Strength training & protein increase fat loss & keep it off...

Today's Post: Monday, 12-7-2009

In today’s Early to Rise email, see www.earlytorise.com , an email on money, success, and health, the founder, who goes by Michael Masterson, titled his health essay today,

“ How to Avoid Becoming a Fat Thin Person.”

This is a very good title for three reasons,

First, if you lose weight by losing muscle, when you’re done, you will burn fewer calories which tends to make you eat more than your body uses which causes any fat you lost to return.

Second, your ability to do things from jumping out of harm’s way if needed to carrying groceries depends on your muscles so having less of them literally makes you less able and safe.

Third, people who are already at normal weight but who don’t exercise and have too little muscle DO have the kind of internal, abdominal fat that tends to cause heart disease and type 2 diabetes. So, if your weight loss efforts turn you into that kind of normal weight person, the health benefits of losing the weight are far less than they could be.

Michael points out to only lose fat but no muscle at all in your weight loss efforts is clearly the right goal.

I think this is easier to focus on if you actually say you want to LOSE FAT rather to focus on losing weight. (Of course if that fat you want and need to lose weighs over 40 pounds and you succeed in losing it, you will weigh less.)

Michael reports that research published in the Journal of Nutrition found that two matched groups of women on a moderately calorie restricted diet got very different results.

Both groups ate the same number of calories -- & both groups even walked several times a week -- but the women in one group ate a bit more carbohydrates and a good bit less protein and the women in the second group not only ate substantially more protein and fewer carbohydrates, they also did two sessions a week of strength training.

The results were strikingly different.

The women on the higher carbohydrate, lower protein diet who walked but did no strength training lost an average of 15 pounds; and something like 2.5 pounds of their weight loss was muscle. (They lost about 12.5 pounds of fat.)

The women in the high-protein group who did strength training just two days a week had lost an average of 22 pounds; & only about half a pound of that was muscle. (They lost about 21.5 pounds of fat.)

The combination of a bit more protein and less carbohydrates with strength training increased the fat lost by 9 pounds.

But the importance of the increased fat lost is even more than just the greater amount.

The high protein, strength training group, was visibly trimmer and less fat far more than the lower protein group who did not strength train.

They looked better and very likely felt more successful. They were clearly stronger than the group that did no strength training. Their health improvement was far greater.

And, even better, between these better results and feelings they also had enough muscle to burn more calories than the group of women who did not strength train and who LOST so much more muscle, so their chances of keeping off the fat they lost are dramatically better.

The increased protein & fewer carbohydrates also helped. As readers of our previous posts also know, high glycemic carbohydrates that you eat make you less hungry at first but soon increase your hunger. Protein foods, by contrast, that you eat, make you less hungry a bit more & do NOT create the rebound hunger before your next mealtime as the carbohydrates do.

This means that the better results were also very likely caused by the higher protein group being less hungry as much as the greater calorie burn from the strength training and less muscle lost.

The best news is that the increase in protein was likely small something like an extra egg or two small servings of fish instead of one & the strength training group only did two sessions a week of it.

This means most people can very likely do as well.

This also means that someone who does the triple of walking most days for at least 20 minutes, strength training two days a week and vigorous interval cardio 3 other days each week -- and eats more health OK protein foods -- and eats green and nonstarchy vegetables and some fresh fruit and whole grain foods AND eliminates refined grain foods & foods made from them, all soft drinks, and most sugar will very likely do even better.

Best of all, this way of eating AUTOMATICALLY reduces the calories you eat; but does NOT make you more hungry.

Exercise and Fat Loss....

Today's post: Tuesday, 2-10-2009

Yesterday we posted the wonderful news that even one minute a day of really vigorous exercise has blood sugar lowering and other health benefits.

There is also evidence that vigorous exercise whether in a competitive sport such as playing soccer or basketball or in progressive strength training or in interval cardio or in faster dancing or in martial arts training done fast, all tend to help you lose fat best. This is because they boost your metabolism after you stop actually doing them, sometimes for several hours. Also, most of them, particularly progressive strength training, add to your muscle mass and how many more calories that muscle burns than fat. So, in both ways, such vigorous exercises are extra effective in helping you lose excess fat or prevent you from gaining it.

However, Weight Watchers and other experts in fat loss have found that to lose weight and keep it off, simply doing more total exercise each week is also important They found that it tends to take a lot more exercise to be effective in helping you lose fat than most people think. Exercise can help enormously in losing fat. And almost all the people who succeeded in losing fat and keeping it off exercised while they lost the fat and still exercise now. But for best results you do need a lot of exercise.

For example, today, Reuters online health news had a story titled:

“Thirty minutes a day of exercise? Better think 50”
They quote these two “updated guidelines issued by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).”


1. “…..evidence published after 1999 indicates that between 150 and 250 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity is effective in preventing weight gain greater than 3% in most adults but will provide "only modest" weight loss.”

2. “Greater amounts of weekly physical activity -- in the order of 250 minutes or more per week -- have been associated with "significant" weight loss, the ACSM notes. Overweight and obese adults will most likely lose more weight and keep it off with at least 250 minutes per week of exercise.”

And, the story adds this from those guidelines also.:

“The ACSM also recommends strength training as part of a health and fitness regimen. "Resistance training does not enhance weight loss but may increase fat-free mass and increase loss of fat ...and is associated with reductions in health risk," the writing committee notes.”

I find a more flexible guideline to be the number of calories directly burned by an exercise.

Walking is a “moderate intensity physical activity” at a 20 minute per mile pace which burns about 100 calories in that time. So, 150 to 250 minutes of walking per week translates into 750 to 1250 calories of exercise per week. That’s 7.5 to 12.5 miles of walking a week.

And, more than 250 minutes of walking is more than 1250 calories a week. That’s more than 12.5 miles a week of walking.

This correlates nicely with the research done years ago which found that the healthiest people were those who got 2,000 to 3500 calories a week of exercise. And, that even as little as 500 calories a week of exercise produces 40 % of the health benefits of doing 2,000 to 3500 calories a week of exercise.

In addition, many writers and fat loss experts have recommended about 3500 calories a week of exercise as ideal for the best results in losing fat and keeping it off.

You can get 3500 calories a week by walking 5 miles once a day. One person who was successful in losing well over 100 pounds did that or something very like it. Another person who lost over 100 pound to this day walks something like 3 miles a day for 2100 calories a week and does about 700 calories of strength training and 700 calories of interval training each week also. So his total is also about 3500 calories a week of exercise.

The second person is much stronger and more aerobically fit than the first one. But both were successful at losing over 100 pounds of fat. And, both have maintained that fat loss in part because they still eat right and in part because they still get 3500 calories a week of exercise.

(Note that while more exercise than 3500 calories a week does burn more calories, it also begins to be enough to produce overuse injuries and can overtire you or simply take too much of your time each week. So while something like 3850 calories a week of exercise may work well and be sustainable, 5600 calories of exercise a week may not be sustainable. That’s important since if you have much fat to lose, you need to plan on continuing to exercise both to do it long enough to lose all the fat and to keep off the fat you’ve lost after that.)

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.“

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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.

Low & Lower carb sandwiches....

Today's post: Thursday, 10-9-2008

As many of you who read this blog regularly know, refined grain foods are NOT good for you. They are high in carbs and have a high glycemic index. They also have much lower fiber and a much lower amount of nutrients than whole grain foods and vegetables have. Even worse, refined grain foods often have bad things added to them such as extra salt, high fructose corn syrup, and partially hydrogenated fats (transfats.)

But sandwiches are a common food, particularly for lunch. They are convenient to make and take to work. They are also sold in various versions at places where you go out for lunch.

Made with bread made of refined grain, such sandwiches help make you fat and sick however.

That makes sandwiches made with refined grain foods both useful, familiar, easily available, and convenient on one hand; and unfortunately, it also makes them bad for your health to eat.

