Make the best health and fatloss method doable....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-27-2014

Successfully being healthy and staying that way for decades of healthy years and achieving fat loss that is truly permanent is simple but NOT always easy.

We’ve posted often that exercise has massive health benefits.  We’ve posted often that some kinds of exercise force fat loss.  And, we’ve posted that the exercises that force fatloss tend to produce the best health effects.  AND, that set of exercises is time efficient enough most people can do them in the time they have.  Every bit of that is true and well researched.

But as enormously powerful as exercise is, it is still the number two recommendation for living many healthy years and for achieving permanent fat loss!

The number one way to have many healthy years and to achieve permanent fat loss is to stop eating and drinking things that harm you and eat LOTS of vegetables each day.

There are many ways to eat or “diets” that get great results for many people who follow them.  Those include the DASH II diet and the Mediterranean diet and the best diet that combines the best of those two and adds our new information on harmful and beneficial foods.

But both the DASH II diet and the Mediterranean diet, and the Ornish diet, the Paleo diet and all the other health oriented diets work best to produce good health if you remove or cut way back on all grains AND if you eat LOTS of vegetables each day.

(In that kind of daily volume it’s essential to eat only organic produce by the way.)

Such high vegetable intake diets have been tested to force fat loss and help you lose belly fat the best.  And, the health benefits of eating that way are comparable to that good or even better. 

It’s actually common in people who have fat to lose, to drop 25 pounds of fat or more after beginning to eat this way and do so without making ANY extra effort to eat less or exercise more.

One woman doctor had MS to the point she was unable to leave home or keep working.  She ate almost only lots of vegetables and her MS vanished for all practical purposes. Other people with MS who have followed her eating style have had similar results.  We posted about that woman last time since her style of diet with only organic vegetables might also help reverse Parkinson’s disease.

Many people who begin eating a LOT of vegetables have reflux disease and high blood pressure disappear or get radically better.  So have people with type 2 diabetes.

Such high vegetable intake diets have helped people slash their risks of heart disease and stroke.  And, their blood tests reflect this too.

Onions and garlic and kale and cabbage and cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts and carrots and pumpkin and many more kinds of cruciferous vegetables and vegetables high in carotenes all help prevent cancer too!

As you can see, a lot of the drugs people take often become unnecessary when people switch to eating such high vegetable intake diets.

They also become a LOT more likely to have decades more of healthy life.

But for many people, eating a lot of vegetables is close to undoable in practice!

THIS post is about the new solution to that problem.

Some of the best for health vegetables are a bit on the bitter side. 

As busy as most people are, it can be challenging to eat vegetables that take a LOT of chewing and do so at every meal. 

And, although there are many ethnic recipes for almost every kind of vegetable known that make it taste good, the work and cleanup needed make this logistically impossible for many busy people to do several times every single day.

Early on it was discovered that using blenders and juicers could make vegetables taste good and quite easy to eat.

You can add a bit of ginger or cinnamon or carrots or a piece of fruit to a harsher tasting vegetable and have the juice be quite drinkable.

I tasted the drink a man I met had for lunch each day with kiwifruit and ginger and kale for example and found it quite palatable although I’d have used a bit less ginger than he did.

But this solution, though it makes it possible to actually enjoy eating vegetables you might not have otherwise been able to eat at all, still has 3 problems:

Two of them are that you don’t get most of the fiber and any other nutrients in the fiber AND you then have to dispose of the fiber for an extra clean up step.

(If you use a blender and just have it blend the whole thing to avoid missing the fiber or having that cleanup, for some things the fiber makes the juice too thick or gritty to want to drink it often.)

The third one is that the cleanup of juicers takes forever.  You have to take the parts apart and clean them being careful not to lose or break any.  Then you have to rinse and dry them and re-assemble them.

For many years the Vitamix has solved those problems.

Its power and high speed make even navel organges or raw celery blend to a smooth and drinkable drink.

And, the cleanup is close to instant.  You don’t take anything apart.  All you do is add dish soap and water; run the Vitamix a bit; pour that out and then repeat the process with rinse water; and then set the top aside to dry.

The Vitamix did have two drawbacks. 

Most blenders and juicers are loud enough you likely should have ear protection like the crew who land jetliners have to protect your hearing.  And, the Vitamix though faster to do the juicing was even louder.

Secondly, like many blenders and juicers, the top was too tall and easy to tip over to make storing a drink in the refrigerator in the top container very doable.

But what if they engineered out 95% of the noise and made the top a bit wider and shorter so it fit in most refrigerator shelves and was very tip resistant?

Vitamix has done just that!

The best retailer right now to buy one of these new quiet Vitamix super blenders  is Williams Sonoma.  They have stores in most upscale shopping centers and sell online.

This new Vitamix, I’m told by the company, has two model numbers.

The one I saw demonstrated at Whole Foods recently with just one speed costs a bit less and is the model 300.  There is also one with five different programs you can run to do different kinds of blending jobs that is called the 750 and which costs a bit more.

I haven’t got ours yet.  But we will.

In my case, I have three problems I think it will help me solve.

a) There is a good bit of evidence that if I drink two Vitamix drinks a day I’ll lose at least two inches off my waist and lose as much as ten pounds of fat.  Even better, I’ll be less hungry than I am now while this happens instead of hungrier! 

I really want that result. So I look forward to trying the new Vitamix!

b)  A man had blood pressure of 158 over 82 had heard that celery could lower his blood pressure.  (You can be relatively safe with that reading if you eat right and exercise even without taking drugs.  But it’s high enough to want to lower it too and uncomfortably close to the higher readings that make taking the blood pressure drugs mandatory for protection of your health.)

He ate 4 stalks of celery a day for several weeks.  Did it work?  Wow did it ever work!  After doing this, his blood pressure was 118 over 68!

I HATE celery.  The taste isn’t too bad but it’s like eating canvas twine.  Yechh!

But with a Vitamix, having the juice of two stalks of celery before breakfast and right after I get up and another two stalks of celery right after I get home from work would be quite doable.

I’d be hugely pleased to have my blood pressure drop half that much!

So I want a Vitamix for that reason too!

c)  In part because of my big belly and love of food and my schedule that has me eating only two hours before bedtime, I have acid reflux which tends to be pretty bad at night.

The Prilosec I take keeps it from making me feel like I just drank an industrial strength acid drink or harming my esophagus enough to make cancer likely.

But taking the Prilosec proton pump inhibitor drug also turns out to be at least half the reason I have high blood pressure and it also helps ensure my reflux problem continues!

However, drinking fresh cabbage juice has enough healing properties that if I lose enough belly fat to cut my reflux way back, I may be able to safely stop the Prilosec and then have the rest of the reflux go way.

And, if I manage that, my blood pressure will go down and my already good heart protection will get even better.

I really want those results.

So I want a Vitamix for that reason too!

What about you?

Would you like those kinds of health results now and not develop the several kinds of diseases that this kind of Vitamix use will prevent?   

Two related Fat loss tips that worked....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-2-2013

(Short post:  Important new announcement and update follows it! )

I recently read the new book, Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha: A Real World Guide to an Unreal Life: Build More Muscle. Burn More Fat. Have More Sex by John Romaniello & Adam Bornstein recently.

Clearly it’s designed for young men or men who want their youth back.  And, it’s clear in reading it, it IS mostly for young men who want those results.

More than that, their plan is so complex and the recommended foods so expensive to buy, that it is for such men with more time than most and more far more money too!

So, why did I read it?!

The author’s DO get results in helping their in person clients lose belly fat.  Their clients DO get smaller waists with far less visible fat by using their advice.

