Category Archives: Diet And Food

One of the best ways to improve your digestion and general health is to take some good quality probiotics. But how can you be sure that those little pills you take, each containing billions of good bacteria, actually make it through to your intestines? After all, they have to get through the acidic environment in your stomach first, right?

Luckily, theres no reason to be concerned. Probiotic bacteria, whether in a commercial form or in probiotic yogurt, are perfectly capable of making it all the way through your digestive system. The evidence shows that oral probiotics can colonize your intestines and even pass all the way through your digestive system without any problem at all.

If you read my earlier post on the acid/alkaline balance in your gut, you already know that your intestines need to be slightly acidic for optimal digestion and a strong immune system. The good bacteria in your intestines play a large part in this.

Lactic acid bacteria, for example lactobacillus acidophilus, are a good example. As part of their metabolism they secrete small amounts of lactic acid and acetic acid, lowering the pH of their immediate environment and making it more acidic. In fact, the word acidophilus literally means acid-loving in Latin, and they are well-suited to surviving an acidic environment.

Another factor to remember is that these bacteria usually spend very little time in your stomach. If you take your probiotics after eating, they will mix together with the liquids and saliva in your stomach. And around 50% of this liquid will pass through to your intestines within 30 minutes of your meal, taking many of the probiotics with it.

Lastly, your stomach may also be less acidic than you think. For example, immediately after eating your stomach pH typically rises to a level of around 6.0. This is only mildly acidic, and should be reasonably easy to survive for most of the bacteria in your capsule. In fact, something like 75% of probiotic bacteria will survive a short exposure to this kind of mild acidity.

This is not all theory. There is actually lots of research demonstrating that probiotic bacteria can make it safely though your stomach. Here are a few of the research papers, along with a quotation from each one.

Recovery of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG from human colonic biopsies (Alander, 2003) The colonization of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (L.GG) in five human colonoscopy patients was studied In all patients L.GG was the dominant faecal lactic acid bacterium as a result of the administration.

Analysis of the Fecal Microflora of Human Subjects Consuming a Probiotic Product Containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus DR20 (Tannock, 2000) The composition of the fecal microflora of 10 healthy subjects was monitored before (6-month control period), during (6-month test period), and after (3-month posttest period) the administration of a milk product containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus DR20 DR20 was detected in the feces of all of the subjects during the test period, but at different frequencies.

Intestinal transit of an orally administered streptomycinrifampicin-resistant variant of Bifidobacterium longum (Fujiwara, 2001) It is clarified that BL2928SR [a strain of Bifidobacterium longum] has the ability for long-term survival in the human gastrointestinal tract, and alters the composition and metabolism of the intestinal microflora.

Colonization and Immunomodulation by Lactobacillus reuteri ATCC 55730 in the Human Gastrointestinal Tract (Valeur, 2004) Dietary supplementation with the probiotic L. reuteri ATCC 55730 induces significant colonization of the stomach, duodenum, and ileum of healthy humans, and this is associated with significant alterations of the immune response in the gastrointestinal mucosa.

Commercial probiotics can be expensive supplements, so you should make sure that you absolutely get the most value from them that you can! There are two simple tips that you should follow to achieve this.

First, take your probiotics with food. Eating a meal temporarily reduces the acidity of your stomach and makes it easier for the probiotics to pass through. This means that more will survive the journey through to your intestines.

Second, take a brand of probiotics that contains lots and lots of bacteria. You should be aiming for at least 10 million CFUs per capsule to start with, and then increase your dose even further when you feel ready. Some of these bacteria are bound to die during transit to your intestines, so the more that you ingest, the greater the chance of an effective colonization.

If you need more advice on how to choose a good probiotic, check out my Ultimate Candida Diet program. It tells you everything you need to know about the low-sugar diet, probiotics and antifungals that you need to beat Candida.

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Can Probiotics Make It Safely To Your Intestines? The ...

IMAGINE THAT YOU COULD solve most of your health problems AND lose up 10 pounds in just 7 days.

Thats an amazing claim but it IS possible.

For those of you who have been reading my blogs and books, you already know this is possible.

I have seen miracles occur so many times in my own patients, and from all the people who have visited my website, posted their stories, and completed this diet challenge.

My true goal is to help people feel better. Period.

I know what it is like to wake up every morning feeling like you cant go on. I know what its like to have seemingly endless minor complaints that lower the capacity to enjoy life. You see, I once was seriously ill with chronic fatigue syndrome. But I changed my life and got better and you can, too.

Of course, with more serious illnesses like this, it may take more than one week to find the cause and the cure. But dont give up.

Using the tools functional medicine provides, it is possible for people with chronic illness to get better over time.

In fact, I now believe that most people walk around just accepting feeling mediocre Once you know what its like to feel truly healthy, youll never go back.

How to Heal from Chronic Illness and Lose Weight

We now know that the ONLY way to truly address and heal weight problems and disease is to get to the ROOT of the problem. You need to find the cause and then get rid of it and help the body heal.

