Losing weight on the stomach area is important according to the NHS. They say: Many doctors now believe that when it comes to your health, your waist measurement is important.

Having a large amount of tummy fat (compared to fat around your bottom or thighs) makes you more likely to develop diabetes and heart problems.

A healthy waist circumference for men is less than 94cm (37 inches), and for women it's less than 80cm (32 inches).

But doing so is not easy, and one person took to Quora to see if anyone had the answer.

User Loraine Simpson responded to the question and said: It can help in the process but you cannot depend on it 100 per cent. There are also other factors that you need to consider.

For example, you have to incorporate also a good diet especially saying no to the foods that contains fattening substance - coming from sugary, fine carbs, and contains MSG.

To help you cut the cravings for unhealthy food and open up the appetite for healthy ones, you may consider taking up supplements that can aide you in losing weight.

This can also fuel up your efforts of walking as it boost also the metabolism in the body. In the process of losing fat, you should also consider focusing your effort in getting good amount of sleep and at the same is to surround yourself with people who will be supportive with you with your goals and objectives.

Quora user Wayne Knapp said: Diet is for burning fat and exercise is for building the body. Exercise can help but if your diet is bad you can also gain fat.

18 months ago I was under-eating in terms of calories, working out like crazy, losing muscle and gaining fat.

When I cut a lot of the added refined sugar out of my diet and stopped worrying about the calories I started losing fat. I exercise far less now, mostly HIIT type workouts but Im trim and still trimming down.

If you want to lose fat, your diet is key! Exercise improves a lot of things but it doesnt drive weight loss.

And user Clifford Starks, who identified himself as a personal trainer and MMA fighter said: It does help the process of losing overall fat, make sure not to change your caloric intake when you adding walking or running to your program though.

There are exercises you can do to target belly fat and Chris Wharton, Co-owner and Director of the Better Body Group, revealed his top three moves with Express.co.uk.

He also said before doing focused moves, you should create a calorie deficit, include compound exercises as part of regular workouts, and increase levels of NEAT (Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) by moving around more in the day to increase the total number of calories burned.

He added: Once you are certain these bases are covered, you can start focusing on more specific body parts. Since a slim, sculpted belly area tends to be the most desired, there are three great abdominal exercises to add into your gym repertoire.

See more here:
Weight loss: Will the simple exercise of walking get rid of belly fat? - Express.co.uk

Welcome to the latest edition of Senior Snippets: the monthly advisory column with the older members of our community in mind, brought to you by Caroline Aherne, Director of Home Instead Senior Care in Bexhill.

For an elderly person to admit they need help would mean they cant take care of themselves anymore, and no one wants to lose their independence. Usually, the burden falls on family members to recognize the signs that an aging parent might need some extra help with daily living tasks, but this doesnt necessarily mean that your loved one has to move into a care home. They may just need some extra help in their home.

Here are some questions to ask to determine if your elderly parents may need some extra care?

Are your parents able to take care of themselves? Pay attention to your parents appearance. Failure to keep up with daily routines such as bathing, tooth brushing, and good hygiene is a sign that they may be experiencing feelings of depression or have a physical ailment.

Are your parents able to take care of their home? Are the lights working or is the laundry piling up? Is the garden overgrown? Any changes in the way your parents do things around the house could provide clues to their health.

Are your parents safe on the road? Driving can be challenging for older adults. If your parents become confused while driving or youre concerned about their ability to drive safely, it might be time to stop driving.

Have your parents lost weight? Losing weight without trying could be a sign that somethings wrong. Weight loss could be related to many factors, including difficulty cooking, loss of taste or smell or perhaps it is the signal of an underlying condition such as malnutrition, dementia, or depression.

Are your parents still social? Its important to talk to your parents about their activities. Are they connecting with friends? Have they maintained interest in hobbies and other daily activities? Are they involved in organisations or clubs? If a parent gives up on being with others, it could be a sign of a problem.

Even if you dont live near-by to your parents but are concerned about their health and wellbeing, there are many things you can do to ensure your parents are getting the support they need. Share your concerns with them and address any issues that you feel may become bigger if they arent dealt with early on. Encourage regular medical check-ups, consider home care services, and seek help from local agencies.