So, their advice works!  That means that some parts of their advice will also work for older men and women of any age!

And, as I’ve learned in my own case, to lose BELLY fat and inches off your waist, you have to lose extra fat beyond what it takes to lose the easier to lose fat from changing totally away from eating really bad foods, drinking soft drinks, and getting NO exercise at all.  

And, besides losing even more fat, you have to make that extra fat loss and belly fat loss  happen in part by gaining more muscle.

Their basic formula is classic. 

Eat far more protein; eat nonstarchy vegetables; and limit starchy foods to small servings only on occasion. 

AND, do LOTS of challenging strength training for almost every part of your body really fast without let up but only 3 days a week with rest days in between. 

(They don’t SAY to stop all soft drinks and packaged snacks, dinners, and desserts and sugary treats and baked goods and hydrogenated and junk omega 6 oils.  But they sure don’t include them or their calories in their list of what to eat and drink either!)

Then they add three interesting and different ways to remove calories:

1.  Get a half hour more sleep than most people do or than you were before unless you already got that much sleep. 

Your body regulates and optimizes your appetite hormones and growth hormones and testosterone release far better when not short on sleep!

When you have that little bit longer fast period every day, your body burns fat better and adds it less readily.

2.  Have one day a week or once every two weeks where you fast on a non-workout day. And, keep your total calories each day you do eat low enough to only feed the body you want to have with none left over for extra fat.

3.  Create a plan that maximizes how long you fast daily from when you have dinner and your last food of the day to when you eat breakfast. Same reason:  When you have that little bit longer fast period every day, your body burns fat better and adds it less readily.

The result of all of the above -- OR a similar plan that adds muscle effectively in simpler, less time-consuming and expensive ways -- is that you lose belly fat and add muscle.  Then you are a LOT less fat and your health protection goes up a lot too because belly fat inside your belly, visceral fat, is so harmful to your health.  And you have far less of belly and visceral fat!

I already use some partial fasts each week, notably Tuesdays during the work day and a to a lesser degree on Thursdays and every other Wednesday.

And, I already to effective strength training that’s getting results one day a week for upper body and one for legs.

So, since their style is different, I just began using it on my easier second upper body exercise day.  So far that’s working out decently.

But the BIG thing I did was to preemptively eat the part of my late evening snacks that I found helped me LOSE weight* right after dinner INSTEAD OF late at night to increase my fasting duration each day.    (*one spoonful of guacamole, one spoonful of nonfat cottage cheese, and a small serving of raw broccoli florets which have health OK fats, health OK protein, and health promoting nonstarchy vegetable and more fiber.  This tends to prevent night time hunger and snacking or eating MORE late night food which is why it helped me lose fat and weight.)

The second BIG thing I did was to be SURE to do chores early enough in the evening that I could consistently go to bed a half an hour earlier.

This DID prevent late evening hunger because the two worked together.  By the time I would have been hungry before, NOW I was already asleep!

The results astonished me!

In two weeks, I lost 7 pounds!

And, for the most part, I can keep doing this most days of every week.

Plus, my muscle gain still has more coming as I keep doing the effective strength training!

The Indiegogo.com crowd funding for our fat loss support site described below, went live last Friday, 4-19 and is live now at: 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/building-the-worlds-most-effective-fat-loss-support-site-using-proven-methods/x/2390951

If you want permanent fat loss and are willing to make an effort to learn and begin the methods that are proven to work,

please join our beta and charter members and we’ll send you the overview of our 10 main methods soon.  You’ll also get a chance to help us start with a fat loss support site that includes what you think would help you most!

Important NEW announcement:

We plan a major upgrade our crowd funding site on Monday,5-6.

That will be visible by Tuesday morning, 5-7 and may be by late in the day on Monday, 5-6.

Fat loss breakthrough – Lose inches from your waist....

Today's Post: Thursday, 1-14-2010

You may have seen one of the many stories covering the recent information documenting that fat on your butt, hips, and legs is not only less harmful but possibly beneficial to your health while fat on your waist and belly is a threat to your health.

The articles point out that this is known to be a fact; but we don’t yet know how to use this knowledge to help people lose fat and stay healthy.

But we do!

This is a bit of a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

We know that different actions produce more belly fat or less than produce more fat on your butt, hips, and legs.

That means we can make sure to do the actions that produce less belly fat and stop those that produce more.

And, we can do the actions that cause us to gain the benefits of the fat on our butt, hips, and legs. That way we can have the health benefits of such fat without needing too much of it; lose more belly fat than fat on our butt, hips, and legs; and best of all take actions that both prevent health harm and help lose more belly fat.

I. What produces excess visceral and belly fat?

a) Ingesting too much sugar; ingesting artificial sweeteners; (& therefore drinking any soft drinks other than club soda); eating refined grains or the foods made from them; eating starchy vegetables such as potatoes without the skin; eating too much of even whole grain foods; and eating too much high glycemic fruit such as pineapple and mango; and drinking more than just a bit of fruit juice all, each one of them, let alone doing more than one, add belly fat.

If you want to have less belly fat, fewer inches on your waist, and far better health and lower doctor and drug bills, eat none of these foods or eat dramatically less of them by cutting out half of them and then doing it again and perhaps even cut them in half a third time -- while totally stopping any that you can right now.

b) You can add drinking too many alcoholic drinks, particularly beer, to that list.

For men more than 2 drinks a day and 14 a week begins to harm your health more than the benefits you get. And, to keep fat off your belly while keeping the health benefits of some drinking, such as higher HDL and heart protection, drink less than 2 drinks most days and average less than 11 a week.

Since most women are smaller and metabolize alcohol about half that well, to stay healthy, rarely drink more than one drink in a day and average 7 a week or less. And, to keep fat off your belly while keeping the health benefits of some drinking, such as higher HDL and heart protection, drink enough less to average less than 5 & a half drinks a week.

c) A sedentary lifestyle with no exercise at all produces excess visceral and belly fat even in people of normal weight as measured by their BMI!

Even a few minutes of walking a few times a week helps reverse this. Half an hour of brisk walking a day for 6 or 7 days a week is better.

d) Getting no vigorous or muscle building or firming exercise also produces excess visceral and belly fat even in people of normal weight as measured by their BMI!

Even 8 minutes of vigorous interval cardio 3 times a week and 20 minutes of strength training twice a week with at least a day in between can help reverse this. As long as you build up to it gradually and don’t overdo to the point you are injured or too tired, more is better for this also if you want to lose excess belly fat.

e) Eating far more servings a day of a variety of nonstarchy vegetables than most people now do and some servings each week of lower glycemic & organic fruit such as berries also helps since it gives you good nutrition with few calories or blood sugar surges. That means you are less fat without being hungry. And the fewer blood sugar surges and the vigorous exercises help you have a lower insulin level. A high insulin level causes your body to deposit MORE visceral and belly fat.

f) Other than omega 3 oils in supplements and fish, get almost all your fats and oils from nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil. In addition to the massive health benefits this gives you directly, these monosaturated oils tend to cause you to have lower insulin levels and less belly fat. Prevention Magazine even has a book out on this called the Flat Belly diet.

Note that people trying to lose fat are more likely to keep doing it until all the excess is gone and then keep it all off IF they follow this last step. Studies have actually documented this. Just keep your intake moderate of these monosaturated oils, STOP eating the less healthy kinds, and do all the other steps.

Note that each of these doable steps both will help you have less belly fat AND each one has separate health benefits that are directly health supporting or health protecting.