In previous blogs, I told you about two major root causes of illness toxicity and inflammation.

But can you address these root causes in just 7 days?

You bet!

The secret is to very quickly stop consuming the things that make you toxic and inflamed like sugar, caffeine, alcohol, junk food, and processed foods. Then you want to do things that help you detoxify and cool off inflammation like eating whole, real foods, eliminating all potential food allergens, cleaning out your bowels, and relaxing deeply. Thats when miracles can occur.

The scientific research supporting the role of inflammation and toxins in illness is overwhelming, but most doctors dont know how to help their patients deal with it. I used to be one of those doctors.

I was trained in conventional medicine, practiced it for 10 years, and helped many people using the tools I was trained to use namely, medications and surgery. While I worked in the emergency room, those tools worked amazingly well, bringing people back from the brink of death and relieving suffering.

But then I realized that I wasnt helping the some 125 million Americans who suffer from some type of chronic illness, or the millions more who just dont feel well.

In fact, I now believe that most people walk around just accepting feeling mediocre with symptoms like fatigue, aches, brain fog, memory problems, depression, headaches, congestion, allergies, digestive problems, joint pains, PMS, and skin problems. These people may not have an actual disease, but they certainly have problems that rob them from feeling great.

How many people do you know who can say that they feel fully alive, full of energy, and able to greet the day with joy and enthusiasm?

How many of us can really do that?

Well, I know that this is possible for most people.

But the sad thing is that most people dont know why they feel less than fully alive and healthy, and dont connect it to their behavior or habits. Ive said it before and Ill say it again. The key to creating health isnt taking another medication! It is figuring out the cause of the problem, and then providing the right conditions for the body and soul to thrive.

Im here to show you how to do just that.

Over the last20 years of practicing at Canyon Ranch, founding The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, and working with dozens of other leaders in the emerging field of functional and systems medicine, I have learned the few simple things that make the most difference for the most people.

That is why I write the books I write.

When I wrote UltraMetabolism, my true goal wasnt to help people lose weight, but to deal with the causes of obesity and disease as a whole. And it has been remarkably effective.

Ive been pleasantly surprised with the feedback Ive received because I know I can help people one on one, but I didnt know just following my recommendations in a book would truly help people.

I have been overwhelmed by how peoples lives have changed. Here is an email someone sent to me after trying UltraMetabolism.

Through reading and following the eating plan in your book I have discovered I am gluten intolerant. Six weeks after starting your plan I had not only lost 13 pounds, but also the all-over bloated feeling, excess gas, stomach discomfort and thickening around the middle that I was experiencing. The puffiness and dark circles under my eyes are gone and I am no longer depressed.

I feel terrific, which is my motivation for staying with the plan (including 45 to 60 minutes a day of strength training and yoga). I have read the comments of others and like many of them, I no longer enjoy foods that are bad for me and crave the foods that are good for me.

Unfortunately, feeling terrific is not enough motivation for some people. And I am amazed and even saddened that there are so many other people out there with a defeatist attitude. Many of my friends told me the discomforts I was experiencing were a normal part of aging and that I needed to learn to accept it.

Wow, were they ever wrong!! Your book has shown me caring for my physical self is essential, especially as I age. I am 48 and thanks to your book I am not getting older, Im getting better, and growing old gracefully is not an option but a cop-out.

THANK YOU!!!!

PS: The only thing I am missing now is conversing with someone I can relate to.

Wow is right!

UltraMetabolism is a complete, comprehensive system dealing with ALL the causes of obesity (and most illnesses and aging).

But after I wrote it, I kept getting requests for something easy and simple to get started with.

I resisted because I dont believe in quick-fix diets, even though my readers and publisher were pushing me to do it.

Then I realized something.

I realized that I could share the same program I have been giving to my patients to help them feel great very quickly and lose weight immediately. I could share it without compromising my true goal of helping people get to the root of their health and weight problems.

And it occurred to me that what I do for nearly every patient who comes to see me is to give them a chance to see just how sick they have been and how powerful making a few simple changes can be in just one week.

Once they realize how their food choices and their behaviors make them feel sick and they experience a taste of UltraWellness they are empowered to make changes that can help them feel great and lose weight for the long term.

The most important things to address at the outset for weight loss and creating UltraWellness are inflammation and toxicity. These are among the two biggest causes of chronic disease and obesity.

So I created a simple, small, inexpensive paperback book called The UltraSimple Diet.

This book gives you all the tricks and tools I have used successfully with thousands of patients for so many years. In one short week, I teach you how to detoxify and to cool off chronic inflammation.

After I published the book, I realized we could take the experience to a whole other level using online tools and a support community. Thats when I developed The UltraSimple Diet Challenge. 500 people participated and the results were amazing. People tracked their medical symptoms things like headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, congestion, joint pain, depression, and more.

The results were dramatic. In just a week, they had an average of 51.15% reduction in their symptoms. And they lost an average of 5.53 pounds (many lost over 10 lbs) and lost an average of 1.37 inches from their waists and 0.94 inches from their hips! To me the weight loss is nice and happens automatically but it isnt the main objective.

