Weight Gain During Menopause

Weight Gain During Menopause

Weight Gain During Menopause is a real issue for most women after a certain age. You reach for that favorite pair of jeans, you try to slide them on but they wont button. You struggle from day to day to keep the weight gain off of your once fabulous body. But the rolls and layers of fat keep coming on that body of yours. You diet and exercise on a daily basis but those 10 to 30 pounds just wont come off. You join a gym or a woman’s work out class but you still jump on the scale and it still reads the same. You just want to scream or jump back in bed and hide under the covers. Is this you?

Weight Gain During Menopause

If you are coming on to that age of reaching that big 40 or you are gaining ground to the 50 age mark then you are more than likely in what is called the menopausal stage of life and this weight issue is one of the common symptoms of the menopausal stage. There are many other symptoms to the menopausal stage of life but in this article weight gain is what we are going to concentrate on. The reason for this article is that in today’s society our looks mean so much to woman. Weight gain during menopause, even if it is 10 or 20 pounds, can mean so much to a woman at this stage in life. Weight gain can bring on depression and anxiety which in turns can bring on the terrible hot flashes.

Weight Gain During Menopause – Why?

What causes weight gain during menopause in these bodies of ours? It can be one thing or a combination of many things. Toxins, stress, exercise, diet, emotions, anxiety, and hormones all can play a major role in weight gain. As the old saying goes, putting the weight on is easy and fun but taking it off is the hardest thing to do. Especially if you are in the stage of life called permenopause or menopause.

If you are in the stage of life of perimenopause or menopause more than likely your hormones are playing a huge factor in your weight. These hormonal imbalances are causing your body to store unwanted fat. The reason for this is that your body is feeling the affect that your hormones are hitting rock bottom and they are looking else where for a replacement of the hormones so the body turns to these fat cells. Studies have shown that woman tend to be insulin resistance do to their diet. When this happens the body converts every calorie it can to fat.

Stress and Menopausal weight gain

Stress plays a large role during this time in life of perimenopause or menopause. Stress hormones can block weight loss in a female. Even if you are dieting long term stress causes the body to go into what is called hoarding. Your body is putting on this fat and then you start to stress out about it and you start what is called yoyo dieting which in turns causes more fat to hoard in your body. It is a no win situation. Stress at this point can not only cause weight gain, but can cause depression, anxiety and make you feel unwanted and insecure about yourself.

You need to break this curse. You need to find yourself a support group and also have open dialogue with your partner at home. Also talk to a qualified physician about what you are going through. I mentioned qualified physician only because there are many physicians that do not understand what women are going through during perimenopause or menopause. Many physicians will say that these symptoms are all in your head and that you need a therapist instead of a medical doctor. Don’t fall for this, ask around and talk to your girl friends to find a positive qualified physician to hear your case. Don’t hold these feelings inside you, this will only cause your stress level to rise and cause other terrible symptoms to occur. Open communication is the key to good health and feeling better about yourself. Give it a try today, you will be glad you did.

Weight Gain During Menopause is an issue that many people deal with and I hope these tips help you out.

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How to (actually) keep your weight-loss resolution

Come 2011 on Saturday morning, a lot of people will be swearing off cigarettes, striving to get their personal finances in order, promising to cut back on drinking and committing to exercise more.

But one resolution will dominate after the seasonal bacchanalia: the desire to lose weight.

Within days or weeks, many, if not most, will have failed. The nicotine patches will be traded for packs of smokes, seasonal sales will tempt you to overspend, a Super Bowl party will undermine the teetotaller, the enthusiasm for the new gym membership will wane, and the can’t-fail diet will.

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So how do you beat the odds and keep your resolve?

Health reporters see all manner of diet books, exercise regimens, stop-smoking paraphernalia and sobering testimonials come across their desks. The tracts range from complex long-term scientific studies through to completely wacky theories.

What emerges from this mass of pontification and promises to melt away fat and give you a smaller waist, slimmer hips and a firmer butt is that there is no magic bullet for achieving your goals. But there are a couple of common threads that arise time and time again that should serve as a guide.

At the risk of oversimplifying, achieving your resolutions requires, above all, planning, commitment and realistic expectations. For many, success also depends on teamwork.

A good plan requires measurable, achievable goals and strategies spelled out clearly.

Commitment means making your plan known, setting a timeline, not being deterred by minor setbacks and rewarding yourself for achievement.

“I’m going to lose weight” is not a plan, it’s a platitude.

A plan sounds like this: “My 20-year high school reunion is on June 1. I’m going to lose 20 pounds by then and fit into a size 8 dress again.”

To achieve that goal you need to lose one pound a week and, to get there, a specific program. For example: “I’m going to reduce my intake to 1,600 calories daily, and I’m going to walk briskly one hour a day.”

To help you meet that goal, you can consult a dietitian, sign up with a group such as Weight Watchers or a Running Room clinic. You can tackle the challenge in a solitary fashion, enlist a couple of friends so you can support each other or make some sort of public declaration that will bind you (à la TV’s The Biggest Loser).

The same strategies apply to other common resolutions, but let’s stick to weight loss because so many people struggle with it.

The fads come and go – the paleo diet, the cleanse, the low-carb, the high-carb, the grapefruit diet, ad nauseam. Most are difficult in the short term and useless in the long term.

Sensible dietitians, such as Globe and Mail columnist Leslie Beck, will tell you that if you are serious about achieving and maintaining a good weight, you don’t need a diet (a temporary fix), you need to adopt a healthy lifestyle (a permanent solution).

Weight loss ultimately comes down to a devilishly simple truism: If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight; conversely, if you burn more calories than you consume, you will lose weight.

With our busy, stressful lives, getting that balance right is anything but simple. And maintaining the balance is really difficult in a society in which there is an abundance of food (much of it unhealthy) and physical activity has been systematically engineered out of our lives.

We can, however, learn valuable lessons from those who have triumphed.

The U.S.-based National Weight Control Registry, which has been tracking more than 5,000 people who have lost significant amounts of weight (from 30 to 300 pounds) and kept it off for a long time (from one to 66 years), has studied their strategies. So, if you want to keep your weight-loss resolution, here are the keys to success, according to the successful:

*Eat breakfast: The vast majority of NWCR participants eat breakfast every day. Paradoxically, healthy people eat often, but eat in a structured manner and, above all, control their portions.

*Banish fatty foods from the home: Keeping temptation at bay is a key strategy. NWCR participants stock their kitchens with healthy foods and limit their restaurant visits. The fresher and less processed your food, the better.

*Be consistent: Maintaining a healthy weight means eating well every day, not cheating on weekends, holidays and when convenient.

*Plan activity: The most successful “losers” get at least one hour of structured physical activity daily. It’s not an afterthought, it’s a priority. Find an activity or two you like – walking, running, biking, hiking, skiing, tennis etc. – and embrace it.

*Tune out: One of the key elements in weight-loss programs is turning off the TV (and computer). People who sit in front of a screen are inactive and tend to mindlessly eat. Most NWCR participants report less than two hours of screen time daily outside work.

*Weigh in: Almost all NWCR participants step on the scale weekly, even after years of being a healthy weight. Monitoring provides motivation and prevents the slow accumulation of weight.

*Record it: Maintain a food diary and log physical activity so you learn what works for you and adjust. At the outset, writing it down also gives you a baseline on which you can build and improve.

*Share it: Few people who maintain a healthy weight over time do so in isolation. You need buy-in and support from your partner and family members.

Finally, don’t have a laundry list of grandiose resolutions. Keep the goals simple and attainable. Slow, steady progress is the surest means to achieve a sustainable, healthy lifestyle.

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Motivation - in moderation - is key to weight loss

Charles Cicciarella had always told himself that he wanted to lose weight, but it was only when he watched his aunt die that he finally got up off the couch.

“The way I saw it was she was quite young, passed away from cancer, and I was thinking, ‘I was given this ticket to life and I’m not taking advantage of it,’ ” says Mr. Cicciarella, a Toronto-based e-learning trainer. “That really gave me the wake-up call.”

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A former “fast food junkie,” he cut out double-cheeseburger combos and started opting for healthy foods. He also took to walking as far as he could to work before jumping on the subway, rather than going straight to the stop nearest his apartment. “I started walking to Dundas station, then I started going to College, then to Wellesley and then Yonge,” he says of stops farther and farther from his apartment. “I literally did it one step at a time.”

That was in 2003. He eventually got a personal trainer, and continues to work out five days a week, mixing weightlifting with cardio. He has lost nearly 150 pounds.

After losing the weight, Mr. Cicciarella was inspired to write a book to help others follow in his footsteps. As he writes in Life is a Fat Onion: My 8 Rules for Losing Weight and Gaining Life, to find the right motivation you have to ask yourself “what is the most important thing in your life.”

A dieter’s initial motivation is an essential part of how successful he or she will be at losing weight and keeping it off. Many other factors will play a role, but like any change of behaviour, eating healthy and becoming active are first and foremost psychological tasks, not physical ones. If you don’t truly want to change, you won’t.

The National Weight Control Registry, a U.S.-based initiative that collects data on people who have been successful at long-term weight loss, has found that medical “triggers” (the reasons people get off their butts to lose weight) are the most popular motivators. Reaching an all-time high in poundage and seeing a picture or reflection of themselves were the second and third most popular triggers.

