WebProNews » Dieting

Chocolate For Breakfast Slims Waistline

Shawn Hess — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:34:50 +0000

Tel Aviv University researchers have released research results that suggest eating some sweets after breakfast may help you lose weight over the long term. The study involved about 200 non-diabetic patients which were all considered obese by clinical definition. Each was randomly assigned to a group who either consumed a 300 calorie breakfast or a 600 calorie breakfast which always included cookies, cake, or some chocolate.

Essentially, both groups lost an average of 33 pounds in the first 16 weeks. The difference came in the second 16 weeks. By the end of the 32 weeks, those who skipped the dessert regained an average of 22 pounds. Those who were in the dessert-eating group continued weight loss and shed an average 15 pounds more. In the end, the dessert group lost an average of 40 more pounds more than the others.

The layman’s explanation is simple. The people who abstained from sweets experienced more cravings throughout the day and gave into the cravings more often. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but it is also when our appetite is smallest. So if you get your metabolism jump started early and eat that snack first, you have all day to burn it and you won’t be distracted by your cravings.

Keeping extra weight off long term is one of the biggest challenges. This finding could be a key component to helping people eat a steady balanced diet. If you combine this type of strategy with some moderate exercise, weight loss doesn’t have to be a mystery equation. Eat light at night and have sweets early in the day.

Let’s see what the reaction is on Twitter:

I’m here to serve … cake. MT @Cljohnst: Cake for breakfast? To lose weight? Thanks @gangrey for brightening my day. tampabay.com/news/health/re…

— Ben Montgomery (@gangrey) February 9, 2012

Yay! I have an essay in here! MT @avilandie: advanced reading copies of Wedding Cake for Breakfast arrived-gorgeous! twitter.com/avilandie/stat…

— Kristen Weber (@kristenwEditor) February 9, 2012

[new post] I made King Cake Cupcakes. And had one for breakfast today. j.mp/zKjRb1

— Shawnda (@foodiebride) February 9, 2012

It sounds like people are happy with the idea so far. Speaking of Twitter, I just read an article where a man had the idea to use Twitter to track his diet progress. The main gist is that, at first he was inspired by his idea, but he quickly became embarrassed by his late-night fatty food feasts and long periods of inactivity on Twitter do to his shameful diet.

As his tweets will reveal, he persisted and did lose weight. One thing that struck me about his story is how others began to tweet their diets to him. They would share tales of high calorie meals and compare weight loss secrets.

Here’s a brief chronology of his work with the Twitter diet:

Last nite: asparagus sted of fries, but too much alcohol. Today: fruit; then sushi, little bit of soy sauce, 1 cookie sted of usual 3.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter25) March 4, 2010

Until last month, I sometimes ordered 2 melts, 2 hash browns — 88% of day’s fat, 100% of saturated fat — for breakfast. Disturbing.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter25) April 28, 2010

In exactly two months, I have dropped 25 pounds. Now, my new goal: to lose 25 more pounds by my 25th birthday, 9/3.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter25) May 3, 2010

I started this Twitter feed at 270 pounds. I think I maxed out between 275 and 280. But now I’m at 220. I’d like to be under 200.

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter25) June 28, 2010

Fitness More Interesting Than Diets To Searchers

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:50:48 +0000

Are people waking up to the idea that exercise is the best way to lose weight? Maybe. Traditionally, Internet searches for burning off those holiday pounds spike the first week of the year. But this year, according to Hitwise, there’s been an increase in gym interest and a decline in search queries involving the keyword “diet.”

At least that’s the way it is in the United Kingdom. Across the Pond traffic to gym and health club websites spiked increased 14 percent compared this time last year. Searches for “diet” and “diets” have fallen by 20 percent and 50 percent respectively.

Hitwise research director Robin Goad lumps in “detox” with diets, and finds a small increase, likely influenced by rapper Dr. Dre’s long-awaited album, which is in reference to a different kind of detox.

Hitwise general manager Bill Tancer finds a similar increase in traffic to gym websites and notes how men in particular become suddenly concerned with getting in shape after the holidays. The rest of the year gym traffic is dominated by women.

A quick look on Google Trends reveals the term “fitness” exceeds searches for “diet,” “diet pills,” and “gastric bypass.” It may be a matter of semantics, though. Another comparison shows the term “exercise” is only half as popular as “diet” with a definite spike for both at the end of December.

But that fitness beat out dieting is a positive development, as is the fact that dieting beat out diet pills and invasive surgery. A review of search trends for the last days of December and first days of January reflect what we already know: people are still mostly couch potatoes, driven to search online about what they see, or want to see, on television.

But fad diets are still out there. Shortly after the “flat belly diet” and so-called “Sassy water” appeared on NBC’s Today show, searches spiked predictably. Others have shown interest in Chantel Hobbs’ “Brain Change” diet, the “Eat-Clean Diet,” and Dr. Siegal’s “Cookie Diet.”

Dr. Siegal recommends his weight-loss cookies, not the Girl Scout Cookies people are actively searching for at the moment also. Dang Girl Scouts. How can one expect to stick to a diet when they come peddling in the middle of diet season?

One has to wonder if the economy isn’t also a culprit in the rise of fitness interest. Diets are expensive sometimes, so is healthy food in America. But, like in Rocky IV, exercise can be accomplished anywhere for free.

As Temp Rises, So Do Swimwear/Diet Searches

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:29:18 +0000

On the opposite side of the lucrative junk food market is the diet market – enough that it makes you wonder if there’s some grander scheme involved: make money fattening them up and then make money slimming them down.

