Category: Weight Loss

Psychology study finds way out of exercise-more-then-eat-more trap.

A strange thing happen when people start exercising to lose weight.

Despite burning more calories, they frequently fail to shed the pounds.

One reason people give is that they start eating more.

It makes sense: you burn more calories, so you eat more, so you end up where you started, right?

Which leads to the question: why bother exercising for weight-loss?

The answer is: because it’s fun.

And in this one small word ‘fun’ may be a way out of this vicious circle of exercising more, then eating more.

It’s this thought that inspired Carolina Werle and colleagues to set up an experiment to test the effects on snacking of  ‘doing exercise’ versus just ‘having fun’ (Werle et al., 2014).

To investigate, they asked 56 mostly overweight women to take a half-hour walk, after which they would be served lunch.

But there was a little trick to how this walk was framed:

• Half the women were told it was exercise and that they should monitor their exertion.
• Half were told they were just having fun and they should listen to music on their walk and enjoy themselves.

Afterwards, while relaxing and eating their lunch, and without knowing it, the women demonstrated what the difference was between ‘exercising’ and ‘having fun’.

Not only were women who’d been ‘having fun’ happier and less tired after their walk, but they also ate less pudding and drank less soda.

Overall, despite burning the same amount of calories while walking, women who’d been walking for pleasure ate less afterwards.

The reason for this difference seems to be in how framing exercise affects people’s search for rewards:

“Engaging in a physical activity seems to trigger the search for reward when individuals perceive it as exercise but not when they perceive it as fun.” (Werle et al., 2014).

So the best advice is: stop exercising and go out and have fun.

If you accidentally happen to do some exercise while enjoying yourself, so much the better!

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Study tests if diet or exercise is better for maintaining weight loss.

The best way to maintain weight loss in the long-term is through more exercise rather than less food, research finds.

People in the study maintained weight loss of 30 pounds or more for around ten years by being active.

They did more physical activity and expended more energy each day than those who were obese.

Successful weight loss maintainers did around 12,000 steps each day, compared with 6,500 by obese people.

In other words, successful weight loss maintainers ate more but burned it off through exercise.

Your activity levels matter a lot more than what you eat in the long term, the researchers concluded.

Dr Danielle Ostendorf, the study’s first author, said:

“This study addresses the difficult question of why so many people struggle to keep weight off over a long period.

By providing evidence that a group of successful weight-loss maintainers engages in high levels of physical activity to prevent weight regain — rather than chronically restricting their energy intake — is a step forward to clarifying the relationship between exercise and weight-loss maintenance.”

The study compared successful weight loss maintainers with one group of people with normal body weight and another group who were obese.

Successful weight loss maintainers did twice as many steps as people who were obese, the results showed.

Exercise clearly beat restricting calorie intake for maintaining weight loss.

The results are the same as those from an analysis of people who had been on the reality TV show “The Biggest Loser”.

Again, people who maintained their weight loss did so through increased activity.

Changes in diet had little effect on maintaining weight loss over the years after they finished the show.

Dr Victoria A. Catenacci, study co-author, said:

“Our findings suggest that this group of successful weight-loss maintainers are consuming a similar number of calories per day as individuals with overweight and obesity but appear to avoid weight regain by compensating for this with high levels of physical activity.”

The study was published in the journal Obesity (Ostendorf et al., 2019).

The foods make people feel 30 percent more full.

Pulses — which include peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas — help people lose weight without dieting, multiple studies find.

Adding a single daily serving of foods like these helps people lose weight without making changes to lifestyle or restricting diet.

A serving is three-quarters of a cup.

People in the studies lost weight without counting calories, keeping food diaries or exercising more.

However, adding these standard approaches can improve weight loss further.

Eating pulses is effective for weight loss because it improves feelings of fullness by 31 percent.

This is because the body takes longer to break pulses down (they have a low glycaemic index).

Other pulses include:

• Broad beans,
• runner beans,
• kidney beans,
• black-eyed peas,
• and butter beans.

