MyNetDiary Blog

What the Belly Really Holds

Excess body fat doesn’t always distribute itself evenly over our bodies. Sometimes we see a concentration of it around our midsections, including our belly, hips and thighs. Unfortunately, when this happens it can signal that our excess weight can lead to more serious health issues. Carrying extra weight in these areas have been associated with increased risk for heart disease, stroke, dementia, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes. And though genes may play a role in this, it can also be triggered by our lifestyles and eating habits. 

While it would be nice to point to high-fat foods as the culprit behind a bulging belly, any kind of excess calories lead to weight gain in our midsections. However, there is one exception to this. High calorie drinks, especially ones with alcohol, have been shown to be linked specifically to belly fat. Our livers are so busy burning off the alcohol it can’t get to burning fat, so the excess is stored in the midsection. 

We can guard ourselves against excess calories by keeping a food diary, but we can also be aware that certain fats can actually redistribute existing fat in our bodies to our bellies. Trans fats, according to research by Wake Forest University, have been shown to redistribute fat tissue to the stomach area. 

In addition to avoiding trans fats, we can also eat foods high in fiber. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition has shown that diets high in whole grains can trim extra fat from our waistlines. 

And when it comes to the differences between men and women, it’s men who tend to collect more belly fat than women. However, once a women hits age 40, estrogen levels drop and body fat can get redistributed to the belly. 

All is not lost though if you have belly fat. If you are actively losing weight through diet and exercise, belly fat is often the first to come off. Spot exercising, such as doing crunches and sit-ups to get rid of belly bulge, do not work quite in the way we hope them too. They can have some benefit, but not a lot. Aerobic exercise is the best for burning fat. 

Tell us, what has helped trim your waistline? You can share your tips on our MyNetDiary Facebook page or in our Community Forum!

Keeping Track of More than Calories

Calorie tracking apps like MyNetDiary are designed to make counting calories and recording exercise an easy process, thus encouraging users to log accurately and daily for the best results. In fact, MyNetDiary does a lot more than lets users keep track of calorie intake and exercise, as seen here in this interview on Radio Nutrition with MyNetDiary’s consulting Dietitian, Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary allows Maximum members to track up to 48 different nutrients, instead of the basic 12 found on Nutrition Facts panels.

However, one of the most important features users can take advantage of with a food journal has to do with something we can’t quantify or chart. It’s the simple and elegant Notes feature where you can record things like mood, temptation, thoughts and distractions. And if you have yet used Notes, now may be the time.

According to a new study, one’s emotional awareness around eating may have a noticeable impact on one’s diet. Emotional eating and overeating are too often and closely connected. Perhaps an event, a conversation, an emotion can derail us from our healthy eating plan, and if we didn’t take note of it, it can happen again and again without us understanding what’s happening.

In the mentioned study, 94 obese women and 56 control participants were asked about parental bonding, eating habits and their emotional awareness. The results showed that obese women exhibited deficits in emotional awareness and used emotional eating to regulate how they feel.

By keeping notes about how you feel when you crave and when you eat foods, or even just “junk foods,” you can look back over these at the end of the week to find if there is a “cause and effect” tied to emotion and food. Maybe your portion size grows when feeling stressed or sad. Maybe you grabbed a donut instead of an apple for a snack after a phone call with a family member.

In another study published in Eating Disorders, participants who were able to practice responding to internal appetite signals were able to improve their binge-eating symptoms. One trick to practice this would be to use Notes to rate and record your feeling of hunger on a scale from 1 – 10 before each meal. With the Daily Bottom Line you can see if there’s a difference between calorie intake on days you ate meals feeling a level 5 hunger versus a level 7, etc.

The real bottom line, however, is that it’s important to take advantage of every tool at your disposal and to be aware of all the influences on your diet and exercise. It is with these tools we can identify patterns, both helpful ones and ones that hurt our goals.

Tell us, what have you done to combat emotional eating and how has keeping track of more than just calories helped you succeed? Post on the MyNetDiary Facebook page or Community Forum. 

What Else is Making You Gain Weight?  

Weight gain is fundamentally an issue of energy imbalance – we eat more calories than we burn.  But why are we eating more calories than we burn?  Most of us have already thought about the obvious culprits regarding too many calories consumed – e.g. portion size, high-calorie foods, mindless snacking while watching TV, dining out too often, too much alcohol, etc.  And we also recognize the importance of exercise as well as to simply move more to burn more calories.  But are there other less obvious factors that could be influencing our calories intake and calories burning?  Let’s explore some of those factors.  Perhaps you might be able to identify some that ring true for you.

