That's Fit

After a booze-fueled night out, you'll probably find yourself gorging on junk. But don't let a few too many shots derail your diet.

Recent research shows that people who are newly diagnosed with type II diabetes can gain better control over their health if they lose weight. While that isn't terribly surprising, what is surprising is that the benefits seem to last even if the patient gains back some of the weight. Losing some excess pounds helps people with type II diabetes better control blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol.

In the study, more than 2,000 people recently diagnosed with type II diabetes were followed for four years. 12% of those patients lost a mean of 25 pounds. Other groups either gained weight or their weight remained stable. Within 36 months almost all of the patients who had lost weight had regained it. Surprisingly, those patients continued to have better blood sugar and blood pressure control at the end of the four-year study -- even though their weight had been regained.

Obviously, this isn't an argument for losing and regaining weight. Researchers don't know how long the benefits would last after the four-year mark. The best bet for people with type II diabetes (or anyone for that matter) is to lose their excess weight and keep it off for good.

Cutting fat - let's just get right to it. Exercise? Of course. Proper diet? Absolutely. The former is pretty straightforward; move around, burn some calories - that sort of thing. The latter, however, can sometimes involve a bit more complexity.

To effectively burn fat, your dietary changes must not interfere with your fitness progress or quest for overall health. As such, a massive calorie-cutting diet isn't really the answer. Instead, try these vie fat-torching tips on from size.

1 - Cut Calories by a Reasonable Percentage. Again, this does not mean starving yourself; rather, it means taking an honest look at your daily caloric intake and calculating a percentage (be it 10, 20, or even 30 percent) you can cut it by.

If you've been eating (or feeding your kids) oatmeal for breakfast with the understanding that it's one of the healthiest choices you can make, you need to rethink your strategy.

While oatmeal can provide good nutrients, a recent study showed that kids who only ate instant oatmeal for breakfast experienced increased appetites and calorie consumption throughout the day. In fact, when compared to having a vegetable omelet and fruit, oatmeal increased appetite and calorie consumption by more than 80%. Steel-cut oats didn't have as drastic an effect as instant oatmeal, however.

The researchers attributed their findings to fluctuations in blood sugar resulting from a meal of processed grain products. Adding some protein at breakfast is essential in keeping blood sugar (and appetites) from fluctuating wildly throughout the day.

Breakfast is arguably the single-most important meal of the day. There exists voluminous research on the role breakfast plays on weight loss, maintaining healthy blood sugars, and even keeping cholesterol in check. But this very healthy meal can turn quite unhealthy if the wrong foods end up on your plate.

Citing researchers from the World Cancer Research Fund, Men's Health reports that eating as few as one sausage or three pieces of bacon per day is enough to raise your risk of bowel cancer by as much as 20 percent. Evidently, the same risk also applies for ham, pastrami, or most other processed meats.

On the flip side, there are foods you can add to your breakfast that can reduce your chances of this type of cancer. Mushrooms, soy meat, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and other dark leafy vegetables can cut the risk of bowel cancer by 40 percent.

It's estimated that 17 million American have diabetes. Frightening, huh? What's even more frightening is that there are even more people who might be experience symptoms of diabetes and not even know it. The truth is, diabetes isn't always an obvious disease and it sometimes goes unnoticed, even though it's one of the number one killers in North America.

We know the obesity is one of the major risk factors for diabetes, and lethargy and dehydration are major symptoms. But here are some other surprising symptoms of Diabetes, according to USA Today:

• Changes in vision (We're talking any changes, including improved vision)
• Blackened skin around the eyes and knuckles
• Bad breath

Want to learn more? AOL Health has important info on diabetes that you need to know.

Sugar may be a worthwhile option as an alternative fuel source for vehicles, but it's a very poor choice for fueling our bodies. In addition to having no nutritional value, sugar is fast-digesting and will drive up blood glucose levels, leaving you feeling tired, hungry, and, paradoxically, craving more sugar.

Aside from the more obvious steps you can take to rid your diet of sugar (such as not adding sugar to your coffee or tea and avoiding candy and other sweets altogether), check the labels of foods you typically eat. If they contain more than 10 grams of sugar, say most nutritionists, you dump them and you dump them fast (with the only exception being dairy, because its milk sugar is naturally-occurring).

Also avoid refined carbs, such as those found in white rice, white bread, and bagels, for they too cause your blood sugar levels to go on an veritable roller-coaster ride. And if you have an unbearable desire for sweets, sate your sugar craving with complex carbohydrate-rich fruits (one caveat: try to avoid eating too much watermelon. Though it is good for you, it ranks very high on the glycemic index and therefore can produce a similar effect on blood sugar). You can also try stevia, an all-natural sweetener that has been used for centuries by the Guaraní tribes of Paraguay and Brazil.

Remember the Grapefruit Diet? Here at That's Fit, we avoid fad diets like Big Macs, but you might be surprised to hear that this one might actually have some merit.

Each week, we'll be naming a Super Food and offering unique ways to use those Super Foods that pack nutritional power. After all, you are what you eat -- make it count!

It's no secret -- beans are great for you. In fact, we've told you before on You Are What You Eat about the amazing health benefits of two common types of beans -- kidney beans and garbanzo beans, aka chick peas. But when it comes to beans, don't limit yourself; there are other healthy beans you should make sure you're eating too. Case in point? Black beans.

