Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

What Is BMI? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

What is BMI and is it an Accurate Measure of Weight and Health?

Dear Fitness Nerd,

Can you explain exactly what BMI is? I recently bought a Wii Fit and according to the BMI calculation I’m fat! I checked some other BMI calculators online and am getting similar results. But I’ve never really considered myself overweight. I exercise daily and think I look pretty toned, but according to the BMI charts I’m overweight! Should I be worried? — Erika (Atlanta, GA)

Ericka, the Body Mass Index, or BMI is one of those things that I wish would just go away, since it causes all kinds of anxiety for people who may actually be in very good shape. It also makes people who may actually have high body fat levels focus on the wrong thing: losing scale weight, when they should be focusing on reducing body fat and encouraging muscle building.

While BMI can be a tool for gauging a person’s body composition in relation to height and weight, it tells you nothing about a person’s percentage of body fat. So for people who have low body fat levels with substantial amounts of lean tissue (muscle), it can be very misleading. 

But before we get into this in greater detail, let’s take a look at what BMI is.

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How To Build A Healthy Pantry … For Busy People! | Healthy Eating

Think you’re just too busy to eat healthy? Use this list of five healthy pantry foods to make sure you always have the right ingredients on hand to eat smart — even when time is scarce.

By Talli van Sunder, DPT, Host of Being Healthy for Busy People 

We’re all busy, so making healthy choices with the many activities that stake claims to our time can be a challenge.

We’re told to exercise, get enough sleep, eat healthy and minimize stress. With all the responsibilities we have, attempting to do all that can be daunting, but it can be done.  The trick to conquering these key areas of health is to focus on one area at a time.  Right now, we’re going to focus on healthy eating — specifically, building a healthy “starter” pantry specifically for people who are busy because of family, career or both.

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Fad Diets: Why They Are Bad & How To Spot Them | Diet & Nutrition

Fad diets promise miracle results, but can they really deliver? Learn the telltale signs of a fad diet and why the “latest diet craze” could be bad for you.

Open up a magazine, turn on the television or browse the Internet and it’s hard to avoid stumbling across the next “miracle diet”.  From the Master Cleanse to Atkins to South Beach to the Cabbage Soup Diet, there are literally hundreds of popular fad diets competing for your attention (and often dollars.)

Some fad diets, like the Grapefruit Diet, are attractive to dieters because of their simplicity: Drink grapefruit juice with your meals and watch the fat burn away. Others, like Atkins, The Zone Diet or South Beach, are more complicated — requiring you to buy a book and spend hours memorizing lists of what you can and can’t eat on the diet.

But do fad diets work? And if they do, at what cost to your health (and taste buds?)

Fad Diet Statistics: How Prevalent Is It?

The statistics around fad dieting are revealing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  estimate that at any given time two-thirds of all American adults are on a diet to either lose weight or prevent weight gain. Of those, 29 percent are men and 44 percent women. Yet only 5 percent of these dieters will be successful at keeping the weight that they lost off.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that each day Americans spend an average of $109 million on dieting or diet related products, including tapes, videos, supplements, books, foods, and medications – or over $34 billion a year. 

Yet, for all of the money spent on diets and diet products, another set of statistics shows Americans overall aren’t losing weight. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, overweight and obesity has reached epidemic levels, afflicting 6 out of every 10 adults, and is the second leading cause of preventable death, resulting in 300,000 deaths per year.

So if Americans are dieting more, why do we keep getting fatter? With all of the claims that fad diets make around “losing weight and keeping it off” you’d think everyone would look like a fitness model. 

So what’s going on?

The Definition of a Fad Diet

First, it’s important to understand that “fad diet” is a subjective term. So any definition of a fad diet will be up for debate. 

The literal dictionary definition of a “fad diet” is “a diet that promises quick weight loss and is popular for a short time.” However, I’ve broadened the definition here to include any diet that has received extensive media attention or has generated underground or popular culture buzz.  For example, Barry Sear’s Zone Diet wouldn’t qualify as a dangerous crash diet — but it certainly has generated enough on-and-off attention over the years to qualify as a “fad.”

Many fad diets undergo a cycle of extreme interest, followed by a period of dormancy, and then a resurgance.  In other words, fad diets don’t die, they just burn-out and then often return a decade later, promising weight-loss salvation to an entirely new generation of frustrated, serial dieters.

The Difference Between Fad Diets and “Crash Diets

A “crash diet” is a type of diet that aims to produce very rapid weight loss in an extremely short period of time — often in less than 3-7 days. Crash diets almost always operate on extreme calorie restriction. Not all fad diets are “crash diets”, but all crash diets qualify as fad diets.

