This Woman Followed a Keto Diet and Lost 100 Pounds—Without Giving Up Pizza
https://ift.tt/2w6wbqV Elena Juarez punched and food-prepped her way to losing 100 pounds. But her weight-loss journey kicked off with a serious health scare. About a year ago, her 10-year-old daughter, Biani, arrived home with a school nurse’s recommendation for a diabetes test. “She came home crying, asking if she was going to die,” the 34-year-old businesswoman and mother of two tells Health. “I assured her she was fine but I was definitely concerned.” RELATED: Keto vs Atkins: Which Is the Better Low-Carb Diet? The doctor told Juarez her daughter was healthy “for now,” but that both she and her daughter needed to make changes to their diet if they wanted to avoid developing the obesity-linked condition. On her own, Juarez started following a paleo-friendly diet challenge that included kickboxing That's when she heard about the ketogenic diet. Six weeks later, she adopted the trendy high-fat, low-carb plan. One hundred lost pounds later, she credits going keto and sticking with kickboxing for her weight loss. “Even at my heaviest, I was always a healthy big girl,” she says. After visiting the doctor, “I didn’t know how to approach it, but I knew we all needed to change our unhealthy ways.” Now, she does an hour-long workout that combines cardio and strength training four to five times per week. She also follows an intuitive eating regimen. She is proud to say she hasn’t given up her favorite food: pizza. “Never did I think I’d be able to eat pizza on any diet, so this to me is my favorite part,” she says of her switch from regular pizza to a low-carb pizza crust. When the family goes out to eat, Juarez says she orders food with extra lettuce and brings her own carb replacement, like low-carb Shirataki noodles. RELATED: 6 Keto Smoothies That Will Keep You Full for Hours “I always hear women say they are too busy because the mom life is a busy one,” Juarez says. But you can never be too busy to take care of yourself and eat healthy; it's all about having the right mindset, she adds. Weight Loss via Weight Loss - Health.com https://ift.tt/2zvXHy6 May 3, 2018 at 02:30PM
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The Two Steps This Woman Took That Led to Her 130-Pound Weight Loss
https://ift.tt/2KuF1BS Meghan Lenss used to love snacking on Hot Cheetos and sipping frappuccinos. In fact, the 26-year-old from Riverside, California ate fast food every day. But when her weight reached 300 pounds in January 2017, she decided to adopt a healthier lifestyle. RELATED: 9 No-Cook Meals for When It's Too Hot to Turn on the Oven Now, a year and a half later, she’s celebrating her 130-pound weight loss. Late last month, she shared a series of transformation photos tracking her slow but steady progress. She launched her new lifestyle because she “was tired of everyday activities being difficult,” she tells Health. “Walking to class, not being able to walk up stairs … It was embarrassing.” And she credits two key things with helping her lose the weight. First, she gave up fast food and started cooking her own meals at home. Second, she committed herself to daily workouts—purchasing an elliptical machine and doing an hour of cardio every night. “It was dreadful and I struggled every night to get my butt in the garage to work out. But I did it, and every day it got a little easier, and soon enough, I saw results. I realized I could do it.” Lenss also downloaded MyFitnessPal to help her stay on track, and she created Instagram page @_iwokeupinbeastmode to keep herself accountable. And though she makes occasional exceptions, she bid farewell to pizza, fries, and high-calorie drinks. RELATED: 9 Kitchen Hacks That Will Make Healthy Eating So Much Easier Today, her meals consist of lean protein and plenty of veggies. She’s swapped her go-to indulgences for healthy alternatives, like replacing her Cheetos for Skinny Pop with cayenne pepper. “Through all of this, I started to have more energy,” she says. “My clothes started to fit better. I gained confidence. I joined a gym! But the real kick is that I actually went to the gym instead of just paying for a membership I never used!” She’s experienced countless highs on this journey, but Lenss also embraces the lows. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I still struggle,” she says. “I ate an entire box of cookies last weekend. But you know what I did after? I accepted it, moved on, and made the next day better. Progress is a process.” Weight Loss via Weight Loss - Health.com https://ift.tt/2zvXHy6 May 2, 2018 at 05:56PM
Both exercise and cold burn fat, but how?
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When we're cold, we burn fat, and a new study helps to explain why and how.