This is a bit of a dilemma.

An excellent article on solutions to this problem was in today’s Early to Rise. After I include it, I’ll have some other comments.

One of their readers wrote to Early to Rise requesting one of their health writers to provide some solutions. The writer himself asked for help. The resulting article is quite good. My own title for it is: Substitutes for refined grain bread in Sandwiches.

Here it is.:

“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.”

“Dear ETR: What's a good substitute for bread?

"As bread is always being lambasted as being too high in carbs, exactly what can be used as a substitute that is both nutritious AND practical - i.e., that can be used every day to make a sandwich for lunch? Everything I can think of has a grain in it!"

Jim Crossman
Somerset, UK

Dear Jim,

Good question.

I asked my nutrition expert friend Isabel De Los Rios (thedietsolutionprogram.com) for some help. Here's what she said...

You can go one of two ways with this, or use a combo of both:

1. Choose organic, sprouted grain breads (such as Food For Life Ezekiel Bread) whenever possible. The process of "sprouting" grains makes them much more digestible and nutritious. Compared to "processed grain," sprouted grain is much higher in protein and fiber and lower in carbs.

2. Use vegetables - such as romaine lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced eggplant, and portabella mushrooms - instead of bread. For instance, instead of a boring sandwich, you could make:

turkey, roast beef, and cheese lettuce wraps (Don't forget a drop of mustard.)
sauteed chicken and vegetable lettuce wraps
tuna salad on sliced tomatoes
turkey or beef burgers on portabella mushrooms
scrambled eggs and bacon on sliced tomatoes
Happy eating!

- Craig Ballantyne

[Ed. Note: Supplement the above suggestions for low-carb meals with a fat-burning exercise routine. Learn how to build muscle and blast fat with Craig's Turbulence Training program. And for advice on how to lose weight, eat right, and exercise better, sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter.

Have a question for an ETR expert? Write to us at AskETR@ETRfeedback.com and one of them may respond to you in ETR]“

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My comments and other ideas for replacing refined grain bread in sandwiches.:

1. Their first solution listed works even better than you might think. My wife has very low level type II diabetes. So she checks the effect on her blood sugar of virtually everything she eats. If she eats refined grain foods of any kind, for sure if she eats refined grain bread, her blood sugar spikes by an extra 20 to 45 points.

She found though, that when she eats the Food For Life “Biblical” breads we buy at Whole Foods Market that the ETR article recommends, the Ezekiel and Genesis kinds in particular, that her blood sugar only goes up a normal amount. The extra 20 to 45 point surge no longer happens. So, the article’s advice on this bread is even better than it may sound.

I’m also very pleased that this company, Food For Life, does NOT add nonfood additives to this bread. Plus I’m very pleased to read that it’s also more digestible and nutritious than the refined grain bread my wife used to eat. (Because it has no junk additives to give it long shelf life, it’s stocked in the frozen foods section by the way.)

2. I do something different with my lunch. I take some walnuts, some pecans, some organic broccoli florets, and some kind of orange veggie -- usually either carrots or sweet potato. Then I start my lunch with a half sandwich using only ONE slice of a sprouted whole grain bread that has mustard, onion, lettuce and tomato in it.

That way, I get the full flavor of the sandwich without the extra carbs of a full sandwich.

3. The third method that some of their suggestions require is to simply use no bread at all and use a glass container with a lid as a carrier instead of a plastic bag and bread as a container.

That same method also works well in restaurants and even fast food restaurants. (It works very well at Subway fast food locations because they have so many decent veggies you can add to the meat part of the lunch to substitute for the food part of the bread.) For this method, you let the restaurant transport the food and provide a plate to substitute for the transport use of the bread and sandwich bag.

And, you eat extra veggies of some kind to provide the extra fill up the bread would have provided.

As you can see by their examples, this can be tasty and filling without any bread at all.

Some soaps & cleaners can make you fat....

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

Regular readers of this blog know that all kinds of soda, eating foods with high fructose corn syrup and refined grains, watching too much TV, and never exercising all will tend to make you fat.

A huge number of people in the United States and now around the world do all of those things. As a result, the rate of obesity and type II diabetes has become an epidemic.

But if you never drink soft drinks, have stopped eating 95% of the refined grain foods you once ate, never buy or eat foods with high fructose corn syrup, limit your TV watching, and exercise every week, would you like it if you continued to be fatter than you want to be?

Would you like to be slightly low on energy besides?

Few people would. But if your thyroid function is impaired by contact with a toxin that impairs it, that’s exactly the result you might get.

Oops !! It seems that a very large number of soaps, liquid hand cleaners, household cleaning products, and lotions now for sale at your local supermarket have just such a toxin in them. Even some toothpastes do. If you touch these products to your skin, you get a dose internally of this toxin. And, having it in toothpaste is scary.

The good news is that it’s avoidable. But you have to know it has this effect. Read labels to be sure it is NOT a listed ingredient. And, never buy or use those products.

The article on this was in today’s Early to Rise. After I include it, I’ll have some other comments.

“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.”

“Toxic Gender-Bender Approved for Widespread Use

By Shane "The People's Chemist" Ellison

I'm no health saint. Every now and then I do something really dumb. It's rare, but I've been known to drink too much wine or beer and even indulge in the occasional cigar. All of these are toxic. As a rogue chemist-turned-consumer-health-advocate, I'm not proud of imbibing. However, it's my choice. And that's the point. Exposing yourself to toxins should be a choice. But modern day society rarely allows this.

Many people are unknowingly poisoning themselves with man-made industrial toxins. The gender-bender known as triclosan is one example - and it makes my toxic indulgences seem as harmless as apple juice.

Triclosan is used in a nauseating array of household products, including toothpastes, soaps, and lotions. Synthesized over 30 years ago, it was once thought to be a safe and effective antibiotic. But results from a recent UC Davis study have sounded the triclosan alarm.

Researchers discovered that it accumulates in the body - even when applied topically - to eventually disrupt hormone activity. The study found that triclosan throws our thyroid and sex hormones out of whack, potentially leading to obesity, infertility, cancer, and age acceleration. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that 75 percent of people from a random sample were positive for triclosan.

There appear to be laws that protect us from such toxic exposure, but appearances can be deceiving. In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. It requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine safe levels of toxins in drinking water and over-the-counter products like toothpastes and soaps. These levels are called Maximum Contaminant Level Goals (MCLG). None of them are enforceable. That's why the gender-bending triclosan was recently approved for use in over 140 household products despite its real and present danger!

The best way to avoid this and many other toxins is to choose organic. Natural soaps and the safe antibiotic zinc oxide work as well as triclosan at beating infection. And neither of them can accidentally poison you.

[Ed. Note: With tricky substances like triclosan lurking everywhere you turn, it's not easy to stay healthy. But if you take a few simple measures, you can protect your health and live a longer, more satisfying life.

Health expert Shane Ellison simplifies the complex, and teaches you how the right supplements and lifestyle habits can help you beat today's pandemic killers. Learn how to overcome obesity, heart disease, and even cancer - and discover the latest natural cures - with Shane's Foundational Health Education program.
( http://www.thepeopleschemist.com/foundation.html?hop=etr07 ) “

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Other ideas for getting clean and killing germs without exposing yourself to this stuff include:

1. Shop for cleaners, soaps, and the like at Whole Foods Market. Their buyers often to usually edit out these kinds of ingredients. So if you find it works Ok for you at home & you buy it at Whole Foods, you’ll almost always be better off than picking up something at a less selective store.

2. Use soap without ANY germ killers and water instead of buying and using the “anti-bacterial” kinds. Washing with just soap and water kills or removes the germs you want to get rid of anyway. But it does not poison you or contribute to antibiotic resistant germs as the “anti-bacterial” kinds will do. (There have also been articles that quote studies showing that use of triclosan and other “anti-bacterial” compounds contributes to creating antibiotic resistant germs.)

