Are you familiar with something I call the Pendulum Diet (aka Yo-yo Dieting)? Some people double down on weight loss and actually make a huge difference. They’re feeling good and living healthier, and all seems well.

But then something strange happens: the weight comes back. This nearly inexplicable trend is depressing for many; after all, why lose the weight when you’ll just gain it back? MSNBC goes into more detail below-

When you lose weight — and gain it all back

All you have to do is wheel your grocery cart into a checkout line to see the cautionary tales screaming at you from the tabloids:

Kirstie Alley regained the 70-plus pounds she lost on Jenny Craig. Maureen “Marcia Brady” McCormick got even heavier after she was on Celebrity Fit Club. Oprah, well, we all know about her struggles. Janet Jackson, Kelly Clarkson… the list goes on and on.

It makes you wonder: If these rich, powerful women, with their personal trainers and private chefs, can’t win the weight war, what chance do I have?

It doesn’t help that the statistics are grim: By some estimates, more than 80 percent of people who have lost weight regain all of it, or more, after two years. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles analyzed 31 long-term diet studies and found that about two-thirds of dieters regained more weight within four or five years than they initially lost.

Women who want to lose weight know these painful numbers all too well. “I’ve been on a roller coaster for the past two years,” says Leigh Moyer, 31, of Philadelphia. In 2003, she lost 25 of her 155 pounds by diligently counting calories and logging daily sweat sessions at the gym. Four years later, busy with graduate school and her job at a software company, Leigh blew off her workouts and stopped monitoring her portions… and shot up to 175. “It was so sad, so frustrating,” she says. “I let myself down.”

Along with the emotional toll is a physical one: Not only is the extra weight a health risk, but recent studies have linked the gain-lose-gain cycle to such potentially life-threatening conditions as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, depression, heart disease, and cancer.

Understanding metabolic math
While small fluctuations on the scale are normal, the unhealthy behavior that experts refer to as “weight cycling” is not. Cycling is defined as a significant increase or decrease of body weight (generally 10 pounds or more) that occurs multiple times.

Experts believe a yo-yo pattern is often the result of a diet that’s too restrictive, and a study reported in the journal Obesity backs that up: It found that people who followed a very low-calorie diet regained significantly more weight than those on a more forgiving plan. Desperate for quick results in a culture of instant gratification, “women try to lose weight on diets with too few calories,” says Judith Beck, Ph.D., director of the Beck Institute of Cognitive Therapy and author of “The Beck Diet Solution.” “If you lose weight on 1,200 calories a day, the minute you go up to 1,300 is the minute you start gaining weight.”

It happened to Tracy Srail. The 24-year-old from Atlanta has watched the scale bounce between 130 and 160 pounds for the past four years. “At one point, I was eating only one or two meals a day and chugging Rockstar energy drinks because I heard that caffeine increases your metabolism. I lost 15 pounds, but it didn’t stick,” she says. “I weigh about 155 now.”

Even on a sensible diet, your body sheds pounds reluctantly. “One reason it’s difficult to keep weight off is because there is a metabolic overcompensation for weight loss,” says Gary Foster, Ph.D., director of the Center of Obesity Research and Education at Temple University in Philadelphia. “If you decrease your body mass by 10 percent, you would expect your metabolic rate to decrease by 10 percent, but it actually slows down more than that, by about 11 to 15 percent.”

Why does your own metabolism thwart you? Simple, says Kelly Brownell, M.D., director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University: “The body may perceive dieting as a threat to its survival. It might not know the difference between Atkins and famine.”

What’s more, says Brownell, who coined the term “yo-yo dieting” in the 1980s, weight cycling can actually change your physiology. So the more diets you’ve been on, the harder it becomes to lose the weight. A hunger hormone called ghrelin increases, and a fullness hormone called leptin decreases, so you feel hungrier and less satiated.

Born to rebound?
It’s bad enough that your body fights you when you try to lose weight. Now there’s compelling research to show that some people may be hardwired to yo-yo.

David Kessler, M.D., former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner and author of “The End of Overeating,” and his team of researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and Yale University, looked into the biology of weight cycling. They found that the reward circuits in the brains of people Kessler calls “conditioned hypereaters” were excessively activated simply by the smell of food and stayed that way until those people finished eating whatever was on the plate in front of them.

