Weight loss for health

Proteins and protein diets in recent years have become rock stars in diet & slimming country. Proteins are supposed to give you a prolonged sense of satisfaction. Moreover, proteins provide large and strong muscles.

Carbohydrates are massively exchanged for proteins. And almost every commercial weight loss website promotes its own protein diet and shakes. Unfortunately there are still some widespread misconceptions about proteins, I will tell you more about it in detail.

Misconception 1: The more protein the better

Because proteins are considered to be super-healthy and diet friendly, many dieters hold the following view: “The more protein you eat, the more weight you lose and more muscle you gain.”

Unfortunately, this statement is not right. If you eat more proteins than your body uses as building material, fuel or fabric protection, they will be broken down into amino acids. Then, the amino acids will be transformed by gluconeogenesis into carbohydrates or by lipogenesis in fatty acids. Never eat more protein than your body needs.

Myth 2: All proteins are the same

Some people think that all proteins are equal (protein = protein). But this is not the case. Each one is unique and consists of a series of amino acids. The numbers, types and order of amino acids and amino acid chains determine the function of a protein molecule.

There are many thousands of different (food) proteins. Therefore, we distinguish between animal and vegetable proteins… Essential and nonessential… and egg, milk, wheat, soy, meat proteins and so on.

Myth 3: Proteins are the white parts of eggs

Sometimes I read comments from people who think that “protein” is the white portions of the chicken eggs. Once I read the following response: “I eat 15 proteins per day as a sort of snack. In addition, eat and drink what I always did.

Although the white part of an egg largely consists of protein, it also contains water, carbohydrates and fats. There are also – as you could read above – different types of proteins, so, eating only the egg whites will not do you any good.

In conclusion, not all proteins are equal. For a balanced diet you should make sure that your food contains different proteins in equal proportions or as your body needs it.

Whatever you do, I would advise you to make sure you follow through on your plan. If you do not keep up with your program you are following, you will gain weight instead of losing it.

There is a lot of difference between losing weight and maintaining weight. While weight loss is about losing excess body weight, maintaining weight is about weight control or the act of trying to maintain a healthy body weight for long.

Maintaining Healthy Weight

Maintaining healthy body weight requires proper planning and strategic methods to be implemented. One has to include diets that work and improve eating habits and patterns together with daily activities to maintain weight. Weight maintenance also means that a person has to develop an overall pattern of varied behavioral routines that can support the exercise and dietary habits. Maintain healthy body weight is all about adopting a new attitude towards life, yourself and the foods habits you are used to.

Success Strategies to Maintain Weight

There are some strategies that can be incorporated in your daily life to ensure healthy weight control. The strategies include:

Eating a healthy breakfast regularly.
Monitor your body weight from time to time. If not regularly, at least once in a week should be fine.
Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day to burn 400 calories a day. This is necessary to control weight.
Walking is the best exercise to control weight, so try to walk every day.
Follow a diet that works, which would be a fat-free diet. Eat healthy carbs and do not avoid any food groups as each of these groups is equally important.
Control your overall calorie-intake. On an average, a person should not consume more than 1400 calories.

Weight Control and Motivation

It is important to stay motivated when you want to control weight. Failure is a part of life, and it comes in a bigger way when it comes to weight control. Therefore, when you are trying to maintain weight in the long run, make sure you make things difficult for yourself to fail!

Always avoid phrases that start with NEVER! “I will NEVER have French fries.” – It just makes you weak.

There are many occasions that lead to problems when you are on a weight control mode – social occasions, parties, barbecues and dining out. If these occasions are necessary, try to eat only the low-calorie food served. There are diets that actually work at such occasions too if you know how to

Do not nibble food leftovers – it is neither necessary, nor appreciated. It is always better to avoid leftovers or excess foods as they tend to accumulate on the hips and within coronary arteries.

Temptations have to be watched and monitored carefully. Whenever you feel tempted to eat, exercise and be active. Physical exercise can be beneficial to control food cravings and for maintaining weight as well.

Weight Control Mantra – Eat Less, Eat Often

Eating less in portion and more often than usual actually helps in stabilizing the level of blood sugar and keeps you full. It helps in maintaining efficient metabolism levels too.

Losing weight is hard work, but keeping the weight off is even harder.

Take Claudia Hallblom of the Los Angeles area. By her own estimation, she has lost and regained about 1,000 pounds in her 39 years.

While many of us may not go up and down by 1,000 pounds, the gain/loss cycle one that is all-too-common.

But why?

Like many of us, Claudia’s success at weight loss was generally motivated by a specific goal – a wedding, a graduation or other event.

To lose the weight, Claudia would get focused and go on a strict diet – counting calories and closely watching what she ate. Her dieting usually met with success, but after reaching her goal and passing the event, the weight would just come back on.

According to Claudia. “I didn’t know how to lose weight and keep it off.”

TWO REASONS WHY WEIGHT LOSS REBOUND OCCURS

In this article, we will fill you in on the two best tools to help keep the weight off, but first, let’s have a look at why this is so hard.

When you lose weight, two changes take place that work against your new, thinner self. First, your lighter body needs fewer calories to maintain itself. Second, your cravings for food become more intense.

