Word: proteins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appetite for meat and sweets were essential to human survival, but they didn't lead to obesity for several reasons. For one thing, the wild game our ancestors ate was high in protein but very low in fat--only about 4%, compared with up to 36% in grain-fed supermarket beef. For another, our ancestors couldn't count on a steady supply of any particular food. Hunters might bring down a deer or a rabbit or nothing at all. Fruit might be in season, or it might not. A chunk of honeycomb might have as many calories as half...
...animals with spears and clubs was a marathon undertaking--and then you had to hack up the catch and lug it miles back to camp. Climbing trees to find nuts and fruit was hard work too. In essence, early humans ate what amounted to the best of the high-protein Atkins diet and the low-fat Ornish diet, and worked out almost nonstop. To get a sense of their endurance, cardiovascular fitness, musculature and body fat, say evolutionary anthropologists, look at a modern marathon runner...
Scientists at Regeneron, based in New York, are tapping into the same feeding hub in the brain but through a different protein that is more closely related to leptin. Regeneron's agent, Axokine, fools the brain into thinking that the body's fat stores are well stocked, short-circuiting the need to eat. People who took Axokine and stayed on a low-calorie diet and exercise program lost twice as much weight as those who relied on diet and exercise alone...
Probably the most unexpected result is that there is no consensus about the best way to lose weight. Half the registrants shed the pounds on their own; the other half enrolled in a program or went to a nutritionist. Some participants emphasized protein, others a low-fat diet. But most chose some combination of limiting what they ate and increasing their level of physical activity...
After reaching their goal, most long-term losers followed a single general strategy toward nutrition: limiting the calories and to a lesser extent the amount of fat in their diet. (It will be interesting to see if this observation continues to hold as high-protein diets become more popular.) That doesn't mean that they necessarily count each calorie or weigh every portion, but they often started by looking up the calorie content of their favorite foods. "I was surprised at how calories can sneak up on you," says Gregg Fields, 44, a college professor in Delray Beach...