In other words, when you have overactive neural circuitry, resisting temptation is not a question of willpower alone. “This is a biological cause of conditioned hypereating. It’s the first time we can say ‘It’s not your fault,’ ” Kessler says. He estimates that 50 percent of obese people and 30 percent of overweight people are conditioned hypereaters.

Evidence shows, however, that this reaction is partially learned, and that through conditioning, you can rewire your brain. After all, the yen to yo-yo is not just physical; emotional triggers play a huge role too. A study at Brown University found that dieters who ate in response to emotions such as stress or loneliness — as opposed to external events, like overdoing it at happy hour — were more likely to regain weight.

When Darcie Schmidt of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was in her late twenties, she lost 75 pounds and then regained 120 over two years, largely because of emotional eating, she says. In her early thirties, she stuck to a strict diet-and-exercise regimen and shed 132 pounds. “I did not eat a single chip for 18 months,” she says. But the stress of a divorce, a move, and a return to school knocked her off track, and she traded her three-mile, five-day-a-week runs for bags of those verboten chips — and regained 40 pounds.

Beck sees women like Schmidt all the time, who do well for a while, only to fall off the wagon. The problem, she believes, is that they never learned the skills needed for long-term behavior change. “They haven’t been taught how to motivate themselves every day,” Beck says, “or how to respond to negative thoughts and recognize a mistake as a one-time thing.”

A study of 200 overweight and obese people, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, supports the importance of a behavior-change approach. Along with other weight-loss techniques, one group received an additional hour of therapy, in which they learned to change their behavior; the other group did an extra hour of low-intensity exercise. After a year, those in the therapy group had maintained their weight loss, while the other group’s members hadn’t.

Risky bigness
While watching the numbers on the scale fluctuate wildly is a blues inducer and clothes-budget buster, there are far more compelling reasons to hold steady. For one, your metabolism might be affected — and not in the way you probably hoped.

“If you go on a very strict diet and gain the weight back quickly, you might lose a lot of muscle and regain a lot of fat,” says Keith Ayoob, M.D., R.D., an associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Then your metabolism operates on a slower idle, which means it’s going to be harder to lose weight as time goes on.”

The more times you yo-yo, the theory goes, the more fat your body gains in each rebound. Because muscle burns 10 times more calories than fat does, your metabolism eventually will slow to a crawl.

“Losing and gaining regularly takes a huge toll on your body,” Ayoob says. Beyond aesthetics, such as a loss of skin elasticity, regaining weight burdens your arteries and skeletal system, and may stress the liver, which can become covered in fat.

Yo-yoing also does a number on your ticker: A study in Clinical Cardiology found that women who weight cycle five times or more during their lifetimes may be damaging their hearts in the process.

But perhaps most startling is the dangerous and lasting effect weight cycling has on the immune system. According to the first study of the long-term impacts of yo-yo dieting, women who repeatedly lost and gained weight had lower immune function, particularly lower counts of natural killer cells. “These cells are important for fending off infections and are also vital in fighting the early stages of cancer,” says Cornelia Ulrich, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Low killer-cell activity is associated with higher rates of cancer. In her study of more than a hundred overweight but otherwise healthy women, those who had yo-yoed most frequently — five times or more — decreased their natural killer-cell activity by a third.

With so many drawbacks, you might wonder if you’d be better off just accepting your belly rolls. But the perils of being overweight still outweigh the risks of yo-yoing. So how do you quit the cycle for good? Despite what you read in the tabloids, it is possible.

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Sometimes you’ll find the rare bird who doesn’t like chocolate. These folks are few and hard between however, so you probably enjoy some form of this delectable dessert in one way or another. That can be a problem.

Obesity’s prevalence in the United States is a serious threat to our daily standard of living, but there may be a great way to avoid it in part. According to a recent article at ScienceDaily, a 15-minute walk can cut chocolate consumption in half! Amazing, no? You can read more below:

Short Walk Cuts Chocolate Consumption in Half

A 15-minute walk can cut snacking on chocolate at work by half, according to research by the University of Exeter. The study showed that, even in stressful situations, workers eat only half as much chocolate as they normally would after this short burst of physical activity. Published in the journal Appetite, the research suggests that employees may find that short breaks away from their desks can help keep their minds off snacking.

