The most effective weight loss strategy is way easier than people think

Tracking your food is the best predictor of success for weight loss, and it's not as awful as it seems. Here's how to do it.

When you think of losing weight, you may envision the sadness of hours on the treadmill and the depressing deprivation of the foods you love. Which, yes, to a certain extinct may be required. But did you know that research shows the single best predictor of success in losing weight is monitoring and recording calorie and fat intake throughout the day?

Yet even though it is the most effective tool, dietary self-monitoring is widely viewed as "so unpleasant and time-consuming, many would-be weight-losers can't muster the will power to do it," according to researchers.

But a new study by the team finds that the reality of dietary self-monitoring may be far less odious than the idea of it.

"People hate it; they think it's onerous and awful, but the question we had was: How much time does dietary self-monitoring really take?" said  the lead author of the study. "The answer is, not very much."

The study is the first to look at how long it takes to keep a detailed journal for those who successfully lose weight.

The team analyzed the dietary self-monitoring habits of 142 participants for 24 weeks. Each were asked to record online the calories and fat for everything consumed, as well as the portion sizes and the preparation methods, for six months.

They found that the most successful dieters of the cohort – those who lost 10 percent of their body weight – spent an average of 23.2 minutes per day on the task in the first month of the program. But by the end of the study, they had got the time down to 14.6 minutes. The researchers also found that the frequency of journal additions played a key role in the success.

"Those who self-monitored three or more time per day, and were consistent day after day, were the most successful," Harvey said. "It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that makes the difference – not the time spent or the details included."

So how awful, or not, is it to record everything you've eaten over the course of a day? I can tell you!
I am my own favorite guinea pig when it comes to nutrition and I love trying approaches to eating. In the summer I was at a dinner party where every guest, independently, was on some type of low-carb diet and raved about how great they felt. I have always been wary of giving up fruit and whole grains, but out of curiosity, I decided to try it for a month – and decided that I would log all my nutrients along the way.

And just like the study found, it was so much easier than  ever expected, by using some online app – the researchers also mention Lose It !, CalorieKing – and was really surprised at how simple it was. The program has most foods entered in a comprehensive database and one just needs to find the food and enter the portion – the program does all the rest of the work and keeps a running tab of nutrients. It keeps a list of frequently consumed things, which makes regular items very quick to add. Recipes I make on a regular basis I entered whole in the recipe section and then could just enter a portion size per meal. All told, it took about 5 to 10 minutes a day. It definitely made me more accountable to myself for what I was eating. At the end of the day, nobody wants to have to face the fact that they ate the whole batch of cookies.

Anyway, the  aythor hopes the study results will encourage more people to try dietary self-monitoring as a weight-loss strategy. And I agree; it's important for a number of reasons. With nearly 40 percent of American adults found to be obese in 2015-16, up from 34 percent in 2007-08, we've got a problem on our hands. Obesity is linked to a host of chronic diseases, for which treatment is expensive and uses up a lot of natural resources. Not to mention, obviously, that it is painful and potentially deadly for those who suffer.

For the record, my low-carb experiment was interesting. I actually lost weight without really trying and felt fantastic. But looking at the data I collected over the month, I was horrified by the lack of fiber I was getting. Now I'm back to my plant-based Mediterranean-style diet. But you know what? I still track my food on a semi-regular basis because it's really interesting ... and so easy.

As the author says, "It's highly effective, and it's not as hard as people think."

 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                         FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           

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Music triggers powerful physical reactions in pregnant women

Researchers have discovered that pregnant women compared to their non-pregnant counterparts rate music as more intensely pleasant and unpleasant, associated with greater changes in blood pressure.
Music appears to have an especially strong influence on pregnant women, a fact that may relate to a prenatal conditioning of the fetus to music.

For their study, the Max Planck researchers played short musical sequences of 10 or 30 seconds' duration to female volunteers. They changed the passages and played them backwards or incorporated dissonances. By doing so, they distorted the originally lively instrumental pieces and made listening to them less pleasant.


