I took a quick look through PubMed today, to see what’s new in the world of fat loss research.  I came across this:

Inhibitory Effect of Deep-sea Water on Differentiation of 3T3-L1 Adipocytes.

Currently, the utilization of deep-sea water (DSW) is receiving much attention due to its high productivity, large quantity, and potential for biological application. The 3T3-L1 cell line is a well-established and commonly used in vitro model to assess adipocyte differentiation…Our results suggest a potential role for DSW as anti-obesity agents by inhibiting adipocyte differentiation mediated through the down-regulated expression of adipogenic transcription factors and adipocyte-specific proteins.

Deep sea water for fat loss???

This piqued my interest, so I did a bit more digging.  Turns out that desalinized deep sea water is growing in popularity in Japan and other Asian countries as a spin on bottled water.  So far, companies like Deep Sea Water, International are not making any health claims, although with studies like the one linked above, I wonder…

I’ll be interested to see if this product gets more traction - especially if it’s introduced in the US mainland.  What with all the “superfruit” claims, I can’t help but be a bit suspicious…it sometimes doesn’t take much to get a health fad started.

The FTC report reveals that the major US food companies spent over $1.6 billion on product advertisements directed at children.  Approximately $492 million was devoted to soda advertising alone.

The FTC based their estimate on the reported expenditures of 44 companies, and covered the largest producers of fast foods, soft drinks, cereals and snack foods.

According to the US Dept. of Health and Human Services:

…data from two National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) (1976-1980 and 2003-2004) show that prevalence of childhood overweight is increasing.  For children aged 2-5 years, the prevalence increased from 5.0 percent to 13.9 percent; for those aged 6-11 years, prevalence increased from 6.5 percent to 18.8 percent; and for those aged 12-19 years, prevalence increased from 5.0 percent to 17.4 percent.

Can you imagine the impact, if a comparable amount of money was spent on promoting veggies, fruits and other healthier foods?

So it’s Friday evening, and I’m stoked. I’ve got the top down on the car, the tunes cranked, a shaker cup with a scoop each of H+Blocker and CE-XL in my hand, and I’m off to the gym for a chest workout. I’m looking forward to a good solid hour of hammering my chest in relative solitude (it’s always dead on Friday nights… most people have a life of some sort… lol).

As I drive along, singing along off-key with Airborne’s Running Wild, I suddenly got a bit of a nasty feeling. See, I’ve only recently started working out at this gym, and I’m not that familiar with their hours. Didn’t they recently start closing earlier on Fridays? Ugh. Suddenly, I’m not feeling so chipper anymore.   

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I’m blogging from not-all-that-beautiful Renton, Washington this morning.  We’re in the area to attend an extended family get-together (HIS family…not mine) on Saturday.  But we decided to make a long weekend of it, so we could take the girl child and her best friend out and about Seattle.  We drove up yesterday (Thursday), and we’ll head back home on Sunday.

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I love this!

I mean, everyone loves a good burger, but this is ridiculous!

Not when it comes to snack foods, methinks…

I’ve been seeing these more and more…chips, pretzels, cookies and the like, sold in boxes of “100 calorie” packages. Nabisco, for example, has a variety of products packaged this way.  These are allegedly designed for more “sensible snacking” - as they make it easier to monitor your intake, and avoid eating too much.

Right?

Maybe not.  According to two studies pending publication in the October, 2008 Journal of Consumer Research, smaller packages may encourage MORE munching, not less.

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It feels good to be off for a couple of days…

This is shaping up to be a good, grueling program, but by the time I get to the end of the 5th day, you can stick a fork in me…I’m done.  The nice thing about the routine is that it changes up every couple of weeks, so while certain exercises are repeated, they’re placed on different days and presented in a different sequence.  This week’s schedule looked like this:

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This article from the Washington Post is sort of a blast from the past - it was written about two years ago.  But little has changed in the intervening years, so I thought I’d dig it up again and post it…as it’s a pretty fair description of how overweight/obesity has influenced the economy, and vice versa.

“Put simply, there is a lot of money being made, and to be made, in feeding both oversized stomachs and feeding those enterprises selling fixes for oversized stomachs,” Weis wrote in 2005 in the Academy of Health Care Management Journal. “And both industries — those selling junk food and those selling fat cures — depend for their future on a prevalence of obesity…

…For that last problem, the Fat Economy has already found ways to innovate and profit. In Lynn, Ind., there is a company called Goliath Casket that makes caskets up to 52 inches wide. The company’s Web site, which can be found at http://www.oversizecasket.com/ , notes that Goliath’s founder quit his job as a welder in 1985, saying: “Boys, I’m gonna go home and build oversize caskets that you would be proud to put your mother in.” 

