Losing unwanted body weight isn't easy. A lot of us have tried and failed many times, subjecting ourselves to the dreaded yet common weight loss/weight gain merry-go-round. This vicious cycle can be demoralising, with many people convincing themselves that something must be wrong with them and they are destined to be overweight forever.

A common 'solution' is the meal or diet plan. After all, you've tried multiple diets and they haven't worked, so all you want now is a nutrition expert to give you a diet plan that will. You believe that if someone tells you exactly what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat it, then you'll lose the weight you want and have the body of your dreams. And why shouldn't you, after all, they're the expert.

However, while this strict diet plan approach may sound like the answer to your prayers, the reality is they very rarely work in the real world. You see, the real world has a habit of getting in the way of our best laid plans:

And whatever you do, don't get sick because the diet plan doesn't care how you're feeling. If you've been told to eat chia-seed pudding for breakfast three times per week, you'd better be prepared to make it no matter how you're feeling.

Think of all the factors in your life that could get in the way of the best laid meal plans, and ask yourself, 'how realistic is it to keep this up for the long run?'

But my friend went on a meal plan and she's kept the weight off for ages now...

There are exceptions to every rule, and if your friend has successfully lost weight and kept it off for several years since going on a diet plan, then I applaud them. However, there's no denying it's difficult to stick to these restrictive diets long-term.

But that's the point, meal plans are not supposed to be followed forever. How boring would life be if we had to eat the same foods in the same amounts at the same times every day for the rest of our lives? If you have a short-term weight loss goals then diet plans can be very effective. Just expect the inevitable weight gain when you're not on the 'plan' anymore.

But what happens when you stop following the diet plan? What happens when life gets in the way? Or you decide that following a meal plan really sucks? Or you actually lose the weight you want?

Diet plans don't address one key factor for successful lifelong fat loss -- habitual and behavioural change. Being told what to eat may provide short term weight loss success, but unless you learn, understand and practice the fundamentals of healthy eating, you'll revert to your eating habits that got you where you were in the first place.

OK, so what do you suggest I do to lose weight?

We live in a fast-paced society, and we all want to lose our excess body weight by the end of the next 12-week challenge. But ask yourself, 'how long did it take to put on this weight that has now become my life?' I'm guessing months at least, but probably years. So why do you think you can get back to your ideal body weight in 12 weeks, and sustain it for the rest of your life?

If eating nutritious foods and having a lean body forever is your goal, most people simply don't need a strict diet plan. After all, we know that lean meats and vegetables is a healthier meal option than hamburgers and fries. But if takeaway food is your usual dinner-time meal, then successfully making the giant leap to eating healthily at every meal without any small steps in between is going to be virtually impossible.

We're already under enough stress with work, family, bills, relationships, and everything else going on in our lives, so don't add to it by trying to turn your eating habits upside down right from the start.

MORE ON THE BLOG:

You Can't Hate Yourself Happy, Or Punish Yourself Skinny

The secret to making lifelong habitual changes to your eating behaviour is to identify positive changes you can make to your diet, and tackle them one at a time. Yes, this will take a while, and you won't lose the 25kg in 12 weeks that your 'fitness expert' has promised you. But small, incremental changes to your diet will add up to extraordinary and lifelong changes in the long run.

I'm sure you already know of changes that you could make to your diet, but here are a few suggestions to get the ball rolling:

Notice how many of these suggestions aren't even strictly 'nutrition' tips. We already know we should eat whole foods most of the time. Your goal should be to have a healthy relationship with food, not love-hate.

So slow down, take it one step at a time, and release the pressure you've put on yourself to lose excess weight quickly through restrictive dieting. Small and realistic changes to your eating habits over the long run will deliver extraordinary results to your health, body weight and wellbeing.

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If Weight Loss Is Your Goal, Diet Plans Are Not The Answer - Huffington Post Australia

Momentum is building to improve capital rules. Recently, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen publicly acknowledged that aspects of the banking agencies supplementary leverage ratio may be having unintended adverse consequences.

