Forget Three Square Meals -- Americans Eat All Day Long

This is so true and I'm an advocator of the "5 small meal a day plan", but it's easy to overdo the calories. When I started the small meal plan I had to put everything on paper  first and count the calories and you have to stick to the plan you make. Always eat at the proper time and never skip a meal and stay between 250 and 300 calories every meal then do your exercise and you won't get hungry and you will lose weight.

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By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Many Americans have tossed the conventional three-meals-a-day routine out the window, and replaced it with frequent chow downs spread throughout the day, new research shows.

The study found that most folks were eating for 15 or more hours while awake, and the lion's share of calories were eaten well after 6 p.m.

"Most participants thought they don't eat or drink that regularly outside their breakfast-lunch-dinner routine," said study co-author Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Most people also assumed that they had been confining their eating routine to a 10- to 12-hour window, he added.

But after tracking actual eating patterns, Panda found that the "recorded fact was different."

The study's results are in the Sept. 24 issue of Cell Metabolism.

The findings stem from a new effort to track real-world eating behavior by means of a newly designed mobile app.

For three weeks, 150 healthy men and women continuously snapped photos of all the food, drinks and nutritional supplements they consumed. In turn, the app tracked all caloric intake, along with the exact time and place food was consumed, the researchers said.

All the participants were between the ages of 21 and 55, and resided in the vicinity of San Diego, the study reported. No one was asked to modify his or her normal eating habits in any way. Also, no study volunteers were dieting.

After 21 days, investigators determined that food intake was generally both erratic and continuous.

In essence, the study authors found that whenever they were awake, people ate. More than half of the participants spread their food intake over a roughly 15-hour period each day. Fasting tended to occur only during sleep, the study found.

What's more, less than a quarter of daily caloric intake happened before noon. By contrast, more than a third of food was consumed after 6 p.m., the study said.

A follow-up experiment tracked eight participants who were classified as obese and who had a habit of consuming food for periods stretching beyond 14 hours each day.

The five male and three female participants were instructed to restrict all food intake to a 10-hour block of time per day for 16 weeks. The app was used to track their eating behavior, and this enabled all participants to log onto a website to follow their actual dietary habits in real time.

The result: Although no one had been instructed to change the kind or amount of food they normally consumed, the obese participants had cut back their daily calories by about 20 percent by the end of the four-month study period. They ended up losing an average of about 7 pounds. They also reported experiencing improved sleep and increased energy levels, the study revealed.

Panda said that at this point, the app is designed to serve as a research tool, rather than as a dietary consumer aid.

Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said the study findings are "not much of a surprise."

"Basically this new study helps confirm what we already suspect," she said. "Eating sporadically and at all hours is just not good for our health.

"I see this a lot in those that I work with in my weight-loss classes," Sandon added. "There is a lack of planning and stability in their eating schedules, so eating just happens whenever. Many skip breakfast, have a light lunch, then find themselves hungry and tired in the afternoon and seeking a pick-me-up from the vending machine, only to get home from work ravenous and wanting to eat anything and everything with no energy to exercise. They then spend the night snacking before bed. This is a common phenomenon.

"[So] planning ahead for regularly scheduled meals is an important strategy for weight loss or just simply eating healthier," she advised.

Is Fasting Really a Safe Way to Lose Weight?

Fasting may help some people but I'm not a fan. People with medical conditions shouldn't be fasting. That said, It's my opinion, some overweight people don't realize they have a medical condition. They don't want to see the Doctor because they don't want to hear the lecture about how they need to lose weight. So they just avoid any medical advice. This is one reason so many people fail at their attempt to lose weight. I Think if you have more then 20 pounds to lose you should talk to your Doctor first. If you take any kind of medication you want to ask your Doctor about a diet. Everyone's ability to lose weight differs. No one loses weight the same way others do. So read this post from MyFitnessPal.com and see if Fasting might be right for you.

