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Decider

Don't Worry, A Rom-Com Leading Lady's Diet Will Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Her Decider So busy she could never sneak a snack when she's working. She enjoys her meals, but the bottom line is that they are purely utilitarian to her. Please, do not get me started on the only eating brown M&Ms garbage theory this film put out into the world ...

Originally posted here:
Don't Worry, A Rom-Com Leading Lady's Diet Will Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Her - Decider

The last few weeks, I have been noticing the bulge. My shirts dont fit well anymore and I have really been thinking about cutting back on the food and being more active.

The problem, I love food. Just like most people that have weight issues, I cannot say no to food. The last few weeks, I have told myself nearly every day that I need to start thinking about losing weight. Then, I remember that I have a raspberry cream cheese pie in the fridge.

This pie is pretty amazing. It has a graham cracker crust, a gooey cream cheese center and a raspberry gelatin top. To top it all off, it is covered with whipped cream. Steph doesnt like anything that tastes like raspberry, so this pie has been all mine. Ive been quickly devouring it every night before bed.

There are specific foods in my life that bring me over to the dark side. Simple things like desserts with raspberry, macaroni and cheese and Dr. Pepper. I am currently kicking the Dr. Pepper, but everything else has been fair game.

All of these temptations are what makes dieting suck. The worst part about it, it seems like everyone else is trying to foil your plans. When I was in college, I was holding pretty strong on my diet for about four months. One weekend when I came home, I actually had to argue with family so I didnt have to eat a piece of banana bread.

I have to admit, it was really hard to do.

I also hate all of the vegetables you have to eat, all of the workouts and all of the preparation it requires.

Behind all of these excuses is stress. I have a little birdy telling me that my life is already too stressful to add all of these new things on top of it. On top of that, I eat whenever I am stressed. In my mind, I think I deserve this piece of pie at the end of the day for what I have went through.

Ive begun to wonder if the stress in our lives is why diets dont work. Instead of dealing with what is stressing me out, I decide to pull out that pie, grab a blanket and watch one of my favorite TV shows.

When I look back on my life and I actually handled my stress, that is when I lost the weight. That is when I actually was able to focus on myself instead of focusing on what will numb my mind from everything going on in my life.

Now, lets face it, stress is a hard thing to get rid of. That is why I am encouraging you, and myself, to work slowly at this. Dont just think you are going to get rid of it all right away. We as Americans are naturally stressed out because that is who we are.

You need to make a goal right now that will de-stress your life. One of the things that stresses me out is paperwork and filing things. I hate when it sits out, but I also hate when I have to file it. So, this week I am going to make a plan and get rid of the paperwork, while also making filing easier.

I dont know what I will do next, but whatever it is will be a baby step towards less stress.

I dont know about you, but I am tired of dieting. What I really want to do is work on de-stressing my life, because that is what is going to get my mind ready to devote time to making real changes in my eating habits. Maybe then I will have the will power to go out for a walk or eat on-the-go less.

I can tell you one thing, right now I am just too stressed to even think about it.

Read more from the original source:
Simonson: Dieting sucks - La Crosse Tribune

KDRV

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen's Diet Will it Work For You? KDRV What's even worse and more significant than the bogus nature of such diets is what they lead to tons of work and obsession with thinness and food. That's one aspect of eating that we often neglect, but it's one of the most important considerations ... and more »

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Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen's Diet Will it Work For You? - KDRV

This is the first installment of Peer Presser, a weekly advice column aiming to offer valuable insights to students, from students. Each Peer Presser features an upperclassman in a different major sharing basic knowledge they've gained in their studies applicable to any college student's daily life.

Balancing school, work and a social lifeoften results in neglected personal health for many college students. Proper nutrition and exercise is all too often ignored by students with a busy schedule.

Andrew Spiessis an assistant trainer to Buffalo States football team and assists training a high school hockey team. He intensely researches nutrition for his own health.

Alexander Field/The Record Andrew Spiess is a senior business major and exercise science minor.

Theres a lot of false information out there, Spiess said in regard to health and dieting.

Many blogs have incorrect information, diets that dont work for everyone, or are even just advertisements to getyou to buy something.

You cant come up with one simple solution; it doesnt exist, Spiesssaid.

A large issue with unhealthy eating is the tendency to choose grab-n-go meal bars and the like.

Whole, basic foods are essential. Choosing an option with minimal ingredients and processing is generally abetter idea.

Dont get too complicated with it, Spiess said.

So rather than resorting to a meal bar, have a salad or make eggs, eat an apple.A balanced diet means something different for everyone, but all humansrequire the same type of fuel to function.

Vegetables are great for you (mom was right), fruits contain a lot of sugar, although its natural, and the need for breads isstill up in the air, according to health experts.

Its such a new field of study that there is no determination on it, Spiess said about thenecessity of breads and pastas.

The recent rise in popularity of organic products is also a gray area, because organic and natural are very vague descriptions.

As college student, he prefers the more cost-effective option when buying produce.

What you ingestdirectly affects your output.

