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New online guide guarantees ideal body weight for life and features virtual coaches

TORONTO, March 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - In a world of fad diets and weight loss gimmicks, the 29 DAYS Lose Weight Program represents a complete departure because it's not a diet at all. Rather than pushing obsessive calorie counting and unrealistic food restrictions, the program takes an innovative approach to weight loss by addressing the root causes for undesired eating behaviour.

29 DAYS is a roadmap that promises lifelong change, not a temporary fix. The program tackles human behaviour by teaching people the science and psychology behind weight loss and empowering them to replace old eating patterns to new healthy habits within a month.

"29 DAYS is not another diet," said founder and president of 29 DAYS Richard Fast. "The first step to losing weight is getting yourself to do what you already know our program does that. It sounds simple, but that's the key piece missing from other plans. Fad diets completely ignore the powerful force of the mind. Once passion fades or the diet ends, you'll revert back to old eating habits, lifestyle and weight."

The program offers members a new lifestyle that includes learning to savour favourite foods without binging or guilt trips, realizing how easy it is to exercise when you start by squeezing it into 60-second bursts, and discovering secret ways that water can help shed pounds.

Through daily interaction online, members of 29 DAYS will take simple, logical steps to change the way they think about food and break bad eating habits. To keep people motivated and on track, a virtual coach makes one-on-one contact twice a day to guide members toward adopting a new mindset as the route toward permanent weight loss. The program requires on average about 15 minutes a day to complete required readings and journal entries.

Just how different is this program? By Day 3, members will learn why crash diets are damaging to permanent weight loss goals. The first part of the program is so focused on the psychology of weight loss that members make no changes to their lifestyle until Day 15.

The 29 DAYS step-by-step program includes four phases:

Week 1 AWARENESS - learn observation and awareness techniques to understand current bad habits; use tools to fight against food triggers such as stress or boredom

Week 2 COMMITMENT - develop individual ideas on how to make permanent changes; tailor plans for personal weak spots; build powerful thought processes and gain control

Read this article:
29 DAYS Lose Weight Program Starts with the Brain to Change the Body

The question: Whats the best breakfast cereal for weight loss?

The answer: Im afraid there is no breakfast cereal specifically designed for weight loss. Compared with other breakfast choices, most cereals are relatively low in calories and low in fat. But its not all about calories. Some low calorie breakfast cereals (e.g. Special K, Rice Krispies, Puffed Wheat) are made from refined grains that are quickly digested. In other words, starting your day with a bowl of refined breakfast cereal could cause you to feel hungry midmorning and overly hungry by lunch time. Both are recipes for overeating.

The healthiest breakfast cereal is made from whole grains and is high in fibre and low in added sugar. Choose a cereal that lists whole wheat, whole oats, whole rye or whole brown rice as the first ingredient. One-hundred-per-cent bran cereals arent truly whole grain cereals, but you can consider them as such since they are a concentrated source of bran thats missing from refined grains. And because fibre slows down the rate at which food leaves your stomach, it helps you feel full longer after breakfast.

Look for cereals that have no more than six grams of sugar for each serving. Theres one exception to this rule: Cereals with dried fruit such as raisins, blueberries and cranberries will have more and thats okay. Dried fruit adds more fibre to cereal, which is a good thing.

Now that youve chosen a nutritious cereal, keeping your portion size in check will help you lose weight. Of course, thats provided youre following a calorie-reduced diet designed for weight loss. Read the serving size information on nutrition labels. I encourage you to do this for all packaged foods, not just ready to eat breakfast cereal.

By dry weight, a food guide serving of ready to eat cereal is 30 grams. In household measures, 30 grams of dry cereal will vary depending on the density, or weight, of the cereal. In general, a serving size of cereal is typically 3/4 to one cup. The serving size for denser cereals such as granola and muesli is 1/3 to 1/2 cup. If youre counting calories, manage your portion size by reading the nutrition label and then measuring out the stated serving size.

Send dietitian Leslie Beck your questions at dietitian@globeandmail.com. She will answer select questions, which could appear in The Globe and Mail and/or on the Globe website. Your name will not be published if your question is chosen.

Read more Q&As from Leslie Beck.

