Obesity and Weight Loss Managment

Toss Cravings, Lose Weight

Of 190 million obese Americans, approximately 10-15 percent engage in harmful binge eating. During single sittings, these over-eaters consume large servings of high-caloric foods. Sufferers contend with weight gain and depression including heart disease and diabetes. A new clinical trial, called Regulation of Food Cues, at UC San Diego Health System, aims to treat binge eating by helping participants to identify real hunger and to practice resistance if the stomach is full.

“Most weight-loss treatments for obese adults focus very little on the reduction of binge eating,” said Kerri Boutelle, PhD, principal investigator and associate professor in the department of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “With this study we use a variety of techniques to train the brain to identify and respond to hunger and cravings and to learn resistance to highly craved foods.”

The one-year study will recruit 30 participants who will undergo weekly 60–90 minute sessions held over 12 weeks. Participants will learn how food cravings originate, how to detect and monitor true hunger, how emotional factors influence eating habits, and how to manage cravings and impulses to eat.

Anti-obesity drugs with a modified lifestyle helps weight loss -new study

A study led by the University of Leicester has found that anti-obesity drugs coupled with lifestyle advice are effective in reducing weight and BMI.

Dr Laura Gray and colleagues from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester have published a paper in the journal Obesity Review which looks at the effectiveness of anti –obesity drugs and a modified lifestyle on weight loss and body mass index. The research was funded by an National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme.

The review was based on 94 studies including over 24,000 individuals and assessed how effective the drugs were in terms of weight loss and body mass index at 3, 6 and 12 months. Two of the included drugs (sibutramine and rimonbant) were withdrawn from use during the review due to possible side effects.

Dieting with the denomination, determination

As a brand new year gets underway, people all over America are resolving to better manage their weight and have a more healthy 2012. According to a new study, those starting new weight loss programs may be surprised to find out that both location and level of experience may influence their success. A recent article published in The Journal of Black Psychology (a journal from the Association of Black Psychologists, published by SAGE) finds that African American women beginning a new group weight loss program are more successful if they are less experienced with weight management and if the program meets in a church.

The authors of this new study monitored two groups of women in the same weight loss program. One group met weekly at a university and the other group met in a church. After 13 weeks, they found that the women meeting in the church setting lost a greater percentage of weight than those who met at the university. Additionally, those women who set out to change their eating and exercise practices for the first time lost a greater percentage of weight than women who had experience managing their weight.

Researchers Tracy Sbrocco, Robyn Osborn, Robert D. Clark, Chiao-Wen Hsiao, and Michele M. Carter studied 55 African American women, ages 18 to 55, involved in a 13-week weight-management program designed to promote long-term diet and exercise practices that produce moderate but lasting weight loss. Of these 55 women, 19 met together in a church and 36 met at a medical school in the area. All participants were weighed and had physical fitness tests at pre- and post-treatment.

Device makers urge coverage of weight-loss surgery

Device manufacturers are pushing the government and health insurers to cover weight-loss surgery, an effort that could give millions more obese Americans access to the treatments.

Advocates say it will give obese patients a complete arsenal for fighting the condition that can spur a host of life-threatening illnesses and help save billions of dollars in healthcare costs for employers and the government.

Critics argue that bariatric surgery has high rates of complications and that, ultimately, surgery does not change the behavior underlying obesity.

Frequent eating tied to less weight gain in girls

Girls who ate frequent meals and snacks put on fewer pounds and gained fewer inches to their waistlines over the next decade than those who only ate a couple of times each day, according to a new study.

Researchers said that one explanation is that smaller, more frequent meals and snacks kept girls satisfied for longer, and prevented them from over-eating.

But it’s too early to say if that style of eating should be recommended to help prevent obesity in girls, or in the general population.

Pick Up the Cell Phone, Drop the Pounds

Cell phones aren’t just for talking any more. Surfing the web, storing music and posting to Facebook have all contributed to the near-mandatory use of a cell phone. How about using that cell phone to lose weight? Researchers with Calit2’s Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems (CWPHS) and the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, at University of California, San Diego are expanding a previous study aimed at finding out if cell phone technology can help with weight loss.

