When Mike turned 65, he was 25 pounds overweight. By strict dieting, he shed the extra pounds, but he lost more weight; he also lost his energy and vitality. He was always exhausted, and his friends, seeing his gaunt, drawn face, worried about his health.
By the time volunteered for a particular fitness program two years later, he had put 25 extra pounds back on. After 6 months of exercise and some willpower at the dinner table, Mike slimmed down again. This time he felt better than he ever had, brimming with energy and glowing with good health.
What made the difference? The first time Mike lost weight; the second time he lost fat. The distinction is important. According to research, a large portion of the weight lost by dieting alone is active tissue, such as muscle and connective tissue, while a smaller fraction is excess fat. Exercise has the opposite effect. It increased his lean body mass and decreased his excess fat.
Same thing goes with cellulite. Most people tend to think that cellulites are only present to people who are obese. That is why they sometimes associate cellulite with fats and obesity.
Actually, even if cellulite refers to the chain of wrinkled “fat cells” and “subcutaneous connective tissues” beneath the layer of the skin, it should never be associated with people who are fat or obese. In fact, there are many people who have cellulite but are not fat at all.
In reality, nobody knows the main reason why some people accumulate cellulite. However, there are some factors that health experts are considering such as the structure of the fat cells or the poison that entered the body. Some experts say it may be caused by some hormonal changes in the body. But none of these things has been proven to cause cellulites.
However, the only main reason why most of the cellulite cases are abundant in women is that the connective tissues of women are more rigid and firm than men. Hence, whenever a woman gets fat, the fatty cells tend to swell and get bigger. It creates a protruding appearance to the skin producing an “orange peel” look.
For this reason, women are more prone to cellulite than men. That is why it is important for women to be more careful on their body as they have higher chances of accumulating cellulite.
Fats and Cellulite
With the many cases of obese people having cellulites in their body, most of them believed that their cellulites are caused by being too fat.
Even though not all those who are obese develop cellulites, being overweight can really trigger the development of cellulites. This is because too much fat under the skin tend to push the connective tissue creating a strain on the skin. Thus, cellulites form.
However, this is still dependent on the structure of the cells. If an individual’s cell structure does not inhibit the tendency to bulge or expand even if fat deposits accumulate, then there will be no cellulites.
So, the most important thing to remember here is to keep those connective tissues firm and strong and avoid accumulating excess fats so as to avoid the development of cellulite.
How? Start an exercise routine program.
Transforming food into fat seems all too easy for most of us. Losing fat is far more difficult, and to accomplish this, we have only three alternatives: (1) decrease food intake and keep activity constant; (2) increase activity and keep food intake constant; or (3) combine both approaches: diet and exercise.
Physical activity can help reverse the results of inactivity. An hour of vigorous exercise burns up 300 to 600 calories. If you also cut 300 to 500 calories from your daily menu, you can also lose weight at the rate of one to two pounds a week.
Without exercise, you would have to eat 500 to 1,000 fewer calories a day to lose the same number of pounds in a week. Exercise is not for everyone who is over-fat, however. The severely obese person should exercise only under medical supervision to prevent strain on the cardiovascular system and connective tissue. And no one should restrict food intake drastically without consulting doctor.
Resorting to this kind of activity will only get the matter worse. Remember what happened to Mike? He thought that when he started dieting, he would eventually lose all the excess fats he has accumulated. The problem is that he lost those connective tissues rather than excess fat.
For people who are prone to cellulites, this will be a greater problem. Losing connective tissues instead of fat by strict dieting can only make the skin more prone to greater problems but the fat cells are still there. That only means that the problem is not solved at all.
Hence, if you wish to loose those cellulites, it would be better to loose those fats first. The idea here is to burn those fats by increasing your metabolism by 7.5% to 28% more than your normal rate.
It is for this reason that exercising is an important factor in losing cellulite. So for a more cellulite free body, always engage in an exercise routine.
M&Ms as diet food? 100-calorie pack misconceptions
Beware of mini-packs and mini-foods, especially if you’re a dieter.
Chronic dieters tend to consume more calories when foods and packages are smaller, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. Authors Maura L. Scott, Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea C. Morales (all Arizona State University) examined consumer behavior regarding “mini-packs,” 100-calorie food packages that are marketed to help people control calorie intake, according to Eurekalert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“Interestingly, one group that over-consumes the mini-packs is chronic dieters—individuals constantly trying to manage their weight and food intake,” write the authors.