In the study, 78 regular chocolate-eaters were invited to enter a simulated work environment, after two days abstinence from chocolate snacking. Two groups were asked to take a brisk 15-minute walk on a treadmill and were then given work to complete at a desk. One group was given an easy, low-stress task, while the other was asked to complete a more demanding job. The other two groups were asked to have a rest before completing the same tasks as the first two groups. Again, half were given an easier task and the remainder a more challenging one. Chocolate was available in a bowl on the desk for all participants as they carried out their work.

Those who had exercised before working consumed on average half the amount of chocolate as the others: around 15 grammes, compared with 28 grammes. 15 grammes is equivalent to a small ‘treat size’ or ‘fun size’ chocolate bar.

The difficulty of the task made no difference to the amount of chocolate they ate, which suggests that stress did not contribute to their cravings for sweet snacks.

Lead researcher Professor Adrian Taylor of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Exeter said: “We know that snacking on high calorie foods, like chocolate, at work can become a mindless habit and can lead to weight gain over time. We often feel that these snacks give us an energy boost, or help us deal with the stress of our jobs, including boredom. People often find it difficult to cut down on their daily treats but this study shows that by taking a short walk, they are able to regulate their intake by half.”

Exercise is known to have significant benefits for mood and energy levels and has potential for managing addictions. Professor Taylor and his colleagues at the University of Exeter have previously shown that exercise can curb cravings for chocolate but this is the first study to show a reduction in consumption.

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Medication is a modern blessing and something that affects a large number of people, especially  in the developed world. As the population of many countries ages, pharmaceutical companies keep researching more and more ways to keep everyone alive longer and feel better, even as their age creeps up.

While this can certainly be a good thing, medication can also have a negative impact if used improperly.  Many complicated side effects can occur even with regular use, so proper research is important.  If you’d like to read more about a recent study regarding medications and emergency hospitalization, read on thanks to the Dr. Pullen blog:

Medications as a Cause of Emergency Hospitalizations in the Elderly

According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine article close to 100,000 Americans of Medicare age are hospitalized annually from medication related conditions.  You might at first think that these are due to overdosages of prescription pain killers or abuse of other prescription medications, but in fact just a relative handful of types of medication lead to most of these hospital admissions. In addition the very old were especially at risk, with half of these admissions in patients over age 80, and about 65% were due to unintentional overdosage of the medications.

Not surprisingly warfarin leads the list and causes almost 1/3 of medication related hospitalizations.  I’ve discussed warfarin in an earlier post on medications with a narrow therapeutic window.  Next in line was insulin, which led to 14% of the admissions, likely due mostly to hypoglycemia and the attendant problems like seizures and coma.  Anti-platelet drugs like aspirin and clopidogrel (Plavix) was next at 13%, and oral diabetes medications next at 11%.

Combined these medications led to >2/3 of medication related hospitalizations in the elderly. How can you avoid these mishaps?

• If you are on warfarin be sure to understand the nuances of the drug regarding diet, medication interactions, and be sure to follow through with your recommended anticoagulation clinic visits.
• Use a weekly medication container to place your medications into to avoid duplicate doses of medications and unintentional overdoses.
• With diabetes medications like insulin and oral medications be sure to let your physician know if you are having low blood sugar problems, know how to manage days when you are sick or unable to eat regularly, and work hard to avoid being in situations where you are not able to eat properly.
• With anti-platelet drugs avoid excess alcohol, use of other NSAID products, and let your physician know if you are having acid-dyspeptic symptoms or note blood in the stool or emesis.

Even if you do everything right, know that these medications have inherent risks, and don’t hesitate to seek medical attention if you develop problems with the meds. Also be sure to let any physician treating you know that you are on these meds.  Consider carrying a current medication list to give to any physician you see so they can keep your medications in mind when they treat you.

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Who among us enjoys the stomach flu? None, I’d wager. This is one of the most miserable sicknesses out there.  It consumes all your energy and creates a terrible amount of nausea.

But could there be a solution out there? I’ll give you a cautious “yes” after reading an article from NPR’s Shots Blog. A pharmaceutical company has developed a vaccine that could lessen or eliminate the effects of the stomach flu (aka the norovirus). Keep scrolling if you’d like to read more about this exciting discovery!

