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3 Ways to Beat Sweet Tooth Cravings
Tweet Share on Facebook April 3, 2008 Comment (36)Debra Zellner, a psychologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey, offered three tips on how to avoid developing specific, intense cravings for sweet foods. (The tips are based on research in animals and humans and in addiction in general, she says.)
1. Don't habitually eat your favorite sweet at the same time of day, in the same mood, or in the same place. If you like Krispy Kremes, don't have one every morning with your coffee; don't confine your Ben & Jerry's sessions to your couch when you're upset. This only sets up a series of cues that will bring on a craving whenever you're in that situation.
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You're Thin—and Too Fat
Tweet Share on Facebook April 1, 2008 Comment (3)When it comes to avoiding heart disease, the standard advice is that we should stay in our healthy weight range. But here's a disheartening thought: Even at a normal weight, we might be obese.
Perhaps the safety zone should be a fat range instead. That's the suggestion of a study—being presented today at the American College of Cardiology meeting—that links so-called normal-weight obesity with risk factors like high blood cholesterol and metabolic syndrome. It's been known for a while that normal-weight people can have a higher-than-recommended percentage of body fat. A researcher in the U.K. calls these people "TOFIs," for "thin outside, fat inside." But this study found that despite falling within a healthy weight range for their height—a body mass index range of 18.5 to 24.9—more than 60 percent of study participants were too fat. (In other words, the men's body fat percentages exceeded 20 percent; the women's, 30 percent). And these folks were more likely to have risk factors for heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. You can calculate your own BMI here.
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Can Exercise Make You Gain Weight?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 31, 2008 Comment (20)A reader E-mailed me with a complaint: Exercise, she says, makes her ravenous to the point that she overeats and gains weight whenever she starts an exercise program. That's discouraging, to say the least. But studies show that working out typically does the opposite.
Most, but not all, studies show that appetite is suppressed both during and immediately after a workout. (The exception would be if you're working out so hard that you really deplete your blood sugar and get weak, hungry, and lightheaded—though that's beyond what most people do.) Catia Martins, a researcher now at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, has studied the effects of an exercise program on appetite and energy intake over the longer term. One small study published last year in the British Journal of Nutrition suggests that a six-week exercise program can improve the body's ability to appropriately regulate appetite, at least in men. After working out an average of four days a week for about 45 minutes at a time, previously sedentary men (but not women) ate less at a buffet after they'd had a substantial snack. Before starting the exercise program, on the other hand, the men consumed the same number of calories at the buffet, whether it followed a calorie-rich snack or only a light one. That finding indicates that having an exercise program made their appetites more closely attuned to the amount of calories they were consuming.
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To Lose Weight, Use the Power of Three
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2008 Comment (27)My usual response to the question "How do I lose weight?" is "Eat less, exercise more, or do some combination of the two." That advice is short, sweet, and, my friends have told me, not particularly helpful. So from time to time I plan to pass on concrete tips or techniques that some people have found help them lose weight safely and intelligently (i.e., no cabbage soup diets). My current favorite comes from the totally excellent book Mindless Eating, by Cornell University's Brian Wansink, which looks at all the environmental cues you don't even realize are influencing how and what you eat.
In the book, he talks about a concept called "the power of three," which involves making three small changes in your eating patterns and keeping them up for a month, by which time they're far more likely to have become a habit. I'm expanding that to exercise, too. The beauty of the idea is that you can pick things that fit your lifestyle, needs and weaknesses.
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Aches and Pains: Sizing Up Soreness After Exercise
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2008 Comment (7)I hit the gym on Saturday and lifted weights for 45 minutes. On Sunday my arms ached. By Monday I wondered if I'd be able to lift the spoon to my mouth to eat my morning oatmeal. You might say I was sore. But how do you tell if you're just achy from ramping up an exercise routine or if you've actually injured yourself?
There are two kinds of people who get sore: those who expect to and those who are surprised by it, says Chuck Kimmel, president of the National Athletic Trainers' Association. In the first category are people (like me) who are just getting back to heavy weights as well as those setting out to do a hard workout or race, like marathoners who plan their postrace week to avoid the quad pain that comes with going downstairs. In the back of my mind, I knew that lifting weights until my arms trembled was probably not going to do me any favors in the subsequent 48 hours.
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In Pursuit of Flavor, Better Treatment of Animals and Land
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2008 Comment (5)Whether you're an omnivore, a vegan, a meat lover, vegetarian, or something else (I'm what I call a fake vegetarian, since I eat fish but no other meat), there are certain principles we can all probably agree on: It's wonderful to have a good, flavorful meal with friends or family. Animals used for food should be treated (and killed) humanely. And it's wise to keep an eye on the impact our food choices have on the ecosystem.
