Thursday, October 7, 2021

10 Proven Ways How to Lose Weight Without Exercise

Popsci.com

10. Get enough sleep to help lose weight without exercise

Insufficient sleep is associated with reduced leptin and elevated ghrelin, two opposing hormones involved in the regulation of appetite. Leptin decreases your appetite and ghrelin increases appetite. These differences in leptin and ghrelin caused by lack of sleep are likely to increase your appetite.[22]

What can you do? Make sure you are getting 8 hours of sleep every night to keep your hunger hormones in balance.

9. Drink more water to help lose weight without exercise

Increasing your water intake to a liter (34 oz) or more every day without making any other changes to your lifestyle can help you lose weight.[20]

Your amazing brain in clear, everyday language

Healing the Brain: Stress, Trauma and Development

“Easy to read. Difficult to put down.”--Micheal J. Colucciello, Jr., NY State pharmaceutical researcher, retired.

“David Balog takes a subject fraught with difficulty and makes it simple and accessible to everyone. The book goes a long way in helping one understand how and why and in what ways stress affects how we live and cope. Invaluable.”--Jessica Hudson, former president, National Association of Former Foster Children

Drinking half a liter (17 oz) of water before a meal can help boost your weight loss efforts

[What can you do? Replace sugary drinks with water to give your weight loss efforts even more of a boost. If you don’t like drinking plain water, make yourself some infused water, there are many recipes available on the Internet.

8. Make smart alcohol choices to help lose weight without exercise

Ideally, alcohol should be eliminated for maximum weight loss results. But if you do choose to drink alcohol, drink in moderation. Research has shown that moderate alcohol consumption has health benefits. Moderate alcohol consumption of about a drink a day is linked to a 14-25% reduction in heart disease risk compared to no alcohol at all.[18]

Your choice of alcohol can have a significant impact on your calorie intake. Cocktails and other sugar filled alcoholic drinks are the worst calorie culprits. And unfortunately those yummy craft beers are also packed with calories, so if you have to drink beer, light beers are the better option. Although straight shots or on the rocks drinks have the least calories, the ellagic acid in red wine helps to delay the growth of fat cells while slowing the development of new fat cells.[19]

What can you do? Eliminate alcohol or drink in moderation. Avoid sweetened drinks, the sweeter a drink is, the more calories it has. Switch to red wine.

7. Drink green tea to help lose weight without exercise

Several studies have shown that green tea can help with weight and fat reduction by helping to increase energy expenditure.[14][15][16][17] This is mostly due to a phytochemical compound in green tea called EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate).

What can you do? Look for a green tea that has a high catechin content. Research has also shown that green tea steeped in bottled water contains more antioxidants in comparison to tea steeped in tap water.[1] The green tea had almost twice the amount of the EGCG antioxidant when steeped in bottled water, making it more bitter compared to tea steeped in tap water. If you do not enjoy drinking green tea, try an EGCG extract, which is available as a dietary supplement

Your amazing brain in clear, everyday language

Healing the Brain: Stress, Trauma and Development

“Easy to read. Difficult to put down.”--Micheal J. Colucciello, Jr., NY State pharmaceutical researcher, retired.

6. Increase your protein intake to help lose weight without exercise

Increasing your daily protein intake can help you consume less total daily calories. A 15% to 30% dietary protein increase at a constant carbohydrate intake helped study participants eat 441 less calories a day and lose 11 lbs in 12 weeks.[12]

Starting your day with a protein rich breakfast can help to reduce hunger cravings during the day.[13]

5. Cut out sugary drinks to help lose weight without exercise

Research has proven that sugary drinks increase the risk of obesity,[9] as well as heart disease, diabetes, and gout. A typical 20-ounce soda contains 240 calories or more. These calories do not give a feeling of fullness, so you will not eat any less. Replacing sugary drinks with non-sugary drinks can result in an average weight loss of 2% to 2.5%.[10]

Beware of artificially sweetened drinks, artificial sweeteners can increase appetite.

4. Increase your baseline activity to help lose weight without exercise

Baseline activity is your day to day activity, the usual light or sedentary activities of daily living such as walking, household chores, etc. These activities generally don’t burn up a lot of calories, but increasing your baseline activity can help increase your energy expenditure. Study results suggest that any increase in physical activity can help reduce belly fat and body weight and is useful for preventing chronic diseases.[8]

What can you do? Adjust your daily routine to allow for at least one baseline activity to be increased, e.g. get into the habit of taking the stairs instead of the escalator/elevator. Engage in more recreational physical activities

Choosing healthy snacks is important. Avoid junk food snacks and snack instead on nuts like pistachios and low calorie fruit such as apples, which contain a soluble fiber called pectin. Pectin promotes satiety (the feeling of fullness), and helps to slow down digestion.[7]

Your amazing brain in clear, everyday language

Healing the Brain: Stress, Trauma and Development

“Easy to read. Difficult to put down.”--Micheal J. Colucciello, Jr., NY State pharmaceutical researcher, retired.

2. Weigh yourself every day to help lose weight without exercise

A four year study involving 875 participants revealed that those who used their smart scales the most lost more weight.[4] Men lost an additional 2.5 lbs and women lost 2 lbs in 1 year.

