Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

This week I bring you good tidings: Eat More and Weigh Less! Yes, you’ve heard that before, but I am not talking about Starvation Response here (and in any case, that was “Eat More Often and Lose Weight”!). No, this time I am talking about energy density and how focusing on the concentration of energy (or calories) in your meals will help you bulk up on the volume of food while still keeping its calorie-count low.

In The Secret to Weight Control: Not Being Dense, Sally Squires writes that the trick is to switch to foods that are not calorifically dense by volume (in fact this whole concept is also called Volumetrics). Think about it: 10 cubic inches of two types foods will still occupy the same space in your stomach, but what if one of those foods had only a quarter of the calories of the other? Your stomach is still full but you haven’t consumed as many calories!

Earlier, when I have spoken about how it’s always been about the calories, I have even jokingly said that if you consumed enough celery or carrots you could still become overweight if the calorie intake was more than your daily requirement. But seriously, can you imagine how many bags of carrots you will have have to eat just to get to even around 500 calories? (Answer: about 3 lbs worth!). Heck, just 2 fluffy Chocolate Kreme Filled Donuts will get you there and your stomach will still have the space for a few more!

I think you are getting the picture … maximising fiber-rich, low-energy-dense foods like raw/steamed vegetables is a great way to trick your stomach into thinking it’s full while keeping tabs on your calorie intake.

While you run off to the grocery store, keep these other stories in mind as well …

1. ‘Yo-yo’ weight warning to mothers: Mothers who gain or lose lots of weight between pregnancies could be putting their baby at risk, say experts.
2. Docs to get fat cheques for surgery on obese: Alberta surgeons’ cheques will increase 25 per cent for operations involving obese patients.
3. Omega-3s: Fishy fad or catch of the day?: Omega-3s are polyunsaturated fats that can fend off prostate cancer, protect your eyes from macular degeneration, cut risk of heart disease and fight diabetes.
4. The Secret to Weight Control: Not Being Dense: Worried about fitting into your bathing suit, shorts and other revealing summer clothes without feeling chronically hungry and deprived? The answer may be to eat more, not less.
5. Obese girls much less likely to attend college: U.S. study: After tracking 11,000 American adolescents, a study released Monday found that following secondary school, obese girls in the U.S. were half as likely to enrol in college, versus their non-obese peers.
6. If it’s not cardio, does it count?: To lose weight, you’ll want to watch your diet. And you’ll likely need to regularly engage in fairly intense cardio workouts to really burn calories.
7. Employees compete to be ‘biggest loser’: By the time the contest ended, 84 employees had shed nearly 1,000 pounds, with two losing over 40 pounds.
8. Low cholesterol may raise cancer risk: Lowering cholesterol as much as possible may reduce the risk of heart disease, but with a price: Taking it too low could raise the risk of cancer.
9. Tired of spin classes? Try the Wii station: A Canadian health club is offering a new form of exercise for people bored with the treadmill or cycling classes - the Wii Workout Station.
10. Adding Intensity to Your Training: What place does a training style more suited to an NFL weight room have in the average schmo’s workout?
11. More women over 30 battling eating disorders: Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia have long been considered diseases of the young, but experts say in recent years more women have been seeking help in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and older.
12. Family, Friends May ‘Spread’ Obesity: Friends don’t let friends get obese.
13. No calories, same taste (and heart risks): Adults who drink one or more sodas a day - diet or regular - had about a 50 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome - a cluster of risk factors such as excessive fat around the waist, low levels of ‘good’ cholesterol, high blood pressure …

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Have a great weekend!

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Careful there! I am not advising you to get rid of your fat friends, but rather to tell your friends to get rid of their fat (the difference a comma makes!)

Why, you ask? Because a new study shows that obesity can spread through your close circle of friends and family. And when you think about it, this is only but natural. Remember: our idea of what is acceptable is all about perception and when the view around us changes, so does our idea about certain things like body weight and appearance.

A spouse becoming obese increased the probability of the other following suit by about 37%. A brother’s probability was studied to be about 40% if his sibling became obese. But the biggest surprise was between unrelated (but close) people:

The risk climbed even more sharply among friends — between 57 and 171 percent, depending on whether they considered each other mutual friends. Moreover, friends affected friends’ risk even when they lived far apart, and the influence cascaded through three degrees of separation before petering out, the researchers found.

- Obesity Spreads In Social Circles As Trends Do, Study Indicates

This and numerous other articles and TV news segments all over the broadcasting world are all based on a study published in the New England Journal Of Medicine, of nearly 12000 people from the Framingham area of Massachusetts, over a period of almost 32 years. I can’t recall a more detailed study than this, but like some other media outlets are reporting, the results are not too surprising. Some of these results were always known by simple observation: The spousal connection, obese families having obese children have all been seen in numerous cases - all we have now is concrete percentage numbers.

Still, the study is important in that it shows us that sometimes extraneous factors other than diet and exercise can play big, sub-conscious roles. When “What’s for dinner?” is answered by “Pizza!” and wild cheers from the children, there isn’t much one or the other spouse can do. Even if one feels in one’s mind that pizza may not be the best way to end the day, he/she just “goes with the flow” and there you have it folks: the slippery slide!

“What spreads is an idea. As people around you gain weight, your attitudes about what constitutes an acceptable body size changes, and you might follow suit and emulate that body size. It may cross some kind of threshold, and you can see an epidemic take off. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop it. It can spread like wildfire.”

If there is one good thing about this study it is this: the results work both ways! I mean that health-conscious friends/spouses seemed to have a good effect on their respective counterparts. While choosing a partner cannot be based on their eating habits (which can change, anyway), knowing the extent of one’s influence on the other is important, as this study shows!

Study: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years

Technorati Tags: health, nutrition, fitness, obesity, social-network

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