How to succeed at Weight Watchers....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 9-21-2010

For some people, Weight Watchers is ideal or at least fits what they most need to lose weight and fat.

First the good news.:

Several things about their approach are sound and test as working.

My memory is that when they tested Weight Watchers, about half the people who began were still going after 6 months to a year and had lost enough weight to make a difference. Most systems they tested were no where near as effective.

1. You can upgrade your food to healthy choices only and get regular exercise and not lose much weight if you have no cutback in your total weekly intake of calories. I should know. I did that myself.

Weight Watchers point system gives you some real leverage on beginning to lose fat and weight because you DO cut back your total weekly intake of food.

There are many ways that have succeeded to help people cut their total intake of calories. Weight Watchers point system works and has been developed and tested to be pretty accurate. It’s easier to use than many other ways of doing it. It isn’t perfect; but it does work.

2. Ongoing support that you actually will use doubles your chances of success – both in losing the weight and in keeping it off.

Weight Watchers meetings do that job well for some people. Not everyone can make a weekly meeting. But if you can, Weight Watchers likely has a meeting near enough to you to get to it.

3. This is particularly true if you tend to have emotional eating triggers that cause you to overeat or eat the wrong things in excess.

The better Weight Watchers meeting leaders do a superb job of giving emotional eaters doable ways to think about this problem and are good at tutoring people well enough they can get control of this problem if they keep working at it. And, with the weekly meetings, that IS available.

4. They have health guidelines now and include some emphasis on exercise too. That’s an upgrade. They used to do neither.

However, their point system was accurate in assessing exercise even before that.

Regular exercise is more important to losing fat weight, keeping it off, and improving and protecting your health than they yet teach – even with the upgrade. But, it takes far more exercise to burn net calories than most people have a clue is the case. Weight Watchers point system has had that nailed for many years now.

So, what to do to be even more likely to succeed if you do attend their meetings?

Here are my suggestions.

1. Stress exercise way more than they do. By itself, it only works to lose fat and weight if you do very large amounts of it.

BUT even 10 or 15 minute sessions of vigorous exercise, particularly interval cardio and strength training just about double your chances of success in losing fat and may as much as make your success in keeping off the fat you lose as much as four times greater.

It helps ensure all or most of the weight you lose is fat instead of bone or muscle.

Even better, by itself it will improve your health as much as the weight loss. In fact, in the early stages when you still have more fat to lose than you’d like, by getting this exercise, your health will gradually get far better than sedentary skinny people have! Why leave a way to double your chances of success on the shelf? Be SURE to include exercise even if you start at a very easy level with super-brief sessions.

The minimum to shoot for is three days of interval cardio and two of strength training and alternating them so you get one day of rest between sessions of the strength training. Even 10 to 15 minute sessions can work.

As long as you can reliably fit it in each week, more is better. So is also doing several sessions of walking each week in addition to the interval cardio and strength training if you can fit it in. (Some people get that done by using transit and making it part of each workday. Others do any TV watching while riding an exercise bike at a walking pace.)

The trick to doing it is to start very easy and progress very gradually. It also helps to do your exercise at home so you need not add travel time each time.
And, doing it in the morning before the varying demands of the day show up is proven to help people keep doing regular exercise.

2. Be even stricter with the health orientation and the low glycemic orientation than they suggest.

a) Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, refined grain foods, and even to some extent 100 % whole grain foods tend to both make you fat directly when you eat them and then cause rebound hunger on top of that. Diet soft drinks and artificial sweeteners tend to act like a very effective appetite booster for sugary foods.

One of the keys to losing fat successfully and keeping it off is stop ingesting things that make you fat or hungrier.

So, stop them all except very occasional treats with real sugar and a low moderate intake of 100% whole grain foods or even less.

That’s stricter than Weight Watchers suggests. It will also improve your fat loss and make your permanent success more likely.

Why leave a tool on the table that makes fat loss easier and more certain?

b) Another way to succeed at fat loss and make it permanent is to be even more strict than they suggest in eliminating foods that are harmful to you.

Every time you decline to eat something with some amount of hydrogenated oils or MSG or oils high in omega 6 or high fructose corn syrup or preservatives or artificial colors or refined grains, you have more real food choices without overdoing your need to restrict calories or limit your Weight Watchers points.

Since these foods are money-makers for the companies that provide them, they are made to taste addictively good on purpose. (The ingredients are cheap!) So NOT eating them gives you much MORE control over your appetites and food cravings.

c) And, Weight Watchers health OK foods are a bit dated.

The health supporting oils and fats include extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, nuts, avocados, wild caught fish and purified fish oil or omega 3 supplements. They probably include some coconut oil and/or some fats from grass fed and pasture fed animals.

Safflower oil, and canola oil are too high in omega 6 oils. Flax oil tends to be consumed in much smaller amounts and used that way may not do too much harm. But these foods mostly belong on your do not eat list. Weight Watchers doesn’t yet show they know that as of my visit to their website just a few minutes ago. They listed them still as health OK foods. The current research proves they are NOT.

The excessive amounts of omega 6 oils most Americans eat tend to make them fat. But, even worse, they have been implicated in causing heart disease and cancer.

3. My third suggestion is somewhat counter-intuitive.

Cut back a bit LESS than they recommend on your total points.

Do be TOTALLY sure to cut back some every single week.

Cut out 100 % or approach 98 % by at least editing out all the bad things we’ve listed and eating MORE natural foods such as health OK fats, protein foods, nonstarchy vegetables, whole fruit, and spices.

As soon as you can possibly do so, begin at least SOME regular exercise – and then gradually keep doing a bit more.

That’s the formula for success. You’ll lose fat without being much hungrier than is bearable.

You’ll stop eating appetite increasers and ingesting things like soft drinks that add calories without lowering your hunger and then boosting it with rebound hunger.

And, the exercise will gradually help you lose fat in addition to the calorie cut back.

But what all too often happens, and where some of their 50% who drop out go, is that the initial point totals they often suggest leave people too hungry.

That is wearing psychologically. It makes you think of the lifestyle upgrades as a temporary evil instead of a permanent lifestyle improvement. (THAT slashes your chances of keeping your lost fat off!)

Even worse, some people trigger their body’s famine response. This STOPS your fat loss cold. You get uncontrollably hungry – and for sugary and fatty foods. Your feeling of well being and energy drop like a rock. Your metabolism slows. And your body uses several biochemical means besides all that to prevent ANY fat loss at all!

So the solution is simple. Decline to go there. Unless you have been eating outrageously too much, cut back by 5 or 10 % --NOT 15 or 20%.

This makes their program more doable for you and more than doubles your chance of taking off fat and increases your odds of keeping it off even more.

My weight loss progress this month....

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s how I’ve done so far.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Important Fat Loss News....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, here’s that article.:

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

"Big Health News Flew Under the Radar

By James B. LaValle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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