Spotting a Fad Diet

It’s not difficult to spot a fad diet if you know what to look for. Nearly all fad diets have certain characteristics that allow you to spot one quickly. While a fad diet will not necessarily have all of these characteristics, it will typically share at least three or more of the following:

• Claims of dramatic weight loss in short periods of time (typically in excess of 3 lbs a week)
• Reductions in overall calorie intake, often at or below 1000 calories total for the day
• Elimination of entire groups of foods or macro-nutrients (carbs, sugars, fats, fruit, bread, etc.) from the diet
• Over-emphasis on consuming certain macro-nutrients (protein, for example) in the diet
• Substitution a single food (grapefruit, lemon juice, cabbage soup, Special K Cereal) in place of normal whole meals
• Lists of “good” and “bad” foods
• Very little, if any, emphasis on exercise as part of the weight loss plan or diet
• Emphasis on extremely short dieting intervals, for example, “24 hour diet,” “3-day diet” or “7 day diet.”
• Claims that the diet will change body chemistry, overcome hormonal imbalances, or “fix” specific conditions that cause you to gain weight
• Use of complex scientific studies with simplistic conclusions to support the “science” of the diet
• Use of dramatic marketing language and too-good-to-be-true phrases like “quick-fix”, “melt off pounds instantly,” “lose fat fast”,  “lose weight when you sleep,” “eat all you want and lose weight!” etc.
• Recommendations to purchase products as part of the diet, for example: supplements, herbal blends, protein or nutrition bars, health drinks, etc.
• Inclusion of laxatives as part of the diet
• Claims about “detoxification” associated with the diet
• Association with a popular celebrity or prominent company or organization
• Excessive media attention, especially in tabloid newspapers
• Circulated via e-mail, word-of-mouth or the web with no clear indication of its origin 
• A price tag: Many fad diets require you to fork over money to access the diet or buy the book

This list is obviously very broad and inclusive, and not all diets that have these characteristics are necessarily unsafe or ineffective. 

For example, even legitimate diets can become associated with a celebrity and attract a lot of media and press attention. However, as a rule of thumb, the more of the above characteristics the diet has, the more likely it qualifies as a “fad diet.”

The Anatomy of a Fad Diet

Fad diets are attractive to people for a number of different reasons.

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Skim Milk | Healthy Food of the Day

Learn how adding skim milk to your diet can help you build muscle, strengthen bones and maybe even lose some body fat along the way.

“Milk - it does a body good” has a new meaning for people looking to add muscle, stave-off bone loss and reduce body fat.

A flurry of research — albeit, mostly funded by the dairy industry — over the past few years has suggested that including skim milk or fat-free milk into your diet can actually help you lose weight. But aside from the weight loss claims (which we’ll take a look at later), there are additional reasons that including skim milk in your diet can keep you fit, trim and healthy.

What is Skim Milk?

Skim milk is whole milk from dairy cows that has most or all of it’s fat removed. 

Traditionally, this was done by letting milk settle, and then “skimming” the fat off the top of the milk. What is left is the protein-rich, low-fat liquid below the layer of fat. In modern milk processing, the de-fatting process is done with centrifuges (basically the milk is spun around inside a big stainless steel tank and the fat is separated and drained off.)

Skim milk (also labeled as “fat-free milk” or “non-fat” milk) generally has less than 0.5 percent milk fat. Low-fat, semi-skimmed milk or “1% milk” has between 1 and 2 percent fat. For comparisons sake, whole cows milk has around 3.5 percent fat, or 7.9 grams of fat (4.6 grams of which are the “bad” saturated type of fat) in a 1 cup (16 oz) serving. In terms of calories, whole milk weighs in at 147 calories, in comparison to the 91 calories in skim milk.

Clearly choosing skim milk over whole or even 2% milk makes the most sense from a fat and calorie perspective.

But what about the difference in nutrition between skim milk and whole milk? Does the skimming process remove any nutrients?
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Lose Belly Fat and Save More than Just Your Six Pack

A new study shows belly fat linked to increased risk of dementia

If you thought the only reason to keep your belly fat to a minimum was to show your abs off at the beach, a new study suggests that keeping abdominal fat under control might help keep your brain healthier as well.

The study of more than 6,000 people, published last week in the journal Neurology, found that the more belly fat the subjects had in their mid-40s, the more likely it was that they would show signs of dementia as they grew older.

Symptoms of dementia can include forgetfulness, confusion, reduced problem-solving capabilities and even difficulty speaking.

The study also found that the research subjects with the biggest guts displayed three-times the risk of developing dementia later in life versus their leaner counterparts.

“Considering that 50 percent of adults in this country have an unhealthy amount of abdominal fat, this is a disturbing finding,” said study author Rachel A. Whitmer, PhD, a Research Scientist of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, CA, and member of the American Academy of Neurology.

Interestingly, having a large abdomen increased the risk of dementia regardless of whether the participants were of normal weight overall, overweight, or obese, and regardless of existing health conditions, including diabetes, stroke and cardiovascular disease. 

An abstract of the study, “Central obesity and increased risk of dementia more than three decades later“ is available online at the journal’s website.

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