Click here to see Q&As from all of our health experts.

The content provided in The Globe and Mail's Ask a Health Expert centre is for information purposes only and is neither intended to be relied upon nor to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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What breakfast cereal will help me lose weight?

Study found few 'wonder pills' had randomised clinical trials to back up dietary claims

By Claire Bates

Last updated at 2:59 PM on 7th March 2012

Weight loss: Impossible without reducing calories and exercising, says Professor Melinda Manore after studying a range of diet pills

Diet supplements advertised as amazing fat burners or craving quashers, should be treated with extreme skepticism, according to one nutrition expert.

The evidence used to support weight loss pills simply doesn't add up.

Professor Melinda Manore from Oregon State University studied the research used to support hundreds of diet pill claims.

She found nothing that proved any single product was a 'wonder pill' causing significant weight loss. In fact some even had detrimental health benefits.

'What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass,' Prof Manore said.

'There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems.'

Read the rest here:
Do diet supplements help you lose weight? Fat chance!

There's no shortage of scientific research pointing to exercise being good for you, but if you're just trying to lose weight you probably want all the help you can get. Now, research suggests that caffeine activates the same fat-busting genes as an hour's exercise. Somebody, pass the espresso.

A team of researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, were interested in the genetic activity in the body during exercise. By taking biopsies from the legs of participants, they were able to work out that several genes associated with metabolizing fat are activated by exercisebut only after an hour or so. That means that your body breaks down fat more effectively after an hour's exercise.

But what they also found was that the exact same genes are activated by large doses of caffeine, a finding they report in Cell Metabolism. In fact, the caffeine causes the body to release calcium, which tricks it into thinking that muscles are being contractedhence the effect.

Sadly, the doses of caffeine required to achieve the same effect as an hour's exercise are... intimidating to say the least. "[You] would need to consume a caffeine equivalent of about 50 cups [of coffee] per day, almost close to a lethal dose", explains Juleen Zierath, one of the researchers, to Nature. Maybe exercise is easier after all. [Cell metabolism via New Scientist; Image: Phil Monger]

Read more here:
To Lose Weight, Just Drink a Gallon of Coffee [Health]

Canada may be in the grips of an obesity epidemic but doctors are advising "surprisingly few" overweight or obese Canadians to lose weight, a national survey finds.

Less than a third of overweight people who responded to the survey had ever been advised to lose weight by a physician, without specifically asking "a further indication of the widely held societal view that obesity is an issue of personal responsibility rather than a medical problem," researchers write in the journal Chronic Diseases and Injuries in Canada.

In addition, fewer than one in five of total survey participants reported having their waistlines measured by a doctor in the previous year, even though Canadian guidelines recommend doctors screen every adult for weight-related problems by measuring waist circumference considered the new "vital sign" that predicts a person's risk of disease and death beyond body mass index alone.

People with abdominal fat are at the highest risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease and stroke. Belly fat is also the leading cause of a cluster of abnormalities known as metabolic syndrome.

The survey also found that 40 per cent of overweight or obese Canadians described themselves as "about right."

Lead author Sara Kirk calls it part of the "normalization" of excess weight: As the population grows heavier, overweight becomes the new norm.

Currently, 59 per cent of adult Canadians are either overweight or obese. Unless trends change, by 2026, the proportion will reach 70 per cent, a federal-provincial summit on healthy weights heard last week in Ottawa.

Severe obesity is tracking at an even faster rate than obesity. Class III obesity, meaning a body mass index of 40 or more, has tripled over the past three decades a phenomenon that is posing significant challenges for the health-care system, from patients too large to fit inside CT scanners or MRI machines, to what intensive care physicians have described as the "nightmare" of trying to insert breathing tubes into patients whose airways are heavy with fat.

Overall, people with a BMI greater than 30 are four times as likely to have diabetes, three times as likely to have hypertension and 1 1/2 times as likely to have heart disease, the researchers write.

Despite such "stark statistics," obesity is poorly managed in Canada, said Kirk, Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

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Docs advising 'surprisingly few' overweight Canadians to shed pounds:Study

Canada may be in the grips of an obesity epidemic but doctors are advising "surprisingly few" overweight or obese Canadians to lose weight, a national survey finds.