Studies of registry members have found that people who set out to lose weight after a medical “triggering” event, defined broadly to include everything from being told by a doctor to lose weight to a family member having a heart attack, lost more weight than people with other types of triggering events and were more successful at keeping it off.The registry has also revealed another key component to the psychological side of weight loss: There is strength in numbers. According to its findings, people who lost weight and attended bi-monthly support groups for a year maintained their weight loss, while people who didn’t attend meetings regained almost half the weight they’d lost.

In Weight Watchers, the diet program first established in Brooklyn in 1963, group support is a key component.

Ashley Gibson, who attended weekly Weight Watchers meetings in Toronto beginning in 2006, credits the groupswith helping her lose 30 pounds. “I think that was absolutely instrumental in me getting to where I needed to be.”

Ms. Gibson, who lives in Durham, Ont., is now a group leader.

“Weight loss and making a lifestyle change is hard, and the group setting allows you to recognize that there are other people in the same place as you,” she says.

Kate Mills credits those group meetings with helping her lose just under 80 pounds since February, 2009.

“Everybody there is going through the same thing, so you get tons of encouragement,” says Ms. Mills, a 29-year-old registered nurse who also lives in Durham. Sharing stories of overcoming the temptation to order a pizza isn’t just cathartic, she says. “People clap. You get applause. Sometimes, that’s what you need.”

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The secret to weight-loss workouts (you may not like the answer)

The question

How hard should I exercise if I want to lose weight?

The answer

The famous “fat-burning zone” is a seductive concept. Keep your workout nice and easy to maximize fat-burning, it argues – no need to waste time and effort by pushing hard.

Unfortunately, this concept suffers from flaws of logic and physiology. But the question of how hard you should exercise in order to lose the most weight remains a complicated one, and there are good reasons to include both very easy and very hard physical activity in your routine.

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It is true that light exercise burns mostly fat, while hard exercise burns mostly carbohydrate. The crossover point, where you get half your energy from each source, occurs at about 60 per cent of your maximum intensity (though it varies from person to person).

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What's missing, though, is how many calories you burn. A leisurely walk that burns 100 calories might take 85 calories from fat and 15 from carbohydrate. You're better off going for a moderate run that burns 500 calories in the same amount of time, with 250 from fat. (Exercise at the highest intensities burns even more calories, but you can't sustain it for as long.)

But there's a more fundamental problem with the fat-burning zone. If you burn mostly carbohydrates during a workout, the calories you consume afterward will replenish those depleted carbohydrate stores. If you manage to rely more on fat during your workout, on the other hand, your carbohydrate stores will remain full. As a result, whatever calories you consume afterward will be stored directly as fat, undoing your fat-burning efforts.

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This effect was demonstrated by Australian researchers in a study published earlier this year in Cell Metabolism. In mice that were genetically altered to burn fat instead of carbohydrate, unburned carbohydrates were simply converted into fat for storage. The total “energy balance” remained unchanged, and the mice gained or lost the same amount of weight as normal mice under the same conditions.

“Your body will use the energy it needs and store the leftover fats, protein or carbohydrates as fat,” lead researcher Greg Cooney of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research explained when the study was released. “When you do the sums, it's ultimately a matter of calories in and calories out.”

Why you need low-intensity exercise

The problem with vigorous exercise is that it stimulates appetite hormones to make you hungry – part of your body's elaborate “set-point” mechanism to keep your weight stable.

One way to get around this trap is with physical activity at a low enough intensity that it doesn't spark hunger.

A forthcoming study by University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher Barry Braun compared a group of volunteers who sat all day (they even used wheelchairs to visit the bathroom) to a group that didn't sit down at all. The difference in energy expenditure, he told The New York Times, was hundreds of calories – but the level of appetite hormones and hunger in the two groups remained identical.

Why you need high-intensity exercise

A Columbia University study published earlier this year found that when subjects were fed a liquid diet until they lost 10 per cent of their body weight, cellular adaptations made their muscle fibres 15-per-cent more efficient at converting energy into force.

This may sound like a good thing, but it means that you burn fewer calories when doing the same amount of work after losing weight – and that pushes you back toward your starting weight.

How can you escape this “efficiency trap”?

The effect appears to be most pronounced at low intensities, so the researchers suggest including some high-intensity exercise in your routine to maximize calorie consumption.

Why you need both

A recently published study from researchers at the University of Western Ontario compares two groups doing six weeks of training, three times a week.

One group did moderate running for 30 to 60 minutes at a time, while the other group did a series of four to six intense 30-second sprints with four minutes of rest. Both groups lost similar amounts of fat and increased aerobic fitness by about 12 per cent.

What's interesting is that the endurance group increased the amount of blood their hearts could pump by 9.5 per cent, while the sprinters didn't improve that quantity at all. In other words, the endurance training acted primarily on the heart, while the sprints produced similar gains through adaptations in the muscles.

You need both your heart and your muscles to be healthy, so include both types of exercise in your routine.

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Want to lose weight? Down the dairy

It’s the time of year when many people attempt to lose unwanted pounds – before food-laden holiday parties begin and treats pile up at the office.

Regardless of the type of diet you decide to follow – low fat, low carb and so on – there’s something you may want to do to enhance your chances of success.

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According to a study published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, upping your intake of calcium-rich dairy products can help you lose more weight.

The link between dairy products and weight loss has been controversial. Some studies have found a higher dairy intake is related to a lower body weight but others have not. But well controlled weight loss trials have demonstrated that consuming more dairy results in better weight loss, reduced body fat and smaller waist sizes.

In the current study, 322 overweight and obese adults aged 40 to 65 were assigned to one of three diets: low fat, low carbohydrate or Mediterranean. Dairy intake was not specified in the diet plans; intake was determined by personal preference.

People with the highest dairy calcium intake – 600 mg, equal to about two cups of milk a day – lost 12 pounds at the end of two years. In comparison, low dairy consumers – averaging about 150 mg of calcium or ½ cup of milk – lost only seven pounds.

The researchers estimated that every 240 mg of calcium consumed – the amount in ¾ cup of milk or 2/3 cup of fruit yogurt – was associated with nearly a 50 per cent greater chance of achieving a weight loss above average in the first six months of the study (the weight loss phase).

Previous studies have found that dairy calcium promotes more potent weight loss effects than calcium supplements. It’s thought that milk proteins can inhibit enzymes involved in fat storage.

Beyond calcium, blood levels of vitamin D also predicted weight loss success. Vitamin D levels were higher – on average 75 nanomoles a litre, a blood level considered sufficient – among those who lost more weight. Vitamin D increases calcium absorption from foods into the bloodstream. Higher vitamin concentrations may also enhance the breakdown of fat stores.

The findings also confirmed previous research that overweight participants have lower vitamin D blood levels. Subcutaneous fat holds on to vitamin D, reducing its release into the bloodstream.

Meeting your daily calcium and vitamin D requirements may improve your ability to shed pounds, but let’s not forget the tried and true keys to success: planning, portion control and consistency. Incorporate the following tactics into your weight loss plan.

Get calcium and vitamin D

Adults, aged 19 to 50, need 1,000 mg of calcium each day and older adults require 1,200 mg. One cup of milk, ¾ cup plain yogurt and 1.5 ounces of cheese all contain roughly 300 mg. To cut saturated fat and save calories, reach for skim or 1 per cent milk and yogurt and part skim cheese.

To help reduce cancer risk, Canadians adults are advised to take 1,000 IU of vitamin D a day in the fall and winter, and all year-round if you’re over 50, have dark coloured skin or don’t go outdoors often in the summer months.

If you’re concerned your blood level of vitamin D is insufficient, speak to your doctor about a blood test.

Know calories

For healthy weight loss, women should consume 1,200 to 1,600 calories a day depending on activity level; men 1,800 to 2,200.

Learn the calorie counts of your meals, snack and beverages. Read the nutrition facts box on food packages to find out how many calories are in one serving of the foods you buy.

Plan in advance

If you come home from work, tired, hungry and without a plan for dinner, chances are you’ll order in. Or graze your way through the evening.

On the weekend, plan a weekly menu of healthy meals and snacks. To help you stick to your plan, make time for grocery shopping and batch cook on the weekend.

Include snacks

Eat every three to four hours to keep your blood sugar stable and your appetite in check, and to help you pare down portions at meals.

Include a midmorning and/or midafternoon snack. Healthy choices include fruit and yogurt, fruit and part skim cheese, dried fruit and nuts, raw vegetables and hummus, or a small energy bar.

Track your progress

Keep a food diary to stay focused. Use it to plan meals in advance – write down the foods and portion sizes you plan to eat the next day.

Weigh yourself on a weekly basis. Monitoring your weight provides motivation and impetus to keep on going.

Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based dietitian at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV’s Canada AM every Wednesday. Her website is lesliebeck.com.

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The Happiness Project

Well I started reading this book called The Happiness Project. My wife bought it a while ago and after I stumbled through Eat, Pray, Love I thought it would be great to get another soul.empowering type book under my belt

Gretchen Rubin who wrote this book is a real pro in the writing game and seems to write biographies on famous people like Winston Churchill, and JFK so she seem to come from a completely different spot than most of the people in this genre. She points this fact out early in the book as well as her aims for her own Happiness Project.

