Thursday, February 8, 2018
Monday, February 5, 2018
Eating Fruit Can Actually Help You Lose Weight. A Nutritionist Explains
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Here's some good news if you love berries, pears, and apples: Ditching fruit isn’t necessary to lose weight. It’s also not smart. Yes, fruit contains carbs and naturally-occurring sugar. But there are important reasons to make fruit a daily staple in your diet, even when you're working to slim down. The key is to eat it strategically. Doing so can actually help you shed pounds.
Natural substances in fruit—including vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and prebiotics—are incredibly good for you, not just in terms of protecting against chronic diseases, but also for managing your weight. Even if you eat plenty of veggies, nixing fruit means missing out on the unique antioxidants they provide.
In research, fruit has actually been tied to weight loss, not weight gain. One study found that overweight and obese adults who ate more fruit experienced greater weight loss than those who didn't. Another study, which followed more than 130,000 adults over 24 years, found that consuming fruit was associated with improved weight loss over time.
This link may be because fruit can help boost satiety, satisfy a sweet craving, and decrease your desire to dig into goodies like candy or baked goods. Fruits also tend to replace higher-calorie treats, whereas veggies tend to be add-ons. In other words, you’re much more likely to choose an apple rather than a piece of broccoli in place of a cookie; and that swap can help you limit total calories and avoid added sugar, the real culprit when it comes to weight gain.
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As for sugar, even the strictest guidelines from groups like the American Heart Association and World Health Organization don't lump the sugar from fresh, whole fruit in with added sugar, the refined type used to sweeten foods (think almond milk, or the spoonful you add to your morning coffee).
That's because the naturally-occurring sugar in fruit is much less concentrated, and bundled with water and a number of key nutrients. For example, one whole orange provides about 17 grams of carb, about 12 of which are natural sugar. But it also supplies fluid, 12% of your daily fiber needs, and nearly 100% the recommended amount of vitamin C, along with B vitamins, potassium, and substances like hesperidin, which has been shown to help lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and inflammation.
Compare that to one tablespoon of table sugar, which contains 16 grams of carbs and no nutrients. Essentially, whole, fresh fruit and added sugar don’t belong in the same category.
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Of course, that doesn’t mean you can eat unlimited amounts of fruit. Fruit does contain carbohydrates, and the job of carbs is to fuel the activity of your cells. When you eat more carbs than you can burn after a meal or snack, even from fruit, the unneeded surplus can either feed existing fat, or plump up fat cells.
For this reason your total carb intake, including fruit, should correspond to your fuel demands, which are based on your height, ideal weight, sex, age, and physical activity level. Most of my women clients can afford to eat two servings of fruit per day (more if they are taller or more active), with one serving being one cup, or one piece about the size of a baseball.
Since the carbs in fruit help fuel activity, when you eat fruit matters too. Downing a huge bowl of grapes late at night while you’re watching TV or surfing the web (when your fuel requirement is low) doesn’t make a lot of sense. Instead, build fruit into the meals and snacks you consume before your more active hours of the day. For many of my clients that may mean eating a small banana 20 or 30 minutes before a workout, or eating berries with breakfast before heading to work—and pairing an apple with almond butter in the afternoon to help power through the rest of the day.
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As far as the type of fruit you choose, try to get a good variety to expose your body to the broadest spectrum of nutrients and antioxidants. In my opinion no fruit is off limits if you’re thoughtful about the amount and timing. For example, while watermelon is a high glycemic-index fruit, enjoying it when it’s in season is smart, since one cup of cubes contains less than 50 calories, and it provides vitamin C, potassium, and antioxidants tied to anti-inflammation, protection against heart disease, and improved exercise endurance and recovery.
Bottom line: fruit is incredibly nutritious and not inherently fattening. Its impact on your weight depends on when you consume it, and how much you eat. Banishing fruit completely can backfire for weight loss, and negatively impact your overall wellness. Instead, strike the right balance to reap all the benefits of fruit and still achieve your slim-down goals.
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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Trying to Lose Weight? Your Partner May Reap the Benefits, Too
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Committing to a weight-loss program can have an unexpected benefit: Your significant other may shed some extra pounds, too, even if they aren’t trying. That’s what researchers found in a new study on the so-called weight-loss ripple effect, published today in the journal Obesity.
The study, which was sponsored by Weight Watchers, tracked the progress of 130 married or cohabitating couples for six months. In all of the couples, one partner had a desire to lose weight, and both partners agreed to weigh-ins after three and six months. Half of the partners followed Weight Watchers, while the others received a four-page handout with healthy-eating and exercise tips, and were told to try to lose weight on their own.
The researchers wanted to see if one approach would work better than the other. As it turns out, they were both effective, and everyone involved lost weight. After three months, those in the Weight Watchers group had lost more weight (about 7.4 pounds versus 4.3 pounds), but by the end of the trial, both groups had lost about 14 pounds.
But the partners who didn’t participate — most of whom were men — lost weight, too. On average, people whose partners joined Weight Watchers lost about 3.3 pounds in the first three months, and about 4.9 pounds over the full six-month study. Those whose partners were given a self-guided weight-loss approach had lost about 2.1 pounds at the three-month check-in, and 4.2 pounds at six months. Because of the study’s margin of error, the difference between the two groups was not statistically significant.
Lead author Amy Gorin, PhD, a professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut, said in a press release that when one person changes their behavior, it’s not unusual for the people around them to change, as well. When one partner starts counting calories, weighing themselves regularly, or making healthier food choices, for example, their partners might emulate them.
