Why aim for a smaller waist....

Today's Post: Monday, 7-11-2011

A local health professional mails out periodic newsletters with some health news items to promote his work.

His recent newsletter had that doctors at Harvard have found that belly size may be more indicative of health problems than pounds or BMI measures.

Abdominal fat, and visceral fat which is inside your body but increases your waist size, they now know tend to indicate future problems with heart disease, strokes, and type 2 diabetes and other problems.

They said that health risks begin to increase at a waist measurement of 31 inches for women and 37 inches for men.

A waist size of 35 inches or more for women and 40 inches or more for men puts them in the danger range.

Clearly the things that reduce visceral and belly fat are health protective according to this measure. (It also helps that having a smaller belly helps you look better.)

What to do if you have a bigger waist than these standards:

1. The most effective thing you can do is exercise. Doing some vigorous and some moderate exercise each week helps.

One study found that exercise helped twice as much as the other solution they covered.

(Even people who are of normal weight but don’t exercise tend to have bigger bellies and hidden visceral fat inside them. People of the same weight who exercise have far less.)

2. That solution was to eat foods high in soluble fiber. The best sources are beans and lentils and nonstarchy vegetables. Oatmeal and oat bran are high in it. But oatmeal is a bit higher in glycemic index. And steel cut oats and rolled oats are far lower in glycemic index than instant or quick cooking oatmeal. Apples are high in it. But apples are best for you if organic and unwaxed which can be a bit hard to find.

3. The other solution which for some people can be as much as 70% or more of the effect they need is to cut way back on sugar and to eliminate packaged snacks, packaged desserts, most fast food, and all soft drinks.

This also includes eliminating all refined grain foods. And, cutting way back on oils high in omega 6 and eliminating all such oils that have been partially or fully hydrogenated also helps. Eliminating high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners also helps.

In practice, these often go together. A packaged snack may have little in it after the refined grains, junk oils, and sweeteners are removed.

4. Monosaturated oils such as extra virgin olive oil and found in avocados and nuts tend to reduce belly fat. Some studies suggest they do so directly. And, they clearly do as replacements for oils high in omega 6 and all such oils that have been partially or fully hydrogenated. Best of all, monosaturated oils consistently have been found to produce health benefits directly.

5. Eat more protein. But eat beans and lentils and nuts and naturally fed animals to the best extent you can. 100 % grass fed beef and lamb and wild caught fish are examples. If you do get animal protein from meat from grain fed animals, eat less and eat the leanest most fat trimmed version you can.

Protein is most filling and helps you eat less of the junkier foods. And these kinds of protein sources tend to produce the best health results.

6. Watch far less TV. Doing so can give you the time to exercise while watching TV burns fewer calories than sleeping! In addition, much of commercial TV entertainment has ads for the foods and drinks best avoided.

People who watch 14 hours or less of TV a week are less fat and have smaller waists than people who watch 28 or more!

5 ways to lose your tummy fat....

Today's post: Friday, 1-23-2009

In today’s very sedentary world most people have more belly fat than they want to have.

They know they’d look better without it.

But it’s also bad for you if it gets really bad. Excess abdominal fat, the more technical name for it, tends to indicate a relatively high risk of:
heart disease and the other cardiovascular diseases such as erectile dysfunction and strokes and peripheral artery disease etc – including low HDL, high LDL & triglycerides, and high CRP;
sleep apnea,
high blood pressure
insulin resistance & type 2 diabetes;
many cancers;
and early death.

If you are a man and your waist is more than 40 inches or a woman with a waist of over 35, your fat tummy puts you into the high risk category for all of the above.

The much better news is that the five ways to lose tummy fat both help you lose it AND directly reduce all of the above risks!!

1. Any kind of effective stress relief helps.

Stress caused changes in your blood and biochemistry tend to cause fat to be deposited on your tummy. And, many people, especially women, tend to eat more of the things that fatten them and add fat to their tummies to relieve stress. Predictably, stressed people tend to gain belly fat.

Tai Chi, meditation, yoga, and the like all can help. So can improving your ability to stay out of stressful situations by taking more prudent risks, treating others well and with kindness, & improving your ability to proactively solve your problems as they come up. Getting better sleep as we posted about last Tuesday, 1-20 can also help. Stress relief often isn’t easy and rarely has been. But any significant improvement you can manage will help you lose belly fat.

2. One of the very best and most effective ways to lose fat, lose belly fat, and reduce all these risks is to do regular exercise that includes some progressive strength training and interval cardio every week.

Both the total amount of calories burned even in low key exercise and activities such walking and light housework and the amount of vigorous exercise you get that causes you to exert an extra effort or to stop afterwards to catch your breath make a difference. But if you can do the more vigorous exercises several times a week without overdoing it, you’ll burn the most calories and remove the most belly fat.

Both interval cardio and progressive strength training cause increased metabolism and calorie burning for up to SEVERAL HOURS after you stop doing them. Even better they tend to reverse insulin resistance and high blood sugar and prevent their return if you keep doing vigorous interval cardio and progressive strength training each week.

