Advancing Your Health

It is well known that when you reduce your calorie intake, you will lose even more weight if you exercise too.  More exercise is always better than some and some is better than none at all.  But what does more mean?  How much do we really need to exercise to lose weight and improve our health?  A 2009 study found that people who did 225-420 minutes a week of moderately vigorous exercise lost the greatest amount of weight.  This same study also found that exercise is the best way to keep weight off that you have already lost.  People who were able to maintain their weight loss, exercised for 150-250 minutes a week. So we now know how much time to devote to exercise, [...]

Beware of too much television viewing!  Published in the journal Obesity, a 2006 study by Raynor and colleagues examined the relationship between weight and viewing of television, VCRs, and/or DVDs.  Their subjects included 1422 subjects who had just joined the National Weight Control Registry.  In order to join the Registry, each subject had to have reported losing at least 30 pounds and maintaining that weight loss for at least a year.  One interesting fact emerged right away from information gleaned from these subjects:  they had not been frequent television watchers at the time they joined the Registry.  Only 12.5% reported watching television for three hours per day or more, and 38.5% reported doing so for less than 10 hours per week, versus an average television watching [...]

The typical treatment methodology for Type 2 diabetes includes medications, diet changes, and exercise, but two recent studies have found that weight loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, may in fact be much more effective in curing Type 2 diabetes. Not only that, but those with Type 2 diabetes who underwent weight loss surgery also saw decreases in blood pressure and cholesterol. Findings from the two new studies were published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine and have helped shed light on a trend doctors have been noticing for years, that bariatric surgery often rids its patients of Type 2 diabetes as well. “Type 2 diabetes is one of the fastest growing epidemics in human history,” and in the U.S. alone, the number of diabetes cases has tripled over [...]

People often say that eating healthy is boring but that couldn’t be further from the truth! Bring some adventure to your plate by incorporating grains from across the globe. Using multiple whole food sources to get your necessary nutrients provides many health benefits. About a quarter of our plates should be filled up with starches, including whole grains. The world provides us with a plethora of great grain options to keep us healthy and provide variety. Travel the globe through eating grains that are native to other countries and banish the boring. Here are two grain options to start your adventure. Teff - is a grass native to Ethiopia with small seeds which cook quickly. The teff flour is traditionally used to make injera bread and now is used as a [...]

March is National Nutrition Month! This year the theme is “Get Your Plate in Shape” by filling it with a variety of foods from each food group in the appropriate portions.  An essential part of your plate is protein-rich foods.  Protein allows our muscles to move, maintains fluid balance, transports nutrients in our blood and regulates our immune systems. Most Americans eat plenty of protein each day, but we may not be consuming it from the right sources or in enough variety. Most adults and older children need 5-7 ounces of protein each day.  Read on for more information about protein-rich foods. Meat, poultry, fish, and eggs:   Animal products are excellent sources of complete proteins and essential vitamins and minerals such as iron and B vitamins.  When eating these foods, make sure they are [...]

Overeating often occurs because we are not aware of how the environment around us affected our eating and what the quantities of food we consume are. Brian Wansink, PhD, a nutritional scientist at Cornell University, has written a book called Mindless Eating, in which he describes research studies that reveal how little awareness we often have about our eating and what influences it. Amazingly, even his students, who were PhD candidates in nutritional science, were unaware of how their environment influenced their eating. These are some of his findings:

• The average overweight person underestimated his or her calorie intake by 30-40% (versus 20% for normal-weight people). The more they ate the greater percentage they were off in their estimates.
• People ate 53% more popcorn if given a large container versus a small [...]
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It’s well known that we eat more calories when we dine out at restaurants than we would eating at home.  But, you don’t have to completely avoid restaurants when trying to manage your weight.  Here are some smart strategies to help control your calories.

1. Don't be afraid to ask for what you want. Have your server put high-fat condiments like salad dressing and mayonnaise on the side so you can control how much gets put on your meal.  Ask to substitute high-calorie side items like French fries for salad or steamed vegetables.
2. Take half your meal home. Ask for a to-go box as soon as your meal comes to the table.  Put half of it away before you are finished eating.  Now you have [...]
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As Super Bowl XLVI approaches, whether you’re pulling for the Giants, or call yourself a “Pats” fan, there is one thing most of us will share in common this Sunday-- the traditional Super Bowl party grub. While the game is a great time to spend time with loved ones and share in fun competitive camaraderie, the chances of overindulging from a nutritional standpoint are fairly good. Chips and dip, loaded baked potatoes, burgers and fries, you name it and it will probably be somewhere in the room on Sunday. To help you steer your team of party goers in a healthy direction, below you’ll find two fantastic Super Bowl party recipes to incorporate into your festivities this weekend:

Healthier Buffalo Chicken Strips

This recipe packs in all that Buffalo wing [...]

More and more people in Georgia are considering weight loss surgery as an option for returning to a healthy body weight. Because those who are overweight are at a higher risk for the development of conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, for many people, weight loss surgery means both regaining activity and mobility via a healthier body weight and the possibility of a longer, healthier life in general. Because the demand for information on surgical weight loss options is growing, Dr. Edward Lin of the Emory Bariatric Center has been taking big action to help educate the community. Today, he held an online chat on the topic of surgical weight loss options (check out the transcript) to help answer questions on the pros and cons of weight loss surgery and dig deeper into the differences between each type of weight loss surgery. Dr. [...]

A recent study found that family members living with patients who underwent weight loss surgery dropped significant amounts of weight and made more positive lifestyle changes.  In this study, 35 morbidly obese patients underwent Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. Overweight spouses and family members living with the patient attended three lifestyle counseling sessions before surgery and five sessions after surgery. At these sessions, patients and their family members learned about healthy eating habits (portion control and a healthy diet) and how to increase physical activity. At one year after surgery, patients lost an average of 100 pounds and decreased their body mass index (BMI) from 48.7 to 33.3. In addition, their overweight spouses and family members lost an average of 10 [...]