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Health Encyclopedia
Subcutaneous fat is found all over the body beneath our skin.
More disturbingly Visceral Fat (VF) can release chemicals that can damage the arteries around the heart leading to heart disease and increase your risk of getting cancer. VF also sits very close to the liver and releases chemicals that can get into the liver easily interfering with its ability to clear insulin from your blood which in turn can lead to type 2 diabetes.
A thicker waistline can be a good indicator of VF but the good news is VF some of the first fat you lose when you start to lose weight.
Many of us assume that the quickest easiest way to lose weight is to skip meals there by cutting down calorie intake.
1. Don't skip meals
This is what happens when you skip meals; research suggests that we are biologically driven to crave certain types of food when we are hungry. If you skip breakfast and you get really hungry your brain tries to compensate by urging you to crave high calorie foods – a dieting disaster! That's because your brain is responding to a powerful signal that comes from a hormone called ghrelin.
When our stomachs are empty ghrelin sends a message to our brains that says ‘fill me up now' and that triggers a powerful urge to eat high calorie food to compensate.
So the first tip to losing weight is DON'T SKIP MEALS because our brain has a really primitive response to this making us crave high calorie high fat foods to compensate and will power may not be enough to fight it!
2. Change your plate size
A simple trick to add to your diet is to change your plate size, down from a 12-inch diameter plate to a 10-inch plate.
Various experiments have been done with this eg. in one study a cinema audience was given 2 different size tubs of popcorn; small and large and were asked to eat as much popcorn as they wanted during a film. Both sizes of container were large enough so the audience could eat their fill but large enough so that they were unable to finish the tubs.
The audience who were given the larger tubs ate more than those who were given the smaller tubs not because they were any hungrier but just because they were given more to eat.
When more food was available to them they couldn't stop even when they were full, they just kept on eating more. Experiments like this show that if you increase your portion size by using a larger plate or bowl you'll tend to each much more. So the 2nd simple tip if you want to stop eating when you are full is to simply reduce your plate or bowl size. If you put less food on your plate you could end up eating up to 22% less food overall.
3. Choose lower calorie food versions of the food you eat
But losing weight is not all about plate size you also need to know what to put on your plate.
Did you know that you can actually eat more and still lose weight! by understanding what you should eat. A series of small changes to your diet can make a massive difference to your waistline.
Simply choose lower calorie versions of the food you already eat. For example take your daily intake of coffee. A black coffee without sugar is around 10 calories whilst a cappuccino is about 100 calories. So 3 black coffees a day and you've already saved 270 calories.
Toast at breakfast for around 125 calories rather than a pastry at 270 calories. Lunch; a grilled chicken and salad with vinaigrette @ 250 calories verses the same salad with added mozzarella cheese and croutons and cream dressing for 450 calories.
A couple of apples a day you'll eat 120 calories rather than that bar of chocolate for 300 calories. Pizza and cocktails at super, a thin crust cheese and tomato pizza at around 850 calories verses a deep pan and pepperoni pizza can add up to a whopping 1400 calories. Oh and that cocktail could surprise you when you choose a tasty Bloody Mary for around 125 calories instead of that pinacalda which can add up to a shocking 280 calories.
If you choose the low calorie meals and drinks, by the end of the day you will have eaten half the calories, 1500 calories verses 3000 calories and already you are starting to lose weight.
A series of small changes in your diet can make a massive difference to your waistline. If you know which calorie laden foods to avoid you'll be able to eat well without putting on weight.
4. Be mindful of how much you eat
But what about those people who eat all the right things and still don't lose weight. Could it be that these people simply have a slow metabolism and no matter how carefully they eat they'll never be slim.
Your metabolic rate is simply the rate at which your body burns calories. Just being alive, breathing heart pumping, brain ticking over. Experiments have shown that many people actually eat more calories than they think they are consuming. When asked to record food diaries as much as 50% of people actually under record how much they have eaten.
Statistics for the general population show that we all under report by as much as 50%, so why should that be?
Many of us forget about the snacks and drinks we consume throughout the day and crucially many of us think that the healthy foods we eat such as a fruit salad somehow don't count.
So many of us are unknowingly consuming far more calories than we actually need to maintain a lower weight.
Don't blame your metabolism just count your calories even of healthy foods. It maybe hard to accept that if you are over weight you have simply eaten more than your body needs and it has stored the excess as fat.
