The Study: Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA put 322 obese subjects through one of three diets. The three were the ones just described, a low far, a low carb, and a Mediterranean diet. They had the subjects participate for two years and found that the low carb dieters lost the most weight, 12 lb., and the Mediterranean dieters scored second place with an average of 10 lb. Low fat dieters trimmed seven pounds in two years.

There’s more to it so check out the story on ABCNews.

Does that mean you should avoid processed foods like cold cuts and hot dogs? (or anything with nitrates or nitrites) No, because a diet rich in vitamin C will prevent nitrosamines from forming. It’s that very reason that foods with nitrites find themselves packed with lots of vitamin C derivatives such as ascorbate or sodium erythrobate.

This week, the Fitness Health Network offered up a nice helping of health/fitness posts:

• Weight Loss Journal featured a guest post that discussed six ways to beat fatigue.
• Obviously given the choice between fresh and canned or frozen fruits and veggies, you go for the fresh because of flavor. However, if you are choosing between frozen and canned, go with frozen because canned veggies have been shown the least nutritional value. I didn’t know that!
• Need some ideas about creating a food budget? NCN shares some of his tips and none of them have to do with $$$.
• When you are working towards a goal, occasionally you get knocked off track. Well Israel at Fat Man Unleashed has been knocked off the last few weeks and posts this weight loss confession. Stuff happens, things don’t always go as you plan, but it’s how you respond and recover that decides how dedicated you are.
• Lazy Man offers up six cancer-fighting superfoods I didn’t know where cancer-fighting superfoods. Oddly enough, I eat all of them, so double win for me!

Number one on the list is a fruit that has been gaining popularity, especially in the alcoholic beverage market, and that’s pomegranate juice. The other day we picked up a bottle of pomegranate liquor on a whim and we’ve had Pom brand pomegranate juice in our fridge a few times. Pomegranate itself is quite fun to eat, you crack it open, suck on the little pomegranates and then spit out the seeds.

For those vino lovers, red wine makes in at #2 and even MLM-favorite Açaí juice slides inot the #6 spot. I joke about the MLM-favorite status only because it’s this juice that is pushed by Mona Vie.

Pomegranate Juice is Packed With Antioxidants [Health.com]

Anyway, when it’s in the 80s or 90s, even standing perfectly still out in the sun at 6PM will get me sweating and so it’s important to remain hydrated for our two and half long double headers. This usually means just a 1 quart bottle of Powerade or Gatorade (not Powerade Zero Mixed Berry though) throughout the first game.

What happens when you don’t get proper hydration? (we’re talking mild dehydration, not the headaches, muscle craps, death-type of dehydration… don’t ever let yourself get that far) I’ll tell you what happens to me, I get really irritable, sluggish, and my reaction time slows. When you’re playing in a work softball league, you’re really out there to get a little exercise, have a good time, and hang out with your friends. If you’re irritable, sluggish, and your reaction time is slow, it’s hard to have a good time. If you’re losing, it’s even worse.

The first few games of the season I didn’t bring my bottle of Powerade/Gatorade and so I felt like I wanted to go to sleep every time I stepped up to bat. Now, armed with my sports drink, I feel great and have been playing better, enjoying the game better, and overall been happier out there.

• Deep fried Oreos
• Cotton candy
• Corn dogs
• Deep fried Twinkie (detecting a trend?)
• Snow cone
• Funnel cake - These are my favorite, but 8.3 ounces has 760 calories, 44g fat, 80g of carbs, and 20mg of cholesterol.
• Deep fried candy bars (if you haven’t detected the trend yet…)

In summary, the foods are bad in one of two ways. Either it’s deep fried or it’s basically sugar, or it’s deep fried sugar. Deep fried is never good for you. Copious amounts of sugar is never good for you. It’s no surprise these treats are bad for you so enjoy in moderation.

First, let’s talk about what margarine is. Margarine is essentially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Hydrogenation refers to the process of infusing hydrogen atoms in liquid fats, like vegetable oil, so that they are solids at room temperature. The by-product is a significant amount of trans-fat acids. For a while, margarine was hailed as better because trans-fats aren’t saturated fats, which were known to be unhealthy for you; but it wasn’t until further study (a report released in 2005 by the US Dept. of Agriculture) did we learn that trans-fats are treated the same as saturated fats in the body.

Butter is bad for you because of saturated fat, margarine is bad for you because of trans-fat. They both have their positive merits but the bottom line is that you should eat them both in moderation.

Of the foods listed, my wife and I do get cabbage from time to time as well as frozen blueberries in our fruit smoothies. Outside of those two, we hardly eat any of them (pumpkin seeds from time to time too, now that I think about it) and probably should integrate them more. Pumpkin appears twice, that’s interesting… since most Americans only think of them during Halloween!

What we’ve started doing is walk around the lake after dinner as often as we possibly can. It’s not terribly strenuous but it’s a bit of added activity every day that has the potential of yielding good benefits down the road.

First, it gets us out and about. I spend most of my day on the computer, sedentary; so getting up and walking around more often is certainly a bonus. While I do go to Body Pump twice a week, every little bit extra certainly helps.

Second, it burns calories at a rate of 100 per mile so that’s 300 burned calories each time we go out. If there are 3500 calories per pound of fat, that’s a pound every 12 days if we’re running at equilibrium. In a year, that’s potential 31 pounds.

Lastly, it’s some good quality time where there are few distractions. We get a chance to chat and that’s priceless.

If you want to lose weight, your body needs to run at a deficit. If you eat 3500 fewer calories a week, you can expect to drop a pound of fat. If eating 3500 fewer calories seems unreasonable, especially if the typical diet is 2000 calories a day, you need to figure out ways to burn an additional 3500 more calories a week. How can you do that?

First, let’s break it down per day. If you can burn up 500 calories a day extra, or eat 500 less, or any combination of the two; you can cut out one pound a week. That seems much more manageable than the 3500 number right? So, think of ways you can cut out 500 calories a day. If you drink a can of soda, that’s 100 calories. Can you skip it? If so, you only need to burn an extra 400 calories. Take one less bite of lunch and save it for tomorrow. Go low calorie and eat lots of fiber. Eating one fewer calorie is far easier than burning it.

But, let’s talk about burning it. The typical benchmark is that a 150 lb. person will burn 100 calories for every mile they walk on level ground. If you weight 150 lb., simply walk five miles a day and you’ll have burned out 500 calories and well on your way to losing a pound a week. Doesn’t that sound really easy? If you weigh more, you’ll burn more. You don’t burn more by running that mile, though you do improve cardiovascular health.

If you are more ambitious, hit the gym and ride the bike, walk the treadmill on incline, or do the elliptical machine. All those will burn calories far faster than walking on level ground, but require more effort. You could always start walking and then move to the gym. Or simply walk on an incline at the gym while watching TV or something.

Remember, 3500 calories is a pound of fat.