Monday, January 29, 2018
Here’s What to Snack on If You’re Trying to Slim Down, According to a Nutritionist
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Tired of eating almonds and Greek yogurt (over and over and over)? I hear you. When you're trying to shed pounds, it's easy to fall into a healthy snack rut. But luckily, there are plenty of other options to choose from. Below are five easy ideas that satisfy all the criteria for a slimming snack. Each one is packed with nutrients to boost your energy and mood; filling enough to tide you over till your next meal; and low-cal enough to support your weight-loss goals. There's something for every type of craving—from salty to crunchy, and yes, even chocolate.
Savory egg salad with chopped veggies
Chop one hard-boiled pasture-raised egg. Mix with one cup of finely chopped vegetables, like kale, cucumber, tomato, and red onion. Toss mixture with a quarter cup of hummus to coat thoroughly and evenly.
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Spiced-up almond butter spread on celery
Stir one quarter cup of shredded zucchini, one quarter teaspoon fresh grated ginger, one eighth teaspoon ground cinnamon, and a teaspoon of pure maple syrup into two tablespoons of almond butter. Fill four fresh celery stalks with the mixture and crunch away.
Oven-roasted chickpeas
Toss a half cup of canned (drained, rinsed) chickpeas with a half tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and one sixteenth teaspoon each sea salt and black pepper. Roast on a baking sheet in a preheated 350°F oven for 15 minutes.
Salmon-stuffed avocado
Whisk together a teaspoon of Dijon, half teaspoon of Italian seasoning, and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix dressing with half a can of wild Alaskan salmon. Fill half an avocado with salmon mixture, and enjoy with a spoon.
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Dark chocolate and berries
Pair a half cup of fresh or frozen, thawed raspberries, blueberries or strawberries with one or two squares of 70% dark chocolate. Sweet tooth, satisfied.
Cynthia Sass is Health’s contributing nutrition editor, a New York Times best-selling author, and a consultant for the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets.
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Saturday, January 27, 2018
How to Lose Weight Without Actually Eating Less
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When it comes to losing weight, the most important rule of thumb is to consume fewer calories than you’re taking in each day. But cutting calories doesn’t have to mean eating less food. In fact, simply focusing on healthier food choices may be a more sustainable weight-loss strategy than trying to reduce portion sizes, a new Penn State University study suggests.
The findings come from a small new clinical trial, published in the journal Appetite, which compared food consumption among 39 women who’d taken part in a previous, year-long weight-loss study and 63 women who were not part of the earlier study. All of the women came to the study lab once a week for four weeks to eat a meal, with varying portions of seven different foods served each week.
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The women in the first group, as part of the previous study, had been counseled on various strategies for weight loss, including measuring out portion sizes, calculating calorie density of different foods, and making overall healthier choices. Because the training focused heavily on portion control, the researchers expected the women who’d participated in those training sessions to eat less food overall.
That didn’t happen, though. Women in both groups fell victim to the “portion size effect,” what researchers call the tendency to eat more when larger portions of food are presented. (For example, when meal size increased by 75%, the average amount consumed went up 27%.) Overall, there was no significant difference in total amount of food consumed, by weight, between those who’d received training and those who had not.
But there was one difference. “When we dug into their food choices, we found that the trained participants were selecting to eat more of the lower calorie-dense foods—like salad, for example—and less of higher calorie-dense foods, such as the garlic bread,” says first author Faris Zuraikat, a graduate student in the department of nutritional sciences. In other words, even though they ate the same total volume of food, they consumed fewer calories.
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The study did not measure the women’s weights, and since it only involved four meals over four weeks, the difference in calories likely would not have had any real weight-loss impact. But Zuraikat believes that making healthier choices over time could be an effective way to reduce calories and shed pounds.
That's not terribly surprising, says Zuraikat, but it's a good reminder that the ideal diet is not one of deprivation. And even though the women were trained in portion control, he adds, it seems to be the general healthy-eating advice that stuck with them—and it’s what they ultimately put into practice. “It may just be easier to judge which foods are higher or lower in calorie density, versus trying to judge an appropriate portion size,” he says.