We share that view and believe these consequences could become much worse in a period of financial stress.

The supplementary leverage ratio, or SLR, is just one of more than a dozen ways that the largest banking organizations are required to monitor their capital positions. Although the SLR is intended to serve as a backstop for risk-based capital standards, the banking agencies demanded higher and higher amounts of non-risk-based capital in the years following the crisis, to the point that the leverage ratio has become the binding capital requirement for many large banks.

Meanwhile, the SLR in the U.S. is twice the international standard. This heightened requirement affects U.S. competitiveness and the ability of U.S. banks to provide financial services to their clients. More troubling is the fact that excessive amounts of capital needed to maintain the leverage ratio can actually increase rather than reduce risks to the financial system, impeding banks flexibility when responding to changes in economic conditions and assisting their customers in adjusting to changing economic winds.

Keep in mind that the leverage ratio is a totally risk-blind measure of capital. Unlike risk-based capital requirements, a leverage ratio can compel a bank to load up on relatively risky assets. As the financial crisis showed, running blind to risk can be dangerous.

In 2013, I wrote on these pages in American Banker that greater emphasis on the leverage ratio could increase risk in the banking sector by discouraging banks from taking deposits.

These concerns may already be a reality.

Banks play a pivotal role in reinforcing stability during periods of financial market uncertainty. In times of economic stress, customers tend to flood the U.S. banking system with deposits as they search for financial safe havens. As cash on deposit surges, banks invest those funds in safe assets, such as Treasury securities and deposits at the Federal Reserve, so that these funds are available if and when the customer needs them. Particularly at large custodian or investment banks, investing customer funds in risk-free assets as opposed to loans or other holdings susceptible to loss ensures that customers can safely withdraw them.

A banks risk-based capital remains steady when it invests customer deposits in these safe assets because they receive a zero percent risk weight. However, investments in Treasury securities and central bank placements reduce a banks leverage ratio because all assets are treated equally under the SLR. This makes it difficult to accept new deposits, which now have an added cost. Worse, sudden changes in customer deposit inflows can make banks leverage ratios volatile. Many banks saw huge deposit inflows at different points during the financial crisis.

Effectively, the leverage ratio is an incentive for banks not to serve as a safe haven for depositors in a crisis. The leverage ratio should not penalize banks for conducting this core banking function. In effect, banks that absorb deposits in times of crisis act as shock absorbers for the broader economy, providing a calming influence. During the last recession, banks accommodated a surge of nearly a trillion dollars in customer deposits.

Fortunately, the Treasury Department and the Fed recognize the issue.

The Treasury Department has provided specific recommendations for improving the design of the supplementary leverage ratio. The clearest, most obvious step is not counting risk-free assets such as banks deposits at central banks, Treasury securities and initial margin for centrally cleared derivatives in the leverage ratio formula.

This change would create a more rational and effective leverage ratio that is concerned with a banks genuine balance sheet risk and is more focused on protecting the financial system as a whole. By their nature, cash or near-cash holdings pose none of the credit risk that capital standards are designed to capture.

The leverage ratios effects on customer deposits can also be viewed beyond the lens of risk.

Banks custodial services form the nuts and bolts of institutional investment activity in good economic times and bad. These services allow pension funds, mutual funds and other long-term investors to manage day-to-day financial transactions, including the movement of cash resulting from their investments. These services often result in banks receiving large levels of deposits when, for example, a mutual fund sells an investment and deposits the proceeds with a bank. Refusing cash deposits or passing increased costs resulting from them to customers could erode the ability of banks to support payment, clearing and settlement activities. If the cost of maintaining pension plan and other retirement savings assets increase, or if the services available to pension funds and mutual funds are reduced, it will be detrimental to U.S. pensioners and therefore the economy as a whole.

Fed Gov. Jerome Powell stated in recent testimony that, [i]n light of the substantial progress in the build-out of our overall regulatory capital and stress testing frameworks over the past few years, the Federal Reserve is taking a fresh look at the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio. Chair Yellen has echoed that view.