Black Beans aren't a staple of most people's diets, but maybe they should be -- In addition to being a great source of fiber and protein, black beans also contain valuable antioxidants and vitamins, including manganese, magnesium, folate and iron. All that and they're virtually fat free. You can't do much better than that, huh?

Although much of my sports attention is zeroed in on the NBA finals at the moment, I still try to keep up with what's going on in baseball. It's been a somewhat unusual year in MLB, but there are some things that are refreshingly unchanged. You can still expect to see sports fans (young and old) smiling through nine full innings of play, there are still plenty of great diving catches being made and old school hustling around the bases going on, and players and coaches are still littering dugouts with the shells of discarded sunflower seeds.

Good thing, too, since sunflower seeds are far more than just something to chomp on during tense moments in a game. Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois found that these magnesium-rich seeds can help regulate blood sugar, thus reducing the risk of metabolic syndrome by as much as 31 percent.

Pumpkin seeds -- a sometimes alternative for sunflower seeds in some dugouts -- also offer similar protection against metabolic syndrome, as do flax and sesame seeds. Chewing tobacco, as you might expect, offers nothing in that regard, and instead offers the increased risk of mouth cancer. Stick to the seeds, kids.

Calorie. When you're trying to lose weight those three little syllables can sound a bit sinister. But calories really aren't the bad guys. Basically, a calorie is just a unit of energy. They give us the fuel we need to keep going. But did you know that when you cut calories you can actually boost your energy? Since calories are our main source of energy, it may seem counterintuitive that reducing them can boost our energy. But the trick -- even though a calorie, is a calorie, is a calorie -- is eating high quality foods that benefit your body.

When you aren't eating healthfully, you're likely to get extra calories from refined carbs (sugary foods, white bread/pasta/rice, etc.) and greasy foods. Those are choices that pack a hefty calorie punch and (though you may get an initial rush from sugar) ultimately leave you feeling sluggish. Slow-burning, healthful foods will keep your blood sugar stable and keep you energized throughout the day.

Whole-grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean protein are all good choices for energy-boosting foods. Some top picks include:

If we continue at the rate we're going, the entire U.S. population will be obese in 50 years. That's what a recent University of Missouri study suggests, anyway. Even if it doesn't turn out to be completely true, it's easy to see how it can still end up being quite close.

What can we do about it? Best I can tell, the only solution is to shape up. Through diet and regular exercise, the obesity epidemic can become a thing of the past, rather than an inevitable part of our future. With that little pep talk over, I feel obliged to now offer up a quick health tip. OK ... here goes.

Random Health Tip of the Day: add water to your cereal. Well, you don't have to add it directly to your cereal; drink a glass of water while you eat it. Men's Health magazine states that doing so will help slow the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream, thereby preventing hunger-causing blood sugar spikes. In addition, the water will help make the fiber in the cereal expand, which will also help you feel fuller longer.

Losing weight, then gaining it back, losing it again, and gaining it back ... it's a vicious cycle that can really do a number on your body. Yo-yo dieting isn't good for your physical health -- or your emotional health. You can put a stop to the yo-yo madness once and for all. The key is understanding why it happens in the first place. Here are just a few of the ideas from AOL Body:

• You underestimate the power of sugar. High-sugar foods like refined carbs make your blood sugar spike and trigger a release of hormones that can make you feel more hungry and crave certain foods.
• You lie to yourself. You tell yourself that one indulgence won't hurt. And it won't! The problem starts when one indulgence turns into two, three, four, five, or more.
  
• You think in days. If you slip and allow yourself a treat or miss your exercise session you think "well, today's a bust ... I'll start again tomorrow." Don't let one slip mess up an entire day.

Be sure to check out the AOL Body slideshow to learn more about yo-yo dieting.

I'm not all that thrilled to say that I share my living space with a cat. Oh, who am I kidding, I like the stupid, little thing. Still, there are plenty of points throughout the night when I second-guess my decision to have rescued it from the pound. It's usually around 3am or so, when the four-legged menace decides my fiance and I have slept enough and it wants to play. Or eat. Or do just about anything cats generally do at that hour. Closing the bedroom door isn't an option because the cat claws at the door all night, making it even more difficult to get some rest. All these sleep disturbances ... they have to be doing a number on my health. Unfortunately, they are; it seems they may actually be increasing my risk of type 2 diabetes.

I suppose I could have left out that entire cutesy, little story about my cat and just got right to the point, but I felt the need to share (wow, I'm emasculating myself more and more by the sentence, aren't I?). Anyway, it turns out that even slight disturbances while sleeping -- including barely audible sounds, such as ... oh, I don't know ... a cat scratching a bedroom door -- can have an affect on blood sugar.

Researchers from the University of Chicago found that after three nights of playing barely audible sounds as study volunteers slept, these individuals experienced a 25 percent change in their blood glucose levels.

As for what to do about an annoying cat, the researchers had no suggestions.

When we think of diabetes, we tend to assume that it affects either those who were diagnosed with it in childhood or those who are severely overweight. But guess what? Normal weight people can have diabetes too, and even if you don't notice the symptoms--fatigue, thirst, excessive urination--doesn't mean they're not there in a milder form.

This article from The Daily Mail talks about Diabetes in depth and even looks at the blood sugar levels of a handful of average adults. The results are surprising -- some seemingly healthy adults have blood sugar levels that should be investigated.

Does this mean that if you're tired, you have diabetes? No, but it does mean that you should be careful -- don't ignore your symptoms, and let your doctor know if something seems off.