Category: Weight Loss

One food that can increase weight loss dramatically.

Just three servings of yoghurt can double weight loss, studies suggest.

People in the study who ate yoghurt each day doubled their body fat loss, compared with a comparison group who were on a low-dairy diet.

The calcium and vitamin D in yoghurt may be responsible for the weight loss.

Calcium is thought to help weight loss by signalling the body to stop storing fat and start burning it.

Calcium deficiency, in contrast, can boost cravings for food to try and obtain more of the essential mineral.

Vitamin D may help to support weight loss partly through its role in aiding the body in absorbing calcium.

The study included 63 people enrolled in two separate studies.

In both, people were put on either low-dairy or high-dairy diet for 24 weeks.

For the high-dairy diet, people ate three servings of dairy, giving them the equivalent of 1,200 mg of calcium per day.

The results of one study showed that those on the high-dairy diet lost 4 pounds.

Professor Michael Zemel, that study’s first author, said:

“When we put people on diets that include three servings of yogurt a day, we-re able to nearly double the amount of fat that is lost, compared to people on a low-dairy diet.”

In comparison, those on the low-dairy diet lost nothing.

The second study found double the weight loss in the high-dairy group.

The study’s authors summarise the results:

“This study suggests that three servings of dairy foods per day produce significant reductions in total and central adiposity in obese African‐American adults—an outcome achieved without weight loss or caloric restriction.

We also found that dairy foods accelerate loss of weight and total and central adipose tissue mass secondary to energy restriction.”

The study was published in the journal Obesity Research (Zemel et al., 2012).

The technique has been linked to better brain health, including improved memory.

Intermittent fasting is one of the best ways to lose weight, research concludes.

Intermittent fasting can lead to the same amount of weight loss as regular calorie restriction, but also increase the shedding of belly fat.

Blood pressure is also reduced by intermittent fasting, along with leading to a lower blood lipid level and a lower resting heart rate.

Broadly, there are two types of intermittent fasting.

The first type involves restricting the time of day during which people can eat.

For example, breakfast is taken 90 minutes later than usual and supper 90 minutes earlier, with nothing outside this 6 to 8 hour window.

The other approach involves only eating one meal on two days of the week, then eating normally the rest of the week (sometimes known as the 5:2 diet).

The conclusions come from a review of multiple studies on intermittent fasting for weight loss.

Professor Mark Mattson, the study’s first author, said:

“We are at a transition point where we could soon consider adding information about intermittent fasting to medical school curricula alongside standard advice about healthy diets and exercise.”

The results from animal studies show that intermittent fasting supports cellular health, probably because of age-old problems of food scarcity that our ancestors experienced.

Fasting causes the body to switch over to turning fat into energy rather than burning sugar.

This switch increases stress resistance, blood sugar regulation and reduces inflammation.

Results from human studies have also shown benefits.

Along with improving insulin sensitivity, intermittent fasting also reduces belly fat and overall weight.

Intermittent fasting may also benefit brain health, according to recent studies.

One study has found it improves memory.

The difficulty with intermittent fasting is getting used to the practice in the first place, said Professor Mattson:

“Patients should be advised that feeling hungry and irritable is common initially and usually passes after two weeks to a month as the body and brain become accustomed to the new habit.”

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (de Cabo & Mattson, 2019).

Having this type of breakfast will help you to stop snacking on unhealthy foods in the evening.

Having a breakfast high in protein lowers cravings for high-sugar and high-fat foods and suppresses appetite during the day.

To get high amounts of protein, people could have eggs, fish or meat-based foods such as burritos, dairy, such as plain Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.

Eating more calories in the morning and less in the evening can double weight loss, studies have found.

Out of all the meals, breakfast is the most important one throughout the day, but 60 percent of young American adults skip it.

Skipping breakfast is common, especially for teenagers in which the habit is strongly linked to weight gain, increased BMI and obesity.

A study found that a high-protein breakfast increased daily fullness, reduced evening snacking, and improved diet quality of overweight or obese young adults.

Dr Heather Leidy and colleague compared a high-protein (HP) breakfast with a normal-protein (NP) in overweight or obese young females.

