Angela Minelli, Cleveland Mind and Body Examiner

We can’t turn on the TV, drive down the road or go to a party without being confronted with America’s hottest obsessions: dieting and weight loss. Diets are a billion-dollar industry; companies spend millions and millions luring us to try the latest diet (low carb, high protein, low fat, no fat, you name it) with promises that this will (finally!) be the solution—a shortcut to a thinner body. Advertising efforts also deeply affect our children, who develop distorted body images and are often on diets as early as nine or 10 years of age. 

Our culture touts diet pills, celebrity workouts, convenience foods and trendy diets to help us achieve our desired weight, but these quick-fix solutions have backfired. America’s populace has reached its highest weight in history. About half of Americans are overweight; one-third are obese. Diets steer us away from our common sense and dip deeply into our pocketbooks while eliciting few, if any, lasting results.

Diets don’t work because each person is unique, with different needs based on gender, age, ancestry and lifestyle; how could one diet be right for everyone? No one diet works for everyone.  The concept of bio-individuality is that each person has their own nutritional needs. So, when the experts say, “dairy is good for you” or “fat is unhealthy,” it’s too much of a generalization. One person’s food is another person’s poison, and that’s why fad diets don’t work in the long run. Furthermore, diets don’t work because they are extreme solutions. As in physics, if a pendulum swings to one extreme, it has to swing equally to the other. A diet might work for a short amount of time, but research shows that almost all diets result in a 10-pound gain once off the diet. Diets don’t work because they are too restrictive. People who fail on diet plans are not flawed or weak. Diets by nature require discipline and restriction at levels that are unsustainable by a healthy human body.

Most people are disconnected from why they gain weight and see diet as the only culprit. For example, ignoring or discounting emotions is often the first thing to cause weight imbalances. Is it an eating disorder or a relationship disorder?  In our fast-paced world, we have lost sight of many aspects of life that truly nourish and balance our bodies, such as slowing down, eating a home-cooked meal and spending quality time with loving people. Eating consciously and making simple lifestyle changes will create positive results and release us from the endless cycle of dieting.

Given half a chance, the human body will balance out by itself, but this is only possible by getting out of the diet mentality and listening to what is truly needed. Imagine taking all of the outward energy we expend on diets, fads and gimmicks and turning it inward, so that we can listen to our hearts and inner wisdom. There is no such thing as a quick fix; we already have everything we need within us. With careful thought and loving reflection, we can feed ourselves in a nourishing way. Working with our bodies rather than against them will bring increased energy, stabilized weight and sustainable health

BBC News, Tuesday, 23 June 2009

Trying to copy celebrities who are back in skinny jeans weeks after giving birth is unrealistic and dangerous, new mothers are being warned.

It can take women six months or even a year, not weeks, to shed the weight they put on in pregnancy, say experts.

Crash diets and intensive exercise programmes are not only likely to fail but can harm mother and baby.

The advice comes from Germany’s Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.

According to the Institute, women are under too much pressure to lose weight quickly after giving birth, when many need some of that extra weight to provide nourishment for the baby.

And celebrities who snap back to their normal weight within weeks of having a baby are not a true reflection of real life.

Stars like Nicole Kidman and Victoria Beckham were back in their skinny jeans weeks after giving birth, while model Heidi Klum was on the catwalk in her underwear weeks after having her baby.

No rush

The Institute’s director Professor Peter Sawicki said: “Often, the extra effort women have to make to look after a new baby and breastfeed after giving birth means the kilos just melt away without effort.

“But for about half of all women, the weight will not go away as quickly.”

Those new mothers still in their maternity wear weeks later should not rush to do punishing exercise classes, says the guidance, but should instead follow a sensible diet and build up slowly to more strenuous exercise.

“Even though many magazines have ‘get your bikini body back quickly’ diets on their covers, promising women they can achieve their ideal weight in time for summer, it is not getting quick results that counts the most.

“This is particularly true after pregnancy. It is normal for it to take three to six months for women to lose the weight they gained in pregnancy,” it says.

Professor Sawicki said women could avoid weight problems after birth by eating sensibly during pregnancy.

“It is not a good idea to ‘eat for two’ in pregnancy and forget about your weight until after the baby is born if you are at all overweight - or prone to overweight - already.”

Louise Silverton of the Royal College of Midwives agreed with the advice.

“We would discourage a rush to lose weight after pregnancy, it places undue strain on the mother’s body when she needs her strength to look after her baby, and the evidence suggests that slow and sustained weight loss, if needed, is the sensible option.

“Also, following the birth and to breastfeed well, women need a good diet with adequate energy intake, so restricting the amount of food they eat simply to lose weight should be avoided.”

UK guidance on weight management for mothers after childbirth is due to be published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence next year.

