Category: Weight Loss

Weight loss can be aided by a number of vitamins and supplements, research finds.

A number of vitamins and supplements are linked to weight loss, according to research.

Vitamin D3 supplements can aid weight loss, a new review of 10 studies has found.

People in the studies took around 1,000 IU up to 20,000 IU per day.

Compared to control groups, people taking vitamin D3 had reduced body mass indexes and trimmer waists.

One study has even shown that taking 2000 IU can increase weight loss by 50 percent.

People who are overweight or obese frequently have a deficiency in vitamin D3, also known as cholecalciferol.

The research was a review of 11 separate studies including almost 1,000 overweight and obese people in total.

All were taking various amounts of vitamin D3 supplementation to help with weight loss.

Professor Simone Perna, the study’s author, explained the studies results:

“The systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 RCTs with more than 900 subjects lasting between 1 to 12 months after cholecalciferol [vitamin 3] supplementation (from 25,000 to 600,000 IU monthly), revealed that cholecalciferol has a desirable effect on weight loss by reducing BMI and waist circumference in overweight and obese individuals.”

A number of mechanisms could be involved in vitamin D3 aiding weight loss.

It may help to suppress fat accumulation, Professor Perna writes:

“Cholecalciferol [vitamin D3] has a direct role in suppressing the PTH hormone, which promotes and triggers fat accumulation in the adipose tissue via increasing intracellular calcium.”

Increasing calcium intake is also thought to help with weight loss, said Professor Perna:

“Some studies showed that taking Ca supplements in addition to cholecalciferol increased the inverse relationship and decreased the fat mass that was attributed to calcium metabolism.

It is believed that a calcium-rich diet increases fat oxidation, promotes fat cell apoptosis and decreases lipid absorption through the process of insoluble calcium-fatty acid soap formation in the intestine.”

The study was published in the journal Medicina (Perna et al., 2019).

The study showed that the supplements led to significantly increased weight loss.

Taking probiotics can increase weight loss over 12 weeks, research finds.

Those in the study who took probiotics achieved significantly more weight loss than a control group.

Probiotics are live microorganisms that have multiple health benefits.

The probiotics taken in the study, including Bifidobacterium longum, also helped to restore diversity in the gut bacteria.

Studies have found that probiotics can aid weight loss in adults and children.

Professor Rui-Min Chen, the study’s first author, said:

“Our findings suggest that probiotic supplementation may help with weight loss and improve metabolic health in obese children, and that this may be an effective strategy for the prevention and treatment of obesity in the future.”

The study included 54 children aged 6-14 years-old.

All the children were put on a diet and exercise regime, but only half were given probiotic supplements.

The supplement included a cocktail of three probiotics: Bifidobacterium longum, Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus.

The results showed that the supplements led to significantly increased weight loss.

Probiotics also improved markers of metabolic health, such as lipid levels, blood glucose and insulin levels.

Dr Harriët Schellekens, a neuroscientist who was not involved in the study, said:

“This study delivers important evidence that probiotic supplementation can indeed be useful in the fight against obesity.

It is very promising that only 12 weeks of supplementation of the probiotic cocktail was able to reduce Body Mass Index (BMI) and also led to the improvement of other metabolic markers of obesity, including a reduction in fasting glucose levels.

This reinforces the concept of the link between the gut microbiome and metabolic disease, which is a growing area of obesity research.”

There is still reason to be cautious, though, said Professor Chen:

“Other studies have also reported no benefits from probiotic treatment in obese children but these were much shorter in duration.”

The study was presented at the 58th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in Vienna, Austria (Chen et al., 2019).

The extract stimulates the “good” fat in the body, resulting in weight loss.

Mulberries may boost weight loss, research finds.

They can also lower blood pressure and decrease ‘bad’ cholesterol.

Mulberries contain a natural compound called rutin that activates brown fat and improves energy metabolism, the process of producing energy from food, helping boost weight loss.

Rutin is a compound found in many fruits and vegetables, especially in citrus fruits (citrus flavonoid).

Buckwheat, capers, raspberries, asparagus, tomatoes, plums, apricots, grapes, green tea and olives are also high in rutin.

A study used rutin extracted from mulberry to find out if this compound can reduce the fat in body cells.

They used obese mice for this study and fed them 1 mg/ml of rutin by adding it to their drinking water for 10 weeks.

Rutin treatment reduced body fat remarkably, increased calorie burning and lowered blood glucose levels.

Rutin can stimulate brown fat, a specific fat that gets activated when the body feels cold.

This good fat generates heat by burning energy to keep the body temperature under control during exposure to cold conditions.

Rutin has the ability to act as a cold mimetic by increasing the action of a protein coding gene in brown fat cells.

Moreover, rutin can produce brown-like (beige) fat in the innermost layer of skin that is made of fat and connective tissues.

Therefore, the increased activity of brown fat cells and formation of beige fat cells can be an effective way to fight obesity and its related disorders, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Dr Wanzhu Jin, study co-author, said:

“The beneficial effects of rutin on BAT-mediated metabolic improvement have evoked a substantial interest in the potential treatment for obesity and its related diseases, such as diabetes.

In line with this idea, discovery of more safe and effective BAT activators is desired to deal with obesity and its related diseases.”

Rutin is completely safe since it is used clinically for the treatment of capillary fragility (when the smallest blood vessels become weak) without showing any side effect.

In general, mulberry is high in antioxidants and flavonoids, providing many health benefits such as anti-cancer activity, an anti-inflammatory effect and lowering of blood sugar and cholesterol levels.

The study was published in The FASEB Journal (Yuan et al., 2016).

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).