Welcome to my blog, where you'll find short tips, quick stories, resource links and other useful stuff about weight loss for professionals. Its also where I rant and rave from time to time. I hope you find it useful!

29 June 2005 - Healthy breakfast idea

Many people struggle to eat enough fruit. Not my father-in-law. Here's his breakfast... 4 pieces of fruit, 1/2 cup of muesli and a tub of yoghurt. This provides more than half his daily fibre needs, almost half his calcium and a generous boost of antioxidants, all before 8am. What a great way to start the day.

29 June 2005 - Not so healthy breakfast idea

A top level rugby team stayed at the same hotel I was at for a conference recently. Just to make sure the elite players didn't accidentally make a low-performnace breakfast choice, the sausages were labelled - "Not for Players". I'm not sure if the sign worked, but a good reminder anyway.

24 June 2005 - How to pick a dodgy nutrition news story

This is about general nutrition stories, but you can apply it to the next revolutionay weight loss pill, potion, lotion, gadget or gimmick.

Almost every day a news story heralds the latest miracle treatment. If it's not curing cancer, its curbing appetite or killing pests around the home. But all too often media hype overpromises and underdelivers, leaving the average consumer lost for the truth.

Here's a few tips for not getting sucked in:

Read the whole story
Catchy headlines can attract attention, but distort the truth. Headlines like `Mutant foods on our dinner tables' don't help to explain the debate and pros and cons genetically modified food. They just scare people.

Identify the source
Sometimes whole news stories can be sourced from a particular interest group pushing its position or a company trying to promote its products. For example, a story talking of the dangers of meat may come from an animal rights group. A survey report revealing `bald men have low self-esteem' may originate from a manufacturer of a balding treatment. The research may not have been reviewed by academic peers or independent experts and could have flaws. You should also ask yourself - who benefits from this story?

Beware of the statistics
A statistically significant result occurs when the association between two factors is found to be greater than might occur at random. The threshold for this level of significance is usually crossed when there is greater than five percent difference between test and control situations. Therefore significant doesn't necessarily mean major or substantial.

Put risks in perspective
A treatment or diet that halves the risk of cancer may cut your risk down from 1 in a million to 1 in 500 thousand. Statistically the odds of getting cancer are still extremely small.

Understand complexity
Many diseases, including heart disease and cancer are caused by the interaction of many factors. For example, what you eat, how much exercise you get and the pollutants you're exposed to. It's often difficult to communicate the implications of research studies in a lengthy journal article, let alone a 10 second sound grab.

Journalists take note
It's also import for journalists to evaluate how they approach reporting scientific developments in health. This issue was the topic for a 1997 meeting convened by Harvard School of Public Health and International Food Information Council Foundation. An advisory group, consisting of researchers, media professionals, members of the food industry and nutrition-related organizations produced Guidelines for Communicating Emerging Science on Nutrition, Food Safety and Health. These were:

Is your story accurate and balanced?
Have you applied a healthy scepticism to your reporting?
Does you story provide practical consumer advice?
Is your reporting grounded in basic understanding of scientific principles?

The media cannot take all the blame for confusing headlines. When new information comes to hand researchers can sometimes change their recommendations. While you may feel those damn scientists can't make up their mind, it is simply a case of not knowing all the answers yet.

20 June 2005 - Oprah's Boot Camp Diet examined

I'm sure we're all familar with Oprah Winfrey's diet ups and downs over the years. But now, it appears she has found her own way to lasting weight management success and she wants to share it with her fans.

With the help of her personal trainer, Bob Greene, she has trialed a 12-week boot camp on her staff. According to the June 20 issue of Australian Women's Day, here are her six basic boot camp rules and my thoughts on each point:

1. Do regular vigorous exercise, eight times a week.
The more often you are active and the greater the intensity, the more calories you'll burn. A tough boot camp approach may toughen you up and get you into the exercise habit sooner. The support from other boot campers will help to get you though this phase.