What is the Happiness Project About?

The book starts with Gretchen Rubin telling us how she is not unhappy but still since there is not an easy way to benchmark happiness she knew that she could be happier, wanted to avoid a conversation on depression and instead see, through research, how someone could be happier in their life.

The book is divided into 12 months and each month has an overarching idea that Gretchen has built resolutions on, and the idea is that every month she will build on what she had done before this newest month, so constant improvement will happen.

The first month was to improve her health, the second month was to Remember Love and Marriage…

The idea that Gretchen Rubin has is not that you will follow her ideas exactly but that she can give you a framework to build your own Happiness Project. Cool idea!

Full of Research and Ideas to Change Yourself

Anyway Gretchen Rubin has a law degree, is a writer, and decided to do this book with her awesome research skills behind her. So in the intro chapter and first chapter I found that the Happiness Project was so chock full of her research and discoveries that were not just touchy-feely that there was just a lot to get through. I have decided to turn this book into more of a project for me, and maybe you should too?

I am not going to take a year to change my life through the Happiness Project but I am sure that over the next few months as I dive into one month at a time I will make significant changes.

You can check out some reviews of the Happiness Project if you are interested in learning more

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Shaming the obese - with photos like these - isn’t working

When there are TV news reports about obesity, they invariably feature shots of big butts and jiggly bellies but you can almost guarantee there will be no faces visible. The same is true of newspapers, though they may also squeeze in an ice cream cone or burger at chin level, still keeping the focus of the photo squarely on the anonymous bulging midsection.

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“The headless stomach” is how Rebecca Puhl, the director of research at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., describes the phenomenon.

There is no doubt that the media portrayal of people who are obese – it ranges from sneering to pitying in everything from TV sitcoms to daily newspapers – is quite negative.

The implicit message in the cutting-off-the-heads approach is that obesity is shameful. So too is the condescending language, such as that used above (deliberately) like “big butts.”

Weight bias is one of the last bastions of discrimination. Fat jokes are still de rigueur when an overweight/obese person comes into view. We allow ourselves to use language and images that would never be acceptable when speaking of people with disabilities, visible minorities or other identifiable groups.

These visual and linguistic shortcuts are not necessarily used maliciously but they fuel common stereotypes – namely people who are overweight/obese are lazy, slovenly and weak-willed.

These stereotypes, in turn, influence public policy and private gestures.

While we talk a lot about the medical consequences of obesity – reduced life expectancy, higher rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, etc. – we rarely delve into the social and economic consequences of having a significant body mass index.

That was the subject of a the 1st Canadian Summit on Weight Bias and Discrimination, held last week in Toronto.

Dr. Puhl, who has studied the question extensively, noted that increased attention on the health impacts of obesity has, paradoxically, resulted in increased weight-related discrimination.

But her research shows that there is a vicious cycle created: The more a person is singled out for weight-related ridicule, the more difficult it becomes to lose weight.

Part of the problem is that a common reaction to stress is to eat and drink – and our comfort foods don’t tend to be carrots and broccoli. Bias and discrimination can lead to self-loathing and isolation.

People who are obese don’t relish their predicament but they tend to avoid seeking professional help – from physicians, dieticians, personal trainers, etc. – because they are often stigmatized and hectored, not supported.

“There is a perception that stigma may be a good thing, that it will encourage weight loss,” Dr. Puhl said. “In fact, the opposite is true.”

The stigma begins at a young age. About one-third of overweight girls and one-quarter of overweight boys report being bullied because of their weight.

“Weight bias is a form of bullying,” said Wendy Craig, a professor of psychology at Queen’s University and scientific co-director of PrevNet (Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence). The focus, she said, should be on changing relationships so that people who are overweight/obese are not singled out and shunned.

Bullying the fat guy is not limited to the schoolyard; it happens in the workplace and the home. And one of the most common protective mechanisms is for overweight people to be self-deprecating, but it is humour tinged in pain.

People who are overweight/obese pay a financial and social penalty for the way they look. A study in the journal Health Economics that followed participants for 15 years found that the wages for obese females were on average 6.1 per cent lower and for obese males 3.4 per cent lower among people doing identical work.

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Are protein shakes the weight-loss magic bullet?

Anyone who is looking to lose weight and has seen Rick Rubin lately is probably heading straight for their blender.

Mr. Rubin, the famed record producer and co-president of Columbia Records, recently lost 130 pounds (almost 60 kilograms) thanks to a six-days-a-week workout regimen and a strict diet of fish and protein shakes. He can be seen showing off his new buff bod in the latest issue of GQ, in which he is interviewed alongside Kid Rock.

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Protein shakes, it seems, have become a constant for Mr. Rubin who has worked with the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash and Shakira. “He was in the studio cutting up apples and drinking his shakes,” Kid Rock told the magazine.

So is the Rubin diet the secret to weight-loss success? Protein shakes, typically made from powdered supplements, have become a staple in the fitness community, where they are seen as a needed way to build and repair muscle tissue. They help push annual sales of sports nutrition products, which now top $2.7-billion (U.S.) in the United States, according to Consumer Reports and their benefits are frequently touted by bodybuilders such as last year’s Mr. Olympia winner Jay Cutler. Actress Hilary Swank reportedly relied on drinking protein shakes for breakfast and throughout the day to get buff for the boxing movie Million Dollar Baby.

But many trainers are skeptical of their benefits for the average person trying to get fit. In some cases, they could be damaging. Drinking too many of them could lead to weight gain and can pose a range of health problems, including dehydration, increased risk of osteoporosis and kidney problems. Trainers say it’s better for most people to opt for a well-balanced diet instead.

“Most people already eat more protein than they need,” says Shayla Roberts, owner of Evolution Coaching in Vancouver. Protein shakes may be a good “quick fix” for people looking to lose weight, since protein makes us feel full, but drinking them is not a good long-term strategy when it comes to dieting, she says.

“You will eventually have to return to eating food, and if you haven’t changed your eating behaviours then you are not going to maintain your weight loss,” Ms. Roberts says.

Considering that the shakes can contain up to 40 grams of protein a serving, consuming too many of them can be harmful and may even lead to weight gain.

“The fact of the matter is the body can only break down about five to nine grams of protein per hour. So any excess protein you are not using for athletic endeavours or energy can either be turned into fat of excreted. So if you are consuming more protein than you need and you are not athletic, you are either going to get diarrhea or you will probably store that protein as fuel, which is fat,” says Shannon Jones, a trainer at Crossfit Zone in Victoria.

Excreting that extra protein can put pressure on the kidneys and lead to bone loss, as calcium is taken from bones to assist the excretion process.

While she drinks one protein shake for breakfast, Ms. Jones says you should avoid drinking them unless you lead a very active life.

“It’s not going to benefit you in any way,” she says.

Some people who lead very active lives, however, consider their protein shakes essential.

“You just cannot physically consume that much protein in a day in a solid form,” says Coco Kissack, a fitness competitor in Winnipeg who drinks between four and seven protein shakes a day.

But the 39-year-old stresses that those shakes are consumed on top of a balanced diet.

Still, that doesn’t stop people looking for a magic fix from frequently asking her if protein shakes will help them get buff bods like hers.

“I get approached by a lot of people who see me working out who ask about their diet, and they think they can just take these products and it’s going to help them out,” she says.

Unless you’re working out as strenuously as she does, they won’t.

Some, in fact, may be toxic.

An investigation released this summer by Consumer Reports found that all 15 of the protein drinks it tested had at least one sample of arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury. While the levels of contaminants found in most of the drinks were in the low to moderate range, the investigation also found that for three of the products, anyone drinking three daily servings of them could be exposed to levels of arsenic, cadmium or lead that exceed the maximum limits for one or two of those contaminants in dietary supplements proposed by the U.S. Pharmacopeia, an organization that sets voluntary standards for health products.

While some people may be lured by the promise of losing weight and getting ripped, the Consumer Reports study should give pause to anyone thinking they can achieve those goals with a heavy diet of protein shakes, Ms. Jones says. The shakes should only be used to supplement a well-balanced diet, not replace it, she says.

And considering the chemicals you could be ingesting when you’re chugging down a protein shake, it may be best to just opt for real food instead, she adds.

“If you want to have a nutritional diet, you probably should weed out the overprocessed substitutes and try to eat food instead of powder.”

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How long can I go before refuelling with carbs?

The question

How long can I go before I need to “refuel” with carbs, and how much do I really need?

The answer

If you’re spending nine hours doing an Ironman triathlon, you definitely need fuel. Samantha McGlone, the 2007 World Championship silver medalist, downs five sports drinks during the bike ride, and adds one or two energy gels an hour to her drinks during the run.

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“But I have done Olympic-distance races [which take about two hours] on water,” says the Montreal native, who represented Canada in triathlon at the 2004 Olympics. “Maybe not the best, but back in the day …”

Researchers have been arguing for years about whether carbohydrates make any difference during exercise lasting an hour or two and, if so, how much you need. Recent experiments suggest that during shorter workouts, carbs are for the brain rather than the muscles, and that during longer workouts, not all carbs are created equal.

