Is The Time I Eat Really Important?

Watching when you eat, without necessarily changing what or how much, may yield big health benefits, including weight loss.

Although more research is needed, intriguing new findings in people and mice suggest that eating within a strict 8- to 12-hour time frame each day changes metabolism at the genetic level, lowering blood sugar and body weight, even without cutting calories.

Scientists think the changes may be powerful enough to lower the risks for cancer, heart disease, dementia, and diabetes.

The latest study on this phenomenon, called time-restricted eating, looked at the link between meal timing and blood sugar control in more than 2,200 women. The average age of women in the study was 47, and the average body mass index (BMI) was 28, making them overweight, but not Obese.

Poor blood sugar control is a risk factor for diabetes and cancer, among other things. Blood sugar that swings wildly before and after eating indicates that the body isn’t very sensitive to insulin, the hormone that signals cells to take in calories from food. That means more insulin has to be released from the pancreas to get the blood sugar into cells. The trouble is that extra insulin doesn’t just impact blood sugar. It also promotes the growth of cells -- including cancer cells. And over time, the body can’t keep up with the demand for more and more insulin. When that happens, blood sugar levels climb dangerously high, leading to diabetes.

The women in the study reported what and when they ate and gave blood samples. Researchers could see how high their blood sugar climbed after meals and how steady their blood sugar had stayed over the previous 2 to 3 months. About half the women reported not eating or drinking anything for at least 12 hours, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., for example. The other half fasted for less than 12 hours, eating both early and late.

“What we found, in general, [is] that women who fasted for longer nightly intervals had better blood sugar control than those who didn’t fast as long, and that was independent of other eating behaviors such as how many calories women were eating,” says study researcher Catherine Marinac, a doctoral candidate in public health at the University of California at San Diego.

It's a very interesting study of eating behavior and not calories. The whole idea of fasting everyday for 12 hours and not really watching your diet is very interesting. I'd like to see more research done on this. Maybe this is really the way to lose weight.

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. 

How Long Can I Live?

Or is the question, "How Long can I stay Healthy?" This is a post I found on the HealthDay site. Most of us want to live long enough to help your kids and grandkids and medicine will help you today. But what kind of retirement will you have. Will you be golfing or playing ball with your grandkids or pushing around a "walker" in an assisted living home.

Children of long-lived parents are less likely than others to die from heart disease in their 70s, new British research suggests. "We found that for each parent that lived beyond 70 years of age, the participants had a 20 percent lower chance of dying from heart disease." Specifically, the children of longer-lived parents had lower rates of vascular disease, heart failure, stroke, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, the study found. The findings aren't an excuse to turn into a binge-eating couch potato if your mother and father reached their 80s or 90s. Nor are they a sign that those whose parents died early should just give up. On the contrary, your decisions about your health can reverse trends toward the illnesses highlighted in the study, Pilling said.

"Though people with longer-lived parents are more likely to live longer themselves, there are lots of ways for those with shorter-lived parents to improve their health. People can really take their health into their own hands," he noted.

Indeed, the correlation between the lifespans of parents and children is actually fairly weak, said Kaare Christensen, a professor of epidemiology with the University of Southern Denmark. As a result, he said, "there is a lot of room for improvement." 

It's known that parents who live a long time are more likely to have kids who live a long time, but Pilling and his colleagues wanted to learn more about this connection -- such as why some people develop heart conditions in their 60s and others don't.

The link between long-lived parents and heart-healthier offspring held even after the researchers adjusted their statistics for factors such as education, age, weight and physical activity. According to the study, some researchers have made similar connections in the past, but they looked at smaller groups of people. 

How might genetics explain the lower risk of heart disease in kids of longer-lived parents? Your genetic inheritance from your parents seems to affect blood pressure, cholesterol levels, tobacco addiction, drug and alcohol dependence, and levels of obesity in the participants, Pilling said. So you can inherit your parents health problems. In other words, your health problems can be passed down to your children. But you can change those factors that you inherit by change what you eat and the way you live. 

