Protein: Helps with weight loss and body composition

I previously mentioned dietary fibre can be used to induce satiation so we feel full and stop eating. However you may make notice at times that no matter how much fibre you eat, you still remain hungry and continue craving for food. This is because you have to induce satiation as well as satiety to efficiently relieve hunger and prolong fullness! Satiety is the feeling of satisfaction after a bigtasty (delicious) meal. When we experience satiety, we lose the cravings for food and naturally stop eating (sometimes before we’re even full). Protein has the strongest effect on satiety which directly helps to control appetite and reduce overall food consumption. To learn more about how protein can promote weight loss and improve body composition read Nutrition: Protein to reduce Energy Intake

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Why should you follow my dieting program?

The number one reason why people fail to lose weight is not because of the weight loss program, but because of their inability to follow their dieting and exercise plan. The key to successful weight loss is to find the program that matches your lifestyle and one that you will be able to maintain for a lifetime. Notice I said lifetime because you will need to carry on these dieting practices with you after you lose the weight to maintain a healthy weight because your last lifestyle wasn't cutting it for you. Using an extreme method to lose weight then returning back to previous lifestyle is a guarantee for weight regain.

As well I know when I said "maintain dieting practices [for a lifetime]" many of you must have been immediately discouraged because “dieting” can be scary word. When most people hear the word “dieting” they imagine eating less food than usual and perhaps eliminating certain food groups from consumption. That is not what any diet should be! I use "dieting practices" as a term to mean "a way of eating", and my dieting practices are based on eating a healthy well balanced diet as according to the American Heart Association that consists of foods from all major food groups with focus on consuming a variety of fruits and vegetables and whole grain products. As well for a source of protein they recommend including fat-free and low-fat dairy products, fish, legumes, poultry, and lean meats.

I believe that my dieting program will be successful in helping facilitating healthy weight loss in the long term and preventing weight regain because it is simple and easy to integrate permanently into your everyday life. It is able to do this because my program concentrates on reducing energy intake through behavioral modification, correct portion sizes and proper information of healthy nutrition to reduce energy.

As well my program respects that there individuals are unique and provides different levels of difficulty depending on one's fitness goals and fitness abilities. That being said I will also teach how to achieve faster, yet safe methods to lose weight for those who want faster results. However it is important to note that much more effort, dedication and commitment will be required for achieving accelerated weight loss as it concentrates more on energy expenditure (exercise), and meal replacements which can be much more invasive to your current lifestyle.
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Sleep: Importance in controlling of weight

Sleep is very important towards the management and prevention of weight gain. Being able to sleep for the recommended 8 hours soon after the sunsets is vital towards being able to control your weight. This article is written for those who have read my article on "Chronobiology" and intend on maintaining only their metabolic circadian rhythm. In this article, I will explain the importance of maintaining a regular sleep/wake schedule and how it can prevent weight gain.

Studies have shown that the food seeking behavior and sleep/wakefulness are coordinated. Other studies have gone on to show that feelings of hunger are paired with vigilance during the daytime and feelings of satiety are paired with sleep during the dark. This explains why we tend to get very alert and unsettled when we are hungry and very sleepy and lethargic when we finish a large meal. Thus irregular and improper sleep patterns can implicate an irregular metabolism. If you are interested in learning more about the importance of sleep on managing weight click to read more.

Understand this:
Leptin is secreted primarily from our adipose (fat) tissue into our blood where it works on the hypothalamus in the brain to reduce food consumption and increase energy expenditure. Leptin is a feedback mechanism of the body to indicate there is a surplus of energy in the body.

Ghrelin is secreted by the stomach and pancreas to stimulate hunger. It is found in highest amounts before a meal and lowest amounts after a meal.

Know this:
Sleep-wake cycles are intertwined with metabolism (affecting satiety and hunger). Scientists are finding increasing evidence that the neurophysiological (the way that nerves function) and metabolic mechanisms (via hormones) for controlling food-seeking behaviors and sleep/wake cycles are overlapping with each other [1].

Numerous studies involving both animal models and humans have shown that sleep deprivation result in hyperphagia (overeating). Human studies have shown that short sleepers express reduced levels of leptin and increased levels of ghrelin [4]. Thus those deprived of sleep would have a larger appetite due to hormonal imbalances. To make things worse being in an environment where food is always readily available means that reduced sleep simply becomes an increased opportunity to eat [1].