I’ve not yet looked at the label; but the only liquid hand soap for use in a push dispenser I know of is the one from Ivory. And, since they do NOT advertise or label it as an “anti-bacterial” soap, I suspect it has no triclosan.

3. If you are washing out something with tons of germs such as cleaning a diaper or washing up after someone threw up, use chlorine bleach instead of “anti-bacterial” cleaners. The chlorine bleach smells like hell. But it kills the germs just fine. And, the smell gives you an incentive to wash quickly and rinse thoroughly. (I also use rubber gloves to keep the smell off my skin.)

4. Never use chemical air fresheners or have them in your house. Some may add extra “anti-bacterial” action with triclosan. And, they have other ingredients that are just as bad.

5. Read the labels today on the toothpaste and soap and lotions and household cleaners you use now and substitute triclosan free versions for any that contain it.

Two major & proven ways to fat loss success....

Today's post: Monday, 9-8-2008

Not long ago it was in the news that people who kept logs of what they eat lost more weight and that this was partly due to the fact that the study also had the participants keep logs of their exercise each week.

Weight Watchers is one of the programs that has tested to be effective in helping people lose weight. And, they do show those results in part because they have the people in their program keep logs of the food they eat.

Now it seems that research has confirmed that the other thing Weight Watchers does is also comparably effective. They provide social support for people who are working on losing weight.

Last Saturday, the email I got from Early to Rise had an article on this & what looks to be the start of an online forum for people trying to lose fat weight.

After I post it here I have some other comments.:

“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.

The Diet Secret You Probably Aren't Using

By Craig Ballantyne

The worst thing you can do when trying to lose weight is "go it alone." Support from your friends and family can help you eat better and exercise more.

Scientists at the University of Michigan studied 228 women in order to determine the connection between social support and the women's ability to eat well and exercise consistently. And though most of the subjects reported low to moderate social support, the more social support they received, the more physical activity they did and the better their nutrition was.

As a result of their lack of social support, most of the women didn't make improvements in their body composition during the study. But as my personal research shows, the more a person's friends and family support their efforts to lose fat through exercise and diet, the better their chances of success.

So grab a nutrition buddy at work, a workout partner at the gym or at home, and some online support at your favorite fitness website. These three valuable sources will help you lose inches and burn belly fat consistently.

[Ed. Note: It's true. Online support can be very helpful when it comes to reaching your fitness goals. Share your weight-loss struggles, diet and exercise techniques, and encouragement for free right here..... http://www.earlytorise.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8404 ....]"

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One way to make this work is to be supportive to other people working to lose weight or exercise regularly. I’ve found that to work well with the people at the gym I go to and with my wife. It helps you whether you get any support back or not as it keeps you in a positive and supportive frame of mind & focusing on the benefits of eating right and exercising.

And, you often do get support back in return. That can sometimes be when you most need it.

Another way to make this work is to join Weight Watchers. I think they could be more proactive in teaching people how to eat right & avoid the worst foods than they do. And, I think they could be more proactive in teaching people how exercise & strength training can help as much as they do. Further I think that it can pay you to set goals with less of a reduction in intake than they do with more of a commitment to make that reduction permanent than I think they do.

But, they do effectively help people take in less calories by using logs of what you eat and give you social support extremely well.

If you need to get your fat loss program started or need help staying with it, they can be a valuable resource.

(As some of you have read here, I used their points system & eating log and set a goal that I thought would help me lose 10 pounds because I thought I could sustain that change. I didn’t go to their meetings but did keep up my regular exercise program. I was able to sustain the changes & did lose the 10 pounds. Since the changes were sustainable & I didn’t want the 10 pounds of fat back I did keep doing it. And, much to my great delight and surprise, I lost another 20 pounds.

It did help that I already exercised regularly and keep a log of my exercise each day and each week.)

So if you want to lose more fat weight than you have in addition to eating right and exercising, try adding & keeping up a food and an exercise log and add some effective social support.

Keys to successful fat & weight loss….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-19-2008

The wonderful news is if you have taken steps to eat right and exercise & are beginning to do those two steps reasonably well, you are ALREADY less fat than you otherwise would have been. (See yesterday’s post on exercise or our other posts on exercise and our posts on eating right.)

But because of our sedentary lifestyles today, you may well still be fatter than you would like and fatter than it is OK for your health to be even if you already eat well and exercise now.

Here are five of the keys to losing excess fat and keeping it off.

We follow them with a summary of a study that found a way to more than double the results you get from these five steps. Then we add some other information that will help.

These steps allow you to lose fat & keep it off without getting extra hungry. They do take some ongoing effort to maintain. But doing so allows you to keep the extra fat off permanently.

A. Here are the five keys.

1. Never drink regular soft drinks.

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

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

Regular soft drinks, high fructose corn syrup, & diet soft drinks all cause you take in calories but NOT feel less hungry. Even worse, they often make you feel MORE hungry.

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

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

In fact, if you have been drinking several soft drinks a day, by switching to water or tea or green tea or unsweetened cocoa or even coffee without added sugar, you may find that this one change will lose you 5, 10, or even 20 pounds. And, not only will the fat come off, you’ll actually be LESS hungry instead of more.

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

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

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

So does eating tomatoes, particularly cooked tomatoes and tomato & pasta sauces. (Pasta, however, is NOT a good idea for fat loss.)

Eating these nonstarchy vegetables makes you MUCH healthier, fills your tummy & turns down hunger with very little net calories.

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

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

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

(Interval cardio & strength training are proven to increase your metabolism and fat burning for HOURS after you stop doing them. Strength training also adds at least some weight to your muscles which then burn more calories than the fat weight they replace even when you are at rest.)


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

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

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

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

Stop eating virtually all refined carbohydrate foods; eat only moderate amounts of whole grain foods or less; & cut way back on table sugar and foods that contain it. Carbohydrate foods, particularly those with no fiber, only turn off hunger for a short time and then they turn hunger back on.

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

The low carb diets work by using this information. And, if you follow one of them AND eat more nonstarchy vegetables than they recommend AND exercise, they can work very well indeed. The “South Beach Diet” is one of the better and more up to date of these. For more recipes, you can also try the “Sonoma Diet” which is similar but slightly more food and enjoyment oriented. Both books are available at amazon.com & can be bought or ordered at your local bookstore.

Another way that works is to follow the DASH II diet or a Mediterranean diet but with less whole grains or pasta and MORE vegetables and health OK protein foods.

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

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

You burn LESS calories watching TV than you do sleeping.

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

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

So, be a LOT more selective in what you watch on TV & watch less or exercise while you watch TV or instead of watching TV some evenings.

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

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

A study done at Kaiser that taught very similar strategies to people – including using the DASH diet -- was reported recently that found that people who kept a food diary each day lost double the weight the people did who did NOT keep the diaries.

And, the people who lost the most weight, also wrote down the exercise they did each week.

The people in the study were told to follow the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.

And, the points they emphasized were.:

Eat 9 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.

Eat 2 to3 servings of low-fat dairy foods daily.

Aim for 25% or less of total calories from fat.

Aim for 2,400 milligrams or less of salt each day. (The DASH II diet aims at 1500 mg a day or less.)

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

They also were told to exercise & average about two hours of exercise a week. And they were told to keep daily food and exercise records.

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

The people who lost the most weight also attended more of the group meetings and did the most exercise. They also wrote down their exercise each day. So at the end of each week, they could see how much exercise they had done.


It’s significant that the people who lost the most weight also kept a log of all the exercise they did each week and did more exercise.

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

In fact, one excellent way to get started with keeping a food log and consistently eating enough less to actually succeed in weight loss is to join a local Weight watchers group.

If you do that, and add the other information here, you not only will lose weight; but because you exercise including strength training also and eat enough protein and restrict sugars and starches, you will lose fat instead of muscle.

