Category: Weight Loss

A surprising mental shift that can instantly supercharge your health journey and naturally improve your diet.

People who learn to be less concerned about their weight can triple their weight loss.

This is because individuals with a healthier body image naturally make better dietary choices.

Unfortunately, overweight people often have body image problems.

Anxiety over public perception and physical appearance often acts as a major barrier to weight loss.

Conversely, learning to accept one’s body and focusing less on scale weight yields much more positive results.

The study involved 239 overweight women who followed a standard exercise and diet program for a year.

However, half of them were given sessions focused on body image.

These sessions explored how emotional states directly influence eating habits.

For example, negative moods can trigger bouts of eating to feel better, rather than eating to satiate hunger.

This is known as emotional eating.

The women were also encouraged to love their bodies.

The results of the study showed that those who improved their body image had triple the weight loss of the control group.

They lost an average of 7 percent of their body weight.

Dr Pedro Teixeira, study co-author, said:

“Body image problems are very common amongst overweight and obese people, often leading to comfort eating and more rigid eating patterns, and are obstacles to losing weight.

Our results showed a strong correlation between improvements in body image, especially in reducing anxiety about other people’s opinions, and positive changes in eating behavior.

From this we believe that learning to relate to your body in healthier ways is an important aspect of maintaining weight loss and should be addressed in every weight control program.”

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The study was published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (Carraça et al., 2011).

The way of thinking is linked to a 34 percent lower obesity risk.

People who are mindful have less belly fat.

Mindfulness is linked to a reduced amount of abdominal fat and a 34 percent lower chance of being obese.

Being mindful does not necessarily mean meditating; it can just mean everyday mindfulness.

Some people are naturally more mindful, but the trait can be developed.

Many of the things people consume, they do so automatically, without attending to the consequences.

Attention to the present moment may also help overcome a common aversion to exercising.

The conclusions come from a study of 394 people who were tested for mindfulness and scanned to determine body mass.

People with low levels of mindfulness tended to agree with statements like:

• I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present.
• I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.

The results showed a modest link between greater mindfulness and a lower risk of being obese.

Mindfulness probably helps reduce belly fat by increasing awareness of eating and drinking behaviours.

Eating is so routine that we easily zone out from the experience.

While the mind wanders, eating can continue automatically.

Studies have shown that people eat more when they are distracted, like when watching TV or talking with friends.

Unfortunately, when not focusing on our food, we tend to eat more and enjoy it less.

The positive effects of mindfulness extend to physical features such as lower blood pressure and lower cortisol levels.

In addition to its physical benefits, mindfulness has been shown to have therapeutic benefits in treating depression, anxiety, substance abuse, chronic pain and eating disorders.

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The study was published in the journal International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Loucks et al., 2015).

The mental state that makes it hard to control temptations.

Being tired, stressed or full of worries is one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, psychologists find.

While people are in states like these, it is much more difficult for them to ignore tempting rewards, such as high-calorie foods.

In this psychology study, people whose memories were overloaded had trouble controlling themselves.

Dr Poppy Watson, the study’s first author, explained:

“Constant worrying or stress is the equivalent to the high-memory load scenario of our experiment, impacting on people’s ability to use their executive control resources in a way that’s helping them manage unwanted cues in the environment.”

In other words, it gets harder to ignore tasty foods when your mind is busy.

Dr Watson said:

“This is especially relevant for circumstances where people are trying to ignore cues and improve their behaviour, e.g. consuming less alcohol or fast food.”

For the study, people were given a test of how well they could control their attention, while they were also being given other things to think about.

For example, in one study they had to memorise a sequence of numbers.

This simulates the situation where a person has a lot of worries on their mind.

The results showed that when people had to memorise the numbers as well, they found it much harder to avoid a tempting reward.

Dr Watson said:

“Study participants found it really difficult to stop themselves from looking at cues that represented the level of reward — the coloured circles — even though they were paid to try and ignore them.”

The key is to avoid situations that involve temptation when tired, said Dr Watson:

“If you are under a lot of cognitive pressure (stress, or tiredness) you should really try and avoid situations where you’ll be tempted by signals.

You need to be in the right frame of mind to be in a situation where you can stop yourself from getting distracted and going down a path where you don’t want to go.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Watson et al., 2019).

Reduce your belly fat 10 percent with a half cup of this food.

Lowering sugar consumption by about one can of soda and adding one half-cup of fibre-rich foods daily reduces abdominal fat and type 2 diabetes risk.

A study has found that decreasing about 47 grams of sugar intake per day — equivalent to a can of soda — lowers insulin secretion, on average, by 33 percent.

