Conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, has been touted for its antioxidant and even its anti-cancer properties. Naturally found in meat, eggs and dairy, especially grass-fed, it is also widely available in supplements. Now, research has found that it may also fight belly fat.

A small study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition adds to the growing body of research showing CLA may be effective at reducing fat around the middle. In the current study fifty-five obese postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes received either safflower oil or CLA during two 16-week diet periods separated by a 4-week "washout" period.

Women who received CLA had reduced body mass index and total fat tissue without altering lean mass. The effect of the CLA in lowering BMI was detected during the last 8 weeks of each 16-week diet period. The women taking CLA lost an average of 4 pounds of fat from around their waist area.

Source

Men and women become less fit as they age, according to a new report in the October 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

This should come with a big "duh". But it also comes with some good news.

First the not-so-good news. "The U.S. population is aging and is becoming more obese and sedentary", the authors tell us. No surprise there. But it's a vicious circle. Cardiorespiratory fitness of both sexes declines with age: two of the best indicators of cardiorespiratory fitness are body composition (fat vs. muscle) and physical activity.

The more fat you've got and the less active you are, the higher the chances of disease, not to mention the ability to function independently.

And by the way, the decline gets worse after age 45, and it's worse for men than for women.

What to do, what to do?

Researchers from the University of Houston studied about 20,000 women and men between 20 to 96(!) in a study called the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study between 1974 and 2006. The 30 years of data collected on such a large group of people offer some strong take home messages for anyone who wants to age well. (Here comes the good news.)

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

I can't help but watch with a combination of amusement and sadness when I read about the billions of dollars spent each year on useless weight-loss products, programs that don't work and high-priced gimmicks that promise to effortlessly relieve the pain of being overweight -- especially when some of the best weight-loss tools in the world are both virtually free and right under our noses.

Which brings me to the subject of today's post: The apple.

Yup, the lowly, all-to-common apple, of which there are literally hundreds of varieties. They're available 12 months a year (but in season right now!), are cheap as dirt, can be had anywhere -- and they happen to be one of the best kept weight-management tools on the planet.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Here's another reason to take weight loss seriously (as if you needed one!): Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Toronto and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington have just published the most comprehensive study ever about how diet, lifestyle and metabolic risk factors for chronic disease contribute to mortality in the United States.

Want to know what they found? The number of preventable deaths per year in the U.S. tied specifically to obesity and overweight is (drum roll please): 216,000. Pretty stunning figure, isn't it? And, just to hammer home the point, the number of preventable deaths due specifically to a sedentary lifestyle is another 191,000.

Now, I'm familiar with the arguments about being fat and fit, and they're not without some merit. Steven Blair, the well-known director of research at the Cooper Aerobics Center in Texas defines himself as a "fat, fit guy" -- he runs more than five miles per week -- but the fact remains that being overweight raises the risk for lots of things that you don't want to have. That said, if you can't lose weight -- or if you don't want to -- at least start exercising. You can definitely decrease the odds of dying, not to mention improve circulation and mood, and even preserve your brain. Plus, even if you're not specifically trying to use exercise as a weight-loss technique, it doesn't take a whole lot to get those health benefits and take yourself out of the "high risk for dying" group. Just 30 minutes a day of brisk walking. And just as it doesn't take that much exercise to make a major difference in your health, it also doesn't take a lot of weight loss.

Photo: Getty Images

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Green tea has been heralded for years as a great addition to your diet if you're watching your weight. The evidence for tea as a weight loss companion continues to grow, but this time it's white tea in the spotlight.

The researchers took an extract from white tea and put it in test tube cultures containing human cells called preadipocytes. Preadipocytes are cells which ultimately turn into fat cells. Exposure to the white tea extract helped prevent that from happening. In a related experiment, researchers then applied the same solution of white tea extract to fully-mature fat cells and found that the extract actually stimulated fat burning in those cells, ultimately reducing their fat content.

Remember that an increase in body fat actually involves two processes: The first is an increase in the number of fat cells, and the second is an increase in the size of the fat cells themselves. If you think of fat cells as little sponges, the first process would be like getting more sponges, and the second would be like soaking them with more water. The white tea extract affected both processes.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

To lose weight and get healthy, get the majority of your carbs from fruits and vegetables. Photo: [cipher], Flickr

What exactly is a "low-carb" diet, anyway?

Having just finished the revised and expanded edition of my 2004 best-seller "Living Low Carb" (out in January, in case you were interested!), I've been thinking a lot recently about low-carb diets. Specifically, I've been thinking about definitions.

