Could this talking plate prevent childhood obesity? Health, Diet and Fitness Today - 06/01/10
06/01/2010 at 06:45pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
When I envisage how to tackle the issue of childhood obesity, my mind runs wild with thoughts, campaigns and how role models could be better utilised. One thing I have never thought of, however, are talking plate scales that track how quickly food is eaten.
Yet that’s exactly what is being trumpeted today as the potential answer to youth overeating.
The Mandometer keeps tabs during meal times and tells the user if they are wolfing down meals too fast - a habit that experts have linked to weight gain.
In a trial with 106 obese children the gadget showed promising results, the British Medical Journal reported.
After 12 months of use the children weighed less and ate smaller portions. Their speed of eating was reduced by 11% compared with a gain of 4% in a comparison group.
Think back to your childhood – were you ever told by your parents to make sure you cleared your plate? You may well have been rewarded with dessert too for the achievement. Well, the report states the fact that eating too fast interferes with our body’s inbuilt signal which lets our brains know when we should stop eating, which is triggered when our stomachs become full.
Parental commands such as ‘make sure you eat it all up’ teach us to override these signals, meaning we’ll often eat more than we need to at mealtimes as adults too.
Scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm set out to design a device to pace eating, primarily to help patients with the eating disorder bulimia, who tend to eat quickly.
The boringly-titled Mandometer plots a graph showing the rate at which food disappears from the plate, compared with an "ideal" graph programmed in by a food therapist.
The machine teaches the user to monitor portions, and to eat more slowly
And if the user is eating too quickly, the talking machine will tell them.
Inspired by this work, researchers at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and the University of Bristol, decided to try out the device on their young, obese patients.
Lead researcher Professor Julian Hamilton-Shield said: "It really did seem to help them."
He said the children learned how to eat more slowly and, as a result, felt full sooner and ate less.
"Their portion sizes decreased by a seventh. Even though this may not sound a lot, it is enough to make a difference.
"And the improvement seems to be durable because it continued six months after the trial finished."
He said people should aim to take at least 10 minutes to eat meals, ideally sitting at a table rather than in front of the TV.
"What tends to happen when we eat alone or while watching the TV is we eat more quickly. Then we miss the signals that tell us we are full up and to stop eating."
In honesty, I hope this isn’t the shape of childhood obesity prevention to come, as it is something that with a gentle educational nudge, parents could and should be doing for their kids themselves.
Too fat for online dating - Health, Diet and Fitness Today - 04/01/10
04/01/2010 at 08:12pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Today’s update is perhaps giving in to the very reason behind the story in the first place, but it’s definitely worth giving it a mention.
Dating and social network site BeautifulPeople.com has axed some 5,000 members following supposed complaints that they had gained weight.
The site has calls itself "the largest network of attractive people in the world", and has gained a huge amount of media attention today off the back of this story, helped chiefly by the following quote from site founder Robert Hintze, which may anger you:
"As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld.
"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded."
Remember that public relations is what it is, and whether or not you agree is irrelevant – the fact that this story is undoubtedly false does not change the fact that the website, by the virtue of blogs and media outlets like this, has achieved its goal of reaching target potential members and promoting its message that it will only accept attractive people.
In my opinion, if the issue of obesity was one of aesthetic importance, you’d have to be a pretty vacuous person to be overly bothered by it. In reality though, it’s not: obesity is an issue of health. Obesity leads to fatal disease, and by jumping on the appearance bandwagon in a bid to promote their service, Beautifulpeople.com are simply pushing an agenda that loses sight of what is important.
The site allows entry to new members only if existing members vote them as sufficiently attractive to warrant it - which is enough of a warning for you to ignore the site and its ridiculous elitist sentiment!
The website which has succeeded in raising awareness of its key message by basically having a bash at obese people!
Guest post - "Diet: Why is this Word Evil?" - female fitness model Angelique Kronebusch
04/01/2010 at 07:54pm by Guest contributor, Angelique Kronebusch
It's the time of the year when many of us are thinking about trimming down, and many will resort to dieting in a bid to get slim. If this sounds like you, Angelique Kronebusch, a Canadian Personal Trainer and fitness model has some words of wisdom you may want to read first.
