7 Best Tips To Help You Stick To A Diet

We recently finished testing the 3 Week Diet (read our review here).  It’s basically a low carb diet in 3 phases which aims to provide the largest possible weight loss in the shortest amount of time.

Sticking to a diet is never the easiest thing to do. So here are the 7 most helpful tips we found from our experiences as we slimmed our way through the 21 days.

1. Make meals as tasty as possible. The problem is that bland and boring food is the enemy of dieters.  We use herbs, spices, Worcestershire sauce, chilli pepper, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, anything in fact which had very low sugar or fat but which added flavor.

Flavorful meals which smelled good were the ones which kept us feeling full longest.

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7 Tips To Help You Stick To A Diet was first published on http://www.weightodiet.com

Fast v Slow Weight Loss - Which Is Better?

When it comes to losing weight, we have long been told that a slow and steady approach is the right way to go.  However, an Australian study published in medical journal The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology demonstrated that fast weight loss might be a much more effective way of actually achieving our target weight.

The study took 200 obese individuals and assigned them to either a gradual, 36 week, weight loss plan or a fast, 12-week weight loss programme.  Of these, 81 percent of fast dieters achieved their target weight, but only 50 percent of gradual dieters reached their goal.

The researchers thought that the fast dieters were more successful because the quick weight loss results gave them more motivation to keep going.

Katrina Purcell, a dietician from the University of Melbourne is one of the study’s authors. She said: ‘Guidelines recommend gradual weight loss for the treatment of obesity, reflecting the widely held belief that fast weight loss is more quickly regained. However, our results show achieving a weight loss target of 12.5% is more likely, and drop-out is lower if losing weight is done quickly.’

Nutritionists have often warned of the dangers of crash dieting. Many diets exclude complete food groups and it becomes difficult or even impossible to get the full range of nutrients required for good health when eating so few calories.

In this study, the fast weight loss group who were consuming between 450 and 800 calories per day were also given medically approved nutritional supplements. The researchers said it was ‘impossible’ for the group to get all the nutrients they needed from the food they were given.

One of the reasons that International guidelines recommend slower weight loss (around 2lb per week) in order to keep it off for good.  However, the Australian study monitored dieters for three years after their target weight had been achieved.  Both groups were put on the same three-year weight maintenance plan, and both regained around 71 percent of the weight they had lost. The researchers concluded that there was no difference in the amount of weight regained between the two groups of dieters.

This means that whether someone regains weight or not after a diet does not depend on the speed of weight loss during the diet.

The study’s conclusions were welcomed by Professor Kishore Gadde and Dr. Corby Martin from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge. They said:

“The study…indicates that for weight loss, a slow and steady approach does not win the race, and the myth that rapid weight loss is associated with rapid weight regain is no more true than Aesop’s fable.

“Clinicians should bear in mind that different weight loss approaches might be suitable for different patients in the management of clinical obesity and that efforts to curb the speed of initial weight loss might hinder their ultimate weight loss success.”

However, a contrary view is held by  Professor Naveed Sattar of the University of Glasgow who said that even the study’s gradual dieters lost weight too quickly.

‘One must remember that weight gain in many who are obese has occurred over years, and reversal may need to be relatively slow so that the brain and systems that regulate appetite have time to reset,’ he said.

To kick start your diet, click here for more information and reviews of a range of fast weight loss programs.


Fast v Slow Weight Loss - Which Is Better? was first published on http://www.weightodiet.com

The Simple Guide To Leptin and Leptin Resistance

The latest buzz phrase in weight loss is Leptin resistance. So what exactly is Leptin? What problems does it cause? And what can we do help reduce Leptin resistance?

What Does Leptin Do?

Leptin is a key to weight loss

This is what a Leptin molecule looks like.

Leptin is one of the main hormones which controls fat storage/release in the body. It acts (on the brain) to maintain a person’s fat stores at the correct level.

There are other hormones which indirectly affect the the body’s fat levels. The most important one is Insulin which acts to regulate the amount of sugar in the bloodstream.

So Leptin regulates fat and Insulin regulates sugar. The two hormones work together and non-fasting leptin levels are affected by Insulin levels.

In a person with normal amounts of body fat, high levels of leptin in the body promote fat release, and low levels promote fat storage.

The amount of leptin in the body is directly related to the amount of body fat. In a fasting state, obese individuals have more leptin in the body than thin people.

This should mean that in a fasting state, the higher levels of leptin in the obese person would be promoting fat release, and thus the fatty would get thinner. However it doesn't seem to work like that...

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The Simple Guide To Leptin and Leptin Resistance was first published on weightodiet.com

Where Does The Fat Go When You Lose Weight?

Where do you think it goes?

More than 50 per cent of the 150 doctors, dieticians and personal trainers who were surveyed thought the fat was converted to energy or heat. I thought it was excreted when you visit the smallest room. It turns out I was wrong!

You breathe it out. It disappears into thin air!

The authors of a study published recently in the British Medical Journal traced every atom of the fat as it is lost from the body. They discovered that for every 10kg of fat which the body loses, 84.Kg are exhaled as carbon dioxide through the lungs. The remaining 1.6kg becomes water which which may be excreted in urine, faeces, sweat, breath, tears and other bodily fluids, the authors report.

"None of this is obvious to people because the carbon dioxide gas we exhale is invisible", says the study’s lead author Ruben Meerman.

This might lead us to ask if simply breathing more can cause weight loss?

Sadly, the answer is no. Breathing controls the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. So if you breathe too much (hyperventilate) this balance is upset and this can lead to dizziness, palpitations and loss of consciousness.

However, this could explain why gentle exercise like walking is beneficial to weight loss, as the deeper breathing which occurs here might aid the fat removal process. So, a walk ion the fresh air anyone?

This ground breaking study was performed by Ruben Meerman and Professor Andrew Brown of the University of New South Wales, Australia.

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Eat A Lighter Lunch To Help You Lose Weight

When people are forced to eat a smaller lunch it’s been found that they don’t compensate by eating more at other meals. This can lead to weight loss.

Researchers in the Division of Nutritional Science at Cornell University offered half their 17 volunteers a buffet lunch and the other half were given a choice of one of six, commercially available, portion controlled foods instead of the buffet. All the volunteers were allowed to eat whatever they liked for all the rest of the day’s meals and snacks.

While they were eating the portion controlled lunch, on average the volunteers consumed 250 fewer calories than on days when they didn’t eat a portion controlled lunch, and after 10 days of light lunches they had lost an average of 1.1lb.

“The results confirm that humans do not regulate energy intake with any precision,” said Professor David Levitsky, “Over a year, such a regimen would result in losing at least 25 pounds (11kg).”

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Comment:
This has great implications for weight loss as it's not too hard to restrict the amount that you eat at lunchtime, especially if you take a packed lunch to work.  You could try packing a salad, as most salad ingredients are low in calories.  Lettuce, cucumber, and most raw vegetables areincredibly healthy and can be eaten in almost unlimited quantities, especially if you are restrict the amount of high calorie salad dressings.