"These are all factors that affect the risk of heart disease," he said.  "If you have a parent who died young, it is always good if it can be determined why he or she died very early and whether there is an inheritable disease for which there are treatments," Christensen said. But in general, he said, people whose parents died very early are "not generally doomed." That's because of the "low correlation"   between the lifespans of parents and their kids.

I believe that your children inherit your genes in whatever condition their in at the time of conception. I believe your genes will change during your life, depending on your condition. So if your overweight at the time of conception your child may also have that same gene. Of course, if both parents are overweight at the time of conception the child will have a much greater chance that he will suffer from the same obesity gene. Remember that your genes will change as you change. Your body is constantly evolving.

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. 

Dieting Has A New Meaning

The face of dieting is changing. For too many years we would diet, lose the weight, the weight would come back. Today diet company's and the diet guru's are taking a different approach. They have finally saw the light and they know the public doesn't believe the claims of quick weight loss and permanent weight loss any longer.

So now, the guru's are preaching reform. Change your life and be a healthier person. Live a healthy lifestyle and you'll lose weight. "Eat clean", that's the new catch phrase.

Sounds simple, ya. It's not that easy to forget everything you were taught as a child. To learn to like different foods. We are a product of our parents and other members of our family and if we have weight problems today it might be because of the way we grew up. So now as an adult, why is it that we are first realizing now at this stage of our lives, that we need to lose weight. Or maybe we knew about this problem earlier as a teen or even earlier in grade school.

You might know that today pre-school and even grade school kids are not as heavy as they were 10 years ago. Things are changing and young parents are making that change. Kids under 10 years are more physically fit. They are more active and I think that some are starting to eat better. So there is hope that our population will become healthier.

But for now we have to fix our own lives. If we truly want to be healthier we have to be more active and we have to eat better. Just going on another diet is probably not going to work. Oh sure, you might lose a few pounds but can you keep off the weight after you stop dieting. You see, there lies the problem. I'm one of those people who believe "diets don't work". It's a little like smoking because food can be additive with all the sugars, salt and other chemicals that manufactures use. Even when you buy produce or meat, chemicals are used to enrich the land where they grow the produce and chemical hormones are used in animals and poultry to stimulate growth. It's hard to get away from addictive food, but there's new foods coming out, like organic produce and free range poultry and hormone free dairy and beef.

I know what everyone is thinking, "those foods are expensive". Yes, I know, but eating healthy is more than just eating healthy foods, eating healthy also means that you have to cut back on the amount of food you eat. For families this won't be easy. Families have to agree that they want to eat healthier, and that means cutting out the snack food and the high-calorie drinks. After that's done the cost of the healthy foods won't change your food bill.

There's a lot of benefits to eating healthier, especially for kids. They won't be sick as much so they won't miss as many school days. They'll do better in school because they'll be more alert. And being more active in their lives will help them lose weight. For the adults, you will be more alert and sharper and being more active will help you lose weight. You'll be more productive at work and at home.  And being a good role model for your kids will get them motivated.

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. 

How Healthy Are You?

Surprisingly Simple Longevity Tests

Your physical condition is a good indicator of "how long you'll live". Most people think they're in better shape than they really are. As a result, they're usually shocked to find out the results. Try it for yourself.

No one can predict exactly how long you'll live, but researchers have devised some surprisingly simple tests that are strongly correlated with a risk of early death - or a longer life - in the years to come.  Here's a look at some basic ways scientists are attempting to assess your physical capability and the associated chances of living longer.

1.   Sitting-Rising Test:  Developed in the late 1990s by Brazilian scientist Claudio Gil Soares de Araujo at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, this test simply involves going from a standing position in a small (2 meters by 2 meters) area to a sitting position on the floor, and then rising again.

Subjects are scored according to how many supports they require to perform the cycle: a point lost for using a hand, forearm, or knee, for example, to either sit or stand.  Another half-point is deducted for generally unstable execution.  A total of 10 points can be achieved for each full cycle.

