Here is a study from July 2008. Bascically said the stronger you are the less likely you are to die from heart disease and cancer:
Not a definitive study but it sure supports what I have seen in real life.
There has been no direct study of Vitamin D and Fat Loss. But there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that point to the fact that it just. Here are a couple of the most compelling to me:
Blood serum Vitamin D has been shown to be lower in the obese in this 1988 Study. This 2002 observational study showed with every 300 mg increase in regular calcium intake there is about 1 kg less body fat in children. What do you need to increase calcium absorption? That’s right, vitamin D. In this 2008 study the set out to test the hypothesis that high vitamin D lead to weight gain. What they found was: There is an inverse association between BMI and the serum levels of
25-OH-vit D and 1,25-vit D. This makes it highly unlikely that high
levels of circulating 1,25-vit D contribute to the development of
obesity.
There is no direct study and I can not say Vitamin D aides fat loss. It seems pretty likely to me. But I can say low vitamin D is associated with obesity.
Just ran across this article on newsday.com. They based the whole article on a study released on Dec. 2007. Quoting the study details such as this: “…men who ate more than 5 ounces of red meat each day and women who ate more than 3 ounces had a 51% greater risk of esophageal cancer, 61% of liver cancer and 24% of colorectal cancer than those who ate less than an ounce of red meat daily.”
Very ominous stuff, with results like that why had this study not made a bigger splash. The links in the do not take you to the study so I had to google it. It still took some creative searching to find the study.(Maybe I am just search engine challenged!) Now I know why it was not a bigger splash. This is a study on 50 to 71 year olds completeing a 124 item food frequency questionnaire. Thus to me would seem to be problem one. How accruate is the survey reponce? I am 42 an can’t tell you what I ate last week!!
The results of the survey are as you would expect. The highest meat eatters had the highest cancer rates. They supost to correct for other enviromental factors such as smoking. But How accurate is this? If smoking was the only varible they problibly could use stats to correct for it. There are a number of factors and each could have an added effect on the other. Here is what I am talking about:
The ones that at the most red meat also: Smoked more, ate more, ate fewer fruit and vegitbles, were more overweight, exercised less and were older. So what is the combined effect of all those things on a persons chances of getting cancer? Here is the data:
No study is perfect. But before we demonize a food that has sustained people forever maybe we should look at data that is based on a study population were there are not so many varibles.
Now I know why they waited a year to write the story, so the study and its flaws would be hard to find.
This study finds that several short (<10 minute) bouts of moderate intensity physical activity may reduce cardiovascular disease risks. Check out a better wright up at drbriffa.com.
This seems to be good news for those of us short on time. We can spread out the exercise and still get positive results. Couple this with a good diet and our health will improve.
Just for confusion: This is an acutal study on:
The conclusion:
This is am example of a controlled study which should be given more weight than the study based on questionaires, like the on in my previous post.
ScienceDaily (2008-10-27) — About 5 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure (HF). While some reports indicate that changes to diet can reduce HF risk, few large, prospective studies have been conducted. In a new study researchers observed over 14,000 participants for more than 13 years and found that whole grain consumption lowered HF risk, while egg and high-fat dairy consumption raised risk. Other food groups did not directly affect HF risk.
Why am I posting this story? The study seems opposite of the low carb approach I have taken. First I do want to stay open minded, being closed to any inputs that are counter to your own views limits the view of the whole problem and reduces the likely hood of you finding the answer you seek. This brings to mind the old story of 2 blind me describing an elephant, one feels the leg and descibes it as like a tree. The other feels the trunk and descibes it as a power snake. Each is right about what they have felt, both are wrong in what the elephant is. In many ways that is where we are in the study on obesity in America.
This is also the type of study to be careful of because it has many varibles that are hard to account for.
A news media feeding frenzy erupted recently when a new diet study broke in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Almost all the reporters got it wrong, wrong WRONG! So did most of the gloating low carb forumites and bloggers. Come to think of it, almost everyone interpreted this study wrong. Some valuable insights came out of this study, but almost everyone missed them because they were too busy believing what the news said or defending their own cherished belief systems … 
The new study, titled, “Weight Loss With a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet” was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in issue 359, number 3.
I quickly read the full text of the research paper the day it was published. Then, I shook my head in dismay as I scanned the news headlines. I found it amusing that the media turned this into a three ring circus, putting a misleading “low carb versus high carb,” “Atkins vindicated” or “Diet wars” spin on the story. But that’s mainstream journalism for you, right? Gotta sell those papers!