Experimental Vaccine for Stomach Flu Might Work

Nothing ruins a nice cruise or a gluttonous run down the office party buffet like the norovirus.

The obnoxious virus causes the euphemistically-named stomach flu and is one of the most common foodborne illnesses. If you catch it, there’s no drug to make you better. You pretty much have to ride out the diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain for a few days.

For now the best way to prevent the illness is with good hygiene. Even then, the highly contagious virus is hard to contain. So there’s growing interest in a vaccine.

An experimental vaccine being developed by LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals has been tried in a study involving almost 100 people. And the results, though preliminary, suggest a vaccine could help protect people from norovirus.

In the test, half the people got two spritzes of vaccine in the nose three weeks apart. The others got placebo spritzes on the same schedule.

Three weeks after the second spritz, the study volunteers faced a pretty tough test. They had to swallow 10 times the amount of norovirus that is usually enough to infect half the people exposed to it.

What happened? More than two-thirds of the people who got placebo came down with stomach flu. Only 37 percent of those who got two doses of the vaccine did. Side effects that could have been related to the study were about the same in both groups.

The result come with some caveats. The vaccine didn’t lead to as strong an immune response as a natural infection. It’s also not clear how long a vaccine’s protection would last. And there are lots of different noroviruses, so a vaccine won’t really be ready for prime time until it can tackle several of those at the same time.

Still, the researchers conclude, the study “shows that it may be possible to use a vaccination strategy to prevent norovirus disease.”

The work was funded by LigoCyte and the National Institutes of Health. The results appear in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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There’s a lot of news out there, some gloomier than others. But today I’d like to give you a bit of good news! Cancer is a very stressful and disruptive condition, but we’re discovering more and more treatments for it as the years go by.

According to a study from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, continuing to take anticoagulant medication can greatly decrease your risk of death if you’re fighting prostate cancer. It’s remarkable how the little things in life really add up sometimes, but this is just one more way you can look out for yourself. Would you like to read more about the study? Keep scrolling to see the rest of the info thanks to About.com Men’s Health Blog.

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Understanding basic first aid isn’t just for Boy Scouts! Emergencies can happen anytime, anywhere and it pays to be prepared. You don’t have to have your MD to help others out in a pinch if you follow a few simple guidelines.

Car wrecks are never convenient, but they can also be very dangerous, especially if the impact happened at high speeds. Getting professional help is important as well, so don’t forget to call 911! If you’d like to learn more tips, please continue reading the following article from the How to Save a Life Blog.

Basic First Aid Tips – Things Everyone Should Know

Everyone should know some basic first aid tips. One never knows when the need will arise where someone is injured, hurt or unconscious. For severe injuries, the first few minutes can be crucial that one knows what to do to assist the person until medical help can arrive. For the minor injuries that happen, knowing basic first aid will help remedy the situation and prevent further problems from arising.

The first thing that everyone needs to do when faced with a major situation that requires basic first aid tips is to make sure that the victim is safe, that those who are trying to help the victim are safe as well. So getting out of immediate danger has to be the first step one takes. Next one needs to determine if the victim is awake or conscious and breathing. If they are not conscious or breathing, then it is important to get medical help on the phone. In the meantime one can make sure that there is nothing in their mouth that would restrict airflow. It may be necessary to administer CPR if one has been trained or knows how to do this. If not, medical personnel on the phone can walk someone through it. Check for any external bleeding. If there is bleeding it needs to be stopped by using direct pressure. Using gauze or terry cloth can be helpful in stopping the bleeding, but do not remove the coverings just hold it in place until medical help arrives.

Burns are another area that will need one to know some basic first aid tips. A burn needs to be stopped from burning as quickly as possible. Generally this can be done by placing the affected area under running water for five minutes. Do not put oil or butter on a burn as it stops it from being able to breathe. Medical help should be obtained if the burn is severe or is a chemical burn. Burn victims must be watched carefully for signs of shock.

For minor injuries there are basic first aid tips that one should know. The first is to have a well stocked first aid kit. For scrapes and cuts it is important to make sure the affected area is free of debris by holding it under running water. It may be necessary to use soap, which will sting but clean the wound well. It is not necessary to cover the scrape or cut unless it will come into contact with clothing. Antibiotic ointment can be applied, but is not necessary.

