How Healthy Are You?

We all take our health for granted. We have that attitude if it's not broken don't fix it. So if we feel as good as we did yesterday we must be all right. 

Most of us think that we're in good enough shape. We tend to judge ourselves by others about the same age. Actually, that's probably not good. We tend to judge ourselves by others who aren't in good condition. I don't know anyone who compares himself with the 80 year olds that Golf three times a week. If you don't know anyone like that it might be that you don't live in Arizona or Florida.

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. 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.

Why is this important to know? Maybe some of us should be taking early retirement. Yes, you will get more money per month from social security if you wait till 67 to collect, but are you going to live that long?

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 which 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 metres/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 centimetres by a person's height (also measured in centimetres) 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 an 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.

Medical science knows little about how long human should live. They can only go by past records. But they do predict that humans will live longer in the future because we are learning more about the body and what we need to do to take care of ourselves. The benefits of living a healthy lifestyle will be to age slower and to stay young longer and if that leads to a longer life, okay, but for me, I want to enjoy my days as long as a can. 

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, 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. 

Want To Start Living Healthy

You can stop getting colds twice a year, stop feeling run-down and tired. You can have more energy, lose body fat and be a happier person just by changing your diet. Sounds crazy? It the truth.

The science is clear: Eating the right foods can lead to a longer, healthier life.

Yet some people, as they get older, find it harder to eat right. This can happen for many reasons: Maybe they don’t feel like eating. Maybe they have trouble cooking or eating. Maybe they don’t know what’s healthy.

Maybe they do and they just don’t like the idea of kale.

“You know what? You can live a long, healthy life and never eat a piece of kale,” says Cheryl Rock, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

She’s all for finding food that you like -- healthy food -- and building on that.

“If you’re eating foods you like, then you’re more likely to stick with it. You won’t force it down for four days and then go out for a double cheeseburger,” Rock says.

It’s more than just finding the right foods. Michele Bellantoni, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that you need to eat them in the right amounts, too.

“It looks like the optimal calories [for most older adults] will be 1,800 [a day],” she says. “And for successful aging, we think about the entire body, rather than just specific organs.”

Many foods are especially good for certain parts of your body. Bellantoni suggests starting with 1,800 calories, then splitting that up with proteins for your muscles, calcium for your bones, and a basic heart-healthy diet.

That approach can do a lot of things for you:

Make sure you have salmon and other fish like trout and herring. They’re high in omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce the risk of heart disease and slightly lower blood pressure, among other benefits. Shoot for two servings a week.

You should also know that the fiber in veggies -- also found in whole grains -- helps lower your odds of cardiovascular disease. It also helps digestion and regularity, which often are a problem for older adults.

Remember that no one food is going to help your heart, any more than just one would help your brain or your bones or your muscles or any other part of your anatomy.

You need a complete, healthy diet.

“If you’re eating a lot of fish but, in addition to that, you’re living on ice cream and candy and stuff like that,” Rock says, “it’s not going to save you.”

It Can Help Your Brain

A loss of memory, a big worry among some older adults, has been linked to, among other things, a lack of vitamin B12. You can get that in:

• Meats
• Fish
• Milk products
• Some breakfast cereals

Alzheimer’s disease has been linked to chronic inflammation, which can be caused by foods like white bread, french fries, red meat, sugary beverages, and margarine.

The science is still emerging on the relationship between some foods and brain health. Check with your doctor or dietitian.

“There was some issue with the Food and Drug Administration disallowing food claims for memory loss,” says Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington.

“I would not want to identify a specific food that prevents memory loss. I probably would tell someone that if you want to be functioning well, then some fruits and antioxidants will do better for you than another slice of cake.”

Antioxidants, found in many vegetables and in fruits like blueberries, help reduce inflammation. They also help you get rid of damaging stuff created when you convert food into energy.

It’s important to realize that good brain function may be as much about what you don’t eat as what you do.

“Your brain runs on blood flow, just like your heart,” says Rock. “So if you’re eating a lot of saturated fats, it makes it less likely that you’ll have those nice clean arteries to supply that brain tissue with blood.”

Make sure you have tomatoes, blueberries, green leafy veggies like spinach and kale, turmeric, and nuts (especially walnuts).

You should also know that those omega-3 fatty acids, found in salmon and other oily fish, are inflammation fighters.

