Posts Tagged “diet”

As someone that follows the ebb and flow of diets I get a chance to see a lot of diets as well as the reports as to whether they work or not.

Over the last few years there have been probably 100 diets released on an unsuspecting public, some gain traction and others don’t but the big diets over the last few years have been Atkins, The Zone Diet, LA Weight Loss, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. Most of the diets have not been successful for the vast number of people but two diets have stood out, sort of.

Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers have been the most successful diets over the last few years mostly because of the marketing that they do. Weight Watchers has the Duchess of York and Jenny Craig has had Kirstie Alley and now Valerie Bertenelli as spokespeople. Everyone loves to follow famous people and these famous people have lost weight so why not listen to the success and follow it.

Actually both Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have been successful as diets the diets are balances with three meals and a couple of snacks and not extreme for high protein or low fat. Mostly Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers are middle of the road type diets that work for most anyone.

The sad thing about these successful diets are the lack of losses that people have seen on them. The average person will lose 10 to 15 pounds in a year on either Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig but the bulk of the weight lost on any organized diet is the fact that there is some kind of accountability in both of these diets. Read the rest of this entry »

Years ago when I first met my wife I was doing a lot of weightlifting but always had trouble getting enough protein into my diet. One of the things that I learned from her was to eat canned tuna. Although I had grown up on the west coast and had eaten a fair amount of seafood I had not ever eaten a can of tuna before, this was about to change. My wife made me a simple meal of cheddar macaroni and cheese (the white instead of the orange) mixed with a can of tuna and topped with chopped pickles. To say that this crazy sounding meal changed my life is an understatement. Once I moved out of my parents house and struggled to make ends meet I would always turn to tuna as a very cheap meal and a great source of protein.

Why is Tuna a good meal?

So what is it about canned tuna that makes it great as a food for anyone interested in fitness? Well there are a few things that swim in it’s favor:

- High in protein, one can of tuna has enough protein for a meal
- Not fat or carbs, if you buy canned tuna in water it is basically all protein
- High in Omega 3 vitamins
- Cheap, you can buy a can of tuna for under a dollar and get really good Albacore tuna for under $3.00 if you chop around

One of the things that you should do and that may seem a little strange is to rinse your tuna. To rinse your tuna you open the can and drain the water and then,while leaving the tin lid on top, rinse the tuna with cold water for 30 seconds or so. This action will get rid of the salt and sodium but will not affect the taste at all.

I have spoken before about how Atkins is only a short term solution but raising the protein in your diet is a great way to speed up your metabolism and accelerate weight loss.. A study here shows that this is in fact true.

There have been countless studies performed on the role of protein in the muscle growth process to try and determine exactly how much protein you should consume to build muscle mass. Recently, several studies have looked at the role that dietary protein plays in helping you lose fat, and more importantly, helping you keep it off!

One thing scientists have discovered is that eating lean protein foods is important for regulating body composition because it decreases your appetite.

In a 2003 study reported in the journal Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition And Metabolic Care, protein was shown to be more satiating (made you feel fuller) than both carbohydrate and fat both in the short term and the long term.

Eating more lean protein foods has also been proven as an effective strategy to help you burn fat and keep it off because of something called, �dietary thermogenesis� (also known as the thermic effect of food).

In a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2005 (93(2): 281-289), researchers followed a group of 113 overweight subjects after 4 weeks of a very low calorie diet, through a 6 month period of weight maintenance. The subjects were divided into a protein group or a control group. The protein group was simply given an extra 30 grams of protein per day on top of their usual diet.

The researchers found that during weight maintenance, the group with the higher protein intake was less likely to regain the lost weight, and any weight gain in the protein group was lean tissue and not fat. The results were attributed to higher thermic effect and a decrease in appetite.

Although calories will always be the bottom line when it comes to fat loss, studies such as these are confirming what bodybuilders have known for a long time: That calories are not the only factor that can influence your body composition. Your protein intake and your ratios of protein relative to carbohydrate and fat can clearly play a key role in helping you lose fat and keep the fat off.

None of this is news to bodybuilders or to anyone who is already familiar with bodybuilding-style nutrition programs such as Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle. But it�s interesting that such positive results were achieved in studies where protein was increased so conservatively - as little as 30 additional grams of protein per day or a 20% increase above traditional protein recommendations.

Many bodybuilding-style diets call for as much as 30%-40% of the total daily calories from protein and some competitive bodybuilders jack up the protein (temporarily) to as much as 50% before competitions.

I�m curious to see if any research is ever conducted with these more aggressive protein intakes. If so, my guess is that we will find once again, that the bodybuilders are ahead of the science when it comes to the manipulation of diet for improving body composition.

The take home lesson is simple: If you remove some carbs and put in some protein - nothing too radical; even as little as 30 grams per day - this small change in your diet may decrease your appetite, decrease your body fat and help you keep the fat off after you lose it.

- Tom Venuto
www.burnthefat.com