine, and the drug Metformin if you take it with sublingual B12 daily.  All help lower elevated blood sugar and/or protect you from its harm.  Metformin even has some fat loss and belly fat loss effects.   This can multiply your efforts to solve this problem and lose fat by using the key lifestyle upgrades that protect your health and help you lose fat.

Similarly, for heart disease prevention, here is a long list of foods and supplements that help:

Drink moderate amounts of alcoholic drinks – notably red wine, resveratrol.

Take real niacin, inositol hexaniacinate, sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol.

Eat the spice ginger, the spice turmeric – the yellow component in curries – taken with black pepper or the active ingredient curcumin taken as a supplement with black pepper, AND minimizing fats from grain fed animals and deleting oils such as corn and soy high in omega 6 and sharply minimizing grains including all refined grains and using extra virgin olive oil instead plus eating wild caught fish and seafood and taking omega 3 supplements.

Combined with the lifestyle upgrades, these increase the beneficial form of HDL, minimize and lower the harmful form of LDL, lower triglycerides, and lower or prevent chronic inflammation.  That prevents or partly reverses heart disease.  And, I’ve seen one source make a case that the inflammation lowering helps fat loss a bit by helping you stop eating when you are full a bit better.

But the most important two reasons to use these for fat loss is that it gives you an extra reason for doing and maintaining the lifestyle upgrades that produce fat loss. And you realize as you do those things that you are not only helping lose fat and keep it off; but you are staying healthy and staying healthy for more years too.

(As an example, I no longer eat commercial baked goods over 99% of the time I have the chance. 

Yes that helps me avoid the fat gain eating them would cause me. 

But I easily avoid eating them by reviewing the fat that they almost always contain hydrogenated oils or high omega 6 oils or both, high fructose corn syrup or excessive sugar or both; and they always contain refined grains. 

Each of these ingredients helps cause heart disease in addition to adding fat to me.

Why would I spend money and take heart protective supplements and then eat heart attack starter? 

I don’t!  So these kinds of foods don’t make me fatter either!

5.  But what about the 3 supplements now talked of for fat loss?

Each one may work.  But each one may not work or do very little.  They are a bit of pain to take as suggested.  And each of the 3 is pricey.

Last, none of them will lose fat for you if you don’t do and keep doing the lifestyle upgrades too. 

That said, each of the three currently shows enough promise that I emailed a friend who found a link to a site promoting one of them noting both their potential value and likely drawbacks.

(He had found a link saying:  “Check out Health Lifestyles - Health News - National News - African Mango” .  Entering that exact phrase in Google yesterday found the link and a good bit of related commentary.) (The supplement of African Mango is called Irvingia.)

“The story is certainly interesting.  Fat loss and inches off your waist with no diet or exercise needed or doing different from what you are already doing.

There are 3 supplements I’ve thought of trying for fat loss.  This is one of them.  

A.  The downside and unknowns:

1.  One way they each seem to get part of their effect is the pain in the ass requirement of how to take them.  They each require you to take them with water half an hour before you begin eating at every meal.  The thought occurs to me that even taking a completely inert placebo pill that carefully every time certainly tends to make you mindful of what & how much you eat at the meal following.  I’ve not heard of any of the 3 passing that test with 100 or 200 people over a 4 month or longer trial by comparing them in people who were consistent at taking them right where some got placebo and some got the supplement.

2.  Secondly, since they do have such compelling stories, they tend to be a bit pricey.  I’ve not been rich enough to afford extra supplements at $60 a month or more just yet.  Taking all three, this one –Irvingia; one I think may work, Fucoxanthin from Wakame seaweed; and green coffee bean extract that sounds like it might be real -- would run nearly $200 a month!  Worse, if they do work, you wouldn’t want to stop taking them.

Third, the more extensive studies of supplements that once had similar stories such as Hoodia, and others found less effectiveness than claimed or none or side effects or both.  This does tend to throw cold water on things pending more research.

4.  I like food and enjoy eating.  My goal is to have fat loss and continue to enjoy eating.  Even if they are effective, I’m less interested in appetite reducers.  So that’s a consideration too.

