Tag: Keto diet

2020: What are the Best Diets?

Well, the results are in, and you may not like what they have to say about your favorite diet.

U.S. News & World Report loves to provide “Best” rankings for a slew of categories, such as doctors in every specialty and colleges. Now their panel of experts has weighed in (no pun intended) on what they have whittled down to the top 35 diets overall. You might be surprised to learn where your particular diet lands on their favorite list. I’ll cover the top 5 only, and then tell you how the popular Keto ranks and why, but you can go to the link at the bottom of this post to see all 35 diets.

How the top 5 diets rank and why?

Okay, here’s number 1.

Drum roll, please. Brrrrrrrr….

 

  1. Mediterranean Diet

No real surprise here. This diet has been studied and emulated for years. But which country bordering the Mediterranean are they following the recipes and food of? They all tend to eat slightly different foods.

I think by now most people know that people that live in this part of the world consume good oils—like olive oil and good fats that primarily come from fish, but other key take-aways to any Mediterranean diet are that these people:

  • Have active lifestyles
  • Eat in a way that helps control weight
  • Consume low amounts of meat, sugar and saturated fat
  • Eat a lot of produce, nuts and other healthful foods
  • Eat primarily organically-grown fruits and veggies (that come from smaller or personal farms)

If you’d like more information on what foods to eat in what amounts, see the consumer-friendly Mediterranean diet pyramid developed by experts in a Boston food think tank.

(Who knew there was such a group!)

This diet was also awarded kudos for being nutritionally sound and having diverse foods and flavors.

 

  1. DASH Diet

Okay, I must admit I’d never heard about this diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. But evidently it’s known for fighting high blood pressure and its nutritional completeness, safety, ability to prevent or control diabetes, and its role in supporting heart health.

It emphasizes:

  • fruits
  • veggies
  • whole grains
  • lean protein
  • low-fat dairy

It turns its thumbs down on:

  • fatty meats
  • full-fat dairy foods
  • tropical oils
  • sugar-sweetened beverages and sweets

Under the pro category, this diet was noted for being heart healthy and nutritionally sound.

 

  1. The Flexitarian Diet

Here’s another one I’d never heard of, which came about in 2009 when dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner published her book The Flexitarian Diet: The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease and Add Year sot Your Life.

This diet—which is the marriage of flexible and vegetarian—emphasizes fruits, veggies, whole grains and plant-based protein. But Ms. Blatner says you can be a vegetarian most of the time but still enjoy an occasional fatty burger or steak when the urge strikes.

It was noted for its flexibility and abundance of tasty recipes.

 

  1. WW (Weight Watchers) Diet

Weight Watchers has done a good job evolving with the times and bringing their diet up to the modern research. It scored highest for overall weight loss and fast weight loss. But WW is also focusing on healthy living and overall well-being.

A big plus to the WW diet is the support system, via in-person accountability and support workshops and on-line or phone chats. The support people are trained in behavior weight management techniques.

With no foods being listed as off-limits, this diet scored big for being able to eat what you want, and for the flexibility in shaping your own diet.

 

  1. Mayo Clinic Diet

I did this diet as a high school junior. Way back then, it focused on very high protein meals, with eggs and meat being the centerpieces. I lost a heap of weight in two weeks, in time to be a bit more svelte for the National Gymnastics Championship.

Now it focuses on making healthful eating a lifelong habit. It also earned high marks for its nutrition and safety.

Mayo’s diet is focused on helping you get your eating habits straightened out and breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones. They also have their own unique food pyramid, which emphasizes fruits, veggies, and whole grains, which allows you to eat more while taking in fewer calories.

According to Mayo, someone on the diet can expect to lose 6 to 10 pounds the first two weeks (!), a lot of which I would expect to be water, and then 1 to 2 pounds weekly until you’ve hit your goal weight. I’m not sure what you do when you hit it, but that is probably in the book.

The 6 to 10 pounds seems like a lot to me. I’ve read a lot of information cautioning people against losing that much weigh that rapidly—for heart reasons, and also for the inclination your body has to reset your calorie point to a lower per-day need before kicking into starvation and fat-storing mode with such drastic weight loss.

But they’re Mayo, and they’ve undoubtedly done their research and checked it twice.

It got additional marks for being nutritionally sound and allowing you to shape your diet.