The consequences of the supplementary leverage ratio are clear and significant. This fresh look is coming none too soon.

Hugh Carney is vice president of capital policy for the American Bankers Association.

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BankThink Leverage ratio harms banks' role as safe haven in a crisis - American Banker (subscription)

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Photo Credit Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

A handful of walnuts may be an effective weight loss tool.

Walnuts are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other substances and, in moderation, have been linked to reduced risk of obesity and diabetes. They may also efficiently reduce appetite.

Researchers now may have found out why. They had nine hospitalized obese patients drink, on five consecutive days, either a smoothie containing 48 grams of walnuts (1.7 ounces, or about 14 walnut halves and 315 calories) or a placebo smoothie identical in taste and calorie content. Then, after a month on their regular diet, the patients returned for a second five-day trial, with placebo drinkers on the first trial receiving a walnut smoothie, and vice versa.

The participants underwent M.R.I. brain exams while looking at pictures of high-fat food (cake, for example), low-fat food (vegetables) or neutral pictures of rocks and trees.

The study, published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, found that when people looked at pictures of high-fat food, activation in the insula, a part of the brain involved in appetite and impulse control, increased among those who drank the walnut smoothie, but not among placebo drinkers. The study was funded in part by the California Walnut Commission.

Walnuts can alter the way our brains view food and impact our appetites, said the lead author, Olivia M. Farr, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Our results confirm the current recommendations to include walnuts as part of a healthy diet.

Excerpt from:
Walnuts for Weight Loss? - New York Times

courtesy Rebecca C. WaldenFifteen days after my 39th birthday, a number flashed on my bathroom scale, the likes of which I hadnt seen since a third trimester of pregnancy.

It confirmed what a family picture from that morning had told me already: I was the largest Id ever beenobese by body fat standardsand that one go-to outfit I wore to try to hide the excess? I was only fooling myself.

Forget that I couldnt climb stairs without feeling winded. Or that Id become so self-conscious that I was turning down social invitations. Something had to give.

courtesy Rebecca C. WaldenHell hath no fury like a hungry gastronome. For this lifestyle change to have any staying power, food had to come first. While I thought I already made healthy choices (most of the time), an honest inventory of the kitchen left much to be desired. Obvious changes aside (goodbye confectioners sugar, hello Chia seeds), I didnt stop there.

Around my midsection, I was sporting the very problem that happens when one estimates portion size. So I bought an extra set of measuring cups, and every day, I work them harder than I do the percolator. When Im not where I can measure, I use these portion control tricks.

As for what to put in them, there was legit glee when I learned that dairy isnt off limits. Hello comfort food! That helped me to brave new recipes centered on superfoods, and jump started my weight loss. With these fat-releasing foods rounding out my menus, I shed the first 10 pounds in 30 days.

courtesy Rebecca C. WaldenFitness and fun are not mutually exclusive. I just needed to mix it up.

Leaving my long favored elliptical behind, I gave Body Pump a try. As intimidating as it first seemed, I found myself looking forward to the next class. A few weeks in and I wondered why Id waited so long.

I began prioritizing exercise around work and family commitments. Instead of resenting it, I craved itstill do. With instructors that keep my form on point, contagiously upbeat music mixes, and familiar folks to high five after a grueling set, these 60-minute segments routinely shatter my inner I cant.

By early March, I could see baby biceps in the bathroom mirror. Once the initial weight loss went from 10 to 20 pounds, I could shop my closet, and I wanted more. So I kept showing up. I was the new kid in kickboxing, then Zumba, and eventually spinall exercise classes known to torch calories. More often than not, I was the slowest, least coordinated person in the room. But at 25 pounds down and counting, I didnt care.

Vacation was no excuse to slouch. Instead of treating spring break as license to eat and drink my way through the entire week, I consumed as I would at home, save one splurge evening. And for that, I worked, sneaking in mountain climbers and other zero-equipment exercises that can transform your body.

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courtesy Rebecca C. WaldenFor the fourth time in as many years, I downloaded My Fitness Pal and learned how to use it correctly. Food and exercise journaling has demystified so much about how to lose weight. It remains a favorite tool now that Im learning how to maintain weight loss.