B.  The possible promise and best uses.

1.  However, it does interest me that Irvingia and Fucoxanthin have tested in small studies to remove belly fat.  Since most of the fat I want most to lose is in my belly and just losing fat overall hasn’t been very effective, when I can afford it later I might consider them. I may pass on green coffee bean extract; but I do plan to do other things first, increase my income, and then test Irvingia and fucoxanthin.  Fucoxanthin too is said to help you lose belly fat. 

(When I lost on the scale down to my goal weight, my belly was still at least 2 to 4 inches too fat; and it & I still looked fat!)

2.  Also, for people who have money and want to start losing fat, there is a conflict with cutting back on overall calories too much at first causing the famine response and guaranteed failure and needing to get enough results at first that they feel the program is working and then keep going.

So this quote from a doctor who tried the Irvingia is of interest:

“While test subjects did find initial improvements, more research needs to be done to see if continuous supplementation would yield any additional benefits. In fact, Tanya Edwards, MD, M.Ed. (one of Dr. Oz's correspondents) wrote on her blog that when she tried the supplement herself, she lost an initial seven pounds, but did not keep losing with continued use (and noticed the same with her patients).”

That way a program that loses 2 or 3 pounds a month with small diet cut backs and some added exercise would lose 5 pounds the first two months which might disappoint some people but would lose them more like 12 to 15 pounds with some visible fat loss on their belly instead.  That could make a truly important difference.

That way people could begin a long term program and lifestyle upgrade that will lose them well over 7 pounds of fat in a year and maybe over 100 pounds in two years in some people.  But instead of dropping out when they didn’t lose much at first, they would succeed since they would lose that initial 7 to 10 extra pounds too."

If and when I get more information or news on these three supplements I’ll do a post on the news of information.  

 My NEW POLICY on Comments.  

Almost all the time comments entered here as anonymous or no name listed are spam for websites having no relevance or very little relevance for the post topic.  I'm getting ads for drugs from questionable sources, handbags oddly enough, software, and even porn sometimes.  I also get stuff with links in languages other than English.  So instead of taking half an hour a day or more to mark each one separately as spam, my new policy is to do a "pocket veto" and just delete them instead.

Even the ones close to the topic are bids for free ads for products most of which I'd not buy or recommend.

SO, if you have a real comment on the post of that day, email me the date & topic from a copy cut and paste from the post and your comment to me at davideller7@yahoo.com .  Those I'd be happy to post and even do a comment myself as a reply or add similar information.

Why a fast start for fat loss is essential....

Today's Post: Friday, 2-17-2012

There are two reasons a fast start for fat loss is essential.

1. If you don’t start fast, you may not start at all!

No start equals NO effort at successful strategies which equals zero fat loss or fat gain instead.

So far, statistics show that half of all adults in the United States are fat.

In round numbers, a third of us have a BMI of over 30.0. (Except for something like half of one percent of men, where the extra weight is muscle from LOTS of heavy strength training, for virtually the whole third it’s from excess fat.)

Of the remaining two thirds or 4/6 1 out of 6 are just under a 30.0 BMI AND have a fat enough tummy to be clearly fat. (For men, that’s over 40 inches on their waist measurement and for women over 35 inches.)

So, 3 out of 6 or one half are too fat by one or both of these measures.

And many of the remaining half are chubby enough to be very close to being in the fat half and still gaining!

Many of these people have thought about trying to lose fat. Some have even decided to try it. But without a fast start of actual effort after deciding to or thinking about it, NO fat is lost.

2. Successful and permanent fat loss takes doing many different but small and doable strategies or efforts.

To achieve a fast start, you need to begin several of these that are quite easy to do but definitely work.

Each one at the start needs to be simple and not too challenging to do at least at first. And, each one must be effective for most people who use it.

After doing this for a month, if you find each one doable and sustainable and you lose inches or pounds or both in that first month, you realize you can lose fat and that the methods ARE sustainable.

And that’s the foundation for successful and permanent fat loss.

At that point as I once realized myself, you will realize, “I can continue doing these things; and since I hardly want the fat to come back!, I’ll just keep doing them.”

Important Warning:

But it’s ALSO essential to use only fat loss methods that tend to not make you more hungry and that are permanent lifestyle upgrades and not a temporary “diet.”

