Tag Archives: Joe

Improve exercise sessions by carrying a cold thermos?

Posted on March 20, 2012 | Comments Off

Can holding a cold thermos help you lose weight?

From Joe:  Reporter  Anahad O’Connor reviewed the evidence indicating that you might improve the quality of your exercise sessions by carrying a cold thermos around, especially if you are overweight. You don’t use it for hydration but for cooling purposes!

…the scientists recruited obese women, ages 30 to 45, with no other health problems. The women took part in three group exercise sessions a week for three months, and held special cooling devices in their hands as they walked on treadmills and performed lunges and other exercises.  In one group, the devices circulated cold water, but in the other group, the water was room temperature.

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Take a vacation, break a bad habit

Posted on March 7, 2012 | Comments Off

From Joe:  It’s counterintuitive. Attack a bad habit such overeating when you are on vacation? That’s when most of us put on the pounds! Yet this is exactly the kind of advice that New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg provided when he was recently interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

In his new book, “The Power of Habit,”  Duhigg reviews up-to-the-minute information from the cognitive sciences about how habits are formed and broken. A key element in this process is the brain’s predisposition to conserve energy by automating behaviors which you perform with regularity. By turning these behaviors into automaticities, the brain conserves your decision-making resources for when they are needed to face novel challenges in life.

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Is it time to start planning your next vacation?

Posted on September 20, 2011 | Comments Off

From Joe: That looks like an odd question to find at TheFittestLoser. But I recently encountered some information about vacation planning that made me wonder if thinking and planning about vacations might be similar to thinking and planning other journeys – real and metaphorical – we take in life. In a recent “how to” article giving tips for planning vacations, Michelle Higgins summarizes what scientists have found about how your happiness is affected by vacation trips. It turns out that your anticipation of the vacation plays an extremely important role in the effect your vacation will have on your overall happiness. In many cases, the anticipation and planning of the vacation will create more happiness than the vacation itself! Hence, Ms. Higgins advises us to relish the anticipation of the event:

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For healthy choices, shop with a cart, not basket

Posted on July 20, 2011 | Comments Off

Will a basket or a cart determine how healthy your grocery choices are?

From Joe:  When you are shopping to eat healthy, does how you hold your items make a difference in the kinds of items you select?

Consumer Reports reporter Maggie Shader would answer “Yes!”

She cites a study which found that carrying your items in a basket leads you to make unwise choices. Carrying items in a basket …

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Wanting Fitness Benefits, Hating Fitness Effort

Posted on June 24, 2011 | Comments Off

If you want to change your life, you have to change yourself. Or, at least part of yourself.

From Joe:  We’ve talked about it before: Converting lifestyle changes into permanent improvements is a major potential stumbling block for everyone who wants to develop better health and fitness practices. That’s why I’m always harping on the importance of framing the issue as one where you change your life by changing your self. Or at least a part of yourself. In the final analysis, that’s the only thing over which you might truly have control.

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Why Home Cooking is Best

Posted on June 15, 2011 | 2 Comments
Eating at home more? Well, celebrate that fact you are being both frugal and more healthy.

From Joe: Are you eating out less because of your new diet? Or because our new economy demands more frugal living?

Are you feeling deprived because you miss those frequent trips to restaurants? Professional chef Sara Jenkins might make you feel better about eating more meals at home:

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Imagine eating M&M’S, then lose weight!

Posted on May 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

Thinking about sweets might actually help you eat less of them.

 

From Joe: Writing about Treats without Calories, Henry Alford asks us to imagine if imagining ourselves overeating some snacks can help us lose pounds:

I’m what any right-thinking nutritionist would call average size. But note that the number 165 is rendered in heterosexual pounds. In gay pounds, I’m Precious. So when I hit 170 this winter, I knew it was time to test-drive a Carnegie Mellon study I’d read about. Scientists there discovered that when you repeatedly imagine eating a certain food, your craving for that food (but not others) is reduced.

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More on “Which diet plan is best for you?”

Posted on May 17, 2011 | Comments Off

From Joe:  We earlier reported the buzz about a Consumer Reports study of diet plans. Now Tara Parker-Pope advises us to be skeptical and tough-minded about successes claimed by commercial weight-loss programs:

 The magazine said Jenny Craig had “the edge over the other big names” on the basis of a two-year study published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. In that study, 92 percent of 442 overweight and obese women stuck with the program for two years…They lost an average of about 16 pounds…But the magazine failed to report that the women in the study didn’t pay a dime to sign up for the Jenny Craig program. Unlike real Jenny Craig customers, they received $6,600 worth of membership fees and food during the two-year study…Today, someone who wanted to spend two years on the program would pay about $400 in registration fees and about $100 a week for packaged meals…

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Which diet plan is best for you?

Posted on May 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

From Joe: If you are looking for a diet plan you can follow for the long haul, Meghan Casserly at Forbes.com suggests you should check out the new Consumer Reports evaluation of diet programs:

 When looking to lose weight, there are a number of serious–and not-so-serious–issues to consider: Will the food taste bad? Will I always be hungry? Will I go broke buying into a meal plan? Will it be convenient? Will I still get to eat out with friends? But for most of us, the bottom line is this: Will I be able to lose weight and keep it off?

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Can multi-tasking at work wreck your diet?

Posted on May 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

From Joe:  Shortly after the turn of the century, we all were being sold a bill of goods about the coolness factor of multitasking: New gadgets, a new generation of workers, instant communication, all this was presented to as really slick. Article after article represented anybody who did not joyfully and skillfully multitask as being an old fogey — most probably a male old fogey. (For example, a USAToday story with its subtext.)

 A lot of research has been done on multitasking since that time. The gist of this research is that we pay a steep price for constantly switching our attention when we are doing something important.

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