Four or five pounds may not seem like a lot. But by the end of the study, about a third of the “untreated” partners in the study had lost more than 3% of their initial body weight, which the experts say has measurable health benefits.
Partners also tended to lose weight at similar rates: If one member of a couple lost weight at a steady pace, his or her partner did too, and the same goes for people who lost weight slowly.
“This data suggests that weight loss can spread within couples, and that widely available lifestyle programs have weight loss effects beyond the treated individual,” the authors wrote in their paper. They also suggest that programs like Weight Watchers could help more people by actively involving spouses and partners in the weight loss process.
Gorin says she and her colleagues next hope to look at whether the weight-loss ripple effect could go even further, to other family members who share a household, or to close friends or coworkers.
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Thursday, February 1, 2018
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
The Mindful Eating Hack That Helped Me Stop Obsessing About Food
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One of the main battles in overcoming overeating is to stop thinking of some foods as "good" and others as "bad." Food is nourishment and hunger is a healthy, involuntary sensation just like feeling cold or tired, the thinking goes.
But like so many people with a history of dieting, I’ve struggled with knowing when I'm truly hungry, and I've had a hard time not judging myself harshly if I pass up a so-called "good" or healthy food in favor of something I've categorized as "bad," like an indulgent dessert. That puts me in a cycle of disordered eating, one I've dealt with for much of my adult life.
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To finally address my overeating issues, I began seeing New York City psychotherapist Alexis Conason. Over two years in private and group therapy, I learned about mindful eating, which she describes as "eating what you want when you want it." Sounds so simple, but for most people, this is pretty revolutionary. We spend so much time depriving and judging ourselves, and one of the ironies of this is that even if you don’t struggle with your weight, food judgments are a constant yet ever-changing part of our culture.
Gluten, salt, animal products, sugar, carbs—we are barraged by conflicting information that flip-flops through the years. But by far the most painful to live with are the judgments we place on ourselves. Denying yourself food that your body is craving will never help you maintain a healthy weight long-term. In fact, it will almost always set you up for disordered eating, as I've learned the hard way.
Dr. Conason helped me understand why. “When we believe that our food will be restricted, we have a 'now or never' mentality, thinking this is our one opportunity to eat this food, so we should eat as much as we can in this moment because we’ll never allow ourselves to have it again,” she says. One of the many issues with this is that we will eat it again...and probably again after that. We hate ourselves not only for eating it, but for failing.
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Her advice to break this cycle? She recommends stocking your kitchen with as much "bad" or unhealthy food as you want—actually more than you think that you could eat at any one time—and then making sure to always keep your stash of it replenished. “When we truly believe that food won’t be restricted, the food usually loses its emotional power. Over time, we don’t feel compelled to eat all the cartons of ice cream in our freezer in one sitting because we trust that there will always ice cream in our freezer, and we can have more when we want it.”
When she suggested this to me, I thought it was bananas. The logic behind it made sense, but I didn’t trust myself remotely. If I had every “bad” food in the house at once, I would never leave, I thought. I told my husband about it though, and he thought I should try it out—and one night came home from the market with six boxes of brownie mix.
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I remember my nervous laughter that turned into a cackle when I saw those boxes of brownie mix. I have tried many things to gain control over my eating, but this had to be the craziest. Then after I stopped laughing and thought about it, I suddenly felt liberated. I think this applies to anyone, whether they’ve struggled with their weight or not: Just imagine for a minute how it would feel to be able to eat anything you wanted, as much of it, whenever you wanted. It’s an almost unthinkable circumstance for most people.
This sense of freedom turned out to be life-changing. Okay, I tore through the first few boxes in a matter of days, making and eating batches of delicious brownies. But after the second box, the idea of eating brownies somehow truly became less exciting, less seductive. I realized how I was imprisoning myself with this idea of what I could and could not eat; how making some foods off-limits gave them a power over me. The worst part was that after years of this pattern of behavior, I was still fat. It was all a waste of energy.
Conason warns that allowing yourself to have whatever you want and managing to resist consuming it all immediately is not something that happens overnight. “It’s a process—you may eat through your whole stock of ice cream the first night. This isn’t indication that you have failed or further evidence that you can’t be trusted around ice cream. It is just part of the process of recovering from diet culture," she explains.
"If we stick with it, eventually one day—maybe the following day, maybe a week from then, maybe a month from then, but at some point, we realize that we don’t want any more ice cream right now, and we can have more later and the food loses its power,” she adds.
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It took about six months for this to happen to me, to accept that I could eat whatever I wanted and not give in to the compulsion to consume everything in one sitting. This freedom from a cycle of binging and depriving myself helped lead me to a light bulb moment: I came to realize that just because I can eat whatever I want doesn’t mean I should.
The key to this is not that I should or shouldn’t eat something because of calories or watching my weight. I “should” or “shouldn’t” from a self-care perspective. Taking away the power foods had over me helped me realize that I don’t feel well after I binge eat unhealthy foods—physically or mentally. If I don't like the way I feel after consuming them, I shouldn't eat them.
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With this in mind, I'm now choosing my well-being over a momentary sugar rush. To be clear, sometimes I still choose the sugar high. I’m still deep in my process, as Dr. Conason calls it. But after years of viewing certain beloved foods as forbidden, I’ve been able to indulge when I want, without thinking about it obsessively beforehand or regretting it after.
Cutting myself off from foods I wanted never made me skinny—it only made me miserable. Proving to myself that I can eat whatever I want has helped me take the power back and make genuine, mindful decisions that make me feel healthy both physically and mentally.
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