Big Holiday Meals OK If Effect Isn't Prolonged

Failing to get back on a healthy eating plan soon after the big holiday feast can lead to serious weight gain and most likely a New Year’s resolution to get in shape.

“Most of us will eat snacks and sweets the week leading up to Thanksgiving or Christmas, then continue for days and weeks afterwards,” said Gaye Lynn Hicks, R.D., L.D., a dietitian with the Methodist Weight Management Center in Houston. “This often leads to a whole season of eating and before you know it you have put on a lot of weight in a short amount of time.”

Hicks said this type of behavior can spiral out of control very quickly, so adopting a healthy lifestyle becomes more important than dieting. Concentrate on eating healthy when not at holiday gatherings and exercising at least three days a week. Once you get into the “lifestyle mentality” it will be easier for to eat healthier after indulging in fattening foods usually offered around the holidays.

“Look at your calendar and mark down the parties where you will want to eat more and others that will be more diet friendly,” Hicks said. “If you focus and plan ahead it will be easier to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of wanting to eat more at holiday gatherings.”

“Most of the time it’s all in our head. We think we’ve blown our diet when that is simply not true,” Hicks said. “The bottom line is if you want to eat mashed potatoes, lathered in all kinds of stuff, during your holiday meal, do it. It will be easier to keep the holiday pounds off if you remember that your annual feast is just one meal.”

Proper Protein Intake Crucial for Moderating Energy Intake, Keeping Obesity at Bay

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Obesity is a growing problem worldwide, but proper protein consumption can help keep it at bay, according to a paper published Oct. 12 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Researchers found that, when subjects were fed a 10% protein diet, they consumed 12% more energy over four days than they did on a 15% protein diet. Moreover, 70% of the increased energy intake on the lower protein diet was attributed to snacking. When the protein content was further increased to 25%, however, the researchers observed no change in behavior relative to the 15% protein diet.

It had previously been suggested that protein content plays an important role in determining overall energy intake, and thus affects obesity, but until this study, experimental verification had been lacking. To test the hypothesis, the researchers tested 16 female and 6 male participants, all lean and in good health. The subjects spent four days on each of the three diets, which were made as similar as possible in factors such as palatability, availability, variety, and appearance, and their intake was monitored.

According to Dr. Alison Gosby, "the results show that humans have a particularly strong appetite for protein, and when the proportion of protein in the diet is low this appetite can drive excess energy intake. Our findings have considerable implications for bodyweight management in the current nutritional environment, where foods rich in fat and carbohydrate are cheap, palatable and available to an extent unprecedented in our history."

Participants in the Weight Watchers group lost twice as much weight as did those in the standard medical care

In this parallel group, non-blinded, randomised controlled trial, 772 overweight and obese adults were recruited by primary care practices in Australia, Germany, and the UK. Participants were randomly assigned with a computer-generated simple randomisation sequence to receive either 12 months of standard care as defined by national treatment guidelines, or 12 months of free membership to a commercial programme (Weight Watchers), and followed up for 12 months. The primary outcome was weight change over 12 months.

Findings

377 participants were assigned to the commercial programme, of whom 230 (61%) completed the 12-month assessment; and 395 were assigned to standard care, of whom 214 (54%) completed the 12-month assessment. In all analyses, participants in the Weight Watchers group lost twice as much weight as did those in the standard care.

Complete report available here

Habit makes bad food too easy to swallow

Study reveals why people eat out of habit — even when they are eating stale food — and suggests a way to combat mindless eating

Do you always get popcorn at the movies? Or snack while you're on the couch watching television? A new paper by USC researchers reveals why bad eating habits persist even when the food we're eating doesn't taste good. The study also reveals the surprisingly simple ways we can counter our habits to gain control over what we eat.

In an ingenious experiment, researchers gave people about to enter a movie theater a bucket of either just-popped, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn.

Moviegoers who didn't usually eat popcorn at the movies ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn. The week-old popcorn just didn't taste as good.

But moviegoers who indicated that they typically had popcorn at the movies ate about the same amount of popcorn whether it was fresh or stale. In other words, for those in the habit of having popcorn at the movies, it made no difference whether the popcorn tasted good or not.

"When we've repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present," said lead author David Neal, who was a psychology professor at USC when the research was conducted and now heads a social and consumer research firm.

The study, in the current issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, has important implications for understanding overeating and the conditions that may cause people to eat even when they are not hungry or do not like the food.

