AshleyB Reviews on FITNESS AND NUTRITION

End of Holiday Season- STAY ON TRACK WITH THESE FOODS!

2010-12-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

The end of the holiday season is almost here, but we all have one more potential hurdle to face before January 1 (and an enhanced commitment to our goals) rolls around: New Year's. I'm talking about the partying on the Eve (hello party food and delicious drinks!), and the sampling of all the "good luck" foods associated with New Year's Day.

Beyond that, you're probably also thinking about your goals for next year, but I've got you covered there, too. Read on for a variety of health New Year's recipes, diet-friendly foods you should include in your meals and tips to set up shop to reach your goals once and for all in 2011.

Probiotics:

Years ago, you would have cringed at the idea of billions of bacteria living in your intestines, but today you are probably among the millions who are looking for ways to increase these healthy guys, called probiotics. While we know that there are more than 400 different types of beneficial bacteria in the intestines, we are just beginning to uncover the various roles they play. We should definitely include foods that contain these probiotics, such as yogurt, drinkable and squeezable yogurts, fluid milk with added probiotics, fermented milk such as sweet acidophilus milk, and kefir. (You can also find probiotics in fermented vegetables such as kimchi and sauerkraut.) There is little regulation with probiotic supplements, so always talk to your doctor before using such a supplement.

Probiotics: A Billion Good Bugs

Exotic Eats: Kimchi

Farmers Markets:

Farmers markets are popping up in communities large and small with fresh, local produce that is affordably priced available to all. Whether you are looking for a creative way to expose your family to fresh fruits and veggies, wanting to support your local farmer, searching for more organic options, or showing support for environmentally friendly and sustainable farming practices, the local farmers market has something for everyone.

A Beginner's Guide to the Farmers Market

Farmers Market Food Finds

Omega-3 Fatty Acids: After the fat-free craze of the 90s, a superstar fat took center stage. Found in flaxseed, fatty fish, soybeans, and walnuts, omega-3 fatty acids do a body good. These essential polyunsaturated fats have been shown to be beneficial in heart health, bone health, mental health, intestinal health and more!

The Mega Benefits of Omega-3s

7 Super Sources of Omega-3s

Better-for-You Yogurt:

A few years back, yogurt hit its low point: sugary granola, cookie bits, and even chocolate candies were mixed in, and some varieties had more than two tablespoons of sugar (in addition to the natural milk sugars). Lower-sugar and plain yogurt have made resurgence on supermarket shelves, as has Greek-style yogurt, which due to the straining process is higher in protein, and usually lower in carbohydrates and calcium. Thick and tangy, it's livening up dips, replacing mayo and sour cream, and becoming a tart swap for whipped cream on health menus everywhere. Without all the sugar and additives, yogurts real health benefits can shine.

How to Buy the Best Yogurt

We Ate It: Greek Yogurt

The Rise of Mixed Greens (and Decline of Iceberg):

Goodbye pale iceberg, hello leafy dark greens. Yes, the likes of spinach, romaine, collard, and kale have added color, texture and taste along with an ample additional of fiber, vitamins and mineral to our salads and cooked vegetable side dishes. From fast food joints all the way up to the finest steakhouses, you can find salads with some heft to them. Your palate and your body will thank you for choosing a more nutritious salad blend.

9 Super Salads

Best and Worst Salad Toppings

Strategies for Salad Bar Survival

Healthier Restaurant Food:

You asked for it, you got it and you were in shock! That’s right, you wanted to be an informed consumer and know the nutritional breakdown of your favorite restaurant and fast food selections. Then when you saw it in print you gasped in horror at the damage you were doing to your body. Giant hamburgers and biggie fries climbed to more than 2,000 calories and an entire day's allowance of fat. Thank heavens that restaurants and fast food joints have started to help out by offering complete meal selections for fewer than 500 calories, along with baked chips, apple slices, carrot sticks, and yogurt as side options.