Inadequate Sleep.  There is an association between sleep and weight – less sleep means more overweight.  Not getting enough sleep can interfere with hunger and appetite control which can encourage us to eat too much.  Feeling tired will also increase the chances that we will skip exercise.  Sleep deprivation also interferes with our body’s ability to handle insulin appropriately – those of you with diabetes might notice an uptick in your blood glucose readings on days that you don’t sleep well.  As well, if you snore loudly and consistently, you might have sleep apnea – a condition that prevents you from sleeping soundly and getting enough oxygen.  Inadequate sleep acts as a stressor.  

Tips:  Plan ahead so that you get the sleep you need.  Take media devices (e.g. TV, DVD player), out of the bedroom.  Don’t work in bed.  Sleep need is individualized but on average, most of us need about 7 -9 hours of sleep.  See your doctor if you are a notorious snore machine to rule out sleep apnea.  As well, if constant worry prevents you from getting a good night’s sleep, then it is time to tell your doctor about that as well.

Eating Too Fast.  If you finish meals in less than 15-20 minutes, then you are probably eating too fast and could be overeating calories as a result.  It takes time for your gut hormones to get released and signal the brain that it is okay to slow down the drive to eat.

Tips:  Slow yourself down by putting your fork down between bites.  Socialize – have a conversation while you eat.  You can also time yourself to see how you are doing.  Don’t eat while working or watching TV.

Medications.  Some medication classes have the side effect of promoting or encouraging weight gain.  Examples include (but are not limited to) corticosteroids (e.g. Prednisone®), anticonvulsants (e.g. Depakote®), antipsychotics (e.g. Zyprexa®), antidepressants (e.g. Paxil), sulfonylureas (e.g. DiaBeta®), and insulin.

Tips.  Share your weight gain with your doctor since there could be another medication available that has less of an effect on weight gain.  Use a calories tracker to help you remain aware of your intake if the known side effect of your drug is increased appetite.  If you feel more tired on your meds, can you find an activity that is gentle and stress reducing so that you feel refreshed afterwards (e.g. yoga, water activity, dancing)?

Most of the information in this post comes from a wonderful guidebook for the general public, “Healthy Solutions to Lose Weight and Keep It Off” by Harvard Health Publications.  If you want an excellent, basic resource on weight control, including great summaries of important research in the area of weight control, then please consider this guide for your home library.  

Have questions or comments about this post?  Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Forum or Facebook page.  I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

Nutrition Facts Labels Now Required on Meats

Back in 1993 the USDA made nutritional labels on meat completely voluntary. Last week, however, the USDA made them mandatory. The new rule affects all ground meat and ground poultry, as well as 40 of the most popular cuts found in the U.S. Meat cuts like New York strips, chicken breasts, pork chops, and lamb kabobs will all have nutritional facts on them or prominently posted nearby.

The information included on these nutritional labels will include total calories, calories from fat, levels of saturated fat, protein, cholesterol, sodium and iron. Another change is that in addition to the lean content of meat (i.e. “85% lean”), labels will also show the fat percentage (i.e. “15% fat”).

The hope is that this will help people comparison shop among different cuts and types of meat. In the United States, the average person consumes over 224 pounds of meat, poultry and fish every year (about .6 pounds per day). While this figure is lower than it has been over the last four years, it still represents a nearly daily intake of meat, so having nutritional labels present should help educate consumers about their purchases.

So what is good, lean meat anyway? According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, lean meat and poultry contains less than 10 grams of total fat and less than 4.5 grams of saturated fat in a three-ounce portion. Extra lean meat contains 5 grams of total fat and less than 2 grams of saturated fat. The best sources and cuts of lean meats are skinless chicken breast and cuts of beef or pork that contain the words “round” or “loin,” such as top round, bottom round, tenderloin, sirloin, or top loin.

So what are your thoughts about nutritional labels now being required on meats? Will it help, or do you already just check out potential cuts via MyNetDiary? We would like to hear from you on our Facebook page and in our Community Forum. 

Don’t Make a ‘Bee-Line’ for a Slim Waistline

In a presentation by Dr. Kevin Hall, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada, it was posited that losing weight could be twice as hard as previously thought. Dr. Hall suggests that there is no direct line between calorie-reduction and weight loss and a body’s metabolism factors greatly into how fast weight comes off when dieting. 

