Weight

Self Tracking Is Easy and an Effective Way to Lose Weight

Being overweight or obese is associated with several risks such as developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even mortality. Despite these well documented risks federal statistics indicate that obesity in America has increased from 35% in 2007-08 to being 40% in 2015-16 and that number is still climbing.

This doesn’t mean that Americans are not making an effort to lose weight as a report by the Boston Medical Center suggests around 45 million embark on diets every year, spending over $33 billion annually on the pursuit of dropping extra weight. The sad reality is that only a small portion of those dieters will reach their goals, as for many the process is too difficult and what they can and can’t eat proves to be too much of a struggle for them to sustain long term.

Weight loss doesn’t have to be unsustainable and an unachievable dream, research is showing that self tracking methods such as an app or diary are the most effective ways to successfully lose weight. Some may feel that self tracking is time consuming, but research from the University of Vermont has found that it can be quick and easy, taking about 15 minutes a day.

As published in the journal Obesity results were examined from 142 self tracking participants. The most successful participants spent on average 14.6 minutes per day online based on their logged in activity in the behavioral weight loss program in which they recorded calories, fat, portion sizes, and preparation methods for all food and beverages consumed; and met weekly for 14 weeks in an online group session with a trained dietician.

The most successful dieters were determined to be those that lost at least 10% of their body weight, who spent 23.2 minutes a day logged in for the first 6 months, then on average 14.6 minutes logged in afterwards. Successfulness was not revolved around how much time was spent logged in, rather it was the number of times they logged in to report what they ate.

“Those who self-monitored three or more times per day, and were consistent day after day, were the most successful,” explained lead author Jean Harvey, chair of the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont. “It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that makes the difference — not the time spent or the details included.”

The key to weight loss success may well be to start a food journal or download a self monitoring app in which to briefly, but no less than 3 times a day report the details of the food and beverages which have been consumed. 

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Source: WorldHealth.net

Location of Body Fat Can Increase Hypertension Risk

Body.Overweight.Obese2People with fat around their abdominal area are at greater risk of developing hypertension when compared to those with similar body mass index but fat concentrations elsewhere on the body, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Obesity is a known risk factor for hypertension, or high blood pressure, and it is widely reported that the location of fat on a person’s body can lead to increased risk of other health issues like heart disease and cancer. However, the relationship between hypertension and overall obesity versus site-specific fat accumulation is unclear.

For this study, 903 patients enrolled in the Dallas Heart Study were followed for an average of seven years to track development of hypertension. Hypertension was classified as a systolic blood pressure of greater or equal to 140, diastolic blood pressure of greater or equal to 90, or initiation of blood pressure medications. Patients also received imaging of visceral fat, or fat located deep in the abdominal cavity between the organs; subcutaneous fat, or visible fat located all over the body; and lower-body fat.

“Generally speaking, visceral fat stores correlate with the ‘apple shape’ as opposed to the ‘pear shape,’ so having centrally located fat when you look in the mirror tends to correlate with higher levels of fat inside the abdomen,” said senior author Aslan T. Turer, M.D., M.H.S., a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

At the end of the study period, 25 percent of patients developed hypertension. While higher BMI was associated with increased incidence of hypertension, when abdominal fat content, overall fat content and lower-body fat content were factored in, only abdominal fat remained independently associated with hypertension.

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Source: American College of Cardiology. “Location of body fat can increase hypertension risk.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 September 2014.

Healthy Weight Loss May Bring Better Sleep, Brighter Mood

Body.WeightLoss.TipsDropping excess pounds may not only improve your physical health, it might also help you feel more awake and happy, a new study shows.

The research, presented this week at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago, included 390 obese women and men who were assigned to one of three programs meant to help them lose weight through diet and exercise.

One group received usual care, in which they were given printed educational materials during visits every three months with their primary care provider. The second group saw their primary care provider every three months, and also had brief meetings with lifestyle coaches. The third group met with their primary care providers and lifestyle coaches, and also received meal replacements and weight-loss medications.