Diet: Why is this Word Evil?
When most people think of the word “diet”, they automatically think of words like “deprivation, starvation” and “anger”.
When I think of the word “diet”, I think of what I eat. I eat a healthy diet of lots of lean protein, clean carbohydrates, healthy fats, lots of vegetables and fruit. Once in a while I like to eat chocolate, pizza and ice cream. These are foods I have maybe once per week as a treat and I will never eat these foods every day, not only for fear of weight gain but I do not like how my body feels when I over indulge in high fat foods. I feel sick, sluggish, and angry about what I just did to myself. When I fill up on fruits and vegetables, I always feel great after and never sick.
A diet also means what you eat on a day to day basis. Your diet can be pizza, chips, pop, beer, cake and cookies. That is a diet, just not a healthy diet.
Diet does not have to mean depriving yourself; it should mean you are choosing “a healthy lifestyle”. When people ask me if I am always on a diet, I like to say “my diet is eating healthy”. That’s it. It really does not have to be more complicated than that. That is how society has made the word “diet” sound like a horrible thing. People try these ridiculous fads out there like the lemon-cayenne pepper concoction, or a celebrity diet of nothing but cucumbers and tomatoes every day. Perhaps you will lose weight trying these unhealthy fads but you will also gain it back so fast, plus ruin your metabolism at the same time.
Follow this way of eating: 5 small meals per day starting right when you get up in the morning and eating every 3 hours. Do not let yourself go hungry. Prepare your foods on Sunday like chicken and fish; put them in some portable containers in your fridge. Do not forget your healthy carbohydrates like yams, brown rice, whole wheat pasta and rolled oats. Cut up some fruit and vegetables, throw them all in some plastic baggies and there you go, you have lunch and snacks ready for you and your family. It really is not that hard to do and everyone has time to do it. Choose lean meats, eat moderate carbohydrates and low to moderate fats. Use the palm of your hand to measure your proteins and carbohydrates. Drink lots of water and choose green tea instead of sugary drinks.
Does this sound hard? Challenge yourself, choose a healthy lifestyle and stick with it. You will look and feel better and your family will appreciate it as well.
___________________________________
Huge thanks to Angelique for giving us her time, following her previous post for us about how fitness changed her life!
Angelique Kronebusch
Angelique's Personal Training website
Follow Angelique on Twitter @MsFitBC now!
New Year Youtube funny exercise video challenge
01/01/2010 at 09:47am by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Further to my last blog which included the hilarious Shake Weight commercial, I have a challenge, Fat Free Fitness readers.
In the name of New Year fun, I challenge you to head on over to Youtube, find the funniest diet or exercise video you can, and post it in the comments section below.
In a few days, I'll post a blog with each of the videos in, and ask you to vote for your favourite! I'll reward the winner in some way - firstly by trying to get my hands on a Shake Weight, but if they won't give me one now following my previous blog (in the words of the great Joey Tribbiani - I'm not even sorry), I'll find something.
Good luck, and please see the video below starring the brilliant Jim Carrey to give you inspiration!
Sexually suggestive exercise tool Shake Weight - our thoughts. Plus, a Youtube challenge...
01/01/2010 at 09:24am by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Right, so it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions, and many people will plump for weight loss as their number one goal.
Cashing in on the New Year-New You ethos is a time-honoured act for many diet pill companies and exercise fad pushers, who like drug peddlers, rely on desperation in their bid to make a quick buck.
We were recently offered the chance to review the ‘revolutionary’ Shake Weight, which claims to tone and sculpt your arms in just 6 minutes a day. Alex Gerrard (nee Curran), wife of Liverpool and England player Steve Gerrard has become the UK face of the product which attracts attention for all the wrong reasons.
Have you ever heard jokes related to men with one arm bigger than the other? Well, it seems the designer of the Shake Weight (UK RRP £29.95) had this in mind then worked backwards, for if there’s one thing this product reminds you of… yep, that’s right - it’s male masturbation.
