Dieting the scientific way
Another New Year, another attempt to lose weight? Hmm..... sounds like it's time to ditch that old diet and try these top new fat-shifting tips instead..
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Once upon a time,staying a healthy weight was easy. It could be summed up by the phrase " calories in,equal calories out". To lose weight you simply had to practice the reverse of home economics - spend more than you earned .Unfortunately for many,but perhaps not surprisingly ,it turns out that people are rather more complicated than bank accounts .
A lot of research has gone into unraveling the intricacies of our personal fat accounts - driven by the dream of winning the big prize of an effective fat pill .Some of the findings have been ,to put it mildly ,counter-intuitive.They also suggest whole new ways of dieting..
To stay a healthy weight,you need a hormone called leptin to work properly .It sends "I'm full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain ,where they go,among other places ,to the same pleasure centres that respond to sex and drugs like cocaine .Obese people produce plenty of leptin ,but the brain doesn't seem to respond to it properly .Last year ,researchers at America's Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive.They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing .In other words ,the study showed that fat people are actually the opposite of greedy :They get less pleasure from eating than others do. There's a lot of evidence for the fact that most,if not all ,of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to 10 kilos,but anything beyond that is a real struggle .This goes for naturally thin people trying to gain weight as well.Making changes is hard,particularly if your body is working against you ,because -as the leptin example shows -the whole weight control system is intimately interconnected with our pleasure centres . So if your body is sabotaging your efforts to lose weight ,why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods ,based on the latest research ,that work with your body rather than against it:
The eat-every-other day diet of course you can still follow the well trodden route of cutting calories,and by sticking to around 1500 a day, you will lose weight .Other upsides are that the kilos will stay off and that you will become very healthy : the risk of all the big killers -heart diseases ,cancer ,diabetes -will plummet ,along with that allergies,asthma and infections diseases .The downside is that you will be constantly hungry and miserable.But what if you could get all those benefits without being in a permanent state of semi-starvation ?
Well,maybe you can .The trick is to try an" alternate day"diet.Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, USA ,reported that when they gaverats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next,they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans ,according to Dr James Johnson who has set up a website with information om how to do it.
How does it Work? Besides forcing the body to burn fat,it may also trigger hormonal changes ,such as ramping up the activity of two anti-aging genes called SIR3 and SIRT4 .Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grinding as trying ti cut back on the an everyday basis.
Recent research from the the University of illinois at Chicago ,of a ten-week trial on obese patients who followed a form of the alternate -day diet,revealed a weight loss ranging from about five to 13 kilos ,whereas the researchers expected an average of only about two kilos ,Blood pressure ,heart rate and cholesterol were also lowered .... !!!!!!!!!!!!
l
Once upon a time,staying a healthy weight was easy. It could be summed up by the phrase " calories in,equal calories out". To lose weight you simply had to practice the reverse of home economics - spend more than you earned .Unfortunately for many,but perhaps not surprisingly ,it turns out that people are rather more complicated than bank accounts .
A lot of research has gone into unraveling the intricacies of our personal fat accounts - driven by the dream of winning the big prize of an effective fat pill .Some of the findings have been ,to put it mildly ,counter-intuitive.They also suggest whole new ways of dieting..
To stay a healthy weight,you need a hormone called leptin to work properly .It sends "I'm full" messages from the fat cells up to the brain ,where they go,among other places ,to the same pleasure centres that respond to sex and drugs like cocaine .Obese people produce plenty of leptin ,but the brain doesn't seem to respond to it properly .Last year ,researchers at America's Oregon Research Institute scanned the brains of overweight people and found their reward circuits were underactive.They were eating more to try to get the enjoyment they were missing .In other words ,the study showed that fat people are actually the opposite of greedy :They get less pleasure from eating than others do. There's a lot of evidence for the fact that most,if not all ,of us have a set point around which our weight can vary by about seven to 10 kilos,but anything beyond that is a real struggle .This goes for naturally thin people trying to gain weight as well.Making changes is hard,particularly if your body is working against you ,because -as the leptin example shows -the whole weight control system is intimately interconnected with our pleasure centres . So if your body is sabotaging your efforts to lose weight ,why not ditch the traditional approaches and try some new methods ,based on the latest research ,that work with your body rather than against it:
Well,maybe you can .The trick is to try an" alternate day"diet.Several years ago researchers at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, USA ,reported that when they gaverats very little food one day and allowed them to eat plenty the next,they showed virtually all the benefits of a permanent calorie restriction diet. The same goes for humans ,according to Dr James Johnson who has set up a website with information om how to do it.
How does it Work? Besides forcing the body to burn fat,it may also trigger hormonal changes ,such as ramping up the activity of two anti-aging genes called SIR3 and SIRT4 .Most people say that the diet takes a bit of getting used to, but is not as grinding as trying ti cut back on the an everyday basis.
Recent research from the the University of illinois at Chicago ,of a ten-week trial on obese patients who followed a form of the alternate -day diet,revealed a weight loss ranging from about five to 13 kilos ,whereas the researchers expected an average of only about two kilos ,Blood pressure ,heart rate and cholesterol were also lowered .... !!!!!!!!!!!!
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