The real benefit is the possibility of people experiencing UltraWellness a state of deep and true health and vitality. And it happens so quickly. You dont need to believe me just try it yourself foronly one week.

And tell your friends. Pass this along.

I believe that if enough people really get to experience the difference in their health in one week of The UltraSimple Diet, it will change them forever.

And if enough people have this positive change, this will create a cultural shift that may be able to counteract the powerful food and pharmaceutical industries that harm our health.

I have been shocked by how powerful this one-week program can be and hope to hear back from you on what your experience is like. In addition to the book, I have also created The Ultrasimple Diet Companion Guide which you can download for free here.

To your good health,

MarkHyman, MD

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The UltraSimple Diet: Kick-Start Your Metabolism and ...

The Challenge: You are a woman who would to lose a few pounds and have a feeling your hormone levels are out of balance

There's No Risk: 30-day, No Questions Asked Refund Instructions If You're Unsatisfied

This book is a very informative reference guide that can be used for women experiencing hormonal changes. I highly suggest reading this book before going to your gynecologist or primary care physician to discuss these issues with your doctor. There are many changes you can make in your own life (diet, supplements, exercise) that are lined out in this book in an easy to understand manner. There are additional things you can do that your doctor may discuss with you such as hormone replacement therapy. Hormone balancing is no joke and if it's something you're struggling with I highly suggest teaching yourself as much as possible and reaching out to your doctor. - Max Bowen

This book has the top tips for how to reset your hormones shifts with time, the latest scientific discoveries, and the problems my many people face most commonly. Even if you think youre doing everything right, a few simple mistakes in your day-to-day routine can send your hormones out of whack and leave you feeling tired, overweight and crabby. Fortunately, you can reset your hormones and get your body and mind back on track with these five simple fixes. You can start making it right by reading the information this book is offering. I am sure it will help you big time! - Courtney Cody

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Hormone Reset Diet for Women: Lose Weight Quickly and ...

South Beach Diet - Benefits and Drawbacks

There are a lot of diets out there these days that promise quick weight loss with no deprivation, but the South Beach Diet is one of the few that actually fits that bill. Originally designed by Dr. Arthur Agatston , a cardiologist, for his heart patients, it's become a tried-and-true diet plan that is no fad. In fact, you can stick to it for life and health as well as weight loss.

One of the main factors in the South Beach Diet's success is that it utilizes the glycemic index to help control hunger. That is, by following the diet and eating mostly foods that are low in the glycemic index, you maintain blood sugar levels and therefore reduce your hunger for "simple" carbohydrates like sugars and sweets.

The diet in three phases, during which you wean yourself off of certain foods and focus on South Beach Diet friendly foods. You can also lose up to eight to 12 pounds in the first two weeks, as long as you follow those guidelines.

Basic benefits

Medical science actually supports this diet, because it focuses on "clean" eating, and it's full of lean protein, fruits, vegetables, and "good for you" fats, while minimizing or eliminating refined sugars, trans fats, and saturated fats.

Are there any drawbacks?

The first part of the diet, Phase I, has you severely restricting your carbohydrates, for the first two weeks. This also includes limiting intake of fruits and vegetables, by the way, so you won't be getting all the nutrients you need. You'll also likely experience difficulties because of the lack of fiber in this particular phase of the diet.

Nonetheless, if you can get through this first two weeks, you'll move on to the second phase of the diet, which is less restrictive. It might also be said that because you so severely limit your intake of certain foods during the first phase (namely, carbohydrates), you're going to clean your palate so that you're not going to be craving junk foods, refined sweets, etc., and can move on to the second phase fully ready to stick to it.

What happens with the rest of the diet

In the second phase of the diet, you're going to add certain foods back into your diet you had to avoid during Phase I. Because you've "cleared your palate," you're not going to be craving these foods as much, and you'll be able to eat them in moderation, though not as much as you could before.

The final phase, Phase III, is the maintenance part of the diet and is meant to be something you'll follow for the rest of your life. It's the least restrictive and is simply meant to utilize basic guidelines that will have you limiting certain foods and focusing on others so that you maintain rather than lose weight.

The results

The South Beach Diet is in fact a very good diet for the most part, and just about anyone can follow it. Because it severely restrict your access to what is mostly "junk" food, while focusing on an intake of "good" foods like lean proteins, fruits, vegetables, and "good" carbohydrates and fats, it is certainly a healthy plan to follow and it doesn't so severely restrict calories or food groups (other than during Phase I) that you are at risk of deficiencies. Weight loss is generally sensible, with a focus of about one to two pounds weight loss after the first phase (which promises up to 12 pounds of weight loss), and medical professionals support this plan in general. All in all, a good sound diet that can be followed for life after the first phase, and that focuses on good healthy foods and sensible rather than extreme weight loss.

