There are fat camps for kids that are designed to help kids lose weight through diet, exercise, and learning new skills to stop the habits that casued the troubles in the first place.

The BBC has this great article about how things will get better for kids that learn the life skills that many of us never really learn about the relationship between life, food and exercise.

Jeneisha and Jamal Holroyd-Bruce were both badly bullied and lacked confidence six weeks ago.Since then, they have been at the Carnegie camp and I went to find out how they got on.Jeneisha and Jamal have changed and it is not just their physical appearance which is different.They both look slimmer, their faces are thinner and they have rosy cheeks.

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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: BBC, Carnegie camp, food, Jamal Holroyd-Bruce, Jeneisha Holroyd-Bruce

I am paraphrasing this article from Health 24 that I thought many men would like and many women would be a little disgusted with on how men can lose weight faster than women.

The “Secrets of the Sexes” series on BBC recently featured a fascinating episode on “Brainsex”. Zooming in on the brains of men and women, they concentrated on how the sexes differ in terms of emotions, empathy, problem solving and spatial orientation.

It was evident that the brains of men and women differ considerably.

This set me thinking about the differences between men and women when it comes to basic metabolism and ability to lose weight. I started wondering whether men have an advantage over women in keeping those kilos in check.

Let’s have a look at some of the most important factors that determine body weight to see whether this is true, or not.

Resting energy expenditure
Resting energy expenditure (REE) is defined as the amount of energy required to support normal body functions and to maintain the energy balance of the body (homeostasis). REE supports body functions such as breathing, the circulation of the blood, energy used by the nervous system and keeping our body temperatures constant (Krause, 2000).

The most important factors that determine REE are body size and composition.

Generally speaking, men are bigger than women. This means that they would require more energy to maintain REE. In addition, men tend to have a higher percentage of lean muscle tissue than women, so the metabolic dice are loaded against women when it comes to REE.

Because of their bigger bodies and higher percentage of lean muscle mass, men will have a higher REE and thus be less likely to gain weight.

Body fat percentage
Women have a higher proportion of body fat than men. This is a genetic adaptation which ensures that the female body is cushioned to bear children. The higher body fat percentage in women lowers their metabolic rates by 5 to 10% compared to men (Krause, 2000).

Thus, women need less energy to sustain their normal metabolism and will be more inclined to gain weight if their food intake exceeds their energy requirement.

Average men and women have body fat percentages of 14% and 24% respectively. Elite male and female distance runners, with the same body mass or weight, have body fat percentages of 5% and 10% respectively (Noakes, 1991).

If even our top female athletes have double the amount of fat in their bodies than their male counterparts, then ordinary women will generally carry more fat than ordinary men. Consequently, females also have a lower percentage of lean body or muscle mass when compared to men.

Lower VO2 max
Another factor that can hamper weight loss in women is the fact that they tend to have a lower VO2 max. The VO2 max is a measure used in exercise physiology to describe the maximum amount of oxygen an athlete can take up to use for exercise.

The unfair advantage
It is evident that men have a number of unfair advantages over women when it comes to losing weight. Most couples have experienced this when both partners go on a slimming diet and do exercise to lose weight: the husband loses more weight at a faster rate than the wife.

So, the female of the species has to work so much harder and stick to her diet for so much longer and do so much more exercise to achieve the same results as her male counterpart. This seems unfair, but it is a fact and there is nothing we, as females, can actually do about this – except to persevere, of course.

Women do need to eat less for longer and exercise harder to lose the same amount of weight as their partners.

Saving grace
The saving grace that counts in favour of women is that the female sex is much more motivated to lose weight and, in most cases, less susceptible to temptations when it comes to cheating. Female dieters won’t as easily succumb to a night out with the boys, which entails consuming copious amounts of beer and fatty snacks.

This may not seem much of a compensation to most women who struggle to lose weight, but if we keep in mind that “the hand that rocks the cradle, controls the world”, then women can exercise iron control and achieve their goals of weight loss despite the unfair advantage that men enjoy.

Text copyright: Dr I.V. van Heerden, DietDoc

Tags: athlete, BBC, energy, energy balance, energy expenditure, energy requirement, food intake, I.V. van Heerden, less energy

Here is a news story that I would love to see here in Canada or in the US. England has a new minister in charge of fitness. Aas we all know fitness is not a very high priority in governemnt in either of our countries but I think England is really on the right track having taken fitness as seriously as they have now.

Thanks to politics.co.uk for this story.

Caroline Flint has been appointed a new minister for fitness, to coordinate the government’s efforts to tackle public health and rising obesity.

Reporting to the health secretary, she will work with the departments for culture, local government, transport and education to help individuals increase their physical activity.

