Posts Tagged: weight

Scientists explore stress, weight loss and our brain

It’s not just our imagination: We really do eat differently when we’re stressed. Nutritionists at UC Davis and the Western Human Nutrition Research Center are shedding light on the important link between stress, our brain and body weight, discoveries that could help society fight obesity and improve our individual efforts to lose weight and keep it off.

 “It is becoming clear that stress degrades our ability to make healthy food choices for long-term well-being,” said Kevin Laugero, a research nutritionist with the Western Human Nutrition Research Center and an adjunct professor with the UC Davis Department of Nutrition. “Knowledge of dietary guidelines is important, but we also have to help people, from a very early age, find ways to manage stress and develop their capacity to choose long-term gain over short-term reward.”

Dieting involves an ongoing series of decisions, essentially weighing short-term reward against long-term consequences (e.g., “I know I should choose the apple, but that apple pie sure smells good”). Laugero was on a team that recently studied these questions: Does our ability to recognize the long-term consequences of our decisions affect our weight management? Are there physiological factors, like stress, that affect how we make decisions? 

The short answers: yes and yes. Working with 29 volunteers, researchers discovered that the dieters who were better at making decisions based on long-term consequences were more successful at maintaining weight loss. And, volunteers with the highest level of cortisol, a hormone induced by stress and produced by the adrenal gland, were more influenced by short-term reward and lost fewer pounds.

You can read more about their study and conclusions on the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Studies website.

Rewards might prevent post-exercise eating

The post-workout binge is so common, according to the Los Angeles Times, scientists have come up with a term for it: compensation. They are now trying to figure out what makes some people compensate while others don't.

In studies of the effects of diet and exercise on body weight, some people who lose a lot of weight, some lose very little weight and some lose none at all. That has led some scientists to believe that exercise might not be a reliable way to lose weight, the Times reported. Exercise seems to stimulate the appetite.

While compensation can be triggered by particularly intense workouts, in most people it appears to be driven by a misunderstanding of how many calories a workout actually burns, a Louisiana State University professor told Times reporter Elena Conis.

"People greatly overestimate how many calories they've burned," the professor was quoted in the article. "Forty-five minutes to an hour on a treadmill only burns 450 calories. You can neutralize it with one coffee and muffin at Starbucks or two glasses of wine that night."

UC Davis nutrition specialist Judith Stern offered suggestions for overcoming compensation, such as working out with a partner.

"It helps to exercise with a friend and eat together afterward, so you can be accountable to each other," Stern was quoted in the Times article. "And if control is hard for you, look for other ways to reward yourself."

The article didn't go into healthful rewards, but I found a few on About.com. Here are some calorie-free rewards for motivating exercise:

• Give yourself an extra ten minutes. At the end of your workout, use that extra time to sit in the hot tub, take an extra long shower, pick up some coffee, stretch, nap or whatever makes you feel good.
• Reward yourself every week. At the end of each week, plan something fun you'll do if you've completed all your workouts. A movie, a massage, a shopping trip, an afternoon in front of the fire, etc.
• Reward yourself every month. Plan bigger rewards for completing all your workouts in one month. A weekend trip, a new pair of running shoes, a day at the spa...choose something that makes you smile when you think about it and get moving.
• Reward yourself at the end of the season. Another way to stay motivated is to plan something for the end of a season, like a vacation. Knowing you have a vacation to look forward to will motivate you to stay in shape so you're strong and ready for your trip.

Exercise motivation can be maintained with rewards.

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