For one year, researchers with the “ConTxt” study will evaluate the use of cell phone text messages to remind participants to make wise nutritional choices throughout the day. Participants randomized to the intervention conditions will also be given tailored messages for weight loss and lifestyle changes as well as a pedometer to monitor their daily activity.

“ConTxt is an innovative, yet straightforward approach to getting people to monitor their diet and physical activity,” says CWPHS project principal investigator Kevin Patrick, MD, MS, professor of Family and Preventive Medicine, UC San Diego School of Medicine. “We are trying to make this as pain free as possible. People won’t stick to something that’s too difficult and they’re all multi-tasking anyway. We’re doing this study to increase what we know about using the cell phone to get messages to busy people on the go.”

FDA takes aim at “unproven” HCG weight-loss brands

U.S. regulators have taken first steps to remove from the market over-the-counter products containing HCG hormone, saying the homeopathic formulations fraudulently claim to produce weight loss and may pose serious health risks.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission issued seven warning letters on Tuesday to companies that sell the over-the-counter products, noting they have not been approved by the FDA for weight loss.

The FDA and FTC said the products, taken as oral drops, pellets or sprays, instruct buyers to use them in conjunction with a very low-calorie diet that the agencies consider potentially dangerous.

Nervous system activity may predict successful weight loss

A recent study of obese volunteers participating in a 12-week dietary weight-loss program found that successful weight losers had significantly higher resting nerve activity compared to weight-loss resistant individuals. The study was accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

The sympathetic nervous system is widely distributed throughout the body and subconsciously regulates many physiological functions including the control of resting metabolic rate and the dissipation of calories after food intake. The present study examined the relationship between activity of the sympathetic nervous system and weight-loss outcome in a group of obese individuals on a low-calorie diet intervention program.

“We have demonstrated for the first time that resting muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) is a significant independent predictor of weight-loss outcome in a cohort of overweight or obese subjects,” said Nora Straznicky, PhD, of the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia and lead author of the study. “Our findings provide two opportunities. First, we may be able to identify those persons who would benefit most from lifestyle weight-loss interventions such as dieting. Secondly, the findings may also help in developing weight-loss treatments through stimulating this specific nervous activity.”

In this study, researchers examined 42 overweight or obese subjects who had participated in dietary-lifestyle intervention trials that cut their daily caloric intake by 30 percent for 12 weeks. MSNA was measured by microneurography, a process involving the insertion of metal microelectrodes into nerve fascicles (a bundle of nerve fibers). Researchers found that weight loss was independently predicted by baseline resting MSNA.

Mid-Morning Snacking May Sabotage Weight-Loss Efforts

Women dieters who grab a snack between breakfast and lunch lose less weight compared to those who abstain from a mid-morning snack, according to a study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The results of this randomized trial, led by Anne McTiernan, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the Hutchinson Center’s Public Health Sciences Division and director of its Prevention Center, will be published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

In the course of the year-long study, the researchers found that mid-morning snackers lost an average of 7 percent of their total body weight while those who ate a healthy breakfast but did not snack before lunch lost more than 11 percent of their body weight. For the study, a snack was defined as any food or drink that was consumed between main meals.

Safety data favors less-invasive weight-loss surgery

Minimally-invasive weight-loss procedures seem to be safer than open bariatric surgery, according to researchers who analyzed past studies comparing the two methods.

The new report suggests that so-called laparoscopic surgery carries an 80 to 90 percent lower risk of infections and hernias, but that just as many people getting both procedures need the operation repeated. The risk of death from either appears to be low, researchers added.

“Within the surgical field it’s been almost accepted to a degree that laparoscopic is the way to go,” said Jennifer Reoch, a nursing graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, who led the new research. “Our study was to kind of give a little more weight to that decision.”