Dr Russell de Souza, who led the Canadian study, said:

“Despite their known health benefits, only 13 per cent of Canadians eat pulses on any given day and most do not eat the full serving.

So there is room for most of us to incorporate dietary pulses in our diet and realize potential weight management benefits.”

The conclusions come from an analysis of 21 separate clinical trials.

The studies tested the effects of both adding pulses alone as well as restricting calories plus adding pulses.

Naturally, people lost more weight when they restricted their diet and ate more pulses, but pulses on their own were also effective.

On average, people lost around 0.5 pound in six weeks without dieting.

Dr de Souza said:

“Though the weight loss was small, our findings suggest that simply including pulses in your diet may help you lose weight, and we think more importantly, prevent you from gaining it back after you lose it.”

Pulses also help lower levels of bad cholesterol and the risk of cardiovascular disease.

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

Certain foods help people sleep better and lose more weight.

A high-protein diet drives weight loss and the burning of belly fat, studies reveal.

Eating more lean meats and low-fat dairy leads to more weight loss than a standard calorie restricted diet, researchers have found.

Protein makes people feel more satisfied so they subsequently eat less.

Diets that have more protein are also linked to better sleep.

Sleeping better can also lead to more weight loss.

For the study, 130 overweight women were put on a calorie restricted diet.

Half, though, ate a restricted diet that was high in protein and dairy.

Dr Ellen Evans, study co-author, 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 the women lost weight without losing bone mass.

Dr Evans 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.”

People in the high protein group had better bone health despite their weight loss.

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).

The supplement is found naturally in many healthy foods.

Some dietary supplements have been shown to improve weight loss by scientific research.

Indeed, one study has shown that inulin can help to quadruple weight loss.

People in the study lost 2.3 percent of their body weight after taking the supplement, compared with just 0.6 percent in the control group.

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

The natural fibre — which is also available as a supplement — works by reducing appetite.

It has a creamy consistency and is sometimes used in the food industry as a substitute for fat.

Inulin is low in calories, high in fibre and it can improve the health of the digestion.

Researcher repeatedly finds that an increases in fibre intake can help with weight loss.

The study included 44 overweight people with prediabetes who were tracked for 18 weeks.

Half were given 30g per day of inulin, while the other group were given a placebo.

Both saw the same level of weight loss over the first nine weeks.

But after that, the group taking inulin achieved a weight loss of 2.3 percent of their body weight in comparison to only 0.6 percent in the control group.

The study’s authors write:

“…the consumption of inulin enhances a traditional calorie-restricted lifestyle program.

An added benefit of the inulin supplement was a greater reduction in intrahepatocellular and intramyocellular lipid in the soleus muscle even after accounting for weight lost.”

Inulin seems to work by reducing appetite, the study’s authors write:

“…subjects taking inulin ate significantly less (~270 kcal less, p = 0.027) at the follow-up ad libitum meal, with no consequent rebound in food intake at the 18 week visit despite a total 7 % weight loss in the inulin group, suggesting that inulin’s effect on weight management is mediated via appetite modulation.”

The study was published in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism (Guess et al., 2015).

Once-a-week injection of this drug led overweight or obese people to lose more than a fifth of their weight.

A weekly injection of semaglutide, known as Ozempic, can reduce body weight by more than 20 percent, a study has found.

Semaglutide — which is now approved by the US FDA for weight management — is known as an anti-diabetic medication and typically prescribed in 1mg doses.

For this study, participants who were obese or overweight received a higher dose at 2.4 mg alongside a low calorie diet and increased physical activity.

Participants, on average, lost over 15 kg and more than 30 percent of people lost one-fifth of their weight — an equivalent of 20 percent.

The drug, like incretin, a natural hormone in our body, lowers blood sugar hence is prescribed for people with diabetes.

Professor Rachel Batterham, a senior author of the study, said:

“The findings of this study represent a major breakthrough for improving the health of people with obesity.

Three quarters (75%) of people who received semaglutide 2.4mg lost more than 10% of their body weight and more than one-third lost more than 20%.