A lot of people, especially here [Buff State], are just sitting for hours at a time in class, or just doing their work, and its not good at all,Spiess said.

Sitting for too long can lead to many health issues and diseases.Make the time to go to the fitness center or even just take a walk.

If you want to multitask, take some of your work to the gym and do it on the bike, or listen to something that you can learn something from while youre exercising,Spiess advised.

Make sure to only multitask during simple exercises, so you dont get hurt, and dont lack focus on your schoolwork.

All you need to keep yourself healthy is some cardio, be it running, biking, etc., and a little strength, which can be body-weight.

A gym or workout equipment isnt needed to stay healthy, so dontmake excuses.

And recoverys a big thing, too. A lot of people dont recover,Spiess warned.

Recovery includes eating well after a workout and resting your muscles so as to not overwork them.

Measuring your heart rate tracks the intensity of your workout, which determines how much rest youll need in between sets and after.

There are different kinds of stretches, Spiesssaid.

Start a workout with dynamic moving stretches, and end it with static holding stretches.

You dont want to do a full split after never doing a full split, Spiess said, laughing.

Maintaining good posture is important in and out of the gym, and if youre less active, ease into a regimen.

Just keep moving, Spiess concluded.

email: [emailprotected]

Continued here:
Peer Presser: Tips for maintaining good personal health as a busy college student - The Record

PA Real Life

Rowena Wood, 26, from Uckfield in East Sussex, saw her weight fluctuate by five stone, leaving her with a mum-tum.

Now, after overcoming post-natal depression, following the twins birth in July 2014, and thanks to her unique baby work-outs, Rowena, has lost four stone and gained thousands of Instagram followers, after posting about her progress. She has shared her story at the same time as one man who was dumped for being too fat - but now has the body of his dreams.

The former care worker said: Max and Millie are two-years-old now and doing really well.

Theyve helped me to lose my baby weight and kept me going. On days when I cant go to the gym, I still get a work out by taking them to the park.

Now I look back at myself and I dont know who I was. Ive come such a long way.

She continued: I feel so body confident now. I didnt when I had the twins. I would never have bought a bikini and now Im thinking about getting one. Its a great feeling.

Rowena met the twins dad on Facebook when she was just 19 and they soon started trying for a baby. They were married two years later, but still she hadnt fallen pregnant.

After two years of trying, they went for fertility tests and were advised that IVF would give them the best chance of having a family.

FlynetInstagram

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Scarlett Moffatt highlights her dramatic weight loss in unseen bikini picture

Just two months later, Rowena who has since separated from her husband, due to the strain this all put on their marriage had a positive pregnancy test.

I tested four days early in December 2013, she said. Id been told testing too early could give a false reading, but I couldnt wait!

I saw the positive symbol and I phoned my then-husband straight away. We told everyone that evening and started to cry.

Two months later, they were even more delighted when learned they were expecting twins, discovering soon after that they were having a boy and a girl.

But pregnancy wasnt easy for Rowena, who suffered terrible morning sickness and lost 7lbs in the first 16 weeks, dropping down to 8st 3lbs.

I couldnt eat or keep anything down, she said. The thought of food made me sick.

Fortunately, her babies remained healthy and, as her sickness subsided four months into her pregnancy, Rowena was able to start eating again.

Now in her second trimester, she was eating for three binging on burgers every morning and gaining a shocking five stone by the time she was due.

PA Real Life

On July 24 2014 Rowena gave birth to Max, weighing 5lbs 13oz, and Millie, weighing 6lbs 3ozs via caesarean section at Pembury Hospital.

I felt overwhelmed, but also felt love for them instantly, Rowena said, recalling the first time she held them.

Although they were doing well, Rowena and her babies were kept in overnight to recover.

But, early the next morning, she started to feel dizzy and realised something was wrong.

She explained: I stood up and said to the nurse, I think Im going to pass out. Everything went black. Its a blur but I thought I was going to die.

When Rowena woke up, she was told shed lost 1.5 litres of blood.

At the time, doctors suggested it could be that they cut through her placenta, but they couldnt be sure. Rowena has not spoken to doctors again about this.

Fortunately, she soon recovered from the episode, but it left her shaken.

PA Real Life

I wanted to be left alone, she said. I suddenly felt anxious.

When she returned home five days later, she was still feeling out of sorts.

I didnt want to leave the house. Something wasnt right, she said.

My husband stayed home from work for six weeks, to share the responsibility, but when he went back, I felt like I couldnt do it. I told my mum I couldnt cope, because I didnt think I was a good mum.

I felt guilty. Id wanted kids so much, and now I didnt know what to do.

Her husband and the couples mums drew up a rota, so someone was always there to help Rowena with the twins.

And weeks after they were born, she was diagnosed with post-natal depression and anxiety.

Desperate to regain control, she started to limit what she was eating and her weight plummeted to just eight stone.

I had cellulite, a kangaroo pouch. Id gone from skinny to massive. I was ashamed of how I looked

Rowena Wood

I gave my food to our dogs, she said. My doctor was concerned though, that it was becoming anorexia, and said, eat anything.