Sigh…

As I’ve written here before, I moderate the forums associated with Will Brink’s two e-books.  I also do a lot of work behind the scenes, specifically, on the e-books themselves.  I’m pleased to report that the long-awaited update to Bodybuilding Revealed will be released soon - all the final touches are finally in place.  It’s really the nicest e-book of it’s kind that I’ve seen (hey, I said this was shameless…), and - combined with the knowledge base on the forum - probably the best deal there is out there. 

Don’t be put off by the word “bodybuilding”…building muscle/strength is for everyone: male/female, young/old.  As I noted in an earlier post:

But when you think about it: muscles are really no different than brains.  I would not want to be weak, anymore than I would want to be stupid.  Sure, not everyone can be equally smart - or strong. But we can all “study” and develop what we have - and be that much better for the experience.

BBR is a portal to a larger world of progressive fitness and strength.  Take a look, and think about giving it a try.

…according to a hot-off-the presses study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Atkins diet may have proved itself after all: A low-carb diet and a Mediterranean-style regimen helped people lose more weight than a traditional low-fat diet in one of the longest and largest studies to compare the dueling weight-loss techniques…Average weight loss for those in the low-carb group was 10.3 pounds after two years. Those in the Mediterranean diet lost 10 pounds, and those on the low-fat regimen dropped 6.5.

More surprising were the measures of cholesterol. Critics have long acknowledged that an Atkins-style diet could help people lose weight but feared that over the long term, it may drive up cholesterol because it allows more fat.

But the low-carb approach seemed to trigger the most improvement in several cholesterol measures, including the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL, the “good” cholesterol. For example, someone with total cholesterol of 200 and an HDL of 50 would have a ratio of 4 to 1. The optimum ratio is 3.5 to 1, according to the American Heart Association.

Doctors see that ratio as a sign of a patient’s risk for hardening of the arteries. “You want that low,” Stampfer said.

The ratio declined by 20 percent in people on the low-carb diet, compared to 16 percent in those on the Mediterranean and 12 percent in low-fat dieters.

The full study can be found at the New England Journal of Medicine site.

One more reason why you shouldn’t read anything into the word “natural” when it appears on a food label.

“Upon careful review of the manufacturing process for High Fructose Corn Syrup, the FDA found that HFCS can be labeled natural,” stated Audrae Erickson, president, Corn Refiners Association. “HFCS contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients or color additives and meets FDA’s requirements for the use of the term ‘natural.’ HFCS, like table sugar and honey, is natural. It is made from corn, a natural grain product.”

As we’ve said before, “natural” is not the same thing as ”good for you.”

Week 2 of the Max OT program was supposed to be a repeat of Week 1 - as far as the exercises and schedule were concerned.  I had to do some improvising, however, as my gym recently changed hands, and a ton of old equipment was replaced this week.  The place was in a shambles on Wed. and Thurs., so I took an unscheduled two days off mid-week until the chaos got sorted out.  As a consequence, both Saturday and Sunday were workout days, rather than days off.  So I’ll take Monday off to rest, and work Tues. - Sat. for week 3. I may stick to that schedule too…Mondays tend to be pretty busy days (thanks to all the folks starting the week with good intentions).

Off topic: but the new gym equipment is cool.  My gym is home to a serious, competitive powerlifting group, so a lot of the classic, “iron” equipment (which attracted me to this gym in the first place) stayed.  But all the cardio equipment, and a lot of the floor machines were replaced…and there are pieces that I will certainly use in the future.  So, nice.

Interruption notwithstanding, the week went pretty well, with progress made on most of my lifts.  The lone exception was my bench - it seemed like more of a struggle this week, and I had a harder time focusing.  I can’t put it down to any one thing - I think it was more of a combination of being a little fried from my previous back and shoulder workouts (which were on Friday and Saturday), plus a harder-than-usual bike ride to the gym against the wind in 95^oF (35^oC) weather.  It happens.

Looking forward to Week 3 - and some changes in the exercises and workouts.

I live in the Pacific Northwest now…but needless to state, I won’t be going in search of these…

On the plus side, though, I imagine it would be difficult to overeat them.

(More about the durian here…lol!)

