Category: Weight Loss

Three tips to understand this common barrier to weight loss.

The biggest barrier to weight loss is actually psychological, a survey has found.

Ninety percent of people do not guess this, citing diet and exercise instead.

However, eating has an emotional component and psychological well-being is important to achieve and maintain weight loss.

Understanding the cause of overeating is the key to weight loss.

People frequently have an emotional connection with food — it is this that really drives overeating.

The survey of over one thousand Americans asked them about the biggest barriers to weight loss.

The results showed that:

• 26 percent thought the biggest barrier to weight loss was poor nutrition.
• 31 percent mentioned a lack of exercise.
• 17 percent thought it was too costly to be healthy.
• 12 percent mentioned a lack of time.

Just 10 percent thought that mental health was important to weight loss.

Dr Diane Robinson, a neuropsychologist at Orlando Health, said:

“Most people focus almost entirely on the physical aspects of weight loss, like diet and exercise.

But there is an emotional component to food that the vast majority of people simply overlook and it can quickly sabotage their efforts.”

People often use food to comfort themselves, which is what leads to overeating, said Dr Robinson:

“If we’re aware of it or not, we are conditioned to use food not only for nourishment, but for comfort.

That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, as long as we acknowledge it and deal with it appropriately.”

Dr Robinson gives three tips for understand emotional eating:

1. Keep a daily diary of mood and food. Look for patterns, such as eating particular foods in response to certain moods.
2. Identify which foods make you feel good. Is it about evoking a memory or are you eating from stress?
3. Before eating, think: do I need this because I’m hungry or is it something else (like stress). If it’s stress, food isn’t the way to deal with it.

The survey was commissioned by Orlando Health.

People who did this consistently lost the most weight, research finds.

Keeping a food diary is linked to the most weight loss by new research.

Just fifteen minutes per day making a note of each meal or snack boosts people’s awareness of what they are eating.

People in the study who did this each day lost an average of 10 percent of their body weight.

Those who monitor their food intake consistently and quickly lose the most weight.

In fact, other studies have shown that food diaries can double weight loss.

Although people imagine keeping a food diary will be tiring, it is not that bad.

Professor Jean Harvey study co-author, said:

“People hate it; they think it’s onerous and awful, but the question we had was: How much time does dietary self-monitoring really take?

The answer is, not very much.”

For the study, 142 people followed an online weight management program.

They visited a website to record how much they had eaten and what exercise they had done.

It was clear from the results that people who logged their intake more often lost the most weight.

Professor Harvey said:

“Those who self-monitored three or more time per day, and were consistent day after day, were the most successful.

It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that makes the difference — not the time spent or the details included.”

A food diary does not have to be formal — it could be something as simple as sending yourself an email or text message.

Having the right expectations helps people stick to their task, said Professor Harvey:

“We know people do better when they have the right expectations.

We’ve been able to tell them that they should exercise 200 minutes per week.

But when we asked them to write down all their foods, we could never say how long it would take.

Now we can.

It’s highly effective, and it’s not as hard as people think.”

The study was published in the journal Obesity (Harvey et al., 2019).

This common mineral could increase weight loss by up to six times.

Taking a calcium supplement can increase weight loss by up to six times, a study has found.

Calcium deficient women who took a supplement lost 13 pounds, in comparison to 2 pounds in a control group.

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

Calcium is lost every day through through sweat, hair, nails and skin.

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

Calcium deficiency is thought to encourage the brain to increase food intake to obtain more of the mineral.

Studies have also shown that people who are calcium deficient have more body fat, larger waistlines and higher levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL).

The study involved 63 obese or overweight women who took part in a 15-week weight loss program.

Before starting the program, their calcium intake was 50 percent down.

Instead of the recommended 1000 mg per day, they were consuming less than 600 mg.

Half were given 1200 mg per day of calcium and the other half a placebo.

After following the diet, the results showed that those taking the supplement lost 13 pounds, compared to only 2 pounds in the placebo group.

Professor Angelo Tremblay, who led the study, said:

“Our hypothesis is that the brain can detect the lack of calcium and seeks to compensate by spurring food intake, which obviously works against the goals of any weight loss program.

Sufficient calcium intake seems to stifle the desire to eat more.”

Another study has shown that decreasing intake of dairy products, which contain a lot of calcium, is linked to putting on weight.

Getting enough calcium is also linked to lower risk for cardiovascular disease.

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

Try this trick and see if it works, says Professor Tim Spector.

Skipping breakfast IS linked to weight loss, new research shows.

Contrary to the popular belief, people who skip breakfast do NOT eat more later in the day to compensate.

Instead, they end up eating an average of 260 calories less per day.

People who skip breakfast feel no hungrier in the afternoon, neither are they less energetic.

Skipping breakfast could add up to around one pound of weight loss over several months.

