Showing posts with label Body Fat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Body Fat. Show all posts

Monday, April 27, 2009

Maybe fat isn't your fault, blame hormones


Controlling weight isn't just about calories consumed

Researchers found a "food free" way we get fat. Many people swear they got fat through no fault of their own. They eat right and exercise, yet a slim body alludes them.

I don't believe this is a reason to throw your hands up and give up your weight loss goals and efforts. But it would be progress to see less blame and more compassion for people dealing with weight issues and obesity.

This is certainly not the first study involving leptin and won't be the last. The more we understand, the better our chances are for a solution more people can apply. This begs the question, 'What were the study participants eating?' as opposed to how much. Perhaps the macro-nutrients of their meals - protein, carbs, fat - influenced the studies results.

I'd like to see studies applying leptin control to low carbohydrate and no carbohydrate diets. If you're not eating foods that involve raising blood sugar - only carbohydrates dramatically spike blood sugar - you probably would circumvent the need for leptin (and insulin) to be effective in the first place.

Researchers at the University Of British Columbia have discovered a food free route to obesity. Can people really gain a lot of body fat without overeating? According to Timothy Kieffer, a University of British Columbia researcher, you really can get fat without pigging out at the buffet. Read more and watch Dr. Mercola's video explaining that not only is type 2 diabetes completely preventable, but it is virtually curable for anyone who is willing to put in the hard time and work and recovering their insulin and leptin sensitivity.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

In The News

Our Kitten Baylee. I said to Jerry "Isn't she precious." He said, "No. I've seen her in action when she's awake."











More shoppers avoiding corn sweetener

LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- A growing number of U.S. shoppers are opting to buy foods containing pure sugar instead of corn syrup, statistics indicate.

The move away form high fructose corn syrup is so prevalent the Corn Refiners Association has organized a campaign on the Web site, www.sweetsurprise.com, to stand up for the syrup, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

"We have been very concerned about the misunderstanding of our product in the marketplace and want to provide the facts so that consumers can make their choices based on science rather than urban myth," the association's president Audrae Erickson said.

Health professionals have said high fructose corn syrup with may be contributing to obesity across the country. Others say because natural sugar has the same amount of calories, neither sweetener is to blame.

"Our message is that people should cut down on both," Center for Science in the Public Interest Director Michael Jacobson said.


Copyright 2008 by United Press International

'Exercise Pill' Is No Replacement For Real Exercise, Expert Cautions

ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2008) — Recently, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, a research organization focused on biology and its relation to health, published a study in the journal Cell on the results of a substance that increased exercise endurance without daily exertion when tested in mice. Media reports have described this substance as an “exercise pill,” potentially eliminating the need for exercise.

Frank Booth, a University of Missouri expert on the science of inactivity, says the “exercise pill” study did not test all of the commonly known benefits of exercise and taking the pill cannot be considered a replacement for exercise.

In the Cell paper “Exercise Mimetics” the researchers demonstrated that AMPK-PPARĪ“ pathways, which is a cellular messenger system, can be targeted by orally active drugs to enhance training adaptation or even to increase endurance without exercise. However, Booth cautions that some of the commonly known benefits of exercise were not tested in the Cell paper including:

* Decreased resting and submaximal exercise heart rate
* Increased heart stroke volume at all exercise work loads
* Increased maximal exercise cardiac output
* Lower blood pressure and arterial stiffness
* Increased aerobic capacity

A complete list of the 26 benefits not tested in the paper is included below. Read more.

ScienceDaily: Your source for the latest research news and science breakthroughs --

Testosterone And Body Fat Are Controlled By The Same Genes


ScienceDaily (Aug. 6, 2008) — Genes that control percentage of body fat are also responsible for circulating levels of testosterone in men, research published in a recent edition of Clinical Endocrinology shows.

The research shows a 23% overlap between the genes that control testosterone and those that regulate body fat composition, suggesting that these two variables are partly controlled by the same set of genes.

