Category: Weight Loss

Four common foods linked to weight loss.

Making relatively small changes to the dietary balance of foods can lead to dramatic weight loss, research finds.

Four foods that are strongly linked to weight loss are seafood, yogurt, skinless chicken and nuts.

In contrast, processed meats and red meats are the foods most strongly linked to weight gain.

Dr Jessica Smith, the study’s first author, said:

“There is mounting scientific evidence that diets including less low-quality carbohydrates, such as white breads, potatoes, and sweets, and higher in protein-rich foods may be more efficient for weight loss.

We wanted to know how that might apply to preventing weight gain in the first place.”

The study included data from three studies which followed over 120,000 people across 16 years.

The results showed that for avoiding weight gain, low-glycaemic load diets were the best.

Foods to avoid include refined grains, sugars and starches, which are all linked to blood pressure spikes and the development of type 2 diabetes.

Low-fat dairy was not linked to weight loss, Dr Smith said:

“The fat content of dairy products did not seem to be important for weight gain.

In fact, when people consumed more low-fat dairy products, they actually increased their consumption of carbs, which may promote weight gain.

This suggests that people compensate, over years, for the lower calories in low-fat dairy by increasing their carb intake.”

Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, study co-author, said:

“Our study adds to growing new research that counting calories is not the most effective strategy for long-term weight management and prevention.

Some foods help prevent weight gain, others make it worse. Most interestingly, the combination of foods seems to make a big difference.

Our findings suggest we should not only emphasize specific protein-rich foods like fish, nuts, and yogurt to prevent weight gain, but also focus on avoiding refined grains, starches, and sugars in order to maximize the benefits of these healthful protein-rich foods, create new benefits for other foods like eggs and cheese, and reduce the weight gain associated with meats.”

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

The study showed that people who did this lost twice as much weight.

One of the easiest ways to boost weight loss is also the simplest, research finds.

People who keep food diaries lose twice as much weight when on a diet, a recent study finds.

Making a note of what is consumed, even in the most informal way, helps to boost weight loss.

Indeed, studies have shown that the more careful notes people make, the more weight they end up losing.

Dr Jack Hollis, the author of a study on food diaries and weight loss, explained:

“The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost.

Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records.

It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories.”

The key is consistency: not just in keeping to a diet, but also in recording food intake.

The process of keeping a diary does not have to be difficult.

It could be as simple as sending a text message or email message to keep a record.

Keeping a food diary works because it makes people more aware of what they are eating.

Awareness is one of the keys to breaking ingrained habits.

People tend to do the same things each day, like eating, without really noticing.

Bad eating habits can, little by little, lead to weight gain.

Notes raise self-awareness and help increase weight loss.

In the study were 1,685 people who followed the DASH diet for six months.

The DASH diet is designed to be heart healthy and includes many fruits and vegetables.

Thirty minutes of exercise per day was also included in the protocol.

At the end of the study, people had lost an average of 13 pounds.

The results showed, though, that people keeping a food diary lost twice as much weight.

The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (Hollis 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 drink helps to regulate glucose levels.

Green tea can be an effective way to increase weight loss, studies find.

Drinking between two to four cups per day has been linked to weight loss in multiple studies.

Similarly, black tea has also been linked to increased weight loss.

People in the studies sometimes lose weight without making any other dietary or lifestyle changes, apart from drinking tea.

Green tea may be effective because it helps to regulate glucose levels.

The active ingredient is a type of flavonoid called gallated catechins, also known as EGCG.

However, catechins can be damaged by boiling water, so let the water cool a little before adding it to the tea.

Alternatively, EGCG can be bought as a food supplement, which provides a more concentrated hit of the antioxidant.

Drinking green tea itself may be better than green tea supplements because of the way the body metabolises critical catechins in tea.

One potential disadvantage of green tea is that it can increase insulin resistance, which can be a problem for people with diabetes or who are obese.