II. How can you get the benefits of fat on your butt, hips, and legs without having too much of it or even having somewhat less?

a) Other than omega 3 oils in supplements and fish, get almost all your fats and oils from nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil.

Note that people trying to lose fat are more likely to keep doing it until all the excess is gone and then keep it all off IF they follow this last step. Studies have actually documented this. Just keep your intake moderate of these monosaturated oils, STOP eating the less healthy kinds, and do all the other steps.

It seems that fat on your butt, hips, and legs stores the fatty acids in such foods. And, it gets better! This fat releases leptin. And, leptin turns down your hunger; prevents insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, and has recently been shown to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

You can stay healthy and get this effect by eating the monosaturated oils and omega 3 oils from supplements and wild caught fish.

Note that people trying to lose fat are more likely to keep doing it until all the excess is gone and then keep it all off IF they follow this last step. Studies have actually documented this. Just keep your intake moderate of these monosaturated oils, STOP eating the less healthy kinds, and do all the other steps

b) STOP eating almost all the other kinds of fats and oils. They each are actively and directly harmful and even can cause you to gain belly fat -- NOT fat on your butt, hips, and legs.

Stopping these fats and oils both protects your health directly AND avoids having too much fat on your butt, hips, and legs without causing less benefits from it.

Excess saturated fat of animal origin causes too high levels of LDL and contributes to excess levels of the small particle LDL that causes heart disease.

Grass fed animals have less fat overall and far less excess saturated fat. So either only eat foods from animals fed only grass OR eat only the leanest versions of meat from grain fed animals. (In cooking, you can add back extra virgin olive oil to compensate if that makes the meat too lean.)

It also helps when eating meat to have it with onions or garlic or some red wine or dried sour cherries or beans as these foods help your body process or remove excess saturated fat.

Also, meat from grain fed animals and oils high in omega 6 oils such as soy, corn, saffola, canola, etc are each too high in omega 6 oils, particularly when you don’t get enough omega 6 oils or eat the foods that cause excess belly fat. So don’t use ANY of those oils except canola when there’s no other alternative. Excess omega 6 consumption, particularly without getting enough omega 3 oils, causes inflammation. And that inflammation helps cause heart disease and heart attacks and may help cause cancer and senility. For the same reason, either only eat foods from animals fed only grass OR eat only the leanest versions of meat from grain fed animals. (In cooking, you can add back extra virgin olive oil to compensate if that makes the meat too lean.)

In addition, pesticides and herbicides, in addition to causing cancer and reproductive harm, may through off your body’s fullness signals that enable you to stop eating when you should. And, since you get more of them in your diet from the fat of grain fed animals fed grains sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, either only eat foods from animals fed only grass OR eat only the leanest versions of meat from grain fed animals. (In cooking, you can add back extra virgin olive oil to compensate if that makes the meat too lean.)

For the same reasons, go very easy on butter or cheese from grain fed animals or only use nonfat or very lowfat dairy such as nonfat or 1% fat milk or nonfat or lowfat yogurt OR get them from animals fed only grass.

And, of most importance in this list, ingest or eat absolutely NO transfats or the hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats!

These fats are heart attack starter. They cause your small particle LDL that directly causes heart disease to go up sharply each and every time you eat them. Should you eat less of them? NO. That’s not enough. They are so harmful, you should eat absolutely none if you possibly can manage it. Never eat them voluntarily.

There is even some evidence eating transfats or the hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats increases your belly fat.

Fat from transfats or the hydrogenated oils that contain trans fats has calories you will BENEFIT from giving up!!

And, by eating foods with omega 3 oils and foods with monosaturated oils such as extra virgin olive oil and nuts, you’ll get enough fat to help you have enough leptin to turn down your appetite and give you the nutrition you need as well.

This is a large set of things to do.

But the more you do them, the less belly fat and internal visceral fat you’ll have; the less excess fat on your butt, hips, and legs you’ll have, and the fat you do have on your butt, hips, and legs will give you the health protection and more controllable appetite you want.

The bottom line is that we DO know how to have less belly fat and most of its bad effects and how to get the benefit of fat on your butt, hips, and legs without having too much of it.

Now you do too.

Important Fat Loss News....

Today's post: Monday, 4-20-2009

Insulin resistance increases your blood levels of insulin. And that tends to cause you to gain fat and belly fat.

Insulin resistance, when it gets worse as it often tends to do, harms your health by elevating your blood sugar enough to cause capillary and immune system damage and can then be very hard to get rid of as it causes type 2 diabetes.

We’ve often posted that regular progressive strength training and regular interval cardio each turn down insulin resistance. And if you do them every week and keep doing them, they can often turn it off.

Consuming lots of junk foods, soft drinks, commercial desserts, candy, and refined grain foods tends to cause insulin resistance or make it far worse.

That is becoming better known fortunately. But many people are just learning this or don’t yet exercise or haven’t stopped eating and drinking the things that cause insulin resistance or cut back on them enough yet.

What if there was an inexpensive supplement that would also improve insulin resistance and a kind of food already known to make fat loss easier ALSO turned down insulin resistance directly and increased fat loss in two ways we didn’t realized it did before?

Given the number of people that could help (and how important that is to help keep good health for people who are just getting into protecting their health) that is front page news.

That news exists and is real as I just discovered over the weekend by reading the Saturday, Early to Rise email.

So, here’s that 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 ."

"Big Health News Flew Under the Radar

By James B. LaValle

I read a study recently that could be some of the most important health news I've seen in a long time, especially for you "apple" shapes out there. Yet there have been no headlines - at least not yet.

The study - published in the Journal of Nutrition - found that taking in plenty of non-starchy vegetables and more magnesium helped increase the production of adiponectin, a hormone found in fat cells. The researchers were careful to look for any other factors that could have affected the results, but found none.

Adiponectin increases the effectiveness of insulin. In other words, it helps your cells absorb glucose. If you have plenty of adiponectin, your insulin production is lower, your blood sugar is better controlled... and that adds up to a lower risk of diabetes and heart disease. But it may also mean you would have a much easier time controlling your weight.

Unfortunately, when we gain weight - especially in the waist or belly - adiponectin production goes down. (This is one reason belly fat is so harmful for your health.) And, indeed, the researchers found that the higher the subject's adiponectin level, the lower the subject's weight. The lower the adiponectin, the higher the weight.

So the big news is that simply by increasing your intake of non-starchy vegetables and supplementing with magnesium, you can increase a hormone that will help you lose that belly fat and decrease your insulin resistance.

Reduce your intake of starchy carbs - especially refined flours and sugars. And eat eight to 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables every day. Non-starchy vegetables are very low in carb grams and calories. They are nutrient-dense foods - loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and other beneficial phytochemicals in a very low-sugar, high-fiber package.

A little extra magnesium helps too. The best food sources are nuts, seeds, and beans. However, I recommend taking in at least an extra 300 mg per day, especially if you show any signs of being low in magnesium (e.g., tense and tight muscles, constipation, or restless leg syndrome). The best forms are magnesium malate or amino acid chelates like magnesium glycinate or magnesium taurate. "

X* X* X* X* X* X*

Other forms of magnesium in supplements that are well absorbed are magnesium citrate and magnesium asporotate. If you don’t take milk of magnesia or other magnesium containing laxatives (since doing that plus taking magnesium supplements can overdose you), taking 200, 400, or 600 grams of magnesium each day plus eating foods high in it tends to prevent constipation and lower or helps prevent high blood pressure also.

In addition, one of the several ways to lose fat without going hungry is to eat a wide variety of nonstarchy or green vegetables each day.