The conclusions come from a review of 13 separate randomised controlled trials — the gold standard in science.

All the trials examined how much difference eating breakfast had on people’s weight and energy intake.

Whether people were overweight or not, skipping breakfast helped them lose weight and did not cause them to gain it.

The results showed that breakfast skippers ate fewer calories overall and therefore lost weight.

The findings may come as a surprise to many, writes Professor Tim Spector, in a linked article in the British Medical Journal:

“The mantra of breakfast being the most important meal of the day has been ingrained in most of us from an early age—from our mother’s mouth as we were late for school to government campaigns to get us to “go to work on an egg.”

We are told that breakfast helps our metabolism and that skipping it will make us much hungrier so we’ll over-eat and put on weight.”

Instead, this review finds the exact opposite, writes Professor Spector:

“…no evidence supports the claim that skipping breakfast makes you gain weight or adversely reduces your resting
metabolic rate.

Furthermore, reasonable evidence now suggests that skipping breakfast can actually be a useful strategy to reduce weight.”

Try skipping breakfast and see if it work, says Professor Spector:

“…no harm can be done in trying out your own personal experiments in skipping breakfast.”

The study was published in the BMJ (Sievert et al., 2019).

Weight loss is hard enough without this surprising barrier.

Being criticised by others is one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, research finds.

Young people who are teased about their weight put on an average of 7 pounds more, compared to those not teased.

Far from motivating change, teasing or criticism causes people to put on more weight.

Teasing and criticism may cause people to engage in unhealthy behaviours like overeating and avoiding exercise.

Criticism may increase levels of the ‘stress’ hormone cortisol, which has also been linked to weight gain.

A previous study has also found that people criticised by their families have difficulty losing weight.

Women criticised by their family about their weight ended up putting on more weight, that study showed.

In contrast, those that received unconditional acceptance from their family lost over five times as much.

Feeling better about themselves likely encouraged people to eat more healthily.

Receiving acceptance from others may also reduce stress, leading to less weight gain.

The latest study involved 110 young people who were followed over 15 years.

Many were overweight and all were asked whether and how much they were teased about this.

They were asked if they agreed with statements such as:

• People laughed at you for trying out for sports because you were heavy.
• People called you names like “fatso”.
• People pointed at you because you were overweight.
• People snickered about your heaviness when you walked into a room alone.

The results showed that young people who experienced the most teasing put on an average of 0.44 pounds each year, compared with those not teased at all.

Over the 15 years of the study, this meant an average weight gain of almost 7 pounds.

The study was published in the journal Pediatric Obesity (Schvey et al., 2019).

The weight loss achieved in this study is one of the largest ever without the use of an aggressive diet or medication.

Acceptance therapy is the most effective therapy for weight loss without dieting, new research finds.

The therapy helps people accept that weight control will be uncomfortable and that pleasure will be reduced.

Accepting these things in advance helps people work harder to improve themselves.

It also reduces the damaging effects of any setbacks.

Fascinatingly, accepting difficulties makes them easier to surmount.

People in the study lost 13.3 percent of their initial weight within one year.

They were also more likely to maintain this weight loss for longer than those receiving an older style of therapy.

For the study, 190 people received either an acceptance-based therapy or standard behavioural treatment.

The key extra components of acceptance therapy are:

• Choosing goals based on life values, such as living a long life.
• Accepting that weight control can be uncomfortable and may reduce pleasure in some ways.
• Learning the cues — such as feeling down — that can affect eating and exercising behaviour.

The weight loss achieved in this study is one of the largest ever without the use of an aggressive diet or medication.

Professor Evan Forman, the study’s first author, said:

“We’re excited to share this new proven therapy with the weight-loss community, and in fact this is one of the first rigorous, randomized clinical trials to show that an alternative treatment results in greater weight loss than the gold standard, traditional form of behavioral treatment.”

The study was published in the journal Obesity (Forman et al., 2016).

The mineral is linked to losing six times more weight.

Women who take a calcium supplement lose six times as much weight, one study has found.

Women taking the calcium supplement dropped 13 pounds in 15 weeks on a weight loss program, in comparison to only 2 pounds in a control group.

It is thought that calcium deficiency encourages the brain to increase food intake to get more of the essential mineral.

Studies have also shown that people who are calcium deficient have more body fat, larger waistlines and higher levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol (LDL).

Another study has shown that decreasing intake of dairy products, which contain a lot of calcium, is linked to putting on weight.

Getting enough calcium is also linked to lower risk for cardiovascular disease.

Around half of all obese people are calcium deficient.

For the study, 63 overweight or obese women followed a 15-week weight loss program.

The analysis showed that they consumed less than 600 mg of calcium per day, whereas the recommended intake is 1000 mg.

Along with following a diet, they also took 1200 mg of calcium per day or a placebo.