If you would like to speak to someone at Home Instead, please do not hesitate to get in touch. We also welcome any suggestions for future topics from you all. All you have to do is write to me at caroline.aherne@homeinstead.co.uk by post to Caroline Aherne, Home Instead Senior Care, Charter House, 43 St Leonards Road, Bexhill on Sea, TN40 1JA.

Read more:
Gauging the Health and Wellness of Ageing Parents - Bexhill Observer

Walnuts already have an image as a healthyish food, but the California Walnut Commission wanted to know more. A new study asked if walnutsalready associated with lower risks of heart disease and Type 2 diabetesmight deliver some of their health benefits by changing our brains reactions to food.

The Headline: Walnuts for Weight Loss? (New York Times)

The Story: First of all, this study tested absolutely nothing about weight loss. Its also worth noting up front that it was partly funded by the California Walnut Commission, but the CWC had nothing to do with the design, execution, or publication of the research; the researchers came up with the study themselves and applied to the CWC for funding.

So if this wasnt about weight loss, what was it about?

This was a small but tight studydouble-blind and placebo-controlled. Nine obese participants were given either a walnut shake or a placebo (walnut-flavored and identical in calories and macronutrient breakdown) as part of their weight-maintenance diet for five days. This was repeated twice, with a month cool-down between, with those who got the placebo in round one given walnuts in round two and vice versa. At the end of the five days, subjects were asked about their hunger levels, and their brains reactions to images of food were recorded in an MRI.

In the surveys, walnut-drinkers reported feeling less hungry than the placebo group (matching previous findings from this research lab). The brain scan results were the new part, revealing that when shown images of high-reward food (compared to low-reward food like vegetables, or non-food like rocks), walnut-drinkers showed more activity in an area of the brain called the insula, which is thought to be involved in appetite and impulse control. This functional MRI analysis, or fMRI, offers researchers exciting insights into brain activity, but flaws have been found in its complex methodology, and the interpretation of fMRI findings is still controversial.

Does that activity mean that walnuts give you more will power when faced with junk food? Not necessarily. Would these results apply in lean patients, beyond the obese test subjects? No clue. Are walnuts special or would other nuts work? Idk.

Okay, but how did walnuts have an effect on these participants brains? I would love to know, as would the researchers behind this study. This is a baby step in the long march toward figuring out the mechanisms behindand extent ofthe apparent health benefits of one of the many, many foods that people eat.

The Takeaway: Walnuts might help you feel more satisfied, and they might stimulate a part of your brain that might boost your impulse control. We can draw our own conclusions about how satiety and impulse control affect our ability to eat less, but this study says absolutely bupkis about weight loss.

Read more here:
No, Walnuts Aren't the Key to Weight Loss - Lifehacker

Kevin Lomangino is the managing editor of HealthNewsReview.org. He tweets as @KLomangino.

Stories in the New York Times Well blog have been known to drive us nuts never more so than when they blithely tout the health benefits of walnutsbased on research thats too preliminary to support such claims.

The latest example came on Friday in a very short and exceptionally incomplete piece headlined: Walnuts for Weight Loss?

Lets start with the fact that this study had just nine participants.

Nine people who were studied for a grand total of 10 days.

Thats far too small a group, studied for too short a time, to claim: A handful of walnuts may be an effective weight loss tool.

And yet thats how the Times chose to frame the findings in its lead sentence. The rest of the story made no attempt to walk back the claim or rein it in not in the slightest.

Weve written extensively on the dangers of drawing any firm conclusions from tiny studies like this one.

The coverage becomes even more suspect when we learn that the reported results had almost nothing to do with weight loss.

As the Times eventually gets around to explaining, the subjects in the study consumed smoothies one with real walnuts and a control smoothie with walnut flavoring. The researchers then performed MRI brain scans while the participants looked at pictures of high-fat foods, low-fat foods, and pictures of rocks and trees. They found:

when people looked at pictures of high-fat food, activation in the insula, a part of the brain involved in appetite and impulse control, increased among those who drank the walnut smoothie, but not among placebo drinkers.

Maybe its interesting for academic researchers to know that a particular part of the brain lights up in response to pictures of chocolate cake over the course of a few days. But that may have little bearing on what will actually happen when people are confronted with real pieces of cake over the course of months or years.