One study gave mice green tea extract along with a non-toxic resin designed to counteract this side-effect of green tea.

The study used both diabetic and non-diabetic mice who were fed either a normal or high-fat diet.

The results showed that the green tea extract stopped mice gaining weight when they were on a high-fat diet.

The study’s authors write:

“Dietary green tea extract and polyethylene glycol alleviated body weight gain and insulin resistance in diabetic and high-fat mice, thus ameliorating glucose intolerance.

Therefore the green tea extract and polyethylene glycol complex may be a preventative and therapeutic tool for obesity and obesity-related type 2 diabetes without too much concern about side effects.”

The study was published in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (Park et al., 2013).

Around 40 percent of the world’s population is overweight.

Depression is one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, new research finds.

Carrying an extra 20 pounds in weight increases the risk of depression by 17 percent, the study found.

The more fat someone carries, the greater the chance they will experience depression.

In this case, depression is driven by low self-esteem and a poor body image.

Since depression involves a loss of motivation and disinterest in life, it makes it much harder for overweight people who are depressed to lose weight.

Dr Søren Dinesen Østergaard, study co-author, said:

“Our study also indicated that the location of the fat on the body makes no difference to the risk of depression.

This suggests that it is the psychological consequences of being overweight or obese which lead to the increased risk of depression, and not the direct biological effect of the fat.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of over three-quarters of a million people, sourced partly from the UK biobank.

The biobank is a long-term project that tracks the health and well-being of volunteers in the UK.

The results suggest that it is obesity that leads to depression, Dr Østergaard said:

“As it appears to be the psychological consequences of obesity, such as a negative body image and low self-esteem that is the main driving force behind the increased risk of depression, society’s efforts to combat obesity must not stigmatise, as this will probably increase the risk of depression even further.

It is important to bear this in mind so we can avoid doing more harm than good in the effort to curb the obesity epidemic.”

Around 40 percent of the world’s population is overweight, Dr Østergaard said.

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Speed et al., 2019).

This vitamin causes weight loss by converting “bad” white fat tissue into “good” brown fat to generate heat in cold weather.

Vitamin A could be a good treatment candidate for obesity due to its ability to switch white fat tissue to brown fat.

A study reveals that the mount of vitamin A increases when a person is exposed to cold conditions.

Vitamin A is involved in “fat transformation” a process where “bad” white fat is converted to “good” brown adipose tissue.

The body will use this type of fat for producing energy and heat, therefore the increased transformation of fat by vitamin A can be used as a new promising way for weight loss and treating obesity.

White and brown fat cells are two types of fat in mammals, including humans.

The white one is the body’s energy storage in the form of fat mostly found in the upper thighs, the abdominal and bottom area.

Brown fat is found in small deposits, used for producing energy and heat, mainly around the shoulders, neck, and kidneys.

Eating too much and inactivity cause our body to store the extra calories in white fat but if this type of fat is converted into brown fat then there is a chance to avoid obesity or even gaining weight.

Dr Florian Kiefer and his team show that exposure to cold increases the retinol-binding protein that transports vitamin A in the blood.

Vitamin A is usually stored in the liver but instead the application of cold pushes vitamin A to relocate towards the adipose tissue known as body fat.

This process causes white fat to turn to “browning” leading to a larger amount of fat burning and so weight lose.

The research team noticed that by blocking retinol-binding protein in mice, both vitamin A mediated by cold and conversion of the white fat to the brown fat were reduced.

Dr Kiefer explained:

“As a consequence, fat oxidation and heat production were perturbed so that the mice were no longer able to protect themselves against the cold.

In contrast, the addition of vitamin A to human white fat cells led to the expression of brown fat cell characteristics, with increased metabolic activity and energy consumption.”

However, vitamin A supplementation requires clinical supervision as excessive vitamin A intake has serious side effects.

Dr Kiefer said:

“Our results show that vitamin A plays an important role in the function of adipose tissue and affects global energy metabolism.