Food on the Run series

Dining Out Guide

Whole Grains for Everyone: Finally, the truth is out… carbohydrates aren’t evil, you just have to know how to select the healthier, whole-grain types in the correct portion sizes and amounts. Awareness and consumer demand has greatly increased your options, and it's easier than ever to find tasty and healthy whole-grain foods. With selections such as whole grain breads, crackers, and cereals, brown rice, and whole wheat pasta, it’s easy to stock up your pantry shelves. It is reassuring to know that you can now provide your body with the energy needed and feed your brain as well by easily selecting your whole-grain products.

Easy Ways to Cook Whole Grains

Whole Grains are the Whole Package

Baffled by Bread? How to Choose the Best Loaf

Healthier Breakfast Cereals:

Remember those mornings when you gulped down bowl after bowl of brightly colored, sweetened shapes of highly refined grains that turned your milk pink or blue? You were fascinated by the cartoon character on the box, or the prize inside, and you didn’t realize that you were easily consuming a quarter cup of sugar along the way. This was the typical childhood breakfast for most of us, but the healthy alternatives were boring! Flash forward to today, when the grocery shelves are lined with healthier options that are now made with the whole grain and contain less sugar and more fiber and protein. No longer tasting like cardboard, these cereals can make everyone in the family happy. Top with some fruit and low-fat milk, and you do finally have a breakfast for a champion.

How to Pick a Healthy Breakfast Cereal

Ready-to-Eat Vegetables and Fruits:

Steam packs, prechopped/washed slices and stick, a wider variety in the freezer case, and individual portion packs--they're a healthy eater's dream comes true. They're washed, prepped and ready to consume--a busy parent's secret weapon. Canned portion packs of fruits are perfect for anyone’s lunch. A freezer full of vegetable blends can turn any veggie hater into a veggie-connoisseur. You might be paying a bit more, but if you'll actually eat more vegetables, then it's worth it.

The Shelf Life of Fruits and Vegetables

Which is Better: Canned or Frozen Vegetables?

Fiber, Fantastic Fiber:

It’s been a well-known fact that different types of fiber have numerous health benefits in the body. Fiber is involved in the lowering of cholesterol levels, controlling blood sugar levels, preventing certain types of cancer, and of course maintaining a healthy gastrointestinal tract. However, when fiber was shown to be involved in helping with hunger management during weight loss, it took on a life of its own. While searching for high-fiber foods like fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains, you will likely come across foods that are highly fortified with fiber. However, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, as this "stealth fiber" is teaching us.

Delicious Ways to Boost Fiber Intake

Fiber: Perhaps Not as Simple as You Thought

'Fake' Fiber in Your Food? How to Spot It

Eating Meat, but Less of It:

In the words of journalist Michael Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” While meat is an excellent source of protein that is used by the body to maintain muscle mass and provide satiety during weight loss, it still needs to be viewed as a side dish, not the main entrée. That means including a 3-4 ounce cooked portion of lean meat, beef, pork, or fish that covers just 1/4 of your 9-inch plate. Be adventuresome as well, and expand your recipe repertoire to include several meatless meals each week using soy products, beans, legumes, and nuts. Join the movement for Meatless Monday.

Learn More about Flexitarianism

Meat-Free Meals

*****I make this dip every year for New Years (and for myself whenever I have a craving.)

For parties, I double the recipe and spread on a large cookie sheet and top with vegetables.

20 Minutes to Prepare and Cook

Ingredients

8oz block of FF Cream Cheese
8oz tub FF Sour Cream
1 Package Taco Seasoning Mix

Top with:
Shredded Lettuce
Shredded Cheese
Chopped Tomato
(any desired chopped vegetables!)

Directions

Beat Cream Cheese, Sour Cream and Taco Seasoning together. (If you want a thicker dip you can use the Low Fat or Full Fat versions)

Spread in shallow 8x8 or 9x9 pan and top with toppings of choice. Serve with corn chips. Refrigerate leftovers

Number of Servings: 10

Recipe submitted by SparkPeople user ELFGODDESS.

Number of Servings: 10

2010-12-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

This is a great article I found in Mens Health By David Zinczenko that can apply to anyone.

Two out of three people in America today are either overweight or obese. That means every time you sit down in an airplane or a packed movie theater, more likely than not you’re going to wind up as the lean center of a fat sandwich. But as you look right and left and see nothing but heft, you can’t help but think, What happened?

How did we all get so darn fat?