The MRI brain scan in this case is a so-called surrogate for what researchers think might happen in the real world. Weve written extensively on why surrogate markers often dont tell the whole story.

Youd think that the Times skeptical antennae would be on high alert given this studys funding from the California Walnut Commission. But theres nary a note of caution anywhere to be found. Nor does the story raise the plausible idea that other nuts would produce the same effects although that possibility is acknowledged by the researchers themselves in the published study.

I guess the macadamia people will have to fund their own study if they want to draw the Times attention.

Kevin C. Klatt, a PhD nutrition student at Cornell University who blogs at Nutrevolve, told me that hismajor concern about this study is that it provides little practical information.

Participants consumed fruit smoothies containing either walnuts or safflower oil with a walnut flavoring. The effects of walnuts in this study are relevant only to this control, which lacks real world application. Im not aware of any smoothie recipes that call for the inclusion of safflower oil.

In addition to this real world issue, from a scientific perspective, its unclear to me what hypothesis is being tested in this study (I looked briefly and couldnt find a clinical trial registration or a primary outcome that was pre-registered). Walnuts differ in a substantial number of ways from safflower oil. As is, the study tests whether changing numerous nutritional factors at once impact their outcomes; given that many of these nutritional factors are common to other foods (i.e. omega 3 fatty acids, fiber), this leaves us unable to claim the outcomes are due to something uniquely special about walnuts.

I didnt bother to read any of the 95 comments (and counting) that Times readers left in response to this story, because I know many of them will echo the criticisms that readers have repeatedly made before in response to the Times incomplete Well Blog reporting.

We join those readers (again) in calling for an end to such incomplete and imbalanced journalism.

Update: This post originally stated that Kevin C. Klatts lab at Cornell has received funding from the California Walnut Commission. That was incorrect and the disclosure statement has been removed.

Most people I know don't need seven reasons to drink beer. But when those reasons

Rarely a week passes for us at HealthNewsReview.org that we don't come across surrogate markers

Step back. Breathe deeply. Join usin sucking insomerecent research news coverage. Coughing on cacophony of

Continue reading here:
Walnuts for weight loss? Times makes huge leap based on brain scans of 9 people - HealthNewsReview.org

Its a hot, muggy day here on Long Island, and I write this to you from my parents home. Every Tuesday and Friday, I visit my hometown of Port Washington, and work with my grandmother on rehab from hip replacement surgery last summer, and my dad on improving his strength, tone and overall cardiovascular health.

Today, Im going to piggyback on what I wrote to you yesterday. Yesterday, we discussed where to get inspiration from to take that first step on your health and weight loss journey. That place, in case you missed it, is none other than YOURSELF!

You can be pushed by your friends, your family members or even your significant other to get started, but if YOU truly dont want to do whats necessary to reach your goals, then they can try to coax you until the cows come homeNothings going to change! Starting this journey for the RIGHT reasons, AKA to better your body, your health and your fitness in order to leave a greater impact on your world, takes a lot of chutzpah believe it or not

A lot of folks today have a sort of Martyr Syndrome, where basically EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in their lives is more important than they are (in their minds), and thus, these people and these things should come before themselves! Its not uncommon for these folks to blame the people and the things that theyre focusing all of their attention and energy on as their primary reasons for NOT taking care of themselves.

And lookI get it! If you have a high-stress job where you work long hours, and/or you have kids, and/or you have a significant other you need to tend to at home, we all have a plethora of responsibilities on our plates each and every day.

That being said, this is YOUR life! Its not your husbands or wifes, its not your kids, its not your bosss or your coworkersIts YOURS!! It may seem chivalrous or noble to excel with all these different people and in all these different tasks, but if you dont take care of yourself, than sooner or later, your ability to serve them is going to go wayyyy down

Some of my best clients have been parents. They got to a point where they were so inflexible and so out of shape, that they were having trouble bending down to pick up their kids, they were having trouble helping their kids tie their shoes, and they were having trouble just functioning in their daily lives. They felt a sense of guilt in not being able to be there for their kids, and were scared about not being there to see them graduate high school, or college, or to get married, or to even have children of their own!

