It’s well known that as you age, unless you take active steps to remain healthy and fit, you tend to gradually put on more fat and lose muscle mass. What is not so well known, however, is what those specific preventive steps really are.

True, a healthful diet and frequent, well-planned exercise can help thwart the inevitable drop in metabolism, but for a few more specifics, you can turn to a recent health-item on the MSNBC Health site, Avoiding the midlife diet crisis.

Since this slowing metabolism is a slow process, the author claims you can stay one step ahead of it by making gradual changes yourself, as you age. Some fo the key points raised are:

• Reducing portion sizes: Did you know, on average, women need 100 fewer calories at age 40 than at age 20?
• Keep your brain sharp: Diet is key here with a focus on fruits and vegetables.

For more tips including ideas for keeping a stable blood sugar level and choosing the right kinds of beverages to keep you well-hydrated, check out the entire article and take those steps to stay young in mind and body!

How often have you heard someone at the gym or on a late-night infomercial say that working out will help you burn fat for hours after you stop? Too many times to keep count? Well, Edward Melanson, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver would beg to differ and he presents his views in Exercise and Sports Sciences Reviews.

WebMD reports on these findings. The problem is that moderate exercise, especially that doen for less than an hour, has little effect on the so called “24-hour oxidation of fat”:

“It’s not that exercise doesn’t burn fat,” Melanson says. “It’s just that we replace the calories. Exercise increases the capacity to burn more fat. But if you replace those calories, that is lost.” [WebMD]

To test the level of fat burning after exercise, Melnason’s team used 28 participants in a study. Of these, 10 were lean and endurance-trained, 10 were lean but untrained, while the remaining 8 were obese and untrained. Their exercise involved riding a stationary bike for about an hour burning 400 calories. After the exercise, while calories burned were indeed higher for all the test subjects, the 24-hour test revealed that instead of fat, it was carbohydrates that were being burned.

The reason for this, according to Melanson, is that what we eat after an exercise affects the kind of macro-nutrient our body uses first for fuel:

For instance, eating as little as 240 calories of carbohydrate during the hour before exercise can reduce fat burning during exercise, and the boost in fat burning during exercise can be “blunted” for up to six hours after eating a meal, says Melanson, citing other research. [WebMD]

These disappointing results are just for moderate exercisers who workout for an hour or less. High intensity exercisers or those practising interval training are bound to notice much better results. Still, the bottom line is simply this: if you are trying to lose weight, it’s dangerous to assume you can eat whatever you want or inwhatever quantity you want, simply because you have “done your exercises for the day”.

You cannot change the laws of science: take in more calories than you expend, and you will gain weight. No question about it.

It’s all in your genes, folks. Researchers at the University of Berkeley have uncovered a gene called DNA-PK that is thought to be responsible for the regulation of the process in the liver that converts carbohydrates in the food we eat into fat.

What is amazing about this discovery is that when mice were treated to disable this particular gene, they didn’t put on any weight even when they overate simple carbohydrates. This led to a researcher wondering if this effect could be replicated with humans:

“We hope that this research will one day help people eat bread, pasta and rice and not worry about getting fat,” Roger Wong, a graduate student who worked on the study, said in a statement. [Reuters]

Due to the inability to convert the carbohydrates to fat, the test mice also had more lean muscle, less body fat and much better blood-cholesterol numbers than regular mice. Since humans have this gene, who knows, someday we could pop a pill and freak out at the all-you-can-eat pizza-pasta buffet!

But until then, stop dreaming and get back to lifting weights and eating more greens, pasture-meat, nuts  and healthy fats!

Back in November of last year, I wrote a short piece on how As The Economy Shrinks, Waistlines Could Expand. That article was almost entirely focused on the nutrition aspect of a recession and how reduced or missing incomes led families to look for cheaper foods which in most cases are unfortunately really bad for you (think dollar menus in any fast-food joint).

But there is another alarming aspect to a recession with regard to health and that is Healthcare (or lack thereof). WebMD reports that as the recession progresses, families are skipping doctor appointments and not taking much needed medication. Even gyms are being avoided as a “luxury” in these difficult times.