The traditional advice has been you should ingest carbs – from a sports drink or energy bar to simple food such as a banana – during exercise lasting longer than about two hours, according to Asker Jeukendrup, a sports nutrition researcher at the University of Birmingham in Britain. For shorter exercise, it’s commonly believed you should have enough carbs stored in your body. A typical 150-pound male, for example, can store about 2,000 calories of carbohydrate in his leg muscles alone; running a half-marathon requires only 1,500 calories.

But that’s not what scientists have observed. In placebo-controlled studies, drinking a high-carbohydrate sports drink seemed to sometimes – but not always – offer a performance boost even in 60-minute exercise bouts.

Last year, researchers from Loughborough University in England published a study in the Journal of Sports Sciences that, combined with earlier results, explains this riddle. They found that runners could go farther in a 60-minute treadmill test if they drank a sports drink containing 6.4-per-cent carbohydrate – but only if they had fasted overnight. If they ate a meal three hours before the test, the sports drink didn’t help.

It seems simple: Sports drinks only help during one-hour workouts if you’re depleted at the start. But there’s another wrinkle. Researchers get exactly the same results during a 60-minute treadmill test if the runners simply swish the sports drink in their mouth then spit it out, without swallowing: The subjects get a performance boost from the drink if they’ve been fasting, but none if they’ve had a meal. “This shows that it has nothing to do with energy absorption,” Dr. Jeukendrup says. “It’s in the brain.”

While this research is still new, brain-scanning studies by Ed Chambers, a colleague of Dr. Jeukendrup’s in Birmingham, suggest that previously undiscovered carbohydrate sensors in the mouth send signals directly to the brain announcing the impending arrival of more fuel. (The sensors work even if the subjects can’t taste the drink.) The brain then signals that you can go faster, even if the carbs never reach your muscles.

At the other end of the spectrum, your muscles really do need more carbohydrate during exercise lasting longer than two hours. Even the most quickly absorbed carbohydrates (glucose and maltodextrin) can only pass from your intestine into your blood stream at a rate of about 60 grams (a little more than 200 calories) an hour – not enough to keep up with demand during intense exercise.

To get around this limit, Dr. Jeukendrup realized he could mix different carbohydrates that are absorbed from the intestine through separate mechanisms. While fructose is only absorbed at 30 grams an hour, it doesn’t interfere with glucose absorption. That means glucose and fructose mixed in a 2:1 ratio can be absorbed as quickly as 90 grams an hour.

This formula has been incorporated in drinks, bars and gels by PowerBar, which funds some of Dr. Jeukendrup’s research (the funding only started after the initial results were published, he points out). Other companies are following suit by introducing products with rapidly absorbed carbohydrate blends.

For Ironman athletes such as Ms. McGlone, the ability to absorb up to 90 grams an hour of carbohydrate is crucial, though it takes practice to tolerate such a high intake without stomach upset. More generally, Dr. Jeukendrup says, the glucose-fructose mix is important only for sustained exercise lasting more than about three hours. But if you’re trying to avoid bonking during a marathon or long bike ride, it could be the key.

Drinks, gels or bars?

Taking in carbs only helps if you can keep them down – not always an easy task if you’re exercising intensely. Marathon fans still remember Bob Kempainen at the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials, vomiting up a stream of fluorescent green Gatorade as he pulled away from his bewildered competitors to win. Typically, drinks containing less than about 8-per-cent carbohydrate (80 grams a litre) are easiest to absorb.

Depending on your sport and your preferences, you can also take in solid food. In November, Asker Jeukendrup and his colleagues published a pair of papers in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise comparing sports drinks, gels and bars. The result: Subjects were able to absorb and burn carbohydrates in all three forms at exactly the same rate. “Cyclists tend to eat more real food than runners, because of the amount of jostling in running,” triathlete Samantha McGlone notes. “If I’m riding hard for more than five hours, I can stop at the store for Snickers and a Red Bull.”

Alex Hutchinson blogs about research on exercise at sweatscience.com.

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Getting motivated with a personal trainer

Sarah Bezanson is feeling the burn. After years of wanting to get in shape but not doing much about it, the 27-year-old Grade 7 and 8 teacher who lives in Dartmouth, N.S., finally joined a gym in the fall of 2009.

Then, last March, she was rear-ended in a car accident that damaged the soft tissue in her back. Months of physiotherapy and rehab later, she decided that it was time to rejoin the gym and get a personal trainer.

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Rather than lying on the couch watching television after work as she used to, Ms. Bezanson now opts for leg presses and curls. And she has never felt better.

The diet: “I’ve wanted to train and get in shape ever since I graduated from university. But when I started teaching, I had a job in rural Nova Scotia and the students I was teaching worked at the gym – that was a deterrent. I’m in Dartmouth now, so I’m anonymous. When I go to the gym, I don’t have to see Patrick from Grade 10 English. Diabetes and high blood pressure run in my family, and I realized I had to start living healthier and take better care of myself. I joined a Good Life gym and had a health profile done. I’m an instructional cadre officer with the Cadets, I volunteer with the SPCA, I’m on committees at school. After my health profile, I was told that if I didn’t change, I wouldn’t be able to keep doing all those things. It was a real kick in the pants.”

The biggest challenge: “Motivation. That’s why I have a personal trainer. I know that if I didn’t have somebody to be accountable to, to pump me up and get me going, to challenge me, I wouldn’t work this hard. It’s gratifying being able to rock a workout and come home and feel your muscles burn. I walk through the gym and the trainers are giving me high fives and they know me by name. It’s just wicked.”

The current plan: “I see my personal trainer two times a week and I train by myself twice a week. I do cardio and a build program. I blew through my build phase. As my trainer has so eloquently put it, I am a tank. As for food, I talked to my trainer and he said to make sure I eat five times a day – breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper. On my own, I’ve pretty much cut out all pop. I think I’ve only had about two cans since October. I eat well. And I do a food journal. Sometimes when I skip breakfast, I kind of kick myself and think, ‘Oh, that’s going to come back to bite me later.’ It also makes you think about what you’re putting into your body.”

The goal: “I want to lose 40 pounds and get down to about 170 pounds. I’m down eight pounds since October. And Cadets has a fitness test next month that I want to rock because if I get to a certain fitness level, then I can qualify to go on international exchanges. I have a humongous travel bug. In the summers, Cadets get sent to England, to Australia, to Germany – all over the place. I want to be able to rock the fitness test so that not only can I qualify for those trips, but also to be a good example to my Cadets. The fitness test is push-ups, sit-ups, a shuttle run and a long jump as it stands now.”

How it’s going: “This is the best I’ve ever been. And I’m just starting. It’s only January and it’s already rocking my world. My dad calls it the kiss-my-ass attitude. I just feel like I can take on the world. It’s amazing. My students notice too. I’ll be in the hallways bopping around and they’ll be like, ‘It’s Monday morning. What do you have in your coffee?” I just have tons of energy, and I teach middle school. I should be dead by the end of the day. Instead, I go to the gym. I sleep better. I feel better. I’m happier. Everything is working out.”

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Making weight loss a family affair

Amber Aarts has always struggled with her weight. At 21, she weighed 450 pounds. She is still trying to lose weight, but is no longer doing it alone. Eating healthily and staying active have become a family affair for the 42-year-old nursing student from Vancouver, her husband Jamie, a systems analyst, and their four kids Kelsey, 15, Keira, 12, Kassidy, 8, and Kourtney, 7.

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After seizing the opportunity to lose weight together, thanks to an invitation last year to appear on X-Weighted, a reality show on the Slice network, the Aarts family have lost nearly 150 pounds collectively – and kept it off.

The diet: “I had gastric bypass surgery about 18 years ago and managed to lose 200 pounds. But I didn’t really change anything after that. I’ve been yo-yo dieting for years. I’d lose 100 pounds, gain 100. But I always did it by myself. I’ve tried everything: Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, surgery. I’ve never put any of my kids on a diet. I’ve tried to watch what Keira ate, but never put her on a diet per se. I had been looking into things because my 12-year-old struggles with her weight like I always have, and I wanted to change that for her. I didn’t want her to live what I have lived.”

The biggest challenge so far: “It’s probably been the hardest thing we’ve ever done. People don’t realize this, but food is what you do for fun. It’s what you do to make yourself feel better. It’s what I did to show my kids that I love them. Getting rid of that thinking was really hard. Portion control is still hard. I used to give my kids big portions without really realizing it. But it came up in my nursing program what a portion size should be. I look back on the pancakes I would give the girls and they’re literally the size of a big dinner plate. At the moment it didn’t seem big, but now it’s like, ‘Holy crap!”

The current plan: “We’ve tried to focus more on being healthy than on losing weight. I wanted to change how we ate so that we could be healthy and live longer. If you have a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle, it encompasses so much, like your self-esteem and everything. My husband and I grocery shop together. We make sure there’s no junk food in our house. We’re just trying to choose healthier foods and be more active. We all go for walks together. Sometimes we’ll go to the pool. With two older kids and two little ones, it’s hard to find something everybody likes to do.”