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It’s flu season all right, but you don’t have to take this one sitting down. You don’t always need a shot to protect yourself either; a little basic hygiene can truly go a long way! Nobody likes being sick, so it pays to be careful

Today’s post offers a few helpful tips from the Touch of Wellness Blog. Don’t lost the flu fight this year!

Fight the Flu this Season

Runny nose, fever, sore throat, muscle aches…sound familiar? These are all symptoms of the much-dreaded flu. This season, don’t let the flu knock you off your feet. Stay healthy with some of these great everyday prevention tips to stop the spread of germs.

1. Clean your hands. It’s a known fact that washing your hands often will help protect you from germs. Warm soap and water are best but have an alcohol-based hand rub for back up just in case.

2.  Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. This will help stop the spread of germs from a surface or object that has the flu virus on it, like a handrail or doorknob, to your body.

3.  Practice healthy habits. Strengthen your immune system by maintaining a healthy diet, drinking plenty of fluids and fitting in regular exercise.

4.  Get ample sleep. When you body is tired, it can’t fight off infections as easily. Rest and relaxation are key.

5.  Keep your distance from people who are displaying symptoms of the flu. Close contact with others who are sick, including friends and family members, puts you at risk.

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It’s a widely accepted fact that diet and exercise are necessary ingredients to living a healthy life. There are other elements on the emotional and spiritual side of things; however, taking care of your body is fortunately fairly straightforward in comparison. But what’s the best way to go about exercising and fitness if you haven’t made it a routine in your life?

Goal-setting helps you nail things down and decide on a plan of action. But these goals must be structured the right way if you ever hope to make progress! Thanks to the content of an article by Smoothfitness.com, you can now sharpen your understanding of fitness goals and live a better, healthier life!

SETTING REALISTIC FITNESS GOALS

The success of any workout plan or fitness regimen is determined by the progression from one goal to the next. In order to progress in a healthy way it is very important to set realistic fitness goals. Setting one large goal is great; however, it is never just one step from where you are today to that goal. Setting small short term goals and reaching them will eventually lead to your overall goal but in a realistic and healthy way.

How to set these goals is going to be based largely on what you hope to achieve from your workouts. If gaining muscle is your long term goal then your short term goals may include week long periods of careful calorie counting to insure you consume more than you burn off. Or short term lifting progressions. For example, if you are building your biceps, find an initial weight that falls within your body’s current limits. Lift that weight and then move up by 5 or 10 pounds every few weeks. This is the kind of progression that makes sense and is healthy for your body. Expecting to add an additional 20 or 30 pounds each day will only result in unhealthy levels of fatigue, discomfort, and quick derailment from your long term plan.

Setting goals for a long term weight loss plan is going to be a little different but the same logic applies. Dieting is often the hardest part in any weight loss plan. Setting small dietary goals will help you transition into healthier eating habits gradually. For example, if you currently eat fast food on average three times a week, cut it down to 2 times a week for a month, then cut back to 1 time a week for a month, and eventually eliminate it entirely. Or keep going 3 times a week, but slowly cut back on the fries, get water instead of soda the next week, then start ordering grilled chicken instead of fried chicken. With either approach the logic is the same.  Small goals that are attainable in the short term will build your confidence and will keep you on track. If you try to cut all the bad things out at the same time, you are much more likely to get frustrated and give up.

In addition to setting dietary goals, a weight loss program requires a physical exercise component. This can be another hard step for individuals who are not as active as they would like to be. It is very easy to think you need to go run 5miles on day one. Yes, there will be physical benefits to that kind of workout; however, they won’t be worth the mental deficit this kind of extensive workout may result in . If you are new to working out just try an activity that will boost your heart rate for at least 15minutes each day. This can be any number of things from intramural sports to walking around the neighborhood. Once you exercise for 15minutes, move on to 20minutes, then 25, then 30 and so on. A healthy workout time is about 30-45minutes if weight loss and fat burning is your long term goal. Again, it is important to build up to this goal, so take it slow and your body will thank you.

These are short term goals that not only help build confidence mentally, but your body will respond better to this gradual slope. Giant spikes in any progression are usually followed by big falls, so take small steps. An increase in your intensity as small as it may be is still an increase. Think of your goals as steps in a staircase, each step no matter its size, still moves you up. Overtime you will reach your long term fitness goal in a healthy way and the staying power of your results which be much greater.

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