The currently popular diet of intermittent fasting that restricts eating to eight hours per day, separated by 16 hours of fasting, is not effective on its own as a means of either losing weight or for improving key metabolic health markers, according to a new study led by researchers at UC San Francisco.

While time-restricted feeding has been shown to prevent weight gain in mice on a high-fat diet and reduces weight and metabolic outcomes in already obese mice, most of the reported benefits of such fasting in humans has had limited scientific testing.

This study, which included 116 men and women with a body mass index (BMI) of 27 to 46, found that people who were randomly assigned to only eat during an eight-hour period each day lost 2 lbs. (0.94 kg) on average over the 12-week period, while those with consistent meal timing lost an average of 1.5 lbs. (0.68 kg).

The study found no significant difference between the two groups in total weight loss or in other markers, such as fat mass, lean mass, fasting insulin or glucose, HbA1C levels, energy intake, or total or resting energy expenditure.

First author Dylan A. Lowe, Ph.D., and corresponding authorEthan J. Weiss, M.D., are both affiliated with the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute. Additional findings, authors and affiliations can be found in the paper, published Sept. 28, 2020, inJAMA Internal Medicine.

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This diet is popular but it doesn't work - University of California

Do you have your heart set on having a boy? Looking for a way to stack the odds in your favor? Heard that changing your diet may help?

Theres no proven evidence for a special diet to conceive a boy or, for that matter, to conceive a girl. According to the Mayo Clinic, Theres not much the average couple can do to affect a babys sex.

But there are some proponents who believe otherwise. Here, we take a look at the theories and their evidence or lack thereof.

Sex and gender are evolving terms. In this article, biological sex refers to a babys X and Y chromosomes, with XX determining female and XY determining male.

Although theres no clinical proof that changing your diet can help you conceive a boy, there are many supporters of traditional and natural remedies that feel it can. One of the most popular suggestions supported by anecdotal information is to make your body more alkaline.

This unproven remedy suggests that people with a more alkaline (high pH) environment are more likely to conceive a boy. This method recommends:

While theres no evidence backing this theory, theres rarely any harm in adding fresh fruits and veggies to your diet!

If you want to conceive a girl, on the other hand, this theory suggests increasing your bodys acidity.

A 2008 study of 740 women concluded there was a higher probability of having a male baby when the mother increased her calorie intake and ate breakfast cereals. Researchers hypothesized that this may be because higher blood glucose levels favor having a boy.

However, the United Kingdoms National Health Service (NHS) suggests the conclusions of this study include inaccuracies that make it ill advised to suggest that increasing a womans caloric intake and eating breakfast cereals could increase chances of having a boy.

Different folks have different opinions about having a boy or girl. For some parents, its about balancing out their family with boy children and girl children. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, the most popular reasons for wanting a boy include:

With reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization (IVF), you might have high-tech options such as sperm sorting and preimplantation genetic screening to improve your chances of having a boy. Sex selection done this way is much more common now than it was just a few years ago, when Chrissy Teigen and John Legend did it.

However, this practice has a wide range of ethical, religious, legal, and social implications and is considered controversial. If youre doing IVF and have this option, keep in mind that its not necessarily a purely medical decision.

Planning on getting pregnant? You might have heard that certain diets can impact fertility.

There have been studies about the relationship of diet to fertility, but they lack the details to be of real use to people trying to conceive. For example, theres positive fertility impact of vitamins and minerals such as folic acid, omega-fatty acid, and vitamin B12, but its not always clear how much of these supplements to take.

Its good for both men and women to eat a healthy diet whether theyre trying to get pregnant or not. Prenatal vitamins (with vitamin B12 and folic acid) are already routinely recommended for people trying to conceive.

This desire to have a baby of a specific sex is often met with suggestions that havent been clinically proven, such as changing your diet one way to increase your chance of having a girl or another way to have a boy. However, theres no scientific evidence that this works.

If youre focused on having a boy, talk to your doctor about your hopes. They may have a suggestion or two and, importantly, theyll have advice and recommendations on helping you have a healthy, happy baby, whether it turns out to be a boy or a girl.

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Diet to Conceive a Boy: Different Theories and If They're True - Healthline

Steve Steeves shares how we should eat for our body, mind and soul to achieve abundant health

HOUSTON To order "The Trinity Diet: Lifestyle Balancing - Body, Soul and Spirit", click here.