Telegraph.co.uk,  05 June 2009

Women over the age of 30 who exercise for more than an hour a week could reduce their risk of getting breast cancer, according to a new medical study.

A group of 4296 women were asked to recall their physical activity levels during four key stages of life: 10 to 15 years old, 15 to 30 years old, 30 to 50 years old, and 50 years old and older.

The odds of developing breast cancer did not appear to change in relation to exercise levels between ages 10 and 30, but women above age 30 significantly cut their chances of developing breast cancer if they were more active, the researchers found.

 The study was led by Lisa Sprod of University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual meeting in Seattle.

“An average amount of exercise was defined as 60 minutes per week,” Miss Sprod said. “so anyone exercising less than 60 minutes was below average, above 60 minutes was above average, and anyone that considered themselves ‘highly competitive’ chose that category.”

Fewer women who classified themselves as “highly competitive” between the ages of 30 and 50 developed breast cancer, compared to women who were less physically active.

Likewise, fewer women who classified themselves as highly competitive at age 50 or older developed breast cancer when compared to women who exercised less than 60 minutes per week.

“Preliminarily,” Sprod said, “the take home message is that accumulating greater physical activity after the age of 30 may play a role in reducing the risk of developing breast cancer.”

Telegraph.co.uk  03 Jun 2009

Drugs that could encourage people to exercise are being developed by scientists to combat obesity and diabetes.

In tests, very overweight mice doubled their amount of physical activity when the hormone leptin – which regulates appetite – was switched on in their brain.

Scientists hope to build on the research to create medication to help people who suffer from obesity to lead more active lives.

Dr Christian Bjorbaek, an endocrinologist Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, said: “This gives us the opportunity to search for drugs that might induce the desire or will to voluntarily exercise.”

As part of the research, the mice become morbidly obese, severely diabetic and sluggish after being bred to lack the ability to respond to leptin.

But after leptin sensitivity was restored to a single class of their brain cells, their blood sugar levels rose and they increased their exercise levels.

Although they remained obese, the mice began eating about 30 per cent fewer calories and lost a modest amount of weight.

Researchers will now investigate whether the same group of brain cells, known as pro-opiomelanocortin neurons, plays as key a role with leaner, fitter animals.

The results of the study were published in the Cell Metabolism journal. Leptin was first identified 15 years ago and made famous for its ability to curb appetite and lead to weight loss.

by Douglas Young, Evening Chronicle

WORRIED about how you will be able to manage? Here are Change4Life’s nine obesity mythbusters.

Healthy food is just too expensive:

Buy what’s local and in season, and make meat go further in casseroles or stir-fries by mixing it with cheap healthy alternatives such as beans, pulses and frozen veg.

I can never eat a cooked breakfast again!:

The full English breakfast, if you fry it all in fat, will be bad for you. However, the basic ingredients can actually make quite a healthy breakfast. Grill lean bacon, cook the eggs without much fat and include baked beans, grilled tomatoes and grilled mushrooms, then serve with wholemeal bread.

I shouldn’t give fruit or veg if my child didn’t like it the first time:

Children can be fussy eaters, but they also need nutrients. Offer them new food as often as possible, and encourage them to help you prepare new foods.

Dried, tinned or frozen fruit is not as healthy as fresh fruit:

We should be eating at least five portions of fruit and veg each day. But these can be fresh, frozen, canned, dried, tinned or juiced.

Missing breakfast is a good way to lose weight:

Breakfast is an important meal. Skipping breakfast means you could lose out on all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

The salt we add at the table is most of the salt we eat:

Actually 75% of the salt in our diet comes from processed foods. Just 10 to 15% comes from salt we add when we’re cooking or at the table.

Processed foods are not as healthy for me as fresh foods:

Sometimes this is true, but a lot of processed foods are just as healthy, and sometimes even more healthy than fresh foods. This all depends on how they are processed.

If I don’t exercise really hard all the time, it’s waste of time:

Nothing could be further from the truth. Moderate exercise, like walking, gardening, playing games, or dancing can have fantastic benefits.

I only need to exercise if I’m overweight:

Physical activity not only helps you look better, it gives you energy, helps you manage stress and anxiety, and can help lift depression.

The Sunday Times, Laurel Ives

Think yourself thin with the latest techniques to keep you away from the cakes

Dieting is often doomed to failure, despite most women being able to pass an exam on the differences between Atkins, South Beach and WeightWatchers. The problem is, we don’t follow the rules we learn. No carbs after 6pm? No problem — until we’re out for dinner, on our second glass of wine and scoffing the bread basket. Everyone has a flash point that makes it hard to say no, but ultimately, resisting temptation is the key to successful weight loss.

