Tongue patch makes it difficult to eat

I find this elective cosmetic procedure to lose weight slightly disturbing.

First off, it's surgery and I think people often forget the fact that any and every surgery has risk associated with it. Second, it doesn't appear to come with any behavior modification therapy which seems to imply that it's meant for quick and temporary weight loss only. Third, I have to assume that if a patient needs to have this procedure done, he/she cannot even manage to stay on a liquid diet for a month under his/her own motivation and therefore needs to be forced to adhere to one.

That seems so wrong to me on many different levels. On the other hand, I have to remind myself that it is elective surgery. The same people who are comfortable getting liposuction and tummy tucks for quick fixes are probably also not unwilling to undergo this procedure. And I don't have any problems with people opting for cosmetic surgery -- as long as they know exactly what they're getting into. The weight loss from this procedure is going to be temporary unless you follow it up with lifestyle or diet changes to keep the weight off.

Counting calories with DailyBurn

I've reviewed free online food diaries before on this blog and at the time, I'd picked SparkPeople as my online food diary of choice because it had a lot of the features I wanted and also had a mobile site I could use. But the mobile site was so slow I never ended up using it, and after using the food diary portion for a while, I switched to DailyBurn.

I prefer DailyBurn because it's got a really nice, clean UI and is less cluttered with ads than either SparkPeople or LIVESTRONG's Daily Plate and more importantly, adding food to my daily food log is easiest on DailyBurn than the other two sites (I've tried both). The AJAXy UI is so nice -- you don't have to switch pages to add a food. You search for your food item, click on the button to add it to you food log and it displays a box you can enter your serving size and meal you ate it with and you hit submit and the box disappears and it all happens pretty fast and you're still on the search results page. The Daily Plate required multiple page clicks just to add a food. SparkPeople's UI is nicer -- it opens up a new, smaller window over the existing window so you can search for and add your food, but sometimes it's slow, and I don't think the UI is as seamless as on DailyBurn.

DailyBurn also often has an image of the food you're adding and when you look at your day's log, you can see the thumbnail of each food item you've eaten (when an image is available -- often user added foods don't have an image). You can group commonly eaten foods together with their recipe feature (I've written an article on how to add a recipe to DailyBurn), or add new recipes that you cook at home. I use this feature a lot, and if it wasn't easy to use, I probably wouldn't do it and I often didn't on SparkPeople.

I've kept a food diary off and on for a long time, but this is the first time I've been able to see exact calorie counts of the meals and foods I eat. And it's eye opening. DailyBurn is so easy to use, I can actually input every single thing I consume during the day and see the exact calorie count for the day and the breakdown of my consumption of carbs, fats, and proteins (there is a "Pro" membership for $45/year that lets you see additional nutrition information, but I haven't yet found a need to go Pro).

I can actually see now how consuming just one or two high calorie things can really spike my calorie count. I'm a small person so my meals average around 300 calories a meal, and one sweet can easily be that many calories or more. With the recipe feature, I can see exactly how many calories are in each cupcake I bake and frost and it makes me think a little more about grabbing one out of the fridge for a snack.

It is, however, time consuming. Keeping a food diary always is. I add everything I eat preferably as soon as I eat it. I use my food scale to weigh things I'm not sure about and convert grams to ounces and ounces to grams to add foods. If I can't get to my computer right away, I can use my browser on my phone, or I just jot some notes and add it later. I cook at home a lot so I'm constantly adding recipes and new food items to the site. But to be able to see my whole day's nutrition information is worth it for me. And I know I won't be doing it forever, and some days I might not do it, but I think it's invaluable and really helps me make wise food decisions.

If you want to see my profile (feel free to add me as a motivator), here's DailyBurn profile.

Nutrition information on calories may lead you astray

New Scientist's article The calorie delusion: Why food labels are wrong is an interesting one for those of us trying to make calorie wise choices. Given the choice between a 250 calorie brownie or a 300 calorie nut based muesli bar, which would you pick? I'd like to think I'd pick the muesli bar, but if you're only counting calories and not factoring in nutrition, well then the brownie's the winner. Or at least you think.

Digestion of different types of foods take different amounts of energy. The more energy your body uses up trying to digest food, the less of it you have to burn yourself. The article mentions dietary fiber and protein as two examples. Dietary fiber provides energy for gut microbes so we get 25% less energy from the calories in dietary fiber than we do from other foods. So instead of 2 calories per gram, it should be 1.5 calories per gram.