Zuraikat says it may be helpful to encourage people to focus on a food's nutritional quality. “When you’re selecting lower calorie-dense foods, you can eat more of them,” he says. The payoff, he adds, is that you'll be more likely to feel full and satisfied.
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Even though the women in the study underwent special training, Zuraikat says there are a few basic rules that anyone can follow if they want to make more low-calorie choices. For starters, foods with a high water content—like fruits and vegetables—tend to have a lower calorie density than foods with less water. He also recommends checking out the Volumetrics Diet, designed by his study co-author Barbara Rolls, PhD, and based on the concept of low calorie-density foods.
“We don’t want people to think they have to eat salad all the time,” Zuraikat says. “But there are ways to incorporate water-rich ingredients into every meal, so you can keep the same level of palatability and enjoy the same amount of food while still focusing on your weight-loss or weight-maintenance goals.”
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Friday, January 26, 2018
The 6 Simple Changes That Helped Me Shed 87 Lb. After Giving Birth
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Tabatha James, 43, 5'8", from Alpharetta, Georgia
Before: 230 lb., size 14
After: 143 lb., size 8
Total lost: 87 lb., 6 sizes
Confession: I’ve had digestion issues forever. Even when I was active in college, I had stomachaches and felt bloated all the time. Then I gained 70 pounds while pregnant in 2011, which didn’t help. I was eating for two (and then some) and craving foods I’d never even liked before, like fried chicken strips and mashed potatoes. Two months after giving birth—and still in a fast-food frenzy—I blacked out in a parking lot. The doctor told me I’d collapsed from dehydration, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation. It was clear to me that my weight wasn’t helping either. I needed a lifestyle change, and fast.
But first, exercise
After my incident, it was six weeks before I could begin to exercise. When I got the OK in June of 2012, I went full throttle. Five days a week, at 5:30 a.m., I did at-home workouts I created with help from my husband. It took time, but the cardio, weights, and bodyweight moves helped me drop pounds. Replacing fried food with grilled options and tracking my calories were also key. By the next February, I was down to about 150 pounds, from a high of 230.
Hooked on veggies
While I was thrilled with my new frame, I still didn’t feel 100 percent. My stomach bothered me, and I would break out in rashes. Then one night I watched the documentary Vegucated, which highlights animal treatment. Stunned by the cruelty, I ditched animal products. I didn’t make the change for my health, but going vegan did transform my body: My digestion and rashes improved, I shed five more pounds, my clothes fit better, and I felt more energized, too. It’s been almost two years since I went vegan, and I know I’ll never look back. Those fried chicken strips have nothing on the new me!
Get toned like Tabatha
This veggie lover got strong thanks to these healthy strategies.
1. Repeat your eats: I try to eat the same meals almost every day: green smoothies and veggie burrito bowls. This way, I’m never scrambling to come up with something to eat—or resorting to fast food.
2. Get app happy: I’m obsessed with the quick and effective routines on the 7-Minute Workout app. Plus, it sends you reminders to wake up and work out, so you never have an excuse to miss a sweat session.
3. Re-create classics: My blog, The Sensible Vegan, is my passion project. It allows me to "vegucate" others and share my recipes, like tuna-less salad, peanut butter-chocolate energy bars, and "buttermilk" biscuits.
4. Snack smart: Eating every three hours helped keep me satisfied when I was trying to lose weight. And since I never felt deprived, I was less likely to overeat.
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The Supplements That Can Actually Help With Diet and Weight Loss—and the Ones That Can't
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New year, new supplement routine? If you’ve started 2018 with a diet or exercise plan that involves vitamins, herbs, shakes, or pills, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a message for you: Check the research first. Not all weight-loss supplements or fitness supplements have been shown to work, experts say, and some may even be dangerous.
To help out curious consumers, the NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) has created two easy-to-use factsheets. Available on the ODS website, the factsheets lay out the effectiveness and safety of many different supplement products, and the ingredients within them.