The problem is that too many people include sharp and temporary cut backs of total calories by simply eating less of almost everything or by being extremely strict to the point that they become too hungry.

Even some otherwise good fat loss and weight loss and programs otherwise do this such as Weight Watchers and the South Beach Diet.

The good news is that people do lose enough to notice just in the first few weeks by doing this. At first, that’s fun and people continue the effort which helps the provider make money.

The far worse news is that over ninety percent of these people won’t keep it off because they slashed calories so much initially, the high level of their body’s fail safe emergency famine response kicks in. When that happens their perceived energy level drops to avoid using calories and their hunger more than triples. If they have access to food, they’ll gain it all back!

a) In fact, this looks to be why so many people think diet soft drinks can help you lose fat!

A recent study provides the information that supports this conclusion while seeming to be a paradox.

That study had 3 groups of people who began while they normally drank soft drinks.

One group just tried to lose fat on an overall program that sounds like it was mostly a good program.

The second group just switched from regular soft drinks to diet soft drinks only.

The third group just switched from regular soft drinks to water only.

Each group lost about the same amount of weight during the few months of the study.

The result for the diet soft drink group clashes with the other studies that found that people who drink diet soft drinks for a few years are fatter with thicker waists than people who drink regular soft drinks!

We know why that happens -- because the artificial sweeteners act as a strong appetite booster and one focused on eating more sweet things besides!

But in the new study, the clue or smoking gun was that the people who switched to diet soft drinks began to have too high blood sugar readings while the people who switched to water stayed normal or improved.

The people in the study were able it seems initially to override the appetite boost. But the blood sugar readings show that the extra sugar and insulin that tend to make fat loss hard to sustain and keep for people who need to lose more fat to keep losing it WERE there.

That means that diet soft drinks are just like cutting calories too much, they look good at first because fat comes off—at first. But they are virtually guaranteed to cause the fat you lose to come back by making you too hungry.

So, to get a fast start on PERMANENT fat loss, you need several doable methods to lose fat that do NOT boost the heck out of how hungry you are all day long.

So the key or “money” question is this: What ARE those things?

Good news! You just read one.

People who drank regular soft drinks and stopped entirely and just drank water instead lost as much fat as people on a seemingly more comprehensive program!

How can that be? And will they be able to keep the fat off that way?

Switching from regular soft drinks to water—or tea or green tea or unsweetened soda or carbonated water or coffee black or with some lowfat milk only—makes you LESS hungry!

Really!? Yes, really.

When you drink regular soft drinks, you do NOT get less hungry despite taking in a good bit of the most fattening kind of calories. Then your blood sugar surges and your body surges your insulin to turn it down so much it overdoes and your blood sugar becomes low. As soon as that happens you get HUNGRIER.

With water, you get no calories AND you don’t get that surge of rebound hunger. The result is you are less hungry.

Your famine response stays turned completely off! But if you keep drinking only water over a year or two you will effortlessly lose 10 to 50 pounds of fat that will never return!

All this means that if you drink regular or diet soft drinks now, by far the most effective and in many ways easiest hunger free fat loss method you can do FIRST, is to throw out any you have in your house if you can, stop buying more, and never drink them again.

If you live where other people still drink soft drinks, it’s harder to be sure. But explain you are working to lose fat permanently and never drinking soft drinks is the best hunger free fat loss strategy, so you no longer are willing to make yourself fat by drinking them.

b) The second method to be sure to include if you aren’t already doing it is to begin regular exercise including some kind of strength training and interval cardio.

Do these at home if you can. And do at least some of them first thing in the morning.

Why? Even though many people won’t do enough exercise at first -- and likely should not -- to lose much fat at first, that’s a good question.

It has two answers.

WHY do you want to lose fat?

Do you want to feel better about yourself? Do you want to feel better generally and less depressed? Do you want to feel and be more in control of your life? Do you want to look better? If you have a sex life, do you want it to improve? Do you want to be less stressed?

In your fat loss plan, wouldn’t it help if all or almost all of the weight you lost was fat?

