Tag Archive for: weight

Sleep More and Quit Eating Sooner

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Sleep more, eat the same, and lose weight. Seriously? That’s what researchers are going to try to find out. At this point, there’s little question that for most people, lack of sleep messes with the circadian rhythms and negatively impacts glucose metabolism.

But a different research team is looking at another element: how long you eat every day can impact your ability to lose weight. Researchers have done a pilot study looking at eating intervals: the time you eat your first meal until you stop eating for the day. For people devoted to their evening snacks, it can be 16 to 18 hours per day.

In the pilot study, subjects restricted their eating to a period of 10 to 12 hours per day. Over 16 weeks, subjects lost an average of seven pounds. One more thing: they didn’t have to restrict their eating. They ate what they wanted, just in a shorter time interval every day.

This was a pilot study using an app that the researchers developed; they’re recruiting 10,000 subjects to see if the idea will work on a greater scale while collecting additional data. Such as what? Well, maybe you actually eat fewer calories when you eat in smaller time frame even if you eat the same foods. By the way, if you want to be a subject, check out www.mycircadianclock.org to see if you qualify.

Back to the sleep portion. The part that interests me the most is the messed up carbohydrate metabolism by eating when your clock says it’s time to sleep. Getting more sleep is not easy these days, but it just might be worth it.

We’ve all heard people say they cannot lose weight no matter what they do. Well, maybe getting a little more sleep and eating over fewer hours may help. Of course, if you’re a diabetic or hypoglycemic, talk with your doctor. But here’s something simple and cheap you could do: sleep more and eat the same over fewer hours. Will you lose weight? We don’t know, but it’s worth a try.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: doi:10.1001/jama.2017.0653

 

Can You Lose Weight by Sleeping More?

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That doesn’t seem to make any sense; you’re not going to be as active because you’re sleeping, so how can that help you lose weight? Well, if you’re sleeping you’re not eating, but there must be more to it than that. Let’s go back to the SCN, the pacemaker of rhythms.

Researchers have found that cortisol and melatonin aren’t the only hormones and organs tied to the light-dark cycles. Hundreds if not thousands of genes also respond to light-dark cycles. Glucose metabolism, the processing of sugars, is tied to these cycles; we seem to process sugars better during the light hours than at night. For some reason, eating carbohydrates in the dark hours results in slow processing of carbohydrates. Typically carbohydrate metabolism is a fairly high-energy process using 15 to 20% of the calories in digestion and absorption, but eating in the evening seems to decrease metabolism enough that it could theoretically result in gaining 12.5 pounds in a year.

Theory and life are two different things. Research on rodents shows that if researchers flip their cycle by feeding them in opposition to their rhythms—they’re day-sleepers, so they’re the opposite of us—they gain more weight when fed the same diet than mice fed during their normal cycle.

What about humans? Is there a solution? Skinny rats are fine, but what’s in it for us? We’ll wrap this up on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: doi:10.1001/jama.2017.0653

 

Could Your Rhythms Be Keeping You Fat?

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You eat well and you exercise, but you still can’t lose any weight. What if the answer was in the natural rhythms of your body? I’m not talking about dance moves; I’m talking about circadian rhythms, the natural 24-hour cycles based on day and night. Since we can pretty much control the amount of light indoors 24-hours per day, our natural rhythms can be in disarray.

I’ve talked about the pacemaker of the heart several times over the years. It turns out that there’s an area in the brain called the superchiasmatic nucleus (SCN) that acts as the central pacemaker for circadian rhythms. It’s found in the hypothalamus and for a small group of cells, it seems to do a lot.

In the mornings in response to daylight, the SCN sends signals to raise body temperature and produce hormones such as cortisol. Time to get up! The SCN also responds to light by delaying the release of other hormones such as melatonin that help us sleep. When it gets dark the eyes signal the SCN that it’s night. Melatonin levels rise in the evening and stay elevated throughout the night, promoting sleep.

What does this have to do with being fat and not being able to lose weight? Now that we know how this pacemaker works, it turns out it could be an important factor. I’ll cover recent research the rest of the week.

What are you prepared to do today?

Dr. Chet

 

Reference: www.sleepfoundation.org.

 

Obesity: A Global Problem

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The overwhelming conclusion by the Global BMI Mortality Collaboration is that the rate of mortality linked with the degree of obesity follows the same pattern in the entire world with one exception: South Asia. If you look at the graphs of the mortality rate per BMI category, they’re virtually identical in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and East Asia. One of the reasons that South Asia might be different was that only three studies were included in the analysis.

We are not alone in our fight to lose weight and get healthier. Actually, that’s a completely different . . .

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Death by Obesity

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The Global BMI Mortality Collaboration examined the mortality of being overweight and obese in most parts of the world. They purposefully did not include people in the meta-analysis who had ever smoked or had a chronic disease when the study began; that makes sense because both can affect mortality within the five-year span they were examining. The range of the subjects was 20 to 89 years old and a BMI greater than 15.0.

They performed a hazard ratio analysis of the combined data, which examines the rate of an event (in this case death) within each weight . . .

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The World’s State of Obesity

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A week ago, I talked to a reader and visitor to my website who continues to check her BMI occasionally to see where she stands; she still hasn’t made it to the normal range but continues to try. I understand—I’m not there yet either. But there’s good reason to keep trying based on a recently published study.

The Global BMI Mortality Collaboration decided to examine the deaths from overweight and obesity in the entire world. Sometimes we think that the U.S. is the only overweight nation in the . . .

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Lessons from “The Biggest Loser”

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The recent study on weight gain by former participants in “The Biggest Loser” reality television show blamed decreases in resting metabolic rate (RMR): the decrease in RMR became worse over time and contributed to most of the participants regaining most of the weight. In other words, they ruined their resting metabolism.

No, they didn’t. In my opinion, there are errors in the measurements for RMR and total energy expenditure (TEE). The errors may be in the equipment, but more than likely, in the assumptions that were made in the calculations.

Here’s where I think researchers went wrong: there . . .

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Rate of Change

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I spent hours looking at the data in “The Biggest Loser” study. I did numerous calculations trying to figure out where the changes in caloric use occurred that could explain the dip in resting metabolic rate that made the headlines. There are several possible explanations.

Today I’ll give you the most probable reason: the subjects lost weight too fast. The average was 4.25 pounds per week and for some, it was double that. While that can win contests, it doesn’t allow the body to adjust to the tremendous changes that should be occurring.

Think about it. There . . .

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Does Weight Loss Ruin Metabolism?

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The health headlines two weeks ago were focused on what we can call “The Biggest Loser Study.” Researchers published the results of a six-year follow-up of contestants in Season 8 of the reality show “The Biggest Loser.” It turns out that most contestants gained back a significant amount of weight. Why? Based on the research, decreased resting metabolism was identified as the most likely suspect. Headlines shouted that weight loss caused metabolic rates to fall more than expected and therefore made it hard, if not impossible, to maintain weight loss.

I believe that all research has merit, even . . .

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Raising HDL: Weight Loss

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Before I finish up this week’s look at HDL cholesterol, I want to wish every mother a Happy Mother’s Day. I hope it’s a great day with your children.

The number one way to increase HDL cholesterol is to lose weight. Losing fat helps increase HDL levels while simultaneously lowering LDL cholesterol. We still don’t know precisely why, but there’s really nothing debatable about it.

I’ll give you my theory of why weight loss helps raise HDL cholesterol. In order to lose weight, you have to eat less and/or move more; more than . . .

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