The goal: “We don’t have a specific goal. We don’t think of ourselves as being on a diet. It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Diets are temporary. This is my life, and this is the way it’s going to be for the rest of my life. We just try to eat healthy and stay active. If we do that for long enough the weight will fall off. It’s working. I’ve lost 30 pounds. My husband lost 30 pounds. My oldest daughter has lost 40 pounds. Keira lost 8 pounds and the little two lost 17 to 20 pounds each.”

How it’s going: “It’s a struggle still, but it’s good. We’re not so divided. We all have the same goal; we’re all watching what we’re eating. This morning, Kassidy went to get a bowl of cereal and actually took a measuring cup out. I’ve never taught her to do that. I’ve pointed out what a serving size is just so that they would realize that. Everybody’s on the same wavelength. You can see the effect it’s having on the kids. They’re definitely more outgoing, especially the older ones. And the little ones’ teachers have said that they’re more active and they run around more at school.”

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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How to lose those last 10 pounds

With summer just around the corner, losing a few pounds is top of mind for many people. And if you’ve been working hard since the New Year to shed excess weight, you’re probably anxious to drop those last 10 before swimsuits and shorts become regular weekend attire.

Ah, those last 10 pounds. Why are they so hard to get rid of? It’s a question I’m often asked by clients in my private practice. After successfully losing 15, 20 or more pounds, why do they find it so tough to tackle the last few?

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Sometimes it’s because they’ve hit a wall or reached a plateau despite determined effort. But more often than not, human nature is to blame. After achieving most of a weight-loss goal, it’s only natural to feel great. After all, your clothes fit better, you have more energy and you’re proud of your new healthy eating habits.

But that new-found comfort comes at a cost. As you lose sight of your original target, old habits lie in wait ready to take hold and prevent you from reaching your goal.

There are many reasons why weight loss can come to a screeching halt. If you’re struggling with the last portion of your weight-loss goal – and yes, it is the most challenging – take a moment to identify what’s getting in your way. Once you’ve determined the culprit, use the tips below to push you to your goal.

You got off track and didn’t get back on

You’re human. That means you’re bound to go off your plan occasionally. The most important thing to do is move forward. Don’t berate yourself. Don’t tell yourself “the rest of the day is a write-off.” Instead, get back on track and the sooner the better.

One lapse won’t make any difference to the scale. But if you let those slips accumulate, they will inevitably show up. Remind yourself of all the positive changes you’ve made so far. One or two dietary blunders aren’t going to undo all your hard work.

Your portion sizes are creeping up

It happens so gradually you don’t even notice. Instead of one cup of rice, you’re serving yourself 1.5 cups and an extra 100 calories. The chicken breast that not long ago was a precise four ounces now weighs in at six ounces. You’re even more liberal with how much orange juice you pour into your glass at breakfast.

A few extra calories here andthere might seem benign. But they add up.

If this sounds familiar, refresh your memory about portion sizes. For two weeks, measure and weigh your foods again. That might be all it takes to get your weight loss back on track.

You let too many “extras” sneak in

An extra dessert, a few tastes while making dinner, a bite or two off your kid’s plate. Those extra calories can – and will – stall your weight-loss progress.

Twenty pounds ago, you could get away with eating something extra here and there and still lose weight each week. But not any more. As you lose weight, your metabolism naturally tends to slow down a bit. When your body has less weight to carry around, it burns – and requires – fewer calories. That means you have less calorie leeway than you did a clothing size ago.

To follow your meal plan more closely, resume keeping a food diary. Write down every bite and track your portion sizes too. You might be surprised to see how often extra calories sneak into your diet.

You’re not consistent on the weekend

I’ve written about this common phenomenon before. I call it chasing the same two pounds. Straying from your plan on the weekend – larger meals, drinking wine, a few extra snacks – can cause the needle on the scale to jump Monday morning.

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Losing weight is the easy part - keeping it off, not so much

Let’s face it, losing weight isn’t the hard part. Many of us could do it in the short term by following any number of diets.

But few people successfully maintain weight loss. Data show that the majority of people in weight loss programs regain most of the pounds – and sometimes more – within three to five years.

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According to a study published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, you stand a better chance of keeping the weight off for good if you eat a high-protein diet that contains low-glycemic carbohydrates.

The glycemic index (GI) indicates how carbohydrate-rich foods affect blood sugar (glucose) levels after eating. Most highly processed grain products (e.g. white bread, white rice, cereal bars, sweets) have a high GI and cause blood sugar to spike after eating.

Minimally processed grains (e.g. brown rice, whole-grain pasta, steel-cut oats, whole rye bread), whole fruits, legumes and vegetables have a low GI. These foods lead to a slower rise in blood sugar after they’re eaten.

In the study, conducted in eight European countries, 773 adults who had completed an eight-week, low-calorie diet were assigned to one of five weight maintenance diets. (During the weight loss phase, participants shed, on average, 24 pounds.) The maintenance diets included 1) low protein (13 per cent of calories), low GI, 2) low protein, high GI, 3) high protein (25 per cent of calories), low GI, 4) high protein, high GI and 5) a control diet based on national guidelines where the participants lived.

There were no restrictions on calorie intake in any of the diets. Participants were told to maintain their weight although further loss was allowed.

After 26 weeks, only the low protein, high GI diet was associated with significant weight regain. Compared with folks assigned to a low protein or high GI diet, those following the high protein and low GI diets did a much better job at maintaining their weight loss.

What’s more, participants on the high protein, low GI diet continued to lose weight during the maintenance phase.

Meals with a low GI are thought to cause changes to hormones and metabolism that can reduce hunger and prevent overeating. Protein-rich foods such as lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, tofu and dairy products delay the rate at which food is emptied from your stomach. In this way, including protein at meals lowers the GI further and keeps you feeling full longer.

Adjusting the carbohydrate and protein content of your diet may increase the odds you’ll maintain a weight loss, but there are other strategies you need to consider.

Keeping your weight stable requires the same level of commitment as when you’re losing weight. The following tips will help you stay focused, motivated and on top of your food intake.

Include protein

Divide your protein intake among three meals and two snacks. Replace calories from refined (white) starchy foods with lean versions of protein such as lean meat, fish, chicken, egg whites, tofu and legumes.

Protein-rich snack choices include nuts, soy nuts, edamame, hard-boiled eggs, part-skim cheese, yogurt and soy milk.

Choose low GI foods

Avoid eating refined and sugary foods. Choose low GI foods such as beans, lentils, nuts, pasta, brown rice, sweet potatoes, steel-cut or large-flake oatmeal, oat bran, Red River cereal, 100-per-cent bran cereals, yogurt, milk and unflavoured soy milk. Low GI fruits include apples, oranges, peaches, pears and berries.

Revitalize your focus

It’s easy to get sloppy after you’ve hit your weight goal. Portion sizes creep up, extra nibbles sneak in and the motivation to work out can wane.

To stay focused, resume keeping a food diary for one week each month. Write down every bite and track your portion sizes. Refresh your memory about serving sizes by measuring and weighing your foods again.

Step on the scale

Permanent weight loss requires making friends with the bathroom scale. The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), a continuing U.S.-based study tracking more than 5,000 people who have successfully lost significant amounts of weight and kept if off for long periods of time, reported that 75 per cent of participants weigh themselves at least once a week.

Think of weekly weigh-ins as an early warning system – they allow you to correct small increases in weight quickly.

Move past slip-ups

The key to long-term weight maintenance is nipping small weight gains in the bud – before they accumulate. If a few pounds creep back on, don’t dwell on your lapses. Take action to lose them: Reinstate your food diary for a few weeks, go back to measuring food portions or add an extra workout.

Check in with a dietitian

Research shows that having personal contact with a nutritionist once a month – be it face-to-face or over the telephone – is associated with better weight loss maintenance.

If you don’t have a personal nutritionist, ask for support from a family member, co-worker or friend. Or consider joining a support group such as Weight Watchers.

Exercise regularly

Ninety per cent of successful maintainers in the NWCR report getting one hour of scheduled exercise each day, often brisk walking.

Leslie Beck, a Toronto-based dietitian at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV’s Canada AM every Wednesday. Her website is lesliebeck.com.

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Monitoring what you eat: the weight-loss numbers game

One of Lora Jordan’s clients came to her recently with what she thought was good news. She had given up sugary snacks and was now munching on raw almonds throughout the day instead.

That’s good, right? Well, that depends, says Ms. Jordan, a Toronto-based nutritionist. How many almonds? A full cup, it turned out.

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Not so good.

“That’s about 800 calories” – about two-thirds of the woman’s recommended daily caloric intake, Ms. Jordan says.

It’s proof that going by gut feel can sometimes wind up leaving you with more gut to feel.

The amount of things you can keep track of – calories, carbohydrates, sodium, fat, trans fat, ranking on the glycemic index – means that dieters can be as precise as they wish about what they are putting into their mouths. Numbers provide not only clarity to people trying to lose weight, but also a valuable framework. Once you know your recommended daily caloric intake, for instance, it’s easier to plot howto best meet that target. It might not be easy to stick to just those foods, but the math doesn’t lie.