That also helps you to keep the fat off after you lose it.

In my case, I simply got the Weight Watchers points system book from my Dad who had gone to the meetings.

I wrote down what I was eating and drinking and the exercise I was doing.

Then I multiplied the points by .90 to see what point total would cause me to lose about 19 of my 186 pounds. I saw that if I added a good bit more unstarchy vegetables to my lunch and dinner every day and cut my number of glasses of wine and beer in half, I’d likely lose about half that much.

That, by the way, is a much less aggressive and hard to stay on goal than Weight Watchers gives people because they want their members to see fast results.

But I realized the goal I set myself was both doable AND that if it worked, I could keep doing it.

It also helped that I was already doing both interval cardio and strength training every week and had long ago given up soft drinks and commercially made snacks and baked goods.

I decided that just losing the 9 to 10 pounds I predicted would be worth it. And, so I did it.

Did it work? It certainly did. And, after a few weeks, I lost the 10 pounds I expected to lose.

But, I got an extremely pleasant surprise after that !! Because it was doable, I was used to my new way of eating, and it wasn’t that hard AND because I surely wanted to keep the 10 pounds off, I kept doing it.

The first surprise was that after a few more weeks, I found I’d lost a SECOND ten pounds.

The really astonishing surprise was that a few weeks after that I lost a THIRD ten pounds.

So I set out to lose 10 pounds and lost 30 pounds. I succeeded in part precisely because I picked a plan I knew was doable enough I could do it consistently every week.

Even better, soon after that I found that even though I ate well at Thanksgiving and Christmas, by eating this way the rest of the time and continuing my regular exercise program, I gained ZERO pounds over the holidays.

Since I would have been about 30 pounds fatter if I still drank soft drinks and ate junky treat foods and didn’t exercise before this, that means that some of you reading this may be able to lose as much as 60 pounds of fat and keep it off by using this information.

MSG makes people fat or fatter….

Today's post: Thursday, 8-14-2008

Health writer & expert Dr Russell Blaylock long ago began saying that in his opinion MSG & similar compounds in the class of things he calls excitoxins will tend to make you fat or fatter than you should be.

I have heard separately that others believe ingesting MSG may cause brain problems in some people but never had that confirmed in actual studies I’ve read myself.

It is well established that if you go to a Chinese restaurant that uses a lot of MSG you may feel too warm and flushed a bit after eating there. This “Chinese restaurant syndrome” can also cause headaches.

If you are sodium sensitive and have high blood pressure, it’s also important to realize that MSG is a shorthand way to write mono sodium glutamate & is a source of sodium you might better avoid for that reason.

And, Dr Blaylock also lists a very large list of names that appear in food labels that may mean that MSG is used as these misleading names are used to disguise the fact that the food actually contains MSG. Autolyzed yeast is one that I had seen before and had assumed it actually was some kind of yeast. Apparently, it is MSG instead. Even worse, if a product lists “other spices” or “other natural flavoring agents” that may mean that they include MSG but don’t desire to disclose it.

With this background, I decided to make sure we didn’t use MSG as a “meat tenderizer” in our cooking and to avoid buying products that listed MSG or autolyzed yeast. I also began to make sure to eat as few foods that listed “other spices” or “other natural flavoring agents” as possible and to not buy such foods at all unless this ingredient was listed last indicating this category was quite small.

I also prefer to eat in Chinese restaurants that have a sign or state or their menu that they do not use MSG – or I ask to have our food prepared without it.

These steps do not eliminate any MSG from my food because I do use some mustard a few times a week, which lists “other spices” as its last ingredient and because other restaurant food likely contains MSG sometimes. But it does minimize the amount I eat quite a bit.

Today, I read that researchers studied a large group of people in China some of whom used no MSG in cooking their food and some of whom used a lot.

The people who used a lot of MSG were indeed significantly fatter than the people who did not.

Did they eat more or exercise less than the people who used none? The report I read said that no they did NOT. It said that their results found that given the same amount of exercise and the same amount of calories eaten the people who used MSG, particularly a lot of MSG, were still fatter than the people who used none.

So, if you are one of the many people who are fatter than you would like or should be or you are working to prevent that from happening, this research shows you would do well to avoid MSG in your food as much as you possibly can.

Even more bad news about diet soft drinks....

Today's post: Thursday, 4-10-2008

I’ve posted before that there is evidence that diet soft drinks are actually no better & may be even worse for you than drinking regular soft drinks. (And, regular soft drinks in any regular consumption are proven to make you fat and sick.)

Recently I got two emails in my inbox from my health sources that help make it extremely clear that this IS so & help explain why it happens.

The first is from Dr Mark Harmon. He also said he posted it on his blog so I’ve listed the URL for that. I’ve edited it a bit to make it shorter & easier to find the key points.

Do artificial sweeteners make you fat? Date: 4/3/2008

From: drhyman@ultrawellness.com & http://www.ultrawellness.com/blog

“There's no doubt about it. Artificial sweeteners cause obesity.

I always thought it was funny to see a very large person order a Big Mac, large fries -- and top it off with a Diet Coke. I also found it peculiar that I rarely saw thin people drinking diet sodas.

So I began to wonder if there could be a link between diet beverages or artificial sweeteners and obesity.

…. I discovered a number of different research findings that pointed to this very phenomenon.

Any sweet taste will signal your body that calories are on the way and trigger a whole set of hormonal and metabolic responses to get ready for those calories.

When you trick your body and feed it non-nutritive or non-caloric sweeteners, like
aspartame, acesulfame, saccharin, sucralose, or even natural sweeteners like stevia, it gets confused. And research supports this.

An exciting new study in the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience has shown conclusively that using artificial sweeteners not only does not prevent weight gain, but induces a whole set of physiologic and hormonal responses that actually make you gain weight.

The researchers proved this by giving two different groups of rats some yogurt. One batch of yogurt was sweetened with sugar. The other was sweetened with saccharin.

They found that three major things happened over very short period of time in the rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt.

First, the researchers found that the total food eaten over 14 days dramatically increased in the artificial sweetener group -- meaning that the artificial sweetener stimulated their appetite and made them eat more.

Second, these rats gained a lot more weight and their body fat increased significantly.

And third (and this is very concerning) was the change in core body temperature of the rats fed the artificial sweeteners. Their core body temperature decreased, meaning their metabolism slowed down.

So not only did the rats eat more, gain more weight, and have more body fat, but they
actually lowered their core body temperature and slowed their metabolism.”

X*X*X*X*

Notice the double leverage they found in this study. The rats fed the artificial sweetener ate more AND had their metabolism slow down.

That means even people who manage to override their body’s desire to eat more when they drink diet soft drinks-- OR eat so called “light” food & drink products that are sweetened with artificial sweeteners, they are likely to get fatter or lose less fat than they had hoped because their metabolism slows down.

In case you missed my point, I’ll make it really clear. If you don’t want to be fat & heavy, do NOT drink diet soft drinks or eat or drink any “Light” food products made with artificial sweeteners. They will sabotage you & help you to stay fat instead.

(Drinking no sodas at all & doing progressive strength training at least two nonconsecutive days a week has the opposite effect from drinking diet soft drinks. You reliably take in less calories than before if you have been drinking regular soft drinks. And, your metabolism speeds up both for several hours after you exercise and from the lean muscle mass you gain gradually from the exercise.)

Then, on 4-8-2008, I got this email from Dr Al Sears see: www.alsearsmd.com

“Avoid sodas…even if they are diet.

Sodas will make you fat. And they lead to other health problems. That “innocent” low-cal diet soda is really danger in a can.

A new study published in Circulation tracked the diets of men and women for nine years. Those who drank just one can of diet soda a day increased their risk of metabolic syndrome by 34%.

….Regular soda isn’t any better. Another study found that regular soda consumption is also associated with the metabolic syndrome.