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“It’s January and people are making resolutions about their overall health and weight and fitness,” says Paul Thomas, nutrition scientist for the ODS and author of the new factsheets. “We thought it was a nice time to emphasize that we have these factsheets that may be useful for people who are considering whether or not these supplements may be of value for achieving their goals.”
One of the factsheets, titled Dietary Supplements for Exercise and Athletic Performance, covers more than 20 common supplement ingredients that have been purported to improve strength or endurance, increase exercise efficiency, achieve a fitness goal more quickly, or increase tolerance for intense training. Products containing these ingredients are sometimes called ergogenic aids, and are often sold in drugstores, organic food stores, and fitness clubs.
Research shows that some of these ingredients may be helpful in specific circumstances. Creatine, for example, might help with short bursts of high-intensity activity (like weight lifting), but not for endurance efforts (like distance running). Drinking beetroot juice might improve aerobic exercise performance, but it’s not known whether supplements containing beetroot powder have the same effect.
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Caffeine is another ingredient that gets a cautious thumbs up. “Sports-medicine experts agree that caffeine can help you exercise at the same intensity level for longer and reduce feelings of fatigue,” the factsheet states. Intake of up to 400 or 500 mg a day is safe for most adults, and experts recommend taking 2 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, 15 to 60 minutes before exercise.
For other ingredients, there’s limited or no science to back up their fitness-related claims. Antioxidants, for example, may be good for overall health, but no studies have found that they play a role in athletic performance. And ingredients like Tribulus terrestris and deer antler velvet—marketed for muscle building and male virility—haven’t even been studied enough to know whether they’re truly safe.
“You may be surprised to learn that makers of performance supplements usually don’t carry out studies in people to find out whether their products really work and are safe,” the factsheet states. And when human studies do happen, they often include only a small number of young and healthy people—often just men—for only a few days or weeks.
RELATED: 57 Ways to Lose Weight Forever, According to Science
Other ingredients on the factsheet include tart cherry juice, amino acids, ginseng, iron, and protein—which you’re probably already eating enough of, the evidence suggests. The bottom line? Only a few of these have been shown to really improve exercise and athletic performance, the NIH says, and even those should only be used by athletes who are already eating a good diet and training properly.
The other new factsheet includes supplements marketed for weight loss—a category Americans spend more than $2 billion a year on. “Sellers of these supplements might claim that their products help you lose weight by blocking the absorption of fat or carbohydrates, curbing your appetite, or speeding up your metabolism,” the factsheet states. But there’s little evidence that they work, say Thomas. Plus, they can be expensive and can interact with prescription drugs, and some may even be harmful.
RELATED: What to Eat for Dinner if You're Trying to Lose Weight, According to a Nutritionist
A few ingredients on the factsheet, like chromium, might help you lose a very small amount of body fat, studies show. Drinking green tea is also safe for most people, and may help them lose a small amount of weight—although green-tea extract pills have been linked to liver damage. (Drinking a lot of green tea can also interact with statin medications, a recent study found.)
But some, like bitter orange, raspberry ketone, and hoodia, have not been studied enough to prove that they’re safe. Others, like beta-glucans and garcinia, seem to be safe when taken as directed, but have not been shown to have any effect on weight loss. Many of these ingredients can also cause unpleasant side effects, like flatulence or diarrhea, nausea or vomiting, headache, and stomach cramps.
The NIH doesn’t want people to stop taking supplements entirely, and Thomas says that supplements, for the most part, are safe to take as directed. But he does want to remind consumers of the uncertainty that exists in the industry, and stresses that pills and powders are not a magic solution to getting in shape.
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“These supplements cannot and are not even marketed to take the place of the standard types of things we know we should be doing for our overall health, fitness, and weight loss,” he says. “Those include eating a very good diet and getting regular physical activity. The question becomes whether any of these supplements possibly add to that, or could possibly be an additional kind of aid.”
If you’re thinking about taking a performance or weight-loss supplement, the factsheet states, talk to your doctor. Talking to a health expert is especially important if you’re a teenager, have any medical conditions, or are currently taking any medications or other supplements.
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