Even better, such exercises help to both relieve stress and to increase the amount of stress you can handle without feeling overstressed and in need of comfort food.

3. To the extent you can manage it, eating or drinking zero or very low glycemic index foods and drinks over 95 % of the time while avoiding artificial sweeteners -- both will help you lose fat all over and will help you lose belly fat.

Health OK proteins and fats and oils essentially get a zero glycemic rating. (They work in enough other ways to remove belly fat and protect your health, we list them in our next way to lose belly fat by themselves. But they work and fit very well here also.) The more zero glycemic foods you eat, the lower your overall glycemic index of what you ingest will be.

The very low glycemic index foods include virtually all nonstarchy and/or green vegetables.

The very low glycemic index foods also include some fruit such as whole apples and cherries and blackberries. Most other whole fruit is relatively low in glycemic index; but enough higher to eat once or twice a day rather than more often.

The lowest glycemic index beans are lentils; but the other kinds of beans are low.

Barley is the only grain that has a truly low glycemic index. But eating only whole grain foods and about a third as many grain foods as most people do now or less -- & as whole grains only -- can also help.

The second way to eat a low glycemic diet is to stop eating or drinking virtually ALL high glycemic index foods. Or to eat them extremely rarely. Since the body acts as if you ate sugar if you eat things that are sweetened by non-nutritive sweeteners, they fit in this category also.

This means essentially NOT eating any refined grain foods whether it’s bread, cereal, baked goods, or snack foods. And it means virtually never drink any soft drinks. This means NOT eating or drinking anything sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and eating very few things sweetened by sugar.

(Since many people still have no clue how fattening and bad for your health these things are, that’s why we suggested taxing them in yesterday’s post.)

Bottom line, if you eat or drink them now, and stop doing it, it’s an excellent way to lose belly fat!

4. Eat more health OK oils and protein foods and mostly stop eating bad ones.

a) Monosaturated oils tend to help you lose belly fat according to the Flat Belly Diet book, which is still relatively new. Monosaturated oils also increase your HDL or don’t lower it and they lower LDL. People who are working to lose weight or fat who have some of these monosaturated oils each day, oddly enough, lose more fat; and of even more importance, they are dramatically more likely to keep off the fat and weight they lose.

They are in extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and nuts. These foods are so nutritious and have so many other health benefits they’ve been called superfoods. Eat any of them you aren’t allergic to and you’ll have better health and less belly fat.

b) Omega 3 oils lower inflammation and triglycerides and help you think better, feel better, and handle stress without getting so angry or irritable you make your problems worse!

The safer and more effective omega 3 oils are in:
DHA from algae and well purified fish oils (both available as supplements);
wild caught fish, particularly salmon, mackerel (NOT king mackerel), and sardines;
walnuts;
and some green vegetables and greens, particularly one called purslane.

Conversely, AVOID getting as many omega 6 oils and saturated animal fats as you can.

c) Omega 6 oils come from grains and most oils other than olive oil. They tend to increase inflammation and may help cause cancer, particularly if heated. Unlike monosaturated oils and omega 3 oils, they do not help you lose belly fat or protect your health.

Eating some omega 6 oils is OK in whole grains. Omega 6 oils cause health problems, including obesity if you eat 20 times that much, as many people still do. Omega 6 oils are high in animals fed grains instead of their natural diets. This means most meat in stores is higher than it should be in omega 6 oils since the animals it’s from were fed almost only on grains.

So mostly avoid meat from grain fed animals; eat whole grains only moderately; eat no refined grain foods; and avoid soy, canola, safflower, and corn oils in your food.

d) Excessive amounts of saturated animal fats tend to raise your LDL cholesterol; add unnecessary calories to your diet; tend to contain any herbicides and pesticides the animal was exposed to in bioconcentrated form; and have been implicated in causing prostate cancer, hardening of the arteries, and Alzheimer’s disease and other kinds of senility.

They are in full fat dairy products and meat from animals that are fed grain and penned up to purposely fatten or “finish” them.

So, for the most part, eat full fat daily products only occasionally and eat mostly nonfat and very lowfat dairy products; and make a strong effort to either eat more healthy kinds of protein than meat from grain fed animals – or only eat very lean versions of it that has had the fat trimmed or removed by draining it off the meat after it’s cooked and discarding it or both.

In addition, avoid ALL hydrogenated vegetable oils (transfats) of every kind. They are like excessive saturated fat on steroids. They are about three times more fattening and bad for your health. Such artificially saturated fats are essentially poisons and act almost like heart disease CAUSING drugs that have been purposely made to do that. (They got into the food supply because they increase shelf life and are cheap to make.)

Also eat a lot of foods high in soluble fiber such as apples, beans, and some oatmeal. And, consider taking sterol supplements or niacin if your LDL still tests as high.

5. The fifth way to lose belly fat ONLY works if you are doing a decent to excellent job on the first four methods plus being careful to not overeat.

But, if you DO those things, it has been shown to just about double the amount of total fat and belly fat you lose.

Our upcoming eBook on permanent fat loss has more on all these ways to lose belly fat including this fifth one.

We’ll announce this eBook here when it becomes available to you.