And while many of these parents were able to reach their short-term goals and drastically improve their relationships with their children as a result of their improved health and fitness, I know some have fallen off the wagon since we stopped working together. Its not because they forgot what they needed to doIts because they didnt do this for themselves! They didnt believe they were worthy of continuing to take that extra time to prep healthy meals or to work out.

If youre reading this, then Id like to fill you in on a little secret: You ARE worth it! I may not know you from a hole in the wall, but I truly believe that were all here to leave a significant impact on the world. You have a gift, a superpower and a talent that makes you unique and useful, and you deserve to be recognized!

However, if youre not taking care of yourself, youll certainly gain recognition, but for all the wrong reasons

Instead of blaming others and your other priorities for your lack of self care, do me a favor, step up, and take responsibility! You may not be where you want to be right now, but this much is true: If you want this bad enough, you can have it!! You just have to reach out there and grab it;-)

pete@weightlossbypete.com

P.S. If youre READY to take that first step on your health and weight loss journey, then youre REALLY going to want to download my FREE report!

With 10 years of experience, SEVEN different fitness and nutrition certifications, and a sustained weight loss of 100 lbs., I think I know a thing or two about this Permanent Weight Loss thing;-)

This report will provide you with the five strategies I personally used to lose 100 lbs., and KEEP THEM OFF! These are the same five strategies I teach my Permanent Weight Loss clients, and are the basis to losing weight and getting healthy once and for all!

To get your FREE copy, please go to http://www.weightlossbypete.com/5strategies.

The Morning Email

Wake up to the day's most important news.

Read the original:
Weight Loss Tip: Take Responsibility! - HuffPost

Sharing his story to Reddit as user MikeMarx153, the man explained how he started out at 31 stone and four pounds before losing more than 18 stone over two years.

Explaining what he thought was the most important factor in his weight loss apart from diet and exercise, he said: It all came down to flawed thinking. For me, I think the fear of failure was most responsible.

Trying and failing at losing weight would only confirm the worst thoughts about myself. It would be further evidence that I wasnt deserving of a better life.

He revealed it was only when someone at his workplace got weight loss surgery and he knew he could use that as a back-up plan if he was unsuccessful on his own that he was able to consider starting to try to lose weight.

Going in to detail about he got to where he is today, MikeMarx153 said: To lose weight you have to swim against the current. You cant have the meals you see advertised on a regular basis, you cant fall for the latest health fad being pushed. You cant eat mindlessly like the majority of the population.

Weight loss is possible - I think this is another piece of flawed thinking that holds people back. Knowing that weight loss is possible is essential to success because it gives you control.

He also explained: Know what a reasonable amount of food looks like. I can honestly say that I had no idea how much I should be eating, or what it would look like, or what it should make me feel like.

My daily calorie goal has always been 1500, and so I tried to shoot for that, but I felt that I had a successful day if I was below 1700.

I also decided that I was going to quit cheating and eating between meals. No more extra piece of pizza, no more cookies in the break room, no more candy from the candy bowl.

"If I went a bit over 1500 because of my three meals that was one thing, but I wouldnt go over because I was snacking.

He reiterated: Count calories, use a food scale, and be honest with yourself. Plus, my Myfitnesspal journal is public (username mikemarx153), so you can just go there and look at what I did.

His final piece of advice, which comes as another man revealed how he lost three stone in four months, was to get to a place in your diet and exercise regime where its only a matter of time before you reach your goal.

He explained: This advice might be more controversial than it first appears. What it means is that I was often creating a caloric deficit larger than that traditional maximum of 1000 (including exercise). Im not saying thats right for everyone, but it worked for me.

The most important thing is that your calorie level be sustainable, so if you can only create a 500, or 250 calorie deficit, then do that.

As well as his key tips, MikeMarx153 shared some other general advice and said: Focus on the things in your life you enjoy that arent food and see treats for what they are.

Think about your favourite not-so-healthy food. Lets stick with Oreos. Do you realise the amount of Oreos you can eat in a lifetime? Thats tens of thousands of Oreos youll be eating, so you dont have to eat them all today.

He also revealed his current diet and exercise plan:

Go here to see the original:
Weight loss: Man lost over 18 stone with new diet plan and THIS small change - Express.co.uk