Archive for December, 2009

Reasons why the teens turned their weight situations around

December 31st, 2009 Health News

Weight loss for teens

Weight loss for teens

I did it for my health. To be honest, it floored me that the teens mentioned health reasons for losing weight just as frequently as appearance-related reasons, because over and over I’ve read that teens are not motivated by health. (It’s hard to give up burgers and fries because of that heart attack you might have when you ‘re 50 or 60.) Nineteen year old Taylor S, who once weighed 250 pounds, says, “My main concern was to become healthier, rather than losing weight. I didn’t want to die in my forties because of my eating habits. Among the things I stopped drinking and eating were soft drinks, sweets, and any other type of junk food item. I was simply focused on taking care of my body. To my surprise, I began losing weight quickly. and this gave me motivation to continue. Gradually, in a period of one and a half to two years, I got down to my current weight of 150.” (He’s 5′9″) Angel W, who weighed 240 pounds, says that one of her main motivations for losing weight was high blood pressure. Her 65 pound weight loss brought her blood pressure down to a normal, healthy tips number – without medication. Vincent J, who weighed 130 pounds when he was about 5 years old, says, “When I was trying to sleep, it became harder and harder for me to breathe. I was so tired that I’d fall asleep in class. My gym teachers told me that if I didn’t lose weight, I would have a heart attack.” Today he weighs about 145 pounds and is 5′5″.

I wanted to look better. Zack A says, “I wanted to look hot!” Now, there’s honesty for you. Along the same lines, a good number of teens talked about wanting to look good in clothes – or out of them. Lee J says, “I wanted to wear cute, trendy clothes.” The turning point for my son Wes was his first college visit. “It was near the beach, and I wanted to be able to take my shirt off when I wore a swimsuit and look good for girls,” he says.

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I wanted to feel better about myself. Jenni O wanted to lose weight because she was depressed and sad, and wanted to feel good about herself. She also wanted to slim down for health and appearance reasons. Ben G says, “I was sick of being upset and depressed whenever I looked in the mirror or just felt fat.”

I wanted to improve my relationships. Many teens told me that they were motivated because they wanted to fit in better with their peers and/or to attract the opposite sex. Mary N says, “I always had lots of friends, but I could never get a boyfriend. Before I started dating my first serious boyfriend, I remember him telling me about this girl he was obsessed with. He said she was so hot. I asked him what he thought of me, and he said that I was cute. After he broke up with me, I didn’t want to be cute anymore. I wanted to be beautiful. I also knew that if I was to date again, I would first need to build up my self-esteem. At that time, I had lost both my first love and all of my self-esteem. I knew that my poor body image had a lot to do with my self-esteem.” All of this encouraged Mary to start on the path to losing 50 pounds, which she did more than 3 years ago.

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Top 10 reasons why the teens gain weight

December 29th, 2009 Health News

From a list of ten possible causes of weight gain – ones experts feel play a role in the obesiy epidemic – I asked the teens to chec off the five main reasons for their weight gain. At least 75% cited the first three causes; each of the other causes was checked by at least 25% of the teens. No teen gave just one reason for weight gain; some checked them all. Here’s how the reasons rank, according to how often they were checked.

Reason #1: Too much snacking. Molly S feels that oversnacking was the number one cause of her weight gain. Now, her mother says, “we have nothing very snack food related in the cupboard. Ice cream, cookies, chips, et cetera, have been replaced by fruits.”

Reason #2: Portion sizes too large. Erin D says that her portions were three times larger when she was overweight than they are today. “Now,” she says, “when I go to fast-food restaurants, I can’t eat a whole value meal. I’m satisfied with a kid’s meal.”

Reason #3: Not enough exercise. Victor F was able to lose 50 pounds by exercising four or five times a week, as well as by learning about and practicing good nutrition. Three years later, he still finds time to exercise regularly, even though he’s in medical school.

Reason #4: Ate too many sweets and desserts: Wes G, who feels that his number one reason for gaining weight was eating too many sugary foods, says that a major difference for him now is cutting out his nightly “giant bowl of ice cream.” (He still eats occasionally.)

