Tag: weight-loss Posts

I’ve been writing about obesity and something called hyper-insulinemia for about as long as I can remember. For those of you who don’t know, many people nowadays have something called metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of symptoms including obesity, high blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, and high cholesterol. The main component of all of these is something called hyper-insulinemia (which is also called insulin resistance). What I just wrote is pretty much accepted as fact nowadays. What is still up for debate is a) whether insulin resistance is the cause or the effect of obesity and b) whether insulin plays a larger role in weight loss than originally believed. You see, there are two competing genres in this war on the bulge. On one side of the ring you have those people who believe a calorie is a calorie, and the only thing required to lose weight is a […]

My new year’s resolution this year was basically to try and stop drinking caffeine and diet soda if at all possible. I used to drink probably close to 2L of diet pepsi a day in Vancouver, mostly because the office I worked at had a fountain pop machine that everyone could use for free. Whether or not diet soda is a health concern is still up for debate, but undoubtedly it has aspartame (even though it has a good safety record, it’s still a chemical) as well as caffeine (which has been linked to weight gain and elevated levels of adrenaline, and cortisol, the stress hormone). I figured while I was in the process of giving up soda pop that I may as well stop caffeine in general. It’s been nearly four months now, and for the most part I’ve been caffeine free. I won’t lie and say I’ve been […]

A lot of the nutrition researchers continue to argue that the body needs to obey the laws of thermodynamics, that is energy in minus energy out has to equal weight gained or weight lost. Using that definition, the way to lose weight is to create a negative caloric balance (by cutting food or increasing energy expenditure) such that the weight disappears. That viewpoint neglects the fact that the body is not a closed system, and the internal cellular metabolism depends on many aspects, one of which is thought to be the macronutrient composition of the food that goes in. For example, protein is known to have a thermogenic affect, which increases metabolism slightly. I read a study tonight which was trying to compare diets, but managed to make another point (one they probably didn’t realize). The study followed 811 people over the course of two years, and watched what happened […]

So, it’s only been about 5 days since I started, but I thought I’d drop a quick update. As most of you know, I am a big supporter of low-carbohydrate diets, mostly because a great deal of research show they are superior for treating things like diabetes and heart disease, but also because I once lost a great deal of weight (with relative ease) by just giving up carbs. Effectively, the last few days have really been a transition from a moderate carbohydrate to a low-carb one for me. I’ve been keeping accurate food, weight and activity logs, which should help me figure out what’s working and what’s not. First thing of note is that I seem to be eating about 500 calories *more* per day than I was about a week ago, and I find I’m still actually quite a bit hungrier than I was before (which is sort […]

I picked up a book the other day that I’ve been meaning to read for a few months now. It is a book by a scientific journalist named Gary Taubes entitled Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (Vintage) (although after reading it, I think a more appropriate title might be something like “The People’s History Of Diet And Nutrition.”) For those of you who follow nutritional research, you may remember Gary from a controversial article he wrote in 2002 in the New York Times called ‘What If It’s Been A Big Fat Lie?” In that article, he proposed an alternative nutritional hypothesis – that it wasn’t fat that ultimately caused obesity or led to the current epidemics of heart disease and diabetes, but it was instead largely influenced by dietary carbohydrates. If there is some truth in that hypothesis (and a great […]

Part of the reason I went back to Chilliwack this last weekend was to get caught up on sleep before all the craziness begins this month and next. Thankfully I managed to do just that, and often slept in until 11:30 or noon. I actually feel fairly refreshed, which is a nice change. Chilliwack Rainbow One of the things I’m going to try to do over the next two months is to lose a few pounds. Before being in the hospital and all my surgeries, I was in a fairly happy place with regards to health. But this last year has been tough and I haven’t really been that vigilant with watching what I eat and getting exercise. So, I’ve decided I’m going to make a focused attempt to drop down to the happy zone again in the next few months, which means I won’t be going out and doing […]

I’ve posted a few times on this subject, but this is a new paper that’s hot off the presses. Once thought to help with weight loss, caffeine has recently been cast in a new light as actually contributing to weight gain. Even caffeinated diet pop can lead to weight gain, due to increased insulin secretion in the body. A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover study with periods of 7 days and washouts of 5 days comparing caffeine with placebo capsules was conducted. Participants were 16 healthy adults aged 18 to 22 years with a history of caffeine consumption. Blood samples from each subject were assayed for glucose, insulin, serum cortisol, DHEA, and androstenedione on the eighth day of each period after an overnight fast. Nighttime salivary melatonin was also measured. Insulin levels were significantly higher (by 1.80 muU/mL; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-3.28) after caffeine intake than after placebo. The homeostasis model […]

Part of the reason I wrote the last article on insulin resistance is so I could continue to talk about that subject without continually explaining what it is I was talking about. Sometime around the year 2003, there was a pretty seminal study performed that had an undesirable, although extremely fascinating outcome. The researchers at the time were trying to guage the body’s insulin response to various foods. When they came to apple pie though, they were in for a surprise: Just half a teaspoon of cinnamon a day significantly reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics, a new study has found. The effect, which can be produced even by soaking a cinnamon stick your tea, could also benefit millions of non-diabetics who have blood sugar problem but are unaware of it. The discovery was initially made by accident, by Richard Anderson at the US Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research […]

Sylvain sent me this link today that basically concluded that one or more cans of diet soda can lead to health risks such as the metabolic syndrome “We found that one or more sodas per day increases your risk of new-onset metabolic syndrome by about 45 per cent, and it did not seem to matter if it was regular or diet,” Dr. Ramachandran Vasan, senior investigator for the Framingham Heart Study, said Monday from Boston. .. The study included nearly 9,000 observations of middle-aged men and women over four years at three different times. The study looked at how many 355-millilitre cans of cola or other soft drinks a participant consumed each day. The researchers found that compared to those who drank less than one can per day, subjects who downed one or more soft drinks daily had a: 31 per cent greater risk of becoming obese (with a body […]

A few blog posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to do my best to return back to my pre-last-relationship weight. To that end, I have spent the last week hitting the gym from time to time and attempting to watch what I eat. The first week has been a bit rocky, and I hit a few tasty speed bumps at Rebecca’s Cinqo de Mayo party, but for the most part I’ve been on track. Since my life is a bit crazy thesedays, it’s challenging for me to always have access to “healthy” food, but I’ve been doing the best I can. So without further ado, the progress after week #1 is (RSS drum roll please): 5.5 lbs Now, I know as well as everyone else that it’s basically impossible to lose more than about two pounds a week of real fat. So, undoubtedly a huge chunk of that […]