Changes in the participants’ weight, amount and quality of sleep and mood were assessed after six and 24 months. The average weight loss in the usual care group was 4.4 pounds, compared with about 8 pounds in the second group and close to 15 pounds in the third group.

However, no matter which group they were in, participants who lost at least 5 percent of their weight after six months slept an average of nearly 22 minutes more each night than they had before, the study found.

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Source: MedicineNet.

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Weight-Loss Efforts Start Well, But Lapse Over Time

Body.WeightLoss.TipsLearning of an obesity-related disease motivates many to start a weight loss program, but troubling health news is often not enough to sustain weight loss efforts, finds new research. “Many of us will respond with good intentions when faced with a health crisis and challenge, but it is easy to put this behind us once the shock has passed and the reality that it is not easy or fun to lose weight becomes clear,” one expert said. “Patients need to keep the reasons they want to change fresh in their minds, set attainable goals, and get ongoing support for their efforts.”

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Source: Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health. “Weight loss efforts start well, but lapse over time.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 April 2014.

Seeking a Cure for Obesity

Body.Overweight.Obese2Obesity and diabetes are among the fastest growing health problems in the world, and the hunt is in for a pill that can fight the problem. Now a Danish/British team has come up with a smart tool that will speed up the scientific hunting process, and we may be one step closer to a pill against obesity.

The body has a variety of functions that decide if we get overweight or not. For instance hormones control our appetite and the uptake of food. In recent years science has taken on the quest of investigating these physiological functions and finding a medical way to fight obesity.

One way that has attracted scientific interest is to work with a special protein, that can stimulate different physiological activities such as the production of appetite controlling hormones and hormones that control the intestinal uptake of food.

The particular protein is found in the cell membranes in intestines, in immune cells and in fat, and it is called FFA4. The protein is activated by long-chain free fatty acids released from the food such as omega-3 fatty acids. When this happens, it releases hormones that inhibit our appetite and increase sugar uptake from the blood.

Molecules can activate proteins, so the job is “just” to find the right molecule.

“We have developed a computer model of FFA4 that can help us to select the correct molecules for synthesis by first testing if they bind in the computer model. This way we can test thousands of molecules in a very short time before going into the laboratory. This will speed up the process of finding the right compounds that can be developed to efficient drugs against obesity or diabetes”, says postdoc Bharat Shimpukade from Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at University of Southern Denmark. The model has been confirmed and refined by detailed experimental studies.

“I have been looking for a couple of months now, and I hope to be able to continue till I find the perfect molecule that can lead to a new cure”, says Bharat Shimpukade.

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Source: Medical News Today.

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Researchers Discover a Gene That Controls Fat Metabolism

Body.Overweight.Obese2The long-term consumption of too much high-energy and high-fat food leads to overweight. Behind this trivial statement lies the extremely complex regulation of lipid metabolism. Together with colleagues from Japan, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have now discovered that the Sirt7 gene plays a central role in energy metabolism. Despite consuming high-fat food, genetically modified mice that lack the gene maintain their normal weight.

Food was not always available to such excess as it is in western societies today. On the contrary, our metabolism was tailored to the optimum exploitation of energy, as humans, for millennia, had to budget their calories carefully. Thus, the formation and depletion of fat depots as energy stores is subject to complex regulation. A series of regulators is involved in lipid metabolism in the liver for the purpose of storing excess energy and making it available again when required.

The researchers hope that their study will provide the basis for new therapeutic approaches. “We would now like to examine substances with which the function of Sirt7 can be deliberately inhibited. We want to examine whether the same effects arise as observed in the mice that lack the Sirt7 gene,” explains one of the researchers. The long-term objective is the development of a drug that would reduce the efficiency of lipid metabolism. This would enable the avoidance of overweight.

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Source: Medical News Today.

Information Technology Can Simplify Weight-Loss Efforts; Social Support Still Important for Success

Body.WeightLoss.TipsAccording to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 69 percent of adults in the United States are currently overweight or obese, which puts these individuals at increased risk for chronic health problems. Although weight loss decreases this risk, statistics show that dieters often fail multiple times before meeting their goals. Now, researchers have found that information technology, such as smartphone applications, can help dieters integrate healthy behavior changes into their daily lives.