At the base of his report is that a body’s metabolism rate slows when one is dieting, so a better image for picturing weight loss is a downward curve that plateaus as one nears one’s goal; this is in place of a straight line toward a weight goal. 

Dr. Hall continues by stating that simply cutting 500 calories from one’s diet every day will not lead to losing a pound a week for everyone, as it doesn’t fully factor in different people’s varying metabolism rates.

Dr. Hall, along with his colleagues, developed a mathematical model that takes into account a person’s age, height, weight and physical activity level to better predict how much weight that person might lose on a diet and exercise plan. Currently, according to Dr. Hall, the model is intended only for use by physicians and researchers scientists. 

His new “rule” suggests a person would need to cut 10 calories per day from their diet for every pound they want to lose over a three-year period, so cutting 100 calories per day would lead to a 10-pound weight loss over three years. Half of this weight loss would occur over the first year. To lose more weight after the three-year period, you’d have to cut more calories, according to Dr. Hall.

The key to this study, however, is that there is no clinical trial backing up these stats. Currently, it is just a mathematical model that has been validated by comparing it to some actual changes in people, so we’ll have to follow this as it progresses. The NIH, however, is currently recruiting participants for a clinical trial comparing the effects of reducing fats and carbohydrates in obese adults. 

So what image best helps you when visualizing your weight loss goal? Tell us on the MyNetDiary Facebook page or in our Community Forum. 

Trying to Build Muscle? Don’t forget about calories!

Building muscle requires some additional protein but not as much as you would think. There are three keys to building muscle:
1.       Additional calories to support an increase in muscle mass.
2.       Additional protein to support an increase in muscle mass.
3.       Adequate resistance training to stimulate an increase in muscle mass.

I will leave the strategies for effective resistance training to our guest athletic trainers and exercise physiologists - this post will address calories and protein intake.

Protein & Calories

Excess protein beyond the maximum that a body can utilize will not get stored as muscle.  Rats!  One’s body appears to max out in terms of how much protein it can use “anabolically” – that is, how much protein can be incorporated into other protein tissues over the course of a day.

The RDA for protein for adults is only 0.8 grams of protein/kg body weight (or 0.36 grams/lb body weight).  Maximal anabolic use ranges between 1.2 – 1.7 grams/kg body weight (0.55 – 0.77 grams/lb) depending upon sport, with power/strength training in the upper end of the range.  For instance, a 68 kg (150 lb) person’s estimated maximal use of protein is going to be somewhere between 82 – 116 grams per day.  If that person consumes 200 grams of protein, then up to 84 grams might get used for purposes other than protein synthesis.  Nitrogen gets stripped off the protein building blocks (amino acids), and then those carbon backbones get oxidized for energy or they get shunted into other pathways such as carbohydrate production and fat storage.   If you are in a calories deficit to lose weight, then those molecules are likely to be used for energy.  If you are in a calories surplus, then they are likely to be stored as fat.  

If you eat a lot of protein, then you better have good kidneys! The stripped off nitrogen gets converted to ammonia and then to urea, which is then excreted in the urine.  

Spread It Out!

The information in this post come mostly from “Advanced Sports Nutrition, Second Edition” by Dan Benardot, PhD, RD, LD, FACSM. Benardot recommends avoiding “peaks and valleys” of intake throughout the day if maintenance or growth of muscle mass is desired. Consuming calories and protein throughout the day in meals and snacks readies the body for muscle growth when an appropriate stimulus presents itself. Consuming carbs and some protein after training appears to be particularly helpful in maximizing muscle growth. As well, good quality protein is important.  Whey seems to be particularly helpful – a natural source is milk.  

Vegans need to be especially careful to get enough calories and protein for muscle growth. Please see the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics position paper on Vegetarian Diets. If you click on the PDF link, you will see the entire report, which was written by vegetarian dietitians.  

What If I Want to Lose Weight?

A calories deficit will allow you to lose weight but weight loss will always include both body fat and some amount of lean body mass (e.g. muscle). You can minimize loss of muscle during weight loss by continuing to exercise, including regular resistance training, and not going too low in your calories intake.  When you don’t meet your calories required for basal metabolism, your body accelerates loss of both lean body mass and fat so that your total energy expenditure can drop quickly. You can view your BMR calories in MyNetDiary Details tab on the web, or in My Plan in apps.

