Archive for May, 2007

The Secret to Weight Loss is in the Breakfast

Posted May 19, 2007 * Comments(2)

Here’s an interesting article about how a good breakfast can increase or decrease your metabolism. There is some truth to this article.

I eat on average between 2000 to 3000 calories per day. It’s an alarming amount, most of which are consumed during the breakfast hours. If I consume 2000 calories, I will not gain nor lose any weight within the next month. If I consume 3000 calories, I will gain about 5 lbs. within the next month.

http://www.drgourmet.com/column/dr/040207.shtml

Dr. Tim Says…

What about breakfast?

 April 2, 2007

Your mother was right (she knew it all along). It turns out that breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day.

There are a number of reasons that you should make a healthy breakfast part of your life. When you consider that you had dinner at 6:00 or 7:00 the night before and you might get up for breakfast at 6:00 A.M. you have already gone about 12 hours without eating. Not having breakfast and waiting until your “coffee break” or lunch adds even more time. By the time you get around to eating it could be that your body has been starving for as long as 18 hours.

We now have a lot of research showing that extended periods of starvation can change your metabolism. The body effectively slows down to preserve the calories that it has stored, since there’s a perceived lack of calories coming in. The science shows that this can affect how easy it is for you to lose weight.

Some scientists have shown that increasing how often you eat can promote more efficient use of the calories that you take in. It does appear this will make weight control easier. We don’t have clear research to tell us how often to eat but those who do eat smaller portions more frequently have an easier time controlling their weight.

Likewise, the research shows that in people who are overweight, eating a larger portion of your daily calories before noon instead of later in the day results in greater weight loss.

It also appears that the type of breakfast makes a difference in how easy it is to lose weight. In one research study, participants who ate cereals, quick breads or muffins had a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) when compared to those having meat and eggs. (The meat and egg eaters tended to eat more calories, however). Having whole grain and cooked cereals fared better for folks than ready to eat cereals or muffins.

A lot of studies have shown that those who skip breakfast have a higher BMI. Likewise, there’s good research showing that breakfast eaters with a lower Body Mass Index are more likely to eat their meals more regularly throughout the day.

The question is, “Are those people who eat more regularly through the day snacking more?” We have all heard about how “grazing” on small meals through the day might be better. When snacking is looked at in those who eat breakfast, studies show that those who eat early are not as likely to snack as breakfast-skippers. When the breakfast-eaters do snack, the research indicates that they tend to snack more sensibly.

There are a lot of other studies showing that having a healthy breakfast helps with other health issues. One of my favorite pieces of research shows that women who don’t eat breakfast have higher total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol. Those women also had developed problems in how their insulin responds to eating. As I have written before, such changes in insulin response are linked to heart disease and diabetes.

So your mom was right (and probably about more than just breakfast). Get your day started right!

  

Calories of Popular Restaurant Salad Dressings

Posted May 19, 2007 * Comments(0)

http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rsrkx4bab.0.9hroy4bab.bul596bab.102&ts=S0254&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drgourmet.com%2Fhealth%2Ffastfood%2Fpdf%2Fpdf-dressings.zip

Internal Fat

Posted May 12, 2007 * Comments(0)

Two articles that emphasizes the importance of dieting and exercising:

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=health&id=5297382

New Report Redefines Concept of Being Fat

Weight Not Just a Number

KABC By Denise Dador

May 11, 2007 (KABC-TV) - A new report is redefining the concept of being fat.

At 5 feet 4 inches tall and 115 pounds, Alona Zerlin looks like the picture of health, but a closer examination of her muscle to fat ratio reveals her body is 24 percent fat.

“Normally for someone my height and weight and size it should be 18 percent, but it’s not like that,” Zerlin said.

“If you stop exercising, you eat a lot of extra food, your body is going to get into the over fat category, where your body is going to accumulate fat on the inside,” Dr. David Heber, of UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, said.

Dr. Heber says if Alona gained five more pounds of fat she would be considered over fat.

This is a new concept of overweight. It’s not big people who are overweight, it’s people who have fat on the inside of their body.