“The evidence is very clear. The more that you monitor, the better you do,” says Sean Wharton, an internal medicine specialist and founder of the Wharton Medical Clinic in Hamilton. “Without looking at calories, you will always have a very difficult time determining what you should or should not be taking in, and you’ll have a difficult time with weight loss.”

The benefits of monitoring are borne out by the U.S. National Weight Control Registry, an initiative established in 1994 by Rena Wing, a professor of psychiatry and human behaviour at Brown University in Rhode Island, and James Hill, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Colorado, that has collected data from more than 5,000 people who have lost an average of 66 pounds and have kept it off for 5½ years.

Researchers found that registry members reported frequent monitoring of their weight. More than 44 per cent said they weighed themselves at least once a day and 31 per cent said they weighed themselves at least once a week.

Frequent monitoring allows people who are trying to lose weight to catch slips early –“I gained two pounds this week?”– and nip them in the bulge.

“It allows you to take a look at trends,” Dr. Wharton says. “To know that your weight has gone up, you need to get on the scale, and then you need to make a change.”

While the calories in minus calories out equation remains the biggest piece of that puzzle, it is not the only piece.

Dr. Wharton points to a diet study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine that found the optimal diet for weight loss was one consisting of 50 per cent carbohydrates, 25 per cent protein and 25 per cent fat. In other words, knowing where calories are coming from is more important than just calculating calories.

“It’s not as simple as what you put in your mouth minus how much you exercise,” says Timothy Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body, who adds that “the type of calories that you consume is more important than the number. ... But tracking something is better than nothing because of the awareness it creates.”

Yet the very tools that help some dieters is a deterrence for others – the counting and weighing and monitoring is a chore that brings confusion, not clarity.

People often ditch diets because “things are too complex” says Rick Gallop, a former president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and author of The G.I. Diet. “People don’t like to count calories or points or blocks. They get very frustrated.”

That is why Mr. Gallop’s book uses a colour code – red, yellow and green – to classify which foods to eat and which ones to avoid. It’s much simpler, he says, than having to add up numbers on the glycemic index, which measures the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. Foods that are low on the G.I. digest more slowly, and because they digest more slowly, they leave you feeling fuller for longer, so you eat less.

Obsessing over numbers and losing sight of the big picture can lead to dangerous consequences.

“It can lead to things like eating disorders,” Ms. Jordan says. For example, some people might restrict themselves to 1,400 calories a day, and meeting that target “consumes their life.” They won’t eat another bite, even if they are starving, which can lead to fatigue, stress and sleep issues, Ms. Jordan says. “You have to listen to your body sometimes as well.”

Numbers need context to be helpful, she says. “Sometimes people will focus on one specific thing: They’ll say, ‘Oh, this is low in trans fat, I’ll eat it.’ But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy for you,” Ms. Jordan says. “It’s important to track, but understanding how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together is more important.”

Like any diet, persistence will make eating right second nature, meaning that you can ditch the calculator soon enough.

“If you do it properly, you’re going to start to eat similar foods. You won’t have to count them over and over again,” Dr. Wharton says. When you consider something new, you may need to check out the label, but for most foods you won’t need to lug an abacus around with you.

Knowing numbers, whether it’s the calories in certain foods, the maximum number of calories you should consume each day or how your weight is fluctuating, provides dieters with a sense of control, says David Macklin, founder of the Weightcare clinic in Toronto.

“It’s empowering,” he says.

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The big fat question: How do we actually lose weight?

January’s store shelves are groaning with new diet books, all promising to finally reveal the universal formula for weight loss.

That promise, however, is as empty as the calories in a Timbit. It’s not going to happen.

“People want to hear that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods, and that you simply need to avoid the bad foods and only eat the good foods and you’ll be fine,” says Yoni Freedhoff, the founder of Ottawa’s Bariatric Medical Clinic and one of Canada’s foremost obesity clinicians.

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Results & past polls

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Over the past few decades, we’ve tried cutting carbs, eliminating fat – or meticulously optimizing the ratio between them; we’ve eliminated meat and subsisted on liquids; we’ve even eaten according to our blood type. The result? When Statistics Canada went out and actually measured thousands of Canadians (instead of trusting them to tell the truth about their weight) between 2007 and 2009, they found that 61 per cent of us were overweight.

As we begin a new decade, obesity researchers are turning away from this search for “good” foods – a quest that has led us down a nutritional rabbit hole, in which the rich complexities of the human diet are reduced to didactic edicts that change every few years.

Instead, they’re focusing more on the physiology and psychology of why people eat what they do, how societal forces influence their choices, and what they can do to change. The code hasn’t been cracked yet, but here’s what we do know about weight loss.

For starters, it’s clear that losing weight isn’t just about eating certain foods. Last fall, Mark Haub, a nutrition professor at Kansas State University, subsisted for 10 weeks on 1,800 calories a day – about 800 fewer than usual – of Twinkies, Doritos, brownies and other convenience-store staples. In the process, he lost 27 pounds and improved health markers such as cholesterol levels.

While Dr. Haub’s experience runs counter to the advice in anti-carb polemics like Gary Taubes’ new book, Why We Get Fat, his slim result was no surprise to obesity researchers.

“Of course you can lose weight by eating pizza and junk food,” says Jean-Philippe Chaput, a scientist in the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research unit at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa. “And you can gain weight by eating apples, if you eat more apples than you eat pizza.”

There are many compelling nutritional reasons to choose apples over pizza and Twinkies. But if you’re primarily concerned about weight, researchers have found that people can successfully shed pounds on pretty much any diet, as long as it involves a reduction in calories.

A 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, followed 160 overweight volunteers assigned to the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers or Zone diet. After a year, the average weight loss was about six pounds, but there was no statistically significant difference among any of the diets.

Instead, the results showed the best predictor of weight loss was how closely the subjects had managed to stick with their prescribed diet. The true mark of a successful diet, after all, isn’t losing weight, it’s keeping it off – and that’s where the Twinkie diet, and any other diet that you’re not prepared to maintain for the rest of your life, fails.

***

The most famous equation in nutrition is “calories in = calories out.” But the right-hand side of the equation is more complicated than most people realize.

If you add one 60-calorie cookie to your daily diet, simple math suggests you’ll gain weight for the rest of your life at a rate corresponding to about a pound of fat for each 3,500 calories. But, in fact, as you gain weight, your body has to spend more energy maintaining the new tissue, using up some of the excess calories. A paper published last year in JAMA calculated that the weight gain would level off at six pounds after a few years.

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Avoiding the weight-loss yo-yo

Deryk Clark is living a familiar story to many people who have tried to lose weight: He’ll gain 10 pounds and then lose 10 pounds; gain 10 pounds, lose 10 pounds. He’s munched on protein bars and gone on cleanses, but he’s now trying to stay focused on eating healthily and staying active – consistently. “The challenge now is trying to change my lifestyle for the long term,” says the 44-year-old project manager at a Toronto-based software company.

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The diet

“I’ve done a bit of yo-yo dieting over the last five years or so. I’ll lose 10 pounds training for a mountain bike race and then it creeps back on when I stop training or the race is over. It’s not a huge amount, but on my frame, not being a tall person, it certainly makes a difference. In the past I did a half-baked weight-loss regimen where I ate meal-replacement bars. I also tried a couple of cleanses. The last time I did one was about a year ago. By the end of it you want to vomit at the mere smell of elderberry.”

The biggest challenge

“Is not being tired. My wife and I have three kids, who are 2, 4 and 7. Balancing a busy schedule with the kids, and both of us working, makes it hard to find the energy after we’ve put the kids to bed to go downstairs and get on the bike. Finding the time to exercise is hard. I find it’s very seasonal. Losing weight and staying active is a lot easier in the summer. And there’s just a lot more comfort foods like lasagna in the winter.”

The current plan

“I joined a weight-loss challenge run by a site called fortylicious.ca that my friend runs. Getting involved in a group challenge helps with motivation. It’s something you can track. I’m also cutting out bad habits like eating cookies at 9:30 at night. Stopping the grazing is one of the big things I’m trying to do, and cutting down on carbs. Also, my wife and I bought a spinning bike for our basement in November. I try to get on it two or three times a week for a 40-minute spin. It’s a great workout.”

The goal

“To be around 180 pounds. My weight fluctuates from around the 178-pounds mark to 190. As soon as I hit the milestone of turning 40, I found that good diet or exercise by themselves aren’t enough. You have to do both. I’ve lost about six or seven pounds since I got the spinning bike. I haven’t had hockey yet in the new year, so we’ll see how that goes. Usually we go to out afterward and order chicken wings and French fries and a couple of pitchers of beer. It’s very hard to resist. You get about 10 per cent of the guys reaching for the carrots and celery on the wing tray.”

How it’s going

“It’s going really, really well. It helps that my wife is pretty active. She runs marathons and half-marathons, so it’s good to have that influence in the house. It feels really good to be exercising regularly and eating better. It’s a good baseline to have in your life, knowing that you’re on top of your health. You can focus on other things and not have to worry about that extra weight that you’re carrying.”

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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How can you win the weight-loss battle?

No carbs, all protein? No eating after 8 p.m.? Which rules should you follow, and which should you ignore?

Talk to the experts - and real people who have lost weight and kept it off.