For more information on Steve Steeves, CCN, ND, PscD., log on to NutritionandHealthCenter.com.

Debilitating back pain left Steve Steeves barely able to walk. He was later diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, an incurable form of Rheumatoid Arthritis. He was given drug therapy for pain management and told he would be in a wheelchair by age 40 -50. Steeves said it was hard to imagine a life in which he wasn't active. A small voice inside him said, "There's another way. Seek out another way." This inspired him to learn more about health and healing. Steeves set off on a journey studying the human body and learned in the process that our physical health is connected to our spiritual and mental health. Today, Steeves is experiencing the best health of his life and is active jogging, playing basketball and lifting weights.

Steeves works as a clinical nutritionist, naturopath and phytotherapist, and helps others find healing at the Nutrition and Health Center. He's also the author of "The Trinity Diet: Lifestyle Balancing - Body, Soul and Spirit". The book helps readers balance their body, soul and spirit through their food, and focuses on the trinity of macronutrients: proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

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The Trinity Diet - KHOU.com

There are a zillion reasons humans eat beyond capacity were bored, tired, distracted, starved for kindness, feel that leaving food behind is wasteful, or were once food insecure and do it instinctively, to name just a few. And if youve ever dieted to lose weight, restricting certain foods or trying to blot out hunger until your intermittent fasting window opens at precisely noon makes it really hard not to overeat on the rebound.

As for me, I had a serious eating disorder in my teens and early 20s (bulimia, if youre curious). With therapy and practice, I figured out healthier ways of managing my emotions than binging, purging, and obsessively dieting. My weight has been stable and mid-range for decades.

Still, food was always a thing I have had to be careful with, the way some are vigilant around alcohol. I dont consciously diet to be thinner, but I am preoccupied with eating "right," and often feel like I've screwed up when I dont follow my own rules. Even long recovered, the disordered mean-girl voices bicker with each other in my head, wagging a finger at me when Im up a few pounds, giddy when my jeans are a little loose. I tell them both to STFU, but they whisper in the background on a loop.

Then, after decades of being on the wagon when it came to bingeing, the wagon officially tossed me into a drainage ditch and landed on top of me. A debilitating divorce, perimenopause, raising two kids in an increasingly dystopian world, aging parents, and instability in my field saw me regularly eating to excess as a way to escape.

Anyone who has eaten compulsively knows what comes next: the shower of shame at losing control, a stab of panic over gaining weight, followed by a familiar resolve to do better. This usually includes avoiding foods that I think might trigger another binge which leads to feeling deprived.

I knew I needed a way off this shamey-go-round, and had heard of intuitive eating. So I picked up a copy of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works, by dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole.

Introduced by Resch and Tribole in 1995, intuitive eating is a philosophy made up of 10 principles, which reject traditional weight-loss diets and encourage you to get in touch with how truly hungry or how satisfied you are in a given moment. You then use that information to inform how, what, and when you eat. The 10 "anti-diet" principles are:

Today, the benefits of intuitive eating are supported by lots of research and intuitive eating-certified nutritionists all over the world. One of them, Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, author of Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating, adds that intuitive eating principles are often part of an eating disorder recovery treatment plan, although she cautions that if you do have an eating disorder, it can skew your hunger and fullness cues, so relying solely on these signals may not be wise until you're further along in your recovery.

Anyone feeling like they are suffering from an eating disorder can and should reach out for help immediately. The NEDA helpline at (800) 931-2237 is available daily, and officials also are on standby in digital chats, ready to help you find resources in your area. If you are concerned about a loved one, learn more about how you can help.

But for the rest of us, these principles are part of a process of learning how to listen to your body, and tuning out the drumbeat of "diet culture," which equates thinness with virtue and success and health, demonizes some foods and slaps a halo on others, and oppresses people who don't fit in to the skinny (white) ideal.

"We are all born knowing how to eat," says Harrison. We un-learn it through what we're told by well-meaning parents, a culture that thinks fitting into your high school jeans is the highest feminine achievement, our own internalized quest for control, and other powerful economic and social forces. That's why paying attention to your body and not giving it celery juice when it wants a turkey sandwich with mayo or yeah, I said it an Oreo or three is critical, and yet so fraught for many of us. Hunger is a biological cue, similar to the urge to go to the bathroom," says Alissa Rumsey, registered dietician and certified intuitive eating instructor, who owns Alissa Rumsey Nutrition and Wellness. "We never say, I just peed an hour ago so Im not going to go again, but we do that with the need to eat. Hunger is designed to help our bodies get enough nutrients to stay alive.

