Category: Weight Loss

Using this approach, people lost 10 percent of their body weight.

Getting on the scales and recording the figure each day can increase weight loss, research finds.

Weighing oneself daily is linked to losing 10 percent of body weight over the year, a study has found.

Critically, people were able to maintain this weight loss over the subsequent year.

Continuing the habit of daily weighing is important since many people regain lost weight over time.

However, keeping tabs on any weight gain helps people adjust their diet and ensure they are getting enough exercise.

Another study has found that combining daily weighing with tracking food intake can double weight loss.

Professor David Levitsky, the study’s senior author, said:

“You just need a bathroom scale and an excel spreadsheet or even a piece of graph paper.

It forces you to be aware of the connection between your eating and your weight.

It used to be taught that you shouldn’t weigh yourself daily, and this is just the reverse.”

The study included 162 people, half of whom used a series of 1 percent targets to lose weight.

The other half acted as a control group.

People in the active weight loss group targeted a 1 percent loss.

Then, when they reached that target, they tried to lose another 1 percent.

This continued until they had lost 10 percent.

People used their own methods to lose weight, including cutting out snacking and eating less.

The results showed that those who weighed themselves frequently lost more weight and maintained this weight loss.

The results also showed that men lost more weight using this method than women, Professor Levitsky said:

“It seems to work better for men than women, for reasons we cannot figure out yet.”

Self-weighing seems to work by improving weight loss behaviours, Professor Levitsky said:

“We think the scale also acts as a priming mechanism, making you conscious of food and enabling you to make choices that are consistent with your weight.”

The study was published in the Journal of Obesity (Pacanowski & Levitsky, 2015).

The supplement can increase weight loss if taken regularly.

Certain supplements have been shown to boost weight loss dramatically by research.

A natural fibre called inulin — which is available as a supplement — can boost weight loss by four times, one study concluded.

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

The fibre works at least partly by reducing cravings for high calorie foods.

It strengthens the gut signal to the brain to reduce appetite.

Brain scans show that after consuming inulin-propionate ester, activity in brain regions important for food cravings is reduced.

Professor Gary Frost, study co-author, said:

 “Our previous findings showed that people who ate this ingredient gained less weight — but we did not know why.

This study is filling in a missing bit of the jigsaw — and shows that this supplement can decrease activity in brain areas associated with food reward at the same time as reducing the amount of food they eat.”

The current study included 20 people who were asked to consume a milkshake that contained two different types of inulin.

Professor Frost said:

“The amount of inulin-propionate ester used in this study was 10g — which previous studies show increases propionate production by 2.5 times.

To get the same increase from fibre alone, we would need to eat around 60g a day.

At the moment, the UK average is 15g.”

The results showed that people ate 10 percent less food after consuming the inulin-propionate ester.

Other studies have linked inulin to weight loss if taken regularly.

Dr Claire Byrne, the study’s first author, said:

“If we add this to foods it could reduce the urge to consume high calorie foods.

…some people’s gut bacteria may naturally produce more propionate than others, which may be why some people seem more naturally predisposed to gain weight.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Byrne et al., 2016).

People in the study lost weight without doing extra exercise or restricting calories.

Restricting eating to a 10-hour period each day can help promote weight loss and improve lipid levels, a new study finds.

Without otherwise restricting their calorie intake, people in the study lost 3-4 percent of their body weight.

Overweight people who restricted eating to a 10-hour window each day also reduced their belly fat, lowered their blood pressure and reduced bad cholesterol levels.

Dr Emily Manoogian, study co-author, explained:

“Eating and drinking everything (except water) within a consistent 10-hour window allows your body to rest and restore for 14 hours at night.

Your body can also anticipate when you will eat so it can prepare to optimize metabolism.

We wanted to know if controlling the timing of food intake to support circadian rhythms would improve the health of individuals that were already being treated for cardiometabolic diseases.”

The study included 19 people diagnosed with metabolic syndrome.

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of problems including excess belly fat, high blood pressure and low levels of ‘good’ cholesterol.

For three months, they restricted their eating to a 10-hour window each day — effectively fasting for the remaining 14 hours.

People could eat as much as they liked during this 10-hour period and calories were not controlled.

Typically, people ate their breakfast later and had their dinner earlier.

The results showed that people lost weight and improved their heart health, as well as fighting the metabolic syndrome.