The American Heart Association’s March survey  of about 1000 people found that:

• 32% had delayed preventive care, skipped doctor’s appointments, or stopped taking medication to save money.
• 25% with gym memberships had canceled them in the past six months.
• 42% percent planned to buy fewer fruits and vegetables. [WebMD]

Bad nutrition is one side of the story but when needed healthcare is delayed or avoided altogether this double whammy is certain have long-term detrimental effects on the health of our citizens unless steps are taken to help those in need continue their regular check-ups and medication.

One thing that everyone would surely agree with is that the overweight and obese are often not looked at in the best light by society. There is often an unspoken disdain, pity or even suspicion about how honest they are in their efforts to lose weight. Well, it looks like the affected people want to take charge and I feel they are doing it in the right way and also for the right reasons.

In a recent news article, Yahoo News reports that obese people are increasingly joining a group of anti-dieting activists in a so-called fat-o-sphere where they tal about ways to improve their health rather than just focus on weight-loss. The real problem they are faced with is society’s war-cry against all things fat (and in turn against fat people in general). This, as you can well imagine leads to very poor self-image among the obese:

“Being fat doesn’t make me lazy or stupid or morally suspect,” said Harding, 34, of Chicago, who also has written a book, “Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere.”

“The message we’re promoting is health at every size.” [Yahoo News]

This is, as I mentioned earlier, certainly a step in the right direction. In fact, as I have previously blogged, Fitness Is More Important Than Fatness and it is not at all unusual to see a slightly overweight person display a greater level of fitness than someone half his/her size!

Granted, it is of course always a good idea to lose some weight if one feels that it is preventing him/her from enjoying life to the fullest.  But there is absolutely no need to aim for some society-decided “ideal figure” at the expense of serious health problems due to stress and excessive exercise.

Kudos to the fat-o-sphere and here’s wishing them the very best health they can achieve. Read more to find out what other activities they are engaged in.

With research and innovation in nanotechnology advancing by leaps and bounds it’s a wonder such a revolutionary concept took this long to develop. In an exclusive breaking news report, Fitness Mantra can report that the first ever microbot-based fat loss pill, provisionally called “NanoBurn” is now available for immediate use!

NanoBurn - Feel The Melt!

What is NanoBurn?

Nanoburn is a revolutionary new pill in capsule form that finally solves the age-old conundrum: How do you burn fat from those hard-to-reach places (your nodding head tells me you know exactly what I mean).

Every NanoBurn capsule contains within it a highly-engineered microbot (miniature robot) whose sole purpose is to find and burn fat. The pill is red and black and contains flaming imagery on the outside to further enhance the aura of burning fat.

The capsule also, paradoxically, contains some fat to feed the microbot while it awaits human consumption.

How Does Nanoburn Work?

I am gonna get you, fatty!

Once ingested, the outer shell disintegrates and the microbot within the NanoBurn pill gets to work immediately! After making a small incision in your stomach, the microbot makes its way to the hip/waist region and gets to work with gusto!

An artists rendering of what happens next is shown here and as you can see. the microbot even has a camera-like lens to find the globules of fat which it then proceeds to ingest with gusto!

Each pill is good for about an ounce of fat before the fat-receptacle gets full rendering the bot useless. But since there is no restriction to the number of pills you can consume, you just need to gobble up 16 pills to lose a pound of fat!

Take that, diet and exercise!

Side Effects of NanoBurn

While the pill itself has no direct adverse side-effects, there is one (albeit minor) problem: scientists have yet to devise a method to get the filled up microbots out of the system. “Since the microbots are no longer in the digestive system, there is no easy way to get them out of the body” said NanoBurn’s Chief Scientist. He added that several ideas like having the bots burrow their way out of the belly-button (or the next-nearest body-cavity) were considered but voted against since they could be “potentially hazardous”. For now these bots will just lie around in your mid-section and cause the occasional fits of violent throwing up, but otherwise you should feel just fine.