However, this is not an argument for consuming large amounts of vitamin A supplements if not prescribed, because it is critical that vitamin A is transported to the right cells at the right time.

We have discovered a new mechanism by which vitamin A regulates lipid combustion and heat generation in cold conditions.

This could help us to develop new therapeutic interventions that exploit this specific mechanism.”

The study was published in the journal Molecular Metabolism (Fenzl et al., 2020).

Self-control can be boosted by talking to yourself the right way.

Talking to oneself in the third person helps to boost healthy eating and may aid weight loss, recent research finds.

For example, instead of saying “What do I want for lunch?”, you say “What does Jo want for lunch?”

People in the study who used this simple self-distancing technique made fewer unhealthy food choices.

The technique works because it boosts self-control.

Thinking in the third-person helps people ignore the most tempting aspects of unhealthy foods.

The conclusions come from a study of 244 people, some of whom were dieting.

They were then asked to chose between healthy and unhealthy foods.

Sometimes people asked themselves “What do I want?” and other times they asked themselves “[Name], what do you want?”

The results showed that dieters and nondieters who thought about themselves in the third-person chose fewer unhealthy foods.

Ms Celina Furman, the study’s first author, said:

“Reflecting on one’s decisions using one’s own name might enhance one’s ability to follow through with their goals, which can often be undermined by strong situational lures (such as tempting foods).”

Even relatively minor changes to eating can have a larger impact on people’s lives, said Dr Ashley Gearhardt, study co-author:

“We do know that even reducing caloric intake by a couple hundred calories a day can be important for preventing unhealthy weight gain and promoting weight loss.

We need to do additional studies in the future about the impact of distanced self-talk on actual caloric intake, but even small improvements can lead to big public health gains over time.”

Other effective mental techniques to boost weight loss include being reminded how difficult it is to lose weight, thinking differently and using distractions.

The study was published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science (Furman et al., 2020).

The top tips for either diet — whether low-carb or low-fat — were to eat less refined flour and less sugar.

Both a low-fat and a low-carbohydrate approach boost weight loss, recent research finds.

Both diets are similarly effective, with people in the study losing an average of 13 pounds in one year.

The top tips for either diet — whether low-carb or low-fat — were to eat less refined flour and less sugar.

More fruit and vegetables and more whole foods also help to boost weight loss.

Professor Christopher Gardner, the study’s first author, said:

“We’ve all heard stories of a friend who went on one diet — it worked great — and then another friend tried the same diet, and it didn’t work at all.

It’s because we’re all very different, and we’re just starting to understand the reasons for this diversity.

Maybe we shouldn’t be asking what’s the best diet, but what’s the best diet for whom?”

The study included 609 people aged 18 to 50 who were all overweight.

Half were put on a low-fat diet, the rest on a low-carb diet.

The emphasis was on a high-quality low-fat or low-carb diet, said Professor Gardner:

“We made sure to tell everybody, regardless of which diet they were on, to go to the farmer’s market, and don’t buy processed convenience food crap.

Also, we advised them to diet in a way that didn’t make them feel hungry or deprived — otherwise it’s hard to maintain the diet in the long run.

We wanted them to choose a low-fat or low-carb diet plan that they could potentially follow forever, rather than a diet that they’d drop when the study ended.”

After 12 months, the results showed that both groups had lost an average of 13 pounds.

Within this there was huge variation, with some dropping 60 pounds while a few gained 15 to 20 pounds.

However, it did not matter which diet people were on.

Professor Gardner said:

“On both sides, we heard from people who had lost the most weight that we had helped them change their relationship to food, and that now they were more thoughtful about how they ate.”

The study was published in JAMA (Gardner et al., 2018).

Eating chocolate at a certain time of the day can help with losing belly fat and lowering blood sugar levels.

Eating a high amount of chocolate in the first hour of the day could boost fat loss and lower blood sugar.