Rowena was prescribed antidepressants, which helped to balance her mood, but also caused food cravings and within four months she piled weight on again.

She said: It took a while for them to kick in, but then I didnt care what I ate.

I think the medication caused me to over-eat. I ate sandwiches and cakes. I was never full. I just ate and ate.

I think getting bigger, and how I felt about myself, made me comfort eat too.

In four months, she gained just over five stone and went from a size 6/8 to a size 16/18.

Her fluctuating weight left her with saggy skin around her stomach, rolls of fat and cellulite.

I hated looking in the mirror, she said. I had cellulite, a kangaroo pouch. Id gone from skinny to massive. I was ashamed of how I looked. I remember thinking, oh my god, look at the state of me, this is it now.

PA Real Life

But early last year, she bumped in to a neighbour Amanda, who went to a local gym and encouraged Rowena to join her. With some gentle encouragement, she started exercising with Amanda three times a week.

Now she goes to the gym five times a week and eats healthily, too, opting for porridge for breakfast, yoghurt, and salmon or chicken, vegetables and rice for dinner.

And she incorporates her twin workouts into her daily exercise plan. It took Rowena a year to lose about four stone and to look and feel better.

She explained: Soon I felt strong and happier. Going to the gym was an instant pick-me-up. I kept active every day, by doing press ups with the twins on my back, or doing lunges pushing their pram.

Last May Rowena posted a photo on her Instagram page: x_miss_fitness_mummy_rolo_x, of how she looked during her pregnancy, beside one taken after months of working out and was amazed by the response.

She said: I had women messaging me, such beautiful messages, saying, I wish I could be like you, youre such an inspiration.

These were women whod had babies and post-natal depression and didnt know how to admit it. I said to Mum, Can you believe it?

Now I give advice to women, saying start light at the gym and do what feels comfortable. Maybe even work out with your babies, like I do.

Continue reading here:
Weight loss - mum dropped five dress sizes doing THIS simple exercise at home - Express.co.uk

By Christy Brissette By Christy Brissette April 4 at 7:00 AM

Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (a.k.a. the DASH diet) is celebrating 20 years of helping people with hypertension and pre-hypertension lower blood pressure just as well as some medications. It has the potential to lower health-care costs and has been a component of the national dietary guidelines for over 10 years. So why are so few people using it?

What is the DASH diet?

The DASH diet emphasizes foods rich in protein, fiber, potassium, magnesium and calcium and low in saturated fat, sugar and salt. On your plate, that looks like plenty of fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, fish, poultry, whole grains and low-fat dairy, with fewer fatty meats and sweets. Although DASH is not a reduced-sodium diet, lowering sodium intake by eating whole foods over processed foods enhances the diets effect.

The original trial of the DASH diet showed reductions in both systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure across subgroups of gender, race and ethnicity and in hypertensive and pre-hypertensive patients. Further studies have found that adherence to the DASH diet lowered total and LDL cholesterol, reduced the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke even throughout several years of follow-up, and reduced bone turnover, improving bone health.

[The celebrity diet trend that actually has some science behind it]

Who should follow the DASH diet?

The DASH diet is recommended in the Guideline for the Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults and by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute because of its blood-pressure-lowering effects for hypertensive adults, and its also been shown to be effective for pre-hypertensive patients. So if your blood pressure is elevated or youve been diagnosed with hypertension, the DASH diet is for you.

But what if you dont have high blood pressure? Are there benefits from following the DASH diet?

The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans say the model eating plan for all Americans is the DASH diet, because it outlines a generally healthy diet from which anyone can benefit. Following the DASH diets principles will mean youre eating a nutrient-rich yet not calorie-dense diet that has been shown to be helpful for promoting weight loss and maintenance.

A growing body of evidence suggests DASH is also helpful for managing diabetes, preventing cancer and improving kidney health.

Why arent more people following the DASH diet?

If the DASH diet is so beneficial and well studied, why isnt everyone following it? Analyses of health and nutrition in the United States from 1988 to 2012 showed that less than 1 percent of the population adhered to the DASH diet and that only 20 percent met half of the recommended nutrient levels in DASH. Compare these numbers to the half of Americans who have high blood pressure, and we can safely say theres plenty of work to be done to increase adherence to the DASH diet.

Dori Steinberg, a research scholar at Duke University, says one of the reasons the DASH diet hasnt taken off is that its recommended foods arent so accessible as fast food and processed foods. Its much easier to grab a fast-food burger and fries than it is to make a spinach salad with strawberries, she says.

Although the DASH diet can certainly be followed on a tight budget, changing the food environment to make healthy options such as fruits and vegetables more affordable and widely available at convenience stores, grab-and-go restaurants, community facilities and more is key to increasing adherence.

Most hypertensive patients who would benefit from counseling on the DASH diet see primary-care physicians exclusively and therefore receive little nutrition counseling beyond suggestions about lowering sodium in the diet. The poor adherence to the DASH diet presents a call to action for primary-care physicians to become more familiar with the diet and to refer patients to registered dietitians, who can provide the dietary counseling people need to put DASH into action.