Now research from leading psychologists has identified the parts of the brain involved in resisting temptation, and how we can use them to stop reaching for gooey chocolate cake. Leading the charge is Professor Walter Mischel, the psychologist who, in the 1960s, developed the “marshmallow test”, which demonstrated that if children were able to delay gratification, they would be more successful in later life. Mischel’s research has shown that to resist temptation, we have to shift activity away from the “hot” parts of our brain to the “cool” parts. “The mind brain has two systems: one is cool, slow and deliberate, and allows for self-control, goal-setting and willpower — the ‘no’ system, if you like. The other is hot, emotional and instinctual, and present from birth — the ‘go’ system,” says Janet Metcalfe, professor of psychology at Columbia University and co-author of a paper on willpower with Mischel.

So when you see a chocolate cake, the “hot” part of your brain reacts to thoughts of the delicious taste, and the sugar rush that you have learnt a slice will give you. Instead of giving in, what you need to do is activate the “cool” part of your brain by thinking about your goals and practising far-sightedness. Imagine the sense of satisfaction you’d get, from fitting into your favourite dress in a couple of weeks’ time, say, or from losing your unsightly tummy bulge before you go sunbathing this summer. It’s a simple strategy, but experiments have shown it is highly effective.

Perception is also important. Feasting your eyes on desirable food activates the hot system in the brain, which explains what we know instinctively: putting biscuits out of sight in a cupboard will mean you eat fewer of them. “The problem with diets is they are also full of pictures of delicious diet food, and all of this is just priming the hot system,” Metcalfe says.

Stress is another key issue. It has been shown to switch on the hot part of the brain and cause us to overeat. Daryl O’Connor, a psychologist at Leeds University, has conducted experiments showing that people under stress tend to go for high-fat, energy-dense food. “The first thing to do is to be aware of how stress changes your behaviour. Then develop an action plan to deal with it. This might involve taking healthy snacks to work or finding ways to cope better with your time and emotions.”

Brain scans have also shown that memory plays a significant role in overeating. If you habitually eat chocolate, for instance, then every time you see it, you remember the high. However, Dr Leigh Gibson at Roehampton University has found that if you give something up, far from your cravings increasing, they will actually decrease, proving that cravings result from habitually giving in to temptation. So the research is clear: if you want to be slim, fit and healthy, it’s time to take control of your mind.

By Jon Swaine – Telegraph.co.uk
19 Apr 2009

Diet pills that go on sale in British chemists for the first time this week are no long-term substitute for self-discipline and healthy living, doctors have warned.

Users of one of the drugs, Alli, can lose 3lb a week, according to its manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline. This equates to more than three stones over four months.

The drug, which is a £1.60-a-day diluted version of the prescription-only drug Xenical, works by reducing the body’s ability to process fat by about 25 per cent.

 The undigested fat passes straight through the body, creating what is described as “an urgent need to go to the bathroom”.

Professor Gareth Williams, professor of medicine at the University of Bristol and the author of Obesity: Science To Practice, said that the side-effects are so severe that “possibly few users will even finish their first pack of Alli, let alone buy a second”.

More seriously, he said: “The drug may cause only a small and transient downward blip in the otherwise inexorable climb in weight.

“Selling anti-obesity drugs over the counter will perpetuate the myth that obesity can be fixed simply by popping a pill and could further undermine efforts to promote healthy living, which is the only long-term escape from obesity,” Prof Williams wrote in the British Medical Journal.

He said that real-life weight loss may not be as dramatic as in clinical trials.

“Dieters in these trials are highly motivated and under medical supervision,” he said. “People … taking it without medical supervision may achieve an average daily energy deficit of only 100kcal - equivalent to leaving a few French fries on a plate, eating an apple instead of ice cream, or (depending on enthusiasm and fitness) having 10 to 20 minutes of sex.”

The second drug is Appesat, which claims to cause weight loss of just under 2lb per week. It is a seaweed extract, which swells in the stomach and tricks the user into feeling that they are full.

Its long-term benefits were even questioned by Dr Jason Halford, the director of the Study of Human Ingestive Behaviour University of Liverpool, who is paid to advise the drug’s manufacturer.

“The cure for obesity and being overweight will never be found in a pill, packet or a wonder drug,” Dr Halford said. “That can only come from enormous changes to our food and physical environment, which are going to take a long time to achieve.

“Drugs don’t necessarily deal with reasons why people become obese, which are largely psychological.”

About two-thirds of adults and a third of children are obese, according to the Health Survey for England. Last year the number of prescriptions for “fat pills” rose 16 per cent to 1.23 million.

Last week a BBC television investigation by Professor Lesley Regan of St Mary’s Hospital in London found that women taking a placebo starch pill, who thought they were taking a diet pill, lost up to half a stone in six weeks.

by Paul Suart, Birmingham Mail

NINE in every ten Birmingham parents feel pressured to lose weight because of examples set by celebrity mums in glossy magazines.

