Count the Exercise Cost of Calories

A bottle of sugary (non-diet) soda contains about 250 calories. That’s a lot. Reminding yourself of this fact can give you the extra motivation to pass up the soda and go for a drink of water instead. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health think they have found an even better motivation: exercise cost.

To test their theory, they created a sign with the words “Did you know that working off a bottle of soda or fruit juice takes about 50 minutes of running” and posted it in a corner store frequented by thirsty adolescents. The presence of the sign reduced the odds that an adolescent would purchase a sugar-sweetened drink by about 50%. This worked even better than their sign that said “Did you know that a bottle of soda or fruit juice has about 250 calories?” If it works for thirsty teenagers, maybe it’s worth a try!

You can read more about the exercise cost of calories study on the school’s web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: When you are tempted by junk food, think about how much exercise it would take to work off the extra calories. If it seems worth the cost, commit to doing the exercise before taking the first bite.

Walking Helps Prevent Chocolate Abuse

Walking can help you lose weight, and it’s not just because of the exercise. In a study by scientists at the U. of Exeter, chocolate lovers who were asked to take a brisk 15-minute treadmill walk before beginning work snacked on only half as much chocolate as study participants who were allowed to skip the walk and rest instead.
In an earlier study by the same group, a 15-minute walk was found to significantly reduce chocolate cravings.

You can read more about the walk to eat less chocolate and kill the chocolate cravings studies on the ScienceDaily web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Get up and take a brisk 15 minute walk before your usual chocolate craving time. If walking isn’t convenient, try a different exercise. And remember, just trying not to think about chocolate doesn’t work.

Thought Suppression and Overeating

Trying to suppress thoughts of a craved food can cause you to eat even more of it at the first opportunity. That’s what St. George’s University of London researchers concluded after observing 116 chocolate-tasting female undergraduates. The women had been divided into three groups. One group was told to think about anything but chocolate for five minutes, another group was told to think about only chocolate, and the third group was told to think about whatever they wanted. Later, when the women were asked to compare two brands of chocolate in a taste test, the group of thought suppressors took a few extra bites…just to be sure.

You can read more about the just-don’t-think-about-it study on NCBI’s web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Instead of trying to suppress thoughts of food you are craving, use this visualization trick.

Protein for Breakfast to Lose Weight Naturally

Researchers at the University of Missouri used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of overweight adolescent girls who habitually skipped breakfast. Each girl underwent a brain scan after skipping breakfast for several days, after eating a “normal” breakfast for several days, and again after eating a “high protein” breakfast for several days. The brain scans were conducted three hours after breakfast time in each case. The normal breakfast consisted of cereal and milk. The high protein breakfast consisted of Belgium waffles, syrup, and yogurt. Neural activity in parts of the brain associated with appetite was lower following the normal breakfast, and lower still following the high-protein breakfast.

To learn more about the study, read the article on breakfast, protein, and cravings at the University of Missouri’s news site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Add eggs, yogurt, meat, beans, or other protein source to your breakfast so that it will keep you satisfied longer. If you don’t have time for breakfast in the morning, try preparing it the night before. It doesn’t have to be complicated: a boiled egg or yogurt with fruit might be a substantial improvement over what you are currently doing.

Find more simple weight loss tips and recipes in this $2.99 top-rated ebook at Amazon.

Potatoes Make You Fat, Study Says

Researchers at Harvard University conducted a study in which they monitored the weight and habits of 120,877 adults over a 20-year period. The study revealed that potato-based foods caused more weight gain than any other food category, with potato chips the main offender. Consumption of other vegetables was associated with weight loss.

To learn more about the study, read the New England Journal of Medicine paper on diet, lifestyle, and long-term weight gain.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Think outside the potato. Try snacking on colored vegetables, and include more of those in meals as well.

Breakfast Skippers Crave High-Calorie Foods

Researchers at Imperial College London used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 20 subjects while they looked at pictures of high-calorie (cake, chocolate, and pizza) and low-calorie (salad, vegetables, and fish) foods. The brain scans were done twice: 90 minutes after the subjects had eaten breakfast, and again at the same time on a day that the subjects had skipped breakfast.

Brain scans conducted on subjects who had skipped breakfast showed significantly greater activation of the brain’s “reward” centers while the subjects viewed the high-calorie foods. Brain scans conducted after subjects had eaten breakfast showed no significant difference in reward center activation between high-calorie and low-calorie foods.

To learn more about the study, read the Endocrine Society‘s article on fasting and cravings.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: To reduce your food temptations, take time in the morning to eat a good breakfast, then plan a healthy lunch and dinner while you are still feeling satisfied.

Is a New Baby as Good as a Gym Membership?

Probably not, according to a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics that investigated the eating and exercise habits of parents with small children. The study of 1,500 men and women found that, not only were the mothers heavier than their counterparts without children, but also that they ate about 370 calories more each day and exercised an hour less each week. Sugar-sweetened drinks and saturated fats contributed substantially to the extra calories. The researchers didn’t find a significant difference between fathers of small children and their childless counterpart in weight or eating habits, but did find that the dads exercised about two hours less per week.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: If you will soon be a new parent, be prepared for an interruption to your regular eating and exercise habits. Make a special effort to reserve some time for exercise, and be careful with those sugary drinks and processed meats.

Do You Have a Junk Food Addiction?

Researchers at Yale, the University of Texas, and Arizona State University scanned the brains of 48 women using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as the woman looked at pictures of chocolate milkshakes. The women had all previously been scored for food addiction tendencies using the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS). While looking at pictures of the milkshakes, the women with high food-addiction scores showed more neural activity in regions of the brain associated with drug addiction than did women with lower scores. These regions of the brain are involved in anticipation and cravings. The authors concluded that “these findings support the theory that compulsive food consumption may be driven in part by an enhanced anticipation of the rewarding properties of food.” In other words, stronger cravings.

The study will be published in the August 2011 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. Meanwhile, you can read more about it in the Science Daily article, “Study Identifies Neural Activity Linked to Food Addiction”.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: If you are overweight because of addiction to unhealthful foods, then long term weight loss will, at a minimum, require that you learn better ways of coping with cravings. Preventing and coping with cravings are hot topics in current scientific research. I will discuss some of the findings of this research in future posts. Today’s weight loss tip: Keep reading this blog, and expect to learn something useful.