Video | The National Weight Control Registry | How Members Lost Weight | How Members Maintained Weight Loss | Maintaining is Viewed as Easier than Weight Loss | Summary
Obesity protects obesity. This observation by researcher Timothy Garvey gets to the heart of something known as the set point theory (1).
According to this theory, your body has a genetically determined weight range, or “set point,” that it strives to maintain. When you stray outside of that range, your body triggers hormones that adjust your appetite and metabolism to reign you back in. Those adjustments work in both directions. However, because starvation is more of a threat than obesity, the mechanisms that prevent weight loss are stronger than those that prevent weight gain. In other words, it is harder to lose weight than it is to gain it.
Are we doomed to live the life our genetics predetermined, or is this set point theory just that…a theory?
While there is no denying that hormonal and metabolic factors play a role in weight control, most researchers consider the set point theory to be oversimplified, failing to take into consideration social, nutritional, and environmental factors.
After all, we all know someone who has lost weight and maintained that weight loss for years. In fact, starting in the 1990s, the National Weight Control Registry made it its mission to identify and investigate the characteristics of individuals who have succeeded at long-term weight loss.
In this blog post, I’ll review the common characteristics shared by the 10,000 successful maintainers in that registry that ensure the weight they lost stays off.
Read More “You CAN MAINTAIN Weight Loss: 10,000 People Did It This Way”
Video | What are SCFAs | How SCFAs Suppress Hunger | Is Fiber Needed? | Foods That Make SCFAs
Short-chain fatty acids, abbreviated SCFAs, promote satiety and reduce your appetite.
You don’t get them directly from your diet, but your body makes them from certain foods, and truly, the more, the better because hunger satisfaction is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the benefits these small molecules have on your metabolism.
In this blog post, I explain short-chain fatty acids, how they suppress hunger, and how to get more of them working for you. I’ll even touch on gorillas, explaining how these tiny molecules help gorillas get so big.
Read More “SCFAs SUPPRESS HUNGER – Here’s How To Get Your Body To Make Them”
Video | What is Liposuction? | Pre-Op | Surgery | Recovery | Cost
The ability to spot reduce fat in a specific area of your body has been debated for years. In my last blog post, I shared a study that got results spot reducing abdominal fat through intense exercise.
But what do you do if intense exercise is not a realistic option for you or your stubborn fat area is elsewhere on your body?
There is a procedure called liposuction that effectively spot reduces fat.
I had the opportunity to sit down with a surgeon who specializes in liposuction and ask him about what goes into preparing for it, the procedure itself, the recovery process, and the cost. Here’s what I learned.
Read More “I Met With A Liposuction Doctor. Here’s What I Learned [Spot Reduction – Part 2]”
VIDEO | The Study | Abdominal Aerobic Endurance Exercise | The Workouts | Why Did This Work? | Takeaway
I am often asked how you lose excess fat in specific areas of the body, such as the belly, hips, thighs, and arms.
If you’ve lost weight through improvements to your diet but still have trouble areas, it’s logical to target those areas with exercise. Unfortunately, there has been little scientific evidence to support the idea that working the muscles in problem areas burns the fat in those specific areas.
With that said, I came across a well-done study from 2023 that got results spot reducing abdominal fat through abdominal aerobic endurance training. In this blog post, I share what it takes to spot reduce belly fat.
Read More “You Can SPOT REDUCE BELLY FAT – But Here’s What It Takes”
Video | What is The Grapefruit Diet? | Original Diet: Sample Menu | The “Magic” of Grapefruit | Revised Diet: Sample Menu | Takeaway
The Grapefruit Diet. Remember that one? It has been around for decades, and most would simply write it off as just another Hollywood diet that, at its best, is a short-term fix and, at its worst, is a harmful approach to weight loss.
But unlike similar diet fads that highlight a specific food in their name, the Grapefruit Diet allows you to eat more than just grapefruit.
In fact, despite an obvious flaw in its design, at its core, it is a low-carb, high-protein diet.
In this blog post, I share what you could eat on the original grapefruit diet and show you how, with just two tweaks, this fad from the past can become a well-formulated diet.
Read More “The Grapefruit Diet Revisited and Revised – IT WORKS…With These 2 Tweaks”
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