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Screen print: Kate Gibb; photograph: Michael Elins
A Formula for Weight Loss
Everyone knows how to lose weight: Eat fewer calories than you burn so the body uses fat for fuel rather than just storing it.
Or, try p = (c/50) + (f/12) – (r/5). That's the patented formula behind Weight Watchers' Points system, which boils down a lot of information into one easy-to-track number. Points don't account for just the caloric content of food (the c in the equation), they also consider the fat content (f) and the benefits of fiber (r). Each member is allotted a certain number of points a day plus weekly bonus points depending on their current height, weight, gender, and activity level.
Turning a meal into a number offers Weight Watchers members something simple, precise, and substantive. As Karen Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers, says, "The Points system creates a structure for people until that structure becomes habit."
And it works. A 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly 40 percent of a group following the Weight Watchers program lost more than 5 percent of their body weight, almost double the success rate of a comparison group trying to lose weight on their own.
Points turn out to be especially effective when combined with an online component; the company's internal research shows that members who also use Weight Watchers.com lose more weight than those who don't. That success has inspired a slew of unauthorized points-counting apps, and from time to time Weight Watchers lawyers send out cease-and-desist letters. The company should remember that its Points system relies on the openness mandated by the federal Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. The law requires most food makers to disclose the amounts of fat, fiber, and calories in their products—the very three ingredients that, with a bit of math, allow the Points system to work. —Thomas Goetz
5 Nutrition Tools
Livestrong.com Calorie Tracker With a database of more foods than you'll find in the average supermarket, this mobile app makes counting calories easier than riding a bike. $3, livestrong.com
Daytum From number of sodas consumed to movies watched, this Web site will slice and dice any data you feed it, with easily readable reports showing your totals, averages, percentages, and more. Free, daytum.com
Glucose Buddy This iPhone app wrangles diabetes info for you, logging blood-glucose levels, food, exercise, and meds in a color-coded readout. It can also graph and export the accumulated stats. Free, glucosebuddy.com
LabPixies Calorie Calculator This software widget sets a daily calorie goal and then helps you keep it, tracking what you eat and showing your progress each time you fire up your browser. Free, labpixies.com
Tanita BC-590BT Wireless Body Composition Monitor Tanita's superscale not only measures your pounds, body fat percentage, visceral fat, and muscle and bone mass but also wirelessly sends that data to your Bluetooth-enabled desktop for long-term tracking. $250, tanita.com
Diet Science
|
You're cutting calories — but how you allocate the remaining ones is important, too. Here's how several popular diets balance out a day's worth of calories, carbs, fat, and protein. — Mathew Honan
| Breakdown of daily caloric intake (2,000-calorie scale)Protein Carbs Fat
<p>
g
>
<p>G
-bye, bread and potatoes. Hello, meat and, um, meat! By restricting daily net carbs (total carbs minus fiber), the hope is that our bodies will burn fat instead. But many medical experts worry about the diet's effect on heart disease.</p>
<p>Adern "Mediterranean diet" plan: Keep calories to no more than 1,600 per day and consume a monounsaturated fat at every meal, and those love handles will lose their grip. Prepare yourself for lots of oil, and hope to keep the weight off.</p>
<p>Yll purge carbs almost completely for two weeks, then maintain a diet of "good" carbs and "good" fats. But the purge diet is as appetizing as Miami sand, and it's a sobering undertaking — all alcohol is banned.</p>
p classr Genes Young</p> <p>
eng known that a healthy diet promotes weight loss and overall well-being, but there's new evidence that shows it may actually slow the aging process. <a href=/a> by guru and UC San Francisco faculty member <a href=ish</a>, puhed in <em>The et Oncology</em>, fthat exercise, stress management, and a low-fat, low-sugar diet with lots of whole foods, fruits, vegetables, vitamins, and fish oils can reduce the rate of cellular aging. That kind of diet boosts levels of the enzyme telomerase, which in turn helps maintain essential DNA sequences called telomeres at the ends of your chromosomes. Think of telomeres as a protective housing—as the housing degrades over time, its contents are more likely to become damaged. Telomeres shield chromosomes from breakdown due to cellular aging, which is a risk factor for conditions like heart disease and cancer. Keep those telomeres long with a healthy lifestyle, and you very well may lengthen your life. <em>— Ma Honan</em></p
OINT <p classIntake</p> <p>
it so hard to cut weight? We know how much we're supposed to eat each day, but we just don't do it (or just overdo it). American men consume 113 percent of their daily recommended calories; American women consume 102 percent.</p> <im
c
sDense Foods Are Doing Us In</p>
<p>
nu're doing something that dramatically changes your eating habits, it's not sustainable," says Barbara Rolls, the Guthrie Chair of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State University. "A lot of diets are very prescriptive, like ‘Just don't eat white foods.' People lose weight, but then those foods are singing to them in the night. We're not a species with a lot of willpower."</p> <p>
sarted to research satiety — or what makes us feel full. "The data clearly show that calorie density, which correlates to water content, has a significant effect on energy intake. It's not portion size per se that makes people overeat; we're eating big portions of calorie-dense food." Rolls' diet plan — called Volumetrics — focuses on the energy density of foods.</p> <p>
kis to focus on foods that contain fewer calories per a given volume, so you feel full without consuming as many calories. Rather than a 100-calorie snack of raisins (a quarter cup), with Volumetrics you'd have 100 calories of grapes (two cups).</p> <p>
iting thing about this as a strategy for weight management is it directs you to healthy, nutritious foods you should be eating anyway," Rolls says. "Because our eating behavior is so sensitive to volume cues, regardless of caloric density, there are a lot of opportunities to make changes and eat less. We have such good food technology now that we can get more vegetables in and get fat out and not lose taste. But the food industry is very slow to change. We need to motivate the people who provide food to us to do this." <em>–Joedsey</em></p
by Numbers
<a href=
e+ Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics</a>
<a =
Live by the Numbers: Exercise</a>
<a =
Live by the Numbers: Health</a>
<a =
yself: Tracking Every Facet of Life, From Sleep to Mood to Pain, 24/7/365.</a> <p>r, Meet Interweb: The Networked Future of Farms</a></p>
