7 Laws of Leaness

A good friend of mine puts out a periodic newsletter. This last one covered a subject I thought worth passing on. I hope you get something good from this. I sure did.

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7 Laws of Leaness

The essential rules that separate the fat from the fit!
Why do some people seem naturally thin—able to torch cheeseburgers and never gain a pound? And why do some of us—okay, most of us—sweat and diet and sweat and diet some more, and never lose enough to get the body we want? Because those "naturally thin" people actually live by a series of rules that keep them from gaining weight. And if you know their secrets, you can enjoy meals without packing on the pounds. Follow these 7 Laws of Leanness for effortless weight loss. 

We’ve spent the past two decades interviewing leading experts, poring over groundbreaking studies, and grilling top athletes, trainers, and celebrities for their health and fitness advice. And we’ve learned that what separates the fit from the fat, the slim from the sloppy, the toned from the torpid, is a set of rules. And what’s amazing is that none of them involves spending hours on a treadmill, eating nothing but grapefruit and tree bark, or having part of your small intestines replaced with fiberfill. Follow these simple rules and weight loss will be automatic.


LAW #1: Lean People Don’t Diet, They Adopt a Lifestyle
Lean people practice good habits and adhere to a lifestyle that allows them to be lean and stay that way. If you are caught in a spin cycle of going into overdrive to take weight off only to return to the old habits that that made you plump out to begin with (and will most certainly return you to that same state), then you are dieting, NOT practicing a healthy lifestyle. 


LAW #2: Lean People Don’t Go Fat-Free
A European study tracked nearly 90,000 people for several years and discovered that participants who tried to eat “low fat” had the same risk of being overweight as those who didn’t. You need fat in your diet to help you process certain nutrients, like vitamins A, D, and E, for example. And many “fat-free” foods are loaded with sugar, and therefore have even more calories than their full-fat cousins. Even the American Heart Association says that fat-free labels lead to higher consumption of unhealthy sweets. A bit of fat helps keep you full and satisfied. Fat-free will amp up your sugar intake and send you running back to the fridge in an hour, hungry for more. 



LAW #3: Lean People Slow Down, and Sit Down to Eat
In fact, the more and the longer you sit down and enjoy your food, the leaner you’re going to be. Greek researchers recently reported that eating more slowly and savoring your meal can boost levels of two hormones that make you feel fuller. 


Note: researchers at Cornell University found that when people sat down at the table with plates already set up with appropriate portions of food, they consumed up to 35 percent less than they did when eating family-style—that is, by passing serving dishes around the table. 



LAW #4: Lean People Know What They’re Going to Eat Next
Planning your responses to hunger may help you shed pounds faster, say Dutch researchers. They posed their subjects questions like “If you’re hungry at 4 p.m., then . . . what?” Those who had an answer (“I’ll snack on some almonds”) were more successful at losing weight than those who didn’t have an answer.


LAW #5: Lean People Eat Protein
In a recent European study, people who ate moderately high levels of protein were twice as likely to lose weight and keep it off as those who didn’t eat much protein.

A New England Journal of Medicine study looked at a variety of eating plans and discovered that eating a diet high in protein and low in refined starches (like white bread) was the most effective for weight loss. Protein works on two levels: First, you burn more calories digesting it. Second, because your body has to work harder to digest a chicken breast than, say, a Ho Ho or a bag of chips, you stay fuller longer. 



LAW #6: Lean People Move Around More

Simply put, fit people augment their fitness by having fun just moving around. Scientists have a name for how you burn calories just enjoying yourself. It’s called NEAT: non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Sounds complicated, like something only policy wonks at a global warming summit are qualified to discuss. But it’s pretty simple: Pick a few activities that you enjoy, from tossing a stick for your dog to bowling with your best friend, and just do them more often. The average person makes 200 decisions every day that affect his or her weight. That means you have around 200 chances each and every day to do better, to make better choices, to improve yourself, and to make progress!

LAW #7: Lean People Watch Less TV
Instead of calling it the boob tube, maybe we should call it the man-boob tube. Of those who watch more than four hours of TV a day, nearly 30 percent have a BMI that high—the cutoff line for obesity, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In contrast, only about 18 percent of people who watch less than two hours of TV a day have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

In a study at the University of Vermont, overweight participants who cut their daily TV time in half (from an average of 5 hours to 2.5 hours) burned an extra 119 calories a day. And a recent study of people who successfully lost weight found that 63 percent of them watched less than 10 hours of TV a week. Want more? A study in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine reported that lean people have an average of 2.6 television sets in their homes. Overweight people have an average of 3.4. Finally, researchers in Australia recently discovered that every hour in front of the television trims 22 minutes from your life. Yikes!

This is a great subject and worth evaluating in your own life.
More on this later...