But not everyone can attend a boot camp, so you may have to take it easier on yourself. Any small changes (for example; an extra walk this week, or an active weekend outing) are a move in the right direction. If you have any injuries or find that you overdo exercise when you start a shape-up program, then watch how hard you push yourself.

2. Eat consciously at all meals. No white stuff (refined grains or sugars).
The big benefit here is eating consciously, which takes you off eating on autopilot. Mindful munching, as opposed to mindless munching, when you don't give much thought to planning and eating meals, will really help you assess the types and amounts of food you eat.

Regarding "no white stuff", cutting sugar will save calories and switching to wholegrain cereals instead of white bread will help fill you up sooner.

Once again, it may be easier to go cold turkey on the white stuff at a boot camp, so be realistic about how much you can sustain cutting back on in the real world. As far as a priority for diet restriction for weight loss, I'd target dietary fat first, then alcohol, followed by sugar and finally starches (complex carbohydrate). This means you may not have to give up all sugar to reach your goals.

3. Eat a good breakfast.
A big plus, for the following reasons... (1) A healthy breakfast of wholegrain cereal and low-fat milk, toast (without butter or margarine), fruit or yoghurt will give you energy to exercise and help you feel full and get you through the mid-morning munchies. (2) Missing breakfast shifts your food intake futher into your day, and it seems that the chemicals in our brain may trigger us to seek out too carbohydrate and fat later in the day. See below.

4. Don't eat two to three hours before bedtime.
Whilst research suggests that eating late at night by itself won't cause more energy from food to be stored as body fat, night times are when people tend to overeat. A simple guideline to plan your evening meals to be on time, early evening and avoid evening snacking can be useful.

5. Don't drink any alcohol.
Of course this rule would be part of a boot camp and breaking the habit of alcoholic drinks will save you a stack of calories. But simply cutting back gradually or trading off a couple of drinks with extra activity, repeat - extra activity - will tip the scales in your favour.

Some people will find alcohol too tempting and always go overboard, so a cold turkey approach can be better here. If you can set your limits and trade off well, then you can still enjoy a drink.

6. Drink at least eight glasses of water every day.
In addition to helping you stay hydrated, drinking lots of water can help you feel full and ward off hunger. In fact, some people eat when they are actually thirsty. Learning the difference helps here. Before each meal, drink a large glass of water, say 500ml, and see if you eat less.

The rules at Oprah's bootcamp make sense, but only if you learn how to bend them to work for you. Sticking to rules, that when broken send your motivation and esteem plummeting isn't always helpful. Find the ones that work for you and your clients and you're on your way to success.

18 June 2005 - 0.3825% fruit in Chupa Chups

A recent Australian TV ad for the popular lollie-pop "Chupa Chups" seemed to reassure parents that the lollie-pop is an OK choice for their kids when they eat lollies because they contain real fruit pulp. But just how much fruit is in these little suckers?

Well... examination of the packaing information revealed that they have 3% fruit pulp. A Chupa Chup weighs 12.75g, so that gives you less than half a gram of fruit pulp per Chupa Chup. Is it just me, or does this seem a very small amount and what health benefit could it provide? A standard serve of fruit is 150g, which is more than 300 times the amount of fruit in a Chupa Chup.

16 June 2005 - Which bread is best for you?

I did a interview for A Current Affair today, which was all about bread. Go to the story.

The bottom line for bread and weight... Bread is not generally bad for your weight. It's what you put on your bread that matters more. Lashings of butter or margarine can do the real damage to your waistline.

Even so, overeating bread (for example; having a third and fourth slice of toast when two would have done or eating extra bread with your evening meal) is something to watch as bread still contains energy you need to burn up - about 300kJ per slice which is about the same as a medium apple or a 200g tub of diet yoghurt.

If you've cut back on your activity level or you've noticed your metabolism slowing in recent years, you may need to go a bit easier on the bread, assuming the rest of your diet is pretty low-fat already.

When you eat bread, choose wholegrain breads with lots of gritty, grainy bits as they have the most fibre, vitamins and antioxidants, and they generally have a lower glycaemic index (GI). Learn more about bread at the Australian Cosnumers' Magazine - Choice Magazine article.

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