Tag Archives: fat

Paprika and Cinnamon Said to Protect Your Body From Fatty Foods

Spices have always been an easy, low-calorie way to add flavor to your food without extra fat. According to the Daily Mail, a research team from Penn State University has found that a diet rich in spices, including turmeric and cinnamon, can reduce the stress that high-fat foods can place on the heart.

Scientists report that turmeric and cinnamon, two of the healthiest spices, may protect you from the physical damage caused by high-fat meals.

“Normally, when you eat a high-fat meal, you end up with high levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, in your blood,” study leader, Sheila West told the Daily Mail. “If this happens too frequently, or if triglyceride levels are raised too much, your risk of heart disease is increased.”

By adding healthy spices to a high-fat meal, researchers found that the triglyceride response reduced by about 30% when compared to a similar meal with no spices added.

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Posted on August 15, 2023 by Maris

The Myth of Targeting Your “Problem Area”

Most people have areas of their body they wish they could change. There are hundreds of workouts that promise to tone your tummy, trim your waist or tighten your butt. It’s certainly possible to build muscle in these areas, but an article from CNN points out that you may not be able to change the underlying shape of your body, even with significant weight loss.

“People come in with unrealistic expectations from magazines and spot-reducing,” says Gary Foster, director of Temple University’s Center for Obesity Research and Education. “That doesn’t happen. When you start to lose fat, it’s proportionate throughout your body, whether it’s your neck, waist, ankle circumference. You’ll come out smaller but have the same body shape.”

In other words, a person who is pear-shaped will remain a pear, and a person who is apple-shape will remain an apple. “Basically, when we lose weight, we lose weight all over in exactly the proportion that’s distributed throughout our body,” says Susan Fried, director of the Boston Obesity and Nutrition Research Center at the Boston University School of Medicine. CT scans, dexa scans and MRIs reveal that as a person loses weight, fat is reduced evenly around the body.

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Posted on July 22, 2023 by Health Buzz

Exercising on an Empty Stomach: Good or Bad for Burning Fat?

You’ve probably heard the claim that exercising on an empty stomach helps boost fat loss. But is there any truth to it? While the answer depends on who you talk to (and what book you read — so many weight-loss books promote the practice), most research studies and exercise science experts agree that fasting before working out is counterproductive.

Working out on an empty stomach makes sense — in theory. Proponents say that you’ll burn more fat because your body doesn’t have carbohydrates to use as energy since you haven’t eaten. However, a February 2024 report published in Strength and Conditioning Journal found that to be untrue. Researchers found that when you don’t have proper fuel in your body, your body has less energy and therefore your exercise intensity and number of calories burned suffers. During intense workouts, your body may actually pull protein from your muscle for fuel — definitely counterproductive since muscle helps to rev metabolism.

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Posted on July 18, 2023 by Jennipher

Huge Meta-Analysis Shows No Link Between Saturated Fat and Cardiovascular Disease

Mary Hartley, RD, MPH, is the director of nutrition for Calorie Count, providing domain expertise on issues related to nutrition, weight loss and health. She creates original content for weekly blogs and newsletters, for the Calorie Count library, and for her popular daily Question-and-Answer section, Ask Mary. Ms. Hartley also furnishes direction for the site features and for product development.

Saturated fat was recently in the news at the Institute of Food Technologists expo when experts revealed, again, that the link between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease is inconclusive. Both the public and professionals are now confused, since diets low in fat, particularly saturated fat, have been the mainstay of scientific consensus for more than 30 years. Saturated fat, a solid fat mainly found in animal foods, includes cheese, whole milk, butter, and fatty cuts of meat. It, together with liquid poly- and mono-unsaturated fats from nuts, seeds, grains and fish, make up all naturally-occurring dietary fat.

Back in the 1970s, the American Heart Association and other authorities said to reduce all fat to 30 percent of total calories and saturated fat to 10 percent or less. The recommendation was drawn from epidemiologic studies that compared the diets among different countries, in particular, the Seven Countries Study. Those studies showed a correlation between total fat intake and rates of heart disease. That, along with the National Diet-Heart Study of the 1960s, form the basis of the message that reduction in saturated fat lowers blood cholesterol and risk of heart disease.

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Posted on July 16, 2023 by GuestBlogger

The Fat Whisperer Claims to Coax Fat Cells Away

She’s being called “The Fat Whisperer.” Hollywood starlets are flocking to her to shed unwanted pounds. Celebrities are claiming she can get them red-carpet ready as she uses the power of persuasion to encourage fat cells to leave the body. Who is this woman and what is she doing?

Mary Ascension Saulnier is the woman behind the “Fat Whisperer” nickname. Saulnier studied at the Santa Fe Academy of Natural Healing. She is also a Pilates instructor, a raw food chef, and now Hollywood’s new diet guru.