Lisa Buckham, a resident of Abbotsford B.C. who lost 200 pounds, Charles Cicciarella who shed nearly 150 lbs and shared his secrets in his book called Life is a Fat Onion: My 8 Rules for Losing Weight and Gaining Life, and Andrea Dirocco-Supryka, a personal trainer and co-founder of One-on-One Fitness in Belleville, Ont.,

Join the weight-loss conversation Thursday at 1 p.m. ET.

How do you win the weight-loss battle?

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Cheating day on a diet

Cheat Day on a Diet

Taking a day of your diet is good. A diet is a great example of having commitment to what you want and I applaud anyone and everyone that does a good job of committing themselves to staying healthy with a good diet. The trouble is trying to stay on a diet every day for months or years on end. This is what people aspire to but it is not very easy to do.

Cheating day on a diet confuses your metabolism

A few diets seem to say that you should try to confuse your body by staying on your diet for a few days or a couple of weeks at most and then getting off your diet for anywhere from one to three days. What do you think of this? Well the idea behind the days off on a diet is that you need to confuse your body so that it does not just adjust to lower caloric intake or just lower your metabolism to maintain fat levels.

Diets with a Cheating Day

Would you like to know examples of off day diets? There is a Weight Watchers diet adjustment that involves changing the amount of points you eat a day and cycling though these. You could do a kind of day off on this plan. The Body for life plan is that you do diet and exercise six days a week and eat whatever you want for one day a week. And finally there is the fat loss for idiots program that has you do the diet for 11 days and then take 3 days off before you do it again. This is the most confusing for your body (this is good) and easiest for you to manage.

Rules for a Diet Cheat Day

The best way that I see people doing there diet with days off is to have rules still for your days off. Try to follow the following rules:

The idea is to eat what you want but do not overdo it.First of all you need a good regimen for your diet days and then for your days off the rules should be about how you cheat.Try to make sure that you are not being ridiculous because it is your day off. Do not eat a whole large pizza or a gallon of ice cream.Do not binge, no huge meals just meals that make you comfortably fullThis is the day that you go to a restaurant if you want.Do not eat three days worth of food in one day. The idea is that you can cheat but you don’t want to spend the whole week just catching up.

I hope that this plan for days off helps. I know that I have struggled with this in the past but the best thing is to just expand on your regular diet and at the same time make sure that get to eat those things that you are craving, in small measures of course.

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Jennifer Hudson on Oprah

Jennifer Hudson after the weight loss

I have to say that I don’t often watch Oprah but today Jennifer Hudson was on and it was interesting to see many of the interesting spots. Oprah showed Jennifer Hudson’s journey from a bit flabby to fab  after losing 80 pounds. Jennifer Hudson also talked a lot about her life including the tragedy of the family murders that happened last year.

Jennifer Hudson Loses Along With Family

Just as we see with many families where one person is overweight the rest of the family was in the same spot and many of the Jennifer Hudson family lost weight. 75 of Jennifers friends joined her on the weight loss journey. Wow

Jennifer Hudson lost weight on Weight Watchers as a spokesperson for the company. I always think that this must be terrible pressure, lose weight and have people critique you while you are on TV commercials. It was funny too to see one of the commercial breaks have a Jenny Craig commercial.

Of course they had the bra fitting for the family. What is it with Oprah and proper bra fittings on the episodes? Being a guy maybe I will never understand but my wife gets it.

Also Tim Gunn was on and said that Jennifer was among the best dressed in Hollywood already before but now she is even more qualified to be best dressed with her new hot bod. Tim Gunn also redressed a bunch of family and friends on the show which was a crowd favorite

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Fat Loss 4 Idiots Meal Plans

With due respect to the huge number of articles written on the benefits of calorie shifting with fat loss 4 idiots, I just wished that the authors of those articles had also taken the time to offer a few easy-go-recipes for the followers of the diet. Regardless, I am going to fill that need with my article

If you have been searching for some good recipes that go well with the concept of calorie shifting, you would be able to find them and more from this article!

What Is Calorie Shifting?

For the sake of argument, I am making a few assumptions here, the first of them being that you are quite familiar with the concept of calorie shifting method of dieting. I am also assuming that you are a member of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet program, which follows the philosophy of calorie shifting diet. Now if those two assumptions are true, then you are going to benefit tremendously from this article. I will offer you a 3-day meal plan based on the dietary requirements of FatLoss4Idiots.

For your information, these meal plans are only for the non-vegetarians; I cannot mention the vegetarian diet here, as it would mean infringing on the copyright of FatLoss4Idiots. If you need the vegetarian version of these meals, you can access that from within their membership area.

Also, note that you are free to consume these meals in any way and order you wish, the only exception being the meal plan of second day. Moreover, if you don’t want to eat a particular food suggested in the meal plan, you are free to do that as well. These meal plans are as flexible as they should be, so that you can enjoy your meals and lose weight at the same time!

Meal Plan for Fat loss 4 Idiots First day

Your first day should consist of the following meals:

Meal 1- I) Mixture of vegetables in steamed form: When you are starting the diet, I would recommend that you eat a bowl of steamed vegetables. You can have any number of vegetables you wish in the mix. If however, you choose to eat them fried, make sure you use as little oil as possible; I would also suggest the use of olive oil over your regular fatty oil.

II) Slices of roasted beef and hard boiled eggs: It is important to start building your lean muscle mass right from day one, as more lean muscles means faster fat burning and a stronger and flatter body! Increasing your protein intake is a great way to build strong muscles, and good news is that both lean beef and eggs are rich in protein content!

Meal 2- Your second meal would consist of eggs, this time in scrambled form. Additionally, you should also consume broiled sea bass.

Meal 3- For the third meal, I recommend sausage links along with cottage cheese.

Meal 4- For the fourth meal, broiled orange roughy along with tuna salad would make a great combo, and if you add a few pears to the mix (in fresh form of course), you cannot help but explain ‘Wow!’

Meal Plan for Fat loss 4 Idiots Second day

You could have the following meals on second day:

Meal 1- For the first meal, you should eat nothing except a deli meat sandwich. To make this sandwich, you should only use the following ingredients:

-Any kind of meat that fits the deli style, such as turkey, ham, roasted beef, etc.

-2 Medium-sized sandwich breads

-Optionally, you can also add onions, tomatoes and lettuce to the mix

Meal 2 to 4- Your next three meals should consist of nothing but fruits. You are however free to choose any fruits from the following: peaches, pears, plums, oranges, strawberries, grapes, grapefruit, apples, kiwis, etc.

These are just examples of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet Generator type meals. To learn more why not check out the fat loss 4 idiots site now and see what they have to offer.

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Gain Muscle Fast

Gain Muscle Fast

Many guys and gals want to gain muscle fast, especially with summer coming and more chances of wearing less clothes. So I thought I would give some tips on how you can gain muscle fast

How to Gain Muscle Fast

Eating to Gain Weight – You need to eat big to gain big. I know all the magazines will let you know that you have to eat enough protein to bloat up a horse. But really you need to eat about 30 grams of protein and 60 grams of carbs every meal. Next make sure that you eat at least five meals a day and if you can up to seven meals a day. Make sure that you are getting at least a couple hours between meals and don’t make them too big so that you can eat every two hours.

Cut the Cardio to Gain Muscle Fast - Cardio is great for burning fat and improving your stamina. One of the problems with cardio is that you are using up energy and burning fat as well as some muscle. The key to your workouts and lifestyle is to decrease the amount of muscle loss to near zero and to keep your energy up.

Concentrate on Compound Exercises – The best exercises to gain muscle fast are to do are the basics such as squats, bench press, and deadlifts. A lot of people will do curls and pushdowns and even concentration curls to work arms when really you will make great gains on your arms by doing the compound exercises.

The best exercises are the best way to build muscle but remember also that you need to do weight workouts quickly and heavy as I will note below.

Keep Sets Short – Make you workouts short so that you can get the most out of heavy weights. The optimal number of reps are 6 to 8 per set but these reps should be all that you can do. Make sure there is nothing left after these reps.

Keep Weight Workouts Short – Workouts need to only be about 45 minutes. Spending more time in the gym means that you will be doing more lighter sets and wasting time. Also there is an urge to do more sets and really doing more sets can be counterproductive to gain muscle fast as it will force you to burn some muscle for energy instead of the glycogen in your muscles only

I hope that these weight tips will help you out. Keep all of these tips in mind and build your lifestyle around them so that this summer your body will be big and you will gain muscle fast as you can get on it.

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Endocrine Disruptors

I have seen a bit of info lately on the concept of Endocrine Disruptors and thought it would be a good idea to do a little environmental awareness of this issue

What are Endocrine Disruptors?

Endocrine disruptors are naturally occurring compounds or man-made chemicals that may interfere with the production or activity of hormones of the endocrine system leading to adverse health effects. Many of these chemicals have been linked with developmental, reproductive, neural, immune, and other problems in wildlife and laboratory animals.

What does the Science say about Endocrine Disruptors?