Well, the simple answer is that we eat more calories. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that American men eat 7 percent more calories than they did in 1971; American women eat a whopping 18 percent more—an additional 335 calories a day! But the harder question is this: Why do we eat so many more calories? Are we suddenly more gluttonous? Do we have some kind of collective death wish? Is the entire country hellbent on qualifying for the next season ofBiggest Loser?

No. There’s an even crazier reason: It’s the food!

We’ve added extra calories to traditional foods, often in cheap, mass-produced vehicles like high fructose corn syrup. These new freak foods are designed not by chefs, but by lab technicians packing every morsel with maximum calories at minimum cost—with little or no regard to dietary impact. Indeed, Eat This, Not That! 2011 has uncovered the truth about some of your favorite fast food and grocery store items and how they're causing you to pack on unnecessary pounds. It’s enough to kill your appetite, which—in these cases, anyway—would be a good thing.

Bonus Tip: Don't miss our year-end walk down The Restaurant Hall of Shame: The 20 Worst Foods of 2010!

THE FAST-FOOD HAMBURGER
The great American staple. Don’t worry, burgers really do come from cows—but have you ever wondered how those giant chains process and distribute so much meat so cheaply? And . . . are you sure you want to know?

The Truth: Most fast-food hamburger patties begin their voyage to your buns in the hands of a company called Beef Products. The company specializes in taking slaughterhouse trimmings—heads and hooves and the like—that are traditionally used only in pet food and cooking oil, and turning them into patties. The challenge is getting this byproduct meat clean enough for human consumption, as both E. coli and salmonella like to concentrate themselves in the fatty deposits.

The company has developed a process for killing beef-based pathogens by forcing the ground meat through pipes and exposing it to ammonia gas—the same chemical you might use to clean your bathroom. Not only has the USDA approved the process, but it's also allowed those who sell the beef to keep it hidden from their customers. At Beef Products’ behest, ammonia gas has been deemed a “processing agent” that need not be identified on nutrition labels. Never mind that if ammonia gets on your skin, it can cause severe burning, and if it gets in your eyes, it can blind you. Add to the gross-out factor the fact that after moving through this lengthy industrial process, a single beef patty can consist of cobbled-together pieces from different cows from all over the world—a practice that only increases the odds of contamination.

Eat This Instead: Losing weight starts in your own kitchen, by using the same ingredients real chefs have relied on since the dawn of the spatula. (Here are the15 best dishes for quick and easy weight loss.) If you’re set on the challenge of eating fresh, single-source hamburger, pick out a nice hunk of sirloin from the meat case and have your butcher grind it up fresh. Hold the ammonia.

BETTY CROCKER'S BAC-O BITS
We’ve all been there before: A big bowl of lettuce or a steamy baked potato is set before us and the sudden desire for a bit of smoky, porky goodness pervades. We try to resist, but we grab for the bottle anyway: Mmmmm . . . bacon.

The Truth: Not quite. If it’s Bac-Os you grab for, just know that there’s not the slightest whiff of anything pork-like to be found in the bottle. So what are those little chips you’ve been shaking over your salads? Well, mostly soybeans. The bulk of each Bac-O is formed by tiny clumps of soy flour bound with trans-fatty, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and laced with artificial coloring, salt, and sugar. The result is a product that’s actually less healthy for your heart than the real thing!

Eat This Instead: Hormel makes a product called Real Bacon Bits, and as the name implies, it’s made with real bacon. And gram-for-gram, the real bacon actually has fewer calories than Betty Crocker’s Bac-Os. If Hormel can make a nutritionally superior product using real bacon, then why would you ever choose the artificial one that’s loaded with partially hydrogenated soybean oil?

PREMADE GUACAMOLE
When you buy bean dip, you expect it to be made from beans. And when you buy guacamole, it seems reasonable to expect it to be made from avocados. But is it?

The Truth: Most guacamoles with the word “dip” attached to the label suffer from a lack of real avocado. Take Dean’s Guacamole, for example. This guacamole dip is composed of less than 2 percent avocado; the rest of the green goo is a cluster of fillers and chemicals, including modified food starch, soybean oils, locust bean gum, and food coloring. Dean’s is not alone in this offense. In fact, this avocado caper was brought to light when a California woman filed a lawsuit against Kraft after she noticed “it just didn’t taste avocadoey.”