Just look at some of these headlines:
“Study Tips Scales in Atkins Diets Favor: Low Carb Regimen Better Than Low Fat Diet For Weight And Cholesterol, Major Study Shows. “
“Low-Carb and Low-Fat Diets Face Off “ “The Never-Ending Diet Wars” “Low Carb Beats Low Fat in Diet Duel.” “Atkins Diet is Safe and Far More Effective Than a Low-Fat One, Study Says” “Unrestricted Low-Carb Diet Wins Hands Down” Some of these headlines are hilarious! I wonder if any of these reporters actually read the whole study. Geez. Is it too much trouble to read 13 pages before you write a story that will be read by millions of already confused people suffering the pain and frustration of obesity?
Here’s a quick look at the study design.
The low fat restricted calorie diet was based on American Heart Association guidelines. Calorie intake was set at 1500 for women, 1800 a day for men with 30% of calories from fat, and only 10% from saturated fat. Participants were instructed to eat low fat grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes and to limit their consumption of additional fats, sweets and high fat snacks.
The Mediterranean diet group was placed on a moderate fat, restricted calorie program rich in vegetables and low in red meat, with poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb. Energy intake was restricted to 1500 calories per day for women and 1800 calories per day for men with a goal of no more than 35% of calorie from fat. Added fat came mostly from nuts and olive oil.
The low carb diet was a non-restricted calorie plan aimed at providing 20 grams of carbs per day for the 2 month induction phase with a gradual increase to 120 grams per day to maintain the weight loss. Intakes of total calories, protein and fat were not limited. However, the participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of protein (more on that bizarre-twist shortly).
The study subjects were mostly male (86%), overweight (BMI 31) and middle age (mean age 52)
Here were the study results:
There were some health improvements in cholesterol, blood pressure and other parameters in the Mediterranean and low carb group that bested the high carb group. That was the focus of many articles and discussions that appeared on the net this week. However, I’d like to focus on the weight loss aspect as I’m not a medical doctor and fat loss is the primary subject matter of this website. All three groups lost weight. The low carb group lost 5.5 kilos, the Mediterranean group lost 4.6 kilos and the low fat group lost 3.3 kilograms…. IN TWO YEARS! Whoopee!
My conclusion would be that the results were similar and that none of the diets worked very well over the long term!
Amanda Gardner of the US News and World Report Health Day was one of the few reporters who got it right:
“Diet plans produce similar results: Study finds Mediterranean and low-carb diets work just as well as low fat ones.”
Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times also came close with her headline:
“Long term diet study suggests success is hard to come by: In a tightly controlled experiment, obese people lost an average of just 6 to 10 pounds over two years.”
Even this headline wasn’t 100% accurate. The study was HARDLY tightly controlled. Tightly controlled means metabolic ward studies where the researchers actually count and control the calorie intake.
The problem is, you can’t lock people in a hospital or research center ward for two years. So in this study, they used a food frequency questionnaire. Sure, like we believe what people report about their eating habits at restaurants and at home behind closed doors! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
“No! I swear Dr. Schwarzfuchs! I swear I didn’t eat those donuts over the weekend! I stayed on my Mediterranean diet. Honest!”
One of the most firmly established facts in dietetics research is that almost everyone underreports their food intake BADLY, sometimes by as much as 50%. I’m not saying everyone “lies,” they just forget or don’t know. In fact, this underreporting of calorie intake is such a huge problem that it makes obesity research very difficult to do and conclusions difficult to draw from free-living studies. Another blunder in the news reports is that this study didn’t really follow Atkins diet parameters OR even the traditional low fat diet for that matter, so it’s not an “Atkin’s versus Ornish” showdown at all. If you actually take the time to read the full text of the research paper it doesn’t say ANYTHING like, “Atkins is the best after all.” That’s the spin that some of the news media cooked up (and what the Atkins foundation was hoping for). It says, “The diet was based on the Atkins diet.” However, the sentence right before that says, “The participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein.” Vegetarian Atkins? The chart on page 236 says the low carb diet provided 40% of calories from carbs at 6, 12 and 24 months. If I’m reading that data properly, then the only low carb period was a brief induction phase in the very beginning. Does that sound like Atkins? 40% carb sounds more like the Zone diet or my own Burn The Fat program to me.