Professor Satchidananda Panda, study co-author, said:

“We have found that combining time-restricted eating with medications can give metabolic syndrome patients the ability to better manage their disease.

Unlike counting calories, time-restricted eating is a simple dietary intervention to incorporate, and we found that participants were able to keep the eating schedule.”

People in the study lost weight without doing extra exercise or restricting calories, said Dr Pam Taub, study co-author:

“Metabolism is closely linked with circadian rhythms, and knowing this, we were able to develop an intervention to help patients with metabolic syndrome without decreasing calories or increasing physical exercise.

If we can optimize circadian rhythms then we might be able to optimize the metabolic system.”

The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism (Wilkinson et al., 2019).

How to tell if a child of normal weight will be overweight or obese in his or her teens.

Obesity is predicted by the mother’s level of education, her body mass index (BMI) and her child’s BMI, new research finds.

BMI is a value that determines if a person has a healthy weight for their height.

The BMI of children, especially between 6 to 7-years-old, is the best predictor if they will be fat or have a healthy weight by adolescence.

For every unit increase in BMI in a child of age 6 to 7 the chance of putting on weight or being obese by age 14 to 15 is tripled.

Also, the chances of successfully losing weight reduce by 50 percent by the time the child reaches adolescence.

For every unit increase in the mother’s BMI, the chance that this child will be overweight or obese by age 14 to 15 increases by 5 percent and the chance of losing weight will decrease by 10 percent.

The mother’s education was the third important factor to predict whether or not the child will have weight problems in the future.

The study found that children whose mothers had a university degree had lower odds of being overweight or obese and were more likely to resolve weight issues in their teens.

Children with all these three risk factors were 71 percent more likely to be overweight or obese by adolescence.

The likelihood of having weight issues by adolescence was only 13 percent in children with none of these risk factors.

Dr Kate Lycett, study co-author, said:

“In the case of BMI, it is an objective measure that is easily measured and reflects diet and exercise choices, but is free from the challenges of assessing physical activity and diet in a standard clinical appointment such as recall bias.”

Dr Lycett suggests that medical professionals can use these three factors to be able to predict with 70 percent accuracy which children will have weight problem or resolve the issue.

The study was published in International Journal of Obesity (Juonala et al., 2019).

With aging we gain more weight, but scientists think there is a way to battle this.

Despite eating less and remaining active, maintaining weight is hard for people as they age.

The cause is partly down to lipid turnover, which is the rate of storing or removing fat-like substances.

The maintenance or depletion of white adipose tissue (WAT) is controlled by lipid turnover.

Lipids, such as fatty acids, are stored in WAT or white fats to be used as energy when the body needs fuel.

With aging, the rate of lipid removal in white fats will slow down, resulting in accumulation of body fat.

This is why it is easy to put on weight and difficult to get rid of it when people are older.

Researchers in Sweden have examined the impact of lipid turnover on fat cells in a group of adults for over 13 years.

During this period, they saw a decline in lipid turnover in the fat tissue for all the participants no matter if they lost weight or put on weight.

Those who didn’t compensate and eat the same level of calories as when they were young, showed, on average, a 20 percent increase in weight.

Studies have shown that more exercise and increased physical activity will accelerate lipid turnover in fat tissue.

This new study also supports the beneficial effect of exercise by measuring lipid turnover in women after bariatric surgery.

They found that weight loss after this kind of surgery will last long-term when combined with higher physical activity.

Professor Peter Arner, the study’s first author, said:

“The results indicate for the first time that processes in our fat tissue regulate changes in body weight during ageing in a way that is independent of other factors.

This could open up new ways to treat obesity.”

The study was published in Nature Medicine (Arner et al., 2019).

The habit is linked to decreased physical activity and a worse diet, which are both serious barriers to weight loss.

Smartphones are a common barrier to weight loss, new research suggests.

High levels of smartphone use are linked to decreased physical activity and a worse diet, which are both serious barriers to weight loss.

People using their smartphones for 5 or more hours per day had a 43 percent higher risk of obesity, researchers found.

They were also more likely to have lifestyle habits that increase the risk of heart disease.

Like many technologies, smartphones are not inherently good or bad in themselves — the key is how they are used.

Ironically, researchers have long been testing the use of smartphones to help people lose weight.

