Category: Weight Loss

Researchers have found that around 50 percent of the obese are deficient in a mineral contained in this drink.

A couple of glasses of fat-free milk each day can double weight loss, research finds.

A study of 322 overweight people revealed that those drinking two glasses of low-fat milk each day doubled their weight loss compared to those who drank around half-a-glass.

The reason could be down to the calcium and vitamin D contained in milk.

Researchers have found that around 50 percent of obese people are deficient in calcium.

In addition, among the general population, around half are deficient in vitamin D.

Higher calcium levels appear to reduce the desire for food.

A deficiency in calcium, though, can drive the appetite as a way of obtaining more of the essential mineral.

Vitamin D helps the body to absorb calcium.

Researchers find that consuming dairy products can help to lower blood pressure and cholesterol.

It is also linked to reduced body fat and increased muscle growth.

Although people sometimes avoid dairy when trying to lose weight, there is evidence that normal intake is not fattening.

A study of 19,614 men followed them for 12 years, tracking what they ate and any change in weight.

The results revealed that those consuming three servings of dairy each day did not gain weight.

Dr Greg Miller, an expert in food science and human nutrition, said:

“The good news for the public is that you can follow the MyPyramid recommendation for 3 servings of dairy foods each day and get the nutrition benefits without concern of extra weight gain.

If you’re cutting calories to lose weight, it’s important to get your 3 servings of dairy foods each day for good health and to enhance your weight loss efforts.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Rajpathak et al., 2006).

There was no exercise or major diet change involved in this simple weight loss method.

Eating slowly helps people lose twice as much weight, a study has found.

Simply chewing each mouthful of food for 30 seconds led to study participants losing 5 pounds in weight over a six-month period.

In contrast, a control group who ate at their normal speed put on around 8 pounds.

There was no exercise or major diet change involved.

The slow eating approach works because it allows more time for the feeling of fullness to travel from stomach to brain.

Professor Schmid-Schoenbein, study co-author, said:

“You can adopt this slow eating approach for yourself and keep it up for the rest of your life.

You can teach this approach to your children and they can teach it to their children in turn.”

The study included 54 children aged 6- to 17-years-old.

They were told to chew each mouthful for 30 seconds and given a small hourglass to help them time it.

Professor Pedro Cabrales, study co-author, said:

“The hourglass made it more like a game.

We also noticed that the children kept each other accountable.

If some forgot the hourglasses, the others would remind them.”

The only other instructions given in the study were to drink a glass of water before a meal and avoid snacks between meals.

The results showed that children who ate slowly lost between 3% and 5% of their body weight in one year.

In comparison, a control group of similar children put on between 7% and 8% over the year.

Slow eating is effective because it gives more time for the ‘satiety reflex’ to reach the brain.

The message that the stomach is full takes around 15 minutes to arrive, but many people eat a whole meal quicker than this.

Dr. Ruy Perez-Tamayo, study co-author, said:

“Our method focuses on preventing weight gain.

It is simple, inexpensive and easy to follow.”

The study was published in the journal Pediatric Obesity (Salazar Vázquez et al., 2015).

People in the study lost weight without losing any bone mass.

A high-protein diet helps people burn belly fat and lose weight, research finds.

People who eat more lean meats combined with low-fat dairy lose more weight than those on a standard diet.

High-protein diets — around 30 percent of calories from protein — can also help to lower blood sugar and lipid levels.

The women in the study were able to lose weight without losing any bone mass, researchers found.

Dr Ellen Evans, study co-author, said:

“This is an important finding because many people, especially women in mid-life, are concerned with both obesity and osteoporosis.

Furthermore, treating obesity often increases risk for osteoporosis.

Many people lose bone mass when they lose weight.”

The study included 130 overweight people.

The researchers put half on a high-protein and dairy diet and the other half on a regular weight loss diet, based on the food pyramid.

Dr Evans said:

“Essentially we substituted lean meats and low-fat milk, cheese, yogurt, etc., for some of the high-carbohydrate foods in the food-pyramid diet.

Participants also ate five servings of vegetables and two to three servings of fruit each day.”

The results showed that both groups lost the same amount of weight.

However, a previous study by Professor Donald Layman found that high-protein diets help reduce belly fat.

Those on the high protein diet maintained better bone health.

Dr Matthew Thorpe, the study’s’ first author, said:

“In the higher-protein group, bone density remained fairly stable, but bone health declined over time in the group that followed the conventional higher-carbohydrate diet.

A statistically significant treatment effect favored the higher-protein diet group.

The combination and/or interaction of dietary protein, calcium from dairy, and the additional vitamin D that fortifies dairy products appears to protect bone health during weight loss.”