The Atkins Foundation, which partially supported this study, told reporters, “We feel vindicated.” HA! They should have paid the reporters and told the researchers they felt ripped off and they wanted a refund for misuse of their research grant!
After carefully reading the full text of this study, there are many interesting findings we could talk about, from the differences in results between men and women to the improvements in health markers. Here’s what the study really says that stood out to me. It’s what I would have talked about if the newspapers or TV stations had called me:
1. “Mediterranean and low carb diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets.”
I can agree completely with that statement. All three diets created a calorie deficit. All three groups lost weight. Low carb lost a little more, which is the usual finding because low carb diets often control appetite and calorie intake automatically (you eat less even if you don’t count calories). Also, if body composition is not indicated, there’s an initial water weight loss that makes low carb diets look more effective in the very early stages.
2. “Personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions.”
Absolutely! Nutrition should be individualized based on goals, health status, body type, activity level and numerous other factors. Different people have different phenotypes. Some people are more predisposed to thrive on a low carb approach. Others feel like crap on low carbs and do better with more carbs or a middle of the road approach. Those who dogmatically follow and defend one type of diet or the other are only handcuffing themselves by limiting their options. Iris Shai, a researcher in the study said, “We can’t rely on one diet fits all.” Hmm, far cry from “Atkins wins hands down,” wouldn’t you say?
3. “The rate of adherence to a study diet was 95.4% at 1 year and 84.6% at 2 years.”
THIS was the part of most interest to me. When I read this, immediately I could have cared less about the silly low carb versus high carb wars that the news reporters were jumping on. I wanted to know WHY the subjects were able to stick with it so well. Of course, that’s boring stuff to journalists… adherence? What does that word mean anyway? Yawn - not interesting enough for prime time, I guess. But it was interesting to me, and I hope YOU pay attention to what I found. The authors of the study wrote:
“This trial suggests a model that might be applied more broadly in the workplace. Using the employer as a health coach could be an effective way to improve health. The model of group intervention with the use of dietary group sessions, spousal support, food labels, and monthly weighing in the workplace within the framework of a health promotion campaign might yield weight reduction and long term health benefits.”
Hmmmmm, lets see: * Dietician coaching
* Group meetings
* Motivational phone calls
* Spousal support
* Workplace monitoring (corporate health program)
* Food labels - calorie monitoring
* Weigh-ins (required and monitored)
Wow, everything helpful to long term fat loss that sticks. Can you say, ACCOUNTABILITY? These factors help explain the better adherence.
By the way, the adherence rate for the low carb group was the lowest.
90.4% in low fat group
85.3% in the Mediterranean group
78% in the low carb group
Here’s the bottom line, the way I see it:
First, please, please, please learn how to find and read primary research and take the news media stories with a grain of salt. If you want to know who died, what burned down or what hurricane is coming, tune in to the news – they do a GREAT job at that. If you want to know how to lose weight or improve your health, look up the original research papers instead of taking second hand information at face value.
Second, those who prefer a low carb approach; more power to them. Most studies, this one included, show at the very least that low carb is an option and it’s not necessarily an unhealthy one if done intelligently. I also have no qualms with someone claiming that low carb diets are slightly more effective for weight loss, especially in the short term, free living situations. Is low carb superior for fat loss in the long haul? That’s STILL highly debatable. It’s probably superior for some people, but not for others.
Third, low carb people, listen up! Even if low carb is superior, that doesn’t mean calories don’t count. Deny this at your own peril. In fact, this study shows the reverse. The low carb group was in a larger negative energy balance than the high carb and Mediterranean group (according to the data published in this paper), which easily explains the greater weight loss. Posting the calories contained in foods in the cafeteria may have improved the results and helped with compliance in all groups.
When energy intake is matched calorie for calorie, the advantage of a low carb diet shrinks or disappears. For most people, low carb is a hunger management or calorie control weight loss advantage, not metabolic magic (sorry, no magic folks!) 
Fourth, choose the nutrition program that’s most appropriate for your personal preferences, your current health condition, your genetics (or phenotype) and most important of all… the one you can stick with. Then tend your own garden instead of wasting time criticizing how the other guy is eating. Your results will speak for themselves in the end. Take your shirt off and show us.