NanoBurn is simply the first of what will undoubtedly be many more innovations in the field of nanotechnology and weight loss. Who needs Hoodia and Alli when you can have NanoBurn?!

NanoBurn: Feel The Melt! Available April 1st, 2009!

This blog has been active for close to two years now and while reporting about health, fitness and nutrition has consumed most of my blog-related activities, I am happy to report that I have not been sitting idly by while I watch the incidence of obesity and obesity-related ailments steadily increase in the world. it has always been my desire to create a safe, painless, economical and easy-to-use method to reduce obesity – something people can use in the privacy of their own homes.

After over a year of research, analysis, design and testing, I am proud to reveal the fact that I finally have a prototype that is ready for public use. I have decided to call this tool the “Actively Progressive & Regressive Intelligent Lipoanalytic Fully Operational Obesity Lowerer” and as its name suggests, this tool will intelligently analyze and remove the bothering layers of fat that plague many an obese person.

The Lipoanalytic Obesity Lowerer

What to the untrained eye looks like a regular power-drill is in fact the result of my hard labor over the past several months. In the complete privacy of your home, you can use this Lipoanalytic Obesity Lowerer (LOL) to literally suck out the problem areas in your body!

How it works:

1. Connect the LOL to a standard power source.
2. Attach the supplied “Reductive Obesity Tool For LOL” (ROTFL) to the LOL.
3. Switch on the apparatus
4. Point the tip of the ROTFL to the problem area like your hips or thighs and press against the skin lightly.
5. Watch as the bit bores right through your skin and simply sucks out the excess fat and stores it in the “Fat Accumulation Repository Carrying Excess” chamber located at the base of the LOL
6. Simply repeat the procedure at various locations on the body, remembering to empty out the fat container at regular intervals.
7. That’s it! A trim and toned body can be yours with almost no effort on your part!

Imagine! No more diets of fresh fruits, vegetables or lean meats! No more exercising for hours in the gym! Strength-training? Who needs that when the LOL makes it so easy to lose weight?

You just need to be aware of a few negligible side-effects:

1. 1/2 inch holes on your body at the places where you have reduced the fat: Nothing to worry much about – just cover up the holes with silly putty and apply facial make-up at the right places. No one will notice anything different – unless you take a bath or someone pokes you right in the holes!
2. Missing body parts: Sometimes, if you are not careful, the odd kidney or lung could get sucked out along with the fat. Again, this is not much of an issue with those body parts which you have two of. But I would, of course, advise you to be extra cautious around “single” body parts like the heart or liver.
3. Massive infection around the holes: Although we urge you to sterilize the ROTFL before use, we have seen several cases of massive infection around the areas of application. Related side-effects include blood loss, dizziness, headache, earache, bodyache, nausea, sea-sickness, disorientation, feelings of superiority, bulimia, anorexia and even overweight and obesity.

I am sure you will agree that these minimal side-effects are a small price to pay to achieve the body of your dreams with almost no effort on your part. If you are convinced that the LOL is the best thing since sliced carbohydrates, simply place your order today and I’ll rush you your very own LOL!

It’s time to bid goodbye to healthy eating and exercising. Forget calories and saturated fat. Enjoy everything from French Fries to Chicken Wings and then simply suck out your fat with the one and only LOL!

Order Now!

Welcome to the ordering page of the brand new weight-loss tool from Fitness Mantra!
If you haven’t already done so, please read all about how this wonderful tool works before proceeding.

To place an order for your very own “Actively Progressive & Regressive Intelligent Lipoanalytic Fully Operational Obesity Lowerer” (APRIL FOOL), please send me an email with your contact information and just sit back and get ready to lose weight (mostly from your wallet)!

In a world filled with wars on terror, terror alert-levels and terrorist-videos threatening the next wave of attacks on civilization, it’s hard to believe there could be anything more dangerous than the evil we know as terrorism. But experts at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit, an annual conference of experts from various fields, which is being held in Sydney this year, think that lifestyle diseases like obesity and heart disease are even more dangerous than terrorism:

“Ever since September 11, we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public,” [US professor of health law, Lawrence] Gostin told AFP later.
“While we’ve been focusing so much attention on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”[Yahoo News]

The biggest concern of most of the experts at the conference seems to be the apparent lack of importance awarded to issues like health, fitness and the rise in prevalence of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Case in point: nothing about these issues has been mentioned during the lengthy campaign speeches by the contenders for the U.S. presidency. Sure, healthcare is a hot topic during debates, but a crucial component – prevention by proactive focus on fitness – is sadly lacking.