This steak would have 20% less calories
if we had updated nutrition labels

Same with protein. It takes more energy for our bodies to process protein so its calorie count should be reduced by 20%. There's also something interesting to note about soft foods (brownies are soft): they take less energy to digest so you burn fewer calories eating them. In one study they fed one group of rats their regular hard pellets and another group of rats soft food. Both of the food had the same nutritional and caloric values, but the rats that ate the soft food became obese and had more belly fat.

Then there's the fact that the brownie is almost all simple carbs and finely milled flour (see my Carbs: A Love-Hate Relationship post for more about simple vs. complex carbs) so almost all of the carbs from that brownie go into your body so you have to burn it off (whereas a good portion of something made with coarse ground wheat flour will go undigested and have to be excreted in bodily waste).

Cooking also makes foods easier to digest. In meats, cooking breaks down long protein chains making it easier for your body to digest. And for starches, it makes what might not have been digestible by our bodies to become easily digestible. In a study with 5 patient volunteers, they found that 90% of a cooked egg will get digested, and only 51% of a raw egg will get digested (what's not digested is treated as waste).

Making food choices can seem complicated sometimes because there are so many things to consider. But practice and knowledge makes it easier. So what to make of the above? Eat food closer to their natural state. Don't overcook food, and eat veggies raw when possible. Eat complex carbs. They are usually both denser and harder to digest and also more of it will be processed as waste (so less calories for you to burn off). Plus they keep you feeling full longer without a sugar crash. And you can increase your protein and dietary fiber intake if you want to. Other than that, I'm not sure I'd make any dietary changes based on the information above, but it's interesting to know and knowing more about your food is helpful in making choices.

I <3 My Garmin Forerunner

I love my Android phone and My Tracks app, too, but there's no beating the Forerunner for ease and comfort. I've been using both lately on the same trips to check out my various post run/walk sharing options. My Tracks makes it easy to add notes, and lets me take photos on walks, but the Forerunner is a better tool than my phone for a quick visual check to see how far I've gone and how long I've been going.



The one thing I wish for the Forerunner is an easier way to add notes along my runs/walks. Because I like to share my maps I want to be able to tell other people where there might be water or a bathroom or a particularly beautiful view. But I've figured out a way to add waypoints to my Garmin Forerunner maps.

This might not work for everyone, but seems to be ok for me. There is a way to mark a location on the Forerunner by going into Navigation -> Mark Location, but for me this requires about 8 button pushes to mark a location, then 2 button pushes to go back to the main screen (number of buttons pushes may vary depending on how you have your Forerunner set). When I'm running I'm not likely to want to push all those buttons. Instead, I just use the lap button.

This means I have to remember the waypoints and the order in which I saw them. When I upload my run/hike to Trimble Outdoors, the map editor notes my laps as "tracks". I can then select each point to add a note about the location. This works only if you can remember the waypoints on your run and don't need to use the lap button for its real intended purpose. So your mileage may vary trying to use this technique.

My maps on Trimble Outdoors.

Kelly Ripa is ripped!

I had no idea Kelly Ripa was so ripped! Her workout routine looks pretty well balanced and she only spends 45-60 minutes on her workouts. I personally think this is the optimal amount of time to spend on a workout. Don't work out for so long that you overtax yourself -- always leave a little energy for the next workout, and for the rest of your day.

And when you hit your health goal, maintenance of your weight doesn't require a ton of time in exercise. Remember that it's a lifestyle change you're making. Good health isn't something you stop working once you've reached your "goal", but it isn't so hard to maintain once you get there if your focus is lifestyle change and not just how many pounds you want to lose.

One legged squats

This is one of my favorite leg exercises because it's challenging and you can do it anywhere -- at the gym or at home. Notice how straight she keeps her upper body and when she bends her leg, her knee doesn't go over her toes (it's hard to tell this from many different angles in the video, but you can see it clearly at 0:12). Do them with perfect form. If you can't keep your upper body upright, then don't go as deep as she does. Do only as many reps as you can with perfect form. Make sure you really feel it in your glutes as you come up by keeping them tight and keep your abs tight to help stabilize. Enjoy!

Zuzana suggests you do 5 reps on each leg and 50 high knees as fast as you can.