The HP breakfast meals reduced by 60 percent their daily hunger and improved their fullness or “satiety” by 30 percent, and suppressed the daily ghrelin response by 20 percent.

Ghrelin or the “hunger hormone” is produced mainly by the stomach and it is responsible for increased appetite.

The level of ghrelin increases before meals when a person is hungry and goes back to normal levels after meals.

In this study the HP breakfast consisted of lean beef, eggs, dairy, and plant-based foods while the NP breakfast consisted of ready-to-eat cereal.

The HP breakfast contained 35 g protein, which is about 40 percent protein, 40 percent carbohydrate, and 20 percent fat.

The daily energy for either HP or NP breakfast meals was 350 kcal to make up 18 percent of daily energy intake.

Dr Leidy said:

“Eating a protein-rich breakfast impacts the drive to eat later in the day, when people are more likely to consume high-fat or high-sugar snacks.

These data suggest that eating a protein-rich breakfast is one potential strategy to prevent overeating and improve diet quality by replacing unhealthy snacks with high quality breakfast foods.”

Those who skip their breakfast for a long time don’t need to be worried about how their body reacts when starting to have breakfast again.

According to Dr Leidy, it normally takes three days for the body to adjust to morning meals and eating early.

The study was published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Leidy et al., 2013).

People in the study lost weight without losing any bone mass.

A high-protein diet helps people burn belly fat and lose weight, research finds.

People who eat more lean meats combined with low-fat dairy lose more weight than those on a standard diet.

High-protein diets — around 30 percent of calories from protein — can also help to lower blood sugar and lipid levels.

The women in the study were able to lose weight without losing any bone mass, researchers found.

Dr Ellen Evans, study co-author, said:

“This is an important finding because many people, especially women in mid-life, are concerned with both obesity and osteoporosis.

Furthermore, treating obesity often increases risk for osteoporosis.

Many people lose bone mass when they lose weight.”

The study included 130 overweight people.

The researchers put half on a high-protein and dairy diet and the other half on a regular weight loss diet, based on the food pyramid.

Dr Evans said:

“Essentially we substituted lean meats and low-fat milk, cheese, yogurt, etc., for some of the high-carbohydrate foods in the food-pyramid diet.

Participants also ate five servings of vegetables and two to three servings of fruit each day.”

The results showed that both groups lost the same amount of weight.

However, a previous study by Professor Donald Layman found that high-protein diets help reduce belly fat.

Those on the high protein diet maintained better bone health.

Dr Matthew Thorpe, the study’s’ first author, said:

“In the higher-protein group, bone density remained fairly stable, but bone health declined over time in the group that followed the conventional higher-carbohydrate diet.

A statistically significant treatment effect favored the higher-protein diet group.

The combination and/or interaction of dietary protein, calcium from dairy, and the additional vitamin D that fortifies dairy products appears to protect bone health during weight loss.”

The study was published in the Journal of Nutrition (Thorpe et al., 2008).

A glass or two each day can help to boost weight loss by 100 percent.

Drinking milk can help increase weight loss, multiple studies find.

A glass or two of milk each day could increase weight loss by 100 percent, one study has found.

Milk can double fat loss in comparison to both soy milk and a carbohydrate drink, another study has found.

It is thought that both the vitamin D and calcium in milk may be beneficial for weight loss.

Around 50 percent of obese people have a calcium deficiency and half of the general population are deficient in vitamin D.

Now, a new study finds that children drinking whole-fat milk have a 40 percent reduced chance of being obese.

The researchers reviewed 29 separate studies carried out in seven countries, including almost 21,000 children.

Of these, 18 of the studies suggested that children drinking whole milk every day were less likely to be obese or overweight.

The findings are in contrast to many international guidelines that children should drink low-fat milk to avoid weight gain.

Dr Jonathon Maguire, study co-author, said:

“The majority of children in Canada and the United States consume cow’s milk on a daily basis and it is a major contributor of dietary fat for many children.

In our review, children following the current recommendation of switching to reduced-fat milk at age two were not leaner than those consuming whole milk.”

The next step in the research is to establish cause and effect, said Dr Maguire:

“All of the studies we examined were observational studies, meaning that we cannot be sure if whole milk caused the lower risk of overweight or obesity.