One of the things I’ve noticed about many people’s fat loss efforts, is how negative they are.  There’s a long list of “don’ts;” tiny portions of plain, drab food and punishing workouts.  It’s all about hardship and deprivation.  If you’re “good,” that means you have the stern discipline and moral fiber to tough it out, and can bask in the awe of your family, friends and colleagues.  And if you’re like everyone else (i.e., “bad”), you crash and burn within a few short weeks, gain whatever you lost back, and either a) beat on yourself for being weak; b) decide your excess weight is due to some extrinsic factor, like “toxins” or “parasites” and go off in search of various ”placebo“ cures; or c) eventually give it all up, decide you’re genetically programmed to be overweight, and join the “Fat Acceptance” movement.

It doesn’t have to be this way…

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I’d be tempted to file this study in the “duuuuuhhhh” category, as keeping a food journal is something I’ve done for every fat loss diet I’ve ever been on since I was 14 years old…and it’s something both Paul and I have discussed before.  But it bears repeating.  And it’s good to see this sort of practical advice confirmed scientifically. 

With all the handy-dandy online tools and software available now, there’s really no excuse now not to do this.  I don’t know of any better way to raise awareness of what you’re eating than this one, simple step.

A while back I discussed the value of regular blood testing, so I thought I’d share my latest results - annotated, to give a brief summary of what each measurement (or set of measurements) means.  A blood test is basically a snapshot of what’s going on “under the hood,” so to speak.  It can’t tell you everything, of course, but it can offer a lot of insights.  For example, if you’re feel tired a lot of the time or fatigue easily, you should make sure that maybe you’re not mildly anemic, before hunting for a diet supp or other panacea in search of more “energy.”

So here we go…reference ranges (i.e., the range of values that are considered “normal” for 95% of healthy members of the population) are given in parentheses.  In certain cases, reference ranges will vary by age, sex, race, and method used to perform the test). 

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“The 20 Worst Foods in America” and the “20 Unhealthiest Drinks in America” - courtesy of Men’s Health Magazine.

I think my cholesterol and triglycerides shot up 30 - 40 points just reading about each food/beverage.  We’re talking serious food porn here…bleurrrggghhh!!!

Over the last month or so Elissa and I have blogged several times about growing youth obesity rates, and the various issues both contributing to it (a plethura of time spent in front on the TV whilst being bombarded by agressive fast food advertisements, for one) and confounding it. I just recently stumbled upon another study that demonstrates just how serious this problem is.

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…by this press release?

A just-released review article in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension concludes that an increase in potassium coupled with a decrease in sodium may be the most important dietary choice, after weight loss, to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. The problem is, most Americans consume about half the recommended daily amount of potassium and double the recommended amount of sodium, putting them at risk for high blood pressure and stroke.

Now, Unilever (NYSE: UN) is introducing the first functional shot that may help close the potassium gap. Promise SuperShots for blood pressure are essential fruit blend functional shots that provide a good source of potassium and are low in sodium. Each three-ounce Promise SuperShots contains 350 mg of potassium, similar to the amount contained in a serving of a fruit that is a good source of potassium, such as a small banana. Promise SuperShots fruit blends come in three delicious flavors: strawberry banana, peach apricot, and mixed berry.

Ummmm…so why not eat a small banana?  Or other good, food sources of potassium, many of which offer as much - or more - potassium per serving than a Promise Supershot?  And - I might add - offer more additional nutrients than a Supershot does, too?

It’s not that Supershots are bad…it’s that they really don’t offer the same value - in terms of nutrition or “bang for your buck” that real food does.

An anti-obesity device that could - conceivably - replace weight loss surgery will be tested on volunteers at sites across the US.

In its St. Paul lab, EnteroMedics, Inc. has created an implant device that looks very much like a pacemaker. It takes advantage of the way our brain communicates with our stomach and the rest of the digestive system through the vagus nerve.

The device is implanted in the abdomen with wire leads connected to the vagus nerve just above the stomach. Small electrical impulses, spaced five minutes apart during waking hours, have already been proven to reduce hunger signals to the brain.

Preliminary results with this therapy, known as “intermittent vagal blocking” or VBLOC, were recently published in the journal “Surgery.”  According to the abstract, the mean weight loss among the 31 subjects was 14.2% after 6 months, with decreased calorie intake, “earlier satiation” and “reduced hunger.”

Although the surgery has been described as “minimally invasive” - it should be noted that there were 3 adverse events that required hospitalization.

This isn’t the first or only pacemaker system under investigation.  A somewhat different device, which employs “gastric contractility modulation” to increase satiety and feelings of fullness, has been used successfully in Europe and is currently being studied in the US.