Why should this alarm you? Metabolic syndrome is a collection of symptoms that lead to diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases like cancer.

If you’re like the average American you drink an estimated 56 gallons of soft drinks each year.

You may have metabolic syndrome and not even know it. In fact, the American Heart Association estimates that over 50 million Americans have metabolic syndrome.

Do you have any of these symptoms?

• Excessive fat tissue in and around the abdomen

• High levels of bad LDL cholesterol, low levels of good HDL cholesterol, and high triglycerides.

• High blood pressure

• Insulin resistance or glucose intolerance (the body can’t properly use insulin or blood sugar)

Each one of these symptoms can cause a whole host of health problems on its own….”

X*X*X*X*

Dr Sears is putting it gently. EVERY SINGLE ONE of those effects is causative or predictive of heart attack, stroke, & all other cardiovascular diseases.

And, you sharply increase your risk of these by drinking EVEN ONE diet soft drink a day.

Ouch !!

Are you at a loss as to what to drink if you don’t drink soft drinks?

Water does work to quench your thirst & is usually available even at fast food places.

A few glasses of fruit juice a week has been found to help prevent Alzheimers. And, there are many flavors of real fruit juice many of which have extra health benefits: orange, cherry, grape, blueberry, etc. They all have some vitamin C. And, you can add chilled club soda to chilled fruit juice if you like the carbonation in soft drinks.

If you want a caffeine boost, try coffee. Or, if you also want a treat & love chocolate, drinking extra strong unsweetened cocoa as a hot chocolate drink works & has incredible health benefits if you add no milk. And, if you want less of a caffeine rush but need a bit of a lift, tea & green tea work -- & have super health benefits if you add no milk to them.

Lastly, if you sometimes add some real sugar to your hot chocolate or coffee or tea -- but not every time, they are still massively better for your health than soft drinks.

2nd way protein helps with fat loss...

Today's post: Friday, 2-29-2008

1. In a recent post, we wrote on the research that found that one of the ways high protein diets or eating helped with fat loss that is not well known as yet is that of the three kinds of food components carbohydrates, fats, & protein, only protein worked well to turn off hunger & do so for quite some time.

(You may already know or have read here that strength training increases your muscle mass which helps increase the amount of calories you burn because muscle simply uses more calories than fat. So the more muscle you gain, the more calories you burn even when you are not exercising and the easier it is to lose fat & the more you can eat without gaining it back.

And foods high in protein help the strength training you do to build more muscle for you, as you may already also know.)

2. It seems there is a second little known way that eating protein foods helps lose fat. It seems that eating protein foods will increase the calories you burn directly !!

I found this in last Tuesday’s Early To Rise email.

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.

“Calorie-Burning Foods

By Craig Ballantyne

How would you like to get the benefits of one cardio session per week, without having to do any work? Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, all you have to do is eat more protein.

That's right, eat to burn calories.

Greek researchers gave 30 women a meal rich in either protein or fat in tests spaced one week apart. And they found that diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT - calorie-burning caused by the digestive process) was three times greater after the protein meal than after the fat meal. The scientists concluded that, over the long term, a low DIT associated with eating fat may contribute to the development and maintenance of obesity.

To benefit from this information, base your meals on lean protein sources and fruits and vegetables. Substitute broiled chicken breasts for fried chicken, grass-fed beef for ordinary hamburger, and poached fish filets for breaded shrimp[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system.”

X * X* X* X* X

It’s important to note that this article suggests more of a villain role for eating fat than other research supports. In some extremely important ways that conclusion of a villain role is totally incorrect.

It’s extremely clear that lean protein (& he uses excellent examples) and nonstarchy vegetables are MOST of what you should be eating if you want to lose excess fat & keep it off.

You’ve just read several ways that eating lean protein helps lose fat. (And, it also helps reduce your intake of animal based saturated fat which improves your health.)

(Organic, nonstarchy vegetables have abundant nutrients so you will be healthy. They have lots of fiber which also helps you feel full & NOT hungry. And, they have so few calories that Weight Watchers lists them as having zero points.)

However, it’s also been found that, given eating lean & health OK protein & abundant nonstarchy vegetables & controlling your total calorie intake that:

People who include health OK fats, monosaturated & omega 3 fats or oils get three astonishing benefits all of them critical to successful fat loss.:

(These fats include fish like sardines & wild caught salmon; purified fish oil or cod liver oil; avocados & guacamole; nuts; & extra virgin olive oil.)

a) You will be MUCH healthier as this suggests that you get ample omega 3 oils & very few omega 6 oils or animal based saturated fats.

b) Research shows that people who include these foods are MANY TIMES more likely to eat right long enough to lose all the fat they want & are MANY TIMES more likely to keep doing it & have the fat stay off.

c) Prevention Magazine has a new diet book out on the 3rd benefit. They found that calorie controlled meals that include a healthy fat in virtually every one don’t just lose fat from your body, they remove your ABDOMINAL or tummy fat !!

THAT provides outstanding health benefits because excessive abdominal fat tends to cause heart disease and type II diabetes. AND, social psychologists have found it makes you more visually appealing to members of the opposite sex.

So that’s the recipe for eating right & fat loss.:

Abundant lean protein; abundant nonstarchy vegetables; and controlled amounts of health OK fats & whole fruit -- & as little high glycemic carbohydrates & other junk foods as you can possibly do without.

Lots of total regular exercise each week (such as tai chi, walking or being physically active; vigorous interval cardio; & progressive strength training) is also a key addition that sharply improves your health; increases your muscle mass; & will help you lose fat and keep it off.

WHY walking helps lose fat...

Today's post: Friday, 1-25-2008

New discovery can give you extra leverage in losing fat & keeping it off.

Walking is well known to be one of the better kinds of activity to add to your exercise program to lose fat.

And, even though running produces enough injuries in most of the people over 30 who do it often to be a bad idea, it works really well to lose fat in younger people if it’s carefully done.

Conversely, swimming seems to get you in shape without removing very much fat if any.

Here’s a very powerful reason why -- that is recent & very useful news.:

(I got behind in reading some of my health info email. The following information was in the 12-20-2007 Health Alerts email that I got from Newsmax.com.):

“People may be overweight simply because they sit too much, according to scientists at the University of Missouri.

They found that exercise alone isn’t enough to take off extra pounds — they discovered that the enzymes in our body responsible for burning fat simply shut down when we sit down.”

This quite literally means that you tend to add fat when you sit down & lose it when you stand.

This has a number of very useful implications you can use to lose fat faster & make sure it stays off.

1. If you have time to walk several times a week in addition to the strength training & fitness exercises you do & you’d like to be slimmer, by all means ADD the walking.

2. If you can do it safely & time-efficiently enough, adding even a small amount of walking to your commutes or to your shopping, will pay surprising fat loss dividends to you.

3. It helps explain why the pedometer based tracking of how many steps you take each day & gradually increasing them has been effective in helping people lose fat.

4. It means that indoor exercisers like the UrbanRebounder, treadmills, elliptical trainers, steppers, & the Nordic Track cross country style ski exerciser also work well to help lose fat.

5. It also means that doing household chores like washing dishes, sweeping, & vacuuming do double duty in helping keep fat off.

6. It helps further explain why watching too much TV reliably makes the people who do it fat.

(It’s also an added reason why one of the best ways to lose fat & find time to exercise is to turn off the TV & go the gym two or three days a week – or more. But even two times a week regularly will help, particularly if you do strength training.)

The other way to use this info without giving up TV watching is to watch it while you walk on a treadmill.

(If you watch TV 20 hours a week & walk at a 100 calorie per 20 minute pace, easy walking pace at a slight incline, you’ll burn 6,000 extra calories. And, according to this new info, you’ll be spending 20 hours a week standing up with your fat burning enzymes turned on where you are likely spending those same 20 hours a week now sitting with your fat storage enzymes turned on.)