Whole milk may have been related to other factors which lowered the risk of overweight or obesity.

A randomized controlled trial would help to establish cause and effect but none were found in the literature.”

None of the studies reviewed suggested that drinking reduced fat milk decreased the risk of obesity or being overweight.

The study was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Vanderhout et al., 2019).

The effect of sleep quality on daily calorie intake and belly fat.

Poor sleep increases hunger and causes people to eat more the next day.

The extra calories will turn into belly fat and are stored as visceral fat around the abdominal organs.

According to a study, insufficient sleep increases abdominal obesity by nine percent and visceral fat by 11 percent.

Visceral fat is dangerous as it affects the health of abdominal organs and is linked to metabolic syndrome, a condition that leads to diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Professor Virend Somers, the study’s co-author, said:

“Our findings show that shortened sleep, even in young, healthy and relatively lean subjects, is associated with an increase in calorie intake, a very small increase in weight, and a significant increase in fat accumulation inside the belly.”

Lack of sleep is increasing in the population and has become a behaviour choice or bad habit which is part of modern life.

More than one-third of American adults have poor sleep due to using smart devices and social networks late at night or due to shift-work.

As a result, people are tired and inactive and tend to consume more food throughout their working hours or at home.

Professor Somers said:

“Normally, fat is preferentially deposited subcutaneously or under the skin.

However, the inadequate sleep appears to redirect fat to the more dangerous visceral compartment.

Importantly, although during recovery sleep there was a decrease in calorie intake and weight, visceral fat continued to increase.

This suggests that inadequate sleep is a previously unrecognized trigger for visceral fat deposition, and that catch-up sleep, at least in the short term, does not reverse the visceral fat accumulation.

In the long term, these findings implicate inadequate sleep as a contributor to the epidemics of obesity, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.”

For this study, a group of adults with healthy weights spent 21 days in an inpatient setting.

They were divided into a normal sleep group who had 9 hours’ sleep and a restricted sleep group who had four hours’ sleep.

Both groups could eat as much as they liked of any food during the study period.

Their body fat, visceral fat, energy intake, energy expenditure, and appetite biomarkers were checked and measured.

The sleep restriction group consumed 17 percent more fat and 13 percent more protein, digesting an extra 300 calories a day.

Dr Naima Covassin, the study’s first author, said:

“The visceral fat accumulation was only detected by CT scan and would otherwise have been missed, especially since the increase in weight was quite modest — only about a pound.

Measures of weight alone would be falsely reassuring in terms of the health consequences of inadequate sleep.

Also concerning are the potential effects of repeated periods of inadequate sleep in terms of progressive and cumulative increases in visceral fat over several years.”

Professor Somers recommended that those people, such as shift-workers, who find it hard to get enough sleep do some behavioural interventions like eating healthy foods and exercise.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (Covassin et al., 2022).

Two-thirds of Americans struggle with their weight.

Changing to a plant-based vegetarian diet can double weight loss, recent research finds.

Not only is going veggie linked to weight loss, it also helps to improve the metabolism by reducing fat in the muscles.

In the study, people on a calorie-restricted diet who went vegetarian lost an average of 14 pounds, compared with only 7 pounds an anti-diabetic diet.

The study shows that not all calories are equal, since both groups consumed the same number of calories.

People on a vegetarian diet also reported feeling fuller and having more energy.

Dr Hana Kahleová, the study’s first author, said:

“What we found is that a plant-based vegetarian diet is a helpful tool for anyone who is serious about staying healthy and lean, especially as we age.

A diet built around plants is naturally rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, which leaves us feeling energized and refreshed instead of hungry and fatigued.

Part of the reason a vegetarian diet works so well for many people is because it’s easy to stick to.”

The study included 72 people with type 2 diabetes.

They were randomly assigned to a normal anti-diabetic diet or a vegetarian diet.

Both diets restricted food intake by 500 calories less than required each day.

The vegetarian diet consisted of grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

Participants were also allowed one portion of low-fat yoghurt each day.

After six months, people on the vegetarian diet lost an average of 14 pounds, compared to 7 pounds on the anti-diabetic diet.