Think of a time when you wanted to lose weight. Naturally, you knew to eat less, but how much less depends on your metabolism, which determines the total calories you need throughout the day. Eating fewer calories than you expend typically leads to weight loss, but how you want to budget these calories gets very personal.

While most of us prefer a consistent calorie goal, some find it helpful to slash calories through intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is skipping meal(s) for a certain number of days with the purpose of creating a calorie deficit for weight loss. On the days you don’t fast you have the freedom of a higher calorie goal to eat with.

Let’s be clear: Intermittent fasting is not:

1) Going more than 24 hours without eating.
2) Regularly eating a very low calorie diet (think: less than 1,000 calories for women and 1,200 calories for men).

Both these scenarios can lead to nutritional deficiencies and other health complications and are not something you should pursue without the help of a health professional. Now that we have that straight, let’s jump in:

Defining Fasting for Weight Loss
Intermittent fasting allows you to shift the calorie-cutting phase of your weight loss to a couple of days per week as opposed to every day. It works because you don’t need to cut calories daily to lose weight. You can go under your goal one day and over the next but still lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you burn.

It’s important to note not all fasting diets are the same, and that something as simple as skipping a meal can count as fasting. Here are a few different ways people practice fasting that don’t include religious fasting:

• Complete alternate-day fasting: Fast every other day. A fasting day means no calorie-containing food or beverage for up to 24 hours. An eating day allows you to eat as much as you want.
• Modified fasting: Fast just a couple of days per week. For example, the popular 5:2 diet schedules 5 days of eating freely with 2 days where calorie intake is 20–25% of needs.
• Time- restricted eating: Eat freely as you feel hungry throughout the day, but only within a specific window of time. For example, setting up a window of 12 hours and only eating within that time frame. Skipping breakfast and not eating after dinner counts as time-restricted eating.

Are Fasting Diets Better than Non-fasting Diets?

by Krista Varady, PhD, at the University of Illinois at Chicago examined 11 daily-calorie-restriction and five intermittent-fasting studies. As an FYI, “daily calorie restriction” is how we’re traditionally taught to cut calories: cutting a consistent but small amount of calories every day. Varady found that both methods of cutting calories were equally effective at helping healthy subjects lose weight and fat, but intermittent fasting appeared to offer an added benefit. Those who practiced intermittent fasting preserved more lean mass (90% weight lost as fat, 10% weight lost as muscle) than those who followed the more traditional method of daily calorie restriction (75% weight lost as fat, 25% weight lost as muscle). Because lean mass burns more calories than fat mass, it is beneficial to help you lose fat while preserving as much muscle as possible.

While these numbers may look impressive, there are a few drawbacks to this review:

• Not enough studies exist. The review included just 16 studies—there just weren’t many studies addressing intermittent fasting. Because of this, there were disproportionately more studies for daily calorie restriction—11 daily calorie-restriction studies versus five intermittent-fasting studies.
• Small sample sizes. Study sample sizes were small, ranging from 8–173 subjects, with most studies hovering at 20 subjects.
• Difference in measurement techniques. Most daily-calorie-restriction studies use dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure fat mass while most intermittent-fasting studies use bioelectrical impedance. Because DXA and MRI are more accurate at assessing fat mass compared to bioelectrical impedance, it makes it difficult to conclusively say that daily calorie restriction preserves lean mass better than intermittent fasting.

The science isn’t perfect, but it confirms what we already know: weight loss happens when the calories eaten are less than calories burned. If you’re overweight or obese, both nonfasting and fasting weight loss can lead to similar health benefits that’ll make your doc proud! Just a 5–10% weight loss can help bring down pesky numbers on your blood test (think: cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar).

Is Fasting a Safe Choice for Me?
The answer really depends on how you approach it and how your own body responds. As mentioned before, going long periods of time without eating, or eating a very low calorie diet for extended periods of time, is not safe. Generally speaking, though, the human body is designed to deal with periods of fasting. If you’re a healthy adult with weight to lose, there’s little evidence to say that intermittent fasting isn’t safe.