7. It makes the idea of programming-in standing briefly at your desk a few times each morning & a few times each afternoon sound more likely to help you lose fat than you might expect.

If you’d like to lose some fat that stays off, take a moment & think of a couple things you can do to use this new discovery. Then once you get used to doing them, just keep doing them.

Eating protein foods DOES help you lose fat…..

Today's post: Monday, 1-21-2008

Researchers recently established a key reason why eating protein foods tends to help people lose fat.

Eating protein foods suppresses a key hormone that turns off hunger. Even better the hormone, called Ghrelin, stays turned down for a good bit from eating protein foods. This helps you avoid overeating from continuing to feel hungry after you eat.

So, if you eat a bit less calories than you are used to but eat well from lean or nonfat protein foods, you are much less likely to get too hungry to continue eating that way.

Separate research shows that continuing to eat some fats & oils makes losing fat permanently MUCH more likely. However, doing so apparently works through a different pathway as this research showed that eating fat did NOT turn down this hormone.

Carbohydrate foods, & it sounds like this research used fast absorbing carbohydrates like sugars that did NOT come with fiber when eaten, were definitely BAD actors.

Eating carbohydrate foods did lower ghrelin levels at first. But they then reversed & INCREASED them above where they were when the carbohydrate foods were eaten.

This clearly makes it much more likely a person will overeat because this effect ensures they will get quite hungry sooner than they should.

Here’s where I first saw the research reported.:

“Thu Jan 17, 7:20 PM ET CHICAGO (Reuters) –

Diets high in protein may be the best way to keep hunger in check, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that offers insight into how diets work.

They found that protein does the best job at keeping a hunger hormone in check, while carbohydrates and fats may well deserve their current nasty reputation.

The study, which will appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, looked at the effectiveness of different nutrients at suppressing ghrelin, a hormone secreted by the stomach that stimulates appetite.

"Suppression of ghrelin is one of the ways that you lose your appetite as you begin to eat and become sated," said Dr. David Cummings of the University of Washington in Seattle, who worked on the study.

The researchers gave 16 people three different beverages, each with varying levels of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. They took blood samples before the first beverage, then every 20 minutes for six hours afterward, measuring ghrelin levels in each sample.

"The interesting findings were that fats suppress ghrelin quite poorly," Cummings said in a telephone interview. They fared the poorest overall.

"Proteins were the best suppressor of ghrelin in terms of the combination of the depth and duration of suppression," he said. "That is truly satisfying because high proteins are essentially common to almost all of the popular diets."

They also found that eating carbohydrates resulted in a strong ghrelin suppression at first, but ghrelin levels rebounded with a vengeance, rising to an even higher level.

Basically, the carbohydrates eventually made people even hungrier than before they had eaten.“


This research endorses what has become clear is the best way to eat to lose fat & then stay trim permanently.

1. Eat nonfat & lower fat sources of protein. Egg whites, whey, & protein supplements made from them work well.

Since the separate research shows that eating some fats & oils DOES help keep hunger away enough to make continuing to eat right & permanent fat loss much more doable & likely, it’s quite clear that eating high protein foods with some health OK fats & oils also works.

(Eating fats clearly has this effect without reducing Ghrelin however, according to this research. So this must work through taste or another system your body uses to gauge energy intake.)

That means that eating whole eggs, wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils, beef fad only grass, and eating nuts are all good ways to get protein for people who want to lose fat permanently.

Eating beans & lentils also works well. They do have carbohydrates. But, since they are also quite high in fiber, the carbohydrates are released to your body gradually enough over a long enough period of time that by the time the rebound effect overcomes the reducing effect, it will be the right time for your next meal anyway.

Important note: Fatty & grain fed meats & poultry contain enough extra calories as saturated fat & omega 6 oils from the grain they eat that they should be eaten much less often, in smaller amounts, & in as fat trimmed & lean a version as possible. These foods tend to have too much fat & calories for the protein they contain to be good fat loss tools. These fats & oils are NOT health OK as they may cause cancer & have been implicated in causing heart disease. And, since these same animals are often raised around pesticides & given antibiotics which are bioconcentrated in their fat, minimizing your consumption of those fats is wise.

2. Similarly, small amounts of avocado & extra virgin olive oil are also OK. Just don’t overdo the amount. They have MUCH better health effects than dairy fats & polyunsaturated oils high in omega 6 oils. So eating dairy fats & polyunsaturated oils high in omega 6 oils is not wise both for health & for fat loss except in very small amounts & not every day.

3. The other kind of food that reduces hunger is food that is high in fiber since your stomach will give you hunger pains if it gets too empty.

Here again beans & lentils work well as they are quite high in fiber, nutrition, & protein also.

But, the best food category for this is green, nonstarchy vegetables. They do have carbohydrates but the amount is quite low compared with the fiber & nutrition they contain. This is so much the case that your body may burn as many calories to digest them as they contain. Weight Watches lists them as having zero points. That means their experience has shown that green, nonstarchy vegetables have zero net calories when you eat them. This means eating them in abundance will help you feel full but NOT put fat on you.

Yellow, red, & orange, nonstarchy vegetables such as tomatoes, summer squash, & carrots also work.

Somewhat starchy vegetables like pumpkin & sweet potatoes & yams or whole fresh fruits are OK, but like eating fats like extra virgin olive oil, avoid eating too much of them.

4. It’s quite clear from this research that drinking soft drinks, eating refined grain foods, & eating more than tiny amounts of sugar & not doing so every day, is also a HUGE key to not being fat or staying fat.

They found these foods make you less hungry at first & then uncontrollably more hungry later.

Eliminate or cut these back by 98 percent & it will be much easier for you to lose fat.

In fact, if they are a big chunk of what you eat & drink now, this research suggests you will be LESS hungry if you eat protein foods instead. Even better, you may lose 10 or 15 percent of your body weight as fat. if you simply keep doing it.

Want to lose some holiday fat? Good news for women …..

Today's post: Thursday, 1-3-2008

I read a recent article about some research that was done into gender differences in weight & fat loss.

The good news is that many, if not most, women do make an effort to lose excess fat.

But the much more challenging bad news is that most women who do try to lose fat tend to not get the job done & few get permanent results. Eating better & exercise, particularly strength training, work if you keep doing them. But many women try to eat less of what they already eat until they get too hungry & give up. That never works to lose fat permanently.

According to this source, men are enough more used to doing things consistently by policy & to use self discipline in order to achieve things that they often actually do the things that result in long term fat loss.

The good news is that there are several strategies that can help women reverse this.

The one I’ve seen be most effective is at the end of this post.

That means that once a man knows that both regular & diet soft drinks will tend to make him fat, he’s much more likely to stop drinking them.

Most women find this more difficult. I’ve seen that many women switch to diet soft drinks & keep eating as they were before or return to it too often. Even if a woman is good about the food, studies show that switching to soft drinks simply doesn’t work. The studies show this consistently.

This may be because people add the calories they didn’t get or the sugar they didn’t get from their soft drinks to the other things they eat. I suspect it also may be because the foods like French fries & sandwiches, hot dogs, or hamburgers that tend to go with soft drinks even if they are diet soft drinks are made with potatoes stripped of their fiber-, containing peel & with refined grains. They are, or have been until recently, often cooked in transfats. These things are fat fertilizer.

Similarly, once he knows that today’s commercial baked goods tend to be made with transfats (though that will mercifully change soon we hope) & sugar & refined grain flour, most men can get themselves to simply stop eating that stuff 95 to 100 % of the time. (Each of these things tend to make those who eat them fat.)

Women often use such foods as treats or eat them in social situations. This makes it challenging for many women to give them up. (It’s not impossible though.)

And, when men learn that eating MORE green nonstarchy vegetables can help them lose fat & get more health protecting nutrients, men are more consistent in doing just that.

