“All natural sweetener.”

“Zero calories.”

Artificial sweeteners have been billed as the perfect alternative to sugar – a way for weight-conscious adults to have their cake and eat it, too. Yet more and more, a modicum of restraint is certainly advised when reaching for those packets of aspartame or sucralose.

While it’s true that sugar alternatives are much sweeter than table sugar, requiring smaller amounts to achieve the same level of sweetness, they won’t necessarily help you lose weight and keep it off. Simply taking the sugar out of a slab of chocolate cake doesn’t miraculously transform it into a low-calorie, high-nutrient food. At the end of the day, it’s still a slab of chocolate cake, with calories from flour, shortening, eggs, and other ingredients like nuts. So if you eat too much of it, your body will be the worse off from the encounter, regardless of which sweetener is used.

In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that, when compared with sugar, no-calorie sweeteners may actually make it harder for people to control their body weight.

Read More

If you’ve been blessed with genes that help you look good in your jeans, lucky you.

But you haven’t escaped the need to exercise.

Sure, being able to eat all you want without getting fat might seem like a blessing. Unlimited ice cream, limited time on the treadmill – what could sound better?  But studies clearly have shown that weight is not the best measurement of health. And if you’re physically inactive you aren’t doing yourself any favors, no matter what size you are.

Case in point: Recent research found that about one in four slim people had two cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar levels that are typically associated with obesity. Some of the obese people in the study, in fact, were in much better metabolic health than some who were considered to have “healthy” weights.

“We found that 23.5 percent of normal-weight adult Americans — or about 16.3 million people — are metabolically abnormal when it comes to heart-disease risk,” said Rachel Wildman, the study’s lead author, in a written statement.

I can’t say it enough: Skinny people need to exercise, too.

Read More

If you’ve been looking for excuses to skip exercise, a predisposition to atrial fibrillation shouldn’t be one of them.

For years, the prevailing wisdom has been that exercise – at least vigorous endurance training – increases a person’s risk of atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart beat linked to the formation of blood clots that can potentially cause a stroke.

By extension, many people feared the same might be true even for leisurely physical activity.

But new research has determined that being inactive may be just as bad. Scientists recently found that light to moderate exercise appears to actually prevent this health condition from occurring in older adults.

Read More

You might expect to read the “Eight Secrets to Weight Loss!” in a popular women’s magazine. But in a top medical journal? And based on a long-term scientific study of thousands of people who lost weight and kept it off for more than a year?

Both a scientific journal and a health conference held earlier this year highlighted the key characteristics of successful weight loss in the National Weight Control Registry, an ongoing study of more than 5,000 successful dieters. Brown University researcher Suzanne Phelan, who is involved in the study, noted that the people who lost at least 30 pounds – and kept them off for more than a year – tended to share certain success strategies. Anyone with some unwanted pounds to shed, she said, would be wise to learn from the “successful losers” in the research project.

“There is a general perception that almost no one succeeds in long-term maintenance of weight loss,” Phelan and a colleague wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “However, research has shown that [roughly] 20 percent of overweight individuals are successful at long-term weight loss when defined as losing at least 10 percent of initial body weight and maintaining the loss for at least one” year.

So how do they do it?

Read More

“Feel the burn!” Jane Fonda used to exclaim to her aerobics disciples. “No pain, no gain.”

These were popular exercise mantras, embraced by many American fitness buffs. Yet these days, you won’t hear many health experts repeating them.

Exercise, obviously, is a good thing. But even if you aren’t a triathlete in training, you still have options.

Intense, painful exercise dragging on for hours at a time isn’t necessarily “better” than a more temperate approach.  In fact, engaging in just 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day has been associated with many significant health benefits, even when the 30 minutes are divided into several shorter workouts.

Given that many people are more likely to squeeze in exercise when it seems easier or less painful, “intermittent” exercise may be the best option for some folks.

What exactly is intermittent exercise?

Fitness experts have used the term somewhat loosely to describe several types of physical activity, namely interval workouts and short, separated bouts of exercise. The premise behind both is simple: Follow a brief period of exercise with a varying level or amount of rest.  And many researchers are beginning to sing its praises.

Read More

Going up?

If you regularly take the elevator instead of the stairs, your weight – and blood pressure and lipid levels– may be going up, too.

Sure, elevators and escalators may seem more convenient and time-efficient, especially when you’re cradling your laptop or a load of groceries in your hands. But health experts have long advised folks to make simple changes to sneak more exercise into their daily routine. And scientific research is beginning to suggest that there’s benefit in taking the stairs.

In fact, one British scientist who has studied the public’s use of stairs – or lack thereof—said the benefits might be far greater than you think.

Read More

It might sound a bit absurd, totally contrary to everything you’ve ever been taught about proper nutrition. But, fruit may be a bad apple, at least in relatively large amounts.

Heresy, you say? Hardly.

The key word here is excess. Nutritional guidelines state that we all need several servings of fresh produce each day. But as with anything in life, there really can be too much of a good thing.

And in this case, the good or bad thing (depending on how you want to look at it) is fructose, the natural sugar that makes fruit sweet. Increasingly, scientific evidence shows that too much of it, whether consumed in large amounts of fruit or added to foods as a sweetener, can make us fat.

Read More

For anyone needing to lose weight (and who doesn’t these days?) comes welcome new research showing there is life – and weight loss—beyond the low-fat diet.

The popular Mediterranean diet is a safe and effective alternative to the low-fat plan often recommended by physicians, Israeli researchers determined in a two-year-long study published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine.

While people who stick with almost any diet lose weight, those on the Mediterranean diet lost a significant amount – almost 10 pounds, compared to about six pounds for those on a low-fat diet. And the Mediterranean diet, in particular, was praised by the scientists because it is high in fruits, vegetables and fiber, all of which are beneficial for health.  Previous research has shown it is good for the heart, and may even reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

What is a Mediterranean diet?

Read More

If you consider yourself fairly trim—perhaps a woman who is 5’7’’ and weighs about 135 to 140 pounds, or a man who measures an even 6 feet and weighs 170 pounds—you may think you don’t have to worry about your weight and your health. You may need to think again.

We’ve all been trained to assume that a lower BMI, or Body Mass Index, always equals better health. But recent research from the Mayo Clinic says what really matters is body fat, not weight or BMI. You may appear to be in pretty good shape, but form isn’t always an accurate indicator of body fat. And if you carry a relatively high percentage of body fat – more than 20 percent for men or 30 percent for women—you may still be at increased risk for serious health problems such as diabetes or heart disease. 

Read More