You have undoubtedly heard how important it is to maintain weight loss to avoid health problems. You’ve also heard that losing weight and gaining it back continually through fad diets or any other means just isn’t good for your health. Well now there is a study that shows that losing weight and gaining it back is better than not losing weight at all.
This study was done on mice, but it shows that yo-yo dieting isn’t as bad as it was once believed to be. There were three groups of mice in the study, placed into a low-fat, high-fat and yo-yo diet groups. The mice that were placed on the yo-yo diet alternated between a low-fat and high-fat diet.
The mice on the yo-yo diet were healthy when they followed a low-fat diet and had higher body fat, blood sugar and body weight when they were on their high-fat rotation. Another surprising detail of this study was that the yo-yo diet mice lived just as long as the mice that maintained a low-fat diet the entire time. This amounted to about six months longer than the mice that followed only a high-fat diet.
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File this under, “In case you didn’t know…”
A recent report, profiled in the Journal of Consumer Research, shows that people who restrict their food intake in the name of weight loss are more stressed and angry. The study, conducted by authors David Gal, at Northwestern University, in Chicago, and Wendy Liu at the University of California, compiled numerous weight loss studies. The authors wanted to determine if exerting self control leads to anger issues.
In the first study, participants who chose an apple over a chocolate bar for a snack were more likely to chose movies with anger issues than a more relaxed movie. The second study showed that those who were financially responsible (choosing a gift certificate for groceries rather than one for a spa service) showed more interest in looking at angry faces rather than at fearful ones.
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A survey from the UK teen magazine Sugar has found that 15 percent of girls 13-19 years old are regularly dieting. A young girl may be influenced to diet by comments made by their parents, pictures of exceptionally thin celebrities or models, and their peer group. If an adolescent girl has watched her mother try several new diets, she is 35 percent more likely to diet herself. Girls are also more likely to be concerned about their weight when they hear their mothers make positive statements about the attractiveness of slim celebrities. I am sure similar comments about slender friends and family members would have a similar impact. The editor of Sugar, Annabel Brog, summed these results up well with the statement, “Mums want the best for our daughters, but we live in a world preoccupied with body size, and inevitably daughters are picking up on, and assimilating, anxieties their mums have.”
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Stress has become a part of our culture, and undoubtedly you may have experienced a sense of being overwhelmed quite often. For some, stress eating or stress drinking alcohol are enormous saboteurs on the path to health and wellness. It’s not just the excess calories that nudge you away from your goal. Here are four factors that people struggle with during stressful times:
1. Alcohol Backfires on Your Well-Being
Stress drinking cocktails or a few beers after a hectic day at work is what some see as a ritual to unwind, but this can backfire later. Alcohol prevents the brain from entering deep sleep leaving you unrested and stressed the next morning. Alcohol also dehydrates you. If you do drink, keep it to one drink a night. That means five ounces of wine or one shot of liquor… not an over-sized glass with a mixed drink.
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