Compound those factors in with:

• Reduced sleep and sleep instability have been related to impaired glucose and lipid metabolism [1], meaning foods eaten are not properly digested and most usually stored away directly as fat in adipose tissue.
• Reduced sleep causes fatigue and usually leads to reduced physical activities [1]; further reducing energy expenditure and contributing to weight gain.

You don`t need me to draw any conclusions for you, but I will anyways just for formality =).

Conclusion:
Reduced sleep leads to increased caloric intake and ultimately weight gain

Solution:
Maintain a regular sleep schedule and BE SURE TO SLEEP AT THE CORRECT TIMES! Do not stay up late enough to allow yourself to become hungry again.

Consequences of ignoring my advice
You decide not to listen and stay up late at night, most likely engaged in an activity that requires your concentration. Here is what happens next:

1. Your concentration will lead to the stimulation of your brain to incorrectly signal for hunger due to the overlapping of the circadian pacemakers and the cytokine system.
2. You ignore the hunger because you know if you eat at night you will be over consuming calories for the day and all the food eaten at night will be stored as fat. So you try to sleep off the hunger.
3. You can’t sleep. You become restless and uncomfortable due to the feeling of hungry. You will not be able to sleep until you eat.
4. You eat; leading to hyperphagia and overconsumption.

Exceptions:
There are times where we will need to stay up to either finish off our presentations for work tomorrow, or study for the final exam. So what do we do?

• Load up on low-density carbohydrates that are high in dietary fiber. Eat as much vegetables and fruits as you need to, to fill up your stomach and feel satisfied.

Reference:

1. M Garaulet, JM Ordova´s and JA Madrid: The chronobiology, etiology and pathophysiology of obesity. Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Jun 22. [Epub ahead of print].
2. Vanitallie TB: Sleep and energy balance, interactive homeostatic systems. Metabolism. 2006. 55 (10 Suppl 2): S30–S35.
3. Garaulet M, Lee YC, Shen J, Parnell LD, Arnett DK, Tsai MY et al: Genetic variants in human CLOCK associate with total energy intake and cytokine sleep factors in overweight subjects (GOLDN population). Eur J Hum Genet. 2010. 18: 364–369.
4. Taheri S, Lin L, Austin D, Young T, Mignot E: Short sleep duration is associated with reduced leptin, elevated ghrelin, and increased body mass index. PLoS Med. 2004. 1: e62.

For your scientific interest: How is the sleep/wake cycle and food seeking behaviors related?

• The circadian pacemakers that control our sleep/wake cycles overlap with the cytokine systems (hormones) that control our metabolism and food intake [2]
• The two systems are connected by a molecule named “interleukin-6” [3]. The implications of this relationship are that individuals who suffer from sleep loss or sleep instability may most likely suffer from disrupted metabolic functions as well.

Thus sleep is very important for having optimal metabolic function. However the main reason sleep is so important for weight management is because our sleep-wake cycles are critical towards the resetting of our circadian rhythms each day. With a good circadian rhythm, our body is able to perform optimally and correctly when required. This is critical for the proper metabolism of food so there is minimal storage of energy as fat. For more information on how the circadian rhythm plays a role in weight gain please read the section: “Chronobiology: Utilizing the Circadian Rhythm to prevent obesity”.
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Chronobiology

The current dogma for the cause of the obesity epidemic in western society today is that people are eating too much and exercising too little. This makes sense because if you look at how society has changed in the last 30 years since the obesity epidemic began there has been a clear increase in sedentary lifestyles accompanied by an increase in consumption of food and fatty processed foods in particular.


However there is a crucial third component in the cause for obesity that the public is unaware of and not commonly spoken about. This third factor in the cause for obesity is the disruption to our circadian rhythm, known as CD or “chronodisruption”. Chronodisruption is an interesting idea not known by the general public because of its complex ideas and scientific knowledge required to understand it. You may know it as “staying up late is bad”, but why? I will go into the importance of sleeping at the right times for the right amount of time and simplifying the concept of circadian rhythm to help the non-scientist understand it and use it to accelerate their weight loss and prevent gaining fat tissue. Read my article "Chronobiology: Utilizing the circadian rhythm to prevent obesity" to learn how to implement it into our weight loss regime Click Here.
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Biochemistry of the Human Metabolism

The human body is well adapt to survival in environments where food is scarce (such as the conditions of the past in which humans evolved from). If an individual starts a cold turkey “no more eating” or “low caloric” diet, the body will go into shock and perceive this action as starvation and slow down the dieter’s metabolism and basal metabolic rate! As a result the dieter will lose a couple pounds (a majority of which is liquid) in the first two days of this diet, but will soon reach a plateau where the dieter’s body weight will remain constant (plateau) (refer to fig. 1). This occurs because the body’s biochemistry (as a natural defense mechanism against starving to death) has slowed down the body’s metabolism to conserve energy and prevent further weight loss.