A study found that consuming 100 g of chocolate within an hour of waking up could help with burning fat, reduce blood glucose levels, and decrease daily cortisol levels (a stress hormone).

Milk chocolate, because of its high fat and sugar content, seems like a good recipe to put on weight, especially in postmenopausal women who are more likely to gain weight.

However, the current study suggests that the “timing” of chocolate intake affects microbiota composition and function, hunger, and fat burn.

For this study, 19 postmenopausal women were asked to consume 100 g of milk chocolate for 2 weeks either within an hour of waking up or within an hour before bedtime.

Weight gain and other factors such as blood glucose levels, hunger, and stress levels related to appetite were compared to a two-week period with no chocolate intake.

The results show that during the two weeks of chocolate intake women were less hungry, craving fewer sweets and so lost more weight.

Eating chocolate in the morning provided other benefits like reduced cortisol levels during the day and consequently lower stress-related appetite.

To some extent this may explain why those women when consuming chocolate in the morning showed better caloric compensation, adjusting their intake in response to changes in their daily calories.

The reduction in craving sweets might be due to longer satisfaction and improved mood from the release of endorphins in the brain.

A summary of the findings:

• Eating chocolate in the morning or in the evening didn’t cause any weight gain.
• Chocolate intake can influence microbiota composition, hunger and appetite, and sleep.
• Eating a fair amount of chocolate during breakfast time could help in losing belly fat and lower blood sugar levels.
• Eating chocolate in the morning prompted lipid oxidation (breaking down fatty acids) 26 percent more than evening intake.
• Eating chocolate in the evening prompted carbohydrate oxidation 35 percent higher than morning chocolate.

Dr Frank Scheer, the study’s senior author, said:

“Our findings highlight that not only ‘what’ but also ‘when’ we eat can impact physiological mechanisms involved in the regulation of body weight.”

Dr Marta Garaulet, study co-author, said:

“Our volunteers did not gain weight despite increasing caloric intake.

Our results show that chocolate reduced ad libitum energy intake, consistent with the observed reduction in hunger, appetite and the desire for sweets shown in previous studies.”

Past studies have suggested that dark chocolate can lower the craving for fatty foods, sweet, and salty treats due to increased satiety and reducing the desire to eat more.

The study was published in The FASEB Journal (Hernández‐González et al., 2021).

Some studies have suggested that one particular type of activity may be best for weight loss.

The best type of exercise for weight loss is the one that suits the individual, research suggests.

The study compared endurance exercise, strength training, a combination, or just trying to meet the weekly target for physical activity in whatever way works.

All three approaches produced a similar amount of weight loss, when combined with a low-calorie diet.

The results come from a study of 96 obese people who took part in a 22-week program.

Everyone in the study reduced their calorie intake while trying different types of exercise.

Some did endurance exercise like cycling, running or using a elliptical machine.

Some did strength training, such as bench presses, bicep curls and squats.

Still others did a combination of the two.

A comparison group were just told to stay active and meet the minimum activity guidelines.

These involve doing 30-60 minutes of moderate activity on most days of the week.

Things like taking the stairs and walking briskly would count.

The results showed that all the types of exercise and diet combinations reduced body weight, waistline, fat and increased lean muscle mass.

The authors write:

“The present study shows that, when adhered to alongside a hypocaloric diet, different exercise training programs (endurance, strength, or their combination) or the following of physical activity recommendations are equally efficient in terms of improving body weight and body composition variables in obesity management.”

One calorie burned in exercise is not the same as one not ingested.”

Other studies have suggested that one particular type of activity may be best for weight loss.

For example, one study found that jogging is the best exercise for those with a genetic susceptibility to weight gain.

A range of studies have found that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one of the best exercises for weight loss.

However, HIIT can be difficult for people to stick to.

In the end, the current study’s suggestion that it comes down to the individual is the best advice.

The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology (Benito et al., 2015).