The study led by Dr Jean-Marc Kaufman at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium was carried out on healthy male sibling pairs and estimated the extent to which sex hormones and body fat are controlled by the same genes. The research involved a cohort of 674 men from 274 independent families, as part of a larger study investigating the origins of body composition, sex steroid status and peak bone mass in healthy men. Read more.

Stand Up For Your Health
Physiologists And Microbiologists Find Link Between Sitting And Poor Health

June 1, 2008 — Physiologists analyzing obesity, heart disease, and diabetes found that the act of sitting shuts down the circulation of a fat-absorbing enzyme called lipase. They found that standing up engages muscles and promotes the distribution of lipase, which prompts the body to process fat and cholesterol, independent of the amount of time spent exercising. They also found that standing up uses blood glucose and may discourage the development of diabetes.

You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way!

"Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe.

That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning in park! More than 47 million adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome, which causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Biomedical researchers from the say the reason so many of us have the condition is because we sit too much!
Read more.

Burning Fat And Carbohydrate During Exercise

ScienceDaily (June 19, 2007) — In a paper published in The Journal of Physiology, Helge, Stallknecht, Richter, Galbo, and Keins from Copenhagen shed light on fat oxidation during exercise and physical activity. Their observations suggest that fat oxidation during exercise reflects a fine interplay between the cardiovascular, neurological, endocrine and muscle metabolic systems.

During exercise and physical activity, the primary fuels used by muscles are carbohydrate and fat. When mild exercise is performed there is a tendency to burn relatively more fat and less glucose, but as exercise becomes more intense, a higher fraction of the energy demands of the muscle are supplied by glucose, until at the highest intensities almost only carbohydrates are used. Is this shift in fuel source a property of the muscle itself, or does it represent the interplay between what is happening in the muscle and the exercise-related responses in the rest of the body?

The study, performed at the Copenhagen Muscle Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, examined muscle fuel utilisation in response to graded exercise performed with only one leg. Nine healthy males performed one-leg exercise at 25, 45, and 85% of maximal workload. Their results showed that, when only a small mass of muscle is contracting, and blood flow and oxygen supply are not limited by central circulatory capacity, the shift in fuel source from fat to glucose as exercise intensity increases does not occur. Read more.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

What Does Your Body Fat Percentage Mean?













Someone stumbled onto my blog yesterday because it turned up on a search for “What does 30.6 percent body fat mean?” The blunt and accurate answer is “It means you have too much body fat.”

Or put another way, 30 percent body fat means you are one third fat. That's a lot of body fat.

(Site Statistics show me where readers come from and what they click on. The reader above went here: “Tracking and Attacking Body Fat” in which I discuss my personal body fat struggles).

Body Fat Guidelines from American Council on Exercise
Classification Women (% Fat) Men (% Fat)
Essential Fat 10-12 percent 2-4 percent
Athletes 14-20 percent 6-13 percent
Fitness 21-24 percent 14-17 percent
Acceptable 25-31 percent 18-25 percent

Recommended body fat amounts Women 20-25%, Men 8–14%.
Adults in United States averages women 22-25% men 15–19%
Obese is defined as Women 30%+, Men 25%+

This is a very common problem today. Many people struggle with weight and figures show about 65 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. Next time you’re in a public place look around and take note of how many people are visibly overweight. There are so many overweight people around us on a daily basis our perception of what is normal has become skewed. We are so used to seeing overweight people we only notice the obese among us when they are morbidly obese or super obese.

While many see others who are overweight as normal, many see themselves as bigger than really they are. But more commonly, there’s a growing group known as “skinny fat people”. Although they appear to be a normal weight they have too much body fat and too little lean mass – particularly muscle mass. This can be dangerous to health, especially when their excess fat is abdominal or ‘viseral’ fat that is linked to greater risk of diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic disorder.

