Eat a Bigger Breakfast to Lose Weight

Many dieters try to lose weight by eating a small breakfast or skipping it altogether. A study by scientists in Virginia and Venezuela suggests that eating a larger breakfast may be a better weight loss approach. They found that dieters who ate a 610-calorie breakfast each day initially lost less weight than dieters who ate a 290-calorie breakfast, but were more successful at keeping the weight off. Dieters who ate the small breakfasts regained much of the weight they had initially lost. By the end of the eight-month study, dieters who ate the larger breakfasts had lost nearly four times as much weight as the dieters who ate the small breakfasts. They also reported less hunger and fewer cravings throughout the day.

You can read more about big breakfast weight loss on The Endocrine Society’s web site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Eat a hearty breakfast, and then make up for those extra calories by making supper smaller. A little extra food in your stomach will help you avoid cravings. You need that extra help during the daytime, not at night when you are sleeping.

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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.

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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.

Stay Up Late, Gain Weight

In a study of eating and sleeping habits of 51 adults, researchers at Northwestern University found that those who habitually went to bed late and slept late into the morning ate about 250 calories more per day than did those on a more normal sleep schedule.

The extra calories were largely due to consumption of twice as much fast food and half as many fruits and vegetables as were eaten by the normal sleepers. Late sleepers also drank more sugary drinks. The extra calories tended to be eaten after normal sleepers were already in bed.

To learn more about the study, read the article on sleeping late and weight gain at Northwestern University’s news site.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: Get to bed at a reasonable time. If you do plan on staying up late, have some fruits and vegetables handy to snack on.

Toxic Sugar

Is sugar toxic? In a recent New York Times article entitled “Is Sugar Toxic,” author Gary Taubes suggests that sugar is not only the primary ingredient behind the obesity epidemic, but also that it independently contributes to risks of high blood pressure, heart disease, and many cancers. Fructose, he says, is the big problem because of how it is handled by the liver relative to other sugars. Many people get their fructose primarily from the high fructose corn syrup in sweetened beverages and other junk food, but it also occurs naturally in most fruits. The article has ignited plenty of controversy, and Gary Taubes has responded to many readers’ comments about his article on a New York Times blog post. In an LA Times post,  Dr. Gerard Mullin, a nutrition expert at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, provides some independent analysis of Taubes’ article. 

According to Dr. Mullin and most nutritionists, the fructose in fruit is not usually a problem. Fiber in the fruit slows the digestion of the sugar, reducing its potential for harm in the liver and blood stream. Sugar added to drinks, on the other hand, can be consumed quickly and in large quantities. This sudden burst of sugar can not only lead to fatty liver, but can also quickly exceed your daily calorie requirements, making weight loss goals extremely difficult to achieve. Most other sweets don’t produce quite the burst of calories that sugary drinks do, but they can be eaten and digested quite quickly, and are often eaten in large quantities (compared to fruit and other natural foods), so they also tend to provide more than their share of calories. 

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: If you drink anything with added sugar, consider replacing it with something a little more natural. Perhaps water? It is completely natural and no calories. But you like the sweetness? Try fruit. Changing an eating happen can be difficult, especially for the first few days, so here’s another tip. Make a goal to give up sugary drinks for two weeks, and then see how you feel. It could be the start of something good.

Calm Food Cravings Naturally with Visualization

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment involving three groups of undergraduate students. Each group was told to imagine doing a task. The tasks to be imagined were as follows:

• Group 1 – Insert 30 quarters into a laundry machine, and then eat 3 M&Ms.
• Group 2 – Insert 3 quarters into a laundry machine, and then eat 30 M&Ms.
• Group 3 – Insert 33 quarters into a laundry machine.

After completing their assigned visualizations, the participants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted from a bowl of real M&Ms. Those who had imagined eating 30 M&Ms ate an average of only 3 real M&Ms from the bowl, while participants from the other two groups ate an average of 5.

The researchers then conducted a follow-up experiment in which participants were asked to imagine either eating 3 or 30 M&Ms or transferring the same number of M&Ms from one bowl to another. The participants were then allowed to eat as many real M&Ms as they liked. Consistent with the first experiment, participants who had imagined eating 30 M&Ms subsequently ate fewer real M&Ms than those who had imagined eating only 3. Participants who imagined transferring 30 M&Ms from one bowl to another, however, subsequently ate more real M&Ms than those who had imagined moving only 3. While the M&M cravings of the first group were dampened, the cravings of the second group were intensified.

The study was published in the December 10 issue of Science. Time has an insightful review discussing this study in a broader context of food and drug addictions.

Relevance to Natural Weight Loss:

Weight Loss Tip: To calm a food craving naturally, imagine eating large amounts of the craved food. Continue your visualization for several minutes, or until you feel the craving subside.

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.