Dr Dennis - Belly Fat Science

FDA Weight Loss Hypocrisy

The market for FDA weight loss drugs is expected to reach 2 billion dollars by the end of 2010. That is nothing compared with the target of the FDA, which is the entire 55 billion dollar per year industry for weight loss products and services. Regulating the weight loss industry is all about money and little to do with weight loss or even good health. [Read more…]

Body Fat Composition and Ideal Body Fat Percent

by Dr. Dennis Clark 1 Comment

Body fat composition can be confusing. This is especially true when you want to lose abnormal fat and keep the fat that you need for good health. Total body fat percent really tells you nothing. Here is what you should know.

Body Fat Composition vs Body Weight

: Image via Wikipedia

The best way to tell whether your diet, fitness, or other weight management programs are working for you is to keep track of changes in your body fat composition. Imagine that you weigh 200 lbs on Earth and are 35 percent body fat. On the moon you would instantly lose about 167 lbs because of lower gravity. However, your body would still be 35 percent fat.

The point here is that weight is not the issue. Fat is.

Body Fat Calculations and Types of Fat

Now it get a little dicey, because there is no way to know how much of the different kinds of fat are in your body. Your total consists of brown fat and white fat (both referred to as adipose tissues), and even cell membrane fat.

Brown fat is the new kid on the block for fat loss. At one time it was thought to be present only in infants. Recent research shows its presence in adults. It occurs mostly in the upper chest area and around the neck. The importance of this discovery is that the more brown fat you have, the more able you are to balance other types of fat. Brown fat directs the metabolism of that awful belly fat that most folks want to lose.

You can easily tell when you have abnormal fat made of white adipose tissue, because it sticks out somewhere. The usual places are belly, thighs and buttocks, and upper arms.

Ideally, the best fat loss would therefore be white fat loss. Indeed, better weight management would include getting your body to make more brown fat and less white fat. So far, scientists have succeeded in getting mice to do this in laboratory research. We do not yet know whether this will work in people. Of course, drug companies are seeking a new miracle drug that will do this for you. No such thing is available at the moment.

Body Fat Recommendations

Keep in mind that measuring total body fat can be misleading, even though it is currently the best indicator of body fat composition. The accuracy of the main three methods of measurement varies.

The most accurate is the submersion test, where your buoyancy in water is used to calculate body fat percent. The second most accurate method is through impedance devices. These are now available as bathroom scales that read body fat and as handheld devices that use the same principle. In my personal experience, my handheld impedance device measures about 3 percent higher than does the submersion method.

The least accurate method is the caliper method. It varies tremendously because the strength of pinching varies with the examiner.

Regardless of the result that you get, there is a range of body fat composition that is best for optimum health and weight (fat) management. There is no magic number for everyone. Indeed, numbers are always higher for women than for men, and they increase with age.

General agreement among nutrition researchers offers the following as healthy ranges of body fat percent for women and men in different age groups:

Women

20 to 40 yrs, 21 to 33 percent fat
41 to 60 yrs, 23 to 35 percent fat
61 to 79 yrs, 24 to 36 percent fat

Men

20 to 40 yrs, 8 to 19 percent fat
41 to 60 yrs, 11 to 22 percent fat
61 to 79 yrs, 13 to 25 percent fat

These are the target ranges for good health. It is probably obvious that being above these ranges is the foundation for overweight (i.e., overfat) and obesity. There may be no limit to how high it can go. One of my clients, a woman in her 50s, measured at 48 percent body fat. Wow!

Lower Body Fat Percent Is Not Healthier

What may not be so obvious is that numbers below these health ranges are not necessarily healthier just because they are lower. You need body fat in the right amounts, of the right types, in the right places for optimum health and body image.

All best in natural health,
Dr. D

Body Image: Men vs. Women (futurelab.net)
Sleep Habits Linked to Fat Gain in Younger Adults (nlm.nih.gov)

Weight Loss Secrets from Around the World

by Dr. Dennis Clark Leave a Comment

Weight loss tips and weight loss secrets appear in national magazines every day. Do they all work? It is hard to tell for sure. Most of these articles and lists are too superficial to be helpful. And most of the advice is weak, too. Here is a little video that I put together to call this weight loss secrets hype to your attention. You can, of course, get a more comprehensive overview of what works for fat loss by requesting my ‘5 Steps’ report to the right there…

The complete list of 19 strategies in the magazine article that I refer to, plus a few more details, are written out for you below. (Just in case you want to know little more … or you weren’t taking notes during the video!)

