Have you been slowly gaining weight over the years? Do you have a few stubborn pounds that you can’t lose no matter what you do? There are a few bad habits that have been linked with weight creep and could be keeping you from reaching your desired weight goal.
I remember playing childhood sports, the coach would often tell us to visualize winning the game or making the free throw or goal. This technique is used by athletes a lot to prepare mentally, and many say it works. Apparently these visualization techniques also work for dieting.
I was watching the news the other night and saw a story about research being done on a new weight loss drug. The creators of the drug call it “adipotide”, and it works in a similar fashion to cancer treatments. It cuts off the blood supply to fat deposits, causing the death of fat cells.
The drug was tested on obese monkeys successfully. The monkeys lost 11% of their body weight and 39% of fat deposits without any change to diet or exercise.
Now, I think this is all very great. It has the potential to save lives. BUT, what bothered me about the news report that I saw was that one of the researchers commented that this drug would be a great kick-start to a diet and exercise plan. I don’t think that will be the case. I think people will buy this drug, take it to lose weight and resume their “normal” eating and lifestyle habits, then gain all the weight back… and then they’ll probably start taking the drug again. The yo-yo weight gain effect will cause even more harm to their metabolisms and internal balance.
We need to be very careful about the idea of a pill to cure obesity. It’s not going to do much good at all if people don’t realize what got them to that state in the first place. What do you think?
The LIFE study, a large 2-phase weight loss study, has found some interesting connections from the completed phase one. In phase one, study participants take part in counseling, 500 calorie reduction diet based on the DASH diet and 180 min of exercise a week.
60% of the participants were successful in phase one; meaning they lost at least 10 pounds and met the 180 min of weekly exercise requirement. They also attended 73% of their counseling sessions on average. When researchers looked at the differences between the successful group of participants and the unsuccessful group, they came up with 2 areas that differentiated them – stress and sleep.
Researchers have been exploring the link between the obesity epidemic and trends in eating out. Both obesity and restaurant use are on the rise. Why are many restaurant meals so bad for you? Because they flavor their foods with compounds that promote weight gain and obesity, such as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, processed grains and trans fat. Many places also use portions sizes that are blown way out of proportion.
When you think of losing weight, you think of dieting. And when you think of dieting, I’m guessing you think of restriction – of eating less and putting more time towards doing things you’d rather not do (like exercising). It doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, when you think of weight loss, you should think of small sustainable changes. And here are a few that you can implement today.
Give the gift of health!