Eat This Instead: Avocados are loaded with fiber and heart-healthy monounsaturated fats. Trading the good stuff in for a bunch of fillers is cheating both your belly and your tastebuds. Either look for the real stuff (Wholly Guacamole makes a great guac), or mash up a bowl yourself. Scoop out the flesh of two avocados, combine with two cloves of minced garlic, a bit of minced onion, the juice of one lemon, chopped cilantro, one medium chopped tomato, and a pinch of salt.

Bonus Tip: Unlike packaged-food manufacturers, fast-food and sit-down restaurants don't typically rely on chemicals to enhance flavor. Instead, they pack in sugar and sodium, calorie counts be damned. Beware of The 10 Worst Fast Food Meals in America!

FRUIT ON THE BOTTOM YOGURT
It seems like the ideal breakfast or snack for a man or woman on the go—a perfect combination of yogurt and antioxidant-packed fruits, pulled together in one convenient little cup. But are these low-calorie dairy aisle staples really so good for you?

The Truth: While the yogurt itself offers stomach-soothing live cultures and a decent serving of protein, the sugar content of these seemingly healthy products is sky-high. The fruit itself is swimming in thick syrup—so much of it, in fact, that high-fructose corn syrup (and other such sweeteners) often shows up on the ingredients list well before the fruit itself. And these low-quality refined carbohydrates are the last thing you want for breakfast—Australian researchers found that people whose diets were high in carbohydrates had lower metabolisms than those who ate proportionally more protein. Not to mention, spikes in your blood sugar can wreck your short-term memory, according to a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Not what you need just before your urgent 9 a.m. meeting with the boss!

Eat This Instead: Plain Greek-style yogurt, mixed with real blueberries. We like Oikos and Fage brands—they’re jacked with about 15 to 22 grams of belly-filling protein, so they’ll help you feel satisfied for longer. And blueberries are another great morning add—scientists in New Zealand found that when they fed blueberries to mice, the rodents ate 9 percent less at their next meal.

Bonus Tip: Daily e-mails (or tweets) that contain weight-loss advice remind you of your goals and help you drop pounds, according to Canadian researchers. We're partial to our own Eat This, Not That! newsletter, and to the instant weight-loss secrets you'll get when you follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/davezinczenko).

TURKEY BACON
Pork bacon’s got a bad rap for wreaking havoc on your cholesterol. But is turkey bacon really any better?

The Truth: Stick with the pig. As far as calories go, the difference between “healthy” turkey bacon and “fatty” pig is negligible—and depending on the slice, turkey might sometimes tip the scales a touch more. Additionally, while turkey is indeed a leaner meat, turkey bacon isn’t made from 100 percent bird: One look at the ingredients list will show a long line of suspicious additives and extras that can’t possibly add anything of nutritional value. And finally, the sodium content of the turkey bacon is actually higher than what you’ll find in the kind that oinks—so if you’re worried about your blood pressure, opting for the original version is usually the smarter move.

Eat This Instead: Regular bacon. We like Hormel Black Label and Oscar Mayer Center Cut bacon for some low-cal, low-additive options.

REDUCED-FAT PEANUT BUTTER
Nothing makes a PB&J feel less indulgent like a scoop of low-fat Jif. It’s low fat, so it must be better for you . . . right?

The Truth: A tub of reduced-fat peanut butter indeed comes with a fraction less fat than the full-fat variety—they’re not lying about that. But what the food companies don’t tell you is that peanut oil—the fat in peanut butter—is a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat that can actually help fight weight gain, heart disease and diabetes! Instead, they’ve tried to cash in on the “low-fat” craze by replacing that healthy fat with maltodextrin, a carbohydrate used as a filler in many processed foods. This means you’re trading the healthy fat from peanuts for empty carbs, double the sugar, and a savings of a meager 10 calories.

Eat This Instead: The real stuff: no oils, fillers, or added sugars. Just peanuts and salt. Smucker’s Natural fits the bill, as do many other peanut butters out there. We especially like Peanut Butter & Co. Original Smooth Operator and Original Crunch Time.