Women, however, do much better than most men in eating salads. But often they eat too little protein foods with their salads or add large amounts of bad fat containing salad dressings.

(Moderate amounts of healthy fats & proteins in a salad can solve that problem. Foods like walnuts, avocado slices, extra virgin olive oil, shrimp, chunks of lean chicken, or canned Alaska wild salmon work much better for fat loss than most commercial salad dressings. And, by adding them the salad prevents hunger longer. Even small bits of cheese can work well for this.)

Then, when it comes to exercise, unfortunately, women do too little of the most effective kind.

Even though the cardio or aerobic exercise & Pilates type exercises women tend to do, do have health benefits & help some to produce fat loss, strength training is much more effective.

As a recent post here suggests, fewer women do strength training than men. Fewer of the women who do strength training do the kind of focused & progressive strength training that does the most good for fat loss when compared with men. And, because of having much lower testosterone, the women who do focused & progressive strength training well, still don’t get quite the results that men do. But it’s still the most effective kind of exercise to lose fat even for women.

So, if you are a woman & want to lose any excess fat pounds you may have gained over the holidays & then some, if you do all these things, you have a good chance of losing that fat.

It may be more difficult at first than it is for a man, but you can substitute water, tea, coffee, or even real fruit juice or milk for soft drinks.

You can eat sandwiches Atkins style by eating the meat or cheese etc & the tomatoes & lettuce etc & get salad or an extra vegetable serving to replace the cheap refined grain bread as a food.

You can eat strawberries & pecans or cooked “Old Fashioned,” less refined, oatmeal instead of refined grain toast for breakfast.

You can do strength training well two or three days a week. Personal trainers & many gyms will gladly show you how. (It may not work as well for women as for men. But it will improve your health. It will improve your sex life. And, even though it may be less than it would do for a man, strength training will cut fat off your body.)

So, if you want to get rid of some holiday fat, try these steps. They do work.

Are you debating making the effort? Or, do you need some extra motivation?

Here are some considerations to consider that suggest doing it is wise.

Even more important, one of these tests can & has given women a huge amount of extra leverage in eating right & exercising enough for fat loss. I’ve seen it work.

Each of these steps makes type II diabetes much less likely. Each of the steps will make you healthier in other ways. And, each of them will tend lower your risk of cardiovascular disease which helps prevent heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, & mental decline -- & sexual dysfunction.

If you are still debating, get your fasting glucose; & the glucose moving average test, HBA1C; & HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, & triglycerides done. You may find readings bad enough to make it really important to follow this plan now.

Readings of over 110 on fasting glucose, over 5.9 on HBA1C, HDL of less than about
50, or triglycerides of much higher than 150 can really hurt you. And, this set of things will go a long, long way towards moving those indicators to where they should be. It’s been tested & found to work.

Here’s the fat loss secret weapon for women. You can also get the blood sugar measuring device that people who have type II diabetes use from your doctor even if you test OK. And, your doctor may insist on it if you test badly.

Why does that help you with fat loss? Because when you exercise right & eat right, it will give you normal & desirable readings. AND, when you eat foods with too much sugar, refined grains, starches, etc & too little vegetables, and OK protein & fat sources, it shows excessively high readings. In addition, you get instant feedback that the readings are better on the days you exercise.

There’s no waiting for the bad news on the scale until you eaten badly & not exercised for a week. You see the results soon enough to take action to prevent the bad news at the end of the week.

It still may not be fun at first until you find health OK foods you actually like & get used to eating them.

But, it’s a way that I’ve seen work that will give you a HUGE amount of extra leverage.

It may be enough to help you succeed when you never did before in losing fat that you keep off.

If you’d like to lose your extra fat & keep it off, why not try it?

(Separate note:

If your LDL is 130 or over, that’s a problem also. And, although exercise will bring LDL down & even better, will make it safer by making your LDL larger & less able to stick to your blood vessel walls, you might want to try niacin or beta sitosterol ( or other sterol) supplements since they reliably lower LDL. The food & drink changes suggested here also help do these things. Statin drugs also work; & if your LDL is way over 160, your doctor may prescribe them. But they cost more & have more side effects.)

Want to lose some holiday fat? Good news for men …..

Today's post: Wednesday, 1-2-2008

I read a recent article about some research that was done into gender differences in weight & fat loss.

The bad news is that many men who would be healthier & live longer if they made the lifestyle health upgrades that would help them lose excess fat often haven’t tried to do it.

But the much better good news is that those men who do try to lose fat tend to get the job done & may even get permanent results.

According to this source, men are enough more used to doing things consistently by policy & to use self discipline in order to achieve things that they often actually do the things that result in long term fat loss.

That means that once a man knows that both regular & diet soft drinks will tend to make him fat, he’s much more likely to stop drinking them.

Similarly, once he knows that today’s commercial baked goods tend to be made with transfats (though that will mercifully change soon we hope) & sugar & refined grain flour, most men can get themselves to simply stop eating that stuff 95 to 100 % of the time. (Each of these things tend to make those who eat them fat.)

And, when men learn that eating MORE green nonstarchy vegetables can help them lose fat & get more health protecting nutrients, men are more consistent in doing just that.

Then, when it comes to exercise, I can tell you that there is even better news for men.

Even though the cardio or aerobic exercise & Pilates type exercises women tend to do, do have health benefits & help some to produce fat loss, strength training is much more effective.

As a recent post suggests, fewer women do strength training than men. Fewer of the women who do strength training do the kind of focused & progressive strength training that does the most good for fat loss when compared with men. And, because of having much lower testosterone, the women who do focused & progressive strength training well, still don’t get quite the results that men do. This woman’s research also suggests, that as a man, you will be more likely to continue to do the strength training once you start.

So, if you are a man & want to lose any excess fat pounds you may have gained over the holidays & then some, if you do all these things, you have a good chance of losing that fat.

This woman’s research says you’ll do it consistently enough to lose the fat. And, you even have a good chance of continuing to do these things & keep all or most of the fat off once you get started.

So, if you want to get rid of some holiday fat, try these steps. You have a good shot at success !!

Are you debating making the effort?

Here are some considerations to consider that suggest doing it is wise.

Each of these steps makes type II diabetes much less likely. Each of the steps will make you healthier in other ways. And, each of them will tend lower your risk of cardiovascular disease which helps prevent heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, & mental decline -- & erectile dysfunction.

(You do have to be careful not to injure yourself by overdoing or being careless with the strength training.)

If you are still debating, get your fasting glucose; & the glucose moving average test, HBA1C; & HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, & triglycerides done. You may find readings bad enough to make it really important to follow this plan now.

Readings of over 110 on fasting glucose, over 5.9 on HBA1C, HDL of less than about 50, or triglycerides of much higher than 150 can really hurt you. And, this set of things will go a long, long way towards moving those indicators to where they should be. It’s been tested & found to work.

If your LDL is 130 or over, that’s a problem also. And, although exercise will bring LDL down & even better, will make it safer by making your LDL larger & less able to stick to your blood vessel walls, you might want to try niacin or beta sitosterol ( or other sterol) supplements since they reliably lower LDL. The food & drink changes suggested here also help do these things. Statin drugs also work; & if your LDL is way over 160, your doctor may prescribe them. But they cost more & have more side effects.

The research shows you have a good chance of success, so why not try it?

“Fat Free” foods may NOT help you lose fat…..

Today's post: Friday, 12-21-2007

1. First, let’s start with the positive.

There IS a kind of fat free foods that DO help you lose weight.

Hint: They don’t come in boxes on store shelves.

Eating green & other nonstarchy vegetables WILL help you lose fat & fat weight.

They have fiber & water and they have an enormous amount of nutrition. They are good for your health to eat. If like most Americans, you eat very few vegetables other than French fries or baked potatoes, which are NOT in this category, you rarely eat such vegetables at all. And, if you are overfat or have fat you’d like to lose this approaches a certainty.