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

People taking these supplements and vitamins were able in some cases to lose weight without making other lifestyle changes.

Taking inulin, vitamin D supplementation and drinking low fat milk have each been repeatedly linked to weight loss.

Inulin, a natural fibre available as a supplement, could quadruple weight loss, one study has found.

Inulin is a fibre found naturally in many foods, including leeks, wheat, onions, bananas and asparagus.

Also, taking a vitamin D supplement is repeatedly linked to weight loss by studies.

People taking vitamin D lose weight without dieting or making other lifestyle changes.

Adding in dieting and exercise can help to boost weight loss even more.

Drinking three cups of low-fat milk each day can double weight loss, research finds.

Obese and overweight women in the study dropped 10 pounds in 8 weeks when they drank a pint-and-a-half of low-fat milk every day, along with following a diet.

Professor Gary Frost, co-author of a study on the inulin and weight loss, said:

“These results are encouraging in that they show this potential food supplement, when combined with exercise, can help people burn through their fat stores faster, decreases appetite and could in the long term help to achieve a healthy weight.”

In addition, inulin is found naturally in many foods, including wheat, leeks, bananas and asparagus.

The fibre helps the body burn fat faster and reduces cravings for high-calorie foods.

Authors of a study on the link between weight loss and low-fat milk write:

“Our results showed that consumption of low-fat milk enhanced the beneficial effect of an energy restricted diet on central and general obesity and therefore a diet rich in dairy calcium could be tried in obese persons.”

Authors of the study on vitamin explained:

“The findings of this double-blind clinical trial study in obese and overweight women aged 20–40 years showed that supplementation of the vit D with dozes 50,000 IU/w for 6 weeks reduced significantly the mean BMI [body mass index], weight and on the other hand, it increased significantly the level of vit D in comparison with the control group.”

The study was published in the journals Cell Host & Microbe, Metabolism and Journal of Preventative Medicine (Faghih et al., 2019; Malkova et al., 2020; Zou et al., 2018).

How changing the timing of meals can boost weight loss.

Changing when meals are eaten can be enough to double weight loss, multiple studies have found.

The simplest weight loss option is to shift calorie consumption to earlier in the day.

Eating more calories for breakfast and less in the evening is linked to weight loss.

Unfortunately, the modern trend in society is to eat smaller breakfasts and larger evening meals, which is linked to weight gain.

A related weight loss approach is to delay breakfast and eat an earlier supper — compressing eating into the middle of the day.

One study told people they could eat what they liked between a breakfast delayed by 90 minutes and a supper eaten 90 minutes early.

The results showed they lost double the body fat, despite not being on any specific diet or changing their lifestyle in any other way.

Eating earlier also helps to improve sleep and blood sugar levels.

A recent review of studies concluded that people tend to eat more of their daily calories in the evening than ever before — a worldwide trend that is leading to weight gain.

Dr Gerda Pot, study co-author:

“There seems to be some truth in the saying ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper’, however, this warrants further investigation.

Whilst we have a much better understanding today of what we should be eating, we are still left with the question as to which meal should provide us with the most energy.

Although the evidence suggests that eating more calories later in the evening is associated with obesity, we are still far from understanding whether our energy intake should be distributed equally across the day or whether breakfast should contribute the greatest proportion of energy, followed by lunch and dinner.”

The study was published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society (Almoosawi et al., 2016).

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).

This vital weight loss technique is nothing to do with diet and exercise.

Learning to love your body, however it looks, can triple weight loss efforts.

Dieters in the study learned to be less concerned about their size and weight and other people’s opinions of them.

They were also encouraged to think that how their body looks is not as important as they think.

Happily, the researchers found, people with an improved body image, automatically eat more healthily.

The study shows that hating your own body is one of the biggest barriers to weight loss.

It is well-known that people who are overweight often have body image problems.

Overcoming these problems — especially worrying about what other people think — is hugely beneficial to weight loss.

For the study, 239 overweight women followed a standard program of diet and exercise for one year.

Half were given a special course designed to improve their body image.

This included sessions on the emotional aspects of losing weight.

This is because some overweight people tend towards emotional eating.

Emotional eating means that negative moods trigger bouts of eating to feel better, rather than eating to satiate hunger.

The women were also encouraged to love their bodies, whatever its size and shape.

The results showed that those who improved their body image lost an average of 7 percent — more than triple the weight loss of the control group.

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.”

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

This type of vegetable oil targets abdominal fat, trimming the belly in only one month.

High-oleic acid canola oil can help cut down belly fat in four weeks, research finds.

