Tuesday, September 20, 2011

DIY Sublimal Mind Control

You can surround yourself with not so subtle messages that will help program yourself to eat healthy and exercise. You can also sabotage yourself in the same way. Deprogram your environment now and begin a new program of self mind control in the direction of health.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Product Review: Fitbit Wireless Personal Trainer

If you want to get in shape, track your progress, or even measure the quality of your sleep, you might like the  Fitbit Wireless Personal Trainer. You don't have to be a gadget lover to like it.

What it does: It uses an accelerometer chip, like the Wii Fit , smart phones, iphones and other gadgets, which measures movement in three dimensions. At day's end, or whenever you like you can plug the included fitbit receiver into a USB port, and the receiver will wirelessly collect data from your fitbit tracker, then send the data to the fitbit website. You use this website for most of your tracking and analysis.

You can also wear the fitbit tracker when you sleep (you slip it in a cloth wristband that comes in the fitbit package). In the morning, sync the data from the device to the fitbit website, and it will keep a record of when you went to bed, how long it took to fall asleep, how often you woke up during the night, and what time you woke up. It tells you your "sleep efficiency,"

The Fitbit is not perfect and cannot do everything. It cannot tell how hard you're working, but it does a great job tracking movements, day or night, asleep or awake.

I feel this device would be a usefull and fun weapon to add to your anti-obesity arsenal and that it could be just the thing to help you win that war against fat.

Friday, September 9, 2011

How a little more muscle can help you lose weight faster

It makes sense that muscle cells burn fat faster than fat cells, but I just read an article about health misconceptions about how fast that really is.

Skeletal muscle cells burn approximately 13 Calories per kilogram per day or around 6 Calories per pounds per day. So, if you weigh in at 180 pounds and are a man, your skeletal muscles will burn around 442 Calories per day when you are just sit around all day. If you are an average female at that same mass, you’ll burn about 379 Calories from your at rest skeletal muscles per day.

Fat cells will burn around 4.5 Calories per kilogram or approximately 1/3 what skeletal muscle cells will burn.

That is a three times faster calorie burn for every pound of muscle gained. I think that means that when I get serious about losing weight, I will dust off the old weight bench and add a little muscle building time to my morning routine.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Blunt Doc says: Belly fat + Prediabetes + 10yrs = Diabetes + Heart Attack

He doesn't have much tact, but he get the point across. This no-nonsense cardiologist lays it on the line: Your belly fat and bad habits are killing you.



Waiting for a new pill? You can, but you'll get fatter & sicker if you wait the wrong way.

Same old story. There is always some new study giving hope, or some new pill on the horizon that will cure type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, stories like this give another excuse to procrastinate on beginning the diets or doing the exercises that can actually make you better right now.

Am I against hope? No.But even if they do get a pill that works, they won't be giving it away free.

If you want to wait for the pill, OK. Just do yourself a favor and wait for it on the treadmill and expect it to come after you hit your goal weight. If you wait for it on the sofa, watching TV, you might not live long enough to buy that new miracle cure.

The gist of the article is: "..Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have shown that an enzyme found in the mitochondria of cells is decreased in the skeletal muscle of those with type 2 diabetes, a finding that could lead to the development of drugs to boost the activity of this enzyme in an effort to fight the disease.

A paper in published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the enzyme, Sirt3, is decreased in the skeletal muscle of humans and animals with diabetes by at least half, compared to those without diabetes and that this may contribute to development of insulin resistance"

Friday, September 2, 2011

Exercise changes stem cells to bone instead of fat.

Any medicine that makes you thinner AND prevents osteoporosis at the same time would likely cost a lot of money. New research done by Department of Kinesiology's Gianni Parise shows that you can get it all for free.


The study shows that " mesenchymal stem cells" could become either fat or bone cells. Making mice do aerobic exercise on little treadmills made their little stem cells more likely to become bone than fat. Mice that were sedentary had more fat instead of bone got negatively impacted blood production in their marrow cavities.


I know some would prefer expensive medicine to doing aerobic exercise. But walking is free, lowers your chance of diabetes, makes you thinner, and now we know it gives you better bones and blood. 


So, what do you think? Spend money on pills or get healthy for free? If you must spend money, think: It might be better to get a nice treadmill than a new pill habit going on.