Official figures due to be released on Friday suggest that unless action is taken to improve the general population’s fitness by 2010, one third of adult men will be clinically obese, up from 22 per cent in 2003.

Obesity already costs the economy about £7 billion, and the NHS about £7 billion. Smoking-related conditions cost about £1.7 billion to treat, and heart disease costs nearly £8 billion in health costs and lost work.
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Tags: active travel, BBC, BBC Radio, Canada, car journeys, Caroline Flint, Caroline Flint Here, Dorney Lake, fitness minister, health secretary, heart disease, minister, NHS, obesity, specific minister, tackle public health, the 2012 Olympic, Tony Blair, United Kingdom, United States, Windsor

I just ran into a couple of great articles on Hoodia and thought it would be great to share them. Why do I care about Hoodia? Well I keep getting spam about the “Greatest weight loss product ever” and man do I hate unfounded hype.

It seems that Hoodia may be a good product but if there is ever a wonder drug that will stop people from eating and help them lose weight than the lack of exercise will surely kill people. I t is very important to remember that even if Hoodia does a great job in helping you lose weight that you still need to exercise regularly to stay or regain health. I have made my own notations here in bold from this great article at about.com written by Cathy Wong

Introduction to Hoodia

Each year, people spend more than $40 billion on products designed to help them slim down. None of them seem to be working very well.

Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it’ll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away. It’s very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn’t stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you’re full, even if you’ve eaten just a morsel.

Hoodia is a cactus that’s causing a stir for its ability to suppress appetite and promote weight loss. 60 Minutes, ABC, and the BBC have all done stories on hoodia. Hoodia is sold in capsule, liquid, or tea form in health food stores and on the Internet. Hoodia is also found in the popular diet pill Trimspa.

Hoodia gordonii can be found in the semi-deserts of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. Much like a cactus it has recently been turned into a cash crop in Namibia where there are hundreds of acres of it being grown to meet the demand in North America.

It takes about 5 years before hoodia’s pale purple flowers appear and the cactus can be harvested. Although there are 20 types of hoodia, only the hoodia gordonii variety is believed to contain the natural appetite suppressant.

Although hoodia was only marketed recently, the San Bushmen of the Kalahari desert have been eating it for a very long time. The Bushmen, who live off the land, would cut off part of the hoodia stem and eat it to ward off hunger and thirst during nomadic hunting trips. They also used hoodia for severe abdominal cramps, haemorrhoids, tuberculosis, indigestion, hypertension and diabetes.

In 1937, a Dutch anthropologist studying the San Bushmen noted that they used hoodia to suppress appetite. But it wasn’t until 1963 when scientists at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa’s national laboratory, began studying hoodia. Initial results were promising — lab animals lost weight after taking hoodia.
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Tags: 60 Minutes, ABC, Africa, Angola, anthropologist, BBC, Botswana, Brown University in Rhode Island, Cathy Wong Introduction, correspondent, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, cramps, depression, diabetes, energy, health food stores, Hoodia plant, hypertension, indigestion, Kalahari desert, Leslie Stahl, liver disease, Namibia, north America, pfizer, pharmaceutical giant, Rhode Island, South Africa, South Africa's national laboratory, supplement, tough product, Trimspa, tuberculosis, Unilever, USD, weight loss product, weight loss solution

I would like to start this post just by saying that I know that there are many horrors of alcohol abuse and that there are many reasons why drinking alcohol may lead to an early exit but at the same time I just bottled my fourth batch of home made beer, Barons Beer actually, and thought that it would be fun to come up with a great big list of why beer is good for you.

Cancer preventer – A compound found only in hops, which are used to make beer, have been discovered to prevent cancer. Of course we all know that hops are an ingredient in beer and therefore Xanthohumol has high hopes of making beer a new anti cancer drug. Xanthohumol flavinoids have been tested and its use is hoped to be a preventative treatment against prostate and colon cancer and even may be a form of hormone therapy for women.

Getting your vitamins – A friend of mine used to say there is a pork chop in every glass of beer but recent studies show that there is vitamin B6 in beer increases the level of vitamin B6 in a beer drinkers blood which has been shown to decrease the level of homocysteine which increase the chances of heart disease.
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Tags: alcohol abuse, Austria, Austria's Innsbruck Medical University, BBC, beer, cancer, colon cancer, Fitness Nutrition, heart disease, hormone therapy, inflammation, Karolinska Institute, kidney stones, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Neuropsychopharmacology, relaxation, Stefan Brene, thanksgiving, the American Journal of Epidemiology, the International Journal, Tokyo University of Science Blood, United States