The results showed that those taking the calcium lost an average of 13 pounds, in comparison to just 2 pounds in the placebo group.

However, these results were limited to those who had low levels of calcium intake initially.

Professor Angelo Tremblay, who led the study, said:

“Our hypothesis is that the brain can detect the lack of calcium and seeks to compensate by spurring food intake, which obviously works against the goals of any weight loss program.

Sufficient calcium intake seems to stifle the desire to eat more.”

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

People lost weight without following any special diet or changing their lifestyle.

Having a light lunch is one of the simplest ways of losing weight, research finds.

People in the study lost weight despite not following any special diet or changing their lifestyle.

They ate a ‘portion-controlled’ light lunch every day for two weeks, but could eat whatever they liked at other times.

Participants lost an average of just over 1 pound in two weeks.

If they had continued at this rate, they would have lost at least 25 pounds in a year, the scientists estimate.

Carly Pacanowski, who co-authored the study, said:

“Making small reductions in energy intake to compensate for the increasing number of calories available in our food environment may help prevent further weight gain, and one way of doing this could be to consume portion-controlled lunches a few times a week.”

The study involved 17 people who ate what they liked apart from a sticking to a light lunch.

The results showed that people did not compensate for the light lunch by eating more at other times — so they lost weight.

On average, they consumed 250 fewer calories per day and lost 1.1 pounds.

Professor David Levitsky, the study’s first author, said:

“The results confirm that humans do not regulate energy intake with any precision.

Over a year, such a regimen would result in losing at least 25 pounds.”

The study was published in the journal Appetite (Levitsky & Pacanowski, 2011).

The extract increases weight loss and halves feelings of hunger.

A small amount of spinach extract increases weight loss by 43 percent, research finds.

The extract — which contains leafy membranes called thylakoids — also reduces feelings of hunger by 95 percent.

Spinach extract slows down the digestion process, helping people feel fuller and eat less.

People in the study simply drank the extract before breakfast and ate their usual three meals a day.

Professor Charlotte Erlanson-Albertsson, study co-author, said:

“Our analyses show that having a drink containing thylakoids before breakfast reduces cravings and keeps you feeling more satisfied all day.”

The study included 38 overweight women who were tracked for three months.

Half of the women were given 5 grams of the spinach extract in a drink before breakfast.

Other than that, the women did not follow a diet but were told to cut out snacking and increase their physical activity.

Professor Erlanson-Albertsson explained the results:

“In the study, the control group lost an average of 3.5 kg while the group that was given thylakoids lost 5 kg.

The thylakoid group also found that it was easier to stick to three meals a day — and they did not experience any cravings.”

One problem for people trying to lose weight is that many modern processed foods are easily broken down by the body.

This means it is hard to feel satisfied by food, so cravings return quickly.

Modern foods are effectively ‘pre-chewed’ said Professor Erlanson-Albertsson:

“It is about making use of the time it takes to digest our food.

There is nothing wrong with our digestive system, but it doesn’t work well with the modern ‘pre-chewed’ food.

The thylakoids extend digestion, producing a feeling of satiety.

This means that we are able to stick to the diet we are meant for without snacks and unnecessary foods like sweets, crisps and such.”

The study was published in the journal Appetite (Montelius et al., 2014).

Following this advice could mean losing 20 pounds more.

The best weight loss technique is to keep a simple note of what you are eating, research finds.

Two other critical pieces of advice are to avoid eating in restaurants and to eat regular meals.

Skipping meals has even been linked to weight gain.

Following all three pieces of advice together could mean losing 20 pounds more.

The conclusions come from a study of 123 overweight women who went on a year-long weight loss program.

Dr Anne McTiernan, who led the study, explained the key finding:

“For individuals who are trying to lose weight, the No. 1 piece of advice based on these study results would be to keep a food journal to help meet daily calorie goals.

It is difficult to make changes to your diet when you are not paying close attention to what you are eating.”

Dr McTiernan added that a food diary doesn’t have to be fancy:

“While the study provided a printed booklet for the women to record their food and beverage consumption, a food journal doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

Any notebook or pad of paper that is easily carried or an online program that can be accessed any time through a smartphone or tablet should work fine.”

The results showed that keeping a food diary was linked to losing six more pounds over the year of the study.

Skipping meals was linked to losing 8 fewer pounds.

Dr McTiernan thinks this could enhance cravings:

“The mechanism is not completely clear, but we think that skipping meals or fasting might cause you to respond more favorably to high-calorie foods and therefore take in more calories overall.

We also think skipping meals might cluster together with other behaviors.

For instance, the lack of time and effort spent on planning and preparing meals may lead a person to skip meals and/or eat out more.”

Women in the study lost an average of 10% of their body weight, which was the goal.

The study was published in the journal Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Kong et al., 2012).