Okay, you might not know what inflammation really is. You don't have to know. All you need to know is that inflammation is what ages your body and many people right now are walking around with a body that's 20 years older than they really are. In Great Britain doctors tested hundreds of people all age 38 and found that some body a body older than their real age and some had bodies younger. 

The doctors determined that some of the aging process is because of DNA but most of the aging process is due to lifestyle. How active you are and how you eat.

Eating the right food can help your muscles

They’re always breaking down and getting built back up again. That’s just the way your body works. As you get older, you need more protein for that rebuilding process.

“So if you don’t eat enough protein, you’ll be breaking down more than you’re rebuilding,” Rock says.

Make sure you have low-fat or fat-free yogurt, cheese, milk, lean meats, fish, other seafood, and beans.

You should also know that eggs are an excellent source of protein and don’t have the saturated fats that meat have. Don’t worry about the cholesterol in your eggs, Rock says. It’s not absorbed well by your body, anyway.

It Can Help Your Bones

Older adults need calcium, because it promotes healthy bone growth. Getting enough vitamin D is important, too, because that helps you absorb calcium.

It’s not always easy.

“The risk for low vitamin D in older adults, that’s kind of a challenge, because it’s not like there’s lots of foods that are high in vitamin D,” says Stephen Anton, from the Department of Aging and Geriatric Research at the University of Florida.

Calcium is also difficult for many older people to absorb, yet too much can cause constipation. It’s something you need to discuss with your doctor or dietitian.

Make sure you have yogurt, low-fat cheeses, and milk for calcium. Few foods naturally carry vitamin D. Calcium and vitamin D are in fortified foods.

You should also know that in addition to being a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, canned salmon is full of calcium and has some vitamin D.

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 Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?

Learn how to get in shape, lose body fat and become a heathier person without spending a lot of time and money by reading my new e-book.

 How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?. This e-book features my extensive research on weight loss, as well as my journey towards fitness. Grab a copy of my e-book now and improve your health, have more energy, and be a happier person with a positive attitute. Available in online book stores now. Amazon, B&N, iBooks for $3.99

Losing weight wasn’t my main goal when he was growing up. Always tipping the scales between being chubby and thin, I never really felt the need to watch my weight. It wasn't until I became a senior that I realized how hard it was for me to carry around that extra, unwanted body fat. I decided to change my lifestyle, and I lost a lot of weight ever since. I'm proud to say that I weighs the same now as I did in high school.

I weighed 220 pounds 30 years ago and today I weigh 158. No expensive equipment, no diet pills, no surgery, and the gym membership I had only gave me temporary weight loss.

I made up my mind after 10 years of yoyoing up and down that I had to find a way to lose the extra fat for good. I read a lot of posts on a lot of websites and decided the only way was to change my diet. A normal guy will burn about 1800 calories a day if he spends his work day on his feet and does 30-minute workouts every day. 

So from research, I found the 30% of the calories are from fat and your body doesn’t care where it gets the fat. That means my body will burn about 550 calories from fat everyday. So if I eat less fat the 500 calories the body will have to get the extra fat from my stored fat. 

I decided I’d have to help the process along so I started an interval training program. It’s easy and it didn’t cost anything. I jog for 10 minutes to increase my heart rate and then walk for a few minutes to cool down and then jog for 5 minutes and walk for 5 minutes and then jog for 5 and walk for 5 and keep going like that as long as I could. If it gets too hard just walk more and jog less, but try to workout at least 30 minutes total.

Changing my diet was much harder. I had to start over. I gave way all the high-calorie food and drinks in the house. I went to the market and bought fresh foods for two days. All I was eating was fruit, whole grain bread and pasta, vegetables, fresh fish some fresh meat, water, tea, and coffee. For snacks, I bought the salted peanuts you had to shell.

The good news was I could eat all I wanted if I stick to the fresh foods and nuts. When I start the diet I stopped drinking alcohol, that’s important. After a few weeks and 10 pounds, I would have one glass of red wine occasionally. It works and I lost the fat. I did add a little variety to my diet after I lost the weight, but I can’t go back to my old way. No more processed foods of bake goods with enriched or processed flour, no high calorie drinks and very little dairy. 

The upside is that I love being 158 pounds again, I jog now, ride my bike, do Yoga, swim laps and lift weights. I have so much energy I can even work out after dinner.  At 71, I’m in good shape and I don’t take prescription drugs. Life could”t be better.