The trimmest & healthiest people eat several servings a day of green & other nonstarchy vegetables.

Not only do such vegetables contain no fat, they help you feel full; & Weight Watchers has found they are so low in calories you apparently burn that many calories just in digesting them. So they actually list such vegetables as having ZERO points.

Does it work to lose fat to simply eat more green & other nonstarchy vegetables?

You bet it does.

I lost 30 pounds of fat & have kept off 20 of them now almost entirely by adding a serving at lunch every day & a serving at dinner every day. Even better I wasn’t extra hungry.

I still eat protein & fats & oils that are OK for health like walnuts, pecans, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, guacamole, & wild caught salmon. I eat beans often. And, I eat eggs occasionally.

But by adding the vegetable servings, I no longer am hungry for seconds. I don’t eat second helpings any more. I had expected to lose 10 pounds. I did that. When I lost a second 10 pounds, I was pleased. And, since what I was doing wasn’t hard to do, I kept doing it & have kept doing it since. But when I lost the third 10 pounds, not only was I pleased, I was astounded.

(The only reason I gained back 10 pounds is I was forced temporarily by events to get a good bit less exercise.

But as long as I keep doing the exercise I do now & keep eating the vegetables, I’ll not gain back the other 20.

And when I add back the exercise, the 10 pounds will go back off also.)

Notice that although I do eat many foods with fats & oils each day, I still lost 20 pounds of fat that have stayed off.

2. Here’s the negative to avoid.

Would switching to foods labeled as “Fat Free” at the store helped me to lose fat too?

No. In fact the overfat people who do eat them tend to get fatter instead. Ouch !!

Here’s why.

The foods with those labels tend to be cookies & crackers. And, almost all of them are made with refined grains. These foods may taste good. But they have no fiber & very little nutrition so they don’t help turn off your hunger very well. Not having fat increases this effect besides. So this category of foods are NOT a promising food to eat to lose fat at all. It’s not much better or more effective to lose fat than drinking soft drinks which are even worse. They are fat free too !!

But there’s worse news. People who eat such foods are hungry for more of them and eat more each time & often do exactly that thinking they can as the foods are “Fat Free.” This usually results in fat GAIN.

But the worst news is next.

I’ve re-titled the article to make it a bit clearer than the original article’s title. But I not only give full credit to the author & the source I found it in, I feel fortunate to be able to include it here because the article itself is so well done.

Foods labeled as “Fat Free” will NOT help you lose fat

Here’s the article:

“By Shane Ellison

Food labels that scream "fat free" have been a goldmine for the food industry since 1993. They have also hoodwinked millions of unsuspecting victims. Overweight people seek out these labels in the hope of waking up skinny. It never happens. But that doesn't stop them from getting ensnared over and over again. I can hear their rationale: "I'm fat, so I should eat fat-free foods." Wrong.

After the fat is removed, sugar is added. Sugar is great if you're at a birthday party, but that's it. It is nothing more than fat fertilizer and a heart attack waiting to happen. Look for it listed as sucrose, dextrose or cane sugar on the labels of your favorite foods. Then buy something else -- like an all-natural food high in healthy fat.

Healthy fat, which you can find in grass-fed beef, seeds, nuts, avocados, and eggs, is essential for proper growth, development and the maintenance of good health. It provides your body with vital energy without causing you to gain weight. In sharp contrast to carbohydrates, sugar and trans-fats, healthy fats tell your body to burn fat and make you feel fuller quicker. Add them to your grocery list. And forget the fat-free labels.”

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is known as "The People's Chemist." He holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand industry experience with drug research, design and synthesis. He is the author of Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs…..]

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs , offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com "

“Fat Free” foods may NOT help you lose fat…..

Today's post: Friday, 12-21-2007

1. First, let’s start with the positive.

There IS a kind of fat free foods that DO help you lose weight.

Hint: They don’t come in boxes on store shelves.

Eating green & other nonstarchy vegetables WILL help you lose fat & fat weight.

They have fiber & water and they have an enormous amount of nutrition. They are good for your health to eat. If like most Americans, you eat very few vegetables other than French fries or baked potatoes, which are NOT in this category, you rarely eat such vegetables at all. And, if you are overfat or have fat you’d like to lose this approaches a certainty.

The trimmest & healthiest people eat several servings a day of green & other nonstarchy vegetables.

Not only do such vegetables contain no fat, they help you feel full; & Weight Watchers has found they are so low in calories you apparently burn that many calories just in digesting them. So they actually list such vegetables as having ZERO points.

Does it work to lose fat to simply eat more green & other nonstarchy vegetables?

You bet it does.

I lost 30 pounds of fat & have kept off 20 of them now almost entirely by adding a serving at lunch every day & a serving at dinner every day. Even better I wasn’t extra hungry.

I still eat protein & fats & oils that are OK for health like walnuts, pecans, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, guacamole, & wild caught salmon. I eat beans often. And, I eat eggs occasionally.

But by adding the vegetable servings, I no longer am hungry for seconds. I don’t eat second helpings any more. I had expected to lose 10 pounds. I did that. When I lost a second 10 pounds, I was pleased. And, since what I was doing wasn’t hard to do, I kept doing it & have kept doing it since. But when I lost the third 10 pounds, not only was I pleased, I was astounded.

(The only reason I gained back 10 pounds is I was forced temporarily by events to get a good bit less exercise.

But as long as I keep doing the exercise I do now & keep eating the vegetables, I’ll not gain back the other 20.

And when I add back the exercise, the 10 pounds will go back off also.)

Notice that although I do eat many foods with fats & oils each day, I still lost 20 pounds of fat that have stayed off.

2. Here’s the negative to avoid.

Would switching to foods labeled as “Fat Free” at the store helped me to lose fat too?

No. In fact the overfat people who do eat them tend to get fatter instead. Ouch !!

Here’s why.

The foods with those labels tend to be cookies & crackers. And, almost all of them are made with refined grains. These foods may taste good. But they have no fiber & very little nutrition so they don’t help turn off your hunger very well. Not having fat increases this effect besides. So this category of foods are NOT a promising food to eat to lose fat at all. It’s not much better or more effective to lose fat than drinking soft drinks which are even worse. They are fat free too !!

But there’s worse news. People who eat such foods are hungry for more of them and eat more each time & often do exactly that thinking they can as the foods are “Fat Free.” This usually results in fat GAIN.

But the worst news is next.

I’ve re-titled the article to make it a bit clearer than the original article’s title. But I not only give full credit to the author & the source I found it in, I feel fortunate to be able to include it here because the article itself is so well done.

Foods labeled as “Fat Free” will NOT help you lose fat

Here’s the article:

“By Shane Ellison

Food labels that scream "fat free" have been a goldmine for the food industry since 1993. They have also hoodwinked millions of unsuspecting victims. Overweight people seek out these labels in the hope of waking up skinny. It never happens. But that doesn't stop them from getting ensnared over and over again. I can hear their rationale: "I'm fat, so I should eat fat-free foods." Wrong.

After the fat is removed, sugar is added. Sugar is great if you're at a birthday party, but that's it. It is nothing more than fat fertilizer and a heart attack waiting to happen. Look for it listed as sucrose, dextrose or cane sugar on the labels of your favorite foods. Then buy something else -- like an all-natural food high in healthy fat.

Healthy fat, which you can find in grass-fed beef, seeds, nuts, avocados, and eggs, is essential for proper growth, development and the maintenance of good health. It provides your body with vital energy without causing you to gain weight. In sharp contrast to carbohydrates, sugar and trans-fats, healthy fats tell your body to burn fat and make you feel fuller quicker. Add them to your grocery list. And forget the fat-free labels.”

[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is known as "The People's Chemist." He holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand industry experience with drug research, design and synthesis. He is the author of Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth About Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs…..]

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs , offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com "