Every year, millions of Americans resolve to lose weight, whether on New Year’s Day, their birthdays, or just some morning when their mirror or the bathroom scale seems particularly unkind. And every year, many get frustrated and give up before they reach their goals. Contributing to this problem is a host of bad information about diet and exercise that circulates through gyms, workplaces, and over the Internet.

To help more people achieve and maintain a healthy weight, Julie Bender, a dietitian with Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, and Phil Tyne, director of the Baylor Tom Landry Health and Wellness Center agreed to “weigh in” on many of the most common diet and exercise myths.

Diet and Exercise Myth #1: Crunches will get rid of your belly fat.

False. “You can’t pick and choose areas where you’d like to burn fat,” Tyne says. “In order to burn fat, you should create a workout that includes both cardiovascular and strength training elements. This will decrease your overall body fat content.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #2. Stretching before exercise is crucial.

False. Some studies have suggested that stretching actually makes muscles more susceptible to injury. They claim that by stretching, muscle fibers are lengthened and destabilized, making them less prepared for the strain of exercise. “You might want to warm-up and stretch before a run, but if you are lifting weights wait until after the workout to stretch your muscles,” Tyne suggests.

Diet and Exercise Myth #3. You should never eat before a workout.

False. “Fuel” from food and fluids is required to provide the energy for your muscles to work efficiently, even if you are doing an early morning workout. “Consider eating a small meal or snack one to three hours prior to exercise,” Bender says. “Load up your tank with premium ‘fuel’ and choose some fruit, yogurt, or whole wheat toast.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #4. Lifting weights will make women bulky.

False. “Most women’s bodies do not produce nearly enough testosterone to become ‘bulky’ like those body builders on TV,” Tyne says. If you do find yourself getting bigger than you would like, simply use less weight and more repetitions.

Diet and Exercise Myth #5. Fat is bad for you, no matter what kind.

False. Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of “good fats” out there that are essential for good health and aid in disease prevention. “They are the ones that occur naturally in foods like avocados, nuts, and fish, as opposed to those that are manufactured,” Bender says. “Including small amounts of these foods at meal times can help you to feel full longer and therefore eat less.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #6. Restricting calories is the best way to lose weight.

False. Both cutting back on calories and moving more will help you lose weight and maintain the lean muscle mass needed to boost metabolism. People often believe the diet and exercise myth that they must take drastic measures to lose weight, such as eating less than 1200 calories per day, but such diets usually do not provide adequate fuel for the body and may slow metabolism. “Drastic measures rarely equal lasting results, so start small and eliminate 100-300 calories consistently from your daily diet, and you will reap the reward,” Bender says.

Diet and Exercise Myth #7. As long as you eat healthy foods, you can eat as much as you want.

False. A calorie is a calorie. Although oatmeal is healthy, if you eat four cups of oatmeal, the calories add up. “Healthy or otherwise, you still must be aware of portion sizes,” Bender says. “You must limit your caloric intake in order to lose weight, however, understanding how to ‘balance’ calorie intake throughout your day can help you avoid feelings of deprivation, hunger and despair.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #8. Exercise turns fat into muscle.

False. Fat and muscle tissue are composed of two entirely different types of cells. “While you can lose one and replace it with another, the two never “convert” into different forms,” Tyne says. “So fat will never turn into muscle.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #9. Eating late at night will make you gain weight.

False. “There are no ‘magic’ hours,” Bender says. “We associate late-night eating with weight gain because we usually consume more calories at night. We do this because we usually deprive our bodies of adequate calories the first half of the day. Start the day out with breakfast and eat every 3-4 hours. Keep lunch the same size as dinner, and you will be less likely to over-indulge at night, yet you can enjoy a small late-night snack without the fear of it sticking to your middle.”

Diet and Exercise Myth #10. You have to sweat to have a good workout.

False. “Sweating is not necessarily an indicator of exertion—sweating is your body’s way of cooling itself,” Tyne says. It is possible to burn a significant number of calories without breaking a sweat: try taking a walk, or doing some light weight training, or working out in a swimming pool.

By Sonia Zjawinski

Eight quarter pounders generate the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as driving for three hours while burning a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days. The study, done by Akifumi Ogino of the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Tsukuba, Japan, found that most of the greenhouse gas emissions are in the form of methane (read: farts). Over two-thirds of the energy used to make your steak goes towards producing and transporting the animals’ feed.

A 2003 Swedish study suggested that organic beef, raised on grass rather than concentrated feed, emits 40%less greenhouse gases and consumes 85% less energy.

In other carbon related food news, Tesco, the largest grocery retailer in the UK, is working on a carbon labeling system that will show consumers how large of a carbon footprint the foods they buy have.

The project, with help from Oxford University, requires calculating the carbon footprint of over 70,000 products and will cost Tesco $10 million. But will people really count their carbon calories?

Seems like $10 million could be better used for sourcing localing manufactured and grown foods that don’t need to travel such large distances? PSFK seems to agree.