Reason #5: Emotional causes (eating when lonely, bored, or sad). Sari M became overweight when her father left the family. Now when she feels like eating for emotional reasons, she usually goes to a coffee house, “where the drinks are all fairly low calorie and I can be around people and friends who will hopefully cheer me up.”

Reason #6: Spent too much time in front of the TF, computer, and/or video games. Christine F says that too much TV and computer time were the major culprits in her weight gain. The most important thing she did to lose weight was “exercised! It took a while to get motivated, but as soon as there were visible results, I was hooked.”

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9 myths about teen weight loss

December 26th, 2009 Health News
Teens' dance aerobics

Teens' dance aerobics

Teens often lose weight against heavy odds. Their experiences challenge conventional assumptions about teen weight loss and the role parents play in it.

Misconception: Teens who come from an overweight family have little hope of losing weight and keeping it off.
Facts: Sixty of the 70 teens who answered the question whether anyone else in their family was overweight said that at least one parent was. 23 of them said that both parents were overweight. Nicole S is typical. Her mom and dad are overweight. She decided to lose weight at 16, when she weighed 293. Although her family didn’t think she would do it, they encouraged her to try. Three years later Nicole weighs 145 (she’s 5′5″).

Misconception: Teens who have been overweight since they were young are unlikely to be able to lose weight and keep it off.
Facts: Many of the teens said that they first becase overweight when they were quite young – more than half said it was at age 10 or younger. The average age they reported becoming overweight was nine had a half. 15 year old Sandra D told, “I’d always been overweight, even when I was little, and I didn’t want to stay that way.” Part of her motivation for losing more than 50 pounds was that she was tired of being compared to her nonidentical twin sister, who never had a weight problem. “Now,” Sandra says, “we’ve both grown – and shrunk – to develop a relationship based on who we are instead of on the physical differences that separated us in the past.”

Misconception: Teen who have tried and failed at losing weight many times before don’t succeed.
Facts: Although it certainly isn’t physically or physchologically healthy for any teen to go on and off diets repeatedly, the teens provide hope for those who have tried and failed at weight management. When I asked many times they tried to lose weight before they finally succeeded (counting only the times when they lost at least 5 to 10 pounds), 7 out of 10 indicated that they’d lost and gained multiple times. Forty of them had tried to lose weight three or more times in the past. Sandra D, says, “There were so many times when I felt like trying was pointless but I finally did it. And if I could do it, then anyone can.” Wes G says, “It took me many tries until I really wanted to lose the weight for myself enough to succeed.” Kelly D, who tried to lose weight 3 or 4 time before succeeding, says that teens need to do some experimenting. “Keep trying new things until you find something that works,” she advises.

Misconception: It’s best to avoid talking about dieting and weight loss with overweight teens because it’s likely to trigger an eating disorder such as bullmia or anorexia nervosa.
Facts: The vast majority of teens losing weight are living proof that overweight young people can lose weight without developing such an eating disorder. Some studies do suggest that teens who say they diet regularly may be at higher risk for eating disorders than nondieters, particularly when they use restrictive and unhealthy dieting methods. That’s why teens need to be educated about how to lose weight in healthy ways and to be shown healthy role models. In fact, Kerri Boutelle, PhD, a weight and eating disorders expert at the University of Minnesota, states, “Several studies actually suggest that teaching teens healthful methods to control their weight may reduce weight concerns and the risk of subsequent eating disorders.”

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Guidelines for low-fat eating

December 23rd, 2009 Health News

The following guidelines should help you design and stick to a well-balanced diet:

  • When choosing breads, cereals, rice, and pasta, always choose whole-grain, high-fiber, low-fat varieties, preferably without added sugar, coloring, or unnecessary preservatives. Choose brown rice over white rice, and whole-grain pastas over pastas made from white flour.
  • Eat your vegetables and fruits fresh and, preferably, raw as often as possible. Water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C may leach out of foods during cooking, be damaged by overprocessing, or be destroyed when foods are overcooked. Even fat-soluble vitamins, which are fairly stable during low-temperature cooking, can be affected by frying. For this reason, it is best to steam or microwave vegetables rather than boiling or frying them. And, unless produce is organically grown, be sure to peel or thoroughly wash it before eating to reduce such unwanted elements as waxes and pesticides residue.
  • Select low-fat and nonfat varieties of milk, yogurt, and cheese. These provide the most nutrients and the least amount of fat. When eating meat, poultry, or fish, choose the leanest cuts available, trim off any excess fat, and bake or broil the foods instead of frying them.