There are a lot of diets that can be described as being amongst the best diets and a lot of these diets promise that it is possible to lose weight quickly. The south beach diet is one of the diets that is often referred to as being amongst the best diets. A doctor who was known as Arthur Agatston first designed this diet and he was a cardiologist. This doctor developed this diet for the patients that he used to see with heart problems. Over time this diet has become a tried and tested regime, and this is not one of the many fad diets which are around. It is possible to stick to this diet for life as a way of promoting good health as well as a method for losing weight.

One of the main reasons why the south beach diet can be described as being one of the best diets is that it makes good use of the glycemic diet. This is a good way to keep hunger under control. This diet works best when the person follows it and eats mainly the foods that are low on the glycemic index as this will help you to maintain the level of sugar in your blood. This helps to reduce your level of hunger for simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates include items such as sweets and sugars.

The south beach diet actually consists of three different phases. During these phases you basically wean yourself away from certain foods and focus on the foods that are better for you and form part of this diet. This diet is considered to be one of the best diets as it is possible to lose between eight pounds and twelve pounds within your first couple of weeks.

There are a number of benefits that can be obtained from following this diet. This diet is considered to be one of the best diets and is supported by medical science. The diet focuses on clean eating therefore it consists of eating lean proteins, vegetables, fruit and also the fats that are actually good for the body. This diet also involves eliminating or at least reducing the amount of refined sugars, saturated fats and trans fats that are within the diet.

The first phase of this diet involves you restricting the amount of carbohydrates that you eat. This has to be done rigorously in order for the diet to work. This phase of the diet will also involve limiting the amount of vegetables and fruit that you are consuming. Therefore, during this time you will be lacking some required nutrients and you may experience some difficulties due to the lack of fiber that is in the diet. The first phase of this diet only lasts for two weeks and then you can progress onto the second phase.

The second phase of this diet is actually less restrictive. Due to the severely limited foods during the first phase you will probably have cleansed your palate therefore you will probably not crave the so-called junk foods. During the second phase of the diet you will be adding certain foods back into your diet and your cleansed palate will mean that you are happy to eat these foods within moderation. The third phase of this diet really sets you up to follow the diet that you have started. This part is really the least restrictive part of the diet. These three phases are the process to losing weight using one of the best diets that are available.

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Diets That Work | Lose 12 lbs in 21 Days

Are you locked in an uncontrollable cycle with food? Iknow the hopelessness created by yo-yo dieting, overeating and losing weight to only regain it again. Youve already tried all the diets; Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, NutriSystem, etc. You promised yourself that this time would be different. But here you are again looking for another solution.

Currently sixty-six percent of Americas population is overweight and nearly one-third are obese. But at the same time we are spending over $60 billion on dieting and weight loss products each year. At no time in history have we had more people overweight. Something is drastically wrong!

Most of us can write books about nutrition and diets. We know the fat grams, calories, and carbohydrates in most foods. We know how we should eat, and what we shouldnt eat. But we just cant put that knowledge into practice.

By the time people pick up this book, they are out of control with food. But its not just the food. It is the obsessive thoughts about food, weight, diets, and body image that consume our lives. We need to experience an internal change for lasting results.

Diets Dont Work provides astructured program that changes the way you think about food and your Self. Because of dieting we have completely disconnected from our appetite. Some of us do not know when we are hungry or full. We may think we are hungry but actually we may be experiencing a feeling that we are not even aware of.

People who go through this step-by-step method outlined in the Diets Dont Work productshave long-term recovery from disordered eating. We understand and we know how to stop this painful way of living. Our books and productsare available in many formats to use in the comfort of your own home. Now is the time to create a new you where you can eat when hungry, make healthy choices, and stop when you are fullwithout a struggle.

You can do this! I willshow you how.

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Welcome to Diets Dont Work!

Most diets seem to succeed in the short-term, and fail in the long-term. This is not a new, or even particularly controversial, observation among researchers:

There are two indisputable facts regarding dietary treatment of obesity. The first is that virtually all programs appear to be able to demonstrate moderate success in promoting at least some short-term weight loss. The second is that there is virtually no evidence that clinically significant weight loss can be maintained over the long-term by the vast majority of people.

Confronting the failure of behavioral and dietary treatments for obesity, Garner & Wooley, 1991

Although weight loss can usually be achieved through dietary restriction and/or increased physical activity, the overwhelming majority of people regain the weight that they have lost over the long-term.

The Defence of Body Weight: A physiological basis for weight regain after weight loss, Sumithran & Proietto, 2013

Of course, we can all endorse the call for a healthier lifestyle, but we must be realistic about what it can and cannot accomplish including that it is not by itself an effective approach to long-term obesity treatment.

An Inconvenient Truth about Obesity, Schwartz, 2012

More in-depth analysis of the failure rate of dieting can wait for another post. The question Im asking here is, if diets fail for some proportion of people, which they indisputably do, why is that? What is the reason? What are the specific mechanisms at work?

The usual assumption among non-researchers about why diets fail is that when a dieter regains weight, it must be because they stopped dieting, which is in turn attributed to things like not having enough willpower, personal and moral failure, gluttony and laziness, or being too ignorant to know better.