However, fasting isn’t for everyone and you shouldn’t try it if you are pregnant, diabetic or healing from a traumatic event like surgery. Still iffy about whether fasting is a good choice for you? We suggest seeking guidance from a health professional before experimenting.

5 Tips for Fasting
If you want to experiment with fasting to switch up your weight-loss journey, here are a couple of tips:

1. Log your calories. If you’re doing a modified fast, you may want to track calories on a fasting day to help you meet your target calorie goal. For all other fasts, it’s helpful to track calories on the days you eat freely. Doing so can help offset the likelihood you’ll overeat and thus cut into your overall calorie deficit.
2. Take it as an opportunity to better understand hunger. Not surprisingly, fasting diets can bring unpleasant side effects, one of which is hunger. We’re all born with hunger cues to signal that our stomach is empty and we should eat. For most of us, this ability becomes blunted as we age especially in a plentiful society where food is not in short supply. We may even mistake thirst or cravings for hunger. Fasting can reacquaint you with what physiologic hunger feels like.
3. Drink plenty of water. Depending on how long your fast is, your body may switch to fueling itself more from fat and protein instead of carbohydrates. To do so will require more water to keep your metabolic machinery running smoothly. Also, if you’re already feeling minor unpleasant side effects from hunger, you don’t want to add a dehydration headache to the list!
4. Choose nutrient-dense foods. On eating days, choose nutrient-dense foods that pack plenty of important vitamins and minerals along with calories. Nutrient-dense foods include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, lean meats, seafood, nuts—you get the idea! These are foods you should choose even if you’re not fasting. Check with your doctor if you’re concerned about vitamin and mineral deficiencies or want to undergo an extended fast longer than 12 weeks.
5. Know you can always change your mind. Tried fasting and found it’s not for you? Fasting isn’t for everyone, especially those who get hangry really easily. Just know that you can cut calories the old-fashioned way and still lose weight.

Reverse middle age weight gain

Middle age, those years between 30 and 50, are the years we all seem to add body fat. So what's going on, why does this seem to happen to everyone? The answer is that we slow-down and as the slow-down occurs we burn less calories but it seems we never stop eating, we don't even slow-down your food intake, actually as you gain weight you seem to consume more calories a day and that puts on even more weight. It's so gradual though you don't realize what's happening. 

The weight gain on average is only about 1 to 3 pounds a year. They even have a name for it now because it's so common. It's called "creeping obesity", that 1 to 3 pounds you seem to gain every year and don't even notice. In most cases people don't wake-up to the weight gain until they have to buy new clothes. It might not sound like a lot of weight but over a 20 year period it can amount to 60 pounds. The following post from WebMD.com addresses this problem and give you some solutions.

You have a couple of things working against you. You're probably not burning calories as efficiently as you did when you were younger. That's because your metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn in a day) dips about 1% per year beginning around age 30, says Carolyn Brown, RD, nutritionist at Food trainers in New York.

You can outsmart that. Shift a few habits so you can rev your body back up.

Start with these five strategies.

1. Eat More Protein

Protein is the building block of muscle, and since muscle mass diminishes as you age, you need even more protein.

“Starting at middle age, you need 10% more protein than you did during your younger years,” says Christine Gerbstadt, MD, RD, author of Doctor’s Detox Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss Prescription.

A bonus: Foods that are high in protein pack a greater metabolic boost than fat or carbohydrates. Biting, chewing, swallowing, and digesting protein-rich foods can burn up to 30% of the calories on your plate, compared to 5% for fat and carbs.

2. Tame Your Stress

The stress hormone cortisol is tied to an accumulation of fat around your midriff. And midlife can be a stressful time, says Florence Comite, MD, an endocrinologist in New York.

Chronic stress can also affect how well your body responds to insulin, which controls your blood sugar, Comite says.

Eliminating as much stress as possible from your daily routine will help cut the amount of cortisol your body makes. 

Do this: Meditate. Just 10 minutes of mindful meditation can make a difference, Comite says.