No other drug has come close to producing this level of weight loss—this really is a gamechanger.

For the first time, people can achieve through drugs what was only possible through weight-loss surgery.”

Semaglutide, marketed as ozempic, can take over the regulating appetite system by mirroring the incretin hormone known as GLP-1 which reduces appetite and hunger.

The researchers believe the medication will help obese people to lose weight and so can lower the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 as well as diabetes and heart disease.

Professor Batterham said:

“The impact of obesity on health has been brought into sharp focus by COVID-19 where obesity markedly increases the risk of dying from the virus, as well as increasing the risk of many life-limiting serious diseases including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, liver disease and certain types of cancers.

This drug could have major implications for UK health policy for years to come.”

For this study, about 2,000 overweight or obese adults received an injection of 2.4mg semaglutide every week over a 14-month trial.

They were also given guidance and consultation on lifestyle changes about increasing physical activity and cutting down calories.

Participants on semaglutide lost 15.3kg of their weight with a -5.54 reduction in BMI, whereas those who didn’t receive the medication had a 2.6 kg weight loss with a -0.92 reduction in BMI.

Furthermore, the semaglutide group experienced a reduction in blood pressure, waist circumference, and blood sugar levels.

Professor John Wilding, the study’s first author, said:

“This is a significant advance in the treatment of obesity.

Semaglutide is already approved and used clinically at a lower dose for treatment of diabetes, so as doctors we are already familiar with its use.

For me this is particularly exciting as I was involved in very early studies of GLP1 (when I worked at the Hammersmith Hospital in the 1990s we were the first to show in laboratory studies that GLP1 affected appetite), so it is good to see this translated into an effective treatment for people with obesity.”

The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (Wilding et al., 2021).

The keto diet works for weight loss and reduces risk of diabetes only if it is done this way.

The ketogenic diet has become very popular since celebrities like Lebron James, Kim Kardashian, and Gwyneth Paltrow promote it for weight loss.

But the keto diet improves human health and reduces obesity only if used for a very short period as its negative effects begin after a single week of dieting, researchers have found.

Indeed, a study has found that keto-like diets increase ‘bad’ cholesterol levels and increase the chance of heart disease (Iatan et al., 2023; presented at the American College of Cardiology’s World Congress).

A keto diet is extremely high in fat and very low in carbohydrates.

Ninety percent of calories are from fat, 1 percent from carbohydrates, and the rest from protein.

The effect of the diet — whether positive or negative — all depends on gamma delta T-cells that play a major role in the immune response and inflammation.

The keto diet manipulates our body to burn more fat and since it hardly contains carbohydrates will cause glucose levels to drop as well as lower insulin production.

In response our body goes into starvation mode and so starts breaking down fats rather than carbohydrates.

Through this process, ketone bodies are produced by the liver and will be used as an alternative energy source.

When the body starts to use these chemicals, it will cause gamma delta T-cells to expand in the fat tissues.

This decreases the risk of diabetes and reduces adipose tissue inflammation, according to Professor Waldemar Von Zedtwitz, the senior author of this study.

The research team fed a group of mice with a keto diet and saw that after one week the mice’s metabolism and insulin sensitivity improved while their blood sugar levels and inflammation reduced.

However, after the first week of being on the low-carb, high-fat diet, the mice started to eat more fat which was more than they could burn and so faced obesity and diabetes.

The team found that this “starving-not-starving” mode causes the body to store fat but also burn fat at the same time.

Professor Dixit said:

“They lose the protective gamma delta T-cells in the fat.

Before such a diet can be prescribed, a large clinical trial in controlled conditions is necessary to understand the mechanism behind metabolic and immunological benefits or any potential harm to individuals who are overweight and pre-diabetic.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in three American adults have prediabetes.

This metabolic condition tied to obesity is a world wide issue leading to type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Professor Dixit said:

“Obesity and type 2 diabetes are lifestyle diseases.

Diet allows people a way to be in control.”

The study was published in Nature Metabolism (Goldberg et al., 2020).