I heard those principles come together this week, when I went to New York University to hear the chef and restaurateur Dan Barber speak to the Experimental Cuisine Collective. Barber is the co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant in Manhattan as well as Blue Hill at Stone Barns, located about 30 minutes from the city in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. For all the background on Barber, check out this profile from Men's Vogue. (The short version is that Barber's for-profit Blue Hill at Stone Barns, sits on the grounds of what used to be the Rockefeller estate, which is also home to the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a separate nonprofit venture devoted to sustainable agriculture.)
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Your Dog Is Fat. And You Know What to Do
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2008 Comment (3)I knew it was time to do something about my dog's weight when an obedience trainer who hadn't seen her in a year greeted us with, "Mindy! You've gotten so, um, fluffy!" Mindy may have taken it as a compliment, but I knew better. My vet says that because her short legs and long back (she's a dachshund mix) predispose her to disk problems, she really should pare about 1.5 pounds off her current 16.5-pound frame.
The doggie solution is (not surprisingly) a mirror of good weight management in owners: Eat less, exercise more, and—this is key—devise a plan that works with the animal's preferences, says Deirdre Chiaramonte, staff internist and director of the fitness and rehabilitation service at the Animal Medical Center in New York.
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Wondering if Milk Works Against PMS
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2008 Comment (9)Yes, dear California Milk Processor Board, I am feeling witchy. But it has nothing to do with premenstrual syndrome. Instead, it's from watching your new Spanish-language commercial in which a bruja (Spanish for "witch") representing a woman with PMS flies through the forest, threatening children and even turning two men into pigs. That is, until she discovers milk, drinks it, and—symptoms eased—turns into a hot babe with a sweet temperament.
The ad is pretty lame—can't we discuss PMS in a serious way without reducing symptomatic women to terrorizing crones? But I was interested in the health claim that drinking milk can alleviate the symptoms associated with PMS, like headaches, water retention, and, of course, mood swings. The milk board cites a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, saying that calcium in milk can ease PMS. I found the study, published in 1998, which evaluated 466 women between the ages of 18 and 45 with a history of moderate to severe PMS symptoms, namely pain, water retention, food cravings, and negative affect (medicalspeak for being in a bad mood). One group took a daily supplement containing 1,200 milligrams of calcium; the other got a placebo. And after three menstrual cycles, the calcium group reported greater relief of symptoms than the placebo group.
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Better Chicken Soup Than HGH?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 18, 2008 Comment (16)The strongest performance enhancement aid I've ever used was lukewarm chicken broth, gulped down during the last hours of an Ironman competition (I swear, it perked me right up). But as disillusioned fans of baseball, cycling, track and field, and a host of other sports now know, elite athletes are turning to much more powerful substances in their pursuit of more home runs, higher jumps, or faster times. Many are reportedly pinning their hopes on human growth hormone, for instance. A new study suggests that—even putting aside the fact that most sports leagues and bodies ban the drug, and it's illegal to distribute it for sports enhancement purposes—athletes might be better off sticking with chicken broth.
A team of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who previously published a review of research that looked at the effects of human growth hormone in healthy seniors, have just published in the online version of Annals of Internal Medicine a similar analysis of the effects on athletic performance in healthy people. Their conclusion, after looking at 27 studies with a total of 303 participants: HGH may produce more lean body mass than a placebo, but that doesn't seem to translate to greater strength. In fact, some studies showed that those who took HGH also experienced more muscle fatigue.
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The Wall Street Diet: Eating Well on a Busy Schedule
Tweet Share on Facebook March 13, 2008 CommentI'm not a big fan of diet books. Research on dieting has shown that even popular diets that produce quick weight loss are tough to stick to over time. To really shed weight and maintain the loss, you've got to make practical changes in your own eating practices that you can keep up until they become a habit. But I am a big fan of tips that help people make those practical changes, and as much as I hate the book's title, The Wall Street Diet (Hyperion) is full of them.
The book is aimed at the busy, stressed-out professionals who constitute author and dietitian Heather Bauer's clients. (I'm busy and stressed out, but I'm no Wall Streeter—and I found plenty of tips for my own life.) Though there are a few menu plans in there, she readily admits that most of her clients don't follow them. Instead, she gives them strategies for dealing with meals in real-life settings: business meetings, airplane travel, commuting, office parties, and the like.