The researchers believe their research shows that the ubiquitous small packages may actually undermine dieters’ attempts to limit calories. “On the one hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be a generous portion of food (numerous small food morsels in each pack and multiple mini-packs in each box); on the other hand, consumers perceive the mini-packs to be diet food. For chronic dieters, this perceptual dilemma causes a tendency to overeat, due to their emotion-laden relationship with food.”
In a series of studies, the researchers assessed peoples’ perceptions of M&Ms in mini-packs versus regular-sized packages. They found that participants tended to have conflicting thoughts about the mini-packs: They thought of them as “diet food,” yet they overestimated how many calories the packages contained. In subsequent studies, the researchers assessed participants’ relationship with food, dividing them into “restrained” and “unrestrained” eaters. The “restrained” eaters tended to consume more calories from mini-packs than “unrestrained” participants.
The authors conclude that dieters should keep an eye on small packages: “While restrained eaters may be attracted to smaller foods in smaller packages initially, presumably because these products are thought to help consumers with their diets, our research shows that restrained eaters actually tend to consume more of these foods than they would of regular foods.”
BEIJING (Reuters) - It is Julia Rohde’s first time in China, but the 19-year-old German weightlifter will not be strolling across Tiananmen Square.
In fact, she is not even allowed to walk down the road. A strict energy-saving regime controls her every meal and move in the run-up to her first Olympic competition.
At the same time, she has turned from weightlifter to weight-watcher, having to shed a couple of pounds before fitting into her category for women weighing up to 53 kg.
“It would be nice to see Tiananmen Square and all that, but it’s just not possible,” said her coach, Thomas Faselt, before a training session in Beijing on Sunday.
“In the days before the competition, they move between their rooms and the canteen, and anything else would be unnecessarily exhausting.”
To alleviate the boredom, the weightlifters bring stacks of DVDs to the Olympic Village, killing time between training sessions by watching movies or surfing the Internet.
Then there is the diet. Since every extra kilogram can be converted into physical strength, taking the athlete closer to a gold medal, weightlifters tend to be enthusiastic eaters.
Before a competition, they lose the pounds to be allowed to start in a lower weight category — but they must not shed it too quickly, or they will lose valuable muscle mass.
“Her normal weight is 55 kg, it’s what I call the little feel-good bolster. But if she had to start in the 58 kg category, she wouldn’t even be here. It’s a huge difference in performance,” Faselt said.
DIET
And so Rohde, who has been lifting weights since the age of 12, is tightening her belt before her competition on Sunday.
In the world of weightlifting, where women with bulging biceps and massive shoulders hoist up 100 kg or more, a crash diet does not mean living on carrot sticks.
Sitting outside the training hall, Rohde lists her typical meal plan: bread, cold meat, muesli and yoghurt for breakfast, salad with a lot of meat followed by fresh fruit for lunch, more meat for dinner.
“And if I notice that my weight is going down quite quickly, I’ll have some chocolate as well,” she said.
Other weightlifters take a less scientific approach to eating. Paul Coffa, who coaches weightlifters from 10 different Pacific Islands such as Nauru and Samoa at a training centre in New Caledonia, said nutrition plans were useless in the region.
“You can try to tell them what to eat, but you’ll never succeed, because whenever they go back home they just eat breadfruit, rice and fish,” he told Reuters at the training centre on Monday.
Coffa’s protegees include Ele Opeloge from Samoa, who starts in the heaviest category, for women weighing more than 75 kg.
“They carry excess weight, but it’s just fat so they can lose 3-4 kg just like that. If they’ve got to come down before a competition, they just come down,” Coffa said.
Working out right up until she delivered and eating from a sensible low-fat, low-carb menu has Tina Hobley in great shape for only being 8-weekspostpartum with daughter Olivia Kitty Alice. But the 36-year-old UK actress — also mom to 8-year-old Isabella — says that she won’t rely on plastic surgery to maintain that physique as she ages, because she’s keenly aware of the dangers of raising two body-conscious daughters. Tina revealed that “the word diet is banned” in the home she shares with husband Oliver Wheeler.
My daughter is only eight, but she and all her mates know about fat content on food labels. It is petrifying. It’s no surprise so many children are developing eating disorders.
Isabella is Tina’s daughter with ex-husband Steve Wallington; Tina and Oliver were married in 2006.
Source: The Mirror; Photo by Simon James/WireImage.