[Five red flags that your clean diet is going too far]

Getting more Americans on DASH

The key to helping people eat better is giving them the tools they need to put nutrition information into action. Its not enough to provide a list of guidelines; we need to give people recipes and support them in learning basic cooking skills to prepare healthier meals.

Dietitians can share information with clients on how to shop for DASH-appropriate foods on a budget, such as canned beans and fish and frozen vegetables and fruit. Any medical or health professional can give their patients and clients information on the DASH diet from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute website.

Steinberg says ongoing dietary counseling has been shown to help people stick to the DASH diet, but her research group at Duke wants to leverage technology to bring knowledge of and support for the diet to the masses.

There arent any apps that focus on DASH, so were working on developing a DASH diet app that can leverage other apps that people are already using to track their diet, activity levels and more, Steinberg says.

Getting more media exposure for the DASH diet is another avenue to increase awareness. U.S. News & World Report experts rated DASH as the top diet overall for several years, adding to the diets research credibility and helping to bring it to a wider audience.

So why does the DASH diets following pale in comparison to other popular diets? Its time DASH got a celebrity endorsement. Or a splashy website with some dramatic before-and-after photos!

[Why phosphate additives will be the next taboo ingredient]

Letting go of perfection

Could positive health outcomes occur if a person didnt follow all of the DASH diet principles but still incorporated some of them?

According to Steinberg, Every two-point increase in DASH adherence score leads to a linear reduction in blood pressure. And improvements in blood pressure are seen in just two weeks.

So this is a diet where you can do your best and see results quickly rather than worrying about following it perfectly. There is such a thing as good enough when it comes to healthy eating, and I counsel clients on this all the time. Is fear about having to stick to a diet holding you back from eating better today? What if your diet doesnt have to be 100 percent healthy? Eating well is about getting your ratio of healthy eating closer to 80 percent and being happy with each improvement along the way.

Perhaps for its anniversary, the DASH diet should consider a rebranding and be renamed the DASH lifestyle. Diets are temporary. The DASH lifestyle deserves to be here for another 20 years and beyond.

Read the original here:
The DASH diet is proven to work. Why hasn't it caught on? - Washington Post

Last Tuesday, I ate some green beans, a Clif bar, and one homemade sous vide egg bite. That's 2000kj. I swear I don't have an eating disorder it's just how you do things on this diet I've been trying. On Wednesday I was back to my regular 8400-ish kj and feeling fine.

Illustration by Elena Scotti/Lifehacker/GMG, photos via Shutterstock

On the 5:2 diet, you "fast" for two days a week, say Monday and Thursday. You eat 25 per cent of your usual kilojoules on those days. The other days, you eat normally. By the end of the week, you've eaten a similar number of kilojoules those suckers on 6300 calorie regimens, but you only had to spend two days dieting.

The diet has been wildly popular in the UK for a few years, starting with a 2012 BBC documentary. When I first heard about it, I almost liked the idea. I'd previously done a form of intermittent fasting that basically amounts to skipping breakfast and delaying lunch. I focus better in the mornings this way, and I seem to eat healthier overall, but it does take some getting used to.

Fasting for a whole day sounded too hard, but then again, it seems like half of England does it (including Benedict Cumberbatch). I had a few kilograms to lose, and I get frustrated and hungry with traditional kilojoule-counting diets so I thought I'd give the 5:2 a try.

No matter what a diet claims as its raison d'tre, let's be real: Most people are interested in weight loss. That's true here too. This diet, as well as others that fall under the intermittent fasting umbrella, is also supposed to improve the function of your brain, heart and metabolism.

The appeal is that you don't have to stick to the 5:2 diet for more than a day at a time. Sure, it's a rough day, but it's nothing like the Whole30 diet, where you commit to a strict set of rules that forbid bread and sugar for a month. And it isn't the endless slog of a typical kilojoules-in, kilojoules-out diet for long term weight loss, where you need to watch what you eat for months or years.

The first day I tried fasting, I was ravenous by the end of the day. I pulled up Facebook on my phone to distract myself, and my friends were sharing their favourite curry recipes with full-fat coconut milk. I had a pang of jealousy but then thought, "Hey, I can make that tomorrow." How many diets let you say that on the first day?

The 5:2 diet itself hasn't been rigorously studied, but a close relative, alternate-day fasting, has some data to back it up. Alternate-day fasting works as well for weight loss as traditional diets, according to studies like this one published in Obesity. But it works better for some people than others, and researchers are trying to figure that out, too. One trial published in Obesity Research and Clinical Practice found that white people and older people were more successful on the diet, but there were a ton of factors they didn't account for, like whether some groups had better access to healthy foods. Men and women had equal luck on the diet.

The other health benefits, besides weight loss, are not as easy to pin down. We've long known that mice live longer when they're underfed. There have been a ton of studies trying to figure out what other benefits come from kilojoule restriction, and whether they can translate to humans in safe and practical ways.