You get great nutrition without significant calories by eating enough vegetables. By eating some health OK protein and fats and some spices and eating enough vegetables, the fiber and nutrition in the vegetables keeps you feeling full and your hunger turned down to manageable levels.

To find out that getting enough magnesium and eating enough vegetables also turns off insulin resistance, lowers excessive insulin, and directly shuts off the fat gaining process by doing so, is incredibly good news.

A healthy snack that helps you lose belly fat too...

Today's post: Tuesday, 12-9-2008

I once read that one study of people who ate nuts found that they lived more than five years longer than people who don’t.

(Clearly those people who are severely allergic to tree nuts were not in that group.)

However, that definitely got my attention because only quitting smoking or doing a first rate exercise program each week get comparable results in increased likely longevity.

And, I’ve known that nuts have natural vitamin E and magnesium that some people need but wouldn’t otherwise get. (Everyone needs these nutrients but not everyone gets them from their food or from supplements. So people who eat nuts tend to be healthier for that reason.)

I also have known that nuts contain sterols and fiber that help to lower LDL cholesterol without side effects.

Further, I’ve known that people who eat nuts as snacks do NOT tend to gain weight despite the high fat content of nuts. It seems the combination of fats, protein, nutrients, and fiber in nuts turns down your appetite well enough that you tend to eat less of other foods to compensate.

I’ve read that eating nuts tends to increase your levels of the desirable HDL cholesterol as well.

Lastly, the Prevention Magazine book the Flat Belly Diet states that people who eat mostly monosaturated oils such as those found in nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil tend to have less belly fat.

Just recently, a study done in Spain was reported which found even more healthful effects from eating nuts, walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts each day in addition to a Mediterranean diet.

The people who did that in this study actually lost belly fat even though they lost no weight; they improved their heart risk factors including getting lower triglycerides I think;
and those that had high blood pressure found they got lower readings.

One commentator pointed out that anyone who not only ate nuts; but who ate nuts instead of candy, or chips, or other packaged snacks or commercially baked dessert foods like cookies likely got a double benefit. Not only did eating the nuts help; but it turned off sources such as high fructose corn syrup, sugar, refined grains, salt, and Transfats that are known to have the reverse effects.

Since this study was done in a population that is less likely to eat such bad for you snacks than people in the United States, it’s my belief that having people here who eat these other kinds of snacks eat unsalted nuts instead would get even more dramatic benefits.

And, it may well be that the other nutrients in the nuts besides the monosaturated oils may have some extra benefits because the group that ate the nuts did even better on the health measures than the group who simply got extra olive oil each week.

In addition to vitamin E, magnesium, other minerals, and sterols – and the plant protein with no cholesterol and the fiber, nuts are high in potassium and the amino acid l-arginine. Both of those nutrients help to lower blood pressure when it’s high. For example, by eating unsalted nuts that are high in potassium, eating the nuts favorably improved the potassium-sodium balance which is known to help reduce high blood pressure.

Pecans also work as well as walnuts and almonds in my experience and are widely available in the United States.

It also helps that walnuts and dry roasted walnuts taste good. Dry roasted almonds taste good. And pecans, even untoasted, taste great.

That means they make a great snack.

A snack that both tastes great AND makes you healthier and likely to have a long healthy life, is a real asset to have.

I have excellent HDL, LDL, & triglyceride readings. And I think that one reason for this is that I eat nuts as part of my weekday lunches each day. And I do NOT eat the bad for you snack foods ever. (I do eat some dark chocolate each week or taste part of one serving of a treat I know I like if they show up at our office but less than five times a year. And that’s it.)

Feel better & lose fat off your waist...

Today's post: Tuesday, 12-2-2008

Yesterday, Monday, 12-1-2008, AP had an online health article saying that a new study found that people who were depressed were more likely to develop abdominal fat internally than people who were not.

1. The article didn’t mention that depressed people are proven to be more likely to NOT exercise or to exercise less than people who are more optimistic and feel better. And, regular exercise has been shown to help reduce abdominal fat both inside the body and outside. So that’s a very important omission.

But it works the other way too. If you make sure you get regular exercise each week no matter how you feel, it’s been shown that you become less depressed. Not only that, interval cardio and progressive strength training seem to work best at producing this effect.

So, one excellent solution to reducing the dangerous inside the body abdominal fat and the outside the body abdominal fat that many people would like to lose -- AND to feel better is to do regular sessions of interval cardio and progressive strength training each week.
This makes you less depressed and directly removes abdominal fat.

Regular exercise also helps to improve your sex life for both men and women other studies have shown.

2. The article quotes the researchers as speculating that depression releases excess cortisol; and since excess cortisol from too much stress has been shown to contribute to increases in belly fat, that may well be correct.

Meditation, Tai Chi, and other kinds of physical stress relief, if done regularly, have been shown to reduce the effect of excess stress or turn it off entirely. So that likely can help with this. And, a separate study was reported recently that said that meditation (& presumably similar stress relief practices) also helps people who recover from depression, stay recovered. So this looks like a good solution if you can do it. Regular exercise also helps relieve stress.

In addition, I got an intriguing report in the email I get from Brain Longevity expert, Dr Singh Khalsa, that eating whey protein either in a whey based protein supplement or in low fat ricotta cheese effectively lowers excess cortisol.

And, since adding servings of whey based protein supplements to your food each day increases your protein intake, this will also help you lose belly fat. Protein helps keep you from being hungry; and whey protein has virtually no carbs and is low in fat.

Most whey protein supplements have stevia, which I find has a disagreeable and over-powering flavor. (To me, it tastes like a badly done, imitation marshmallow flavoring.) In addition, since stevia tastes somewhat sweet but delivers no sugar to your body, it may tend to make you hungry or hungrier as the artificial noncaloric sweeteners do. But there is good news, because the supplement company, Jarrow, does offer a whey protein supplement that has no stevia added. You can buy or order Jarrow’s stevia-free whey protein supplement at virtually any health food store.

3. You can also take action to feel better & reverse depression. (When you stop being depressed, the depression stops producing excess cortisol since it is no longer present.)

Here are some effective methods that do NOT involve the addicting and only slightly effective drugs for depression.

a) This time of year particularly, due to less sunlight, some people often become depressed. This effect is called SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder.

There are three treatments that work.

The most expensive and least effective is Light Therapy where you get full spectrum light bulbs in your kitchen or bathroom or the room where you exercise & where you spend time early in the day and spend up to 45 minutes a day exposed to several very bright full spectrum light bulbs that are on.

It also has been shown to work to take even as little as a 10 or 15 minute walk at mid-day, possibly over your lunch hour. Yes it may look almost dark on very overcast winter days. But the actual light readings on a light meter are substantially higher than the light bulbs in the light therapy can deliver. The other benefit is that the walks burn some calories and add to your weekly exercise. So if it’s safe where you could walk at lunch time, which can vary with the weather in some places, this is a good one to use.

Taking 3,000 iu or at least 2,000 iu extra a day of vitamin D3 in addition to any in your food or multivitamin has also been shown to work. And, it certainly is the most convenient of the three. Plus it costs only $5 or $6 a bottle to buy.

b) Do the Thanks part of Thanksgiving once a day.

It IS doable to write down a list of things that you ARE thankful for and that have gone well each day even if there are a lot of bad things going on too.

Studies have found that people who spend just a few minutes each day doing this once a day feel remarkably better in just a few days or weeks. The only downside is that it’s like exercise, because it works best if you keep doing it every week.

c) An optimistic frame of mind can be learned. And, an optimistic frame of mind turns off the cognitive part of depression.