3. Don’t Skimp on Sleep

When you're short on sleep, your appetite kicks into higher gear. In one study of some 68,000 women, those who slept for 5 or fewer hours each night gained 2.5 pounds more than those sleeping 7 hours a night.

Do this: Set a soothing bedtime routine that includes turning off all screens at least one hour before bed.

4. Get Stronger

The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when you’re at rest. But you start losing muscle mass around age 40, Gerbstadt says.

Resistance training helps. Keeping your muscles strong makes it easier to maintain your weight.

Do this: Use weights that are heavy enough to exhaust your muscles with 12 repetitions, yet light enough to complete at least eight repetitions. Do lunges, squats, dead lifts, and pushups (12-15 repetitions per set). Or, if you're not into weightlifting, do yoga or other exercises that use your own body weight for resistance.

5. Clean Up Your Diet

It's true: You can't eat the way you used to, without some consequences.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who ate the most refined foods (like sugar, white bread, cookies, and cakes) developed significantly more belly fat than those who consumed the same number of calories from less processed foods.

Do this: Always have healthy snacks on hand. Keep almonds in your pocketbook, trail mix in your desk drawer, and hard-boiled eggs in the fridge.

WebMD Feature

The Truth About This Gluten-free Craze

I read dozens of article about  gluten-free and enriched or processed wheat. First of all, gluten-free products are foods that have no processed or enriched wheat. At first consumers thought these foods were only for people with food allergies. But now we know that today's wheat is not your grandmother's wheat. Processed or enriched wheat can be just as dangerous as eating sugar products like fructose and just as habit forming.

So those of us watching our weight and those trying to lose weight need to avoid any enriched or processed foods and wheat in particular. Fortunately gluten-free products are very popular today and it's pretty easy to find a big section of gluten-free products in the major grocery stores. You can find bread, bagels, crackers even pizza crusts, cereals you name it, if it's made of flour there's probably a similar Gluten-Free product.

Science says the reason enriched wheat is bad for your diet is because it raises your blood sugar and not just a little but spikes it up and let you crash just as fast. That crash you get after the spike will cause 'food cravings' and in a short time you'll want more food. I know what your going to say "I don't eat that much at the table". And the reason for that is that it takes about one hour for blood sugar to crash. And by that time we don't go back to the table for more dinner but we do reach for snack food. Enriched or processed wheat is in all the snack food, chips pretzels, crackers, Chex,  and dozens  of other snacks.

Whether it's drinks or food the reason it seems like your constantly eating is because your blood sugar  jumping from super-high to super-low causes cravings so you think your still hungry and you want to eat more, but in reality your not hungry it's only a craving, your body is telling you that your blood sugar levels are low. It's not a trick, they are low and you did it to yourself by eating foods you shouldn't eat.

Avoid processed foods and any foods with enriched wheat flour.  So gluten -free will help you lose weight by avoiding food cravings caused be wheat and you can further help yourself by avoiding added sugar. Don't eat or drink anything with added sugar or sugar substitutes like fructose or corn syrup.

Where Do I Start?

Losing weight isn't as hard as some might think. You want to start by changing the food your eating. This is a common mistake many people make. They think if they just cut back on calories by eating less they'll lose weight. Maybe if you just want to lose 2 or 3 pounds. It's your diet that put on your extra weight and by the way that's extra body fat, not just weight. You can gain healthy weight and that's okay. Pro-athletes will gain healthy weight by adding muscle, but if your gaining fat that's the stuff you want to lose.

Changing your diet and eating healthy will give you more energy to exercise and be more active. The extra activity will help your burn more calories and you'll lose fat. Now the hard part is to get your body to burn the stored fat.

Your body only processes or burn enough to give you the energy you need at that moment. The body works in real time. In other words when your resting your body burns very little calories. It will burn some because your heart is always working and your brain is always working and there is other body functions that have to work constantly. When I sit and type out the post, I'm burning some calories, more than just watching TV, but if I was standing I would burn twice the calories because of the work your muscles have to do just to hold you up. So watching TV burns more than sleeping, but write my post at my desk burns more than watching TV and walking burn even more and running burns even more.