Less than a third of overweight people who responded to the survey had ever been advised to lose weight by a physician, without specifically asking "a further indication of the widely held societal view that obesity is an issue of personal responsibility rather than a medical problem," researchers write in the journal Chronic Diseases and Injuries in Canada.

In addition, fewer than one in five of total survey participants reported having their waistlines measured by a doctor in the previous year, even though Canadian guidelines recommend doctors screen every adult for weight-related problems by measuring waist circumference considered the new "vital sign" that predicts a person's risk of disease and death beyond body mass index alone.

People with abdominal fat are at the highest risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease and stroke. Belly fat is also the leading cause of a cluster of abnormalities known as metabolic syndrome.

The survey also found that 40 per cent of overweight or obese Canadians described themselves as "about right."

Lead author Sara Kirk calls it part of the "normalization" of excess weight: As the population grows heavier, overweight becomes the new norm.

Currently, 59 per cent of adult Canadians are either overweight or obese. Unless trends change, by 2026, the proportion will reach 70 per cent, a federal-provincial summit on healthy weights heard last week in Ottawa.

Severe obesity is tracking at an even faster rate than obesity. Class III obesity, meaning a body mass index of 40 or more, has tripled over the past three decades a phenomenon that is posing significant challenges for the health-care system, from patients too large to fit inside CT scanners or MRI machines, to what intensive care physicians have described as the "nightmare" of trying to insert breathing tubes into patients whose airways are heavy with fat.

Overall, people with a BMI greater than 30 are four times as likely to have diabetes, three times as likely to have hypertension and 1 1/2 times as likely to have heart disease, the researchers write.

Despite such "stark statistics," obesity is poorly managed in Canada, said Kirk, Canada Research Chair in Health Services Research at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

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Docs advising 'surprisingly few' overweight Canadians to shed pounds: study

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2012) An Oregon State University researcher has reviewed the body of evidence around weight loss supplements and has bad news for those trying to find a magic pill to lose weight and keep it off -- it doesn't exist.

Melinda Manore reviewed the evidence surrounding hundreds of weight loss supplements, a $2.4 billion industry in the United States, and said no research evidence exists that any single product results in significant weight loss -- and many have detrimental health benefits.

The study is online in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

A few products, including green tea, fiber and low-fat dairy supplements, can have a modest weight loss benefit of 3-4 pounds (2 kilos), but it is important to know that most of these supplements were tested as part of a reduced calorie diet.

"For most people, unless you alter your diet and get daily exercise, no supplement is going to have a big impact," Manore said.

Manore looked at supplements that fell into four categories: products such as chitosan that block absorption of fat or carbohydrates, stimulants such as caffeine or ephedra that increase metabolism, products such as conjugated linoleic acid that claim to change the body composition by decreasing fat, and appetite suppressants such as soluble fibers.

She found that many products had no randomized clinical trials examining their effectiveness, and most of the research studies did not include exercise. Most of the products showed less than a two-pound weight loss benefit compared to the placebo groups.

"I don't know how you eliminate exercise from the equation," Manore said. "The data is very strong that exercise is crucial to not only losing weight and preserving muscle mass, but keeping the weight off."

Manore, professor of nutrition and exercise sciences at OSU, is on the Science Board for the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. Her research is focused on the interaction of nutrition and exercise on health and performance.

"What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass," Manore said. "There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems."

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Most weight loss supplements are not effective