For example, fasting should help your body learn to manage blood sugar better. If you overeat, your cells can become resistant to insulin, eventually leading to type 2 diabetes. Dieting and exercise both seem to reverse this effect, and from what we know about the way the body manages blood sugar, fasting should help even more. Unfortunately, we don't have enough evidence to say if that's actually what happens.

The book explaining the 5:2 diet, The Fast Diet, is more honest about this than I expected a diet book to be. Author Michael Mosley, a doctor turned BBC presenter, tried several fasting-based diets for his Eat, Fast, and Live Longer documentary. He explains that he settled on the 5:2 pattern as a compromise between the different methods. Essentially, it's based on his experience and gut feelings. I'm OK with that. We don't have enough evidence to say that fasting (or even dieting) must be done a certain way, so if 5:2 is tolerable and has a decent chance of working, I figure it's worth a try.

They're tasty, I swear.

I wake up thinking about breakfast. That's not off the menu, but I only have a 2000kj budget for the day, and I'd rather save it for later. So I fill my belly instead with some kind of beverage: Coffee, water, carbonated water, diet coke. The craving usually subsides.

If it doesn't, I'll go for a snack of veggies, since they are nearly kilojoule-free. I go for a microwave-steamable bag of fresh green beans. With plenty of salt and pepper, it's flavorful and almost filling, and the entire bag is just 520kj. I split it into a morning and evening snack. [Ed note: Ew. Microwaveable green beans for breakfast.]

Either way, I'm usually fine until 2PM. If I'm having trouble concentrating at work, then I know it's time to have some real food. This could be a carefully measured portion of pretty much any food, but I don't see the point in researching recipes, shopping and cooking up a snack-sized meal. (The Fast Diet has plenty of recipes, though, if you prefer this approach.) More often than not, I choose a Clif bar: Around 1000kj, depending on the flavour. I find it about as satisfying as you can expect a 1000kj meal to be.

I don't get ravenous until evening, and that's the hardest part for me. I'll prowl around the kitchen, debating how to spend my last 400 or 800kj, making myself even hungrier in the process. I like to have something dense and filling, like an egg bite, but it's never enough. Tomorrow, I have to tell myself. I can have more tomorrow.

In fact, it's easiest to just stay out of the kitchen and keep your mind off food. Fasting is easiest on the days I'm busy at work, and hardest on a weekend when I might have time to lounge around or find myself at a party.

I never tried it, until recently. I just scheduled my workouts and my fast days so they didn't coincide. But yesterday I thought, hey, why not try going for a run and write about how terrible it feels?

It was not terrible. I was shocked: It was afternoon and I hadn't had anything besides Diet Coke and carbonated water all day. I brought a Clif bar just in case, but ended up jogging for the better part of an hour without feeling any hungrier than when I was sitting at my desk. I ran at my usual speed, and even ran longer than I had originally planned. (Bad judgement induced by hunger? I won't rule it out.) And afterwards, I set the Clif bar aside and didn't have a bite until evening, when I realised I could treat myself to a 1700kj super burrito.

Some people say they have more energy when they exercise on an empty stomach. I always figured that was something you could get used to, but I didn't expect to experience it on the first try. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe not.

It's like the see-food diet. You see food, you eat it.

When it isn't a fast day, you're supposed to eat "normally". Nothing is off-limits, but whether you're using this to lose weight or just a healthy lifestyle, you'd be smart to eat your veggies and protein and not too many cupcakes.

I do get a little hungrier the day after a fast (although it's easy to skip breakfast, even if I was hungry at bedtime). But there's no guarantee you'll end up pigging out. "A calorie slash of 75 per cent on a fast day generally gives rise to a little more than a 15 per cent increase on the following feed day," Dr Mosley and his coauthor, Mimi Spencer, write in The Fast Diet. They cite this study, which also noted that people feel less hungry on fast days by the second week. (Again, this research is on alternate-day fasting rather than the 5:2 diet).

I find that, mentally, I can't use a diet tracker like LoseIt on my non-fasting days. The tracker has decided I should eat 5900kj a day, so on fast days, it tells me that I'm doing a good job but also displays a warning that this doesn't seem like enough food. Fair enough. But then the rest of the week, I'm tempted to stick to that 5900kj goal, which is not how the 5:2 diet works. I never felt ready for another fast day, because I always felt a little starved. So I ditched the tracker, and easily got back into the 5:2 rhythm.

MyFitnessPal can do different calorie goals for each day, if you pay for a premium subscription. prefer to go without a tracker and let the calories fall where they may.

This definitely isn't the diet for everyone. If you're happy with a plan that asks you to undereat just a little every day, stick with that plan. You're not missing out on much.

But if you have a hard time sticking to a typical kilojoule-restriction diet, you might find intermittent fasting easier to take. The 5:2 diet was designed to be a form of fasting that is easy to stick to: You get some food rather than none, and you can schedule your fast days to always fall on whichever days work for you. You can even put them back-to-back if you want, but even Dr Mosley admits that's too difficult for most people to handle.