These are assumptions which reflect the mythology of our culture: that anyone, if they try hard enough, can be anything they want and therefore that weight is entirely a choice, a product of effort and moral character. This story centres the individual, their behaviour, their character traits, and their moral attributes as the cause of fatness in the first place, and the reason why weight is regained following a diet.

But these explanations are not satisfactory to me, nor, as you will see, are they reflected in the scientific literature.

To explore other answers, I haphazardly gathered peer-reviewed articles, spanning a range of more than 30 years, that investigated or discussed the various reasons why weight loss produced by dieting is not maintained long-term.

Here is what they theorize about why diets fail.

1. Behavioural relapse, a.k.a. going off the diet

The earlier papers on the failure of dieting focused on behavioural factors, since dieting was, at the time, a relatively new and exciting behavioural intervention for obesity. (By the mid-20th century, dieting as a popular pastime was not new, but as a subject of medical research, it was still fairly novel.) Researchers assumed that when someone could not sustain weight loss, it mustve been due to a breakdown in their new behaviours people must have gone back to eating more and moving less, just as is popularly assumed.

However, the researchers tended not to lean so heavily on moral explanations for this relapse. One study suggested that the fault lay with lack of scholarly attention to the maintenance phase of behavioural change in designing weight loss plans. This was further complicated by the fact that no one can avoid eating entirely, which makes dieting quite different from other behavioural interventions like smoking cessation programs and abstinence from alcohol.

Alongside this were proposed cultural and commercial pressures to eat, especially calorie-rich and highly palatable foods. There also appeared to be few natural rewards provided by dieting once the intervention phase ended apparently nothing, not even thinness, feels as good as food tastes.

The researchers were not very optimistic about the usefulness of dieting if it only resulted in regaining weight. An illuminating quote from the conclusion of one paper:

Research on humans suggests that the deleterious effects of obesity are exerted primarily during periods of weight gainIts medical consequences may be unfortunate enough that if people cannot maintain weight loss, they would be better off not trying to lose weight!

Behavior Modification in the Treatment of Obesity: The problem of maintaining weight loss, Stunkard & Penick, 1979

Another paper suggested that culprits for the breakdown of dieting behaviours were negative moods, emotional stress, social pressures to eat more, as well feelings of intense hunger that prompted overeating. But an interesting quote from this same article hints of more than purely behavioural factors:

The obvious reason for weight regain after weight loss treatment is that participants return to inappropriate eating and exercise habits. These habits need not be as bad as pretreatment habits to cause regain, because metabolic factors may make it easier to regain after a period of dietary restrictionThe pattern of relapse and regain appears to be the result of a war between the will and physiologic demands over which self-control appears relatively powerless.

Why Treatments for Obesity Dont Last, Goodrick & Foreyt, 1991

So even in cases where behavioural relapse were implicated, researchers seemed to acknowledge that other factors contributed to that relapse (like stress, biological and cultural pressures to eat, and increased hunger), or to the weight regain itself (metabolic changes.)

2. Lowered energy expenditure

Reduced calorie intake and weight loss, it turns out, cause some interesting changes to the body that result in expending fewer calories. In animal studies, changes include decreased body temperature, less spontaneous activity, and lowered resting metabolic rate (the amount of energy the body uses while at rest.)

Reduced total energy expenditure and, possibly, lowered resting metabolic rate after diet-induced weight loss have also been observed in humans. (Conversely, humans who gain weight above their baseline weight through eating have been observed to have an increased resting metabolic rate.)

A person who gains weight would be expected to expend more energy just due to their increased body mass, thus requiring more energy to physically move and biologically maintain it. The same, but in reverse, is true for someone who loses weight less energy is required to maintain a smaller body.

But the changes in energy expenditure resulting from dieting have been described as disproportionate, meaning that they were greater than the changes expected for the amount of weight gain or loss, indicating that some compensatory mechanism meant to restore preferred weight may exist.

In other words, a person who lost weight to reach 150 lbs. may expend fewer calories just existing than someone who has always weighed 150 lbs. And someone who purposely gained weight to reach 150 lbs. may use more calories to maintain their weight than the person who has always weighed 150 lbs.

However, other studies of weight loss in humans have not demonstrated the effect of lowered resting metabolic rate, which leaves the question open.

A nod to weight diversity from the last study linked:

Body weight in adults is remarkably stable for long periods of time. In the Framingham Study the body weight of the average adult increased by only 10 percent over a 20-year period. Such a fine balance is evidence of the presence of regulatory systems for body weight. Whatever the mechanism (or mechanisms), the weight at which regulation occurs differs from one person to another, and these differences are almost certainly due in part to genetic and developmental influences.

Changes in Energy Expenditure Resulting from Altered Body Weight, Leibel, Rosenbaum, and Hirsch, 1995

3. Fat storage and insulin sensitivity

Another physiological change produced by weight loss is increased insulin sensitivity. This is generally considered a good thing, but it may also leave people vulnerable to weight regain. We may need to go back to a little high school biology to cover this one adequately.