Research has shown that more or less 40% of weight lost by any means is regained in 1 year, and close on 100% of weight lost is regained after 5 years.

1. Use smaller plates to help lose weight without exercise

Dinner plate sizes have increased on average by 23% since 1900.[1] Using bigger plates can result in you serving 9% to 31% bigger portions than you usually would.[2] Larger portions encourage you to eat more, and will inevitably lead to an increase in weight gain.

In one study, participants who were offered a larger portion increased their calorie intake by 30% compared to those offered a smaller portion.[3]

If the plate or bowl size encourages you to eat only 50 more calories a day, your increase in weight would be about 5 pounds a year.

What can you do? Invest in smaller plates and either get rid of all bigger plates and bowls or store them so that they cannot be used. Use disposable portion control plates for eating on the go.

Crefit: https://www.shape-able.com/

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Blame obesity on Thomas Edison?

A reader-friendly guide to the brain. Click here!

from research organizations

Study finds dopamine, biological clock link to snacking, overeating and obesity

Date:: January 3, 2020
Source:: University of Virginia
Summary:: A new study finds that the pleasure center of the brain and the brain's biological clock are linked, and that high-calorie foods -- which bring pleasure -- disrupt normal feeding schedules, resulting in overconsumption.
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Clock and eating concept (stock image).

During the years 1976 through 1980, 15% of U.S. adults were obese. Today, about 40% of adults are obese. Another 33% are overweight.

Coinciding with this increase in weight are ever-rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and health complications caused by obesity, such as hypertension. Even Alzheimer's disease may be partly attributable to obesity and physical inactivity.

"The diet in the U.S. and other nations has changed dramatically in the last 50 years or so, with highly processed foods readily and cheaply available at any time of the day or night," Ali Güler, a professor of biology at the University of Virginia, said. "Many of these foods are high in sugars, carbohydrates and calories, which makes for an unhealthy diet when consumed regularly over many years."

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In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, Güler and his colleagues demonstrate that the pleasure center of the brain that produces the chemical dopamine, and the brain's separate biological clock that regulates daily physiological rhythms, are linked, and that high-calorie foods -- which bring pleasure -- disrupt normal feeding schedules, resulting in overconsumption. Using mice as study models, the researchers mimicked the 24/7 availability of a high-fat diet, and showed that anytime snacking eventually results in obesity and related health problems.

Güler's team found that mice fed a diet comparable to a wild diet in calories and fats maintained normal eating and exercise schedules and proper weight. But mice fed high-calorie diets laden with fats and sugars began "snacking" at all hours and became obese.

Additionally, so-called "knockout" mice that had their dopamine signaling disrupted -- meaning they didn't seek the rewarding pleasure of the high-fat diet -- maintained a normal eating schedule and did not become obese, even when presented with the 24/7 availability of high-calorie feeds.

A reader-friendly guide to the brain. Click

"We've shown that dopamine signaling in the brain governs circadian biology and leads to consumption of energy-dense foods between meals and during odd hours," Güler said.

Other studies have shown, Güler said, that when mice feed on high-fat foods between meals or during what should be normal resting hours, the excess calories are stored as fat much more readily than the same number of calories consumed only during normal feeding periods. This eventually results in obesity and obesity-related diseases, such as diabetes.

Speaking of the modern human diet, Güler said, "The calories of a full meal may now be packed into a small volume, such as a brownie or a super-size soda. It is very easy for people to over-consume calories and gain excessive weight, often resulting in obesity and a lifetime of related health problems.

"Half of the diseases that affect humans are worsened by obesity. And this results in the need for more medical care and higher health care costs for individuals, and society."

Güler said the human body, through thousands of years of evolution, is hard-wired to consume as much food as possible as long as it's available. He said this comes from a long earlier history when people hunted or gathered food and had brief periods of plenty, such as after a kill, and then potentially lengthy periods of famine. Humans also were potential prey to large animals and so actively sought food during the day, and sheltered and rested at night.

"We evolved under pressures we no longer have," Güler said. "It is natural for our bodies as organisms to want to consume as much as possible, to store fat, because the body doesn't know when the next meal is coming.

"But, of course, food is now abundant, and our next meal is as close as the kitchen, or the nearest fast-food drive-through, or right here on our desk. Often, these foods are high in fats, sugars, and therefore calories, and that's why they taste good. It's easy to overconsume, and, over time, this takes a toll on our health."

Additionally, Güler said, prior to the advent of our electricity-powered society, people started the day at dawn, worked all day, often doing manual labor, and then went to sleep with the setting of the sun. Human activity, therefore, was synchronized to day and night. Today, we are working, playing, staying connected -- and eating -- day and night. This, Guler said, affects our body clocks, which were evolved to operate on a sleep-wake cycle timed to daytime activity, moderate eating and nighttime rest.

"This lights-on-all-the-time, eat-at-any-time lifestyle recasts eating patterns and affects how the body utilizes energy," he said. "It alters metabolism -- as our study shows -- and leads to obesity, which causes disease. We're learning that when we eat is just as important as how much we eat. A calorie is not just a calorie. Calories consumed between meals or at odd hours become stored as fat, and that is the recipe for poor health."

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences and University of Virginia Brain Institute funded the research.

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Materials provided by University of Virginia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.