Select as few foods as possible from the fats, oils, and sweets category. When you do use fats and oils, choose monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats instead of saturated ones. Limit your intake of sweets. Choose fresh fruits instead of cakes, cookies, and other high-fat desserts.

Food labeling

Food labels are required to include a “Nutrition Facts” section that identifies how many servings are found in each container, and how much of the following components each serving contains:

Total Calories Sodium Vitamin A
Calories from fat Total carbohydrates Vitamin C
Total fat Dietary fiber Calcium
Saturated fat Sugars Iron
Cholestrol Protein

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Understanding fats

December 20th, 2009 Health News

Fats have been classified into three major categories – saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, and monosaturated fats. This classification is based on the number of hydrogen atoms each has in its chemical structure.

Saturated fats, which are usually solid at room temperature, are found primarily in animal products, including fatty meats like beef, veal, lamb, pork, and ham; and in dairy items such as whole milk, cream, ice cream, and cheese. For example, the white marbling you can see in a piece of beef is saturated fat. Some types of vegetable products – including coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and vegetable shortening – are also high in saturates.

The liver uses saturated fats to manufacture cholestrol. Therefore, excessive dietary intake of saturated fats can significantly raise the blood cholestrol level, especially in people how have an inherited tendency toward high blood cholestrol.

Guidelines issued by the National Cholestrol Education Program (NCEP) and widely supported by most experts recommend that your intake of saturated fats should be kept below 10 percent of your total calorie intake. However, for people who have severe problems with high blood cholestrol, even that level may be too high.

Polyunsaturated fats are found in greatest abundance in corn, soybean, saffflower, and sunflower oils. Certain fish oils, particularly those containing the omega-3 fatty acids, are also high in polyunsaturates. Unlike the saturated fats, plyunsaturates may actually lower your total blood cholestrol level. In doing so, however, large amounts of polyunsaturates also have a tendency to reduce your HDLs – your “good cholestrol.” For this reason – and because, like all fats, polyunsaturates are high in calories for their weight and volume – the NCEP guidelines state that your intake of polyunsaturated fats should not exceed 10 percent of your total calorie intake.

Monosaturated fats are found mostly in vegetable and nut oils such as olive, peanut, and Canola (rapeseed). These fats appear to reduce blood levels of LDL cholestrol without affecting HDLs in any way. However, this positive impact upon LDL cholestrol is relatively modest. The NCEP guidelines recommend that your intake of monosaturated fats be kept between 10 and 15 percent of your total calorie intake.

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Understanding cholestrol

December 17th, 2009 Health News

Your body requires fat and cholestrol to maintain good health. During infancy and childhood, fat is essential for normal brain development; throughout life, it is essential to provide energy and support growth. Cholestrol is used to build the walls of cells throughout the body and to manufacture essential substances like hormones and vitamin D. So it is important to have some fat and cholestrol available in your body at all times. But you can get too much of a good thing, and when the amount of fat and cholestrol you consume becomes excessive, health problems can begin to appear.

It is important to recognize that although fat and cholestrol are essential for good health, you do not always need to get these substances from your diet. After two years of age, in fact, the body requires only small amounts of dietary fat, and needs no dietary cholestrol at all, as the liver is capable of manufacturing whatever is necessary. In spite of this, most of us consume very large amounts of both fat and cholestrol – in many cases, enough to increase our health risks significantly. Excessive fat intake is an important causative factor in obesity, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and colon cancer. Excessive dietary cholestrol increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. How do these substances contribute to these life-threatening disorders? To understand this it is necessary to learn a little more about the actions of fat and cholestrol within the body.