Regardless of the truth to that theory, searches for "diets" surge twice a year, but only once a year do they correlate with searches for "swimwear."

This little factoid comes courtesy of Hitwise’s LeeAnn Prescott, who notices that there is a seasonal connection between poolside fashion and interest in dieting.

You might say that you didn’t need a line graph to understand that (women, we’ll sexistly assume) once summer approaches and the legs start making their perennial appearance, that weight-loss might be a concern.

But graphs are fun anyway, and researchers aren’t allowed to assume. It’s clear, though, that after we break our New Year’s Resolutions and fail miserably at the chocolate sacrifice for Lent, that summer reminds we may find ourselves half-naked in public some time.

"It is odd though," LeeAnn writes, "given how much time it takes to loose [sic] any significant amount of weight, that the correlation between ‘swimwear’ searches and ‘diet’ searches is timed so close. Apparently, we’re shooting for immediate results, since some of the popular search terms are ’3 day diet,’ ‘fad diets,’ and ‘fast weight loss diets.’"

Employment Site Traffic Has Ups and Downs

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:10:33 +0000

The first week of a new year, people want two things overall: a new body and a new job. Last week we found out that on New Year’s Day, visits to dieting websites spiked by 57 percent. By the end of the week it seems all that dieting is going toward a new suit as visits to job site jump by 31 percent.

Hitwise reports the jump, noting that CareerBuilder.com received most of that traffic, receiving 13.73 percent of the job-hunting market. Monster.com was the second most visited job site, with 11.51 percent of visits. Yahoo is high on the list in yet another category, coming in third with 5.33 percent.

“Along with diet and fitness websites, employment sites experience an increase during the first week of January each year as the job force considers finding a new job as part of their New Year’s resolution,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.

“This year career search engines experienced the greatest year-over-year growth as job hunters navigate the increasing long tail of job openings.”

The Employment and Training category overall, though, is down two percent compared with this time last year. Hitwise credits a booming economy for the drop in job-hunters.

“The decrease in visits to employment sites is most likely due to the drop in the unemployment rate of over 8 percent during 2006,” said Tancer.

According to Hitwise’s list of the top visited company websites, Americans are more grassroots, less high-falutin’, in their job quests. Though they may have all said they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, racecar drivers, veterinarians, or movie stars as kids, reality tells them a job at Target is more realistic – or a nice, cushy and secure government job.

Top 10 Most Visited Employment Sites:

1. CareerBuilder

2. Monster

3. Yahoo! HotJobs

4. Monster.com My Monster

5. Job.com

6. USAJOBS

7. America’s Job Bank

8. Indeed

9. MSN CareerBuilder Network

10. Hewitt Associates

Top 5 Most Visited Company Employment Websites

1. Careers at Target

2. USAJobs

3. UPS Jobs

4. Walmart Hiring Center

5. USPS – Online Applications

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Online Dieters Learn You Can’t Eat Web Cookies

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:35:34 +0000

We kick the dirt as we return to work after the holidays, noticing as we button those new pants from Mom that they’re a little snug. Okay, a lot snug. It’s comforting to know we’re not alone, as visits to dieting websites spiked by 57 percent on New Year’s Day.

It’s the women in the family’s fault, always feeding us so we don’t waste away like godless orphan Scrooges, plying us with chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate turtles, peanut butter balls, peanut butter fudge, peanut brittle, brownies, chocolate fudge, cakes, pies, gravy, sausage balls, cheese balls, tuna balls, crackers, cookies, chips, dips, cheeses, and little white cloudy confections that we don’t exactly know what’s in them, but Mom calls it “divinity.”

And my sister makes these nameless wonderful things that are, basically, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups wrapped in a chocolate chip cookies. Yes, there are starving people everywhere in the world at Christmas and I’m chowing down on friggin peanut butter cups wrapped in friggin chocolate chip cookies, blissfully ignoring the level of indulgence this is, ignoring that there’s somebody out there thrilled about the fruit basket Santa left them. At least some poor fellow will benefit from some brand new trousers when I donate them as a fat tax.

Or maybe they mean to fatten us up so we can’t run away.

But, like I said, we’re not alone. Hitwise reports that as soon as the sugar buzz wore off, people were rolling to the dieting websites like pilgrims to the Ganges, trying not to get fudge on the keyboard, disappointed you can’t eat a Web cookie.

Because we had time to watch the reruns, cheek-stuffed, the Biggest Loser Club website saw the greatest increase in traffic, jumping up (waddling up) 146 percent. eDiets.com gained 82 percent, and the leading weight loss site, Weight Watchers, had its cyber-glycemic levels soar by 70 percent.

For the week ending December 30th, the top search terms containing the term “diet” were: south beach diet, diet pills, diet, atkins diet, diabetic diet, diet plans, cabbage soup diet, lemonade diet, free diet plans, and master cleanse diet.

That last one just sounds nasty, but it may be the last resort if your sweat smells like burnt marshmallows.

Stay Puft is not your friend, Ray.

“Unfortunately,” says Hitwise’s Bill Tancer, “data from past years tells us that online diet interest is fleeting, and should start declining by the second week of January.”

Cabbage soup and master cleanse diets just don’t have the same appeal as peanut butter and chocolate. Excuse me, I have to go hang myself with a Charleston Chew.

The Top 10 Dieting Sites by Market Share of US Visits January 1, 2006:

1. Weight Watchers
2. Nutrisystem
3. eDiets
4. The Biggest Loser Club
5. SparkPeople
6. WebMD Weight Loss Clinic
7. South Beach diet
8. Jillian Michaels
9. Jenny Craig
10. Diabetic Living Diet

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