Using smartphones to help motivate weight loss and keep track of eating and exercise habits may be helpful in fighting obesity, studies have suggested.

Dr Mirary Mantilla-Morrón, the study’s first author, believes many people do not take advantage of the positive side of the technology:

“It is important that the general population know and be aware that, although mobile technology is undoubtedly attractive for its multiple purposes, portability, comfort, access to countless services, information and entertainment sources, it should also be used to improve habits and healthy behaviors.

Spending too much time in front of the Smartphone facilitates sedentary behaviors, reduces the time of physical activity, which increases the risk of premature death, diabetes, heart disease, different types of cancer, osteoarticular discomfort and musculoskeletal symptoms.”

The study included 1,060 young adults with an age of around 19 or 20.

The results showed that those using smartphones were twice as likely to eat more fast food, sweets and sugary foods in general, on top of decreased physical activity.

Dr Mantilla-Morrón said:

“The results of this study allow us to highlight one of the main causes of physical obesity, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

We have also determined that the amount of time in which a person is exposed to the use of technologies — specifically prolonged cell phone use — is associated with the development of obesity.”

The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology Latin America Conference 2019 (Mantilla-Morrón et al., 2019).

What is the effect of consuming low-calorie or calorie-free products?

Artificial sweeteners can make you feel more hungry, despite their calorie-free or low-calorie content, research finds.

They have an appetite-stimulating effect on the brain, causing people to eat more and actually increasing the risk of putting on weight.

Artificial sweeteners are food additives and chemical substances that replace sugar to keep foods and drinks sweet but reduce their energy content.

Sugar substitutes such as sucralose, acesulfame potassium (acesulfame K), aspartame, neotame, and saccharin are used in many foods and drinks for losing weight and combating obesity and diabetes.

A study looked at the artificial sweeteners’ effects in changing taste perceptions and brain regulation of appetite.

They found a mechanism in the brain that tells the brain how sweet the food is and how many calories it has.

Dr Greg Neely, the study’s lead researcher, said:

“We found that inside the brain’s reward centres, sweet sensation is integrated with energy content.

When sweetness versus energy is out of balance for a period of time, the brain recalibrates and increases total calories consumed.”

In this the study, fruit flies were given a diet laced with artificial sweetener for 5 days.

The study found that these animals were consuming 30 percent more calories compared to the time that they were exposed to naturally sweetened food.

Dr Neely said:

“When we investigated why animals were eating more even though they had enough calories, we found that chronic consumption of this artificial sweetener actually increases the sweet intensity of real nutritive sugar, and this then increases the animal’s overall motivation to eat more food.”

The study identified a complex neuronal network sending the information to the brain that it hasn’t eaten enough and needs calories after consuming artificially sweetened food.

Dr Neely explained:

“Using this response to artificially sweetened diets, we were able to functionally map a new neuronal network that balances food’s palatability with energy content.

The pathway we discovered is part of a conserved starvation response that actually makes nutritious food taste better when you are starving.”

Professor Herbert Herzog, who has replicated the fruit flies study in mammals using sucralose-sweetened diet, confirmed similar findings.

Professor Herzog said:

“These findings further reinforce the idea that ‘sugar-free’ varieties of processed food and drink may not be as inert as we anticipated.

Artificial sweeteners can actually change how animals perceive the sweetness of their food, with a discrepancy between sweetness and energy levels prompting an increase in caloric consumption.”

Billions of people consume artificial sweeteners in their diet hoping to lose weight, but these chemicals can significantly increase food consumption.

Previous studies have reported that artificial sweeteners increases hyperactivity and reduce sleep quality in humans.

The study was published in Cell Metabolism (Wang et al., 2016).

Food craving can be a major barrier for those trying to lose weight.

Playing a simple game on a phone can help to reduce food cravings, research suggests.

Three minutes playing a video game reduced cravings for food, alcohol and cigarettes, a study has found.

Food craving can be a major barrier for those trying to lose weight.

Cravings are often focused on unhealthy foods high in sugar, fat and salt, which can make weight loss very difficult.

The game used in the study was ‘Tetris’, an old-fashioned game involving rotating differently shaped blocks.

The game just provides a visual distraction, so other games would probably work as well.

Visual distractors probably work because the mind’s capacity is limited: it is hard to concentrate on two things at any one time.