The authors note that there's nothing magic about 2000kj (they even allow 2500kj for men, or just 25 per cent of what you would normally eat). Likewise the schedule: They suggest you cut down to just one fast day a week if you're maintaining your weight, or you can do three fast days if you're having fun and want to speed up weight loss.

They suggest another tweak that I found really helps: Doing a 24-hour fast instead of trying to make it through a night, a full day, and then another night. This scheme is so easy I've found myself doing it by accident. Have a big, late lunch, say around 2PM, and then skip dinner. When you wake up, if you can skip breakfast, then all you have to do is push off lunch until 2PM again, and bingo you've done a 24 hour fast.

I did lose a few kilograms while trying the 5:2 diet, although I didn't do it consistently, and I also also changed some other things in my life around the same time, like exercising more. I'm not ready to give the diet full credit, but so far I'm happy with it.

Whether this diet works for you will probably depend on how you spend your time (do you have a busy work schedule?) as well as how you handle hunger and willpower. It's definitely doable, and even though it's trendy, it's refreshingly free of pseudoscientific claims. If you're ready to give it a try, read the ground rules on the Fast Diet website and snoop the forums there to pick up some tips, then pick a busy day and stay out of the kitchen.

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Tomorrow morning (April 1), Daylight Savings ends in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT. For some reason, the obligatory clock readjustment tends to flummox otherwise intelligent people. Do you move the clock forward or backwards?? If you suffer from this embarrassing annual brain fart, here's an old adage that will help you to permanently remember.

The first day of April is always a difficult 24 hours to navigate if you want to avoid being tripped up by some zany product or service announcement from the likes of Google, Microsoft or, as we've seen today, Uncle Tobys and James Squire. To help you stay ahead of the game, we've selected the delicious (and not-so-delicious) fake stuff and put it all in the one place.

Continue reading here:
Starving Yourself Two Days A Week Is Actually Not A Bad Diet - Lifehacker Australia

Veterinary nutritionists can be found in universities, teaching veterinary students and treating patients with special dietary needs. We may work in the pet food industry as consultants or by contributing to research, development and education efforts. We also work with veterinarians and their clients, providing answers or input aimed at resolving dietary quandaries.

As a veterinarian with more than 25 years experience and a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (ACVN), I enjoy doing a little of all these.

For example, I may develop a homemade diet for a Labrador with copper liver storage disease, a very particular liver problem. Or Ill check in with one of my consulting clients to see how a picky young German Shepherd with recurring diarrhea is doing with his new diet. A presentation for a large veterinary meeting focusing on diets that can be used to not only treat disease states, but also to perhaps prevent them may be on my to-do list. Conference calls with veterinary students to discuss nutritional biochemistry and how cats differ from humans and dogs also occupy my time.

But my favorite part of the day is reaching out to pet parents through my work with the Companion Animal Nutrition and Wellness Institute (CANWI), a grassroots not-for-profit organization focusing on optimal nutrition and wellness to improve and extend the lives of our furry children and best friends.

At CANWI, we recognize the difficulty people have in accessing companion-animal nutrition information not sponsored by the pet food industry, a multibillion dollar operation instrumental in providing the bulk of consumer information as well as in supporting veterinary nutrition research and education. While we agree that the industrys goals align with the need for safe nutrition, we firmly believe that there is also a need for unbiased information on the subject.

As part of this effort, CANWI raises funds for veterinary education, including forums and programs that educate veterinary technicians, students and the pet-vested community. In fall 2016, CANWI named Danielle Conway, DVM, as its first Veterinary Nutrition Resident; the organization will support her two-year formal training program at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine. Typically, this sort of advanced training is funded by the pet food industry. As CANWI president Patricia Micka noted when announcing the award, To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a nonprofit is funding a Veterinary Nutrition Residency program. It is our intention to make this an ongoing program and not a one-time event.

Another CANWI mission is to fund scientific research to identify healthy, or what we term optimal or best, nutrition for our companion animals. Every day, we field queries from people interested in feeding their dogs and cats the best possible diet, one that will sustain longer, healthier lives.

While we humans are told to eat plenty of fresh foods, most of our dogs and cats are fed processed commercial foods throughout their lives. What effect does this have do processed foods provide optimal nutrition and support longevity?

Heat processing improves nutrient availability, shelf life and food safety, but it is also known to cause the Maillard reaction, chemical reactions between amino acids in proteins and sugars that give browned food its distinctive and appealing flavor. Similar Maillard reactions occur in body tissues, especially with aging, and form what are termed advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. Diets high in Maillard reaction products (MRPs) have been shown to increase levels of AGEs in the body.

Studies in humans and rodents have revealed that elevated levels of AGEs in tissues are associated with a number of age-related ailments, including diabetes, cataracts, osteoarthritis, atherosclerosis and vascular diseases. The absorption of MRPs from the diet and their accumulation in the bodys AGE pool may be one of the ways foods have an impact on age related diseases in both humans and animals.