In your fat loss plan, wouldn’t it help if some of your net calorie cutting required NO cuts in how much you eat?

First:

Exercise begins to deliver every one of the first set of things within just days or weeks of beginning to do it regularly!

You may have only lost a pound or two or five but not that much. BUT, you’ll already begin to HAVE many of the things you are losing fat to get! THAT does make you a success right away.

Better, you do begin to be more in control of your life and able to make the other upgrades you need to lose fat

Second:

Best of all, you get the next two things. AND that’s huge. Those two things are key strategies to keeping off the fat you lose permanently.

And starting is doable.

If you have to, start your walking program with five 3 second walks and do that three times a week. Just always do those 3 walks and build up to more over time. If you can start with four ten minute walks and it will easily fit in your current schedule do that.

If you have to, once you can walk for a few minutes, speed up until it’s a bit of an effort for 30 seconds several times during the walk. Sure, if you are young enough and healthy enough to do five sets of 30 seconds of fast jump rope too for interval cardio that’s better. But start with something easy, safe, and doable and build up to it if you are too heavy or have existing heart disease or are a good bit older and haven’t exercised or done it for 20 years!

If you have to, start your strength training by getting up out of your chair two or three times or doing part of just one pushup from your knees or use 5 pound dumbbells.

The key is it has to be easily doable. You have to begin doing it regularly and keep it up. It is close to essential that you keep a log so you can see your progress or see early if you miss too often. And it’s essential that you gradually keep improving.

c) EAT MORE! That won’t make you hungrier either!

Eat more nonstarchy vegetables. And, if you aren’t allergic eat more beans, lentils, and black eyed peas.

If you’ve not been doing this, just add one of these things a week but eat it four days a week to every day for at a week or two.

Build up to a serving or two of beans, lentils, or black eyed peas most days; and five to seven servings a day of nonstarchy vegetables.

The beans, lentils, and black eyed peas will turn off your hunger longer because they have so much more protein and fiber.

But the raw cruciferous and other nonstarchy vegetables both raw and cooked are a key way to be healthy and stay that way. And they turn off hunger far better than no food at all despite having almost that few calories!

d). Are there any foods that like soft drinks tend to make you hungrier that you can make fast progress by just no longer eating?

You bet there are!

There’s a big list! Some of the things you’d do best to just never eat again. Some, you might like a lot and are not that bad if you eat them seldom enough.

Chips, French fries, and other salty snack foods made mostly from refined grains and bad for you fats and oils besides the salt are a good choice to join soft drinks on the virtually never eat again list. They are proven fatteners for people who eat them every week of every year. Save your calories for real food.

Nuts if you aren’t allergic are so filling they’ve been found to not add net calories when you eat them and the raw and unsalted ones make great health-OK snacks. Some raw nonstarchy vegetables make great snacks. So do some low glycemic fruits. If you are really hungry and it will be a couple of hours or more, before your next meal try some raw walnut halves, some raw broccoli or cauliflower florets, and an organic apple.

There are also some ingredients that are so fattening or bad for your health, it makes sense to never eat anything they are in ever again if you can possibly manage it.

If it has refined grains or hydrogenated oils or oils high in omega 6 like corn and soy or high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners or colors, take a pass totally virtually every time.

That stuff is dreadfully bad for you and proven to fatten you. And, the oils are high in calories and the other things tend to be like regular soft drinks and have little or no fiber and cause rebound hunger.

Most bread and rolls and buns and virtually all commercially baked goods and desserts simply disappears off your menu if you follow that rule.

The sooner you do it and the more completely you stick to it, the more fat you will lose and the less will ever return.

Desserts are a special case because they can be so enjoyable. But when you do eat them, try extra hard to have them be home made, make sure they contain only real sugar and refined grains at worst and NO high fructose corn syrup or harmful fats and oils. AND have them be a few times a year or a month and never several times every single day!

e) In addition, to eating more beans, lentils, and black eyed peas, eat more health OK protein foods.

Wild caught fish, unpolluted seafood, low fat and nonfat dairy, naturally fed, 100% grass beef or lamb sometimes and naturally or pasture fed poultry and eggs are the best choices. Very lean and fat trimmed grain fed meat and poultry is not as good; but is far healthier for you and with fewer calories than the fattier versions.