MADRID (Reuters) - In Madrid’s popular Santa Ana square, tourists can’t get enough of plates of sliced mature Manchego cheese, cold meats and cured ham, and of course rings of fried, battered squid.
But what’s on offer — served with hunks of white baguette — isn’t so appetising for vegetarians or anyone looking for the five daily portions of fruit and vegetables many nutritionists recommend for healthy living.
“I love the food here but it’s not exactly your five-a-day,” said Susie Goodall, a 28-year-old British immigration consultant enjoying a glass of red wine in one of the square’s bars.
“If you do get vegetables in restaurants they are fried. When you order a tomato salad, you get seven tomatoes covered in oil!”
The Spanish government, however, says what it describes as the Mediterranean diet is so good, so healthy and historical it should be promoted throughout the world.
It is leading a bid — joined by Italy, Greece and Morocco — to persuade the U.N. education and culture body UNESCO to put the Mediterranean diet on the world heritage list.
“Spain took the initiative … convinced that the characteristics of the Spanish culinary model par excellence make it clearly deserving of this UNESCO distinction,” said the agricultural ministry in a statement.
If Spain gets its way, the Mediterranean diet could join the intangible cultural heritage list, alongside the Festival of the Dead in Mexico and the Royal Ballet of Cambodia. It would also provide another way of marketing, even more profitably, Spanish products such as olive oil, ham and wine.
Defining the Mediterranean diet, though, is a moveable feast. When British chef Rick Stein journeyed through a number of Mediterranean countries for a TV series on the region he sampled everything from kebabs in southeast Turkey to tagines and couscous in Morocco, and salted cod in Spain.
The Boston-based food think-tank Oldways promotes a Mediterranean diet which it says is “the gold standard for eating patterns that promote life-long good health”.
However, the diet it recommends is “based on the dietary traditions of Crete, Greece and southern Italy circa 1960 at a time when the rates of chronic disease were among the lowest in the world, and adult life expectancy was among the highest, even though medical services were limited”.
MEAT AND NO VEG
Oldways and other organisations promote the Mediterranean diet which is typically defined as one with polyunsaturated fats like olive oil rather than butter and margarine, lots of pulses, vegetables, and unrefined cereals, some fish, moderate amounts of dairy products and low amounts of meat and sugar.
In Spain, though, meat is on the table in abundance. At lunchtime, blackboards outside bars and restaurants across the country announce set menus to feed hungry workers.
Favourites are fried pork chops, beef steaks or chicken breasts, usually served with chips and a miniature salad garnish. Fish is usually fried rather than the baked dishes featured in so many Mediterranean cookbooks the world over.
Spain is also battling a growing problem of obesity. The rate of obesity in adults has doubled within the last 10 years to 14 percent, while one in three Spanish children is overweight or obese — as in Italy and Greece — the highest rate in Western Europe.
The rise is blamed on factors like overeating, more inactive lifestyles and the introduction of more pre-packaged food and sweets into children’s diets.
The Spanish authorities are reacting. The government asked restaurants to sign up to a voluntary code to not advertise bumper portions which it thinks encourage overeating.
FAT PROBLEM
Last year, in an exceptional case in the northern region of Asturias, social services removed a 10-year-old boy weighing 100 kg from the care of his grandparents because they would not stop overfeeding him.
Spain’s problem with obesity does not undermine its case to have its traditional diet internationally recognised, says Chef Ferran Adria whose restaurant El Bulli was named best in the world by Restaurant Magazine.
He said it was indisputable that Italian, Spanish, Greek and Moroccan cuisine had a common culture “which is one of the best in the world.”
“The source of obesity is upbringing. Cooking healthily is very simple … but someone needs to explain it to you.”
Basque chef Juan Mari Arzak, whose restaurant in the northern Spanish region has three Michelin stars, also supports the UNESCO bid.
He thinks UNESCO recognition could be used like the Designation of Origin labels — seals given in the European Union since 1992 which tell consumers products meet certain standards and come from the region they say they do.
Agriculture Minister Elena Espinosa has said marketing campaigns for Mediterranean products are already being run in Spain, the EU and the rest of the world.
Speaking on the phone from his kitchen as he prepared tuna marinated in olive oil, rice wine and chillies, Arzak said: “If this is proved (that the Mediterranean diet deserves UNESCO recognition), it would show that the cuisine is better (than others).
“When you get a Nobel prize it’s because you’ve earned it.”
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