Increasing fibre intake by 5 grams a day — the amount in a half cup of beans — results in a 10 percent reduction of belly fat.

Visceral fat is a type of body fat stored within the abdominal area and internal organs.

This type of fat causes abdominal obesity and is also associated with several health problems, like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Dr Emily Ventura and colleagues conducted a 16-week study on overweight Latino adolescents who were between 12 to 19 years old.

They tested if increasing fiber consumption and decreasing sugar intake have an effect on type 2 diabetes risk factors.

The study’s authors wrote:

“A reduction in visceral fat indicates a reduction in risk for type 2 diabetes, considering that to a greater degree than total body fat, visceral fat [fat surrounding the internal organs] has been shown to be negatively associated with insulin sensitivity.”

Those who increased fiber intake had a significant reduction in body mass index (-2 percent vs. 2 percent) and visceral adipose tissue (-10 percent vs. no change) compared with those who decreased fiber intake.”

Being overweight or obese are serious issues affecting adults and children around the world.

The World Health Organization reports that in 2016 over 1.9 billion adults were overweight and more than 650 million adults were obese.

The authors of this study wrote:

“Our results suggest that intensive interventions may not be necessary to achieve modifications in sugar and fiber intake.

Accordingly, nutritional guidance given in the primary care or community setting may be sufficient to promote the suggested dietary changes in some individuals.

In addition, policies that promote reduced intake of added sugar and increased intake of fiber could be effective public health strategies for the prevention of type 2 diabetes in this high-risk population.”

The study was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (Ventura et al., 2009).

The quickest exercise for fast weight loss.

High-intensity interval training is linked to the fastest rate of weight loss.

High-intensity interval exercise involves exercising hard for a short period, such as 30 seconds, and then recovering for four minutes.

People doing this type of interval exercise for 23 minutes lost 30 percent more weight than those exercising continuously for twice as long.

In other words, high-intensity interval training can lead to faster weight loss.

Interval training can be done on a bicycle, by running, jogging, speed walking or with a variety of other exercises.

Current recommendations for weight loss are to work out for an hour a day.

This is not practical for many people, so interval training provides a way to get the exercise done faster.

The conclusions come from a review of 36 studies involving 1,012 people.

The results showed that both continuous workouts and interval training helped with weight loss.

Those doing interval training lost an average of 28.5% more weight than those training continuously.

The study’s authors write:

“It is important to be aware of the possible risks and caveats associated with higher intensity training.

For example, it might increase the risk of injury and impose higher cardiovascular stress.

Adherence should also be examined as higher intensity protocols can result in higher discomfort.”

However, they included a wide variety of studies which…

“…makes it difficult to generally recommend that one particular protocol is ‘best’ for modulating body adiposity.”

Exercise, of course, has a variety of other benefits, many psychological.

One study found that long-term memory is boosted by interval training.

Another found that exercise makes people more extraverted and agreeable.

Exercise also increases people’s conscientiousness and makes them more open to experience.

The study was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Viana et al., 2019).

Over one thousand psychologists agree on the biggest barrier to weight loss.

The greatest barrier to weight loss is emotional eating, a survey of psychologists finds.

Losing weight is about addressing the issues behind emotional eating.

So said almost every psychologist polled about successful weight loss.

Emotional eating refers to the way in which the emotions can trigger eating.

One example might be responding to feeling bored by eating a bag of chips.

Another might be reacting to feeling sad by eating ice cream.

Emotional eating often begins in childhood when treats are given as rewards for good behaviour.

Psychologists help people break the cycle of emotional eating by identifying situations and feelings that trigger it.

Changing the habit is about spotting the triggers and then changing the response.

Strategies psychologists recommend to help with this process include mindfulness, cognitive therapy and problem-solving.

Professor Norman B. Anderson, an expert on mind/body health, said:

“Anyone who has ever tried to lose a few pounds and keep them off knows that doing so isn’t easy.

The good news is that research and clinical experience have shown that, in addition to behavioral approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy that targets emotional barriers helps people lose weight.”

The survey included 1,328 licensed psychologists who were asked how they helped their clients lose weight.

The need to target emotional issues was highlighted by 92 percent of respondents.

Professor Anderson said:

“Although it is generally accepted that weight problems are most often caused by a combination of biological, emotional, behavioral and environmental issues, these new results show the key role of stress and emotional regulation in losing weight.

Therefore, the best weight loss tactics should integrate strategies to address emotion and behavior as well as lifestyle approaches to exercise and making healthy eating choices.”

The study was conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center for the American Psychological Association.