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I HAVE MOVED! My main blog as of Sept of 2010 is TWO YEARS TO HAPPY WEIGHT AFTER. Visit me there. My post links in the updates below will link up to the new blog. THANKS for reading!
Created by MyFitnessPal - Nutrition Facts For Foods
Just 30 calories per day of chocolate may be enough to help reduce your blood pressure. As far as serving sizes go, that’s about a Hershey’s Kiss worth.--from "Give Your Blood Pressure This Daily Treat" at REAL AGE site
But you have to eat the right kind of chocolate, according to Joseph Maroon, MD, author of The Longevity Factor. He recommends nonsweetened or minimally sweetened dark chocolate that’s at least 70 percent cocoa.
People in a study who had low blood concentrations of vitamin C and walked on a treadmill for an hour burned 25 percent less fat than people with adequate C. But a dose of C brought fat-burning levels back up to par. Why? Seems C is essential for creating carnitine, a substance that turns fat into fuel. Find out how much C you need with this tool.--from "Slim Down with This Vitamin" at RealAge.Com
Acai Berries:The berries are so nutritious, writes John La Puma, MD, author of ChefMD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine, that they may help lower bad cholesterol, inhibit inflammation, and fight off arthritis. They may even have cancer-fighting powers. In a lab study, acai berry extract killed between 45 and 86 percent of a sample of human leukemia--from "The Highest Anti-Oxidant Fruit Ever" at Real Age
cells.
The antioxidant quotient is reason enough to eat this fruit, but acai berries are also chock-full of B vitamins, magnesium, copper, zinc, phosphorus, and sulfur.
Starting your day with a large meal packed with both carbohydrates and lean protein, and even a small piece of chocolate, can help lessen cravings and hunger the rest of the day, which can lead to significant weight loss, new research suggests.--from "Big, Well-Balanced Breakfast Aids Weight Loss"
To combat both the addiction cycle and the hunger that inevitably seems to come with calorie reduction, Jakubowicz and her colleagues designed the "big breakfast" diet. In this eating plan, your breakfast accounts for roughly half of your daily calories, and breakfast includes milk, 3 ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate or candy.
The reason for fruit's brain-boosting effect? It's all about the flavonoids, those amazing antioxidants that fight disease and might be one of your best defenses against cognitive decline. In a study, people who had the highest flavonoid intake performed best throughout a 10-year period on tests of verbal fluency, logical reasoning, and visual memory.
{W}eight loss maintenance may get easier over time; after individuals have successfully maintained their weight loss for 2–5 y, the chance of longer-term success greatly increases. Continued adherence to diet and exercise strategies, low levels of depression and disinhibition, and medical triggers for weight loss are also associated with long-term success.
Bring the color blue into your life more often. There’s a good reason you won’t see many fast-food restaurants decorated in blue: Believe it or not, the color blue functions as an appetite suppressant. So serve up dinner on blue plates, dress in blue while you eat, and cover your table with a blue tablecloth. Conversely, avoid red, yellow, and orange in your dining areas. Studies find they encourage eating.
Eating a diet that is low in calorie density allows people to eat satisfying portions of food, and this may decrease feelings of hunger and deprivation while reducing calories," study author Dr. Julia A. Ello-Martin said in a prepared statement.
She and her colleagues compared 71 obese women, ages 22 to 60, who ate either a reduced-fat diet or a reduced-fat diet that also included water-rich foods.
After one year, both groups showed significant weight loss and a decrease in the calorie density of their diets. But the women on the fat-reduced/water-rich diet lost more weight during the first six months of the study -- 19.6 lbs. vs. 14.7 lbs.
The researchers found that the women on the reduced-fat/water-rich diet ate 25 percent more food by weight and felt less hungry than the women on the reduced-fat diet.
The statistics on weight loss are not heartening. Most who lose--yes, the vast majority--regain lost pounds, and even add some. Oh-oh, I feel dragonfire on my neck!
Bad News Brute Alert:The Biggest Loser achieves rapid transformations—contestants often drop more than 9 kg in a week—through calorie restriction, endless exercise and no small amount of dehydration that occurs behind the scenes. Ryan Benson, 38, an actor who works for a DVD distributor in Los Angeles, lost 55 kg to win the first season in January 2005 but says he regained 14.5 kg within five days simply by drinking water. Matt Hoover, 31, a motivational speaker based in Seattle, had a 7-kg rebound within a day of winning Season 2. Last season's runner-up, Kai Hibbard, 28, an aerobics instructor in Alaska who says she spent the night before her final weigh-in hopping in and out of a sauna for six hours, consumed only sugar-free Jell-O for several days and wolfed down asparagus, which is a natural diuretic.
The U.S. National Weight Control Registry, which tracks the habits of some 5,000 successful maintainers, cites a study showing only a fifth of dieters with a history of obesity sustain a loss of 10% of their body weight for a year or more. "The best predictor of the ones who are not going to regain are the ones who are doing the most physical activity," says Dr. Holly Wyatt, an obesity expert at the University of Colorado. She says most registrants exercise, on average, at least an hour a day.Going to work on a couple of eggs might be the way forward if you want to shift those pounds. According to new research from the Rochester Centre for Obesity in America, eating eggs for breakfast could help to limit your calorie intake throughout the rest of the day, by more than 400 calories.
Among the men tested, neither odor 1 (citrus floral) nor odor 2 (sweet pea & lily of the valley) seemed to affect the perception of weight. However, odor 3 (floral and spice) significantly reduced the perception of the woman’s weight by an average of 4.1 pounds. More remarkably, those men who found the floral and spice odor to be pleasant perceived the woman to be a full 12 pounds less than her actual weight.
--from article "Special Odor Reduces Perceived Weight Up To 12 Pounds"
(hat tip to Scentsability blog)
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Not all fats are created equal: Make yours mono and you may end up eating fewer calories. In promising preliminary research, monounsaturated fats -- olive oil, for instance -- appear to work better than other fats in delaying the time it takes you to feel hungry again. So put olive oil on your toast instead of butter or margarine.
And, nutty as it seems, studies show that a handful of well-timed nuts so effectively satisfies the appetite that you're less likely to overeat later.
--from "The Eat Part" article at USA Today
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Studies show that people who keep food journals lose more weight and keep more of that weight off in the long run. The National Weight Control Registry-–an ongoing research project tracking more than 3,000 people who’ve lost an average of 66 pounds and kept it off for five years– found that keeping a food journal is the one strategy used by the majority of successful dieters. In fact, in a study of 685 dieters conducted by a health insurance company, the best predictor of weight loss throughout the first year was the number of food records kept per week.
--Rebecca Pratt, staff writer at SparkPeople.com
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