However,

Avoid all preserved meats such as salami, pastrami, lunch meats, bacon, sausage AND hot dogs AND regular hamburger and the like at least 99% of the time. They all tend to be from grain fed animals and fattiest plus the preservatives in them apparently help cause heart disease quite strongly according to recent research.

Avoid all farmed fish. It turns out to be usually fed grains and is too polluted to be safe to eat.

A solid intake of protein helps you be less hungry AND it slashes getting the famine response or turns it way down – plus it helps ensure you lose fat instead of muscle when you lose pounds on the scale.

Each and every one of those is a huge asset to permanent fat loss.

f) You’ll notice that most of the things to remove tend to make you sick or cause disease and most to all of the things the to eat or drink more of support or cause good health.

That’s another key to permanent fat loss.

Every calorie of bad stuff you stop taking in is less excess fat you’ll have. And every time you chose to support your health, you’ll tend to produce permanent fat loss.

Then too, when you are not that motivated by the fat loss temporarily a focus on health will also keep you on track so your fat loss will be permanent and add to your motivation also.

So, for a fast start, simply make plans for several of these methods and begin them with easy actions you start this week or schedule today.

Choose five or six or seven small things you know you CAN do and begin them all.

You can lose almost as much as the poor fools that cut too much out of what they eat in the first few weeks if you do that many and do them well.

But unlike them, you won’t be extra hungry all the time, you can keep doing the things you began and do them better and better, and your fat loss will continue and be permanent!

More information on fast weight loss....

Today's Post: Friday, 6-18-2010

Six weeks ago, we did a post on fast weight loss that included some ideas on how and why to get the fastest loss of excess fat that also enables the people who do it to keep going and to keep it all off.

That was "Study says fast fat loss helpful--False, BUT it is worth looking at" that was posted on Friday, 5-7-2010.

I made two points in that post. The people in the study who lost the most weight initially were likely those who had the most fat weight to lose and therefore the most easily correctable bad habits. And, the people who lost more likely used more methods to lose their fat.

In reviewing the information in the study because of an email today about it, I also realized that the people they listed as losing weight “fast” lost less than 2 pounds a week.

I missed the point that “fast” weight loss by many people’s definition is a good bit more weight per week than that.

So, what they really found was that people who lost a moderate amount of weight each week wound up losing more than people who lost less than that each week.

Today, I decided to give you three strategies for creating the fastest weight and fat loss that you will actually keep off.

1. Aim for ALL your goal but NOT below your goal and also aim to keep all the fat off once you get there!

Eat as if you were now the weight that you would prefer to weigh. But do NOT eat less than that in total calories.

Also gradually increase the amount of total and vigorous exercise you do each week to the best of your ability; and keep doing that exercise every week.

(If you weigh 20 % more than you should, you are taking in as much as 20% more calories than you should.)

But do NOT eat less than that or think of the way you begin to eat as a “temporary” plan. Think of it as switching permanently to a health supporting eating style you learn to keep doing and a relentless attack on your excess fat.

Over 90% of the people who eat less than that fail to continue and to keep the weight off that they lose. They get too hungry too often and they trigger their body’s famine response.

It can be initially fun to lose more by eating less than your body would need if you weighed what you have targeted to weigh. You may well lose more than the 6 pounds or so a month that the “fast” people in the study did – at first.

But the minute you go too far and trigger your body’s famine response, the game is lost. You’ll get “too tired” to exercise. Your weight loss will stop like you ran into a large concrete post. And, you’ll get so hungry for fattening foods, you’ll eat them. Then you’ll gain it all back. Yikes !!

Weight Watchers has people set such goals at intakes below what the people would eat at their target weight; but even though many do lose weight at first, many more people drop out after several months and gain the weight back than I believe is necessary for the reasons I just stated.

2. The second strategy for fast fat loss is much more forceful. My name for it is:

“Hit your fat with TWELVE hammers!”

There are a great many ways to lose fat that do NOT make you excessively hungry or trigger your body’s famine response.