From the beginning, I also kept my weekly weight loss goal to a realistic 1 pound per week.

With every food or beverage entry, I estimated calories liberally. For exercise, I did the reverse. An unnecessary step to some, but my journey was different. This wasnt just an effort to lose weight. For long-term success, I needed to make the mental leap away from dieting as a means to an end and instead, embrace this as a lifestyle change for good.

Throughout the process and still now, these margins of error keep me on track.

By mid-April, Id lost 30-plus pounds, and logged enough entries to create trend data. The stats blew away every dietary bias Id ever believed. When I upped my protein game, stopped fearing carbs, and started embracing healthy fats, good things happened, and fast.

Im now 219 days in, four months shy of my 40th birthday, and in the best physical shape of my adult life.

courtesy Rebecca C. WaldenYou know that saying mind over matter? It can make the difference between loathing and loving your workout. There are times when Im tired or distracted, and not particularly in the mood to slog through any given sweat sessiondays when the 10-pound weight might as well weigh 100. Blame it on the endorphins, but in those moments I come up with a goala feat just this side of ridiculous to work towardsand it helps me finish the set with all I have left.

When I first saw real progress (and stepped into smaller clothing), I was reluctant to trust it. Nothing more than vanity sizing run amok. How much could my body possibly have changed? Only one way to know for sure, and it was buried deep in the Once Upon a Time part of my closet. A textile truth serum in an unforgiving cut. Yes, Im talking about my wedding dress.

Did I dare?

Right through every last kettle bell swing and lunge squat, every power press and dead lift, and every morning when I felt like chucking the alarm into the wall instead of getting up and after it. Right up to the day last week when I was able to twirl around in a certain gown and celebrate the goal achieved. Wedding dress challenge done and won.

Irreverent focus on fitness aside, Ive finally come to understand two things. There is no finish line. And a little levity keeps things interesting. With that in mind, Im now drawing inspiration from the black pants made iconic by Olivia Newton John. Halloween is less than three months out, and tight pants arent just for Jimmy Fallon.

Read more:
I Dropped 5 Sizes in 7 MonthsHere's How I Did It - Reader's Digest

For many, the prospect of losing weight without changing your diet sounds too good to be true.

But scientists have found a method that could provide the solution: simply weigh yourself daily.

In a study of 294 female students by researchers at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, it was found that those who hopped on their scales every day over two years saw a drop in both BMI and body fat compared to those who didnt.

Whats more, the women - who were all of different weights - hadnt been told to try to lose weight.

The researchers were particularly interested in studying students as its so common to put on weight at university, especially in your first year - they dont call it the Freshers 15 for nothing, after all.

In fact, a 2009 study found that over 70 per cent of students gain weight in their first year at university.

But simply by weighing themselves daily, the women not only avoided putting on weight, but actually losta significant amount. Those who didnt weigh themselves saw little change in their BMI.

The losses in BMI and body fat percentage were modest, but still significant, especially keeping in mind that these women were not part of a weight loss programme, said lead study author Diane Rosenbaum, PhD.

We did not expect that, in the absence of a weight loss intervention, folks would be losing weight.

Lifting weights can make you more intelligent

The researchers cannot say for certain that daily weighing leads to weight loss, but it could be thatchecking in every day motivates you to look after your body more.

Regularly weighing yourself can motivate you to engage in healthy eating and exercise behaviours, because it provides you with evidence that these behaviours are effective in helping you lose weight or prevent weight gain, said Meghan Butryn, PhD, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel.

Similarly, if you see weight gain on the scale, that information can motivate you to make a change.

Of course, its normal for a persons weight to fluctuate, and so if you weigha bit more than the day before, it could just be due to water retention, when you last went to the toilet, what you ate the night before or where a woman is in her menstrual cycle.

But perhaps simply by making youmore aware, daily weigh-ins could help you lose weight.

Originally posted here:
Weighing yourself daily linked to weight loss, says study - The Independent