As the experts rightly point out, certain “high profile” diseases like AIDS and the “in the news” syndromes like SARS capture the limelight in the press and media, but good-old-fashioned conditions are ignored:

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world’s deaths, the meeting was told.
“It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive,” said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group’s executive director.
“However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall.”

It’s time to get back to basics, I think.
I know I’ve said this many times before, but I’ll say it again:
“Prevention is the cure.”

Yes, you read that right: Lean and healthy people who, unsurprisingly, tend to outlive their unhealthy, obese, smoking counterparts are a bigger burden on the healthcare system when their systems finally begin to give way with age!

Brief pause while you take that in and try to figure out exactly what this means!

In a research article titled “Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure” (Full Study: PDF, 666KB), Dutch scientists headed by Pieter H. M. van Baal investigate the cost aspects of preventing obesity:

The objective of this study was to estimate the annual and lifetime medical costs attributable to obesity, to compare those to similar costs attributable to smoking, and to discuss the implications for prevention.

Based on the costs of treating various illnesses in the Netherlands, the study focussed on three groups of people: lean and non-smoking people, obese people and people who smoke. By age 20, the healthy group had about 64 more years to live, while the obese had 60 and the smokers just 57. Consequently, the total “Expected Lifetime Healthcare Costs” of the healthy group were 236000 euros, while they were 195000 euros for the obese and a relatively lower 172000 euros for the smokers. These results, the study concludes, show that reducing obesity does not necessarily save the healthcare system monetarily.

Of course, there are several things iffy about this study and an LA Times article describes a few of them. Think about a few of these arguments in favor of reducing obesity:

1. Quality of life: During their already reduced life-span the obese suffer from untold consequential problems due to being overweight: skeletal issues like joint and knee problems, strokes, heart-attacks (even if they do recover from these) and so on. Simple tasks like moving around or performing household chores become more difficult for the obese. I am not even going to go into the social, mental and public aspects of being obese (inability to participate in certain activities, negative bias at the work-place, perception among peers …). All of these would fall under the quality of life (or lack thereof) that an obese individual would endure during his or her life-time: reason enough to stay fit, you would think.
2. Contributions by those who live longer: It would be difficult to put a price on the cultural, social and economical contributions that are lost when people die prematurely (whatever may be the reason). Another aspect of this reasoning is the additional cost endured by survivors to take care of dependents (older or younger). People who live longer also add to the Gross National Product and, as LA Times points out, pay more taxes too. These factors have all ben conveniently left out in the study
3. Life-disruptions during the important years: Don’t get me wrong. I definitely am not suggesting that much older people are not important. But you will certainly agree with me when I say that a person makes the largest contributions during the “peak-years” of 20-60. Of course, many people are productive even beyond that age-range and, if anything, it only strengthens my argument. Reducing obesity and reducing life-disruptive illnesses during the best years of a person’s life, I am sure you would agree, is so much more important than worrying about health-care costs that would occur much later in life as a consequence of living longer. And remember, those who are productive beyond the age-range I mentioned would most certainly be fit to be able to pull that off!

To the study’s credit, I am glad it ends with saying that it is not always about the money:

A remaining and most important question is whether prevention should be cost-saving in order to be attractive. Obviously, the answer is that it need not be cost-saving: like other forms of care it ‘‘merely’’ needs to be cost-effective. ‘‘The aim of health care is not to save money but to save people from preventable suffering and death. Any potential savings on health care costs would be icing on the cake”

“We are not recommending that governments stop trying to prevent obesity,” van Baal said. “But they should do it for the right reasons.”

My take? There are no wrong reasons to prevent obesity. What say you?