Post Thanksgiving

A holiday like Thanksgiving will motivate anyone to go out and buy a treadmill or some other piece or workout equipment but don’t. You don’t have to spend money to loss weight. 

What you eat is what raises your level of body fat or lowers it. 70% of your weight problems are caused from the foods and the drinks you consume. The other 30% is about your activity levels. 

Unfortunately, as you gain weight your activity levels drop off causing you to burn less calories. But you can reverse that by changing your diet. Eating healthy foods, drinking more water will make a big difference.

FYI, the average North American consumes about 3500 calories a day. Twice what the body needs and half of those 3500 calories are from the liquids we consume. Did you ever realize how much money you would save if you stopped drinking calories. 

Healthy foods are usually a little more expensive but after you cut out all the can and bottled drinks and all the snack foods, and by the way that’s where all those excess calories come from, you will have extra money for the fresh fruits and vegetables your body needs. 

Forget eating what taste good, and start eating body what your needs. 

The healthy food pyramid above are all the choices you need to stay healthy and loss weight. Avoid foods that come in a can or box and stick to whole foods. 

It’s the carbs we get from manufactured foods that add the pounds. That also includes anything from the bakery, There is no bread or lunch meat on the food pyramid.

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information.

Checkout my other blogs: 

blogonweight.blogspot.com

howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com

But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

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. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.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. 

It's The Holidays, It's Okay To Gain A Couple Pounds

It's a very special time for every family. A season of celebration. I hope you can spend some time with your family, even if it's on the phone.

Celebrating has always involved food and drink, it's a tradition that has gone on for thousands of years and I'm sure it will continue on, but we don't have to pig-out.

Yes, you have to taste the important traditional dishes that your friends or relatives have taken hours to prepare, but use a small plate, take small amounts and try and avoid the sugary stuff. Remember you can't work-off a lot of calories.

A one hour workout for an experienced athlete will only burn about 300 calories. For a person with less athletic experience you might only burn 100 calories. On a festive holiday like Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year it's easy to consume 3000 to 4000 calories between all the food, snacks, and drinks for the day. That kind of consumption can increase your weight by 2 or 3 pounds at least.

So if you can hold down your calorie count to say 2000 calories which should only be a few hundred more than normal, you should be able to work off those extra calories in a couple of day.

The problem we all have this time of year is the continual party, one after the other with very little time inbetween to recoup. Than there's the shopping for gifts. We go after work and spend a couple hours trying to find gifts and no time to eat, so we eat in restaurants with friends which involves more celebrating and more calories.

Did you know that the hoiday season is the busiest time of the year for restaurants. It's not unusual for a family to eat out 4 or 5 times a week during the holidays. So if you add up all the meals we eat in restaurants and all the social events we have to attend, it's no wonder that the average adult will gain between 5 and 10 pounds during the holidays.

This is the typical weight gain you have to avoid. It can take months to recoup, if you can recoup. Most of us will try to diet in January. We'll lose some weight but not much, because the winters are cold and in the cold weather we tend to eat more comfort food and that's high-calorie food.

Eating the wrong foods even in small portions will keep you from losing weight. You can't exercise away a bad diet. Once the weather starts to warm up most of us find it easier to cut back on food, but by that time it's hard to break the bad habits we had during the winter. We will trim down a little because we are more active in the spring and summer because the days are longer and we have more time to work outside.

I know all about this life cycle because that is the way my life was. All the weight I would gain during the cold months never quit left me. I always ended up one or two pounds heavier at the end of the year. Of course, we never remember how much we weighed the year before, so we don't realize we keep gaining weight every year. That cycle is call "creeping obesity". The one or two pounds you gain every year and don't even realize it. Then when you get to be 50, you wonder how you gained all that weight. On average, a 50 year old male will weigh between 40 and 60 more than he did on his 21st birthday. The more you weigh when your 21, the more you'll gain over the years. This doesn't hold true in all cases, it's an average over the entire population, some people are very athletic and never gain weight. I weigh the same today as I weighed when I was 17, of course I spent years yo-yoing from 220 pounds down to 160.

Be mindful what you eat. Keeping your body is good condition is your responsibility. It would be better for you and better for your health if you never gained any extra weight. When an adult gains weight they are adding body fat. Not good. The human body is only built to carry a small amount of body fat, like 15% of your weight. It's there in case of emergency. When you can't find food your body will still have fat to survive on. But because of the American diet we are adding too much fat and it only causes health problems.