Saulnier runs a weight loss clinic where she has a plethora of treatments for her clients. Her services may include detox masks, teas, wraps, heated suits, or ultrasound treatments. While these are high tech and non-traditional tools in the weight loss arena, it’s the “whispering” that is really gaining notoriety.

Saulnier has a technique where she orders fat to leave a client’s body. She claims to be able to get to the emotional root of a client’s over-eating issue, listen to what emotions are in the fat cells, and then tell it how to move out of the body.

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Posted on July 6, 2023 by Lacy

High-Fat Diets Actually Help the Heart, Study Finds

File this one in the “goes against everything we’ve been told” file.

A recent study published in American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology suggests that a high-fat diet is OK and even beneficial for the heart. The study, which looked at cardiac function in patients suffering from heart failure, found that that a high-fat diet improved the heart’s ability to pump, along with boosting cardiac insulin resistance (which reduces the risk of diabetes). Sounds pretty different than what we’ve been told all along right? That eating too much fat is bad for the heart?

Not so fast. According to the study which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Case Center for Imaging Research, all fats are not created equal. In fact, a balanced diet that includes mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and which replaces simple sugars and highly processed foods with complex carbs, are most beneficial for damaged hearts. Notice what wasn’t on that list of a healthy diet? Trans fats or saturated fats.

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Posted on May 10, 2023 by Jennipher

Fat Removed From Liposuction Reappears in Mysterious Places

Far too often people have the propensity to look for an easy way out when losing weight. While most of us lead busy lives and find it difficult to include exercise, ultimately it’s up to all of us to prioritize our health.

One example of how some people do not address the real issues associated with being heavy is through weight loss surgery. Liposuction has become the most popular plastic surgery, with more than 450,000 operations every year. While the vast majority of liposuction surgeries are done safely by highly trained physicians, there seems to be almost eerie side effect of having the procedure done. (more…)

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Jason

The Best of “Ask Mary” Valentine’s Day Edition

Calorie Count members want to know, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Here are a few of our readers’ favorite “Ask Mary” questions about the differences in dieting and weight between the sexes.

Ask Mary: Why do men lose weight more easily than women?

Compared to women, men just have higher calorie requirements. It’s easier for them to create the calorie deficit needed to lose weight. Men have high testosterone levels and testosterone makes them build muscle. Muscle is metabolically active tissue that burns calories. If you compare a man to a woman of the same height, weight, age, and activity level, the man will need 15 percent more calories than the woman. Coupled with a man’s tendency to be taller and bigger, it’s easy to see why men need more calories. And so when men eat less, there is a huge gap between the amount they need and they eat, which promotes quick weight loss. Women, on the other hand, have a completely different fat-to-muscle ratio with more fat to support the demands of pregnancy and lactation. Their day-to-day calorie requirements are lower and so their calorie deficit is less.

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Posted on February 6, 2024 by GuestBlogger

Knowing Your Omegas on the Dr. Oz Show

Tune in this Wednesday, January 26 to the Dr. Oz Show to learn all about the big O – Omega fatty acids.

By now, we all know that omega fatty acids, like those found in salmon, flaxseeds and walnuts are good for you, but do we really know the difference between an omega-3 fatty acid and an omega-6 fatty acid? (more…)

Posted on January 24, 2024 by heather

Interview with Gary Taubes, Author of Why We Get Fat

Gary Taubes, a professional writer and journalist is the author of the critically acclaimed Good Calories, Bad Calories. Now his newest release, Why We Get Fat takes the long-held idea that the reason we get fat is the calories in/calories out hypothesis and debunks it. In essence, Taubes, through scores of research-backed evidence, suggests that it is not the amount of calories per se, but rather the carbohydrates in our diet that are responsible for fat accumulation.

Taubes proposes that in order to lose weight, we need to consume a very low carbohydrate diet. Protein, naturally-occuring fat, like those found in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, avocados and oils as well as leafy green vegetables should comprise the mainstay of our diet. The typical American diet of starchy carbohydrates, grains, sugar, processed food and even high glycemic vegetables and fruit needs to be given the boot if we want to avoid being overweight or obese.

Listen to an excerpt of this interview here.

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Posted on January 21, 2024 by heather

Four Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight

By Jessie Gorges

Stepping on the scale and still not liking what you see? It could be that you’re unknowingly making common errors in your new-found diet plan. Check out these four misconceptions that dieters think will help with weight-loss but, in reality, are ineffective and often detrimental.

You avoid the foods you love: Deprivation diets don’t work, at least not for long. You can still eat chocolate and you can still put a slice of cheese on your sandwich. The key to eating these commonly-craved foods is eating them in moderation. Have a couple of fun-size Snickers bars to solve your chocolate craving, and relegate your sandwich to only one slice of cheese instead of two.

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Posted on January 19, 2024 by Health Buzz

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