 

  1. MIND Diet (Tied with Mayo and Volumetrics below)

The Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) is another new one to me, but it’s definitely keeping up with the current concerns on maintaining mental health, as it aims to prevent mental deterioration.

One expert found it to be a healthy, sensible plan backed up by science. (I always love how they throw that in, and then we learn a decade later that “new” science has deleted the old facts.)

What this diet does is take both the DASH and the Mediterranean diets and focus on the foods in each one that specifically affect brain health.

I’m always a little concerned when diets focus too much on one aspect of health, but evidently this diet has been found to reduce Alzheimer’s risk by 35% for people who followed it moderately well and 53% for people who really adhered to it. So I think it deserves a closer look.

It does focus on fewer carbs than is currently recommended by our government guidelines and is known to bring on quick weight loss.

The pro category had marks for its blending of two proven healthy diets and its brain-power boosting focus. The cons were that the diet details were not “fleshed out” and the recipes and resources were slim.

 

  1. Volumetrics (Tied with Mayo and MIND, above)

Penn State University professor Barbara Rolls pioneered this diet, which experts say is really more of an eating approach than a focused diet. It’s designed around:

  • learning how to decipher a food’s energy density
  • learning how to cut that energy density in meal planning and eating
  • making choices that fight hunger

Food is divided into four groups: very low-density, low-density, medium-density, and high-density. You might already guess that non-starchy fruits and veggies would fall into the very-low density category, while crackers, chips, chocolate candies, cookies, nuts, butter and oil fall into the very-high level.

The pro checkmarks for this diet were that it is filling and no food is off-limits. The negatives included lengthy meal prep, and if you don’t like fruits, veggies or soups, sticking with it could be tough.

 

The list continues with a total of 35 rankings, including Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Dr. Weil’s Anti-inflammatory Diet, Dr. Dean Ornish’s Diet, Vegetarian, Vegan The Engine 2 and Paleo.

 

But where did the Keto diet fall?

In spite of its increasing popularity and the medical attention it’s receiving, experts rated this popular diet near the bottom, at #34, behind Paleo (at 29), and Atkins (32). And even though more research is being done on the effects of this diet, a July 2019 Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine (JAMA Internal Medicine) stated that “enthusiasm outpaces evidence” when it comes to a keto diet having a dramatic effect on diabetes or obesity.

A friend of mine from high school is a keto-type diet aficionado and it has helped her tremendously with her diabetes control and weight maintenance. She said it was such a relief to no longer have to count carbs for her daily glycemic intake measurements. The last time I saw her, she looked healthy and had a ton of energy.

Granted, that’s anecdotal evidence, but it’s important to her and her health. Since it takes a long time to do research, it may be that the evidence is just taking time to catch up.

 

To see the entire list, read the overviews, and get more information on each of these diets, see the report.

 

And until next week, (when I’ll tell you about the new diet geared toward people suffering from acid reflux that my husband and I have embarked on),

Happy Dieting!

Andrea

*This list is to serve as general information and not to be intended as an endorsement of any diet plan or a prescription. Always consult with your physician or personal health practitioner before beginning any diet or exercise program.


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro, and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

What is Intermittent Fasting and How Do You Do It?

Many years ago, when I was in college, a sorority sister asked me how I managed to lose so much weight. “By starving,” I said (sarcastic chuckle included). “How else?”

My response was only a little facetious, and definitely rhetorical. She nodded in understanding.

 

All my nutrition training told me that was the wrong way to go about it; that starving was dangerous and counter-productive. To lose weight you just needed to increase your exercise (as a Physical Education and athletic training major I was already doing quite a bit of that); and reduce your calorie intake a little. (I hadn’t been doing that. In fact, I was consuming far too many calories for my activity level.)

And, of course, when I did restrict my calorie consumption, I wasn’t starving myself entirely. I usually enjoyed dinner with my sorority sisters at the house and substituted Diet Pepsi for other meals. Gobs of it. Definitely an unhealthy thing to do. (I was usually in too much of a hurry to take time to eat breakfast.)

Research now shows—and more professionals are recognizing—that “starving” or severely reducing your calorie intake or fasting one to times a week is beneficial.

But there are researchers that have supported this conclusion for some time.

 

Some fasting and limited calorie consumption history—

When I was working in Southern California in the 80s and 90s, a researcher at nearby Loma Linda University was studying the effects of fasting and severely reduced calorie consumption, to a point where he said that you really end up feeling hungry most of the time. He believed, for a variety of reasons, it was healthier for the body to run in short supply. He also thought it would lengthen your life span.