Dr Kahleová explained the study’s results:

“Vegetarian diets proved to be the most effective diets for weight loss.

However, we also showed that a vegetarian diet is much more effective at reducing muscle fat, thus improving metabolism.

This finding is important for people who are trying to lose weight, including those suffering from metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes.

But it is also relevant to anyone who takes their weight management seriously and wants to stay lean and healthy.”

Other studies have shown that vegetarian diets can add up to 10 pounds of weight loss compared to traditional diets.

The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition (Kahleova et al., 2017).

A drink that supports weight loss with healthy nutrients that the body needs.

People who drink more milk lose twice as much weight, research finds.

As little as two-thirds of a glass of milk could increase weight loss by 10 pounds.

Over the six months of the study, milk drinkers lost almost twice as much weight as those drinking less or no milk.

Other dairy products that contain calcium and vitamin D should work just as well.

Research has linked higher levels of both calcium and vitamin D to greater weight loss.

Vitamin D helps the body to absorb calcium.

Unfortunately, around half the world’s population is deficient in vitamin D, while 50 percent of the obese are deficient in calcium.

The study’s write:

“Vitamin D increases calcium absorption into the bloodstream.

It is obtained by sun exposure, from food (mainly fish liver oils, fatty fish, and eggs), fortified foods (such as milk, yogurt, margarine, oil spreads, and breakfast cereal), and supplements.”

For the study, 322 were put on a low-carb, low-fat Mediterranean style diet and tracked for two years.

The results showed, though, that following the diet was not linked to weight loss.

Instead, those that drank more milk had more weight loss.

Those who drank little milk lost only 7 pounds, while those who drank more lost 12 pounds.

The authors explain:

“In summary, our findings suggest that both higher consumption of dairy calcium and increased serum vitamin D are independently associated with successful weight loss.

The causal relation between these factors needs further clarification.”

Calcium deficiency has been linked to larger waistlines, more body fat and higher levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol.

People in the study who lost most weight consumed an average of 580mg of calcium per day.

This is the amount contained in around two glasses of milk.

The study’s authors write:

“The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans include a recommendation for 3 cups (720 mL) of milk per day, an amount that was shown to be beneficial for weight loss in our study.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Shahar et al., 2010).

Taking the two supplements lead to people in the study losing more belly fat and more fat overall.

Calcium supplementation combined with vitamin D can help weight loss, research finds.

Taking the two supplements led to people in the study losing more belly fat and more fat overall.

One study has even shown that people drinking more milk, which contains vitamin D and calcium, can double weight loss.

Up to half the world’s population may be deficient in vitamin D.

A deficiency in vitamin D could help to increase people’s appetite, research suggests.

Foods that are rich in vitamin D include oily fish and eggs, but most people get their vitamin D from the action of sunlight on the skin.

The body cannot produce calcium, so relies on it from food intake.

Foods high in calcium include dairy products, seeds, nuts and dark, leafy greens like spinach and kale.

Around half of people who are obese have a calcium deficiency.

For the study, 53 overweight or obese people were put on a calorie-restricted diet.

However, half were also given a 600 mg calcium supplement and a 125 IU vitamin D3 supplement.

The results showed that people taking calcium and vitamin D together lost 6 pounds of fat, while those in the comparison group only lost 4 pounds of fat.

The study’s authors write:

“Calcium plus vitamin D3 supplementation for 12 weeks augmented body fat and visceral fat loss in very-low calcium consumers during energy restriction.”

Although the exact mechanism for how calcium and vitamin D aid weight loss is not known, the authors speculate:

“The greater decrease in fat mass observed in the calcium+D group of the current study could result from several factors attributing to calcium metabolism.

First, a calcium-rich diet is shown to increase fat oxidation, promote fat cell apoptosis, and reduce lipid absorption due to the formation of insoluble calcium-fatty acid soaps in the intestine, which are eventually excreted in the feces.

Second, high dietary calcium intake is associated with suppression of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25-(OH)2D) levels which in turn act to decrease calcium influx into the cell.”

The study was published in the Nutrition Journal (Zhu et al., 2019).