Insulin is a hormone that the pancreas releases into your bloodstream. Insulins main life goal is to act like a key that allows glucose, also flowing through your bloodstream, into your cells, which then use the glucose for energy.

When a persons cells become resistant to insulin, the glucose cant get into the cells it then builds up in the blood, eventually causing high blood sugar. Meanwhile, the cells switch to using fat for fuel.

With weight loss, cells become more sensitive to insulin, which allows glucose to enter the cell once more. Those cells use that glucose, and the fat that would otherwise be used for energy is directed back into storage, which may spell weight gain.

Experimental research in humans has indeed demonstrated that increased insulin sensitivity following weight loss from dieting predicts the amount of weight the person will eventually regain. The researchers are careful to point out that increased insulin sensitivity, alone, is not enough to cause weight regain, but in combination with lowered energy expenditure (see above) and increased food intake (see below), it certainly helps.

From this same paper:

Following weight reduction, there is a 95% failure rate for obese individuals to stay weight-reduced more than 4 years (5). After obese subjects undergo weight reduction, metabolism shifts to favor weight regainThese metabolic phenomena result in the shunting of lipid fuels away from oxidation in muscle to storage in adipose tissue, and in the setting of positive energy balance, increases in body weight and percent body fat occur.

Weight Regain Following Sustained Weight Reduction is Predicted by Relative Insulin Sensitivity, Yost, Jensen, and Eckel, 1995

4. Increased appetite

During and after weight loss, levels of several hormones involved in appetite regulation change significantly.

Hormones that promote feelings of fullness and inhibit food intake (including leptin, peptide YY, GLP-1, cholecystokinin, and amylin) are decreased with weight loss. Meanwhile, ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger, is increased, along with reported food preoccupation and appetite.

Again, these responses may indicate the existence of a regulatory mechanism intended to restore preferred body weight:

Taken together, these findings indicate that in obese persons who have lost weight, multiple compensatory mechanisms [encourage] weight gainFurthermore, the activation of this coordinated response in people who remain obese after weight loss supports the view that there is an elevated body-weight set point in obese persons and that efforts to reduce weight below this point are vigorously resisted.

Long-Term Persistence of Hormonal Adaptations to Weight Loss, Sumithran et al., 2011

In addition to feeling hungrier, weight-reduced people show a stronger preference for high-calorie (high sugar and high fat) foods. There are also changes in brain activity patterns indicating that weight-reduced people are more responsive to food rewards, while brain areas associated with controlling ones food intake are less active.

The hypothalamus, a part of the brain that may act as a brake on the homeostatic tendency toward weight gain, shows decreased activity in people who have lost weight, which affects both food foraging behaviour and metabolism to favour eating more and regaining weight.

5. Genetic predisposition to gain weight

It has long been understood that body weight has a significant genetic component.

Research in pairs of identical twins shows that there is also a significant genetic component to weight loss, including how much and what type of fat is lost, and the rate of fat burning relative to use of glucose for energy.

On the other side of the coin, population studies of twins have shown an association between dieting attempts and subsequent weight gain, which probably reflects a pre-existing tendency to gain weight that is powerful enough to counteract weight loss attempts.

From that study:

The poor success in weight maintenance after dieting predisposes individuals to the vicious cycle of frequent dieting attempts and weight regain. The relation between weight cycling and subsequent weight gain is well described in the literature. Part of the weight gain occurring in young adults may be regarded as physiologic, and is likely to occur independently of attempts to lose weight.

Weight-loss attempts and risk of major weight gain: a prospective study in Finnish adults, Korkeila et al., 1999

Another study using twin data indicates that some of the weight gain may also be due to dieting itself, independent of genetics.

As you can see, moral explanations for weight regain leave a lot to be desired. They reflect lazy thinking. A persons drive to eat, combined with their tendency to regain lost weight, is clearly more dependent on physiology than on moral corruption, or even simple ignorance.

Biology drives behaviour. It also primes the body to most efficiently exploit that behaviour. What is often interpreted as weakness of will and greediness by our culture is actually the result of a complex orchestration of genetic, homeostatic, metabolic, hormonal, and neurological processes influencing us to eat, restore lost weight, and ultimately survive.

And a final quote:

metabolic conditions after weight loss may not be the same as they were prior to gaining the weight in the first place. Instead of working in our favor to prevent weight gain, biology becomes one of the driving pressures that underlie weight regain.

Biologys response to dieting: the impetus for weight regain, MacLean et al., 2011

If youve ever regained weight after a diet, you are in very good company. Most dieters regain the weight. You are not lazy, stupid, or greedy. You did not fail on the contrary, your body worked hard to save you.

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Why Diets Dont Work - The Fat Nutritionist

We don't often think about what the word "diet" really means. For most, it conjures up thoughts of the measures people take to lose weight. It's also a term used by food manufacturers to indicate that something is supposedly healthy or has less of some seemingly undesirable ingredient--usually fat, sugar, or total calories. But the word "diet" itself simply refers to what you eat. We always hear people say they're "going on" diets, but your diet is what you eat day-to-day.