Bonus Tip: The average American drinks 450 calories a day—a quarter of the calories you're supposed to consume during an entire day! Beware of The 20 Worst Drinks in America, 2010 Edition.

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EAT RIGHT RULE: If your food can go bad, it's good for you. If it can't go bad, it's bad for you.

Winter Activities- how many calories burned?

2010-12-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

It's way too easy to gain a few pounds during this time of year, but if you pay attention to your calories in and calories out, there's no reason you can't maintain the body you've worked so hard to create! The first part of that is knowing how many calories are in the foods you're eating, but the other is knowing how many calories you burn doing various activities.

I looked at a few common winter activities on the Health Status website and Health Discovery website and noted how many calories the average 150-pound woman would burn over the course of 30 minutes. You can adjust the activity, weight or duration to answer your questions using the Health Status calculator or Health Discovery calculator.

Happy Hostess
You're excited to be the one hosting the celebratory New Year's Eve party or the cozy snow day soiree, and that's a good thing, because many of the activities you'll do are decent calorie burners. Shopping for food and decorations for 30 minutes burns 81 calories, and you'll get rid of another 90 each half hour you spend putting away groceries and cooking. If you rearrange the furniture (remember, you can't have a dance party without a dance floor!), you'll torch 225. Spend 30 minutes styling your hair and burn 90 calories, and when it's all over, you'll go through 153 calories mopping and 77 washing dishes.

Outdoor Enthusiast
After the recent storm, many people are facing inches, if not a few feet, of snow. Snowmobiling burns 117 calories in 30 minutes, ice-skating is worth 252 calories, sledding torches 234, downhill skiing is good for 297 and cross-country skiing wins with 387. You might need to chop a little wood to keep the fire roaring when you get back indoors -- you can count on burning 207 calories in 30 minutes with that. Clearing your driveway is a great calorie burner, too: Shoveling by hand is worth 216, and using a snowblower knocks off 162.

Inclined to the Indoors
If when you hear a forecast for snow, you bury your head under the covers, don't worry -- you'll still burn a few calories. Staying cozy on the couch reading a book gets rid of 36 calories. Up the action to playing a board game and you'll burn 56 in 30 minutes. Use your time wisely and get some cleaning done to burn 99. Or get your chilly buns to a Bikram or hot yoga class to burn 238 calories in just half an hour.

Of course, these aren't the only winter activities you can have fun with. My friends at FitSugar have the calorie burn for building a snowman (143 per half hour), having a snowball fight (160 calories) and making a snow angel (107 calories). We're not sure where they came up with the numbers, but we don't have time to worry about that -- we've got a snowman to build!

SOOO GET MOVING THIS HOLIDAY!

5 BIGGEST FITNESS MISTAKES YOU CAN Make FOR THE NEW YEAR

2010-12-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

This list goes for New Year workout enthusiasts and gym vets. Make your New Year resolutions and healthy habits do work for you by avoiding five common beliefs about exercise and diet.

1. Thinking your workout are more important than your recovery. The actual time you spend in the gym doesn’t change your body. The adaptations that occur during the after effects of exercise change your body. Recovery involves eating good sources of protein, adequate sleep, hydration, detoxification, and optimal nutrition levels.

2. Not protecting oneself from gym germs. I see clients in a personal training studio, FitOne Studio and had forgotten about gym germs. Basically, protect yourself from an easily spread staph infection by cleaning the equipment before you use it and covering wounds.

3. Using your workout as an excuse to binge. There is a huge difference between rewarding yourself in moderation, eating the right foods for recovery, and binging on junk food or alcohol because you went to the gym 2 times this week. A moderate and acceptable way to reward yourself for hitting your goals is of great value to your fitness program. Having a 2 bagels and convincing yourself that you will work off the calories in the gym is undermining your gym efforts. That reasoning could only work if you plan on spending two hours plus in the cardio area.

4. Just doing “Cardio”. This is simple- if you want to increase your metabolism, be healthy, lose weight, and feel good; you must improve your insulin receptor sensitivity. This is done with a combination of resistance training, low Glycemic Index dieting, and some cardio exercise. The more sensitive a person’s insulin receptors are, the more efficient your muscles and liver are at using insulin to regulate metabolism. Insulin is the key to the vast majority of chronic illness. Fortunately, it is the variable most easily influenced by healthy eating and exercise. Just doing cardio can also put extreme amounts of force onto your joints that results in painful chronic injuries.