Now the tone has officially been lowered, I ask that you watch the short video showing American chat-show sweetheart Ellen Degeneres with the product below then continue.
Alex said: 'I use The Shake Weight every day and my arms have never looked so good. It really works.' This would be much more sincere if she wasn’t being paid to say it.
In a recent interview, Alex told the Daily Mail that this year, after seeing a picture of herself on holiday, she hired a personal trainer and cut down on the Big Macs and Quarter Pounders and is now looking toned – no doubt the reason for the weight loss, rather than the Shake Weight.
From a results point of view, this product is, much like Katie Price/Jordan’s PR team at the minute, a huge waste of money.
Now for some truths
The makers claim that using it for six minutes a day will tone the arms thanks to a technology called 'dynamic inertia’. However, the concept is as doomed as carbs in Victoria Beckham’s household, because although it claims that it will target your bingo wings; as I, and many greater minds than mine have said before, you cannot, I repeat, cannot, spot reduce, or reduce body fat in specific areas just because you want to. If you lose weight, you lose it from everywhere at different times along the journey, not your upper arms just because you train using that body part.
No number of crunches will get rid of your post-Christmas bulge, and no amounts of squats will entirely rid your bum and legs of the wobbles. The fact is, if you want to lose body fat, which is what ‘bingo wings’ are laden with, resistance training, such as training with the Shake Weight or doing weight training, will not cut it. You could do 2000 crunches a day, but you’d still only be exercising your muscle, barely affecting the layer of fat covering it.
Only aerobic exercise, such as jogging, cycling, swimming, skipping, boxing etc combined with a healthy diet will trim your waistline with any real affect, although resistance training should be an integral part of any weight loss effort in order to shape your body and improve your metabolism.
6 minutes, or 6 hours a day of ‘exercising’ with the Shake Weight will not get rid of the body fat surrounding your upper arm. Fat and muscle are two distinct body tissues – the same reason why you can’t turn fat into muscle or vice versa as people sometimes believe.
Back on the note of spot reduction, (the attempt to lose body fat from your ‘problem areas’), think about it this way – if you used a cycle regularly, and were hugely overweight, would you just lose the weight from your legs because you were only exercising using your legs? The answer is no, you’d lose it from everywhere - your arms, face, stomach, you name it, you exercise enough, you’ll lose it.
The Shake Weight will undoubtedly tread the same forgotten path as the Coleen Rooney-endorsed Flexi-bar, the Last Big Thing™, which we wrote about in November.
Now for your Youtube challenge
I will personally try to get one of these hilariously misguided exercise tools to whoever posts the funniest exercise video in the comments section below. In a few days time, if we have enough, I'll feature the videos in a blog on the site and ask you guys to vote for the funniest. I can't say fairer than that!
So, get Youtubing, if nothing else I'm sure it'll be a giggle.
Happy New Year guys.
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Fat Free Fitness Weight Loss
Launched in 2009, fatfreefitness.co.uk is the UK's only weight loss specific personal training agency. Fat Free Fitness helps you stop dieting and counting calories, by teaching you how to improve your nutrition, increase your activity and exercise levels and lose weight. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is a great way to lose weight and save money. fatfreefitness provides you with expert diet, fitness, exercise, gym and personal training advice and support, similar to ivillage.co.uk, weightlossforall.com, thecolumn.org, weightlossforgood.co.uk, tescodiets.co.uk and weightlossresources.co.uk. Win diet, exercise and fitness products by entering fatfreefitness.co.uk competitions. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is not a weight loss support group like Weight Watchers weightwatchers.co.uk or Slimming World slimmingworld.com. Fat Free Fitness is updated regularly with new information. Fatfreefitness.co.uk and weight loss expert, personal trainer and fatfreefitness.co.uk founder Rich Leigh disagree with and discourage fat loss tablets, diet tablets and weight loss aid tablets, fad dieting and crash diets such as the Atkins diet, the Cambridge diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Beverley Hills diet, the baby food diet and all other carbohydrate and calorie restricting diets.