Understanding cholestrol

Cholestrol is a white, waxy, fatty substance that is produced by the liver and is also present in foods of animal origin, including beef, poultry, fish, cheese, eggs, and dairy products. In general, the more cholestrol you put into your body by eating such foods, the higher hte level of cholestrol in your blood will be. But dietary cholestrol is not the only thing that determines your blood cholestrol level. Dietary fat – especially saturated fat – and the cholestrol that your liver manufactures on its own also play important roles.

Pure cholestrol cannot mix with or dissolve in solutions like water and blood, so it is combined in the liver with other substances – fats and proteins – to form particles that are capable of moving through the bloodstream. These particles, called lipoproteins, carry cholestrol from the liver to the parts of the body where its is needed, and then bring it back again for removal from the body. A distinction has been made between two principal types of lipoproteins: the low-density lipoproteins (called LDLs, or LDL cholestrol) and the high-density lipoproteins (called (HDLs, or HDL cholestrol). The levels of each of these forms of cholestrol in the blood can be measured separately. Together, they make up most of your “total blood cholestrol,” or “total cholestrol.”

Low-Density Lipoproteins (LDLs)

Low-density lipoproteins contain mostly cholestrol and protein. These LDLs are removed from the bloodstream by cells throughout the body, and then are broken down into their original elements, which are used for essential bodily functions. However, some people’s systems remove LDLs more slowly than others, causing the level of LDLs – and thus cholestrol – to build up in their blood. This tendency to remove LDLs and cholestrol quickly or slowly is inherited.

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Weight loss strategies

December 14th, 2009 Health News

Each of these weight loss strategies takes advantage of the different ways the body used these nutrients to help you lose weight.

Strategy #1, eating a low-fat diet, ensures that you add less fat to the fat stores. The less fat you add, the less you will have to remove later. Strategies #2 and #3 are aimed at removing the fat that already pads your frame.

Strategy #1: Eat a low-fat diet

Fat is the villain. Fat makes you fat. Unlike carbohydrates and protein, fat is not burned off when you eat it. Almost all (97%) of the fat you eat slides right into the fat stores that pad your body. It is as if you took the hamburger you just ate and wadded it onto your belly except that it is happening from the inside.

The capacity for storing fat knows no bounds. The normal lean person stores about 140,000 calories of fat. Contrast this to the body’s limited capacity to store carbohydrate (about 1200-1500 calories). And with fat storage, there is no upper limit. A person who weighs 300 pounds is storing about 200 pounds of fat.

Whereas it is extremely difficult to overeat carbohydrates if you are eating nutrient dense, fiber rich food, there are no mechanisms to protect you from overeating fat. You can overeat fat one day, and the next, and the next, and the fat stores grow larger and larger.

In short, you are overweight because you have put too much fat in cold storage.

Creating a deficit
Each day fat from the foods you eat is added to your body’s fat stores. Some is removed to furnish energy not supplied by the carbohydrates you eat. Your weight is determined largely by how much fat you add to the fat depots versus how much you remove.

If you eat just the amount of fat that is removed from the fat stores to furnish the energy not supplied by the carbohydrates, your weight will remain the same. If you eat more fat, the excess will go into the fat stores and you will gain weight. If you eat less fat than is required to satisfy your energy needs, then the body will have to make up the deficit by removing fat from the fat stores and you lose weight.

Strategy #2: Eat plenty of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich carbohydrates

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Weight loss: Energy supply and demand

December 11th, 2009 Health News

Your body needs energy to operate
We will start with energy because weight loss is all about how your body uses and stores energy.

Basal Metabolism: Your body needs a certain amount of energy to function – to power your heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, and other organs and keep them in good repair. The amount of energy you use when you are completely at rest is called your basal metabolism. The rate at which you burn energy when you are completely rest is called your basal metabolism. The rate at which you burn energy when you are completely at rest is called your basal metabolism rate (BMR).