On the flip side, many athletes and fit people weigh more but have a low body fat due to high levels of muscle mass (this is good). This is why BMI or body mass index is not the best way to measure body composition or body fat for some people. And the good old fashioned basic weight scale is also a poor way to measure your body composition. It only tells you your overall body weight not your all important fat to lean mass ratio.

The most accurate way to measure body fat is by Bod Pod or water immersion, both of which can be expensive, hard to access, and unnecessary. Other body fat percentage tests. The cheapest method is by use of calipers and best done by a trained professional - else a medical professional or a personal trainer. Another relatively affordable method is by bio-impedance and can be done in some doctors' offices or with a home meter. I personally use an Omron hand held and a Taylor scale model.

But you can easily estimate body fat percentage with a measuring tape. Waist size is the biggest indicator of being fit or over fat. Below are links to several online body fat percentage estimators.

Knowing your body fat percentage is an important key to health. Your body fat percentage – and your lean mass percentage – tell you how fit or unfit you are and indicate where you need to improve. People with high body fat percentages need to lose body fat and gain lean muscle mass. That sounds so obvious. So why are people Googling questions that indicate we really do not know this basic health information?

The Hidden Dangers of Excess Abdominal Fat

US Naval Circumference Method


Home Body Fat Test (Online Fill In Form)



Understanding Your Body Fat Percentage


Guide To Body Fat Percent

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Update & Wishing You A Happy New Year



















Just a quick update. We're very busy in Bardelli (Barzarro) World. My husband moved his home office out of the room he shared with our son and onto one wall of our bedroom. All his stored stuff he didn't use much or at all got moved outside into storage sheds. Bruno is a happy little camper in his "new" unshared room. And I loll in bed watching tv while Jerry plays with his Linux and Windows computers.

On the weight and fitness front I'm down to 112 pounds. One hundred and twelve pounds! That's two pounds from goal! Woo Hoo! Although my scale weight is down my body fat crept up to 20.4 percent and 23 pounds. I don't know if the scale shift downward was water loss, muscle loss, fat loss or a combination. Frankly right now I could care less. My break ends on the 7th and by then my new Power 90X Plus will be here! I was invited to pre-order as I'm a Power 90Xer. Yeah!

And I haven't been doing conventional workouts - think Power 90X - but I've been active including horse wrangling. I'll tell that tale later. Talk about high excitement. I've been enjoying holiday fare including champagne, chocolates, chips, dips, crackers, cheese, and beef stick snacks. I have to conclude this three week break from Power 90X hasn't hurt me. I'm rested up and raring to go. Bring it!

Sunday, November 25, 2007

New All-Time Low Body Fat Percent!




















My numbers this morning are 116 pounds, 17.1 percent body fat and 20 pounds body fat. This puts my lean mass at 96 pounds! That's a gain of 4 pounds of lean mass! (I started my second 12 week round of Power 90X in October).

That's a total of 13 pounds of muscle mass gained since April. And down from 29 percent body fat to 17.1 percent is 12 percent body fat lost.

WOO HOO! Power 90X and Tony Horton Rock! And so do I. If this isn't a glowing testimonial to the effectiveness of Power 90X and eating properly for performance (approximately 40-35-25 or 40-30-30 protein - carb - fat on most days) I don't know what is.

I'll add this food for thought; when choosing a fitness or nutrition approach judge it on the results others achieved. Closely examine it and ask yourself if you can truly adopt it as a LIFESTYLE, not some temporary fix that you'll quit. And look at people who use that approach. Do they look the way YOU want to look? If someone hawks an approach but they never reach their goals (including goal weight, body fat percent, and appearance) why would you follow them? Many diets leave you a "skinny fat person". Is that what you want? How many people who follow a certain diet or exercise program you're doing or considering actually get the results you want?

"Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Unknown



Want REAL Results? Buy Power 90X and BRING IT!


Other Power 90X Links:

Power 90X Fitness Infomercial.com Reviews

Raven's Body Blog

Watch P90X Demonstrated

Exercise and Low Carb Diets Make Poor Partners - Fat Loss Coach Speaks Out by Charles Remington