“When people use information technology to support their weight-loss efforts, they tend to access features that streamline the tracking of daily health behaviors, such as caloric intake and exercise, or that provide visual feedback on their overall progress, like graphs showing weight lost over time,” said Cheryl Shigaki, an associate professor in the MU School of Health Professions. “Self-monitoring is key to successful weight loss, and information technology can make these tasks more convenient. We also found that people really liked getting feedback on their progress, which motivated them and helped them better evaluate their health behaviors and plan for future success.”

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Source: University of Missouri-Columbia. “Information technology can simplify weight-loss efforts; social support still important for success.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 April 2014.

Novel Approach to Accelerate Metabolism Could Lead to New Obesity Treatment

Body.Overweight.Obese2By manipulating a biochemical process that underlies cells’ energy-burning abilities, investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have made a novel discovery that could lead to a new therapy to combat obesity and diabetes. Published in the journal Nature, the new findings show that reducing the amount of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) protein in fat and liver dramatically reduces the development of obesity and diabetes in mice.

“With this discovery, we now have a means of metabolic manipulation that could help speed energy production and lead to weight loss,” explains senior author Barbara Kahn, MD, Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at BIDMC and George Richards Minot Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Our findings are particularly exciting because the antisense oligonucleotide [ASO] technology we used to inhibit the NNMT gene in our study is already being used to treat other diseases in humans.”

The new findings hinge on a biochemical mechanism known as a futile cycle, in which cellular reactions are sped up, thereby generating more energy. “We all know people who can seemingly eat whatever they want and not gain weight,” explains Kahn. “Part of the reason for this natural weight control owes to basal cellular metabolism – the body’s inherent rate of burning energy. A futile cycle is one way to speed up energy utilization in cells.”

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Source: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Novel approach to accelerate metabolism could lead to new obesity treatment.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 April 2014.

Like Obesity, Being Underweight is Also Tied to Earlier Death

Body.Overweight.Obese2A new Canadian review of research on the relationship between weight and risk of premature death finds that having a body mass index in the underweight range is linked to an even higher risk of death than having a body mass index in the obese range.

Led by Dr. Joel Ray, a physician-researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, the review is published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

In their review, Dr. Ray and colleagues found that adults with a BMI classed as underweight (under 18.50 or less) had a 1.8 times higher risk of dying from any cause than adults with a BMI classed as normal. This was even higher than for people classed as obese.

For people with a BMI in the range 30.00 to 34.99 (obese), the risk of dying was 1.2 times higher than that of people with BMI classed as normal, and for those with a BMI higher than 35.00 (severely obese), the risk was 1.3 times higher.

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Source: Medical News Today.

Now This is Interesting: Being Overweight may Benefit Older People

Body.WeightLoss.TipsA new study from Australia finds that people aged 65 and over with a body mass index in the overweight range live longer and suggests perhaps the World Health Organization guidelines on BMI may not be suitable for older people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines overweight as having a body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 25, and a BMI of 30 or over as obese. BMI is equal to a person’s weight in kilos divided by the square of their height in meters (kg/m2).

Caryl Nowson, professor of nutrition and aging at Deakin University in Melbourne, and colleagues looked at links BMI and risk of death in people aged 65 and over, and found those with the lowest risk of death had a BMI of around 27.5.

They also found those with a BMI between 22 and 23 – considered to be the normal weight range – had a significantly higher risk of death.

“Our results showed that those over the age of 65 with a BMI of between 23 and 33 lived longer, indicating that the ideal body weight for older people is significantly higher than the recommended 18.5-25 ‘normal’ healthy weight range.”

Prof. Nowson says for people aged 65 and over, by the WHO standards, being overweight is not associated with an increased risk of death, and that “it is those sitting at the lower end of the normal range that need to be monitored, as older people with BMIs less than 23 are at increased risk of dying.”

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Source: Medical News Today.