Two models for this are:

Using a large magnifying glass to focus some gentle seeming sun’s rays on a single point. The sun may feel just slightly warm or even not warm without the magnifying glass; but when you focus hundreds of these rays on a single point, you literally can light it on fire or roast it.

The “Shiva” method of using multiple X-rays focused on a cancer at single point to zap it to death without doing nearly as much harm to the parts of you that only get hit with one of the rays.

By using many methods at once to lose your fat—and starting as many as possible as soon as possible, you gain four ways.

a) You can afford to ONLY use methods that avoid making you excessively hungry. (That means you get to tell your famine response to leave you to your work and STAY turned off!)

b) You can afford to use ONLY methods that you can keep doing or learn to keep doing. (That way you keep going until all your excess fat is gone AND you can make it STAY gone.) In fact, the key is to find many ways to lose fat that AVOID making you a lot more hungry. There are a surprising number of those; and they are EFFECTIVE in losing fat.

c) If you use a method that proves ineffective or you are forced to not use a method for a time—or just mess it up yourself, the other methods will continue your fat loss anyway.

d) There are some methods you want to use to the max in doing this. But, by using this many methods, many of them can be quite small and easy to do. That makes them less intimidating to begin and MUCH easier to keep doing.

3) Smash ALL the chains to those things that now force you to be fat. Escape them by completely removing them all.

The people who try to drag them or just remove a few will lose less fat and will be more likely to gain it back. And, they will lose fat more slowly.

Every food or drink that makes you fat or harms your health or makes you hungrier but delivers no nutrition for it, is your enemy.

It can be hard for some people to break the habit of eating them or drinking them. But once you do break the habit, it can be much easier to be free of them.

We have been posting about many of these for a long time.

a) Regular soft drinks deliver calories and fail initially to turn down your hunger at all and then hit you with rebound hunger later that day!

Drinking none from now on will melt off all your fat they have been feeding -- and you’ll be LESS hungry!

b) Diet soft drinks have zero calories but act like a targeted and very strong appetite drug for sugary foods soon after your drink them!

Drinking none from now on will melt off the fat their appetite boosting effects have caused you gain – and you’ll be LESS hungry.

c) Foods made with refined grains are like a combination soft drink. They do turn down your hunger at first; but then they spike your blood sugar and then make you more hungry later when your body slams it back down.

Even worse, the blood sugar spike causes your body to pump out extra insulin which tends to cause any available calories to deposit as fat.

More natural and lower glycemic foods have more fiber and turn off your hunger without this extra hunger rebound effect later and without the extra insulin adding to your fat deposits. Health supporting protein foods, oils, nonstarchy vegetables and most whole fresh fruits -- all do this. (Whole grains are not much better than refined grains so go very easy on those; but they do harm your health far less. If you must eat a grain food, eat ONLY 100 % whole grain ones.)

You will have to learn what real and health supporting foods to eat instead. But if you give up virtually all foods made with refined grains, you will become less fat. And, you will do so with virtually NO increase in hunger.

There are many more foods and drinks on this list to escape. But those are three of the worst that you can get rid of. Break the chains of habit that have you ingesting them all and you’ll be much less fat and NOT more hungry.

Faster Fat Loss results....

Today's post: Thursday, 2-12-2009

In recent posts, we’ve covered that progressive strength training and interval cardio burn calories for up to several hours after you do them. We’ve also covered that doing both, some of each every week, gets you the best health protection and the most improvement in key health markers.

Just, last time, on Tuesday, we posted that fat loss works best with lots of exercise each week. One way to achieve that is to do both progressive strength training and interval cardio each week. So, if you do both, progressive strength training and interval cardio, you tend to do more exercise total each week. In addition, you have a more varied exercise program with less chance of injury or overtraining by doing that rather than doing twice as much as of either one alone. That makes doing both more sustainable. That way you keep exercising long enough to get good fat loss results; and you’ll be able to keep off the fat!

So, for those reasons, it’s clear that doing both progressive strength training and interval cardio each week is ideal for good fat loss results.

Plus, if you put that much into your exercise program, you don’t want to sabotage it by eating junk. So you are a bit more likely to make an effort to eat right also. Clearly, if you do both progressive strength training and interval cardio AND eat better, you’ll get faster fat loss results.