Controlling your weight and keeping your body in good condition is your responsibility. Your doctor can only relieve your symptons. Give a pills or repair a broken bone. Your body has to heal itself and your have to feed it the nutrition it needs to do that.

If you really want to lose your body fat than look for my Ebooks at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet.

There’s two ebooks.  “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 Ebook. 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 ebook is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.

Retirement Can Be A Positive Thing For Your Health

Although aging may mean more physical problems, retirement can help people lead healthier lives, a new study from Australia suggests. 

Researchers found that when folks retire they tend to increase their physical activity, sit less and sleep more soundly. 

"Our study paints a positive picture of retirement," said lead researcher Dr. Melody Ding, a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health. "Retirees [in the study] were acquiring a healthier lifestyle. Factors that may have contributed to this include the availability of time to be physically active and removal from sedentary jobs and work-related stress." 

Whether or not these results would be the same in the United States isn't clear. "Retirement and the health benefits of retirement could be very context-specific," she said.

"Life expectancy in Australia -- 82.1 years -- is a few years longer than that in the United States -- 78.7, and there are also different social welfare and health care systems," she said. "All of these factors may limit the 'generalizability' of our findings to the U.S." 

The study tracked about 25,000 Australians. The average age of those still working was just over 54. During slightly more than three years of follow-up, about 3,100 of the study participants retired. 

After retirement, study participants reported increased physical activity levels of about an hour and half a week. Retirees also sat around less -- cutting their sedentary time down by just over an hour each day. And, compared to when they were working, those who retired slept an average of 11 minutes more each day, the research revealed.

The study authors also noted that about half of the women smokers quit after retirement. 

No significant link was found between retirement status and alcohol use or eating fruit and vegetables. 

The average age for retirement in the United States is 62, according to a 2014 Gallup poll. Ding said the average retirement age in Australia is just over 63 years. 

"I think it is important to plan for retired life with a positive mindset," she said. "Some people get anxious about retirement because they may lose a sense of purpose." When people stop working, they sit less, move more and get a better night's sleep, study says.

She recommended pursuing hobbies, volunteering or spending time with loved ones as ways to keep a sense of purpose. She added that retirees might incorporate a social component into a healthy lifestyle, such as catching up with a friend during a walk.

One study participant -- an 89-year-old retired bank manager -- told the researchers, "I have more time in my retirement and I am happily busy. I keep fit by dancing four times a week and walking." 

To keep his mind active, this retiree teaches computer skills. The message on his answering machine: "I am out enjoying my retirement." 

Rachel Johnson is a professor of nutrition at the University of Vermont. "It was encouraging that many of the retirees in this study opted to spend time being more physically active," said Johnson, who is also chair of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee. "Being active is important to preventing heart disease and stroke." 

The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes per week of vigorous exercise (or a combination of moderate and vigorous activity) to improve overall heart health. 

Older adults will also experience benefits if they divide their exercise time into two or three segments of 10 to 15 minutes a day, Johnson said. 

She also suggested that older people try these tips to get and keep active:

• Walk a dog.
• Walk at the mall when the weather is too hot or too cold.
• Walk, jog in place or use the treadmill at a gym while you watch your favorite 30-minute show.
• Park the car far from your destination and walk.
• Take the stairs.
• Dance.
• Trade after-dinner dessert for an after-dinner walk.

The Doctor added that retirement is a good time for doctors to talk to their patients about making positive lifestyle changes that could add years to their life. 

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 Dash Diet Explained

I like this diet because it's not temporary, like the Mediterranean diet, it's a meal plan you can follow for the rest of your life. If you notice with both these plans  fish is the main source of meat. Plant protein is very important and easy on the dairy. Do some research for yourself, these plans are the way to a healthy life and the best way to lose body fat without starving.

The DASH diet took the top spot overall for the sixth straight year in the U.S. News & World Report annual diet rankings, released Tuesday.

This year, the publication rated 38 diet plans in all -- three more than in 2015 -- with rankings based on reviews from a panel of experts. Two of the new additions ranked highly: the MIND diet, which focuses on boosting brain health, and the Fertility diet, which aims to help women conceive faster but has been shown to benefit others as well. 