Then the University of Wisconsin (my alma mater) did a longitudinal (17 years, I believe it was) study using monkeys (one of their favorite subjects) on calorie restriction versus the unlimited, unrestrained, smorgasbord eating approach.

 

What they found was fascinating.

 

Some monkeys were allowed to gorge themselves on as much food as they wanted, without restriction. Other monkeys were put on restricted-calorie diets. They only ate what was put in front of them; and the calories were less than what one would expect them to be for a healthy monkey’s daily calorie count. Both groups had access to activity or exercise.

Well, what do you think happened?

They showed side-by-side pictures of two monkeys, one on the restricted diet and the other on the smorgasbord. Both monkeys were similar age. But they certainly didn’t look as though they were!

The limited-calorie monkey looked lean and healthy, with a youthful body and face. His hair was thick. He was energetic. And he didn’t have any of the diseases that “normally” come with monkey age.

On the other hand, the smorgasbord monkey was fat and lethargic. Evidently he lost interest in exercise and spent most of his time lolling about in his living quarters, even when given access to exercise. His fur was sparse and grey; he was jowly, with fat accumulation around his face. He looked downright miserable and sad. And he had a lot of medical problems.

Did the calorie-restricted monkey live longer?

Nope. But he lived BETTER! He lived with health and vigor until the end came. Mr. Smorgasbord progressed miserably. Death swallowed him faster and more decisively than Mr. Lean.

 

Now we’ve come to a point where researchers believe that Intermittent Fasting (IF)— eating very little, or nothing, for a couple days a week—leads to weight loss. Weight loss that lasts. It also provides a heap of other benefits too:

  • Protection from heart disease
  • Protection from cancer
  • Reduction of blood pressure
  • Decrease in diabetes
  • Improved brain health
  • Enhanced physical fitness
  • Possible breast cancer reduction
  • Increased stress resistance
  • Reduction in inflammation at the cellular level

 

So exactly what is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent Fasting (IF) is an eating schedule that incorporates regular periods of low or no food consumption. (We’ll get to the optional techniques in a bit.)

Scientists believe it works because it may shift a person’s cellular and metabolic process in health-promoting ways.

One significant finding is that when the IF diet is pitted against a daily calorie restriction diet, the IF approach wins. People lose more weight with intermittent fasting. And it’s easier to adhere to because people enjoy and find more success with it.

IF also outperforms other, more traditional diets in several ways:

  • weight loss
  • body fat reduction
  • improvement in insulin resistance

 

Intermittent Fasting techniques—

There are several approaches to intermittent fasting.

The first is called the 5:2 approach. The 5:2 is when you eat normally for five days a week and then fast or eat reduced calories on two other days of the week. The two days can be separate or back-to-back.

Fasting every other day is another method.

And then there’s the Time-Restricted fasting, where you only eat in a narrow window of six to eight hours.

 

In either the 5:2 approach or the Fasting every other day method, your fast day calories should not exceed 500 calories. And those 500 calories should be:

  1. healthy fats—avocados, oils, fish, nuts
  2. protein—eggs, fish, nuts
  3. No, or minimal carb, ingestion is allowed

 

Mark Mattson, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine neuroscience professor compares the IF effect to exercise stress. Intermittent Fasting stress appears to trigger similar adaptations.

 

“These cycles of challenge, recovery, challenge, recovery seem to optimize both function and durability of most cell sites,” he says. (Special TIME Edition, 2019. “What Is Intermittent Fasting and Is It Actually Good for You?” Markham, Heidi; page 20)

 

What they don’t yet know the answer to is how normal-weight people might fare with or benefit from IF. And are there long-term risks.

Based on the University of Wisconsin research, I would take an educated guess and say that benefits would outweigh the risks, if you paid attention to what a healthy weight is for you and tweaked your needs accordingly.

Mattson recommends the 5:2 approach because it’s been studied the most.

 

And then there’s the Keto diet—

This IF fasting is similar to the Keto diet in terms of food ingested on fasting days: healthful fats, proteins and very few carbs.

The idea with the Keto diet, though, is that you force the brain—which normally runs on carbs only—to use the protein and fat in your diet. To give you a basic biochemistry overview, it happens like this:

Carbs are C-H-O structures (CHO)—carbon, hydrogen and oxygen

Proteins are C-H-O-N (CHON), with the nitrogen component on the end.