Each person has his own BMR determined partly by heredity and partly by lifestyle. Your heredity sets the upper and lower limits of your BMR. You can maximize your BMR within this range by doing daily aerobic exercise and by eating a lot of nutrient-dense, fiber-rich carbohydrates. The higher your BMR, the faster and more easily you lose weight.

Physical Activity: Unlike your basal metabolic rate, physical activity is not fixed within a range. The more exercise you do, the more energy you need to fuel it.

Total energy needs: Your total energy needs are the sum of your basal metabolism plus the amount of physical activity you do. The higher your BMR and the more active you are, the more energy you need.

Food Supplies Energy
Where does your body get energy to power your basal metabolism + physical activity? Just as energy stored in batteries powers machines to do work, energy stored in the food you eat powers your body.

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Few tips to keep yourself fit

December 10th, 2009 Health News

Keep your Carbohydrates Tank on Full
When you eat a meal, some of the carbohydrate you consume tops up the glycogen stores. If you skimp on carbohydrates because you are following a low-calorie, low-carbohydrate, and/or high-protein diet, your glycogen stores will be inadequate and you will feel it. You will have diminished energy, stamina, and endurance.

Excess Carbohydrate Calories Don’t Turn to Fat
Although scientific research has proven over and over that excess carbohydrates are burned and released as heat, people still believe that carbohydrates turn to fat. Scientific experiments have shown that only if you were to eat more than 2200 calories of pure carbohydrate in addition to your normal daily total calorie intake for 5 to 6 days in a row might the excess carbohydrates possibly turn to fat. This is called glycogen loading and is not so easy to do.

Protein: Overrated
The role of protein in our diets is greatly misunderstood. Although many people associate rippling muscles with a diet of steaks and chops, the protein you eat doesn’t build bulging biceps and triceps. It is used to rebuild muscle.

We tend to think of muscle as a permanent structure, but it is constantly being broken down and rebuilt (in response to use). When muscle is broken down, protein is released and burned. Since only small amounts of muscle are broken down and rebuilt each day, you don’t need much protein in your diet. Scientific research has shown that adults need only about 12-15% of their calories from protein. And no matter what we eat, we generally get that amount.

Most Americans eat more than enough protein for good health. Consuming too much protein can put stress on the kidneys. In addition, since many people equate high-quality protein with red meat, and since red meat is filled with saturated fat, by eating lots of red meat you may be raising your cholestrol level and putting your heart at risk.

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How to make thinning hair lush and thick

December 1st, 2009 Health News
Taking care of thin hair

Taking care of thin hair

Even people with thinning hair dream of having lush, thick and healthy locks to set off their complete look. For most people with thinning hair, though, all of their styling endeavors are met with frustration and a resulting style that falls short of the image that they had envisioned.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Thinning hair does not sentence you to a life of dull and unstylish tresses. In fact, there are several things that you can do to make your thinning hair look stunning. And the best part is that these thinning hair options won’t take a great deal of your time or money either.

The first thing you need to do to make your thinning hair look fabulous is to find the right stylist. Search for a stylist who has other clients with thinning hair and is fluent in all of the right styles and techniques to both protect thinning hair and make it look thicker than it really is. You can do this by asking for referrals from friends who also have thinning hair but always seem to look like they have just left the salon.

Here are just a few of the ways that you can make your thinning hair appear lush and thick:

Cut and texture: One of the best ways to conceal your thinning hair is to find a cut that adds a lot of texture and movement to your style while at the same time makes your hair appear thicker. Choose styles with a lot of layers and textures, ends that will create movement and interest to your thinning hair style. Adding texture through soft curl can also be a great way to make your thinning hair look its best.

Color: Not only does color add more body and thickness to you thinning hair, it can also be used to draw the eye away from particularly thin spots. Using a combination of low-lights and color accents, your stylist can do wonders for your thinning hair with a color brush.

Products: There are a wide variety of products in the market that can be used to conceal thinning hair. Products such as thickening shampoos and conditioners can do a lot for thinning hair. Also be conscious of what types of styling products that you use on your thinning hair.

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