Now doing both progressive strength training and interval cardio has been shown to actually help people eat less calories in a study. It’s even possible it may make your appetite easier to control too.

I just found this in a recent Early To Rise issue.:

Here’s the article.:

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”

“An Exercise Combo for Faster Results

By Kelley Herring

Want to see faster weight-loss and fitness results? Do a combo!

A recent study published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine found that men who combined aerobic exercise with weight training for 16 weeks ate significantly fewer calories compared to men who did aerobics or weight training alone or who did no exercise at all.

And of course, eating fewer calories and burning more fat makes for a leaner, fitter you.

The researchers believe that the combo of cardio and strength exercises works by improving blood levels of fats, glucose, amino acids, and satiety hormones.

Get on the fast track to health by coupling this exercise combo with a low-glycemic, clean protein diet packed with antioxidant-rich fruits and veggies to fuel your fat-burning machine.”

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So, getting both progressive strength training and interval cardio each week may also cause you to eat less, or fewer, calories too.

So, faster fat loss is almost guaranteed.

In addition, by doing both, you’ll be strong AND fit – not just one or the other.

Here’s a short summary of eating right for fastest and most permanent fat loss also.:

1. The first eating key seems to be a high moderate intake of health OK protein foods such as nuts, beans, lentils, wild caught fish and seafood from unpolluted water, lean poultry, beef fed only grass, and some nonfat and very low fat dairy seems to be the best. Adding more protein with whey protein supplements can also help. (Jarrow makes one with no Stevia. Now that, in addition to tasting like artificial marshmallows, Stevia has been found to have health issues, that’s important.) These protein foods are quite effective in turning off hunger and MUCH more effective than high glycemic carbs. So eating them not only helps you stay healthy and build muscle from your exercise, they keep you from getting too hungry and help you to continue to eat right.

2. The second eating key is to get a moderate amount of extra virgin olive oil, avocados, or nuts each day and a moderate of wild caught fish high in omega 3 oil each week and NOT eat any vegetable oils, including canola, that are high in omega 6 oils. That is best for your health. But of most importance, including the health OK fats, also has been found to make eating right sustainable. People who restrict all fats and oils, including these health OK ones, are not as healthy as people who try to do without them. But of most importance, the people who eat a bit less AND include health OK fats and oils, are dramatically more likely to continue eating right. So they are more likely to do it long enough to lose fat and to keep it off.

3. The third key is to eat an abundance and variety of non-starchy vegetables. They fill you up and help keep you from feeling too hungry to keep eating right. So again, they help you keep doing it long enough to get good results and to keep doing it. As a result you keep losing fat long enough to get good results and keep it off. Some fresh fruit each day provides good health results and fiber, but you need to be moderate in your intake. It’s also essential to NOT eat refined grain foods, excessive sugar, or any high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. Those things tend to cause your body to store fat and make you MORE hungry. So avoid them for fastest and best results.

30 SECONDS of vigorous exercise lowers blood sugar....

Today's post: Monday, 2-9-2009

If your blood sugar is too high, you may have heard that exercise will help lower it. You may even have heard that progressive strength training and interval cardio do the best job.

But if you haven’t been exercising and do NOT have an extra half an hour a day or the budget to go to a gym or buy home exercise equipment, you may have done nothing about it.

The same is true for the situation if you are fatter and heavier than you should be and don’t exercise. Even if you’ve not tested it, your blood sugar is likely to be too high. In addition, if you can lower it slightly if your blood sugar is even a bit high, you’ll tend to lose some fat.

What if you could exercise for only ONE minute a day at home on some days AND in only 2 weeks, you could lower your blood sugar level significantly?

You can do just that!

The report of some new research has been out for over a week. We even posted: “Minutes a WEEK of exercise can help....Thursday, 1-29-2009” a week before last Thursday based on our initial reading about it.

But I missed something. I’d read that the study had found that just minutes a WEEK of vigorous exercise had an astoundingly large beneficial effect on the health of the people in the study who did it. But what I missed was that in only 2 weeks, it lowered their blood sugar levels significantly.

So, when I saw the article in today’s Early to Rise email, I knew it was important enough to post immediately.