(Martin Seligman, PhD in his books notably, Learned Optimism, explains how this works and what it consists of.)

Here’s a short summary.

It has two parts.

When things go wrong, optimistic people are extremely realistic and scientific in thinking about what went wrong.

They assume that the bad things had causes that can be identified, they won’t keep happening if the causes are removed or reversed; they assume when the cause disappears and the damage is repaired and, in some cases, preventative measures are set up, that the bad things will stop. And, the are careful to not assume that one bad thing will cause others without actually checking to see if this is the case.

To put it simply, they avoid shooting themselves in the foot if they just stub their toe.

For example if someone is a bit mean to them because that someone had a bad day, optimists tend to expect that to reverse or at least that that person sometimes has a good day instead of deciding that person is a mean person. They also remember when that someone was nice before if they were. So they tend to be hard to lose as friends and give you credit for what you do right and usually forgive you when you are grouchy.

The second part is more akin to noticing the things that go right. Since there are virtually always some things going well, optimistic people tend to notice that many good things are always happening.

In addition, they look for ways they CAN do things or ways things might be possible.

If what they try doesn’t work or almost works, they often will make an extra effort to make things work. This often is effective.

They look for ways to succeed in life and expect to find them. Then they try the things they’ve found. As long as they take prudent risks instead of foolhardy ones in doing this, they are often remarkably effective at making good things happen even when other people cannot.

As a result they tend to see problems as challenges that can be overcome.

The results are almost spectacular. Seligman and others have found that people who are optimistic by this definition, have more friends, enjoy much better health, and even make more money, than the pessimists who have the reverse tendencies in these two areas.

No cost way to measure your health risks....

Today's post: Tuesday, 11-18-2008

1. As our regular readers know, there are a number of blood tests of key health factors that it can pay incredible dividends to get done and either move to safer levels if they are in the danger zone or improve if they are out of the desirable zone.

But they do cost some money and some time to get done.

It’s recently been in the news that there is a health risk measure that is almost as valuable that can be done in a couple of minutes. No doctor visit or lab visit is necessary. And once you own the very inexpensive measuring device, it costs NO money at all to do each time.

It seems that even more than total weight on the scale or the BMI index reading, your waist size and its relationship to your hip size is quite important and a very good measurement of your health risks.

There are two ways to measure this: the number of inches total and the ratio to your hip size.

If you are of close to average height, you waist size in inches alone is reasonably accurate. If you are shorter or taller than average, the waist hip ratio is better.

Because abdominal fat is more metabolically active and indicative of future health problems if it’s in too much supply than fat elsewhere on your body, it’s the important measure.

It’s much safer if, as a man, your waist size is less than 40 inches and less than 35 inches if you are a woman.

Similarly, it’s better if your waist size is smaller than your hip size if you are a man. And, if you are a woman, it’s better if your waist is less than 90 percent of your hip size.

Even better is less than 95 percent of your hip size if you are a man. And, less than 80 percent of your hip size if you are a woman is better.

The desirable level is less than 90 percent of your hip size if you are a man. And it’s less than 70 percent of your hip size if you are a woman.

2. The bad news is that it can be challenging to improve this measure.

However, here are some things that DO work.:

It helps very much to eat right and exercise. Eat a high nutrition low carb diet; and get LOTS of exercise. Then you’ll get the best results.

Most of the strategies that we posted a few days ago which lower your CRP levels and protect your heart also tend to lower your waist size.:

“1. Get regular exercise, ideally some strength training and some interval cardio every week.

2. Eat nonfat and very lowfat dairy foods; eat nuts if you aren’t allergic to them; eat beans and lentils; eat wild caught fish; eat beef fed only grass; & if and when you do eat poultry or other meat from animals fed grains, trim as much fat from it as you can and avoid eating it often.

3. Use only extra virgin olive oil. Only rarely eat small amounts of unheated butter as an occasional food flavoring. And completely stop, to the best of your ability, eating corn, soy, safflower, and canola oil or foods containing them.

4. Take DHA supplements & purified fish oil supplements daily. And, if you can, eat wild caught fish NOT known to be high in mercury at least once or twice every week (NEVER eat farmed fish for other reasons.)* The supplements and fish intake ensures you get enough omega 3 oils as the grain fed meat and poultry now sold has virtually none. *(Farmed fish are higher in omega 6 oils and have several kinds of health damaging pollutants.)

5. Stop eating all refined grain foods; stop eating or drinking any food or drink that has high fructose corn syrup; and eat sugar less often and in smaller amounts. Instead eat some high nutrition fruits such as kiwi fruit or blueberries; eat plentiful amounts of a variety of vegetables; and eat some whole grain foods also if you have little or no excess fat on your body and get plenty of exercise.”

For lowering your waist size or keeping it from getting larger, getting more exercise, the first step here and NOT ingesting the worst high glycemic, carbohydrate foods, the fifth step here do the most for you.

So, if your waist reading is quite bad and you do no regular exercise now, begin to do some strength training, some interval cardio, and look for safe ways to do more walking each week.

If you eat bad carbs, or drink soft drinks, your waist measure will be much higher than you can easily achieve by upgrading your food and drink to more health supporting choices & ONLY those choices.

The third way to lower your waist size is to manage your stress well and fit in some kind of physical stress relief several times a week. (Unrelieved stress tends to increase cortisol levels and high cortisol levels tend to cause fat to deposit around your waist.) Tai Chi is ideal because it both burns as many calories per minute as walking and relieves stress better than most meditators achieve. But watching videos you find funny enough to laugh at; progressive relaxation; and meditation also work. Regular exercise also helps some, particularly walking.

Taking other steps to lose excess fat without losing muscle also helps.

Prevention magazine has published a book saying that eating much or most of your fat intake as monosatured fats such as those found in extra virgin olive oil, nuts, and avocados and limiting other kinds of fats, see steps 2,3, & 4 above, also helps keep down your waist size and abdominal fat.

See The Flat Belly Diet
(Official Site - Lowest Price Online Only $16.52 Plus Free Shipping.)
www.Prevention.com/flatbellydiet

Also, we are now working on an eBook on how to successfully lose excess fat and keep it off. Watch this blog because when that’s ready, there is yet another secret to losing abdominal fat that we will include in that eBook.

Higher intensity interval cardio takes off belly fat....

Today's post: Tuesday, 10-28-2008

Many people want to lose extra belly or abdominal fat the most.

That desire makes excellent sense.

If you have a flat belly with no extra fat, you look better and find it easier to fit into your clothes. You look healthier. In fact, studies have found that for both men and women they appeal more to the opposite sex if in men their waist is 90 % of their hip measurement or less and in women if their waist is 30 % of their hip measurement or less.

In addition, belly or abdominal fat is the fat on your body that tends to predict high blood sugar that may develop into type II diabetes and heart disease. It also produces angiotensin that contributes to or causes high blood pressure.

Exercise CAN help. But it’s been found that some kinds of exercise work MUCH better than others to take off belly fat and keep it off.

The really good news is that the most effective kinds of exercise burn fat faster and take less time to do than the less effective ones.

Here are a couple of articles from Early To Rise from yesterday and today that make this point very well.:

This one was in their enewsletter from yesterday.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“The Low-Intensity Cardio Lie

By Craig Ballantyne

Once in a while, a study comes along that surprises me. For instance, I recently found one showing that cardio works for fat loss - as long as it is high-intensity cardio.

Researchers at the University of Virginia assigned 27 obese women (average age 51) to one of three groups...

1. The control group did no exercise training.

2. The second group did five days per week of low-intensity exercise (LIE). (Gotta love that acronym... truly represents the "slow cardio lie.")