Read more from the original source:
Do Better Canine Diets Support Longer Lives? - The Bark (blog)

Posted by Carson McGrath on March 29, 2017 Leave a Comment

(Graphic by Caroline OConnor/ Daily Collegian)

Can you save the planet with your diet? The Plant-Based Nutrition Club at the University of Massachusetts thinks so. The group educates the UMass community on the benefits of plant-based, vegan or vegetarian diets, and they feel good doing it.

Normally what I tell people is I went vegan for the animals, found out I was saving the environment and felt a hell of a lot better, said Nicole Henderson, a sophomore English major and current secretary of the club.

Still relatively new to campus, the Plant-Based Nutrition Club, or P-NUT, brings speakers to campus, screens documentaries and leaflets in the community to share information about the advantages of opting out of meat and dairy products for more vegetables and legumes.

Plant-based foods provides you with a lot of good things like fiber, protein and healthy fats that animal based products dont provide, said Haley Harzynski, a nutrition major from the class of 2016 and founder of P-NUT.

Harzynski started the club her junior year at UMass in the hopes of joining like-minded students together to discuss the benefits and realities of being vegan, vegetarian or having a mostly plant-based diet. Harzynski has been vegan for six years and a vegetarian for 15 years.

Planted-based nutrition and veganism is all about creativity, abundance and taking something that people dont see and creating something from it, Harzynski said.

Jordan Lake, a sophomore sustainable food and farming major and vice president of P-NUT this past fall semester, said plant-based nutrition is one of the easiest ways to be an activist.

We make a decision of what we eat at least three times a day, and simply being mindful of our choices can have immense impact beyond oneself. What we eat impacts so much more than our bodies, and our society is so disconnected from this, said Lake.

P-NUT works to inform the campus community on alternative, healthier and more sustainable diets in order to fight the stigma of living a vegan or plant-based lifestyle.

I think there is a big stigma behind the word vegan, which is why a lot of times we prefer plant-based because we are kind of a new generation of vegans, where some of the older people are go vegan or get out kind of thing, whereas I feel this generation is a lot more inclusive, said Henderson.

Reed Mangels, a nutrition professor at UMass and a registered dietitian, stopped eating meat in the 1970s and became vegan over 25 years ago. Mangels is the current faculty advisor of P-NUT.

As someone who has been involved with vegetarian groups in her own community, she said P-NUT is a great way for students to discuss their plant-based diets and to learn about various options available for the vegan lifestyle.

I saw this as a really great forum where people could educate each other and be a support group, she said.

Being vegan or vegetarian is not a requirement to join the group. The club welcomes students who are interested in the lifestyle or want to learn more about how to implement the diet into their everyday lives.

We are not going to make an impact or reach different communities if we are only having people in the lifestyle, we need people who dont know about it, who have friends who dont know about it and that is how it spreads, said Olivia Laughlin, a psychology and communication major and president of P-NUT.

By demonstrating to students what types of alternatives to dairy or meat products they can eat, all while educating them on not only the personal health benefits but environmental benefits as well, Laughlin said the club serves as role models for other students on campus.

Just by making [veganism] look easy and normal and accessible, it makes it a lot more appealing, she said.

The group holds the philosophy that being vegan is not a huge sacrifice.

One of the biggest conceptions is that it is a sacrifice; you have to sacrifice everything you love, you have to give up all this great food but it is really not. The hardest parts have nothing to do with the eating, sometimes it is hard to confront the information, Laughlin said.

Jessica Holley, sophomore nutrition and public health major and member of P-NUT, has been a vegetarian since she was in middle school and went vegan four years ago. At times she finds people unwilling to understand her choices.

People get very defensive. Its like I am doing something wrong about the way I choose to eat, said Holley.

P-NUT aims to create a discussion on campus centered around dismantling the misconceptions of what vegetarianism and veganism is in order to push people to think about where their food comes from and the effects it may have not only on their bodies but also on the environment around them and the animals that inhabit it.

[Veganism] made me look into other social justice issues and look past the surface of how the systems want you to see things, and so it really just sparked my passion for finding my own truth in things, said Laughlin.

There are already vegan options for students on campus at places like Earth Foods, Peoples Market, Roots and the dining halls.

Last year the group brought Mary Lawrence, owner of Well on Wheels, to Franklin Dining Hall as a vegan guest chef for students to try vegan and vegetarian dishes.

The group wants to continue to push for more plant-based and vegan options in the dining halls through strengthening their connection with UMass Dining Services.

Henderson also said P-NUT hopes to continue building relationships with the community from hosting events at Earth Foods or Peoples Market, to partnering with the UMass Nutrition Association.

I see P-NUT becoming more collaborative in the future working with student-run businesses, off-campus groups and hopefully having contact at least with some national organizations. Theres so many different scales to work on, but collaborating and working with others is always the most fun and interactive to get working with people, said Lake.

P-NUT meets every other Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Chenoweth Laboratory.

Carson McGrath can be reached at cmcgrath@umass.edu and followed on Twitter @McgrathCarson.