When you don’t consume carbs, the body can break off the nitrogen component of the protein and make it look like a carb. So when a lot of protein is consumed in lieu of carbs, the body can make a carb.

Consequently, when someone is in deep starvation, the body will actually cannibalize its own muscle tissue for the protein to make energy for cell metabolism.

But the fats are the key.

When fats are consumed, the metabolic process breaks the fatty acids down into what are known as ketone bodies, produced by the liver. The brain, heart, liver and muscles can run on ketone bodies. This metabolic process occurs during:

  • low food intake
  • carbohydrate restriction
  • starvation
  • prolonged intense exercise
  • alcoholism
  • untreated type 1 (juvenile) diabetes mellitus

 

When you read the above list, you can see four factors listed that we’ve been talking about: low food intake, carb restriction, starvation (perhaps intermittent fasting) and prolonged exercise. Although you don’t have to engage in prolonged intense exercise to reap the benefits of IF.

 

What food can you eat on the non-fasting days?

Does fasting two days a week mean you can go hog wild on the freebie days?

No. You’ll still want to consume healthful foods, but you can add some carbs to satisfy your “sweet” food cravings. And you probably won’t need to pay as much attention to the calorie consumption.

 

What about those annoying hunger pangs?

Mattson says you can expect hunger pangs the first month, while your body and brain adapt. So hang in there!

 

Is Intermittent Fasting a quick fix?

IF is not the quick fix everyone hopes for. I don’t think one of those exists. You can’t continue to consume an overall crummy diet or maintain a sedentary, indulgent lifestyle and expect miracles from two-day a week fasting.

And if you are obese, make sure you consult your physician before embarking on any new eating plan.

NEXT WEEK I’ll tell you some stories on how intermittent fasting can balloon into an eating disorder and go awry!

Until then,

Enjoy the good food God has given us for our pleasure and health, and give IF a try. You’ll be surprised at how much more energy you have and how much better you’ll feel as you help rid your body of excess calories and toxins.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

The Science of Weight Loss: Rethinking Your Dieting Programs

Did you see the recent news report about the famous Keto diet, which is the big diet craze right now. While some extol its virtues, others claim it’s dangerous.

So what and who should you believe when it comes to healthful eating and lifestyle?

While anecdotal evidence can be helpful, it’s best to follow what the current research says, as long as the research you’re reading isn’t funded by special interest groups or the chemical or food companies promoting the food or protocol. (Beware, some information you find on “reliable” sites is also tainted by big money.)

 

So what are the recent findings?

Like a breath of fresh air, the recent findings are…(drum roll, please)…

 

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!!

 

Hallelujah!! The research is validating what most of us have known all along.

Everyone is different, and my diet plan may not look like yours. And it probably shouldn’t.

 

What the recent findings tell us about diet and exercise—

A Time magazine Special Edition* supplement (2019) reports the U.S. weight loss industry to be 66 billion dollars annually. No wonder marketers push so hard for us to buy their new programs!

Some of the ways Americans try to lose weight are through:

  • Coordinated diet programs (Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, etc.)
  • Bariatric surgery
  • Week or more of expensive stays
  • Calorie and step-tracking apps
  • Fad diets (they list Paleo and keto in this category)
  • General high protein diets, like South Beach, etc.
  • Vegan

 

And yet, with all of these diet choices and dollars spent, more than 70% of Americans still tip the scales into the overweight or obese range.

And that’s a problem health-wise and finance-wise, for all of us. Why? Because more than 70 illnesses—like heart disease, Type II diabetes, and some cancers—area the “direct result” of being too fat!

But shouldn’t losing weight be easy, simply a matter of burning off more calories than you take in?

You would think so, and that’s why I was taught several decades ago. In fact, until just recently, that was the belief. Now scientists agree that isn’t the case. Losing weight, and keeping it off, is hard.

And anyone who has tried to lose weight knows it isn’t true. And 80% of us dieters are aware of another discouraging truth: we’ll regain all of the weight we lost and probably a few pounds more in two years. That sad fact is a finding of a UCLA review of 30 studies on the matter.

As Louis Aronne, director for the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Clinical Research at Weill-Cornell Medical College says,

 

“Obesity is a real disease, with real physiological consequences: when you gain weight, the nerves in your hypothalamus that conduct signals from your fat cells to the rest of your brain become damaged. As a result, your brain doesn’t realize that you’re full, so you keep eating.”