Now in most cases, individuals who have tried any low caloric diet will give up when they stop seeing results and binge on an enormous feast because hunger has taken over them. However note that the body’s metabolism is still low and your enormous feast contains more energy than your body is ready to process, so it causes the dieter to gain more weight than when they started the diet! Note that even if the dieter gave up the diet and returned to their normal diet, they would still gain weight because of the lower than regular metabolism (refer to fig. 2). Dieters who have already tried losing weight will notice that it is the last couple of pounds that are impossible to trim off.

So how the hell do we lose weight with just dieting alone, if our body’s damn natural self-defense mechanism prevents us from losing weight in the first place!?!

We trick it.

We eat a diet that is exactly suited for your Basal Metabolic Rate so your body will not go into shock. However every variable day (every 2^nd or 3^rd day) we eat a reduced caloric (but not nutritionally deficient) diet. By varying the day in which we eat a reduced caloric diet for only one day, the body does not have enough time to adapt and perceive starvation (refer to fig. 3). This allows dieters to eat fewer calories over time and metabolism to remain normal, thus allowing individuals with this variable dieting pattern to lose weight over time.However realistically one will be supplementing their dieting regime with exercise to improve and accelerate results!

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Nutrition

The first step in nutrition is we are going to have to figure out how much food you really need before you start over eating. How we do this is by calculating your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of energy your body uses each day just to sustain life. (So if you just sat still all day doing nothing, this is the amount of energy your body will consume)

Basal Metabolic Rate Formula
Women: BMR = 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)
Men: BMR = 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in year)

In example, if my BMR is 1700 calories and I sit around all day and ate only 1700 calories each day I will not change in weight. Eating only this amount will help to sustain my weight. *Now the hard part will be trying to only eat 1700 calories a day! Realistically I will be walking around all day at work in the laboratory, and I exercise for 1.5 hours every day. So my energy expenditure will be much higher than 1700.

A good estimate of your daily energy expenditure is the “Harris Benedict Formula”

If you have no to very little exercise, you will have a calorie expenditure of your BMR x 1.2
If you have a moderately active lifestyle you will have a calorie expenditure of your BMR x 1.55
If you have a very active life style you will have a calorie expenditure of your BMR x 1.725

I would say I have a moderately active lifestyle so my daily energy expenditure is about my BMR x 1.55 which is ~2635 calories. Now if you want to lose weight we will have to reduce your caloric intake (BUT not your nutritional intake!). And to further help promote weight loss we will need to increase your energy expenditure with exercise which will help to increase your net energy loss.

I can tell you right now that it is much easier and faster to lose weight by reducing your caloric intake then solely exercising! Our body has biochemistry that is very effective at spending energy, so for example a high intensity run for 30 minutes will only burn about 350 calories, while a big mac is already 576 calories! So by skipping a big mac for something healthier like a salad or fruit, you saved yourself a whole lot of running!

Nutrition and how we eat is very important! Our body’s biochemistry is very complex and we have a natural bio-rhythm called the “circadian rhythm”. I will explain this in future blogs to help educate you on how to eat and when to eat!


Extra Information for those interested:

To have accessibility to an abundant source of food whenever we desire is a relatively new phenomenon for any species on earth. As far back as the dinosaurs 360 million years ago, to as recent as the first Homo sapien that came into existence 130 000 years ago, food has always been scarce and difficult to find. In nature whenever animals find a source of food, they would be sure to devour the entire source and definitely overeat because one was never certain when their next meal would come.

For millions of years now all species have been living under these conditions and the only way for any individual to survive was to adapt to the conditions. Only those with biochemistry which functioned to store energy effectively (i.e. as lipid/fat molecules), and psychology that encouraged overeating and eating foods which were sweet, salty and fatty (which were rare in nature) could survive. Only those who could survive continue on to have children and as a result of this natural selection we humans as well as all other species on earth are programmed to overeat, with biochemistry designed to store as much energy as possible and spend energy as effectively as possible. Evolution takes millenniums to occur so we humans are still designed to live in conditions that are suitable to the past but since we live in today’s society of fast food and automatic door openers, obesity has become an epidemic in developing nations.

