Category: Weight Loss

Study identifies belief that could be crucial to inspiring healthy eating and weight loss.

People who believe they have control of their weight — and they were not ‘born fat’ — eat more healthily, a study finds.

Believing that DNA does not totally determine weight is also linked to higher personal well-being.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Health Education & Behavior, explain:

“If an individual believes weight to be outside of the influence of diet and exercise, she or he may engage in more behaviors that are rewarding in the short term, such as eating unhealthful foods and avoiding exercise, rather than healthful behaviors with more long-term benefits for weight management.

By fighting the perception that weight is unchangeable, health care providers may be able to increase healthful behaviors among their patients.” (Parent & Alquist, 2015)

The study of almost 10,000 people found that with age, believing you are in control of your weight was linked to more healthy eating behaviour.

People who felt in control took more notice of nutrition labels on food and were more likely to have fruit and vegetables at home.

They were also less likely to eat frozen meals, unhealthy restaurant food and ‘ready-to-eat’ foods.

People who thought their weight was controllable also took more exercise and had higher well-being.

The study found little difference between men and women:

“Although previous research has found gender differences in weight as a motivation for exercise and healthful eating, we did not find evidence that gender affected the relationship between health beliefs and physical activity or healthful eating.

However, we found evidence that the relationship between belief in weight changeability and exercise, healthful eating, and unhealthful eating differs by age.”

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One dietary ingredient can help boost weight loss.

A high-protein, low-calorie diet is one of the most effective for weight loss, research suggests.

People consuming more protein as part of a calorie-controlled diet lost 18 pounds, on average, over six months.

In addition, the older adults in the study maintained their muscle mass and bone density.

Previous studies have shown that adding more lean meats and low-fat dairy boosts weight loss compared with just restricting calories.

Higher protein intake is thought to make people feel more satisfied, so decreasing calorie intake.

Diets containing more protein have been linked to better sleep, which can benefit weight loss.

Sticking to around 30 percent of calories from proteins also helps to lower blood sugar and lipid levels.

Dr Kristen Beavers, study co-author, said:

“Doctors hesitate to recommend weight loss for fear that losing muscle and bone could cause mobility issues or increase the risk of injury.

This study suggests that a diet high in protein and low in calories can give seniors the health benefits of weight loss while keeping the muscle and bone they need for better quality of life as they age.”

The study included 96 older obese adults who were put on one of two diets.

Half were put on a six-month low-calorie diet with extra protein.

People ate 1 gram of protein each day for each kilogram of their body weight.

Participants were also given adequate levels of calcium and vitamin D, which have also been linked to weight loss.

The other half were put on a weight maintenance diet.

The results showed that those on the high protein diet lost 18 pounds, largely of fat.

The fat loss was mostly in areas that are important for decreasing cardiovascular risk — around the centre of the body.

Study participants also preserved their muscle mass.

The study was published in the journal Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism (Serra et al., 2019).

This drink helps fight obesity plus offers other health benefits.

Yerba mate tea is a herbal tea which is an excellent source of flavonoids, amino acids, vitamin C, B1 and B2 , and minerals providing several health benefits.

This traditional southeastern Latin American tea is sold as a stimulant due to its caffeine and methylxanthines content.

Yerba tea can decrease fat cells and help fight obesity, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and other cardiovascular risk factors, and also promote the immune system.

Mate tea contains a naturally occurring substance called methylxanthines, which is similar to caffeine and theobromine.

Theobromine is the bitter part of yerba mate, cocoa products, green and black teas which have also been shown to lower blood pressure and “bad” cholesterol (LDL).

According to a recent study, the caffeine in mate tea can decrease storage of fat in the cells, lower triglyceride production, and help weight loss.

In this study, rats were fed a high-fat plus high-sucrose diet with 0.1 percent of caffeine extracted from mate tea.

Consuming coffee was highly effective as it reduced the side-effects of this obesogenic diet in rats.

They gained 22 percent less body fat and 16 percent less weight compared to other rats that had decaffeinated mate tea instead.

Drinking 4 cups of brewed coffee per day is equivalent to the 0.1 percent caffeine that was used in this study.

Mate tea contains more caffeine than tea but less caffeine than black coffee.

The caffeine content of mate tea per cup is about 80 mg whereas a cup of coffee contains, on average, twice the amount caffeine.

Dr Elvira Gonzalez de Mejia, study co-author, said:

“Considering the findings, mate tea and caffeine can be considered anti-obesity agents.

The results of this research could be scaled to humans to understand the roles of mate tea and caffeine as potential strategies to prevent overweight and obesity, as well as the subsequent metabolic disorders associated with these conditions.”

The research team also found that storage of fat in various cells and tissues dropped by 20 to 41 percent in rats no matter whether they were fed mate caffeine extracts, synthetic caffeine, or black coffee.

In addition, they looked at the effect of some of expression of genes linked to lipid metabolism and obesity.

These were lipoprotein lipase (LPL ) and fatty acid synthase (FASN) genes.

Dr de Mejia explained:

“The consumption of caffeine from mate or from other sources alleviated the negative impact of a high-fat, high-sucrose diet on body composition due to the modulation of certain lipogenic enzymes in both adipose tissue and the liver.

The decreased expression of Fasn and Lpl brought about lower synthesis and accumulation of triglycerides in the adipose tissue.”

The study was published in Journal of Functional Foods (Zapata, et al., 2019).

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).