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Plant-Based Nutrition club promotes healthier, sustainable diets on campus - The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Compared to leaf-eaters, primates who ate fruit had around 25 percent more brain tissue. Anup Shah/Getty Images hide caption

Compared to leaf-eaters, primates who ate fruit had around 25 percent more brain tissue.

Primate brains may have grown larger and more complex thanks to a fruit-filled diet, a new study suggests.

The researchers analyzed the brain sizes and diets of over 140 primate species spanning apes, monkeys, lemurs and lorises and found that those who munched on fruit instead of leaves had 25 percent more brain tissue, even when controlling for body size and species relatedness. Take spider monkeys and howler monkeys, for example. They both live in the rain forests of South America in groups of about 10. But where howler monkeys leisurely munch on trumpet tree leaves all day, spider monkeys venture out in small groups shortly after sunrise to forage for passion fruit and other ripe morsels. Despite their similar environments and social setting, spider monkeys have bigger brains than howlers.

Primates like this baboon may have evolved larger, more complex brains over generations of seeking out fruit rather than sticking to low-calorie leaves. Nature and the Nature Research Journals hide caption

Primates like this baboon may have evolved larger, more complex brains over generations of seeking out fruit rather than sticking to low-calorie leaves.

"If you are foraging on harder-to-access food, like fruit instead of leaves, then you need to have all the cognitive strategies to deal with that," says Alex DeCasien, a doctoral candidate at New York University and lead-author on the study. Fruit can vary from season to season, be tucked away in hard-to-reach nooks, and require skill and strength to crack into, smarter primates could be more apt to scope it out and reap its nutritious rewards. "All of that is so much more complicated than just grabbing a leaf and eating it," she says. And so, a diet of fruit may in turn have led to the evolution of the bigger brains over generations, she adds.

Monkeys and apes who incorporated animal proteins into their diets also had slightly larger brains than the leaf eaters, the Nature Ecology and Evolution study found. Again, the researchers speculate this could be because primates need more cognitive power to hunt and consume things like frogs, birds, and insects compared to the brain power needed to eat leaves. But DeCasien says she and her colleagues were surprised to find that these omnivores have significantly smaller brains than fruit-eaters. They suspect it could be because many of these omnivores, like lemurs and lorises, eat insects. "[Insects] may be abundant like leaves and might be easy to capture," she says.

The findings challenge a long-held scientific hypothesis that the size of social groups among primates is the biggest determinant of brain size. The bigger the social group, the more complex the social interactions, leading to the evolution of larger brains with more computing power, the theory suggests.

Previous studies have shown that larger groups of primates with more complex social structures are correlated with larger brains. In fact, scientists have used that idea called the social brain hypothesis to explain why humans and certain other primates like chimpanzees and bonobos have bigger brains than other primate species. (Now, diet is thought to have played a big role in making human brains bigger than any of our primate cousin's. As we've reported before, scientists think eating cooked meat gave our bodies some extra energy to fuel the building of bigger brains.)

But the authors of the new study compared body size, diet, and social lives (factors like whether they were solitary or lived in pairs, monogamous or polygynous, and the size of their groups) of these various primate species to their average brain sizes. Overall, diet appeared to be a more consistent predictor of brain size for a species than social complexity brain sized increased with fruit eating more consistently than with greater number of social connections.

From left to right: lemur, vervet monkey, baboon, chimpanzee, human (excluded in this study). Nature and the Nature Research Journals hide caption

"This study shows social group size is not a global predictor of brain size," says Stephen Montgomery, a researcher studying brain and behavioral evolution at the University of Cambridge who wasn't involved with the work. He adds that size of social groups don't always correlate with bigger brains. Montgomery says this is because primates are really diverse in behavior and habitat from solitary slow lorises that creep through swamp forests to zippy capuchin monkeys that live in groups nearing 40 members. So while a complex social life might drive one species to evolve bigger brains, another species' brain size might be influenced by other factors, like diet. "As the authors show, one exception may be diet," he says, "which directly relates to the basic currency of any biological system: energy."

But Robin Dunbar, a professor or evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford and creator of the social brain hypothesis isn't entirely convinced by the new findings. Dunbar has researched the social brain hypothesis for two decades but wasn't involved in the new study. "They assume that social group size and diet are two alternative explanations for brain evolution," he told The Salt in an email. "They are not," he says, suggesting that both could contribute together. Also, he adds that group size and social complexity is more of a predictor of the volume of the neocortex, a part of the brain that's responsible for sensory perception, language, cognition and more. In other words, the more complex a social group, the bigger the size of the neocortex, according to previous studies. The authors of the new study should have considered looking more closely at the neocortex, Dunbar suggests.

DeCasien agrees that diet and social lives are probably both at play here. "Diet, social structures, cognitive abilities they're likely to have co-evolved together in primates," DeCasien says. However, she is quick to note that these evolutionary trends take many generations and millions of years to manifest. So don't go looking to eat more fruit because of the new findings sure, they pack a nutritional punch, but it doesn't mean they will make you and I any smarter.

Continue reading here:
What Gave Some Primates Bigger Brains? A Fruit-Filled Diet - NPR

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