More than 93 per cent of Brummie respondents to the survey by national pub restaurant chain Toby Carvery said their health was being put at risk by high-profile mothers constantly pictured in figure-hugging outfits and urging other mums to diet and lose weight.

Eighty-five per cent of the 3,000 British mothers quizzed felt many famous mums had ‘cheated’ their way back to a perfect body after giving birth either by undertaking secret surgery or because they have the luxuries of time, money and an army of personal trainers.

Amanda Ursell, TV presenter and leading nutritionist, is backing Toby Carvery’s campaign to encourage mums to look after themselves by eating well instead of resorting to fad dieting.

“The pressure young mums are under to lose weight is ridiculous,” she said. “After having a child your body needs time to adjust. It’s really not wise to go headlong into a strict diet and exercise regime especially when feeding a newborn.

“Having a family means being sensible and educating each other about the importance of a healthy lifestyle.”

Jennifer Taplin, Metro Halifax

Many people think getting cancer is just the luck of the draw.

A new poll found 43 per cent of Canadians think this way, but new research shows one-quarter to one-third of all cancers can be prevented with a healthy lifestyle.

It’s this groundbreaking evidence that links diet, exercise, and weight management to preventing cancer which sparked an international symposium in Halifax starting today.

“What will come out of this is a change of thinking, it will be a new look and understanding of the evidence. It will be more compelling change opportunities,” said Theresa Marie Underhill, CEO of Cancer Care Nova Scotia.

“Just imagine the impact if we take what we know and apply it.”

More than 120 people from a number of sectors will ruminate on how to start a wave of societal change that will lead to fewer diagnoses of cancer. An estimated 74,000 Canadians die of some form of cancer every year.

Based on their own research in Nova Scotia, Underhill said most people — at around 72 per cent of those polled — think cancer is the greatest risk to their health. Getting the word out about how people can prevent this disease in the first place in crucial.

“Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. We’re putting the power with individuals to make a difference for themselves and change their luck, quite frankly,” she said.

“Not too many times you have the opportunity to change your luck.”

By Kim Painter, USA TODAY

Are Wii fit yet? As a nation, we definitely are not in good shape. But 10 months after the launch of Nintendo’s Wii Fit— the first hit video game marketed as an exercise tool — there are signs that, with the help of gaming systems, some of us might be making progress.

In January and February, Wii Fit was the best-selling video game in the USA and had sold more than 6 million units, says market researcher NPD Group.

Think about it: A game that teaches yoga poses and calisthenics is outselling games that teach warfare and auto theft. Marketers have noticed. More “exergames” are in stores or on the way: The latest, Gold’s Gym Cardio Workout (from Ubisoft, for Wii consoles), goes on sale Tuesday.

‘EXERGAMES’: They can get kids off the couch

Fitness experts have noticed, too. Though no one says exergames will solve the nation’s obesity problem, many hope they will produce real benefits.

“Some exercise is better than none,” and “none” is what many people get, says Cedric Bryant, chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise.

People who use exergames certainly move. In Wii Fit, users are invited to try yoga, strength exercises, aerobic activities and balance games while stepping and gyrating on a movement-sensitive board and following an on-screen trainer. The game tells users they are toning their bodies, improving posture and balance and burning calories.

But how much good does it do?

The exercise council is conducting a study to find out. So are researchers at the University of Mississippi. They are lending the game to eight families for three months and recording the results, says Scott Owens, an associate professor of health and exercise science.

“I think that for people who have been inactive, there’s a good chance they can see improvements,” Owens says. And the game may inspire some to join real yoga classes or jog outside, Bryant adds.

Even hard-core athletes may find some use for such games, says Sue Stanley-Green, a professor of athletic training at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. She is trying Wii Fit as a rehabilitation tool for athletes who are recovering from surgery or injury.

More fitness games on the way

Of course, any exercise program can cause injury. Exergames are no exception, experts say. They also worry that people will substitute light game workouts (such as the three-minute hula-hoop sessions on Wii Fit) for more rigorous activities (such as brisk 30-minute, real-world walks). And they say an ideal exergame would offer more useful feedback than Wii Fit, and some early imitators do.

But games that are more demanding, more interactive or both are on the way or already available, says Stephen Yang, assistant professor of physical education at the State University of New York-Cortland. For addictive, calorie-burning fun, Yang recommends Eye Toy Kinetic (for PlayStation2), a workout game that points a camera at the user to track movements and provide instant feedback.

He also likes tween favorite Dance Dance Revolution (for various game systems), which is not marketed as an exercise game but fits the bill. And he directs parents to Gamercize, a British import that connects to any video game system — and keeps it running only as long as the user keeps moving on a mini-bike or step machine.

The future will bring games that track heart rates and keep exercisers working at a challenging but safe pace, he says. Virtual group workouts, with participants connected online to a live coach, will happen, too, he says.

But the games that work best, Yang says, will be the ones that are the most fun.