Are You Choosing the Right Goal?  
If you are a competitive athlete, then consider visiting a sports medicine facility so that your body composition (i.e. percentage of body fat and lean body mass) can be tested accurately. You would benefit from having a weight goal based upon a range of body fat percentage in line with your sport.  Contrary to what many athletes assume, sometimes a better goal for performance is not weight loss or gain per se, but a change in body composition. And that may or may not involve a net change in weight.

Have questions or comments about this post?  Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Forum or Facebook page.  I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

More Resources
Benardot, D.  Advanced Sports Nutrition, Second Edition. Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL, 411 p.

Clark, N.  Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook, Fourth Edition.  Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL, 461 p.

Position of the American Dietetic Association, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Nutrition.  Nutrition & Athletic Performance.  J. Am. Diet. Assoc.  2009;109:509-527.  Access online here. Be sure to click on the PDF link below the abstract for the full report.

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.

Keep Your Diet Out of the ‘Red Zone’ During Super Bowl XLVI

Super Bowl XLVI is this Sunday, and while it serves as one of the largest televised events of the year (sports-related or otherwise), it’s also an unspoken excuse to sit on a couch for four hours while downing high-calorie snacks and drinks. But you don’t have to send your diet into the “red zone” this weekend in the name of team support. You just have to have the right game plan!

Starting today, you can up your exercise regimen for the next three days in anticipation of ingesting more calories on Sunday. Keep track of those “extra calories” you burn these next three days so you can cash them in on snacks and drinks during the big game.

If you’re heading to a friend’s house for a potluck, make sure you at least bring a healthy dish to eat. Don’t expect everyone else to cater to your diet restrictions or limitations. Just be realistic that the Super Bowl is about party foods, not health foods. It’s likely others at the party will appreciate having something available on the lighter side too. 

Think about your field position in relation to the snack table. Don’t sit down next to the nachos or strap a bucket of wings to your knees. Put some distance between you and the food so you’ll have to get up to get a refill. 

Don’t grab the football-sized plates if possible. If your host only has dinner plates, fill it with veggies first, leaving yourself only a small amount of room for the fattening stuff. Small appetizer plates are best. 

Fill up before you watch. You don’t have to start the game on an empty stomach! You can fill up at home or with healthy foods before you start watching. This will help you avoid mindless snacking while you’re hungry and paying attention to the game. 

Hire a water boy. Okay, this one is meant to be funny, but in reality, you want to be drinking as much water before, during and after the game as you can. Alcoholic drinks and sodas have a lot calories in them, so quench your thirst with the good stuff as often as you can. 

In the end, remember that your goal for that day is to watch the game and enjoy your time with friends and family - not to see how much food you can fit in your stomach. And your goal for this year is to be healthy and lose weight - not derail yourself during the last football game of the season. 

Keep an eye on the prize - your health! Have fun and go Giants/Patriots!

Four Keys to Losing Weight While Injured

Let’s face it, sometimes injuries happen, especially if we’re new to regular exercise or stepping up our training routine. And though they can be a setback to our exercise regimen, they don’t have to be a setback to our weight loss goal. Here are four keys for keeping our waistline down while an injury lays us up.

1. Assess your injury. Talk with your doctor about the severity of your injury. Is it a mild sprain, a pulled muscle, or something worse? Your doctor can go over your restrictions on movement and help you find out what you can do, instead of leaving you to imagine all the things you can’t do. Perhaps talk with a rehabilitation specialist about a few exercises you can do to help the healing process.

2. Place extra attention on your diet. As we well know, to lose a pound of fat we need to lose 3,500 calories. We lose these calories through consuming fewer calories than our RDI (Reference Daily Intake) and burning them with exercise.

If your exercise routine is limited or stopped while you’re injured, then it follows that your diet will take over a larger share of the workload. We recommend you track your calorie intake diligently while you’re exercising less. With that, make sure your daily activity level is set to your new lifestyle (i.e. Sedentary or Low Active), as an injury can make you less active than your previous everyday life. This will help MyNetDiary calculate an accurate calorie goal for you.

Also, you will likely have to scale back your weight loss goal during an injury. If you were on course to lose two pounds a week, you’ll likely do better to only aim to lose one pound (or less) a week. The important part is that you either lose weight or maintain, and not give up and start gaining back what you’ve already lost.