In a 2014 paper published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, Araujo and others discovered that older adults had a 5 times greater risk of mortality during the 6.3-year follow-up period, if they scored only 0-3 points on the test, relative to the top-performers scoring between 8-10 points.  A total of 2002 adults between the ages of 51 and 80 years participated in the study.

Araujo's team writes that the Sitting-Rising Test (SRT) is a simple gauge of musculoskeletal fitness, with the capacity to predict mortality among community-dwelling adults in this age range.

Another version is the Chair Rise Speed Test, which calculates how many times you can rise from a chair and sit back down again, within a minute.

 A 2014 paper published in the British Medical Journal compared the fastest sitters with the slowest among 2766 53-year old adults. At baseline, women performed anywhere from 21 stands/minute on the low end to almost 37 stands/minute.  The range among men was just under 22 stands/minute for the low performers, to 39 stands/minute at the high end.

After 13 years, those of either gender who performed poorest at the outset had more than twice the risk of death from any cause when compared with those with a higher chair rise speed at the start of the study.

2.    Grip Strength:   The strength of your hand grip is typically measured using an electronic dynamometer.  In numerous studies, a stronger grip has been linked with lower all-cause mortality, especially among older adults. In the 2014 UK study of adults aged 53, women's grip strength ranged from 21kg (46lb) to almost 34kg (75lb), while the men squeezed from 36kg (79lb) to 54.5kg (120lb).  Averaged across both sexes, and taking other risk factors like body mass index, smoking status, and physical activity levels into account, the 53-year olds with the poorest grip strength had anywhere from a 29% to 98% greater risk of death from any cause during the 13 years of follow-up.

3.    Standing Balance Time:  The same 2014 BMJ paper examined how long its subjects could stand on one foot with their eyes closed.

 The resulting times were short, with a maximum average of just 19 seconds for men, and 10 seconds for women.  The good news: achieving simply those brief standing balance times was linked with lower mortality.  Poor performers of the standing balance test -  clocking in at just 3 seconds for both women and men - had a 2.5 greater chance of dying from any cause, during the 13-year study.

4.    Sitting Height:  If you think your overall height is the only tallness measure researchers are interested in, you're wrong.  Sitting height, an anthropometric measurement that compares the relative proportions of the torso and legs, has been linked in Western populations to the incidence of heart disease. Greater leg length (and less relative sitting height) has been viewed as an indicator of better childhood health, which may protect against age-related illnesses like heart disease and diabetes in adulthood.  

Data on other ethnic populations are less clear, however; a 2007 Chinese study found that greater sitting height was linked to more diabetes and abnormal lipid levels (dyslipidemia), whereas a 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology found no relationship between height (including sitting height) with mortality among 136,202 adults in the Shanghai Women's and Men's Health Studies.

5.    Gait Speed:  Can how fast you naturally walk say anything about your longevity?  Yes - according to epidemiologists from the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere, in their 2011 paper published in JAMA. The researchers examined 9 separate studies involving a total of 34,485 participants and found that among both sexes, gait speed was linked with survival at all ages. A natural gait speed of 0.8 meters/second (about 1.8 miles/hour) corresponded with average life expectancy for each age; walking faster than that as a natural pace was linked with better than average longevity.

Since walking requires energy, balance, and engages multiple organ systems to work together, the researchers suggest slower speed may indicate hidden illness or poor overall conditioning.

6.    Waist to Height Ratio:  Some researchers believe that waist to height ratio - calculated by dividing the waist circumference in centimeters by a person's height (also measured in centimeters) is a better predictor of disease than weight or body mass index.  The advice is simple: keep your abdominal fat down, and make sure your waist measurement is not greater than half your height.

Bottom line:  These tests are simple tools to measure the statistical probability of early death, as indicators of overall health and conditioning.  You can improve your own odds of living a long, healthy life by staying physically active, eating an anti-aging diet, staying active within your social circle, keeping stress at bay, not smoking, and drinking only in moderation.

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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, BN.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. 