5. Avoiding weights because of the bulking up myth. Ladies I believe you, lifting weights can make you bulk up. However, this doesn’t occur because of the act of lifting weights, it occurs from a poorly progressed exercise program or inflammation from too much physical activity. Progression in fitness refers to how a person changes their exercise regimen for positive adaptations. Positive adaptations are a consequence of proper progression because the body’s response to exercise comes from a process that involves the immune system, nervous system, and endocrine system. This has to involve subtle changes rather than drastic changes for positive to occur. A drastic change to the body’s systems can cause excess inflammation, unnecessary muscle responses, and an impaired immune system. A quickly made decision to join a boot camp program after only working out once per week is a drastic change to the body’s system therefore causing negative adaptations like inflammation in the muscles. If you want the toned look you desire, follow a sensible diet and exercise regimen tailored for your body and lifestyle.

Happy New Year...:::....

MOTIVATION AND SELF CONTROL!

2010-12-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

You’ve been trying to “get in shape” for years.

You have tried all the diets.
You’ve had a gym membership(s) for years & years
You buy all the books
You’ve hired a trainer
You’ve popped pills and applied creams

Problem is…

You diet for a week, cheat for 3 days, diet for 2, cheat for 6, diet for 1….
You stopped going to the gym in February
You read the books and never apply your newfound knowledge
And you skip training sessions

Your Motivation sucks and you have no Self Control

And without motivation & self control, the best weight loss program in the world is useless.

Sucks doesn’t it?

And it sucks even worse when you run into one of those people who never seem tempted by America’s fast food industry.

Why is it that they can say no to a delicious Big Mac with 2 all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese….while you’re getting hungry just looking at the picture.

Well, according to this study, one of the major differences between normal weight people and overweight people is impulsivity.

And, what the heck is impulsivity?

According to the researchers, impulsivity is an important construct that covers a wide range of behavioral, motivational and emotional phenomena.

In this context, impulsivity is made up of four separate components, which are the basis for the creation of a scale called the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale:

Urgency, defined as ‘‘the tendency to experience strong impulses, frequently under conditions of negative affect’’;
Lack of Perseverance, defined as ‘‘the difficulty to remain focused on a task that may be boring or difficult’’;
Lack of Premeditation, defined as ‘‘the difficulty to think and reflect on the consequences of an act before engaging in the act’’;
Sensation Seeking, defined as ‘‘a tendency to enjoy and pursue activities that are exciting, and openness for new experiences.’’

Previous studies had shown that urgency may contribute to an obese person’s problem controlling eating in situations of strong emotion. See emotional eating.
.
Lack of Perseverance has only been measured in obese persons by means of self-report questionnaires. Previous research has shown a link betweenobesity and self discipline (which is related to lack of Perseverance). Obese persons who overeat have a strong tendency to suppress thoughts which may make the suppressed thoughts (e.g., thoughts of food) become hyperaccessible, which in turn causes distress and increased food consumption. This may explain why obese people overeat, despite their intentions to control their food intake.
In the same vein, it has been shown that avoidance of body/shape concerns actually increases such preoccupations. Thought control difficulties may discourage patients and interfere with their treatment.
.The Lack of Premeditation aspect of impulsivity has shown in previous studies that obese persons choose immediate rewards even when future long-term negative consequences are associated with them. This reflects an inability to assess future impact, which may potentially contribute to disadvantageous decision-making (e.g., not considering the possible long-term negative consequences of overeating).
.When it comes to the Sensation Seeking dimension of impulsivity, research has shown that overweight persons with binge eating disorders have enhanced sensitivity to rewards. The tendency to seek rewards (e.g.,food) is associated with food intake, overeating and subsequent weight gain, as well as difficulty maintaining or losing weight. This tendency affects food intake, especially when varied food (food that varies in color, form, taste and texture) is offered. It may be related to a heightened selective attention to food stimuli and may make it difficult to regulate eating, particularly in obese individuals who have impaired sensitivity to the hunger and satiety signals that normally regulate eating.
The researchers hypothesized that hypersensitivity to food stimuli associated with poor self-control would lead to difficulties regulating eating behavior and related thoughts.