The rankings also added a new category, Best Diets for Fast Weight Loss. "We recognize dieters may have short-term weight goals and need options to accomplish that in a healthy way," says Angela Haupt, a senior health editor at U.S. News.

DASH (dietary approaches to stop hypertension) was developed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to help people prevent high blood pressure. The plan focuses on eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains while lowering salt. Besides being named Best Diet Overall, DASH also got first place in the category of Best Diets for Healthy Eating.

Weights Watchers won first place in the Best Weight Loss Diets category. The Weight Watchers and Mayo Clinic plans tied for first place in the Best Commercial Weight Loss Diet category, with Jenny Craig coming in next.

For Best Overall, the MIND diet came in second after DASH, tying with TLC. MIND combines features of the DASH and Mediterranean plans, aiming to boost brain health. TLC stands for Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes and aims to lower cholesterol through diet, exercise, weight loss, and not smoking.

For fast weight loss, the HMR (Health Management Resources) and Biggest Loser plans tied for first place. HMR is a low-calorie plan that includes meal-replacement shakes and emphasizes plenty of fruits and vegetables. The Biggest Loser diet has you eat regular meals with lean protein, fruits, and vegetables, keep a food journal, and control your portions, along with physical activity.

For the Easiest to Follow category, Weight Watchers, Fertility, and MIND tied for first.

In the Best for Healthy Eating group, DASH came in first, followed by TLC and Mediterranean, a way of eating rather than a formal diet plan that emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and moderate alcohol.

For those with diabetes, the Fertility diet, surprisingly, was first. The diet focuses on changes that are healthy for everyone, like cutting down on red meat and getting protein from nuts and vegetables. DASH and Biggest Loser tied for second place in this category.

For Best Diets for Heart Disease, Ornish, TLC, and DASH took the first three spots, respectively. The Ornish diet is very low-fat, with 10% of calories from fat, and it encourages exercise. It can be tailored to goals such as reversing heart disease, diabetes, or losing weight.

The Mediterranean Diet, Flexitarian (avoiding meat most of the time), and Ornish plans took top spots for Best Plant-Based Diets.

At the Bottom

Meanwhile, the Whole30 diet -- a 30-day program that prohibits legumes, grains, dairy, alcohol, added sugar, and processed food -- ranked at the bottom of the list.

"The Whole30 program is extremely restrictive," Haupt says. "...there's no 'cheating' -- not even a splash of milk in your coffee. Our health experts say that restriction is unnecessary and potentially unhealthy."

Melissa Hartwig, co-creator of the Whole30, says the diet is "designed as a 30-day 'reset,' not a 365-day lifestyle or even a diet. ...The point is to use those 30 days to eliminate foods that can cause digestive and inflammatory issues, and then re-introduce certain food groups one at a time to identify which ones make someone feel badly, so they can make informed choices for themselves going forward. Regardless of the results of any one survey, we believe eating real, whole foods, including [a] wide variety of vegetables and heart-healthy fats, is always a good thing.''

Independent Perspectives

"The list of best diets matches what we as [dietitians] RD's recommend -- choose diet plans that are sustainable, flexible, and enjoyable,'' says Connie Diekman, RD, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. "Weight loss is just one part of a healthy weight. Keeping weight off is the important part. And the top diets here make healthy eating sustainable."

Quick-fix eating plans, she says, are not about "achieving a healthier muscle-to-fat ratio. They are about fitting into a dress or winning a bet -- not health promoting.'' She says the list is ''a good reminder to focus on the real goal, lowering body fat while building lean mass.''

For six years now "The Dash Diet" has ranked #1 as the best overall meal plan for healthy living.
It's also a reminder that there's no one perfect diet, says Jennifer Arussi, RD, a dietitian in Los Angeles who also reviewed the report. She is not surprised that the DASH diet got the top spot. "This research-based diet clearly demonstrates its ability to significantly reduce blood pressure with the added benefit of reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke."

Two other plans that got high marks, HMR and Weight Watchers, she says, both emphasize group support and attendance, and both these things ''have been shown in the literature to predict and accelerate weight loss," Arussi says.

Have the right meal plan is the best way to succeed in your weight loss journey. But you can't get discouraged because your plan isn't working. Not all plan work for all people, so pick a new plan. 

So advice for you. Stay away from the pre-made meals, those meals in a box. If you notice all these diets are based on fresh foods. I had to get used to shopping 3 times a day.

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.