Are There Really Any Weight Loss Secrets?

No, not really. Every weight loss expert has one or a few pieces of advice that are incorrectly referred to as secrets, though. Most of them are offered in isolation, as if one or even a handful of strategies might be useful without considering other key factors.

It is no surprise that you get advice about exercise from fitness trainers, advice about supplements from supplement manufacturers, advice about nutrition from nutritionists, and advice about drugs from drug companies and medical doctors. Who has the best advice?

One way to evaluate weight loss tips is to see who uses them and where. A recent article in Readers Digest listed 19 such tips from around the world. The short version of that list is:

Serve a side of rice and beans (Brazil)
Fast once in awhile (Indonesia)
Eat at home more often (Poland)
Eat your breakfast (Germany)
Drive less, ride a bike more often (Netherlands)
Eat muesli (Switzerland)
Grow your own garden (Russia)
Use turmeric (Malaysia)
Drink rooibos tea (South Africa)
Eat pickles (Hungary)
Take a weekly family hike (Norway)
Do yoga (India)
Take a daily power nap (Japan)
Make lunch your biggest meal (Mexico)
Spice up your food (Thailand)
Back off of supersizing (United Kingdom)
Eat leisurely, with more conversation (France)
Take up Nordic walking (Finland)
Eat herring (Netherlands)

All of these strategies are beneficial in some way. It seems silly, however, to list any one strategy as representative of a particular country.

Best Weight Loss Solutions

As you can see, the list offers nothing new. No item is a secret. The main question, therefore, concerns which of these is the best for weight loss. My opinion is that, regardless of how well they work, the best ones are the ones that you will actually do. Making lunch your biggest meal may be too inconvenient. Taking up Nordic walking, even on a machine at the gym, may not be especially appealing. Spicing up meals may exceed your limit for foods that burn your palate. You may not even like pickles! Maybe you don’t even eat where supersizing is an option, which is a good idea to begin with.

Weight Loss Tips Are Weak and Incomplete

Generally, national magazines offer weight loss advice that is superficial and weak. This list is no exception. Comprehensive advice that explains how to combine diet, exercise, supplements, lifestyle, hormone balance, and many other factors is much more valuable than any list.

The Most Important Components for All Weight Loss Programs

The subject of eating is, all by itself, comprised of multiple variables: what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat. All of these probably have more impact on weight management than all of the items in the above list combined.

Exercise for fitness generally fails to address weight loss. Indeed, there is no general agreement on what fitness really is. For the purpose of weight loss, exercise must stop and reverse the loss of lean body mass (i.e., muscle mass) that accompanies aging after the age of 25.

Hormone imbalance, beginning with estrogen dominance (progesterone deficiency) and continuing to insulin resistance, leptin resistance, and low levels of testosterone and growth hormone, all of which are important in men and in women, is a key cause of weight gain.

: Image by hair_k via Flickr

The federal food pyramid is a big, bad joke for dieters. If you eat according to the recommendations of this pyramid, you will look like a pyramid.

Supplements can be very helpful. The best research shows how an ingredient in green tea, called EGCG, directs fat loss. Other top fat loss supplements include chromium, fish oil, and CLA.

These are just some of the more important factors that must be incorporated into a total weight loss program.

The Most Common Missing Weight Loss Secret

The list above comes close to the main missing ingredient in most weight loss programs, because it advocates daily naps. Stress and sleep deprivation are two of the most powerful causes of weight gain. Naps are certainly helpful. However, if the 90 percent or more of Americans who are sleep deprived would do what takes to get a full, restful night’s sleep, the rate of obesity in the U.S. would slow down. Unrelieved stress acts like super-glue for hanging onto fat. Good sleep resets our ability to deal with daily stress. It even boosts nightly spikes in growth hormone levels, which has beneficial effects on fat metabolism and dozens of other aspects of human health.