Physical activity and our heart and metabolic health are known to be intimately linked. Even the slightest increase in physical activity levels lowers cardiometabolic risk, studies have shown, while less physical activity raises the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But why is exercise so good for our body, and how does it help us to manage fat levels and keep a healthy weight? Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center — affiliated with Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA — in collaboration with scientists at the Ohio State University in Columbus set out to investigate. The researchers found that even a short, moderate bout of exercise boosts the levels of a key lipid that is released by brown fat, or the "good" type. Brown fat is considered to be "good" because, unlike white fat — which has been tied to conditions such as heart disease and diabetes — it burns calories; the main purpose of brown fat is to convert the food we eat into energy. The new findings — which are now published in the journal Cell Metabolism — "highlight another mechanism for the beneficial effects of exercise," explains study co-author Laurie Goodyear, a senior investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center. Cold and exercise have similar effectsThe lipid in question is called 12,13-dihydroxy-9Z-octadecenoic acid (or 12,13-diHOME), and one of the interesting things about it is that our body also releases it when we're cold. Previous research has shown that exposure to cold makes the lipid 12,13-diHOME stimulate brown fat activity, and that people with a higher level of 12,13-diHOME have better insulin sensitivity and a lower body mass index (BMI). What the new study found, for the first time, is that exercise also boosts 12,13-diHOME levels. Using lipidomics analysis, the researchers saw that a single "bout of moderate-intensity exercise causes a pronounced increase in the circulating lipid [12,13-diHOME] in male, female, young, old, sedentary, and active human subjects." An additional examination of mice revealed that in rodents, too, both a short bout of exercise and long-term physical training boosted levels of the lipid. Finally, removing the rodents' brown fat canceled this effect, confirming the fact that the lipid is produced by this type of fat. White and brown fat complement each otherAs Goodyear explains, "Our data provide some of the first evidence that exercise can alter the endocrine function of brown fat by increasing 12,13-diHOME." Treating mice with 12,13-diHOME "increased skeletal muscle fatty acid uptake and oxidation, but not glucose uptake," write the researchers. This suggests that, while white fat breaks down the stored adipose tissue into fatty acids that then circulate in our blood, brown fat produces 12,13-diHOME, which encourages the muscles to absorb these fatty acids during exercise. "I think it is surprising that one type of fat provides the fuel and the other signals the muscle to use the fuel," says Goodyear. The researchers say that they found the results surprising, especially in light of previous studies, which so far have suggested that exercise lowers the activity of brown fat in the human body. "Most data," says study co-author Kristin Stanford, who is a researcher at the Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, "have suggested that cold and exercise have opposite effects on [brown fat]. "[S]o," she adds, "to see that 12,13-diHOME was released from [brown fat] after both exercise and cold exposure was unexpected." "We still have more to learn about how [brown fat] is activated by cold and exercise and how these two stimuli could work in parallel," concludes Stanford. Weight Loss via Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness News From Medical News Today https://ift.tt/O45xlc May 2, 2018 at 03:50AM
Intermittent fasting may have 'profound health benefits'
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Intermittent fasting can help with weight management, but might it also bring other health benefits?
In intermittent fasting, what essentially takes place in the body is that one source of energy — which can facilitate the accumulation of body fat — is switched for another. Our bodies run on glucose, or simple sugar, but when we fast for a longer period of time, that energy source becomes unavailable. Our system needs to identify a different kind of "fuel." That is when the body begins to convert certain types of body fat into fatty acids, which are easily absorbed by the blood. Fatty acids, in turn, produce molecules called ketones, which the body uses as its new source of energy. Stephen Anton, a researcher at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, calls this process "flipping the metabolic switch." "This switch," explains Anton, "can happen after a certain period of time fasting. It's a gradation in which your metabolism over time shifts to use higher and higher amounts of ketones for energy." He and his team were interested to learn more about how this switch occurs, and whether it could bring other health benefits, alongside weight management. For this purpose, they reviewed numerous recent studies focused on the mechanisms and benefits of intermittent fasting. The team's review, published in the journal Obesity, suggests that intermittent fasting may be more healthful than other dieting strategies, as ketones put less stress on cells than the byproducts of other dieting styles. Significant weight loss regardless of styleAnton and his colleagues explain that the switch usually begins to take place after 8–12 hours of fasting, though in the case of individuals who practice intermittent fasting, the fasting strategies vary. The researchers focused on the two most common types of intermittent fasting diets, the first of which is based on time restrictions for eating. In it, the dieter may fast for a number of hours per day — for instance, 16 hours — while allowing themselves to eat anything they'd like over the remaining hours. For the second type of intermittent fasting, dieters may choose to alternate days of total fasting, with days when no food is off limits. Or they may simply alternate days of frugal eating — when individuals limit themselves to foods that equal only about 500 calories in all — with days of unrestricted eating, or "feasting days." "Of course," Anton notes, "we recommend healthy food [during the feasting times]." The team's review of existing studies revealed that, all in all, any type of intermittent fasting diets are associated with significant weight loss. In all 10 clinical trials assessing the effects of alternate-day fasting, the results conclusively pointed to this strategy's effectiveness when it came to shedding extra kilos. And, 3 out of the 4 studies focused on the restricted timing type of intermittent fasting had similar results. "So in my mind, it's not a question of whether it works for producing fat loss," says Anton. What's more interesting and more important is what kind of tissue is lost through intermittent fasting. Additional potential health benefitsMost of the studies reviewed by Anton and team revealed that, while participants did lose body fat, no significant amount of lean tissue — which includes organ tissue, muscular tissue, and bone tissue — was lost. This is important, since lean tissue allows our bodies to keep on functioning well, and other types of dieting strategies, Anton notes, lead to significant loss of both fat and lean tissue, which may affect health in the long run. Studies into the effect of the switch from glucose-driven energy to ketone-driven energy in rodents and other animals suggests that intermittent fasting could also have other health benefits, the scientists say. The researchers say that it could help to prolong the lifespan, improve the functioning of metabolic processes, protect cognitive function, enhance physical performance, reduce harmful instances of inflammation, and shield against cardiovascular diseases.
Still, the authors warn against starting intermittent fasting without first asking for a doctor's advice. This dieting style may not be equally beneficial for everyone, and in some cases it could do more harm than good, he cautions. Weight Loss via Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness News From Medical News Today https://ift.tt/O45xlc May 1, 2018 at 03:47AM |
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