In a British study of 800 people who underwent MRI exams, 45 percent of those with a normal waist circumference and normal body mass index had excessive levels of fat.

“It turns out the fat around the liver and various organs actually changes your metabolism and makes them more susceptible to diabetes, heart disease and breast cancer,” Dr. Heber said.

So how do you get rid of internal fat? Diet alone is not the answer.

“If you just cut back on what you eat, you’ll just lose muscle and fat and you won’t change the ratio. In order to mobilize the fat, you have to build the muscle which changes your metabolism and then you’ll get rid of the fat,” Dr. Heber said.

Dr. Heber recommends eating more protein, limiting fat and carbs, and weight training at least three times a week.

Zerlin says it’s a program she plans on making a lifestyle.

“As you get older your metabolism gets slower so you just have to keep working at it,” Zerlin said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_he_me/thin_fat_people_10

“Fat maps” reveal hidden bulges in the thin

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070612/LIFE11/706120342

BY MARIA CHENG
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

If it really is what’s on the inside that counts, then a lot of thin people might be in trouble.

Some doctors now think that the internal fat surrounding vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas — invisible to the naked eye — could be as dangerous as the more obvious external fat that bulges underneath the skin.

“Being thin doesn’t automatically mean you’re not fat,” said Dr. Jimmy Bell, a professor of molecular imaging at Imperial College, London. Since 1994, Bell and his team have scanned nearly 800 people with MRI machines to create “fat maps” showing where people store fat.

According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. “The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined,” said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council.

Without a clear warning signal — like a rounder middle — doctors worry that thin people may be lulled into falsely assuming that because they’re not overweight, they’re healthy.

“Just because someone is lean doesn’t make them immune to diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease,” said Dr. Louis Teichholz, chief of cardiology at Hackensack University Medical Center in Bergen County, who was not involved in Bell’s research.

Even people with normal Body Mass Index scores — a standard obesity measure that divides your weight by the square of your height — can have surprising levels of fat deposits inside.

Of the women scanned by Bell and his colleagues, as many as 45 percent of those with normal BMI scores (20 to 25) actually had excessive levels of internal fat. Among men, the percentage was nearly 60 percent.

Relating the news to what Bell calls “TOFIs” — people who are “thin outside, fat inside” — is rarely uneventful. “The thinner people are, the bigger the surprise,” he said, adding the researchers even found TOFIs among people who are professional models.

According to Bell, people who are fat on the inside are essentially on the threshold of being obese. They eat too many fatty, sugary foods — and exercise too little to work it off — but they are not eating enough to actually be fat. Scientists believe we naturally accumulate fat around the belly first, but at some point, the body may start storing it elsewhere.

Still, most experts believe that being of normal weight is an indicator of good health, and that BMI is a reliable measurement.

“BMI won’t give you the exact indication of where fat is, but it’s a useful clinical tool,” said Dr. Toni Steer, a nutritionist at Britain’s Medical Research Council.

Doctors are unsure about the exact dangers of internal fat, but some suspect it contributes to the risk of heart disease and diabetes. They theorize that internal fat disrupts the body’s communication systems. The fat enveloping internal organs might be sending the body mistaken chemical signals to store fat inside organs like the liver or pancreas. This could ultimately lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or heart disease.

Experts have long known that fat, active people can be healthier than their skinny, inactive counterparts. “Normal-weight persons who are sedentary and unfit are at much higher risk for mortality than obese persons who are active and fit,” said Dr. Steven Blair, an obesity expert at the University of South Carolina.

For example, despite their ripples of fat, super-size Sumo wrestlers probably have a better metabolic profile than some of their slim, sedentary spectators, Bell said. That’s because the wrestlers’ fat is primarily stored under the skin, not streaking throughout their vital organs and muscles.

The good news is that internal fat can be easily burned off through exercise or even by improving your diet. “Even if you don’t see it on your bathroom scale, caloric restriction and physical exercise have an aggressive effect on visceral fat,” said Dr. Bob Ross, an obesity expert at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.