Winchester residents who would like to shed the extra pounds they put on over the holidays, or those wanting to fulfill New Years resolutions to lose weight can get some help doing so during the Clark County Activity Coalition Winchester Weigh Down. The 10-week weight loss competition begins March 14 and runs through May 23 and has categories for men, women and families. During the competition participants are asked to weigh in each week at one of five locations around the community. As in the past, at the end of the 10 weeks, the person, and family, that loses the most weight will receive prizes, including membership to the Winchester YMCA, gift certificates to Dicks Sporting Goods, heart rate monitors, pedometers and other general exercise equipment. Activity Coalition co-chair Laura Sheehan said the competition was another way the group can promote better health in the community. The main mission of the Activity Coalition is to promote physical activity and opportunities to improve health, Sheehan said.A main objective of the Weigh Down has always been to motivate and encourage individuals to make life changes in regards to food and exercise. Last year, 125 people participated in the competition and Sheehan said the coalition would like to see even more this year. In an effort to get more people involved and to help people achieve their goals, more classes are being offered for participants this year. Among the 18 class offerings are: getting started with weight loss. stress and emotional eating. exercise at home. eat like a pig look like a twig. silversneakers cardio circuit for seniors. how to make healthy protein smoothies. We hope having more classes will give people more reasons to join us and also will help people achieve their weight loss goals, Sheehan said. The Weigh Down is an opportunity to make people aware that losing weight is not as hard when you have a group to do it with and to support you. Gina Lang, co-chair of the Activity Coalition said its not uncommon for the average sedentary adult to gain five to seven pounds a year. The competition is geared toward everyone, regardless of how much weight they want to lose. We want to encourage everyone to join, from those who want to lose 10 pounds, to those who have more to lose, Lang said. We also want to encourage those who have participated in the competition before to come out, they are eligible to participate also. Sheehan said she was also excited that the group was able to begin a website this year to assist participants in the competition. There is so much information on the page from the class offerings and weigh in locations as well information about discounts participants can receive from local health facilities during the completion, Sheehan said. Im excited about the website and think it will be a powerful tool for people who are wanting to lose weight. Winners of the weigh down will be announced June 2 during the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new walking trail opening at the Clark County Extension Service located on Fortune Drive. For more information, go to http://www.winchesterweighdown.com.

Contact Bob Flynn at bflynn@winchestersun.com.

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Winchester Weigh Down begins March 14

It could be any Weight Watchers meeting anywhere.

"What's a good snack?" "How much water should you drink in a day?" "What is a correct portion size?" the leader asks as hands of those eager to answer the questions shoot up in the air.

This meeting at Employment Solutions is made up of people who have extra challenges when trying to lose weight. Many of the participants at Employment Solutions, a non-profit that helps those with barriers to employment become self-sufficient, have mental and physical disabilities that keep them from living independently. Because of that, many live in group homes or depend on other people to choose and prepare their food.

For them, food is used often as a reward for good behavior. And keeping active isn't the first priority when dealing with many people with many needs living in one home, said Nicole Kelley, director of expressive programs at Employment Solutions.

Sometimes the level of staffing is an issue, too.

"There is just no way if you have one staffer you can even get everybody together to take a walk," she said. And sometimes people simply don't know the best way to teach good health and fitness, she said.

The weekly informational programs at Employment Solutions such as one recently in which a chiropractor talked about nutritional health and how losing weight can help your spine and overall health are just part of the effort.

Eddie Farris proudly wears his blue "Employment Solutions Fitness Challenge" T-shirt that was given to all participants along with a water bottle and a notebook to record their food choices.

By exercising and watching what he eats, Farris has lost 200 pounds. He carries before-and-after pictures, well creased, in his pocket and proudly shares his story.

Participants celebrate their one-week weight loss. (Video by Mary Meehan)

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Job placement program helps participants get healthier, lose weight

Lauren Goodger's battle with her body image has been well documented. Now the 25-year-old The Only Way Is Essex star admits that she is desperate to lose weight, but cant.

Speaking exclusively to heat, the Reality TV star reveals the full extent of her problems with her weight...

I just feel like I need to confront it. It's like if I say I out loud it I might stop having a problem and feeling so crap about myself.

I feel bigger than I ever have. I buy dresses with sleeves on because I hate my arms. I wear cardigans to cover them. I need to lose weight everywhere.

I see a girl who should be skinnier.

Rarely, I dont want to see. I always think I look good and then I see a pap picture and I look awful. It really upsets me. If I thought I really looked like that I wouldnt leave the house.

The NTAs this year that was so bad. Thats the worst I have ever looked. I saw pictures of myself afterwards and I cried.

I know. I try and block it out as much as possible and I think; Its okay Im curvy, Im curvy and lots of people see me as a poster girl for that but do I go out and feel amazing? No. I miss the days when I could put on little jeans and a vest. I could never do that now. I want to be normal.

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Lauren Goodger: “I can’t stop eating”

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