So if a normal person doing normal activity might burn 2000 calories a day, some hours you might burn 50 calories and some hours you might burn 150 calories. For example, a person who works out 5 days a week for one hour a day does a walk and run routine can burn 300 to 350 calories during that workout. All these statistics are to give you an idea of how many calories you might burn.

If you go to the Mall or grocery store and watch people for a long period of time you'll notice people who have a hard time getting around and some moving at a very fast pace. The point I want to make is that someone who spends most of the day either sitting or laying may only be burning a minimal amount of calories like 1000. The person burning 1800 might be the average office worker who could be sitting or lying as much as 16 hours as day, and that's even if they workout. And some people who are very active, working all day on their feet and working out every day and then working around the house after they get home, may be burning 2500 calories a day.

You want to be one of those people who burn more than 2000 calories a day and you can do it. But first, you want to start by eating healthy and building your energy. Nex,t you want to start walking more. Try to walk in the morning, before work, and then again in the evening after dinner. A good way to begin exercising is to walk more. Now is not that easy to judge the amount you walk because of your speed. So I suggest getting a pedometer. There cheap, just go to a sporting goods store. The average person doing normal things all day walks about 5000 steps a day, but to lose body fat and build strength you want to walk 10,000 steps a day. The pedometer will count for you, just set it to zero in the morning and hook it on your belt. If your short steps after dinner you want to walk before bed and finish the 10,000.

I think changing your diet and sticking to it is the hardest part. You have to start eating 'clean', no processed foods. Which means eating 'fresh' foods. Fruits, vegetables, dairy and grains and some meat. I follow the 'food pyramid'.

I write several blogs and e-books, check out some of my other sites.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog
idropped40pounds.wordpress.com
howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com
blogonweight.blogspot.com

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $1.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my book. at Amazon.com, B&N.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. I’ll give you a discount coupon you can use at checkout. (PJ42H) not case-sensitive the price is $1.99 w/coupon

5 Reasons To Eat Real Food

This is a great post that I'm re-blogging from the 'MyFitnessPal' website. The post is about the 
advantages of Clean Eating. This is only a portion of a larger post that I hope to reblog at a later date.  For people who want to have a better diet but don't know were to start, this article should help you.

1. Eat “healthier” without thinking about it. It’s useful to think of food as nutrients (macro- and   micronutrients) so we can better understand our body. When it comes to healthy eating, it’s more useful to think of food simply as food. Choosing “real” foods lets you eat healthier from a nutrient perspective without thinking too much about nutrients.

2. Redefine your relationship with food. Do you find yourself labeling food as “good” or “bad” based on a predefined notion of what healthy eating looks like? Nothing should always be that black and white, least of all a healthy relationship with food. Choosing real foods forces you to reevaluate the foods you think are healthy (aka processed foods labeled “low fat,” “sugar-free” and so forth). That being said, if you’re willing to buy real food ingredients to bake a cake, you should be able to enjoy a slice of dessert without a side of guilt.

3. Get the most nutrients out of the foods you’re eating. Processing foods usually removes or destroys valuable nutrients. The two exceptions are fortified foods (think: orange juice with added vitamin D) and preserved foods (think: canned and frozen). Choosing mostly real foods helps you maximize the nutrients you get from the foods you eat.

4. Cook, connect and celebrate with friends and family. Real food means real cooking! Since real foods come in the most natural form, it pushes you to be creative in preparing and cooking your meals. Cooking is an essential skill when it comes to living a healthy life. Since good food is a cause for celebration, get your friends and family members involved if you can.

5. Live a longer, healthier life. “You are what you eat” is a simple mantra capturing the impact that diet quality has on your quality of life. Eating mostly real foods will decrease your chances of getting a debilitating chronic disease like heart disease, stroke, diabetes or cancer. After all, the goal of being physically healthy is to live a long life whilst avoiding these pitfalls. 