Over the past decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that numerous chemicals, both natural and man-made, may interfere with the endocrine system and produce adverse effects in humans, wildlife, fish or birds. Scientists often refer to these chemicals as “endocrine disruptors.”  These chemicals are found in many of the everyday products we use including some plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, flame retardants, food, toys, cosmetics, and pesticides.  Although limited scientific information is available on the potential adverse human health effects, concern arises because endocrine disrupting chemicals while present in the environment at very low levels, have been shown to have adverse effects in wildlife species, as well as in laboratory animals at these low levels.  he difficulty of assessing public health effects is increased by the fact that people are typically exposed to multiple endocrine disruptors simultaneously.

So What Do We Do Now?

Endocrine disruptors are essentially pollution in the air and water systems. The only way to avoid these is to live in a clener atmosphere which for many of us living in or near cities is close to impossible. Follow these tips whenever possible and remember that hte cleaner your diet is the better anyway.

Educate yourself about endocrine disruptors, and educate your family and friends. Buy organic food whenever possible. Avoid using pesticides in your home or yard, or on your pet — use baits or traps instead, keepin your home especially clean to prevent ant or roach infestations. Find out if pesticides are used in your child’s school or day care center and campaign for non-toxic alternatives. Avoid fatty foods such as cheese and meat whenever possible. If you eat fish from lakes, rivers, or bays, check with your state to see if they are contaminated. Avoid heating food in plastic containers, or storing fatty foods in plastic containers or plastic wrap. Do not give young children soft plastic teethers or toys, since these leach potential endocrine disrupting chemicals. Support efforts to get strong government regulation of and increased research on endocrine disrupting chemicals.

The science and society are still at odds with the issue of endocrine disruptors but this does not stop us from being more careful in the way that we eat and live to minimize their effects.

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Free Fitness Book

Free Fitness Book
Well I decided to make a change to the 10 days of fitness ecourse that I created a couple of years ago and have edited ever since. I have not changed the 10+ days of emails into a shiny new ebook in pdf format.

I am really excited about the prospects for people reading this book and hope it changes you as well.

The big driver for this change was to make sure that people would not just learn how to change their life but also to make the changes necessary.

The new fitness ebook is 40 pages and includes questions for you to answer on each day. A big change and something that you can do still in 10 or 12 days.

This book is not meant to be read as much is it meant to be printed and read, and for you to answer the questions so that you can move ahead in your life.

In this free fitness book I cover the following topicsEatingMeal PlanningCardioWeightsRest and SleepWeight LossHow to Gain MuscleAnd a bunch more stuff

So sign up now and pick this up

Let me know what you think about my new free fitness book. I am really excited about this and hope it really changes lives.

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Meditation in 8 Weeks Can Create Huge Change | 8 week meditation study

8 week meditation study

Cool new 8 week meditation study came out today. I have mentioned before that I have meditated a fair amount in the past. Nothing like Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, but enough to know the affect that it can have. Meditation is great. Anyway one of the big things that meditation does is still the mind so that you are much better able to keep your concentration as well as creativity.

Studies tend to be inconclusive on the physical effect to your brain from meditation but a new report seems to show that in just 8 weeks it can make a big difference.

8 Week Meditation Study

An eight-week pro­gram of medita­t­ion led to brain struc­ture changes in peo­ple par­ti­ci­pat­ing in a stu­dy, re­search­ers say. It’s the first time that medita­t­ion, a prac­tice ad­vo­cat­ed by a range of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, has been shown to lead to such changes, ac­cord­ing to the sci­en­tists.

Pre­vi­ous re­search, they said, had re­vealed struc­tur­al dif­fer­ences in the brains of med­i­ta­tors, but could­n’t doc­u­ment that medita­t­ion had ac­tu­ally caused those changes. The re­search­ers re­ported that par­ti­ci­pat­ing in an eight-week medita­t­ion pro­gram ap­peared to make meas­ur­a­ble changes in brain re­gions as­so­ci­at­ed with mem­o­ry, sense of self, em­pa­thy and stress.

“Al­though the prac­tice of medita­t­ion is as­so­ci­at­ed with a sense of peace­ful­ness and phys­i­cal re­laxa­t­ion, prac­ti­tion­ers have long claimed that medita­t­ion al­so pro­vides cog­ni­tive and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits that per­sist through­out the day,” said Sara Laz­ar of the Mas­sa­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s Psy­chi­at­ric Neu­roimag­ing Re­search Pro­gram, the stu­dy’s sen­ior au­thor. “This study demon­strates that changes in brain struc­ture may un­der­lie some of these re­ported im­prove­ments and that peo­ple are not just feel­ing bet­ter be­cause they are spend­ing time re­laxing.”

The study is to ap­pear in the Jan. 30 is­sue of the jour­nal Psy­chi­a­try Re­search: Neu­ro­imag­ing.

Meditation Study Shows Changes to the Brain

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors scanned the brain struc­tures of 16 study par­ti­ci­pants two weeks be­fore and af­ter they took part in the eight-week Mind­ful­ness-Based Stress Re­duc­tion Pro­gram at the Uni­vers­ity of Mas­sa­chu­setts Cen­ter for Mind­ful­ness. In ad­di­tion to weekly meet­ings that in­clud­ed prac­tice of mind­ful­ness medita­t­ion – which fo­cus­es on non­judg­men­tal aware­ness of sensa­t­ions, feel­ings and state of mind – par­ti­ci­pants re­ceived au­di­o record­ings for guid­ed medita­t­ion prac­tice and were asked to keep track of how much time they prac­ticed each day. A group of non-med­i­ta­tors al­so had their brains scanned dur­ing the same time pe­ri­od.

The med­i­ta­tors in the 8 week meditation study re­ported spend­ing an av­er­age of 27 min­utes each day prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness ex­er­cises, and their re­sponses to a “mind­ful­ness ques­tion­naire” in­di­cat­ed sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments com­pared with pre-par­ticipa­t­ion re­sponses, the sci­en­tists re­ported.

Anal­y­sis of the brain scans, which fo­cused on ar­eas where medita­t­ion-as­so­ci­at­ed dif­fer­ences were seen in ear­li­er stud­ies, found in­creased grey-mat­ter dens­ity in the hip­po­cam­pus, known to be im­por­tant for learn­ing and mem­o­ry, and in struc­tures as­so­ci­at­ed with self-a­ware­ness, com­pas­sion and in­tro­spec­tion. Grey mat­ter is the brain tis­sue that con­tains nerve cells.

If you are interested in learning more about meditation then check out this article on meditation for fitness that I wrote a while ago that is of course still relevant. Also There was a past study on meditation for stress relief and the science of meditation.

After seeing this 8 week meditation study I say find a quiet corner in the house and just sit quietly and see what meditation can do for you.

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Natural Remedy For Kidney Stones

natural remedy for kidney stones

Natural remedy For kidney stones are something for any sufferer to look at. If you are suffering from the excruciating pain that kidney stones or renal calculi can cause and your doctor has advised waiting to see if the stone will pass by itself, you could certainly benefit from finding a natural remedy for kidney stones.

What are Kidney Stones?

Kidney stones are formed by the body from unprocessed minerals in the renal system. Most of them consist of calcium oxalate. They occur in about 10% of the population but men are four times as likely to get them as women. They tend to recur, so that once you have had one, you have a 75% chance of having more in the next 20 years.

It is possible to have them without noticing, because many will pass when very small. You might have a pain when urinating but you probably would not notice that you had passed something that could be as tiny as a grain of sand.

Treatment for Large Kidney StonesKidney Stone Cure Book

Larger stones can block the urethra and that is when the severe pain is caused. You may also see blood in the urine. This comes from the lining of the organs being damaged by the uneven surface of the stone. If you have pus or pain during urination you should tell your doctor as this may be a sign of infection.

Even in cases where the stone is large enough to cause pain, the majority of them do pass naturally. There are certain natural remedy for kidney stones you can do to help this happen, or make it happen faster.

Natural Remedy For Kidney Stones

The best natural remedy for kidney stones is simply to drink plenty of water. Aim for 2-3 liters spread through the day.

Consuming more soup, fresh fruit and raw vegetables is another way to increase your intake of water, as they contain much more than dry cooked foods and grains. Be careful however to avoid over consumption of oxalate which contributes to the forming of the most common type of stone.

Foods high in oxalate that should be avoided include chocolate, peanuts, rhubarb, spinach, beets and sweet potatoes. Also, cut down on salt and alcohol which have a dehydrating effect, and meat and dairy products which cause uric acid to form in the kidneys.

Some people take diuretics to increase the water flow through the kidneys. Some herbal teas have a diuretic effect, for example dandelion and stinging nettle. Replacing two glasses of water with one of these teas may help the stone to pass more quickly. Unless you have other medical reasons for taking them, prescribed diuretics should not be necessary.

You should strain your urine so that you catch the stone when it passes. Your doctor can have it analyzed to see what minerals it is formed from. This will tell you how you need to alter your diet in future to give you the best chance of preventing a recurrence. For most people, a diet that is lower in protein and salt is recommended.

It may be wise to not to take large doses of vitamins and minerals until you have had your stones or your urine analyzed.

A doctor should always be involved in treatment of renal calculi because of the possibility of infection and complications. A natural remedy for kidney stones should only be used in conjunction with medical advice.

These natural remedy for kidney stones should help you out as we all know how painful kidney stones can be.

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