Studies have shown that working with a Registered Dietitian can increase your chances of losing weight and keeping it off. Sign-up with a FitDay Dietitian today!

Long Term Success

The main problem with diets is that many simply don't work long-term. People often find that they can't stick with a diet for a long period of time. This is likely due to the fact that many diets aren't realistic, are too restrictive, too costly, too complicated, or too inconvenient to maintain. Additionally, we're hard-wired to like foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates. Simply put: our taste buds and our brains enjoy fat and sugar.

Not Feeling Full

Fat in food slows down stomach emptying, which helps increase the feelings of fullness and satiety after a meal. Many popular diets are too low in fat, leaving you hungry soon after eating. These extremely-low-fat diets don't work because you eventually overeat to compensate. On the other hand, some diets advocate going very low-carbohydrate. Again, these diets usually aren't successful because our bodies need a certain amount of carbohydrates to function properly. Diets that are too low in carbohydrates leave you feeling fatigued and moody. This happens because carbohydrates are the body's preferred form of fuel needed for immediate energy (particularly for the nervous system). Additionally, carbohydrates stimulate the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which helps boost mood.

Calorie Count

Another reason some diets don't work is due to the fact that they're way too low in calories. Your body needs a certain number of calories each day just to maintain normal metabolic functioning. Your lungs, brain, heart, muscles, digestive system, nervous system and cardiovascular system all require calories to work properly. If you drastically cut calories--as people often do when they diet--your body thinks it's starving and it downregulates how many calories it needs at rest because it's trying to conserve energy. Also, when you lose weight as a result of severely cutting calories, you're likely losing lean muscle mass rather than fat. Because muscle burns more calories at rest, your body wants to rid itself of that and hold onto fat for energy. Then, as soon as you return to your old eating habits, the weight quickly piles back on.

We need to reconsider the way we think about food. Rather than thinking about temporarily going on some hot new diet to shed excess weight or achieve some other aspect of wellness, we should be thinking about making achievable, realistic changes that we can sustain for a lifetime.

Kari Hartel, RD, LD is a Registered, Licensed Dietitian and freelance writer based out of St. Louis, MO. Kari is passionate about nutrition education and the prevention of chronic disease through a healthy diet and active lifestyle. Kari holds a Bachelor of Science in Dietetics from Southeast Missouri State University and is committed to helping people lead healthy lives. She completed a yearlong dietetic internship at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, IL, where she worked with a multitude of clients and patients with complicated diagnoses. She planned, marketed, and implemented nutrition education programs and cooking demonstrations for the general public as well as for special populations, including patients with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, and school-aged children. If you would be interested in working with Kari one-on-one, sign-up for FitDay Dietitians.

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Why Diets Don't Work / Nutrition - FitDay

Brain: How are we going to get the earth to lose weight? Pinky: I know! We can get everyone to go on a diet! Brain: Diets dont work, Pinky. Pinky: Not even if you call them a whole new way of eating? Brain: No.

Since its apparently Picking on My Heroes Week*, Ill point you to the comments thread on this post at Feministing. The post itself, reporting on a recent study that (*cough* like a zillion others *cough*) concluded dieting does not lead to long-term weight loss or health gains, is great. And I probably shouldnt even pick on the commenters, since at least when its a bunch of liberals, no ones going down the Obese people cost society money! path. (Yet.) But still, its even more frustrating to see the usual shit here, not just on a liberal site but a feminist** site, than it is to see it, you know everywhere else in the fucking world.

Said usual shit can be summed up thusly: Diets dont work, but Fill in the blank with any of the followingor make up your own!

Gosh, theres so much conflicting information here! However to synthesize it? Do you suppose theres, like, a single element common to all those statements?

Ooh! Ooh! I see it! DIETS DONT WORK.

What do I win?

The thing that causes so much confusion (to put it charitably) here is that diets do work, actuallyin the short term. All diets, from cabbage soup to Weight Watchers, will cause people to lose weight. At first. But after five years, all diets have the same result: the vast majority of people who lost weight at first gained it back.

This is what people mean when they say, Diets dont work, without adding a but Diets do not lead to permanent weight loss for the vast majority of people. A slightly more efficient way of saying that is, Diets dont work. But boy, people come out in droves to argue that one.

When I posted the Mastiff/Pug before and after shots the other day, I totally slayed myself when I remembered to add Results not typical under the pug. If youve ever looked at a commercial weight loss programs literature, youve seen that phrase under every picture of a triumphant former fatty showing off her new self. Translation: Hi! To indemnify ourselves against the worlds largest class action suit, we want to make sure youre aware that our product does not work for most people! Now look back up at that picture! Dont you want to look like her? Buy our product!

Its easy to ignore that pesky little point about the product not working, because hey, Im not typical, either! Ive got the resolve! Ill be the one in the ad.

Fun fact: I have been asked by Jenny Craig staff if they could send my before and after photos to Corporate to see about making me the one in the ad on two separate occasions, years apart. Im actually not typical! Except Two different befores, two different afters. Ill leave you to sort out what that means.