The pregnant women rated the pieces of music slightly differently, they perceived the pleasant music as more pleasant and the unpleasant as more unpleasant.

The blood pressure response to music was much stronger in the pregnant group. Forward-dissonant music produced a particularly pronounced fall in blood pressure, whereas backwards-dissonant music led to a higher blood pressure after 10 seconds and a lower one after 30 seconds.

"Thus, unpleasant music does not cause an across-the-board increase in blood pressure, unlike some other stress factors", says Tom Fritz of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. "Instead, the body's response is just as dynamic as the music itself."

According to the results, music is a very special stimulus for pregnant women, to which they react strongly. "Every acoustic manipulation of music affects blood pressure in pregnant women far more intensely than in non- pregnant women ", says Fritz.

The researchers suspect that foetuses are conditioned to music perception while still in the womb by the observed intense physiological music responses of the mothers.

 THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.

PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO VIEW MY BLOG-

HTTP:GSEASYRECIPES.BLOGSPOT.COM/

FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-

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FOR CROCHET DESIGNS

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Hypersensitivity to pain produced by early life stress gets worse by later stress exposure

Early-life stress such as childhood neglect and abuse is suspected to contribute to the development of chronic pain in adulthood, a new study has suggested.

Researchers  used an animal model of maternal neglect that stresses rat mothers by restricting nesting/bedding material.

These stressed rat mothers do not provide consistent levels of nurturing to their pups, i.e., the mothers are present but their care is unpredictable, resulting in increased levels of stress in the pups. The pups were otherwise not harmed or stressed.

Pups that had experienced this early-life stress showed increased reactivity to painful stimuli, particularly if they were exposed to a mild stress, an unpredictable unpleasant noise, as adults.

This enhanced muscle pain was related to both catecholamines, natural compounds in the body involved in the “fight-or-flight” response, and cytokines, molecules involved in the body’s inflammatory response system.

Interestingly, interventions that blocked the actions of the catecholamines and cytokines reduced the sensitivity to pain in the stressed pups.

Dr. said that while it has been recognized for some time that early life events can shift homeostatic balance, predisposing adults to the development of chronic pain, that this could be mediated by a peripheral mechanism, involving the interaction between immune and neuroendocrine stress axes suggests novel approaches to detecting individuals at risk as well as to treatment of chronic pain.

This study suggests a ‘two hit model’ for the risk for pain syndromes: an initial stressor that predisposes to increased reactivity to later stress. The authors implicate both stress response and inflammation systems in the body in the link between stress and pain, potentially pointing to new treatment mechanisms.

ps- this is only for information, always consult you physician before having any particular food/ medication/exercise/other remedies.

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Condoms are actually great for the vagina

Apart from preventing unwanted pregnancies and spread of sexually transmitted diseases, condoms may help good bacteria in the vagina flourish, a new study has found. 

Sexually active women in the study who used condoms had larger colonies of beneficial microbes in their vaginas compared with women who used other forms of birth control, the researchers at found. 

The scientists focused on lactobacillus, a group of bacteria that dominates the natural flora of the vagina for many women. 

The microbes, which produce lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide, help the vagina maintain an average pH of 4.5, comparable to the acidity of beer or tomato juice, it was reported.

This "acidic buffer system," as the researchers called it, is thought to block harmful bacteria from taking up residence and causing infections. 

Though there may not be a "normal" microbiome for a healthy vagina, the presence of lactobacillus is thought to help prevent bacterial vaginosis, which is an imbalance of vaginal bacteria that causes itching, unusual discharge and unpleasant odour. 

Beneficial bacteria have even been linked to a decreased risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. 


ps- this is only for information, always consult you physician before having any particular food/ medication/exercise/other remedies.

ps- those interested in recipes are free to view my blog-

http://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/

for info about knee replacement, you can view my blog-

http://Knee replacement-stick club.blogspot.com/

for crochet designs

http://My Crochet Creations.blogspot.com/

I've not given details about designs, but those interested are free to mail me for the same.