3. The third group did three days per week of high-intensity cardio exercise (HIC) plus two days per week of LIE.

Instead of exercising for a specific length of time in every session - LIE or HIC - the subjects exercised long enough to burn 400 calories. So no group burned more calories than the others, though the third group burned the 400 calories faster in their three HIC workouts each week.

And HIC kicked LIE's butt! The study found that the subjects in the low-intensity exercise group did not lose fat. On the other hand, the subjects in the high-intensity cardio group lost a significant amount of abdominal fat.

So, once again, research has shown that...

Exercising harder results in more fat loss in less time.

Only hard exercise burns belly fat.
Low-intensity cardio won't help you lose fat.
I prefer interval training to cardio for my clients who are on a fat-loss program. But the results of this study have influenced me to make a slight change in my recommendations.

I now occasionally throw in some high-intensity cardio for my clients, usually as a 20- or 30-minute session done at a pace they can barely maintain for that length of time. They don't like it, but it works. (Most of them prefer the interval training.)

If you are interested in trying this, you can add HIC to your program up to three times per week. Just remember to self-monitor your body for any symptoms of overuse injuries - and, as always, TRAIN SAFE.

I'll give the last word to the University of Virginia researchers who stated, "The present data indicate that body composition changes are affected by the intensity of exercise training with HIC more effectively for reducing total abdominal fat and subcutaneous abdominal fat in obese women." “

This one was their health article today.

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Your Metabolism Slows Down and Stays Down, Unless...

By Craig Ballantyne

I have some bad news for you. According to scientists at New York's Presbyterian Medical Center at Columbia University, folks who succeed in losing weight tend to wind up suffering from a lower than expected metabolic rate. This means that if you lose weight, you will burn fewer calories each day than someone of the same weight who was never overweight.

Seems unfair, doesn't it?

The researchers studied three groups: subjects who had lost 10 percent of their bodyweight and kept it off for up to one year, subjects who just recently lost 10 percent of their bodyweight, and a control group.

All of the subjects were studied for 24 hours straight to determine how many calories they burned. Results showed that both weight-loss groups burned fewer calories during the 24 hours than the control group, even though they were matched by weight and gender.

This decrease in calorie burning is just one of the many reasons you will find it easier to regain weight after you lose weight.

So what can you do?

You must do everything you can to boost your metabolism. I highly recommend to all of my clients that they use interval training or high-intensity cardio rather than low-intensity cardio, and that they also engage in high-intensity resistance training three times per week. By performing high-intensity exercise, you will put up the greatest fight against your handicapped metabolism.“

X* X* X* X* X*

Note that you can burn 100 calories doing higher intensity interval cardio in 8 minutes or less. Walking takes 15 to 20 minutes to burn 100 calories. So the higher intensity interval cardio is much faster to do.

As their earlier articles and other sources have found, high intensity cardio done as interval cardio or training that has moderately short periods at a high moderate pace or level of effort which you alternate with shorter periods of much a much faster pace and greater level of effort both gets you into shape faster than steady pace cardio and much more safely than continuous high intensity cardio. The overall pace of the exercise by the end or the miles traveled may be the same for the exercise done with the several intervals of varying intensity as it would be for the continuous version. But the several intervals of varying intensity will get you in shape faster; it is much safer to do; and it burns fat and increases your metabolism MORE. In fact, your overall pace will soon be FASTER for the interval version than it would have been for the steady state version.

By doing this kind of interval cardio several times a week and doing progressive strength training at least twice a week in which you also have periods where you work quite hard, you burn belly fat best and keep your metabolism high the best.

More on calorie restriction and other ways to live longer....

Today's post: Monday, 10-27-2008

Two news stories that appeared today in the online health news had some exciting findings on just this topic.

1. The one that was in several sources was about the effects of a purple tomato that researchers had bioengineered to have anthocyanins that provide the purple color in blackberries, blueberries, bilberries, and other kinds of fruit.

Those researchers tested it on mice bred to develop cancers. The mice who were fed this tomato lived so much longer it would be as if humans fed this kind of purple tomato lived an average of 20 years longer.

They also found that two measures of inflammation and LDL cholesterol were significantly lower in these mice. Those effects tend to prevent cancer and protect against heart and cardiovascular disease

Since in today’s world we encounter so many kinds of chemical pollution our bodies already contain so many we might just as well be genetically bred to develop cancers because of the cumulative possible effects of these chemicals. To me that suggests that getting an abundant supply of anthocyanins from fruit and supplements is quite likely to do as much for us. And there is beginning to be some research that suggests this is so. Eating blueberries has been shown to help prevent or even reverse age related mental decline for example. I personally take bilberry extract and grape seed extract and eat blueberries 3 times a week.

My Tuesday, 10-14-2008 post on 14 ways to live longer that included, “eat purple food” looks to be accurate and the method effective based on this new study.

2. The second story appeared in yesterdays, Sunday, 10-26-2008 HealthDay online news.

In this study, the researchers fed rats tart cherry powder and the results suggest that calorie restriction and the effects of the anthocyanins in tart or sour cherries may overlap the results of calorie restriction. In fact, the study suggests that eating tart or sour cherries (with no sugar added anyway) and/or taking tart cherry extracts such as the tart cherry powder the researchers used may be a significant help to people trying to lose fat and to lose it from their waist or belly or abdominal area.

The rats the researchers fed the tart cherry powder to lost 14 % of their bodyweight mostly by losing fat in their belly or abdominal areas.

Most of us have ancestors who successfully survived famines, many of them more than once. So these fat loss effects are likely much more than people would experience. The amount of tart cherry powder per pound of bodyweight may also have been higher in these rats than people would be likely to consume.

However, it still looks as if sour cherries and any kind of tart or sour cherry extract is likely to give you some of the effects of calorie restriction. And, if you are eating right to lose fat or are using calorie restriction, eating sour cherries &/or taking any kind of tart or sour cherry extract might well improve your results and help you lose fat from your belly or tummy region.

Given the negative effects of excess abdominal fat on your health and appearance, that’s very good news indeed.

New information on Fat Loss....

Today's post: Thursday, 9-25-2008

There are two parts to this post. The second part has the key to fat loss success.

1. Being fat not only makes you look less sexually appealing, it tends to turn off your sex drive.

2. A little known fact is one of the most important reasons people who try to lose fat weight fail to lose it all and keep it off. But there are three ways to overcome it. If you want to lose all the fat you should & would like to lose and keep it off, it’s definitely worth trying all three together.

1. Being fat not only makes you look less sexually appealing, it tends to turn off your sex drive.

Most people know being fat makes you look less sexually appealing. But few people know it also tends to turn off your sex drive.

Last Friday, 9-19, in the Yahoo News health section online, Reuters Health had a story titled,

"Obesity may diminish a man's fertility ."

They found married fat men tended to not have as many children as married men of normal weight. They found that measurable in differences in hormone levels in the fat men caused this effect.

The fat men had below normal testosterone levels. And, some of the fertility related hormones that were low in the fat men caused the researchers to believe that excess body fat likely also tended increase the conversion of testosterone to estrogen in a man's blood. They measured higher estrogen levels in the fat men.

They also said that previous studies found that fat men had lower libido and increased risk of erectile dysfunction when compared with men who were not fat.

The good news is two fold.

One, if you are fat now, you can increase your testosterone level right away, even before you lose very much fat, AND increase your chances of losing the fat and have it stay off. Doing progressive strength training and/or interval cardio regularly -- releases testosterone.