 

If that’s the case, any over-fat person would probably need to stop eating before you get to a point of satiation or fullness.

In short, you probably need to religiously count calories so you don’t risk overeating!

 

But isn’t a calorie a calorie?

 That’s what I was taught in college, and that belief held for years in the scientific community. Now we know that’s not the case. The body handles and digests food differently depending upon the food’s chemical make-up.

One thing I learned 30+ years ago that still holds true, however, is that when you lose an extreme amount of weight—defined as 10% or more of your body weight—your body starts preserving energy by switching specific hormone productions and sending your body into starvation mode. Result? You’ll be walking around feeling constantly famished.

Is that what it comes down to, though, always feeling hungry? Some researchers say yes, while others say there is a better way.

 

What about exercise?

When trying to lose weight, we can’t avoid exercise. It’s is a key component of the weight loss puzzle. But what type is best, aerobics or resistance training?

That answer hasn’t changed in some time.

For optimal health and successful weight loss that you can maintain, you need both.

While aerobic exercise increases the number of calories you burn off, resistance exercise improves your metabolism or metabolic rate. And a higher metabolic rate means your body burns more calories even when you’re in a relaxed state. You could say you “burn hotter.” You get more bang for the buck.

As my son would say, “Sweet!”

 

So what should your overall goal be for good health?

Scientists and doctors say your focus should be an improvement in overall health, not just an aim for a number on a scale, or weight poundage pumped in the gym.

But don’t despair! Researchers do know from their findings that It doesn’t really matter whether you’re on a low-fat or low-carb diet, because the end result for both types of eaters is the same amount of lost weight! That’s the opinion of Caroline Apovian, a weight-loss specialist at the Boston University School of Medicine. She’s also president of the Obesity Society.

Hallie Levine, the author of the chapter “What a Healthy Diet Looks Like” in the Time supplement also quotes Apovian as saying,

 

“I usually encourage patients to eat as much protein, fruits and non-starchy vegetables as they want, while restricting starch intake to one or two servings a day.”

 

Why is that? It’s because protein is essential to growth and healing and muscle mass building. That’s important because it’s the muscle that’s primarily responsible for your metabolism level.

Another critical take-home message is that

 

a lower carb diet (30% or calories from protein and the remainder from low-glycemic foods—the kind that cause your blood sugar to rise quickly) is much easier to stick to because it’s less likely to trigger those nagging hunger pangs.

 

So what would fall into the low-glycemic column? That would be foods like:

  • non-starchy vegetables, like carrots, peas, sweet potatoes
  • nuts
  • beans/legumes, like garbanzo beans, white beans, black-eyed peas and lentils
  • some fruits (Beware: many fruits will spike quickly your blood sugar! And fruit juice almost always will.)
  • eggs, dairy, meat, fish and fish oils

(For more in-depth information on low-glycemic foods, see the American Diabetes Association website.

 

And the Time article mentioned one more important fact:

 

When you do have carbs on your plate, try to eat them last.

 

Eating this way, rather than chowing down all of the hot bread the server delivers to your table to keep you occupied before the meal arrives, helps keeps your blood sugar down and those all-important insulin levels low

So you could eat your bread, if you eat it for dessert!

 

So how much weight loss is enough?

Evidently losing just 5% – 10% of your body weight results in positive health gains. Your risk for diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease can drop. And that’s great news!

So maybe before we make grandiose plans to whittle our tummies and legs into a size 6 jeans, when we’re currently wearing (comfortably!) a size 12 isn’t what we should aim for.

How many pounds lost would that be?

Unfortunately, because clothing manufacturers’ sizes are all over the map, it’s no longer easy to tell. But, in general, the consensus is that you would need to lose 8 -10 pounds to drop one pant size.

For a 150-pound woman, that’s within the 5% – 10% range.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

 

As we go forward, we’ll look at a variety of important findings, like what scientists learned from the reality show The Biggest Loser, why your particular diet may not be working for you, finding your dieting sweet spot for health, weight management and fitness, and what Blue Zone model living can do for your health longevity.

We’ll also delve more into the exercise component.

Exciting stuff!

See you back here next Wednesday with the next installment.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Certainly there was an Eden….We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien

(*If you want this information in more detail and in your library, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the Special Time Edition The Science of Weight Loss at your local drugstore or bookstore. It’s on sale until April 5, 2019.)