If you're worried about packing on the pounds this holiday season, here's something to chew on: A new study revealed that simply slowing down during meal time can help you lose weight.

Researchers studied appetite-regulating hormones in a test group where each person was given the same thing to eat, 10 ounces of ice cream. One group was told to eat the entire bowl within five minutes; the other within 30 minutes. After reviewing participants' hormone levels before, during and after their meal, researchers concluded that eating too fast blocked the release of hormones that make you feel full. In short, the ones who ate within five minutes still wanted more ice cream when they were done, while the others didn't.

"Most of us have heard that eating fast can lead to food overconsumption and obesity, and in fact some observational studies have supported this notion," said study researcher, Alexander Kokkinos, MD, PhD, from Laiko General Hospital in Athens, Greece in a news release. "Our study provides a possible explanation for the relationship between speed eating and overeating by showing that the rate at which someone eats may impact the release of gut hormones that signal the brain to stop eating."

Photo: Michelle May, M.D.

The trademarks of yo-yo dieting -- overeating, followed by deprivation in guilty repentance -- may seem like something a doctor would have the self-control and training to be above, but Michelle May, M.D., former yo-yo dieter and author of the new book "Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat," explains that "health care professionals are people too," and that the restrictions of diets -- not the dieters -- are to blame for failed weight-loss plans.

The reason? In her book, she explains that the very basics of dieting -- the counting, planning and constant need to think and plan your eating based off of someone else's rules (often "before you're even out of bed!") is tiring. So much so, that any good aspect of the diet is essentially canceled out by the end result: "This constant effort and vigilance may wear you out and cause you to return to overeating to escape." Once Dr. May ditched diets, and adopted long-term successful strategies she describes below, the weight came off.

That's Fit: What do you think was most effective in helping you achieve a healthy weight?

Dr. Michelle May: I had to pay attention not just to what and how much I was eating, but why I was eating in the first place. I didn't have any deep, dark emotional issues, but I had certainly learned to comfort and entertain myself with food. Even when I was on a diet and following the rules about what to eat, I was still eating when I was bored, stressed or tired. When I felt too deprived of the foods I loved, I'd go off my diet. Nothing had fundamentally changed about my relationship with food so I just went back to overeating my favorites. This is what I called my eat-repent-repeat cycle.

I've since worked with thousands of people who are doing exactly the same thing, and the reason is that with yo-yo [dieting you don't] have any middle ground -- you are either on your diet or off. I kicked yo-yo dieting by changing the paradigm completely from a yo-yo to a pendulum. There is still the possibility of extremes but as you give overeating and dieting less of your energy, the pendulum settles into a smaller arc in the middle where you have the flexibility and the mindfulness to nourish your mind, body, heart and soul.

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Her new book, "The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain," tracks what's happening in your brain during the average day -- the best food to fuel you through your waking hours (she recommends complex carbohydrates and lean protein; "be wary of fad diets that focus on one food type or group. These can wreak havoc by upsetting your body and brain balance"), when the peak time for exercise is ("Some research shows body temperature may peak around late afternoon or early evening, so that might be the best time to work out" but we are individuals so we'd "do best to keep a kind of daily energy diary" to see when we're at our personal best) and more in the interview below.

That's Fit: How does self-control suck your energy?

Judith Horstman: Like most activities, self-control takes energy, and that requires fuel. And yes, not doing something is an activity. A part of your brain -- usually the reasoning thinking part -- has to expend energy to not react to stimulus such as a luscious piece of calorie-laden pie. As one researcher says in the book, willpower is more than a metaphor: It's an expensive metabolic activity. That seems doubly unfair, doesn't it? You need to take in fuel (eat) to control your urge to eat.

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Photo: Courtesy of Frank Bruni

Amidst a childhood of overeating -- we're talking tantrum-throwing if he didn't get that third burger he wanted -- Frank Bruni, 44, went on his first diet at age 8, beginning a what would become a decades-long struggle of weight-loss and weight gain. "I was born with just an enormous appetite, clearly," says Bruni. "Going on the Atkins Diet at 8, that was a measure of how self-conscious I'd become about my weight, just how much teasing I'd been exposed to and just how intensely eager I was, even at that young age, to do something about it. And so I kind of stepped on that whole binge-purge cycle at an early age."

After reaching his largest size -- upwards of 270 pounds (Bruni, then as now, didn't measure his size by the scales) and a 42-inch waist -- a breakdown helped him confront his compulsive eating habits. A new job with hours he could control allowed him to stress less and exercise more. Bruni, who now wears a size 34, says he's content with the way he's managing his eating. Instead of bingeing three to four nights a week like he did in the past, Bruni has an episode once every three or four weeks, at most.

In an interview with That's Fit, he shares how he quit the yo-yo dieting cycle, what his fitness routine entails and how others can begin to address their issues with food.

That's Fit: How did you break your pattern of yo-yo dieting?

Frank Bruni: A couple of things happened. I hit rock bottom in terms of I just so hated the way I looked and I felt so disgusted by it, there was a certain point where I was like, "I just can't put up with this anymore. It just makes me too sad and ashamed." At that time, I had just changed jobs, so I had less stress because I had more control over my hours. I was able to commit to 90 minutes to two hours of exercise every day -- and that's what I would do. I mean hard exercise. After that, when I was in more of a weight-maintenance mode, I happened to reassigned to Italy and the natural portion control and the emphasis on food quality over quantity that you find in Italy was like the perfect recipe to help me maintain the weight loss.

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: Hachimaki, Flickr

Over the last few years, a great deal of information has been uncovered about how the tobacco companies knowingly engineered their cigarettes to become more addictive, usually by adding chemicals to cigarettes that increase the addictiveness of nicotine and keep smokers hooked. What if the food industry was doing the same thing?