Doing these two kinds of exercise also boosts your metabolism for hours after you exercise and increases your muscle mass. So since the increased muscle burns more calories than fat does, you burn more calories in two ways and tend to both lose fat and increase muscle. This helps ensure that not only do you lose only fat as you lose weight, you may well lose MORE pounds of fat than you lose pounds on the scale.

You can also have more testosterone by preventing some of it from being converted to estrogen. According to Dr Al Sears, taking the supplement DIM or eating lots of broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables that contain it or both does exactly that.

Now, here’s the really interesting part of this post.:

2. A little known fact is one of the most important reasons people who try to lose fat weight fail to lose it all and keep it off. But there are three ways to overcome it. If you want to lose all the fat you should & would like to lose and keep it off, it’s definitely worth trying all three together.

As often happens, I read some key information earlier today in the health article in today’s Early to Rise.

“This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, an e-zine dedicated to making money, improving your health and quality of life. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.”

“Don't Diet TOO Much

By Craig Ballantyne

Bodybuilders have long known that if you eat too little for too long, you can actually decrease your resting metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn at rest).

Now, scientists are catching up to our muscle-building friends. Researchers from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana studied long-term dieting in 48 normal-weight subjects.

For six months, one group of subjects reduced their calories by 25 percent. A second group reduced their calories by 12.5 percent and exercised to burn another 12.5 percent of their calorie intake each day. A third group consumed only 890 calories per day until they lost 15 percent of their body weight, and then went on a weight-maintenance diet.

The researchers found that resting metabolic rate decreased after only three months in the subjects who'd reduced their calories by 25 percent. The 890-calorie-per-day group and the diet + exercise group also had a decreased resting metabolic rate, but it took six months for them.

The conclusion: When you diet too hard and too long, your body starts to conserve energy by reducing your metabolism and by decreasing the number of calories burned in any exercise you do.

To keep your resting metabolism high, follow these three guidelines when trying to lose weight:

1. Don't cut your calories too much. A 10 percent reduction - combined with regular exercise - is plenty.

2. Permit yourself a "reward meal" once a week. Eat your favorite foods, but don't go over the number of calories you had been eating each day before you started the diet.

3. Every eight to 10 weeks, take a few days off of dieting, and go back to your pre-diet caloric intake.

[Ed. Note: Supplement Craig Ballantyne's diet rules with a fat-burning exercise routine. Learn how to build muscle and blast fat with his Turbulence Training program.

And for more advice on how to lose weight, eat right, and exercise better, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.] “

(Their “natural health e-letter” comes out currently twice a week and you can sign up for it at:
www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com .)

X* X* X* X* X* X*

Here are the 3 other ways to prevent this effect.:

1. A combination of: eating less or hardly any of the foods and drinks that tend to make you fat;
and eating more green and nonstarchy vegetables;
and a 10 percent reduction or even a bit less in your total calories while keeping a dairy before the reduction and every week after it.
-- Will remove fat from your body. And, doing it in ways that allow you to eat other foods you enjoy and only cutting back that much, will enable you to keep doing it.

(I only had to cut my beer and wine intake a bit and ate more vegetables and was already avoiding fattening foods and drinks and exercising each week. But I’ve been able to maintain my fat weight loss since that’s all I had to add & subtract. So I’ve just kept doing it.)

Cutting back more than that tends to lower your metabolism and tends to make you feel bad to the place you both stop losing fat and tend to give up. Why do that? Upgrade your diet to health supporting foods and drinks and cut back the calories just a little. That both prevents the decrease in metabolism and makes it doable to continue.

For me this is not theory. I set out to lose just 10 pounds. But since I was able to keep up the changes easily, I lost 30 pounds.

2. Doing progressive strength training and/or interval cardio regularly not only releases testosterone and improves the sex lives of BOTH men and women, doing these two kinds of exercise also boosts your metabolism for hours after you exercise and increases your muscle mass. So, since the increased muscle burns more calories than fat does, you burn more calories in two ways and tend to both lose fat and increase muscle.

This also tends to prevent this drop off of metabolism that can slow or prevent losing fat.

3. There may be a way to improve this protection against having your metabolism drop even more. It does nothing by itself to lose fat. So people who don’t eat a bit less calories and upgrade how health supporting their foods and drinks are AND do both progressive strength training and interval cardio can use it with little effect.

But the people who do the things that cause fat loss, apparently get quite an effect if they add this third method too. I just discovered it existed a few days ago. And today’s Early to Rise article explains why it can be such an asset in fat loss.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have something you could take that would both totally prevent this drop in your metabolism AND cause you to lose most or all of your excess abdominal fat?

What if it also was safe to take and produced no “speed” or over-stimulation effects as well?

It’s a bit on the pricey side. It costs $50 to $60 a month to take it. And, it’s likely useless if you don’t do the other things and keep doing them.

But if you have the money and are doing the other things, I think it looks worth doing.

An active ingredient in wakame seaweed and some other kinds of seaweed is called fucoxanthin.

Wikipedia has this.:

“Fucoxanthin reduces fat because of its increase in cell energy expenditure. This is important because fucoxanthin helps to increase your metabolic rate, which becomes progressively slower as you age, explaining why normal dieting doesn't always have the desired long-term results. There have been recent studies in both humans and animals that showed taking fucoxanthin supplements helps to reduce body weight as well as significant losses in visceral fat, decrease in liver and abdominal fat, and an increase in energy expenditure. Subjects taking the fucoxanthin supplements lost an average of 14 pounds, 11 pounds more than the placebo group.”

The supplement most readily available in health food stores is Garden of Life Fuco Thin.

(from http://palmbeachnutrition.com/Garden-of-Life/Fuco-Thin/tabid/229/Default.aspx ):

“Garden of Life Fuco Thin

Fuco Thin by Garden of Life is for anyone who is seeking to manage body fat and support a healthy metabolic rate while following a balanced diet and a regular exercise regimen.

All-natural concentrate with fucoxanthin levels 250-500 times higher than wild seaweed

Supports the metabolism or breakdown of fat in white adipose tissue, including belly fat

The first marine algae-derived ingredient with clinically proven thermogenic effect

Does not stimulate the central nervous system and will not cause jitters or lost sleep.”


The Garden of Life literature reports that many of the people who do the other things and also take Fuco Thin lose inches off their waist in addition to pounds on the scale.

I lost 30 pounds without taking it and only lost 2 inches from my waist. I’d love to find that taking this would trim off another 2 to 4 inches off my waist.

So I intend to try it myself soon.

If you try it and it works for you, please leave a comment here.

Cherries are a Superfood….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-21-2008

It’s beginning to look as if tart or sour red cherries are a real superfood.

And, fresh, canned, dried, or as a real juice, the evidence is accumulating to show they have significant health benefits.

I’ve read that they really help people who have gout.

And, it’s already known that making, cooking, & eating hamburgers to which dried cherries have been added both makes eating the hamburgers better for your health AND makes them taste juicier.

(Making them using beef fed only grass & eating them Atkins style-- using no refined grain bread or even whole grain bread-- & adding lots of onions is the healthiest way to eat them.)

It seems tart or sour red cherries do a great deal more than that. And, we may now know why they help people with gout.

Recently, I got this article in my Early to Rise email. (I add my comments after it.)

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Tart Cherries Reduce Inflammation

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Tart cherries might not be one of the first foods that come to mind when you think "heart healthy," but perhaps they should be. New research from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center shows that compounds in cherries may protect against the kind of inflammation that's been associated with both heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers fed two groups of rats bred to be particularly susceptible to heart disease the equivalent of an unhealthy human diet (aptly abbreviated SAD for Standard American Diet). Both groups got the same number of calories, but the diet of one group included dried extract of tart cherries. And the results were impressive. Markers of inflammation - TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) and IL-6 (Interleukin 6) - went down significantly in the group fed the cherry extract.