How the free online food diaries stack up

Photo: by Barbara In searching around, I've found that there are a lot of free, online food diaries. I wrote an article on examiner.com, Online food diaries: Free sites that can help you achieve your fitness goals about them, but here is a more detailed comparison of the food diary/log sites I looked at.

Most online food diaries aren't just for logging what you eat. They also help track your progress and offer resources. Some sites incorporate social networking so you can meet other people for support, some sites help you plan your meals and workouts, and a few have mobile apps or websites you can use on the go, but only a couple of them have it all.

The low down on the sites

I arbitrarily chose two test foods that I searched for on all the sites. Something I had for breakfast yesterday: Oroweat 12 grain bread, and Jennie O's Turkey bacon. When I refer to my "test" foods below, I'm referring to these two items. Please note that the prices for memberships reflect the prices when I did my research (May 23, 2009) and are subject to change at the discretion of the site's management. Please also note that is not a comprehensive list of these sites.

• SparkPeople: This was my top pick. It offered everything above. Even though I'm not sure I'll take advantage of every aspect of the site, the fact that it had a free mobile site was a bonus for me (none of the other sites offer this for free). Plus the UI was nice and wasn't cluttered too badly with ads. The food search and add feature opened up a small, separate window so I could keep searching and adding foods to any meal/day. One thing I had a difficulty with was trying to add a strength training workout. It wanted me to pick individual exercises that I did and I found that slow and tedious.
  
• The Daily Plate: Part of the Live Strong network. The food search wasn't as nice to use as SparkPeople's. There are ads at the top of the results which is a little confusing because you can't add those foods. It had a wide assortment of exercises, but I had the same problem I had with SparkPeople -- it wanted me to add individual exercises for a strength training session and again, it was tedious. It has iPhone and Blackberry apps, plus a mobile site, but none of that is free ($2.99 each for the apps, and you have to be a Gold member to use the mobile The Daily Plate site for updates, though it does let you do searches for caloric content over the phone).
  
• My-Calorie-Counter: Part of the Everyday Health network. Decent database of foods -- had my two "test" foods and easy to understand serving sizes. You can add custom foods, but not add custom exercise/activities. Exercise activities required you to add time in decimals. It allowed you to add blog entries, but you have to sign up on everydayhealth.com (which hosts the blog) in order to do that. UI was ok with a clean, minimal look; ads are very visible in the header and right nav. Has the option to sign up for $5/week personal coaching. There are forums/discussion boards that looked pretty well populated and active.
  
• FitDay: couldn't find my test foods in the foods database. You can track your moods and body measurements. They offer a premium membership at $5.49/month which lets you do custom tracking and gives you access to "advanced reports" on nutrition. They have a PC app that you can purchase for $19.95 that is supposedly easier & faster than the online version. No social networking, and no free resources other than the tools to help you meet your goals (like online articles or suggested plans, etc). I couldn't stand this site's UI except for their graphs which are nicer than SparkPeople's graphs. It's very ads spammy -- they're blinking at you from everywhere.
  
• Gyminee: Social networking, lots of pre-saved workout routines. Lots of articles (but the "latest" news was from February 2009). Videos of exercises. Nice, clean UI.
  
• NutriDiary: Doesn't force you to sign up (you can sign in as a guest and take a little tour). Can log weight, food, exercise, body measurements, has reports so you can track progress. Also has a forum, but isn't as well frequented as my-calorie-counter's above. UI is minimal and ads are obvious, but not as obnoxious as on FitDay.
  
• NutraWatch: Has a premium membership option for $14.95/year with limited functionality for free. You can't track your exercise log with the free membership. Some social networking: it allows you to create "teams", but these consist of people you know and add yourself. You can add notes to your entries. And they supposedly have an app you can download to your java/web enabled phone, but when I tried to download it, all I got was an error (I tried multiple times). Sucky UI and limited free functionality.
  
• NutriMirror: My two test foods were not in the food db, and limited exercise options to choose from. UI mostly ok and has some nice graphs, but the right hand nav is atrocious.
  
• MyFitnessPartner: Good food database, but the exercise adder isn't all that intuitive. Forums that look pretty active, weight & body measurement tracking, blog (but can't add notes directly to a meal).
  

Note: I don't have a relationship with any of these sites so my opinions are unbiased (as much as anyone's opinions can ever be unbiased). And my research consisted of signing up for all of these sites and trying to input my current day's data, and looking at all the available tools on any given site, as well as looking at the what else was available like graphs, articles, forums, etc.