According to Dr. David Kessler, that's exactly what food manufacturers have been doing for years, and that's at least partially responsible for the epidemic of overeating and obesity we're now witnessing.

Kessler, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has written a terrific and compelling book called "The End of Overeating." The book makes several arguments:

1. Food has been "engineered" to contain various combinations of fat and sugar and salt that have never before been found in the human diet.
2. These combinations -- particularly fat and sugar together -- are designed to stimulate brain chemistry in a way that makes it virtually impossible to resist these foods (Remember "betcha can't eat just one"?).
3. These foods "amp up" the neurons in the brain, getting them to fire more. "The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to act more vigorously in pursuit of the stimulus," he writes.
4. The most important goal of food "design" is not nutrition but to create a feeling of anticipation and desire by activating the pleasure centers of the brain.
5. Once the pleasure centers of the brain have been "hijacked" by these foods, our desire for them no longer has anything to do with hunger and more resembles addictive behavior than anything else.

Now there's a lot more to the book than that, and I strongly recommend that you read it. But a few points that Kessler makes are worth mentioning here.

Photo: Courtesy of Rodale

That's Fit: In your book you say "people get fat because they eat more than people who are lean." What about genetics, exercise and metabolism? And what about the quality of food versus the quantity of food?

David A. Kessler: Genetics, metabolism and exercise do influence a person's weight to a certain extent. For the majority of people, however, the amount of food they eat is the chief culprit in weight gain. Because food has become so energy dense, the traditional "calories in, calories out" balance is tipped on the side of intake. You can't separate quality and quantity -- foods that are highly processed and loaded and layered with sugar, fat and salt are much more likely to be eaten to excess.

Photo: allanpat, sxu.hu

Hunger is a helpful little signal. It's the body's way of telling us when it needs food. Granted, we find all sorts of ways of short-circuiting that hunger signal. When we're bored or stressed, emotions can make us reach for food even when we don't need it, and if we don't slow down while eating, we can often overeat. So it would stand to reason that, if you ate slowly (giving your body time to feel full) and controlled emotional eating, you would never overeat, right? For some people, it's not as simple as that.

Hyperphagia happens when a person's hunger rages out of control and the body doesn't indicate fullness as it normally should. Associated with rare conditions such as Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), hyperphagia can cause a person to overeat excessively -- even sneaking or stealing food in an attempt to satisfy their unstoppable hunger. About 4,500 Americans are diagnosed with PWS, but experts believe that undiagnosed cases would raise the total to nearly 30,000.

Ghrelin, a natural hormone that plays a role in hunger, has long been suspected as a culprit in hyperphagia. And scientists are continuing to study ghrelin and other possible factors behind hyperphagia. Detangling the complicated mystery that is PWS and hyperphagia could have a positive impact on the greater population as well. While true hyperphagia is relatively rare, understanding the medical causes of the problem could also help researchers in the study of obesity.

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Though anorexia and bulimia get a lot of press, little attention is paid to the most common eating disorder: Binge eating. Binge eating can lead to obesity, diabetes and depression, and while many people overeat now and then, binge eating disorder involves frequent out-of-control overeating, and it can cause a person to feel shame, anxiety or guilt.

A recent study out of Dalhousie University found that perfectionists, especially, can be at risk of developing binge eating disorder. Binging is a form of escapism -- "Think about it -- when was the last time that you were rapidly eating a pizza and pondering a major life decision at exactly the same time?" study author Dr. Simon Sherry asks Science Daily -- so perfectionists may turn to binge eating as a way to distract themselves from overwhelming, negative feelings.

Card-carrying perfectionists -- binge eaters or not -- might be able to relate to this. When a perfectionist sets a goal and it isn't reached, it creates difficult feelings. Sherry's study found that a particular sub-group of perfectionists -- those who feel they're being judged by others -- are at a heightened risk of turning to food for solace.

Source

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Have a fun and fit weekend, everyone!

Welcome to Walking the Walk, a feature that takes a deeper look at commonly shared diet and fitness advice. Every other week, I'll choose one piece of advice and practice it for seven days. Then I'll report back on what I discovered about making it work in real life and how it affected my own personal fitness -- and how it ultimately can affect your own efforts.

Let me let you in on a little secret: Despite my poker-straight hair, I'm like the girl with a curl. When my habits are healthy, they are very, very healthy. When they are not ... well ... you know.

Lately, I've found myself grazing -- skip breakfast, eat a granola bar around ten, start to get ravenous around two, binge, feel guilty, vow to do better. It's ugly. I know myself; regular, nutritious meals are the foundation of maintaining my healthy habits, probably more than anything else. The minute I start skipping meals, I'm headed for diet disaster.

With that in mind, I've decided to try eating five to six small meals a day for this week's "Walking the Walk." Though I tend to be more of a three squares and one or two small snacks kind of girl, I think this will help me get back into the habit of eating consistent, healthy meals. (Plus, it might just jump-start my metabolism.)

I aim for a 1500-calorie day, so I'm going to try and divide those calories equally -- 300 each meal for a total of five meals. If you're trying this at home, be sure to eat the amount of calories that are right for you.

Day 5: It's 10:00 A.M., time to eat my second meal of the day. But here's the thing -- I'm not hungry. I'm finding that happening a lot this week; the clock says it's time to eat, but I don't feel like it.

On the one hand, this is probably a plus. I already know that when I let myself get hungry, I've waited too long to eat. But I'm not convinced that telling people to eat when they aren't hungry is the answer to weight loss, either. Shouldn't we be depending on our bodies' hunger signals to tell us when to eat?

That said, I know that for me, personally, eating regular, healthy meals is key to avoid overeating. Bottom line: My feelings on this five-small-meals-a-day thing are -- so far -- mixed.