Finding The Right Weight Loss Program

Advertisers bombard you with weight loss advertising. It's a huge industry that's looking

for a piece of your money. Don't swallow everything you hear or read, most of it is just

Hype. Most weight loss plans give you quick results but when 100 dieters were

interviewed one year later, almost 90% had put the weight back on.

Finding a reliable weight loss program is important. More than a third of people in the U.S.

are considered obese. And it's not just adults. The CDC says 1 in 6 kids are dealing with

the condition, too. Weighing too much puts you at risk for many serious health problems,

including diabetes and heart disease.

"Eat less and exercise more" has always been the golden rule for dropping pounds. But how do you really accomplish that? Here are the five must-haves in a weight loss program, according to the researchers at Johns Hopkins.

1) Plenty of interaction and support. You want ongoing contact with the program's support team. Researchers recommend at least 14 sessions over 6 months. This might be in person or by phone or by email. "Support is so critical in helping people through the weight loss process," Gudzune says.

2) Diet changes that are backed by science. "Things like the Paleo diet are very hot right now but haven't been studied with their effects on weight loss," Gudzune says. You want an approach that has solid evidence to support it works. This might be a low-calorie eating plan or meal replacements, or a well-studied diet for weight loss, like Atkins, she says.

3) Exercise encouragement. Opt for a program with some type of plan to get you moving more. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate activity (like walking) each week. You can divvy that up however you like. Keep in mind that exercise is key if you want to stay at your lighter weight once you've dropped pounds, but doctors say it's hard to lose weight with just exercise alone.

4) Behavior strategies. Your program should encourage things like weighing yourself, meal planning, or tracking your food or exercise.

5) Approved meds only. Steer clear of programs that push fat burners or other supplements that aren't FDA-approved for weight loss. The FDA offers a list of dangerous weight loss products. You can sign up for email alerts, too. 

Weight loss is about changing what you eat and less about how much you eat. If you eat fresh, healthy food I think you can eat all you want. Fresh, healthy food is not processed, it's fresh, not frozen vegetables, fruit, lean meat, mostly fish,  brown rice, and drink mostly water, tea, or coffee. Don't add anything with calories and avoid dairy.  

Follow a diet like this and don't go back to your old ways. Never cheat, no cheat days allowed, and increase the walking and you will lose fat. The more you walk the faster you'll lose fat. I believe the more a person walks the longer they will live.

If you really want to lose your body fat then 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. 

The Argument Against Cheat Days

So cheat days sound like a good thing, right? Not so fast. The logic behind these days has more than a few flaws, and it’s due to the psychology and physiology behind them.

The Name Is to Blame

The trouble with cheat days starts with the wording.

“The very phrase ‘cheat day’ sets up enjoying a meal as something forbidden,” says Sondra Kronberg, R.D., executive director of the Eating Disorder Treatment Collaborative. “Separating foods into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ categories encourages you to associate eating with guilt and shame.” This means that instead of enjoying everything we eat, we feel bad about ourselves when we eat something we consider “bad.”

What’s more, when we deem certain foods “bad” or “cheating,” the negative name doesn’t help us pump the breaks.

“When a food is off-limits, it can develop a specific, emotional charge,” explains Melainie Rogers, RD, a nutritionist and eating disorder specialist. “You begin obsessing over it, fantasizing about, and looking forward to that ‘indulge day’ all week. Then, when you finally have access to it, you overeat.”

On the flipside, labeling foods as “good” or “healthy” can also backfire. Science shows when we think something is healthy, we’re not concerned with portion control and thus overdo it—whether it’s a “normal” day or a “cheat” day. Yes, there can be too much of a good thing.

Along these same lines, thinking of a meal or snack as “healthy” can have a surprising affect on our hunger. Studies show merely considering items we put in our mouth as “healthy” can literally make us feel hungrier—especially if we select a “good-for-you” item out of obligation over something we’re truly hungry for.