The Study

The aim of this study was to examine for the first time how obesity and eating disorder symptoms are related to the four facets of impulsivity in a clinical sample of overweight and obese women.

The results suggested that overweight and obese persons have higher levels of:

Urgency,
lack of Perseverance,
Sensitivity to Reward, and
Sensitivity to Punishment.

In regards to Urgency, the results suggest that obese and overweight persons may have difficulties controlling their eating behavior, and especially when they are experiencing intense emotions.

This inability to prevent oneself from overeating may have detrimental immediate (e.g., self-depreciation, depressed mood, abdominal pain) and long-term consequences (e.g., weight gain). This tendency to overeat can, in turn, lead to the development of maladaptive strategies to control weight (e.g., dieting, skipping meals). As such, it may help explain why certain overweight and obese individuals develop an eating disorder.

The high levels of lack of Perseverance may result in obese and overweight individuals having difficulty controlling their thoughts of food or thoughts concerning their shape and weight.

This phenomenon may lead to overeating because thoughts of food increase the desire to eat.

Sadly, eating may be used to escape from negative thoughts (e.g., general negative thoughts or self depreciating thoughts following out-of-control eating). This phenomenon is probably reinforced by the temporary alleviation of the negative thoughts and emotions and it may well increase the likelihood of excessive food intake.

The researchers also found that obese and overweight persons have high levels of Sensitivity to Reward. This tendency to exaggerate the impact of rewards (food, in this case) may lead to weight gain or impede weight loss.

Conclusion

Based upon their results, the researchers concluded that:

Obese and overweight persons find it difficult to inhibit automatic or dominant behaviors and intrusive thoughts.
They also have a tendency to exaggerate the impact of rewards and punishments.
The study also confirmed the relationship between impulsivity and dysfunctional eating.

Based on these conclusions, the researchers believe that psychological interventions intoobesity should target the self-control problems that characterize impulsive behaviors.

Two types of interventions should be offered:

Obese and overweight patients may benefit from treatment that focuses directly on remediation of inhibition, attention and mental flexibility and improves processing resources.
They may also benefit from interventions that circumvent limited cognitive resources and work on automatic processes.

To the extent that obese persons have deficits affecting inhibition and mental flexibility, they may benefit from mindfulness techniques that target inhibition (of dominant or automatic behaviors and of intrusive thoughts) and mental flexibility processes. Mindfulness encourages a more adaptive relationship with the thoughts and negative emotions that previously triggered problematic eating; it also encourages patients to observe their feelings of hunger and satiety.

Since intrusive thoughts and visual images of food (visualizing a specific food item) and olfactory images of food (smelling a specific food item) play a key role in triggering overeating, obese persons may benefit from imagery techniques that aim to strengthen their thought-control abilities. The imagery technique uses visual and olfactory imagery tasks in which persons are trained to form images that interfere with images of food. To this end, they are asked to read visual and olfactory cues silently. These cues are unrelated to food and are printed on a sheet of paper, for example ‘‘Imagine the appearance of a rainbow’’ or ‘‘Imagine the smell of freshly mown grass.’’

Then, the patients are instructed to maintain the imagined scene or smell by focusing exclusively on the picture or on the smell that each one brought to mind. Researchers have found that this procedure reduced food desire. They suggest that this is because the visual and olfactory images interfere with food-related images.

Given that binge eating often occurs when cognitive resources are depleted (e.g.,when the person is tired or under stress), obese persons may benefit from implementation intention techniques that rely on automatic components of self-regulation.

The idea is that planning in advance when, where and how a person will complete a self-assigned goal (‘‘If situation x is encountered, I will perform behavior y!’’) leads to effective and automatic goal initiation and pursuit.

This technique has been found to facilitate the attainment of goals to eat healthier foods (less fat and more fruits) and to engage in physical exercise.

Whew…that’s a lot of science to absorb on a Tuesday afternoon.

And it’s exactly why I say that losing weight isn’t as simple as “eat less & move more“.