3. Stay connected. Perhaps you were part of a weekly running group, or you had an exercise buddy at the gym. Don’t shy away from those with whom you’ve been active because suddenly you’re not. If your injuries require a lengthy recovery periods (i.e. months), perhaps you could volunteer at race days to support your friends or take the time to write notes of encouragement to those on the same journey as you are. Consider your role temporarily changed from “player” to “mascot”. Helping others will help you.

4. Worry about today, not tomorrow. Don’t set arbitrary deadlines to be back to full health. You can set goals for yourself, like increasing your endurance and strength, but deadlines can set you back, mentally, if you don’t hit them when you thought you should. Worry about what you can do today to continue losing weight. Even if your injury is similar to one you had in the past, the recovery period can be different, so don’t make a timetable based on the past. If you come back too quickly from an injury you only risk injuring yourself again. Take it day by day. 

Size Matters: A Quick & Dirty Guide to Controlling Portion Size

Although most of us think we are good guessers when it comes to portion size, we aren’t! We are easily tricked into overestimating or underestimating portion size, and therefore, calories. Small differences in portion size might not seem like a big deal, but those differences add up over time and can help you make or break your weight goals. So learn tips on how to err on the side on minimizing, not maximizing calories. Most of the tips listed here are adapted from Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating.”

1.       Container Size

We think portions are smaller when their containers are large and conversely, we think portions are larger when their containers are small. These tips are especially important for those of you who do not measure or who just measured a food or beverage once and then shifted to “guestimating” thereafter.

Use tall, skinny glasses instead of short, wide glasses. The same amount of liquid (e.g. 1 cup) will look like more in a tall, skinny glass than when it is contained in a short, wide glass. We tend to drink more calories from short, wide glasses. Practical tip: don’t throw out your short, wide glasses – instead, use them for water. This will encourage you to drink more water.

Use smaller plates (8-9 inches) instead standard dinner plates (10-12 inches). Don’t guess – take out a ruler or measuring tape and measure the total diameter of your plate. Are your plates really large? Consider using salad plates instead of dinner plates, or simply buy smaller dinner plates.

Use custard cups instead of bowls. Pyrex custard cups will hold about ½ cup or 4 fl oz without spilling over the sides. Regular-sized bowls can easily hold up to 12 fl oz (up to about 1½ cups). Custard cups are perfect for ice cream, puddings, fresh fruit salad, and other foods that you wish to limit to a ½ cup serving.

2.       Color & Contrast

If the food and dish have a similar color, then we are more likely “over serve” ourselves compared to a target amount (and therefore, eat more calories). Example: attempting to serve oneself one cup of cooked white pasta on a white plate. When the food and plate have a high color contrast, we tend to guess lower – that is, we tend to “under serve” ourselves (e.g. white pasta on a black plate). And interestingly, the reverse is true if the plate and tablecloth have a high contrast – we tend to over-serve food (e.g. white plate on a black tablecloth). The key is contrast rather than plate color per se. Van Ittersum and Wansink published a great article on this subject: “Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: The Delboeuf Illusion’s Bias on Serving and Eating behavior.” The article will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, but it is accessible online ahead of print here. If you prefer a brief summary of that study, then check out Ann Lukits’ article, “Tricking the Eye To Keep From Heaping Plates” in The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2011.    

3.       See All You Eat

Assemble all meal components (prepared, that is) so that you see everything you are about to eat for that meal. Once you finish your meal, do not go back for seconds. When we eat multiple courses, we lose track of how much we have eaten and tend to eat more calories. Keeping visual reminders on the table of how much food or drink we have consumed (e.g. empty beer or soda bottles, empty plates, bowls, or glasses, bones, etc.) helps us eat fewer calories than if there are no visual reminders. Practical tip:  avoid “all you can eat” restaurant specials and buffets.  

Good luck experimenting with portion size! Have questions or comments about this post? Please feel free to comment on MyNetDiary’s Community Forum or MyNetDiary Facebook page. I would love to hear from you!

Best,
Kathy Isacks, MPS, RD
Consulting Dietitian for MyNetDiary

More Resources

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. Hidden Cues to Eating.  

Katherine Isacks, MPS, RD. MyNetDiary. Measuring & Estimating Portion Size.  

Wichita State University. Visual Estimates of Serving Sizes.  

Disclaimer: Please note that we cannot provide personalized advice and that the information provided does not constitute medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, please visit a medical professional.