Also, how would the carbon footprint data be read? Would it be included in the nutritional label? And how would people know what was a large or small footprint? I still don’t know what’s an obscene amount of carbs and sugars (hence my ignorance while eating pasta and guzzling grapefruit juice), so how am I supposed to know what’s bad for the environment?

I’m all for educating the public, but I also think that small, local farmers are having a harder and harder time making ends meat (no pun intended). Isn’t it time mega markets got involved, as well as the government? Every city should have a solid farmers market to get their goods.
Here’s a poster from the New York Farm Bureau that I think sums it all up.

Via Wired.com

If it works, this could be the best weight loss invention yet - the ability to easily burn almost 120 extra calories per hour while working at your computer.

The origin of this thinking comes from Dr. James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, who found that any incremental movement, even fidgeting, burns extra calories. From this, he extrapolated that even very light aerobic activity would cause the body to greatly increase the rate at which it burns calories, a process called non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

To study his hypothesis, he invented a computer workstation that can be used while walking slowly - very slowly - on a treadmill, and recently released the results of a small research study that evaluated how many calories this would burn.

The recent study included 15 obese individuals - 14 women and one man - in their forties who did no regular exercise. Their average Body Mass Index (BMI) was 32 and percent body fat was 52%. Using the treadmill at 1mph burned 119 more calories per hour during the study than sitting while working, which would indicate that walk-working for 2 to 3 hours per day could lead to a weight loss of about 45 pounds in a year according to Dr Levine. […]

Read more: Lose Weight While Working at Your Desk

Many women have tried a new diet, failed, and then switched to another one. The reason is these diets leave you hungry, deprived of vital nutrition and tend to slow down your metabolic growth. One of the major weight loss programs that claim to bring an end to all your problems is the Curves fitness plan.

Curve fitness plan consists of six weeks of training where you are taught how to weight loss and prevent it coming back to you. The most significant aspect of this plan is that it increases your metabolism that allows you to burn calories round the clock. It is achieved by healthy eating and various strength-training exercises. The curve fitness plan requires eating various small meals at frequent intervals rather than less number of large meals. This is especially helpful during the low calorie phase of the plan by prevention of hunger. In order to speed up your weight loss labors, you eat more to have a higher metabolic rate.

Read more at Curve Fitness

Sent by Nitin Chhoda, Toning For Women

Have you ever considered using gimmicks that promise ‘instant weight loss without any exercise or dietary modifications ‘, ‘fat free (but not calorie free) foods’, ‘fat burning pills’, ’spot reduction gels’ and creams ?

In an attempt to lose weight, it is likely that you or someone you know has tried the ‘low carb’ diet.

Sadly, many of the above techniques facilitate water loss and not necessarily fat loss. The advertisers have no legal obligation to mention this, and it is not in their best interests to do so. A consumer therefore ends up buying into the hype, in the quest for rapid weight loss.

It is important for us to understand the facts behind the hype. When trying to lose weight, the goal should be to lose ‘fat’ weight and not ‘water’ weight (which is essential to the body). The weighing scale simply gives you a sum of both. In other words, when you lose weight on the scale, it may be water or fat - you never really know!

As nature has it, water weight is the easiest to gain or lose. Next in the list of relative ease is muscle, which is unfortunately lost through temporary fad dieting. Fat requires the most patience and discipline to lose. It takes years of cumulative bad habits to pile on the fat stores. It is therefore unrealistic to expect to lose it in a few weeks. Beware of any ‘quick fix’ schemes that promise otherwise.

Lets take a look at water. All of us have heard the old adage “Drink at least 6 - 8 glasses of water daily”. Yes, but have you ever wondered why ?

70-75% of our body is water. If we do not drink enough water, additional demands are created on 2 key organs, the kidney and the liver. Not only do the kidneys get overworked, but latest research has now shown that in a state of dehydration the liver works overtime to flush out the body toxins thereby compromising on its primary role; that of breakdown of fat stores. Hence fat gets retained. Think of it. You can actually get fatter if you do not drink water regularly!!!

Important lesson - try and finish 0.5 liters every 4 hours by sipping water regularly. Get into the pattern slowly - it normally takes 3 - 4 weeks to get into a healthy pattern of drinking water, after which you will start to feel the improvement in energy, and gradual weight loss.

Finally, remember that body weight can fluctuate by as much as much as 2 pounds daily due to variations of fluid levels throughout the day. Woman should make note that variations are more marked due to the fluid loss during menstrual cycles. This means that if the weighing scale shows that you have suddenly lost 2 pounds over a few days, its no reason to celebrate. If you have associated headaches, loss of concentration, lethargy and loss of appetite, you may be dehydrated.

A good way to prevent the weighing scale from tricking you is to weigh yourself first thing in the morning after every 8 - 10 days. This way you can rule out the intraday ups and downs due to fluctuations in water weight.