One of the study’s authors, Professors Jackie Andrade, explained:

“Episodes of craving normally only last a few minutes, during which time an individual is visualising what they want and the reward it will bring.

Often those feelings result in the person giving in and consuming the very thing they are trying to resist.

But by playing Tetris, just in short bursts, you are preventing your brain creating those enticing images and without them the craving fades.”

The study included 119 people whose cravings were measured before and after playing the video game.

The results showed that cravings were reduced by 24 percent in comparison to a control group.

Professor Andrade said:

“Feeling in control is an important part of staying motivated, and playing Tetris can potentially help the individual to stay in control when cravings strike.

It is something a person can quickly access, for the most part whether they are at work or at home, and replaces the feeling of stress caused by the craving itself.

Ultimately, we are constantly looking for ways to stimulate cravings for healthy activities – such as exercise – but this a neutral activity that we have shown can have a positive impact.”

The study was published in the journal Appetite (Skorka-Brown et al., 2014).

Being aware of this barrier may help improve weight loss strategies.

People who are obese find food more satisfying than people who are not, new research finds.

Obese people also continue to find food more satisfying, even after eating more of it.

In other words, obese people have to eat more of a tasty food to get bored of it.

Higher satisfaction from eating may be one of the biggest barriers to weight loss.

Being aware of this bias may help improve weight loss strategies.

Dr Linnea A. Polgreen, study co-author, said:

“Obesity is a major public-health problem.

Thirty percent of the US population is obese, and obesity-related health problems (diabetes, hypertension, etc.) are increasing.

Causes of obesity are varied, but food consumption decisions play an important role, especially decisions about what foods to eat and how much to consume.

Taste perceptions may lead to overeating.

If people with obesity have different taste perceptions than non obese people, it could lead to better understanding of obesity and possibly designing new approaches to prevent obesity.”

The study included 290 people, some of whom were overweight and obese.

They were given as many pieces of chocolate to eat as they liked and asked about their satisfaction while eating.

In general, people find that the more they eat of a food, the less satisfaction they get from it — even chocolate.

However, Dr Aaron C. Miller, the study’s first author, explained, the pattern was different for obese people:

“In our study population, people with obesity reported a higher level of satisfaction for each additional piece of chocolate compared to non-obese people.

Thus, their taste preferences appear markedly different.

Our findings further indicate that obese participants needed to consume a greater quantity of chocolate than nonobese participants to experience a similar decline in taste perceptions.

Specifically, obese women needed to eat 12.5 pieces of chocolate to fall to the same level of taste perception as nonobese women who ate only 10 pieces, which corresponds to a difference of 67.5 calories.

This may, in part, explain why obese people consume more than non-obese people.”

The study was published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Miller et al., 2019).

How to overcome one of the biggest barriers to weight loss.

Managing the emotions behind eating is one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, research finds.

Addressing emotional eating can double the chances of weight loss success, one study has found.

One technique is to imagine the thoughts that might trigger emotional eating as travelling away on a ‘conveyor belt’.

Mental images like this can help people step back from their emotions and control their eating.

Unfortunately, many weight loss programmes do not even address psychological factors like this.

The tendency is to focus on diet and exercise, without considering the impact of the mind.

People frequently have an emotional connection with food — it is this that can drive overeating.

For example, when feeling bad it is common for emotional eaters to cheer themselves up with food.

Foods like cookies might be linked to comforting memories of childhood or feelings of safety, which encourages their consumption.

Being able to spot this link and predict the regret emotional eating will bring on later can help curb the problem.

Dr Edie Goldbacher, at Temple’s Universities, Center for Obesity Research, said:

“Emotional eating may be one reason why people don’t do as well in behavioral weight loss groups, because these groups don’t address emotional eating or any of its contributing factors.”

Janet Williams, who successfully lost 17 pounds and has kept it off, took part in a Temple University study that targeted emotional eating.

She says:

“The program doesn’t just help you identify when you eat.

It helps you recognize triggers that make you eat, to help you break that cycle of reaching for food every time you feel bored, or frustrated, or sad.

I still use the skills I learned in the study.

I’ve learned to say, ‘I will not allow this emotional episode to control my eating habits.'”

One study has found that learning to control emotional eating could almost double the odds of successful weight loss.

The study was published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Braden et al., 2016).