I want to add something, if your labeling your food you will start to recent the "good food". You will begin to crave more comfort food. The food you crave is not really "bad" food but pizza, burgers, fries, cheesy mashed potatoes, etc. just have too many calories and not enough nutrition. If you make your own hamburger on your grill and you use a healthy bun, and you put lettuce and tomato on it, I don't see anything wrong with that. Once a month I eat beef, but I cook my own. If you make your own food you know what's in it and you'll eat healthier and consume less calories.

Attack of the Calories

Folks who assume they can compensate for giving into temptations—say, by holding themselves back on all days except their cheat days—are actually less likely to reach their dietary goals. This is because they’re more likely to consume a greater number of calories, not just on their cheat day but on the days following it.

Restricting ourselves throughout the week and then slamming our bodies with sugar and fat once our cheat day rolls around, can have “a massive impact on blood sugar and insulin levels,” Rogers says. “You’ll wake up the next day craving more sugars and simple carbs, and you’ll find yourself feeling pretty ragged. And if you repeatedly increase your caloric intake above baseline, you may inadvertently end up gaining more weight over time.”

Cravings serve as a sign that your nutritional approach isn’t sound. “Most cravings come from overly restricting your food intake, using food as a drug, or over exercising,” Kronberg says.

A cheat day use to mean that for dinner on Sunday you could eat dessert. You could have an extra 200 or 300 calories, but today it seems to be a day you can go crazy and stuff yourself all day long. That's why I don't like "cheat days". Years ago when someone would diet they would restrict their calories and pretty much starve themselves, but today you quit doing that. Today when we want to lose weight we stop eating "comfort food" and we eat start eat healthier. We eat enough to keep from having craving but we are eating healthy and that's how we lose weight.

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. 

The 5 Meal-A-Day Diet Plan

I understand the concept: Five small meals a day takes the edge off your appetite, evens out blood sugar levels, and keeps your energy steady. But I confess: Who has time to eat this way?

Although my fitness trainer encourages me to eat healthy food every few hours, my meals usually look like this: coffee, a bit more coffee, lunch at 3 p.m., dinner at 9 p.m. I start over again the next morning.

When I decided to change this habit, and the routine of eating the way you eat is just a habit that you can change, I found that doing these five things helped:

1. Plan ahead. Five meals a day equals breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks. To do this right, you need to plan what you’ll eat every day for each “meal.” And you need to schedule eating every 2 to 3 hours.The trick is to even out the calories so you eat 300 calories each time your eat. All five meals should be the same size. Larger meals will elevate your blood sugars or glucose level and cause food cravings later. So whether it's a meal or a snack it needs to be the same size, the same amount of calories. 
2. Stock up. Face it: You’re going to grab whatever food is closest. So stock up on veggies, fruit, healthy carbs like whole grains, lean proteins, and low-fat dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and cottage cheese.
3. Go for taste. Choose snack foods that will sustain you and taste good. Remember, healthy food can be satisfying. Mixed nuts are my favorite but for a morning snack fruit or greek yogurt is better.
4. Whip up a smoothie. Blend fruit, milk, yogurt, powdered protein and a little honey for a sweet taste. It's a filling snack packed with vitamins, fiber, protein, and calcium. It  might sound crazy but I put peanut butter in and I don't use fruit, I use vegetables like spinach leaves and if I don't want milk, I'll put water. There's dozens of ways to make a protein shake, you can find recipes on the internet.
5. Combine carbs and protein to stay full longer. Try whole wheat toast with peanut butter or a hard-boiled egg; whole-grain pasta with olive oil and cheese; or oatmeal with fruit, milk, and honey. Or make yourself a big pot of soup that includes pasta, beans and chicken to heat up for lunches or snacks.

If your someone who starts the day very early you might want to do 6 meals a day. Make that first meal the first hour your up and finish eating 3 hours before bed. If you have to push the meals closer together, remember to cut the calories a little like 250 each instead of 300.

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

Gettingtoahealthyweight.wordpress.com

idropped40pounds.wordpress.com

howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com

blogonweight.blogspot.com

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of websites looking for the material you want.

My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

My second e-book is available in the same stores. And on smashwords.com.  Just type in the search line “getting to a healthy weight”.