Power Plates vindicated?

Remember this?



The first time I caught wind of the Power Plate was when Madonna made headlines using it. A lot of people wrote it off as a fad. I was in Zurich shortly after that and the gym at the office had one of these. I stared at it and thought about using it, but never gave it a try.

A new study, though, has shown that vibrating plates may help weight loss and decrease abdominal fat.

The study involved 61 people (mostly women) who at the beginning had roughly the same amount of fat (they measured overall fat and abdominal fat) and about equally obese. They broke those people into 4 groups:

1. The first were on a dietician prescribed diet. They were asked to do no exercise.


2. The 2nd group were on a dietician prescribed diet and attended supervised classes where they partook in a conventional fitness routine including cycling, swimming, running, step aerobics, and some general muscle strengthening exercises.


3. The 3rd group were on a dietician prescribed diet and supervised vibration plate training. They were asked to do no aerobic exercise.


4. The 4th group was the control group and were not asked to change anything

The year long study started with 6 months of the fitness regiment noted above, followed by 6 months of asking the participants to try their best to maintain a healthy diet and exercise on their own without supervision.

They took body measures and CT scans of abdominal fat at the beginning, at 3 months, 6 months, and then at 12 months. As you would expect, only the 2 groups that incorporated exercise (conventional or vibrating plate) maintained weight loss at the end of the year (~5% reduction). What's more amazing, though, are the results of the fat loss:

Group	Weight loss (6m)	Weight loss (12m)	Visceral fat loss (6m)	Visceral fat loss (12m)
1. Diet only group	6%	< 5% *	24.3 cm2 (3.76 in2)	7.5 cm2 (1.16 in2)
2. Conventional exercise group	7%	6.9%	17.6 cm2 (2.7 in2)	1.6 cm2 (0.25 in2)
3. Vibrating plate group	11%	10.5%	47.8 cm2 (7.4 in2)	47.7 cm2 (7.39 in2)
4. Control group	-	gained 1.5%	-	-

* 5% weight loss is considered enough to improve health

I'm kind of impressed. For the amount of time the participants of the study were on the vibrating plate (11 - 14 minutes per session), those are some amazing results. But I would have liked to have gotten more details about the exercise regiments. The gap is so large in the amount of fat that was lost -- I wonder how rigorously the "general muscle strengthening" exercises were in the conventional exercise group. Muscle helps burn more fat so doing just cardio will build some muscle in people who don't regularly exercise and have just begun a routine, but without the weight training the results won't be as great. I don't imagine doing one day a week of general muscle strengthening (which sounds so vague) is really going to help develop much muscle.

Interested in getting one? See Power Plate related products on Amazon

Blueberries, blueberries!

If you're food aware, then you probably already know that blueberries are good for you, but now there's preliminary research that may indicate its even better for you than you thought. More research needs to be done, but in a study with rats, they found that blueberries may reduce belly fat and decrease diabetes risk. Blueberries are chock full of naturally occurring antioxidants which is what scientists suspect is responsible for its health benefits.

Researchers fed rats that are specially bred to become severely obese either a low-fat or high-fat diet. Some rats got fed a diet that was 2% blueberry. And after 90 days, the rats that were on the blueberry enriched diet had less abdominal fat, lower cholesterol, and were better able to process glucose (diabetes results when the body can no longer properly process glucose). Both the low-fat and high-fat diet benefited from the addition of blueberries, but the health benefits were even greater when combined with a low-fat diet.

Those on the low-fat + blueberry diet had the additional benefits of being lighter, having less body fat, and a smaller liver (enlarged livers are linked to obesity and diabetes).

It's blueberry season! Add it to cereal or yogurt, make some low-fat blueberry muffins or whole grain blueberry pancakes (my favorite), and enjoy those little blue gems.

Get Fit and Save the World!

Obnoxious title, isn't it? But think about it, being healthy is actually good for the planet. Achieving and maintaining my optimal body weight means I consume less food and therefore consume less resources that go into making the food I eat including raw materials like plants and livestock, and save on production costs and waste to make the food I eat, as well as transportation costs to get the food to the grocery stores where I shop and the restaurants I frequent.

This article, Keeping Slim Is Good For The Planet, Say Scientists claims that a lean population, like that in Vietnam, consumes almost 20% less resources and produces less greenhouse gases.

So go green; get fit!