I think people have forgotten that first line in #5, 'You are what you eat'.  This phase isn't new. I remember being in school some 50 years ago and reading the same thing. I think people use to pay more attention to what they ate. Today all we look for is convenience and price. Isn't that the real problem with our overweight population? We want to spend more time relaxing and less time worrying about our health or our appearance.

How I Plan Meals

I always start to plan meals the day I'm going to shop. I generally shop on Sunday morning, so before I go out I'll make up a meal plan for the coming week. It's might sound hard but breakfast, lunch and snacks are pretty easy, It's usually the same week after week. For me and my wife it's pretty simple, we don't buy a lot of complicated foods. What I mean is pre-made foods or processed foods. So I want Low-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt and frozen berries, eggs, low-fat milk and Oatmeal. I stay away from any berries that have syrup included, I just want plain berries. I also get a variety of fresh fruit, whatever is in season. If they have apples in June, be sure to read the small sticker that tells you what country the fruit comes from. When things like Apple are in the stores in June and you pick Apples in the fall, you have to wonder how old they are or where did they come from. I always stick to fruit from California or Florida or at least fruit from the U.S.  Harmful chemicals are used in other countries like in Central America by the big commercial growers to increase production. In the U.S. we outlawed this chemicals  several years ago.

Next is the snacks and drinks. This is pretty easy for me, we drink lots of water and we might add a little juice to flavor the water. I look for juice without added sugar, then I buy tea bags and coffee. If you like beer, lite beer has about 100 calories per bottle and if that fits into your food plan, okay, there's no added sugar in beer. Wine and hard alcohol has added sugar, but if you want hard liquor, tequila and vodka only have about 100 calories per drink. A good mixer for these alcohols is a carbonated water with no calories. I only buy un-popped popcorn, mixed nuts, seeds and for a treat, dark chocolate.

Dinner menus are the hardest I want to eat fish 3 times a week, poultry once a week and red meat about twice a month. The other days I try to go meatless. I try to buy mostly fresh vegetables, mostly organic and fill in with plain frozen vegetables. I like bread and rolls but it's that easy finding whole grain items. They are out there and there's more than ever before. I'm not talking about whole wheat, whole grain wheat or oats or barley, but whole grain. I buy gluten-free pasta, bread, bagels and pizza crusts. That way I don't have to search the shelves for non-enriched flour.  And for dessert we eat fruit. Don't forget fruits like grapes and pineapple, but again try to buy only what's grown in the U.S.

Before I go to work, while I'm having coffee, I plan dinner for that day. If there's something in the freezer I need I’ll take it out and put it in the refrigerator.  So I remember I always write down the menu and take it with me when I go shopping. If your organized enough to do this a day or two ahead then if you're missing anything from the menu you'll have time to pick it up. If you learn to stick to the planned menus then you can actually save money on food. It means a few more trips to the store, but the inventory of groceries around the house will start to shrink. This is a good thing and yes the kids need snacks, but this will give you the opportunity to make some healthy choices. When you wait until the last-minute to shop, you don’t have time to make the proper choices, you end up buying anything just to get out quick. I wish I could count the times I nearly got run over going to the checkout line.

Fruit is great snack food, it has sugar but its good sugar, its natural sugar. It's all the processed foods that are causing our health problems. Try to avoid processed food. If you saw the Today Show when a health guru was talking about the six meals a day plan, maybe some of you thought it sounded  crazy, but it's true. Never skip breakfast, but be careful that you’re eating the right thing. Eggs are great, but only one yolk, the rest whites. toast is good, but not white bread or bagels unless the whole grain, it's just empty calories, and fruit is okay.  It's very important to eat but eat good food and avoid food that doesn't have nutrition. Get something for your food dollar. Go back and review earlier posts where I discuss the six meal plan. It won't hurt to read it over again. There's a lot of truth in that post. Remember you're not eating to fill your stomach with things that taste good, you’re eating to give your body enough nutrition until you eat again.