Canola oil-based diets have also been shown to lower cholesterol levels and provide health benefits in obese people.

Canola oil is low in saturated fat but high in monounsaturated fatty acids and mainly used in cooking and salad dressing.

Excess belly fat, which is located in the abdominal area, is a risk factor for metabolic syndrome.

This medical condition is a combination of high blood pressure, obesity, and type 2 diabetes which puts a person at greater risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.

Almost one in three US adults, one in four adults in the UK, and one in five Canadian adults have metabolic syndrome.

But a study has found that canola oil can reduce abdominal obesity in people who are at higher risk for metabolic syndrome and cardiometabolic disease.

Professor Penny Kris-Etherton explained:

“Visceral, or abdominal, fat increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, and is also associated with increased risk for conditions such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

Monounsaturated fats in canola oil decrease this fat that has adverse health effects.”

Participants in this study had abdominal obesity and either had metabolic syndrome or were at risk for it.

Participants followed five diets to test different five oils, but only the canola oil diet led to abdominal fat loss.

Based on participants’ daily calorie needs, the quantity of treatment oil was calculated.

For instance, a person on a 3,000-calorie diet would have 60 grams of canola oil a day to make up 18 percent of this calorie intake.

They drank two smoothies every day and each smoothie contained 30 grams of canola oil (two tablespoons) with 100 grams of non-fat milk, 100 grams of orange sherbet, and 100 grams of frozen unsweetened strawberries.

The results showed a reduction of 1.6 percent in belly fat after four weeks consumption of high-oleic acid canola oil a day.

Professor Kris-Etherton said:

“As a general rule, you can’t target weight loss to specific body regions.

But monounsaturated fatty acids seem to specifically target abdominal fat.”

Canola oil is extracted from rapeseed and there is a concern about rapeseed oil.

Rapeseed contains erucic acid which is toxic to humans when consumed in large amounts.

However, if canola oil contains less than 2 percent erucic acid, it is generally recognized as safe.

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

How to feel more full without eating anything.

Looking at pictures of food on a phone is enough to satisfy hunger and could be used as a weight loss technique, research suggests.

People who saw the same image of a sweet food 30 times felt more full without actually eating anything.

It is because how we think about food has a large effect on appetite.

Dr Tjark Andersen, the study’s first author, said:

“In our experiments, we showed that when the participants saw the same food picture 30 times, they felt more satiated than before they had seen the picture.

The participants who were shown the picture many times also chose a smaller portion than those who had only seen the picture three times, when we subsequently asked about the size of portion they wanted.”

The reason people can feel satisfied without eating anything is because thinking about something, such as eating, is like doing it.

In contrast, how we think about food can also make us want more, despite already being satisfied.

Dr Andersen explained:

“Your appetite is more closely linked with your cognitive perception than most of us think.

How we think about our food is very important.

Studies have shown that if you make people aware of different colors of Jelly Beans, even if they have eaten all they can in red Jelly Beans, will still want the yellow ones.

Even if both colors taste completely the same.”

In that case it is thinking about the variety or novelty of the ‘yellow ones’ that makes people want more, not hunger.

How many images?

This is not the first study to show that looking at images of food reduces hunger and reduces the pleasure from eating.

However, what Dr Andersen and colleagues wanted to explore was how many and what types of images work best:

“We know from previous studies that images of different types of food don’t have the same effect on satiety.

That’s why you can really feel full after the main course but still have room for dessert.

Sweet things are a completely different type of food.”

Dr Andersen’s online experiments included over 1,000 people shown pictures of M&Ms and Skittles.

The results showed that seeing two or three images of a food makes people want them more.

However, seeing these sweet foods 30 times reduced their appetite.

Weight loss technique?

Looking at images of food as a weight loss technique, then, is only likely to be effective if, firstly, one looks at enough pictures.

A few images makes people want the foods more.

Secondly, looking at images will have to stop you beginning a meal.

Dr Andersen explained:

“You won’t save many calories unless you completely refrain from starting a meal.

But perhaps the method can be used for this as well.

It’d be interesting to investigate.”

Dr Andersen imagines an app that might help satiate hunger:

“Think if you developed an app based on a Google search. Let’s say you wanted pizza.

You open the app.

Choose pizza—and it shows a lot of photos of pizza while you imagine eating it. In this way, you could get a sense of satiety and maybe just stop wanting pizza.”

Related

• Playing a simple game on a phone can help to reduce food cravings.
• The best way to deal with food cravings is to accept them.
• …and here are 10 more techniques to stop food cravings.

The study was published in the journal Appetite (Andersen et al., 2023).