At any one time in the UK around 10 million people are trying to lose weight and most of them fail and that's usually because they can't stick to their diets but science has now come up with some simple ways to make dieting less painful. One of the simplest ways to losing weight is not to let your self get hungry.
5. Don't let yourself get too hungry
The key to losing weight and keeping it off is not to let your self get too hungry and there is some fascinating research in this territory.
It turns out that there are certain foods, which are much better than others at staving off the hunger pangs.
So what kind of foods will keep you feeling fuller for longer?. Hunger pangs happen when your stomach is empty and shrinks back down in size after your last meal. This then triggers the hormone ghrelin to send a message to your brain that you want more food.
But there are some clever ways you can fool your brain and damp down those hunger pangs and one way is simply to eat protein. Scientists have known for many years that protein rich foods such as lean meat, eggs and fish keep you feeling fuller for longer but until recently nobody really understood why.
As little as an extra 10% protein in your breakfast meal can stave of hunger pangs for longer and therefore you are much more likely to eat less at lunchtime.
So what is it about protein that keeps you feeling fuller for longer? Scientists have recently discovered one key way in which protein controls hunger pangs. When any food travels through your digestive system it triggers the release of a hormone PYY into the blood stream and when PYY reaches the brain it suppresses any hunger signals.
So you stop feeling hunger pangs and feel full. But scientists have now discovered that of all food types protein triggers far more of this PYY hormone than anything else flooding the brain with signals that you are now full and thereby suppressing hunger pangs for longer.
That's why protein makes you feel satisfied or sated for longer than any other food type. So this really is the Holy Grail for dieters.
6. Soups
How to control hunger pangs and lose weight? Soup is one of the best kept secrets of dieting. So why does soup keep you feeling fuller for longer.
If you eat a solid meal with a cup of water the water will briefly expand your stomach and then travels straight through just leaving the solid morsels of food to be digested leaving far less volume and thereby shrinking down the stomach.
But when you blend the exact same meal with a cup of water into a thick soup it increases the overall volume of the meal which stays in the stomach for longer because this blended mass can't drain out of the stomach quickly.
7. More food choices available - the more you are likely to eat
Our bodies instruct us to seek out variety in our foods where and when ever we can and that can affect how much we eat.
Scientists now believe that this response to food is somehow hard wired into our brains to seek out variety which is what our ancestors would have done 100's/1000's of years ago.
They were simply scavengers and it was very important to them to seek out a wide variety of food, as no single food was plentifully available. When faced with a wide variety of foods to choose from you are likely to eat 30% more than when you have a relatively limited choice of foods from which to choose from.
So variety triggers your instincts to try everything and that can lead to over eating.
So a buffet type situation can be very dangerous! The wider the choice the more you are likely to eat or can lead to over eating.
8. Exercise
What about exercise? A man walking on a treadmill moderately exercising for 90 minutes approx 4 miles/hour at a 5% incline will burn approx 19 grams of fat which is about a bag of crisps!
But scientists have now discovered an amazing effect of exercise, which is called after burn. A lot of the fat you burn during exercise is actually burnt after you exercise and not during the exercise session. So why do people burn fat at a higher rate after exercising?
Our bodies use different foods to give us energy; carbohydrates and fats. During exercise our muscles use mostly carbohydrate because they are easier for our bodies to burn and are a quick source of energy.
So after exercising your bodies store of carbohydrates has been largely used up and it will take approx 22 hours for your body to replace them. So in the meantime your body is forced to burn fat from your fat stores just to keep you going, walking, talking and even sleeping.
9. Become a little more active
You don't need to join a gym to burn off extra calories just by making your day just that little bit more active will help.
Small changes in your daily routine can significantly increase the number of calories you burn but remember not to eat more because you are that little bit more active.
Moderate changes to your daily activities such as getting off the bus to work one stop earlier, walking up an escalator instead of riding it, moving around more during the day can burn as much as an extra 240 extra calories a day being burnt and over a year that could mean you losing up to 12kg, that's just under 2 stone!
Uncovering nine of the simplest ways to lose weight can really help you shed those pounds; soup really helps to keep you full and protein staves off hunger pangs and exercise can work in mysterious and marvellous ways.
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Diet and Weight
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