Weight Loss Max

The more your belly sticks out, the greater your risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows.

“The message is really obesity in the abdomen matters even more than obesity overall,” Dr. Carlos Iribarren of Kaiser Permanente of Northern California in Oakland, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.

Body mass index (BMI), a gauge of weight in relation to height, is a fairly crude way to judge a person’s heart disease risk based on obesity, he noted. For example, muscular people may have a high BMI and be perfectly healthy.

In the current study, Iribarren and his team tested whether sagittal abdominal diameter, or SAD, which is the distance from the back to the upper abdomen midway between the top of the pelvis and the bottom of the ribs, would improve the accuracy of BMI in predicting heart disease risk.

Waist circumference is widely used to measure obesity in the abdominal area, Iribarren noted. But while there are many ways to measure a person’s waist, he added, SAD, which is evaluated by a doctor or nurse with a caliper, is much more standardized, and therefore probably less subject to error.

He and his colleagues looked at 101,765 men and women who underwent checkups between 1965 and 1970, which included SAD measurements, and were then followed for about 12 years.

Men with the largest SAD were 42 percent more likely to develop heart disease during follow-up compared to those with the smallest SAD, while a large SAD increased heart disease risk by 44 percent for women, Iribarren and his team found.

Within BMI categories, the researchers found, heart disease risk rose with SAD; even among men of normal weight, heart disease risk was higher for those with bigger bellies.

The relationship between SAD and heart disease risk was strongest among the youngest men and women, which is not surprising, Iribarren said, given that people who develop central obesity younger in life would likely have more serious problems.

“I think it has important implications for prevention,” he said. ” Don’t let this happen to you when you’re young, that’s kind of the message.”

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, December 15, 2006

Starting your day off with a grapefruit is a great way to add to a healthy diet.

What are the benefits of eating grapefruit?
- Grapefruit helps you lose weight.
- Gives you more energy.
- Helps to keep your thyroid hormone in balance.
- Regulates the intake of fatty acids.
- Good for your heart and circulation.
- Contains lots of potassium.

Remember these benefits the next time you are at the grocery store!

Over at Yahoo! News they have posted this story:

A New York federal judge on Monday tossed out a lawsuit by a Florida man against the company behind the Atkins low-carb diet that he alleged caused his cholesterol to skyrocket and necessitated an angioplasty.

Jody Gorran, 53, of Delray Beach, Florida, went on the Atkins Diet in 2001, admittedly eating mainly pastrami and cheesecake. After just two months, his cholesterol shot up to an unhealthy 230 from a low 146, according to the suit.

“Pastrami and cheesecake — large amounts of which Gorran admittedly consumed — may present risks, but these are risks of which consumers are aware,” wrote Judge Denny Chin in his dismissal of the suit.

The low-carbohydrate diet, pioneered by Dr. Robert Atkins and widely blamed for a drop in sales of high-carb foods, involves eating proteins such as meat and cheese and limiting carbohydrates such as bread and pasta.

Gorran felt pain in his chest in the fall of 2003 and underwent an angioplasty to unclog one of his coronary arteries, according the suit.

“The average consumer surely anticipates that these and other high-fat or high-protein foods may increase cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease,” Chin wrote of the salty deli meat and cream cheese-based dessert.

The diet consists of only “advice and ideas” that are protected by the First Amendment, Chin wrote.

Gorran had sued Atkins Nutritionals Inc. claiming its products were “defective and unreasonably dangerous,” seeking money damages and an injunction requiring the company to put warning labels on all of its products and its Web site.

Atkins Nutritionals sells shakes, nutrition bars and candy, as wells as books on dieting.

On a personal note, I am really glad that this suit was thrown out.  Any diet, especially of the Atkins variety, needs to be researched and followed through carefully with doctor’s supervision.  How this man expected to lose weight eating pastrami and cheesecake is beyond me, and then felt it was Atkins fault when his health failed.  This is right up there with people who smoke, and then are surprised or decide to sue when their health turns for the worse.  Hopefully more cases like this will follow.

Two years ago, L.A. Weight Loss paid penalties to the state of Washington when it was charged with misrepresenting their costs and making claims that were unproven.  Now, much like a dieter who has slipped back into their old eating habits, it appears that L.A. Weight Loss has slipped back in to their old habits of duping their customers in Washington.

A new settlement has been completed, and again L.A. Weight Loss is paying out of pocket and landing in an unwanted spotlight about their programs.  For the complete story, head over to ConsumerAffairs.com.

The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology reports that Adults with type 1 diabetes who are obese, especially those who carry excess weight around the middle, are at increased risk for developing kidney disease, a study shows.

“These results,” Dr. Ian H. de Boer told Reuters Health, “suggest that weight control is important in type 1 diabetes…and that lifestyle interventions, such as exercise and diet, may be useful in preventing kidney and heart disease in this group of people.”