Research shows that when you lose weight, you need about eight fewer calories per day for each pound of weight that was lost. That means someone who loses 40 pounds will require about 320 calories fewer each day than they did before the weight loss.

A change like that is significant and requires a corresponding permanent change in what you eat. Not just while you are losing the weight, but for the rest of your life.

Also working against you after losing weight is your appetite. Weight loss brings about a change in hormones that leave you feeling hungrier.

Studies also show that, after a weight loss, levels of the appetite-regulating hormone leptin are lower than what they used to be. Similarly, the levels of ghrelin, another hormone which stimulates food intake, rise after weight loss.

Keeping the weight off is therefore a battle of the mind against your hormones and metabolism – both of which want to put the weight back on.

According to Paul MacLean, associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver, “The big problem is keeping it off. The recent estimates are that only 5% to 10% of people are successful at keeping weight off on a long-term basis.”

Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of nutrition and metabolic research at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego adds: “You lose 10% of your body weight. All of a sudden all these systems kick in to try to keep you from losing weight. People are mad at themselves or depressed after they regain the weight. But I explain: It’s not you. Biology has kicked in now…. You are hungry all the time. You think about food all the time.”

Discouraging, to say the least!

TWO WAYS TO BEAT THE 95% FAILURE RATE

However, the good news is that there are two tools which can help you overcome the problem of weight re-gain.

First – and no surprise to most of you – is exercise. Exercise buffers the body against regaining weight, in ways that researchers of the physical body are just starting to comprehend. “Everyone thinks exercise is about burning calories,” Dr. Fujioka says. “But you are actually returning the system to more like what it should be.”

Second – and a much easier way – is the re-training of old habits through therapies developed by decades of research of the mind and its influence on the physical body. Leading research psychologist Dr. Patrick Porter says “The most powerful force within our bodies resides in our minds. This has been the source of all great achievement throughout mankind and is the single most effective tool to support lasting weight loss.”

There are two colors of fat, brown and white. The type we are most familiar with is white, which comprises most of the fat in the body. White fat is a storage depot for excess calories and provides insulation and produces inflammation, an unhealthy situation for the body. Brown fat is a healthy type of metabolically active fat. Brown fat is named as such because it contains a lot of energy-generating mitochondria which gives rise to the color. Brown fat is considered “good” because it burns calories and generates body heat.

Through complex brain-hormone interactions, the body controls its own body temperature. A higher body temperature is the result of increased metabolism. It’s like running an engine; the harder it runs, the hotter it gets. The hormones that raise metabolism, in fact, do so mainly by increasing thermogenesis. Low body temperature means lowered metabolism; we’ve seen this is an indicator of low thyroid function. People with more brown fat have a higher body temperature and higher metabolism because they burn more calories to produce body heat.

Brown fat produces a specialized blood protein known as thermogenin that allows for the production of body heat. Brown tissue is controlled by nerves and stress hormones. The stress hormones epinephrine and norepinepherine, released from nerve cells and the adrenal gland, activate brown tissue, increasing thermogenesis.

Newborn babies have the highest concentrations of brown fatty tissue, but until recently, it was thought that adults didn’t have any brown fat. In 2009, scientists discovered the presence of it in adults. This was considered a major medical breakthrough when the research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Less than one percent of the body’s fat is brown. Most is located in the front of the neck, shoulders and around the collar bones. It also hides in deeper layers of fat and the number of areas varies among individuals. Thinner people and younger people tend to have the most. Although, you lose brown fat as you get older and as you gain weight, it doesn’t go away completely. In the past, it was thought that once you lost your brown fatty tissue, it was gone forever. However, this is clearly not the case. Everyone has the potential of making more.

Now researchers are working feverishly to find ways to help people make more of this calorie-burning tissue. Researchers are investigating different types of medications and even stem cell transplants as ways to induce brown fat production. Animal studies show that lowering room temperature just a few of degrees will make them lose weight by boosting their metabolism. Cold also makes white fat act more like brownish or beige fat, which burns more calories.

You can make more brown fat by cooling your body down. Even a small decrease in the temperature your body is exposed to will induce your body make more calorie burning cells. From a survival perspective, when the body is cooled, it has to make more brown fatty tissue to generate enough body heat to keep from freezing to death. Researchers have speculated that warm temperatures may be contributing to our obesity epidemic. Turning down the thermostat just a couple of degrees could help boost your metabolism because you need to burn more calories to stay warm.

Exercise done in the water is particularly good at drawing out body heat, forcing your body to burn more calories. You don’t need to make yourself so cold that you feel uncomfortable or shiver. Swimming is one of the best fat-burning exercises. Swimming is extremely relaxing and a great form aerobic exercise. But any water exercise is a great way to cool your body and burn extra calories. Submersing yourself in water that’s cooler than body temperature will cool you down, causing you to make more brown fat to keep you warm. Try walking in a pool, using a kick board or take a water aerobics class. You don’t have to be a great swimmer to use water to help you burn extra calories.

Just as healthy fat can be part of the cycle to help lose weight; dysfunctional brown fat can get in the way. And, ironically – or perhaps not so ironically, considering the constant feedback loops of the body — obesity can cause brown fat dysfunction. If you are very overweight, your fat tissue cannot produce heat properly, so your metabolism is lowered and it becomes even harder to lose weight, ad infinitum.