Everyone eats the equivalent of three extra cheeseburgers a day than they admit -- regardless of their waistline, researchers have revealed. The study shows obese and thin people all fib about food to the same amount regardless of the number on the bathroom scale and this could be undermining national health advice.
Researchers innovatively took into account the amount of energy a person burns in a day with everyone misreporting how many calories they consume by an average of 900 calories.
It found that as obese people burn more energy doing day-to-day tasks, they do not lie about food more than slimmer people. Although the gap in reported meals and actual intake was bigger in obese people, they actually burn more calories than non-obese people.
The research team said: "The gap between reported intake and actual expenditure was bigger in obese adults than normal-weight adults but not because they lied about how much they had eaten instead it was because they expended much more energy each day than their thinner peers. Bigger bodies need more energy every hour of the day and particularly during physical activity because moving your weight is hard work."
The study looked at 221 adults with an average age of 54 and a range of body shapes. Although obese people misreported how much they ate by an average of 1200 calories and slimmer participants by 800 calories they actually burnt 13 per cent or 400 calories more energy.
Everyone lied, whether they were obese or non-obese, about how much they consumed by the same amount -- claiming they consumed 1,800 calories on average.
New weight-loss intervention targets instinctive desire to eat
People who are highly responsive to food lost more weight and, importantly, were more successful at keeping the pounds off using a new alternative weight-loss intervention that targets improving a person's response to internal hunger cues and their ability to resist food, reported a team led by University of California San Diego.
"There are individuals who are very food cue responsive. That is, they cannot resist food and/or cannot stop thinking about food. Behavioral weight loss skills are not sufficient for these individuals, so we designed an alternative approach to address this clinical need."
Approximately 74% of adults in the United States are living with overweight or obesity. Behavioral weight loss programs, that include calorie counting, have been the go-to treatment. However not everyone responds, and most people regain the lost weight.
For those who find it difficult to resist food, weight loss can be particularly challenging. This food responsiveness is both hereditary and shaped by the environment and individual factors.
In the Providing Adult Collaborative Interventions for Ideal Changes (PACIFIC) randomized clinical trial, the researchers compared their intervention, called Regulation of Cues, against a behavioral weight loss program, a control group, and a cohort that combined Regulation of Cues with the behavioral program.
Weight loss was comparable after 24 months among individuals in both the Regulation of Cues and the behavioral weight loss program. However, participants in the Regulation of Cues arm stabilized their weight and kept it off while participants in the other groups regained weight at mid-treatment when clinic visits were reduced to monthly.
According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, overweight and obesity are risk factors for heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and some cancers, all of which are among the leading causes of preventable death. Over a 12-month period, 271 adults aged 18 to 65 attended 26 group treatments. They were all asked to engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity per week.
The Regulation of Cues intervention did not prescribe participants with a diet. Instead, it trained the use of natural cues of when to eat rather than focusing on calories, it reinforced tolerance of cravings, and focused on inhibiting urges to eat palatable foods when not physically hungry.
Palatable foods -- usually food that contain high amounts of sugar or fat with the additional of salt and flavorings -- stimulate the reward system in the brain and can be particularly challenging to resist.
The control arm provided nutrition education, social support and mindfulness training. The behavior weight loss program prescribed a diet, restricted calorie-dense foods, reinforced avoidance of cues to overeat, and focused on restricting calories. The combined program integrated the focus on diet and energy intake from the behavioral weight loss program with Regulation of Cues, including management hunger cues.
"Individuals who need help losing weight can seek out the Regulation of Cues program if behavioral weight loss did not work for them, if they feel they have trouble resisting eating, or if they never feel full."
How high-intensity interval training can reshape metabolism
Scientists have shed new light on the effects that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has on human skeletal muscle, according to a new study in men.
The findings suggest that HIIT boosts the amount of proteins in skeletal muscle that are essential for energy metabolism and muscle contraction, and chemically alters key metabolic proteins. These results may explain the beneficial effects of HIIT on metabolism and pave the way for additional studies exploring how exercise impacts these processes.
Exercising has many beneficial effects that can help prevent and treat metabolic diseases, and this is likely the result of changes in energy use by skeletal muscles. The purpose of the study was to understand how exercise alters the muscles' protein content and how it regulates the activity of these proteins through a chemical reaction called acetylation. Acetylation occurs when a member of the small molecule group, acetyl, combines with other molecules, and can affect the behavior of proteins.
For their study, the team recruited eight healthy, untrained male volunteers to complete five weeks of high-intensity cycling training. The men worked out three times per week, finishing four minutes of cycling at a target rate of more than 90% of their maximum heart rate followed by a two-minute rest. They repeated this pattern four to five times per workout.
Using a technique called mass spectrometry, the team analyzed changes to the composition of 3,168 proteins in tissue samples collected from the participants' thighs before the study and after they completed the training. They also examined changes relating to 1,263 lysine acetyl-sites on 464 acetylated proteins.
Their analyses showed an increase in the production of proteins used to build mitochondria, which produce energy in cells, and in proteins related to muscle contractions. The team also identified increased acetylation of mitochondrial proteins and enzymes that are involved in the production of cellular energy. Additionally, they observed changes in the amount of proteins that reduce the skeletal muscle's calcium sensitivity, which is essential for muscle contractions.
The results confirm some well-known changes to skeletal muscle proteins that occur after exercise, as well as identify new ones. For example, the reduced calcium sensitivity may explain why it can be harder for muscle contraction to occur after an athlete becomes fatigued. The work also suggests that exercise-induced changes in the regulation of proteins through acetylation may contribute to boosting metabolism.