Surprise! Protein's more filling!

Ok, maybe it's not a surprise, but today at least, it's sure going to be news (and perhaps I'll be the first to break the embargo at 12:01AM - thanks Blogger for allowing scheduled posts!).

It's going to be on radio, print and television - the results of the first prong of the DiOGenes study. DiOGenes is a multi-pronged study spearheaded over in Europe and today's spear has to do with trying to answer the question, "What's the best diet to help maintain weight loss?".

This study was an enormous undertaking as it looked at whole families, in 8 different European countries for between 6 and 12 months and randomized their dietary intakes to compare weight gain with diets high or normal in protein and high or low in glycaemic index carbohydrates.

In total, the study aimed

"to recruit a total of around 850 obese/overweight parents (BMI>28) from the 8 participating centres, corresponding to 450 families with an estimated 450-1050 children, where at least one child in each family is overweight."

Mandatory too was an 8 week run-in weight loss phase where adult family members were required to lose 8% of their body weight before their family was admitted into the study.

The results weren't particularly surprising. Dietary protein helped maintain weight loss while GI index did not.

I think the most important part of the whole paper was a quote in the introduction that does a great job explaining why the world's getting so big so fast,

"Given our genetic background, it is essentially infeasible for humans to self-regulate food intake under current environmental circumstances."

What this basically states is that in 2008, the default is weight gain, and I can't agree more. People haven't changed in the past 100 years, but our environment sure has and the reason we're gaining weight so quickly now is that since weight gain is the default, that means by definition maintenance of a healthy body weight in our current environment has actually become a skill. And just like other skills (martial arts for instance), just because your minds' eye might know what it looks like to do a jumping, spinning hook kick, it doesn't mean you can simply jump up and do one.

To extrapolate a martial arts analogy to healthy weight think of it this way: Just because your minds' eye might know what a healthy lifestyle looks like, to expect yourself, without instruction, to be able to simply jump up and happily live with one is often too much to ask (people do it unhappily all the time - that's called dieting).

Not surprisingly this study was funded by Big Food and here's one time where I think it's a great partnership. Here's an opportunity for Big Food to help by using their study to help pave the way to the creation of new food products that may be useful in preventing weight gain/regain.

Hurray for Big Food!

(there's something I don't say very often)

[BTW, I'll likely have a 5-10 second sound bite on CTV's National News tonight in Avis Favaro's story on this study should any of my Canadian readers want to watch]

Subway's Jared Celebrates 10 Years of Weight Maintenance!

Congratulations go out to Subway's Jared for doing what the vast majority of those that lose weight don't do - keep it off.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Jared's Subway eureka moment came back when he weighed 425lbs and his college roommate at Indiana University made a tape recording of the sounds he made while sleeping (severe sleep apnea can sound quite dramatic and frightening). He reports trying a few other efforts before finally settling in on his now famous Subway diet which arose with him reading a nutrition facts panel while standing in line for a sub. The rest of course, is marketing history.

Jared's Subway diet amounted to roughly 1,500 Calories a day, low for the majority of men, combined with lots of walking.

Subway took notice after Jared was featured on multiple local media outlets and he has remained a spokesman for them every since.

He no longer formally counts Calories but certainly practices Calorie awareness and knows what portions work best in his own personal foodscape.

Jared's not alone in his weight maintenance success. The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) now numbers well into the thousands and to be a registrant you've had to have lost over 30lbs and kept it off for over 1 year. The last time I saw Dr. Rena Wing (one of the registry's founders) speak, the average registrant had lost 66lbs and kept it off for 5.5 years.

So how do the registrants do it? The NWCR has a great facts page and here are some highlights,

Duration of successful weight loss has ranged from 1 year to 66 years!

Some have lost the weight rapidly, while others have lost weight very slowly--over as many as 14 years.

45% of registry participants lost the weight on their own and the other 55% lost weight with the help of some type of program.

98% of Registry participants report that they modified their food intake in some way to lose weight.

94% increased their physical activity, with the most frequently reported form of activity being walking.

78% eat breakfast every day.

62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.

90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.

One thing's absolutely certain and during a working day you'll hear me say it at least 5 times a day,

"The more weight you'd like to permanently lose, the more of your lifestyle you'll need to permanently change"

which of course then leads me to the,

"Therefore if you don't like the life you're living while you're losing, you're much more likely to gain it back"

Jared has kept his weight off because he likes his new lifestyle.

Do you like yours?

Congratulations again Jared.