Nobody from Weight Watchers ever asked me, because I just used their online tools and never spoke to a human being about my weight loss, but if Id been interacting with WW staff, I strongly suspect I would have been approached about doing ads there, too. I was not typical three times on two programs! I am the fucking queen of not typical!

Five years after the latest after, I look very like the befores again. Huh.

And okay, can we talk about how Weight Watchers is not a diet, but a lifestyle change? (Which, my god, must be the most brilliant marketing meme in history). Can we talk about lifestyle changes in general?

Heres the big secret, which I have absolutely no scientific evidence to support but would nevertheless bet every cent I have, both my dogs, and my firstborn on: at least 95% of people who insist that lifestyle changes work (and who are not in the business of selling weight-loss products) are less than five years out from the beginning of a lifestyle change.

Better known, as they will see by the end of five years, as a diet.

As anyone who knew me between 1995 and 2002ish, but especially my sisters, can attest, I was fucking insufferable with my endless proselytizing about lifestyle changes. If Id been more internet-savvy at the time, I totally would have been polluting every conceivable message board with my endless rambling about how easy it is, really, once you get used to itonce youve made that lifestyle change! About how much better it feels to be thin! About how Ive taken control of my eating, my life, my destiny! About how Im never, ever, ever going back!

And boy, would I feel like an asshole now. Specifically, a fat asshole.

Diets do not lead to permanent weight loss for the vast majority of people. Not even if you call them a whole new way of eating. Or a lifestyle change. If your lifestyle change involves putting restrictions on your food intake, you will almost certainly be fat again in five years.

Every study that looks at dieters five years down the line results in this conclusion. Thats why most studies dont. Huge kudos to the UCLA researchers both for following up and stating that conclusion in no uncertain terms.

Well, except for the one who the Reuters article reports is now planning to study whether exercise is the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Should be an interesting study, seeing as it will necessarily involve finding a large number of people who have achieved sustained weight loss.

My prediction: that study will conclude their secret is a daily dose of powdered unicorn horn.

*I should note here that the Shakesville issue has been completely resolved for me via respectful discussion. What a friggin concept.

**Because feminism is so totally about telling groups of people, women in particular, that their decisions about their own bodies are both wrong and everybody elses business.

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Diets Dont Work, But | Shapely Prose

Can what you eat help attention, focus, or hyperactivity? There's no clear scientific evidence that ADHD is caused by diet or nutritional problems. But certain foods may play at least some role in affecting symptoms in a small group of people, research suggests.

So are there certain things you shouldn't eat if you have the condition? Or if your child has it, should you change what he eats?

The symptoms of ADHD include inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that are inappropriate for age.

There are three different types of ADHD. Combined ADHD (the most common type) includes all of the symptoms. Inattentive ADHD is marked by impaired attention and concentration and hyperactive-impulsive type is marked by hyperactivity without inattentiveness.

To help recognize ADHD, understand that some symptoms that cause impairment must be present before age seven years and some impairment from the symptoms must be present in more than one setting (like home and school or home and work).

2008 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

Here are answers to questions about elimination diets, supplements, and foods that may help symptoms of the disorder.

It may include the foods you eat and any nutritional supplements you may take. Ideally, your eating habits would help the brain work better and lessen symptoms, such as restlessness or lack of focus. You may hear about these choices that you could focus on:

Overall nutrition: The assumption is that some foods you eat may make your symptoms better or worse. You might also not be eating some things that could help make symptoms better.

Supplementation diet: With this plan you add vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients. The idea is that it could help you make up for not getting enough of these through what you eat. Supporters of these diets think that if you dont get enough of certain nutrients, it may add to your symptoms.

Elimination diets: These involve not eating foods or ingredients that you think might be triggering certain behaviors or making your symptoms worse.

ADHD diets haven't been researched a lot. Data is limited and results are mixed. Many health experts, though, think that what you eat and drink may play a role in helping symptoms.

One expert, Richard Sogn, MD, says that whatever is good for the brain is likely to be good for ADHD. You may want to eat:

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ADHD Diet for Children and Adults: Do Elimination Diets Work?

--Elayne Boosler

I am a great believer in fad diets, particuarly free fad diets, although the more popular fad diets have been given a bad press lately.

The most famous pioneer of the fad diet craze, Doctor Robert Atkins died in April 2003. He was reported to have weighed a rather hefty 255lbs at the time of his death. His high protein, low carbohydrate diet made the doctor a household name, although many experts are horrified that his diet promotes that two thirds of all calories consumed are derived from fat.

Other fad diets have also come under attack, critics claim the diets do not provide our bodies with the necessary vitamins, minerals, fats, carbohydrates or proteins that we need to function at an optimal level. I disagree!

I am also a big fan of detox diets, and have included some of my favorite detox cleansing diets.

I lost over 40lbs in just six months following fad diets, I did not stick to one diet but would chop and change, as some of them are rather limiting on the taste buds if you attempt to follow them for long periods of time.

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Find a Free Fad Diet to work for you