"People believe their eating behavior is largely activated by how food tastes. Nobody likes cold, spongy, week-old popcorn," said corresponding author Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC. "But once we've formed an eating habit, we no longer care whether the food tastes good. We'll eat exactly the same amount, whether it's fresh or stale."

The researchers controlled for hunger and whether the participants liked the popcorn they received. The researchers also gave popcorn to a control group watching movie clips in a meeting room, rather than in a movie theater.

In the meeting room, a space not usually associated with popcorn, it mattered a lot if the popcorn tasted good. Outside of the movie theater context, even habitual movie popcorn eaters ate much less stale popcorn than fresh popcorn, demonstrating the extent to which environmental cues can trigger automatic eating behavior.

"The results show just how powerful our environment can be in triggering unhealthy behavior," Neal said. "Sometimes willpower and good intentions are not enough, and we need to trick our brains by controlling the environment instead."

In another movie theater experiment, the researchers tested a simple disruption of automatic eating habits. Once again using stale and fresh popcorn, the researchers asked participants about to enter a film screening to eat popcorn either with their dominant or non-dominant hand.

Using the non-dominant hand seemed to disrupt eating habits and cause people to pay attention to what they were eating. When using the non-dominant hand, moviegoers ate much less of the stale than the fresh popcorn, and this worked even for those with strong eating habits.

"It's not always feasible for dieters to avoid or alter the environments in which they typically overeat," Wood said. "More feasible, perhaps, is for dieters top actively disrupt the established patterns of how they eat through simple techniques, such as switching the hand they use to eat."

Foods rich in protein, dairy products help dieters preserve muscle and lose belly fat: study

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New research suggests a higher-protein, lower-carbohydrate energy-restricted diet has a major positive impact on body composition, trimming belly fat and increasing lean muscle, particularly when the proteins come from dairy products.

The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of Nutrition, compared three groups of overweight and obese, but otherwise healthy, premenopausal women. Each consumed either low, medium or high amounts of dairy foods coupled with higher or lower amounts of protein and carbohydrates.

The women exercised seven days per week for four months, a routine that included five days of aerobic exercise and two days of circuit weightlifting.

According to the researchers, there were identical total weight losses among the groups, but the higher-protein, high-dairy group experienced greater whole-body fat and abdomen fat losses, greater lean mass gains and greater increases in strength.

The tissue composition, exclusively fat, of the weight the women lost has profound implications for longer-term health, say the researchers.

"One hundred per cent of the weight lost in the higher-protein, high-dairy group was fat. And the participants gained muscle mass, which is a major change in body composition," says Andrea Josse, lead author of the study and a graduate student in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University. "The preservation or even gain of muscle is very important for maintaining metabolic rate and preventing weight regain, which can be major problem for many seeking to lose weight."

Researchers found the lower-protein, low-dairy group lost about a pound and half of muscle whereas the lower-protein, medium dairy group lost almost no muscle. In marked contrast, the higher-protein, high-dairy group actually gained a pound and half of muscle, representing a three-pound difference between the low- and high-dairy groups.

On top of the muscle mass differences, the higher-protein, high-dairy group lost twice as much belly fat than the lower-protein, low-dairy group.

"Fat in the abdomen is thought to be especially bad for cardiovascular and metabolic health, and it seems—according to what we found in this study—increasing calcium and protein in the diet may help to further promote loss of fat from the worst storage area in the body," says Josse.

"A very important point is that these changes were not captured by simple measures of body weight or body mass index, which are the most commonly used measures of dietary 'success'" adds Stuart Phillips, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology. "These women also got fitter and stronger, which greatly reduces their risk of disease."

Weight loss without the hunger: eat a lighter lunch

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Losing weight without a grumbling stomach or expensive liquid diet can be as simple as eating a lighter lunch, finds a new Cornell University study to be published in the October issue of the journal Appetite.

Participants who ate portion-controlled lunches did not compensate by eating more calories later in the day, leading researchers to believe the human body does not possess the mechanisms necessary to notice a small drop in energy intake.

"Making small reductions in energy intake to compensate for the increasing number of calories available in our food environment may help prevent further weight gain, and one way of doing this could be to consume portion-controlled lunches a few times a week," said doctoral student Carly Pacanowski, who co-authored the study with David Levitsky, Cornell professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology.