If I were forced to choose only one approach (and thank god I’m not), I would recommend avoiding the extremes of very low carb or very low fat or very high fat or very high carbs. Balance makes the most sense to me, and the research suggests that this helps produce the highest compliance rate. That’s not rocket science either, it’s common sense. If you have a serious fat loss goal, as when I compete in bodybuilding, then a further reduction in carbs and increase in protein makes perfect sense to me as a peaking diet. If an extremely low or extremely high carb diet worked for you, great. But generalizing your experience to the entire rest of the world makes no sense. Arguing from extremes is the weakest form of argument. The reason I have THREE nutrition plans (three phases) in my own fat loss program is because programs with flexibility and room for individualization beat the others hands down in the long term. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter in my e-book about unique body types, how to determine yours and how to individualize your nutrition – it’s THAT important. If you have more choices, you have more power. The people who are shackled by dogma and narrow thinking are stuck. They also risk missing what’s really important. Things like: Personalization
Adherence
Long-term Maintenance
Accountability
Social Support
and…
CALORIES!
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
PS. If you want to learn more about a balanced, flexible and proven approach, which teaches nutritional individuality and which can produce similar weight loss in one month, month after month, that the subjects of this study produced in TWO YEARS, (if you ADHERE to it!), then visit my fat loss website.
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com
Cardio exercise is such a strange thing. In theory, it should work
so perfectly well for all men and women, but as anyone who has
tried it knows, the practicality of it just doesn’t add up.
After
all, some men and women do cardio 6 hours, 9 hours, or more per week,
and still have belly fat to burn. On the other hand, it works just fine
for others.
British researchers wanted to get more insight into this paradox,
and studied 35 overweight men and women, who weren’t previously
exercising.
(Reference: International Journal of Obesity 32: 177-184, 2008).
Subjects exercised 5 times per week for 12 weeks. That’s a lot of
exercise, but it helped the subjects lose an average of 8.2 pounds,
which is great - I was positively surprised by the results.
So cardio will work for some people, however, in my experience, it
works best in young men, who need the help the least!
Back to the study, the variance in fat loss between individuals was
huge. Check this out…
The best subject lost a staggering 32.3 pounds in 12 weeks, while
the worst subject actually GAINED 3.74 pounds.
The scientists think they know where things went sour. They
classified the subjects into 2 groups, called the “Compensators”
and the “Non-compensators”.
The Compensators were hungrier, and as a result consumed an extra
268 calories per day, all but wiping out their cardio efforts.
Therefore, the Compensators lost the least amount of weight, and
scientists believe that was due to the huge “compensatory” increase
in appetite experienced by this group.
Does your appetite increase when you do slow cardio? If it does,
research shows it will ruin your cardio efforts.
So if your cardio program is not working for you, check your
appetite and calorie intake to see if you are “compensating” for
your efforts. If you are, you might be better off using a program
of high-intensity resistance and interval training (i.e. Turbulence
Training) for your weight loss efforts.
As Australian Professor Steve Boucher has shown in research,
interval training increases hormones called catecholamines. And
increased catecholamines can reduce appetite, among other fat-
burning benefits.
In the real world, few people lose 33 pounds after 12 weeks of
cardio. Heck, few even achieve an average weight loss of 8 pounds
with aerobic exercise.
So again, check your appetite, and consider giving high-intensity
exercise a go for your next workout program.
Beat the curse of cardio with high-intensity Turbulence Training.
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training
About the Author
Learn about the “Dark Side of Cardio” in the free report from Craig Ballantyne at www.TurbulenceTraining.com.
Craig is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes
for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness
Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat
loss workouts have helped thousands of men and women around the world
lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times
per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that
will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy
equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com
Maintaining sufficient Vitamin D will do that according to a recent study. Modern life puts us inside more than out, which could lead many to have chronic low levels even in summer. This study showed even slightly low levels could elevate your risk. Are you getting the recommended daily dose of vitamin D? That may not be enough:
“Vitamin D deficiency has been related to an increasing number of conditions and to total mortality. These results further support an important role for vitamin D in myocardial infarction risk,” the authors conclude. “Thus, the present findings add further support that the current dietary requirements of vitamin D need to be increased to have an effect on circulating 25(OH)D [vitamin D] levels substantially large enough for potential health benefits.” - from ScienceDaily.com
Here is an earlier post I did on Vit D that gives you some guide lines.