Peace with food, no more bitter psychological aftertaste! Bring it, I thought.

As of this writing, Ive been eating intuitively for about eight months, and I can tell you that it is incredibly simple and it's gotten to be almost second nature to me. And the payoffs worth it. But easy, it wasn't, especially in the first few months. It took constant awareness of how I was thinking about food, because diet-type thoughts were so ingrained. I am not exaggerating when I say I could have used a diet culture deprogrammer (luckily there are some great resources out there.) Heres how it went down for me.

Following the advice of Tribole and Resch, I bought a bunch of things that I ordinarily wouldnt have in the house because I'm afraid Id hoover them. (This is in keeping with principle 3, giving myself unconditional permission to eat, and not elevating certain foods over others.) I picked up Nutella, trail mix, and that maple square cereal from Trader Joes, which Id last scarfed straight out of the box during an incredibly scary experience a while back. I told myself that these foods would be there if I wanted them, that no one is going to take them away, and that I can go out and get more if I need to. Im truly allowed to eat them.

I kid you not: The Nutella sat unopened because knowing I could have it whenever I wanted made me forget about it. When I was hungry and saw it raising its smooth, chocolatey hand in the cabinet, I asked myself if I wanted Nutella. The answer was simply never yes.

One afternoon I snacked on some cereal, which was sweet and yummy, and I ate it slowly and consciously so Id really enjoy it. But eating it with so much awareness rather than inhaling it, I noticed it was a harsh texture and awfully dry how had I eaten half a box without seeing how raw it left the roof of my mouth?

As for the trail mix, I had some every day until I lost interest in it. This has to do with habituation, or our natural tendency to find stuff we were once excited about kind of meh if its just a normal thing. Research has found that this makes us eat less of the foods were used to eating.

At work, instead of making sure my plate was three-fourths veggies and a quarter lean protein as was my ritual at my offices salad bar (this was pre-COVID), I asked myself what sounded good for lunch. The answer was variously sushi; hummus and pita; and one day, it was spinach salad with eggs and bacon bits with blue cheese dressing.

It was all satisfying (principle 5 talks about how striving for satisfaction helps you make good choices for your body). Each time, when I checked in with myself mid-meal, which is an intuitive eating suggestion, I often didnt see the need to have more than a couple more bites to feel full. I resisted the habit of judging food as "good" or "bad" and myself as "good" or "bad" for having eaten it, and noticed that overall, my body was telling me to make pretty decent choices. Principle 10, practice gentle nutrition, points out that you don't have to eat perfectly to be healthy.

I finished a bowl of formerly-avoided pasta at a restaurant. Principle 6 is to feel your fullness, that it's a signal to stop eating, but I ate the whole thing. I was full in a heavy kind of way, which made me want to do something about it. My mind sprinted to a plan to exercise more the next day, to cut back on "unhealthy" foods, to be more careful youre supposed to stop when youre satisfied, I scolded myself, not brick-in-the-stomach full.

Danielle DalyGetty Images

When I spoke with Harrison about it, she asked me if it felt like a fight-or-flight response. It had. She said that eating disorders are traumatic, and that dieting can be as well. If it happened again, she suggested doing whatever I needed do to calm down deep breathing, meditation. You might try a mantra fullness is okay, it doesnt mean anything bad about me, Im allowed.

She also pointed out that the diet culture has taught us to be so rule-bound that its natural for new intuitive eaters to turn the practice into another set of rules that weve failed at if we dont follow them.

Don't worry there will come a time when youll choose to eat to Thanksgiving-full and it will feel like no big deal, she says, adding that Im in the hardest part of the adjustment. It makes sense: After 35-plus years of fullness equalling weakness in my own mind, It takes practice to get used to eating intuitively, says Harrison. It should feel gradually easier, she said.

Principle 1 is to reject the diet mentality, which Harrison says flows from the diet culture. Now that I am attuned to it, I see diet culture everywhere. Its always been on billboards and Instagram, but it is the water we're all swimming in, which is why we don't even notice.