The study closely monitored the food intake of 17 volunteers who ate whatever they wanted from a buffet for one week. For the next two weeks, half the group selected their lunch by choosing from one of six commercially available, portion-controlled foods, such as Chef Boyardee Pasta or Campbell's Soup at Hand, but could eat as much as they wished at other meals or snacks. For the final two weeks, the other half of volunteers followed the same regimen.

While eating portion-controlled lunches, each participant consumed 250 fewer calories per day and lost, on average, 1.1 pounds.

"The results confirm that humans do not regulate energy intake with any precision. Over a year, such a regimen would result in losing at least 25 pounds," said Levitsky, who adds the study demonstrates one simple, low-cost way to consume fewer calories.

Large weight gains most likely for men after divorce, women after marriage

LAS VEGAS — Both marriage and divorce can act as "weight shocks," leading people to add a few extra pounds—especially among those over age 30—according to new research to be presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

But when it comes to large weight gains, the effects of marital transitions are quite different for men than they are for women.

For men, the risk of a large weight gain increased most prominently after a divorce. But for women, the risk of a large weight gain was most likely after marriage.

"Clearly, the effect of marital transitions on weight changes differs by gender," said Dmitry Tumin, lead author of the study and doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University.

"Divorces for men and, to some extent, marriages for women promote weight gains that may be large enough to pose a health risk."

The probability of large weight gains following marital transitions increased the most for people past age 30.

"For someone in their mid-20s, there is not much of a difference in the probability of gaining weight between someone who just got married and someone who never married. But later in life, there is much more of a difference," he said.

Tumin conducted the study with Zhenchao Qian, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

While there have been many studies about weight gain after marriage or divorce, most of them look at average changes in weight and find very small increases in weight after marriage and often small decreases in weight after divorce.

But these results may mask the fact that some people actually lose weight, while some stay the same, and some have large weight increases, Qian said.

"We estimated the effects of marital transitions on the likelihood of weight gains or losses for different categories of people, allowing for the possibility that not everyone who goes through a marital transition has the same kind of experience," Qian said.

Tumin and Qian used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth '79, a nationally representative sample of men and women aged 14 to 22 in 1979. The same people were surveyed every year up to 1994 and every other year since then.

In this study, the researchers used data on 10,071 people surveyed from 1986 to 2008 to determine weight gain in the two years following a marriage or divorce.

The NLSY included data on Body Mass Index (BMI), a common health measure of weight relative to height.

The researchers separated people into four groups: those who had a BMI decrease of at least 1 kg/m2 (about 7 pounds for a person 5'10" tall) in the two-year period after a marital transition; those who had a small BMI gain (7-20 pounds for the 5'10" person); a large BMI gain (more than about 21 pounds); or no weight gain or loss (net change of less than 7 pounds).

The researchers took into account a wide variety of other factors that may influence weight gain or loss, including pregnancy for women, poverty, socioeconomic status, and education.

Both men and women who married or divorced were more likely than never-married people to have a small weight gain in the two years following their marital transition.

"For most people, the weight gain we see after a marital transition is relatively small, not something we would see as a serious health threat," Tumin said.

However, most other studies have suggested divorce actually leads to weight loss, at least in the first years after the marriage ends. Again, this may be because other studies have not separated people into age and gender groups, and only used average changes in weight, Tumin said.

The data in this study can't reveal why men are more likely to have large weight gains after divorce, while marriage is more likely to cause large weight gains for women.

However, these results fit with other research on how marriage affects men and women.

"Married women often have a larger role around the house than men do, and they may have less time to exercise and stay fit than similar unmarried women," Qian said.

"On the other hand, studies show that married men get a health benefit from marriage, and they lose that benefit once they get divorced, which may lead to their weight gain."

The probability of weight gain becomes more pronounced for men and women who marry or divorce after age 30 and the changes only grow larger as people get older, the study found.

"From age 22 to 30, the effect of marital transitions on weight is not very clear," Qian said.

"But both marriages and divorces increase the risk of weight changes from about age 30 to 50, and the effect is stronger at later ages."

Tumin said that it may be that people settle into certain patterns of physical activity and diet over time. "As you get older, having a sudden change in your life like a marriage or a divorce is a bigger shock than it would have been when you were younger, and that can really impact your weight."

The researchers noted that this study only looked at people for two years after a marital transition, and results may change over the years.

"This study really looks at the shock of a marital transition and how it affects weight," Tumin said.