For years, low-carb suffered from bad publicity. Atkins -- a superb nutritionist and very smart guy -- couldn't shake the stigma of recommending "pork rinds" ( a recommendation that was taken out of context), and people who didn't know any better thought his diet forbade all carbohydrates (it most certainly doesn't).

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Photo: sxc.hu

I've been touting the benefits of omega-3 fats for a long time. They lower triglycerides, improve circulation and cell health, boost mood and decrease inflammation. But can they help with weight loss?

Maybe so. New findings reported in the British Journal of Nutrition found that overweight and obese people have lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids than people with a healthy weight.

"Our findings suggest that (omega-3) fatty acids may play an important role in weight status and abdominal (obesity)," wrote the researchers, led by Professor Monohar Garg from the University of Newcastle, and president elect of the Nutrition Society of Australia.

Other research has shown that omega-3s have a protective role in preventing obesity. "Previous studies involving children and adolescents have shown a negative correlation between adiposity (fatness) and [blood levels] of omega-3s," explained the researchers.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Retailers would like to help us remain in a state of denial about our ever-expanding waistlines. They'd like us not to notice how fat we're actually getting.

We don't like facing up to the fact that we're becoming fatter by the minute, and most of us don't particularly like buying "fat clothes." We'd prefer not to notice that those size 8 dresses that used to fit no longer do, or that when we try on those 32-inch waist jeans that used to fit so well, they now feel like they were made for just one of our legs. When that happens, we just don't buy as much. Retailers noticed -- and they have a solution. They changed the sizes.

"In recent years," writes Elizabeth Landau on CNN.com, "brands from the luxury names to the mass retail chains have scaled down the size labels on their clothing," which means "you may actually be a size 14, and, according to whatever particular store you're in, you come out a size 10," says Natalie Nixon, associate professor of fashion industry management at Philadelphia University. Why? Simple. It makes the consumer -- you and me -- feel good.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

For years I've argued that the Atkins Diet is nowhere near as "dangerous" as critics claim, and dozens of studies have since backed me up. Yet many people continue to worry about the effect of the strict Atkins diet on cholesterol. And many who have noticed how effective an Atkins-like diet can be for weight loss have been reluctant to try it because they associate the diet with a high meat intake (incorrectly, but that's another column).

Worry no more, because a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine received a flurry of media attention, and the subject? A variation of low-carbohydrate dieting which the researchers dubbed "Eco-Atkins."

The researchers start by stating that the Atkins plan has been shown to be effective not only for weight loss, but for reducing insulin resistance, lowering triglyceride concentrations and raising HDL (so-called "good" cholesterol). (They cite numerous published studies which have demonstrated every one of those effects.) That's a pretty impressive resume, and one might be forgiven for asking, "and the problem is?"

Source

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

People whose vitamin D levels test high before they go on a diet experience significantly better results on that diet than people with low levels of vitamin D, according to a new study, suggesting that vitamin D plays a part in weight loss and that increasing your intake of this incredibly important nutrient just might help you drop additional pounds.

We already know that vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it's not clear which comes first -- are people obese because of inadequate vitamin D or does obesity cause vitamin D levels in the body to somehow drop?

In the current study, presented at the Endocrine Society's 91st annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in 38 overweight men and women before putting them on a calorie-restricted diet for 11 weeks. Here's what they found: Higher levels of vitamin D predicted greater success on the weight-loss diet.

Photo: a.drian, Flickr

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Even a modest reduction in carb intake might be enough to stabilize blood sugar, reduce insulin and, in the long-run, facilitate weight loss, says a new study from the Department of Nutrition Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Photo: TheBusyBrain, Flickr

I've ranted about high sugar cereals for years. Even those masquerading as "healthy" cereals are usually high-glycemic (meaning they raise blood sugar quickly), and they contribute to weight gain, cravings and ultimately, lower energy.

And most of these cereals are fiber lightweights, despite the fact that we're constantly being sold on the notion of cereals as "high fiber" foods. With the exception of Fiber One, UltraFiber, Bran Flakes and a few others, most commercial cereals only contain a gram or two of fiber, which is one of the reasons they're so "high glycemic" in the first place.

Now a new study has shown that high-glycemic foods like cornflakes are not only bad for the waistline -- they're also bad for the heart.

Source

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

Photo: imagesniper/Flickr

People who wolf down their food are more likely to be overweight and suffer from digestive problems. Here are some tips from the Life Extension Foundation (an organization dedicated to exploring ways to live long and healthy lives naturally), expanded on by me, to help you not do that!