Then, a friend from work said to me: "You look so thin! I reflexively said thanks, which immediately felt wrong. She meant it as a compliment, but if thin is a synonym for pretty it shouldn't be and I don't even believe it is. This is why principle 8 honor your body is so important. All bodies deserve dignity, Tribole and Resch write. If I said thank you and someone in a larger body heard me, it likely wouldve reinforced weight stigma in their minds, reminding them that thinner bodies are valued in our society and their bodies are not, says Harrison.

I havent had a full-on binge since I started this, and even better, I havent had the urge to. Harrison uses an the analogy of a pendulum when you dont pull it so far back into the deprivation zone, it doesnt swing so hard in the other direction. When I ate a little more than I intended and felt that pang of tsk-tsk, I kicked into nonjudgmental mode. I jotted down: I had more food at dinner than I meant to. But cmon, it was good. Its okay it happens to everyone. You didnt commit a crime.

With a little sadness at how hard Id been on myself for so many years, I then let it go.

Im gaining weight. Im not weighing myself but the leather pants Ive had since before my children were born are definitely tighter. Id be lying if I said Im comfortable with it. Im not. In fact, all day at work Im preoccupied with the waistband squeezing my belly. I unbutton my pants and pull my sweater down.

Not cool, I telepathically message the Goddess of Intuitive Eating. So totally not cool. Im giving my body what its asking for! Shouldnt that mean no weight gain? And maybe even a bit of weight loss, given that Im not eating whole pints of ice cream?

Some people gain weight with intuitive eating, some people lose weight, and some stay the same, says Harrison about her clients. I would say most people gain, because theyve been restricting. It stabilizes over time, but at first, most people do. I complete the sentence in my head and there's nothing wrong with that to help myself learn to believe it. Because there isn't.

I am surprised at how uncomfortable and scary even this little weight gain feels to me. I always have had and still have what Harrison calls thin privilege, which means I am not subject to the judgments and discrimination thrown at people who carry more weight on their frames. Why is even a few pounds freaking me out?

Harrison believes it has to do with a hard-wired sense of fear that well be expelled from the group. All of our security is threatened by not belonging, so a fear of weight gain is really fear of being rejected or ostracized, she says, even if you believe that wouldnt literally happen, especially among the people who care about you. A very irrational and childlike part of us is fearful, so try to parent that side of you and talk to yourself in a compassionate adult way.

Oh, and buy new pants, she adds.

I bought new pants. Theyre cute and have Lycra and it helps to not be reminded of my body every second by not being able to exhale. In fact, I dont think about my body at all.

And geez, since buying those now too tight leather pants, Ive aged 20 years and carried twins. Come on, already, with the ridiculous standards for women! Our bodies are not meant to stay the same year over year theyre meant to change, says Rumsey. Your weight at 25 is not going to be the same at age 45, and that is okay! God, that sounds so sane. Of course it's okay. And buying new pants rather than forcing myself to endure too-tight ones as a reminder/punishment that I'm out of control is in keeping with intuitive eating principle 7, which is to cope with your difficult emotions with kindness.

But you dont even need to adore every roll and pucker to have a healthy body image, says Rumsey. It starts by understanding and internalizing that your physical appearance is not what makes you worthy, she says. I'm proof that you can know that rationally but still feel you want your body to be cookie-cutter perfect, not that mine ever was. Ill keep reminding myself.

Im sitting at the Feast of the Seven Fishes with my boyfriends family. Its an Italian-American Christmas Eve tradition, and its more like 15 fish courses all amazing and 35 desserts. Normally, the combo of a crowded house, lots of socializing, and endless food would send me into a must try everything overwhelmed binge.

I felt zero compulsion. Eyeing the abundance, I ate what looked especially appealing, wasnt tempted to try what wasnt, and left the table solidly full but not sick.

My boyfriend got me one of those giant Hersheys Kisses for Christmas, and Ive been chipping mindfully away at it. One night, however, it looked especially like our country was falling to fascism, and when I peeled my terrified eyes from the TV, I saw that the Kiss was mostly gone.

The bad news? Id binged (and we still might lose our democracy). The good news? I didnt panic, at least about food, or even feel bad about it.