Calories are simply a measurement of energy. When we eat food we break down the food into energy. We can then use this energy for our daily activities and normal body/organ functions. However the extra energy is stored by our body as glycogen for short term energy storage, all excess energy is stored by our body as fat. To give an idea, 3500 calories is equivalent to 1 pound of fat.
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Lifestyle

One of the most important factors in losing weight is to have a healthy lifestyle.
If you have been trying many times to lose weight but just haven’t had any luck, it is due to two major factors:

1) Your current lifestyle is causing you to be overweight. In order to lose weight in a healthy way we are going to completely change your lifestyle into a healthier one.
2) Your genes (DNA/Hereditary information) predispose your to a larger body size.

To lose weight we can’t change your genetic information, but we can change your lifestyle into a healthier one. Now if you have been overweight for over a period of 8 months, it's a good indication that your current lifestyle is not a healthy one. The science of weight loss is so simple! But never carried out by individuals trying to lose weight. There is two major components in weight loss:

1) Nutrition
2) Exercise

We need to modify these two components in your current lifestyle in order for you to lose weight because the current one is not working for you! Here is the basic outline of my plan for you to lose weight.

1) We modify your caloric intake and nutrition so it is more suited to your lifestyle. An individual can actually completely lose all their extra weight from nutrition alone, but exercise will help speed up the process and tone your body into a sexy figure. I will help you calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate and figure out how much you should be eating, and as well help you come up with a meal plan.

2) Exercise is important for those trying to lose fat and at the same time tone their body. Exercising will also speed up your weight loss process. I will focus most of my exercising on endurance training that will work your cardiovascular system and make you sweat hard!

3) Thirdly! I will help educate you on the science of your body to help explain what to look out for and what to be expecting along your journey towards losing weight. I will also give some tips and tricks to help ease you on your journey towards transforming your body into a slimmer, healthier and happier you.

I hope that when we are finished, I will leave you with a new healthy body, an educated mind and a happy spirit.


For Your Interest:

In today’s (modern industrialized) society humans occupy a lifestyle that consists of sleeping later at night, reduced sleep hours, frequent snacking on processed and fried food, and consuming meals (dinner) late at night. Humans from 40 millennia ago did not have lights to stay up late at night, access to vast amounts of food (and processed food) at any time of the day or the luxury to obtain food without any expenditure of energy. So what would happen if humans from the past were forced to live in today’s society? First of all they would have reduced energy expenditure because there is no need to exert energy to accomplish anything, everything is technology based and prepared for you. Second you would have increased caloric intake because there is an increase availability of food and humans from the past have a minds set to always eat because they don’t know when the next meal will come. Third they would have an offset circadian rhythm resulting in chronodisruption resulting in improper metabolism of food consumed. So it seems if our ancestors from 40 000 years ago were forced to live in our society today, they would suffer from increased body weight leading to obesity and accumulation of visceral fat. Not to mention further complications in metabolic function, premature aging, cancer, diseases, and psychological problems.

The one interesting thing I remember learning from my astrobiology course was that human biological evolution (the change in our genetic material over time) has ceased for the last 40 000 years. The Homo sapiens today are exactly the same as the Homo sapiens from 40 millennia ago. Even though biological evolution had ended, the cultural evolution of Homo sapiens continued to make changes as drastic as living in candle lit huts during the dark ages of the 4th century to staying up late dancing disco during the 1970’s. Now in the 21st century Homo sapiens are undergoing a new kind of evolution, a technological evolution that is changing human behaviour, psychology and as well lifestyle. We humans are designed to survive in the rugged conditions of the past, living relaxed sedentary lives in today’s technologically advanced civilization. All the complications that our ancestors of the past would have living in our society apply to us as well!

For individuals currently suffering from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension and metabolic impairments, there is a strong possibility that your illness is caused by the reasons I have mentioned above. You are not going to be able to cure your sickness with medicine and drugs, those only help to alleviate your symptoms. What you need is to remove the source of your illness which is most likely the current lifestyle you are leading. As I help to modify your lifestyle into a healthier one, I hope to not only help you reduce your waistline, but relieve you from many other diseases associated with obesity and improve your cardiovascular fitness as a secondary effect.
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