Here’s the article. As usual, my added comments follow it.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com .”


“Improve Your Metabolism in Just 2 Weeks!

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

It's hardly news that exercise is good for you. It can help keep weight off, build a bigger brain, improve mood, and lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. Many people are put off by the idea of exercise because of time constraints. But research continues to demonstrate that you don't have to spend an hour in the gym or on the track to get the significant health benefits.

Case in point: A new study out of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland found that high-intensity exercise for brief periods of time may help reduce the risk of diabetes.

In the study, published in the journal BMC Endocrine Disorders, researchers had young healthy male volunteers use exercise bikes to perform rigorous 30-second sprints. Over the course of two weeks, the subjects performed 30 of these sprints (about two or three a day) for a grand total of 15 minutes of exercise.

You read that right - 15 minutes. Over the course of two weeks.

And this low-volume, high-intensity training substantially improved both insulin action and blood sugar control.

"Doing a few intense muscle exercises, each lasting only about 30 seconds each, dramatically improves your metabolism in just two weeks," said James Timmons, a professor at the University and one of the researchers.

I've been an advocate of short, high-intensity training for years. Now, in addition to the many studies showing that this kind of exercise improves cardiovascular fitness and is an effective way to burn fat, the Heriot-Watt study shows that it may be an effective weapon in the fight against diabetes.

This finding is important, because it helps make the case that there's a lot you can do for your health in very little time. If, that is, you train smart. While walking 30 minutes a day is terrific, and weight training and spin classes and all the other ways to exercise still have their place, it's nice to know that you can still get a lot accomplished even if you have only a few minutes a day to work out.

[Ed. Note: If 15 minutes over the course of two weeks can help improve your health, there's no excuse to avoid exercise. For more advice about staying fit and healthy, check out health expert Jonny Bowden's site, JonnyBowden.com ....]"

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Here are some other points and ideas on how to use this.

1. The people studied were relatively young and in good health. My guess is that older people or people who are in less robust health AND who have NOT been getting any exercise at all might need to build up to this kind of intensity rather than just doing it right off the bat.

But the evidence is that your body can get used to this kind of exercise if you build up to it over a period of time. And, if you do that and do such a short, 30 to 60 second session, of exercise even after you’ve built up to it, it is even safer.

2. To illustrate that, here are three at home exercises from our post on 1-29.:

In this case, they did an abbreviated interval cardio exercise by having the people do a 30 second session on an exercise bike while pedaling as fast as they could.

a) But one set a day in about a minute of as many fast pushups as you can do until you cannot do another will likely also work.

b) Or doing half squats as fast you can for one minute each time

c) or doing one set of as many crunches as you can in one minute would also likely work.

So, if all you can do now is 3 pushups where you do them where you only have your knees bent and touch, so called women’s push-ups, instead of regular push ups where you support yourself on your toes and keep your legs straight, do that the first time; then do them a bit faster the second time; and then do 4 the time after that; & keep improving. When you keep doing this even 3 days a week with a day off in between each time, you will gradually build up to being able to do 30 or 40 really fast. (Note that if you do get strong enough to do 40 really fast from the knee pushups, you’ll likely be strong enough to do at least 5 regular pushups and can then build up to 30 or 40 of those really fast for even better results.)

For best results do half squats (easier on your knees and easier to do fast than full squats) or crunches on the other days of the week. (Or you could do jumping jacks if you like them instead.) Then gradually build up to where you can do something like 98 in less than a minute.

It may take you a couple of months to build up to doing the kind of really vigorous and fast exercise that gets these really good results. But you’ll find you CAN do it. If you do it, you’ll get really good results too just like the people in this study. The evidence is that you can do it safely by gradually building up to it in this way.

BUT the truly HUGE news is that you can get significant results in just ONE minute a day. And, you can do it at home. No extra money or gym needed—or travel time to a gym either.

If you can do more once you get used to exercising or you already have a walking program or do less intense strength training at a gym twice a week, that’s great as it would be if you added it later.

But by adding just ONE exercise for ONE minute or even a bit less at least 4 days a week, you can get extraordinary results.

Think about it. You can do that much even if you don’t have time for more.