Recent News and Articles on the Keywords: diet + count + web  Related to the article below (Last Update: 8/5/2008)

Here's a peek at a draft of the county's guide to pesticides on ... Seattle Post Intelligencer - 57 minutes ago The index was created when Congress order the EPA to determine the amount of pesticides that children were consuming in their diet. ... Pesticide data pulled from county Web site Seattle Post Intelligencer - Jul 18, 2008 Not only does the guide not say to avoid buying local produce, it offers a link to another Web site sponsored by King County (pugetsoundfresh.org) that ... Revisit 'Kathy's Weight Loss Journey' The Wichita Eagle, KS - Aug 3, 2008 Instead of offering a recipe today, I'm sorting through my mailbag to answer some questions and share some comments about my Don't Say Diet recipes. ... Actress Monique Coleman Joins America's Second Harvest and ConAgra ... Earthtimes (press release), UK - Even a short period of malnourishment -- not eating a complete, balanced diet -- can have irreversible effects on a child's physical, emotional and ...CAG Food for thought Lower Hudson Journal news, NY - Yet while many families can get by with some creative corner-cutting - stir fry instead of steak dinners, the Lotsa Pasta diet - or shifting dollars in the ... What do we do now? Ha'aretz, Israel - Aug 3, 2008 First, whereas most components of the American diet are transported thousands of miles to assure that consumers in every state can have everything they want ... How to survive without eating peaches, peppers, lettuce Western Farm Press - Aug 4, 2008 In the Seattle area, a county government program removed a similar guide from its Web site. According to an AP article, the Local Hazardous Waste Management ... W.Va. justice recovering from surgery Daily Mail - Charleston, WV - He will probably be able to return to his normal activities and diet after about a month. Albright, a Wood County native, was elected to the Supreme Court ... Goodbye, and don't forget to eat well Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN - Aug 1, 2008 Diet fads come and go. I'd love to tell you there's a secret to shedding pounds quickly, but there isn't. Calories do count. It doesn't matter whether you ... Heat Warning Issued for Athletes Kansas City infoZine, MO - Aug 4, 2008 If you are taking water pills or are on a fluid-restricted diet, check with your doctor to see how much you should drink when the weather is hot. ...

Study finds it's not the diet, but sticking to it that counts

Your support of us and our advertisers and your valuable encouragement are very much appreciated.

DALLAS — The first side-by-side comparison of four popular diets — Atkins low carb, Ornish low fat, the Zone and Weight Watchers — has found no difference in each plan's weight-loss potential. When the fat-free chips are down, the type of diet doesn't seem to matter nearly as much as whether people actually follow it.

"I was kind of surprised at how similar they all looked," said Dr. Michael Dansinger, who conducted the research with colleagues at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.

The results appear in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

No diet, it seems, can escape the laws of thermodynamics. There is no magic: Scale back the calories, or use more of them than you take in, to shed pounds. The four diet approaches studied, Dansinger said, "all end up reducing calories."

At the start of the research, the Tufts team assigned 160 volunteers to follow one of the four diet approaches. Average weight loss among the 40 participants in each plan after a year was 5 to 7 pounds.

But dieting, as dieting veterans will understand, proved difficult. About half of participants in the Atkins and Ornish plans dropped out before the year was up, as did about 35 percent of the Zone and Weight Watchers group.

The findings, in the words of one scientist, are the kind of "no duh" conclusions that may nevertheless startle many dieters.

"It's giving people a slap in the face, one that we scientists have been trying to give for a long time," said Ruth Ann Carpenter of The Cooper Institute in Dallas. But to those in the trenches, she said, "the results are not at all stunning."

Carpenter was particularly disappointed that the study did not address the importance of exercise. "You cannot talk about weight loss without having any component of physical activity," she said. While the 160 volunteers were given general advice about exercise, the research focused on a comparison of the eating plans.

Still, it is more diet data than scientists had previously.

In a commentary published with the study, Dr. Robert Eckel of the University of Colorado, Denver, calls for more research into lasting results. Few diet studies have spanned more than a year.

A second, unrelated study published yesterday highlighted the dearth of evidence that any commercial weight-loss program works.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine combed the scientific literature for research on some of the country's most advertised diet programs. They found a handful of studies, most about Weight Watchers. One of those studies found about a 5 percent reduction in body weight over three to six months.

Jenny Craig and LA Weight Loss have no published scientific evidence that addresses their program's effectiveness.

"With the exception of one trial of Weight Watchers, the evidence to support the use of the major commercial and self-help weight-loss programs is suboptimal," the Pennsylvania researchers wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

"The bottom line is that Weight Watchers is by far the best-studied program," said Thomas Wadden, head of Penn's Weight and Eating Disorders Program.

That doesn't mean, however, that everyone should be a Weight Watcher. The encouraging news from the Tufts study, Dansinger said, is that one size doesn't fit all. With so many options, people can find the one they are more likely to adhere to, which is key to success.

His research found that the more rigorously people stuck to the diets, the more they lost. Those who stayed in the study for the full year, trying to follow the rules, lost 10 to 12 pounds.

And those who followed the diets most strictly lost about 15 pounds on average. Researchers assumed that those who dropped out of the study did not lose weight.

One reason people become discouraged, experts say, is that weight is gained slowly, while people want to lose it quickly. That sets many dieters up with unrealistic expectations.

Studies find that people tend to gain weight over years or decades because they take in only 100 or so calories a day too much. That translates to one extra Coke, a couple of cookies, a few extra globs of creamy dressing.

Most obesity experts think weight should be lost more akin to the way it is gained, a "Low Fad" approach, according to Eckel of the University of Colorado.

For example, he said, those with a taste for sodas or juice could eliminate the sugary drinks while hardly flinching.

By that equation, "two beverages a day less would be 25 pounds a year," Eckel said.