Among 1,105 type 1, or “insulin-dependent,” diabetes patients followed for an average of six years, 93 (8.4 percent) developed microalbuminuria — small amounts of the protein albumin in urine, the first sign of diabetic kidney disease and a marker of increased risk for heart disease.

According to de Boer of University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues, the risk of microalbuminuria was significantly higher for patients who were particularly thick around the middle, what doctor’s call “central obesity.”

For each four-inch increase in waist circumference, the risk of microalbuminuria increased by 34 percent, the team reports in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

The subjects in the study were part of the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT), which showed that intensive insulin therapy — keeping blood sugar as close to normal as possible — substantially lowers the risk of kidney disease and other complications of diabetes.

“The current study showed again that, overall, intensive insulin therapy is protective against kidney disease in type 1 diabetes,” de Boer told Reuters Health. Risk of kidney disease was 4.5 percent for patients receiving intensive insulin therapy, compared with 12.8 percent for patients receiving conventional insulin treatment.

Parents have a responsibility to make decisions for themselvs that will also affect their children.  It is easy to understand that children will mimic their parents’ behaviors, both positive and negative.  This also includes food, diet, and health.

If a parent obsesses outloud over calories, food intake and exercise.  It will undoubtedly rub off on their children, who may not quite understand how to balance this information.

Dr. Cheryl Koch, a registered dietitian and director of the food and clinical nutrition programs at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center has some easy tips that will help dissuade kids from inheriting an unhealthy obsession with food and weight:

• Encourage a healthy lifestyle overall.
• Avoid fad diets. They promote unhealthy eating patterns and inappropriate nutrient intake for young children.
• Make exercise a part of fun family activities, not a chore.
• Don’t make negative comments about other people’s weight in front of a child.
• Promote a natural body image. Express comfort and pride in a figure that doesn’t resemble a supermodel’s.

Two middle-aged Japanese bureaucrats showed their bulging bellies to the nation as they kicked off a diet blog as part of a national campaign to fight growing obesity.

Vice Health, Labor and Welfare Ministers Noritoshi Ishida and Keizo Takemi were both pictured on their blog lifting up their white shirts as female dieticians measured their flab.

The duo will keep regular commentary and show their measurements over the next six months as they try to trim down.

Both have been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, in which people have too much fatty tissue around the abdomen.

“I have given myself a challenge and decided to open up the diary of my struggle,” Ishida wrote on the “Metabo Busters” blog.

The 55-year-old said he would try to walk for 10 minutes a day, would not use elevators if possible and limit his alcohol intake to one can of beer a day.

“Conquering metabolic syndrome is key to achieving the goal” of reducing diabetes in Japan, Ishida said.

“However, even though I’m in charge of this, I have metabolic syndrome as I weigh 88 kilograms (193 pounds) and have an abdominal circumference of 101.5 centimeters (41 inches),” said Ishida, who hopes to lose six kilos and six centimeters of belly.

Takemi, who is also 55, has set a goal of losing five kilograms and squeezing his abdominal circumference by five centimeters.

“I will be under pressure to make a very serious effort as I love delicious foods,” Takemi said.

“But I want to send a message: ‘If Takemi can do it, everybody can do it’,” he said, pledging to eat only one sweet a day.

Obesity is on the increase in Japan despite the nation’s traditionally healthy diet and lifestyle.

Head here for the officials’ official blog.

The Google 15 encourages you to get on the scale every day by calculating a moving average from your daily weight. We then plot this average alongside your daily scale weight and a goal weight that you set–this gives you a better idea of your weight trend by masking most of the day to day noise that variances in water weight introduce.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the excitement of getting on the scale to see that you “lost” two pounds since yesterday. Unfortunately, that tends to be followed by the depression that you “gained” three pounds the next day. It’s impossible to “lose weight” every day according to your scale weight, so as a result, most people cultivate an irrational (but very real) fear of their scale and only climb on to get feedback on their weight loss efforts every week or two.

Your exact scale weight isn’t really important as long as it’s “ahead” of the trend you’re aiming for. If you’re trying to lose weight, you want your day-to-day scale weight to be below your moving average–concentrate on your moving average weight, not your scale weight! In the example on the right, note that on 4/10 it looks like the user “gained” three pounds according to the scale weight, but the moving average merely leveled out. But this is no reason to panic–the next day’s weight continued the downward trend.

Of course, the big secret that you never hear is that the hardest part about losing weight is keeping the weight off once you’ve lost it. The Google 15 generally considers you to be on goal as long as your moving average weight stays within 2.5 pounds of your goal weight. So don’t stop using it once you’ve made your goal weight–enter your weight every day and it will give you an early warning if you start to pack on the pounds!

This Google add-on was created by Google software engineer Brian Fitzpatrick.  For more info, go here.