Instead, an automatic compassionate response came to me: I asked myself, with nonjudgmental curiosity, why I ate so much chocolate. The answer was obvious: anxiety, and a fear on some level that we would end up in a nuclear war and this would literally be the last chocolate I ever ate. Its okay, I told myself. It's a scary time. And then I forgot about it. Progress.

UPDATE: Its been five months since that last entry, and intuitive eating is happening more, well, intuitively. Unless I'm under great stress, I dont contemplate every bite or think about it after, and my discomfort with my extra couple of pounds has diminished noticeably (or it could be that they've gone awayI'm not weighing myself, which is part of intuitive eating.) That Nutella in my pantry eventually got eaten, and enjoyed, rather than guiltily snarfed. Im not eating 100% freely like a little kid again, but I do have that sense of control that you have when there really isnt anything to control at all.

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Does Intuitive Eating Work? What Happened When I Tried Intuitive Eating - GoodHousekeeping.com

The coronavirus is affecting the lives of Japans nationally protected species, the Nara deer, which live by Nara Park in Nara City, Nara Prefecture.

Tourists have largely disappeared from the historic tourist destination due the pandemic. And although some of the deer have left the park for a more wild and healthy life, others are becoming malnutritioned due to their dependence on the Shika Senbei rice crackers that tourists feed them.

Approximately 1,300 deer live near the Nara Park. Roughly 13 million tourists visit the park annually, and up to around 20 million deer crackers are sold each year. Excluding the 400 that are housed in the Rokuen deer shelter, around 900 deer roaming the park consume the rice crackers, meaning each deer generally eats more than 60 crackers per day.

The rice crackers weigh about 3 to 4 grams each, and are considered a snack for the deer, who eat about 5 kilograms of grass everyday. However, the nutritional value of the crackers is higher than grass, making them attractive to the deer. Therefore, the deer are often seen hovering around the food stands where the crackers are sold, waiting to entertain the tourists who feed them.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, however, tourist numbers have significantly decreased. Crackers sales have plummeted. with their daily lives upended, the deer themselves started showing signs of change as well.

According to a research conducted by The Nara Deer Preservation Foundation (NDPF) and Assistant Professor Shiro Tatsuzawa of Hokkaido University (Conservation Ecology Department), it was discovered that there has been a decrease in the number of deer staying inside the central grounds of Nara Park.

In January this year, before the pandemic outbreak caused a drop in tourists, 71.9% of the deer population was recorded as present in the park during daytime. In contrast, only 50.2% of the deer were found in the park during the daytime in June. Nighttime numbers were recorded at 56.5% in January and 34.9% in June, showing an estimated 20% drop in both cases.

Perhaps the deer decided to roam around looking for grass to feed on since there were much fewer tourists to feed them the crackers, suggests Assistant Professor Tatsuzawa.

While the deer population in Nara Park has decreased, the number of deer sitting on the grass during daytime has increased from 19.3% to 59.1%.

Deer are ruminants, meaning they digest their food, such as grass, by bringing it back from their stomachs to chew on it again, making rest time after meals essential. Tatsuzawa states that this increase may be a good indication that the deer are eating more grass and are returning to a more natural healthy diet.

There have already been signs of improvements. Normally, deer droppings are dark and round in shape, but before the pandemic, there were loose feces found all around the park. NDPFs veterinarian, Rie Maruko explains that the deers intestinal bacteria will become out of balance from eating too much Shika Senbei and human snacks, often resulting in loose droppings.

Like humans, deer need to eat a balanced diet to maintain a healthy stomach. Lately, loose droppings have been greatly reducing, and the overall health of the deer population has improved.

On the other hand, a segment of the deer population is becoming extremely thin, apparently due to its dependence on rice crackers. Assistant Professor Tatsuzawa believes some deer might be addicted to the rice crackers, as they are seen roaming around the once populated tourist sites, such as the Nara National Museum, but are not seen eating any grass.

According to a previous survey, some deer ate more than 200 crackers a day, leading the Assistant Professor to speculate that perhaps these deer have become so accustomed to eating the crackers given to them by people that they are unable to adapt to the changes.

Not only has the coronavirus pandemic drastically changed peoples lives, but the lives of the Nara Park deer as well.

(Find access to the story in its original Japanese, here.)

Author: Hiroto Kuwajima

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Naras Deer Miss the Tourists: Some Relearn Natural Diet While Others Grow Thin - JAPAN Forward