This is an important finding, because inflammation is a factor in every major degenerative disease, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and even cancer. In addition, the cherry-fed rats had significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. And they were far less likely to build up fat around the middle. (Abdominal fat - in both rats and people - is linked to diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, a kind of pre-diabetes.)

The researchers believe that the secret ingredient in cherries may be anthocyanins, the pigment responsible for making cherries dark. The high levels of antioxidants in the fruit may also play a role.

How much would a human have to eat to get the same potential benefit? It's hard to make a perfect extrapolation to a 150-pound human from a rat that weighs a few ounces - but an educated guess is that it would take only about a cup and a half of cherries (fresh or frozen).

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden - a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health - can point you toward delicious and natural foods that will help you feel better and live longer. Check out his book, The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, for additional strategies to keep yourself in tip-top shape. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. And read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's natural health e-letter.]”

(See www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)


X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

The reduced inflammation may be one of the reasons that cherries help people with gout. They may do more; but that alone would be helpful.

I was also very interested to read that this study suggests that eating dried cherries or whole ones most days might help keep fat off your tummy. If that proves true in people, it could be very useful. For most people, taking fat off their tummy does the most to improve their appearance. So adding the right exercise and eating right otherwise and an effective fat loss plan with eating cherries might be a great way to take inches of fat off your waist and would improve your appearance enough to be quite motivating. As a bonus, it’s been found that taking fat off your waist does the most to protect your heart.

And, this data definitely shows that cherries are heart protective. If, as blueberries, which are also high in anthocyanins, do, eating cherries raises your HDL cholesterol, this may be even more the case.

This study DID show that cherries lowered triglycerides. If eating them also raises HDL, that means that eating cherries lowers the kind of small particle LDL that acts like a kind of sandy glue that causes plaque to build up your blood vessels. This study shows that by lowering triglycerides it might do that. If eating them also raises HDL, they would be very heart protective.

And, they may be that heart protective even if they don’t also raise HDL. This study didn’t measure CRP as an inflammation maker; but cherries did lower other inflammation makers and may lower that also. That would be very heart protective as high CRP levels are quite predictive of heart disease and heart attacks.

This study doesn’t mention that cherries have vitamin C and may have other antioxidants as blueberries do. That also is heart protective.

So, between what tart or sour red cherries have been shown to do in this study and what I suspect they also do, they may be one of the most heart healthy foods you can eat.

And, there are also related foods and supplements with proven health benefits that you can use besides cherries for similar effects.

Blueberries are a known and proven superfood. You can also take bilberry extract. And, bilberries are a kind of blueberry. Concord grape juice may have some similar compounds. And, grape seed extract also is high in anthocyanins. Dried cranberries also may have similar benefits.

(Dried cranberries are much sweeter and more palatable than fresh ones.)

I’ve never tried making a dessert with dried cranberries, canned sour cherries with no sugar added, and coconut or walnut halves. But I bet it would taste good.

And, this study suggests it would be really good for you.

Cherries are a Superfood….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-21-2008

It’s beginning to look as if tart or sour red cherries are a real superfood.

And, fresh, canned, dried, or as a real juice, the evidence is accumulating to show they have significant health benefits.

I’ve read that they really help people who have gout.

And, it’s already known that making, cooking, & eating hamburgers to which dried cherries have been added both makes eating the hamburgers better for your health AND makes them taste juicier.

(Making them using beef fed only grass & eating them Atkins style-- using no refined grain bread or even whole grain bread-- & adding lots of onions is the healthiest way to eat them.)

It seems tart or sour red cherries do a great deal more than that. And, we may now know why they help people with gout.

Recently, I got this article in my Early to Rise email. (I add my comments after it.)

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com."

“Tart Cherries Reduce Inflammation

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

Tart cherries might not be one of the first foods that come to mind when you think "heart healthy," but perhaps they should be. New research from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center shows that compounds in cherries may protect against the kind of inflammation that's been associated with both heart disease and diabetes.

Researchers fed two groups of rats bred to be particularly susceptible to heart disease the equivalent of an unhealthy human diet (aptly abbreviated SAD for Standard American Diet). Both groups got the same number of calories, but the diet of one group included dried extract of tart cherries. And the results were impressive. Markers of inflammation - TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) and IL-6 (Interleukin 6) - went down significantly in the group fed the cherry extract.

This is an important finding, because inflammation is a factor in every major degenerative disease, including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and even cancer. In addition, the cherry-fed rats had significantly lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. And they were far less likely to build up fat around the middle. (Abdominal fat - in both rats and people - is linked to diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome, a kind of pre-diabetes.)

The researchers believe that the secret ingredient in cherries may be anthocyanins, the pigment responsible for making cherries dark. The high levels of antioxidants in the fruit may also play a role.

How much would a human have to eat to get the same potential benefit? It's hard to make a perfect extrapolation to a 150-pound human from a rat that weighs a few ounces - but an educated guess is that it would take only about a cup and a half of cherries (fresh or frozen).

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden - a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health - can point you toward delicious and natural foods that will help you feel better and live longer. Check out his book, The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth, for additional strategies to keep yourself in tip-top shape. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. And read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's natural health e-letter.]”

(See www.TotalHealthBreakthroughs.com .)


X* X* X* X* X* X* X*

The reduced inflammation may be one of the reasons that cherries help people with gout. They may do more; but that alone would be helpful.

I was also very interested to read that this study suggests that eating dried cherries or whole ones most days might help keep fat off your tummy. If that proves true in people, it could be very useful. For most people, taking fat off their tummy does the most to improve their appearance. So adding the right exercise and eating right otherwise and an effective fat loss plan with eating cherries might be a great way to take inches of fat off your waist and would improve your appearance enough to be quite motivating. As a bonus, it’s been found that taking fat off your waist does the most to protect your heart.

And, this data definitely shows that cherries are heart protective. If, as blueberries, which are also high in anthocyanins, do, eating cherries raises your HDL cholesterol, this may be even more the case.

This study DID show that cherries lowered triglycerides. If eating them also raises HDL, that means that eating cherries lowers the kind of small particle LDL that acts like a kind of sandy glue that causes plaque to build up your blood vessels. This study shows that by lowering triglycerides it might do that. If eating them also raises HDL, they would be very heart protective.

And, they may be that heart protective even if they don’t also raise HDL. This study didn’t measure CRP as an inflammation maker; but cherries did lower other inflammation makers and may lower that also. That would be very heart protective as high CRP levels are quite predictive of heart disease and heart attacks.

This study doesn’t mention that cherries have vitamin C and may have other antioxidants as blueberries do. That also is heart protective.

So, between what tart or sour red cherries have been shown to do in this study and what I suspect they also do, they may be one of the most heart healthy foods you can eat.

And, there are also related foods and supplements with proven health benefits that you can use besides cherries for similar effects.

Blueberries are a known and proven superfood. You can also take bilberry extract. And, bilberries are a kind of blueberry. Concord grape juice may have some similar compounds. And, grape seed extract also is high in anthocyanins. Dried cranberries also may have similar benefits.

(Dried cranberries are much sweeter and more palatable than fresh ones.)

I’ve never tried making a dessert with dried cranberries, canned sour cherries with no sugar added, and coconut or walnut halves. But I bet it would taste good.

And, this study suggests it would be really good for you.