Beyonce Wants ‘Chocolate’ Following 60-Pound Weight Loss

 LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Caption After sticking to a strict diet to lose baby weight following the January birth of Blue Ivy, who can blame Beyonce for wanting to indulge?

“Y’all have no idea how hard I worked!” the new mom told fans during her concert at Revel Beach’s Ovation Hall in Atlantic City on Saturday night, via the Associated Press. “I had to lose 60 pounds. They had me on that treadmill. I ate lettuce!”

The “Run the World (Girls)” singer, 30, said she’s more than ready to ditch the produce for dessert.

“Now tonight I’m gonna get chocolate wasted!” she exclaimed.

Beyonce’s treadmill admission had to please a certain VIP in the audience – Michelle Obama (who has partnered with the singer in the past to inspire kids to exercise with her “Let’s Move!” campaign).

The First Lady enjoyed the concert with daughters Sasha and Malia, who happily danced in their seats to the music of Queen B, according to Us Weekly.

“They sat up in a private balcony with Gayle King. Michelle was jamming out to ‘Crazy in Love,’” a concertgoer told the mag. “When Beyonce told the crowd to get up and jump, [Malia and Sasha] stood and started dancing and jumping. They were shouting when Beyonce asked, ‘Do girls run the world?’

“Together, all three of them did the ‘Single Ladies’ dance moves,” the concertgoer added.

Nighttime fasting may foster weight loss

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era.
It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence.
A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity — and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it.
Just eat your cake — or better yet, an apple — earlier. Then wait 16 hours, until breakfast the next morning, to eat again.
"We have to come up with something that is a simple alternative to calorie counting," said Satchidananda Panda, a regulatory biologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla who led the study published online Thursday by the journal Cell Metabolism.
Panda and his team put groups of mice on different eating regimens for 100 days. Animals in two of the groups dined on high-fat, high-calorie chow. Half of them were allowed to eat whenever they wanted, and nibbled on and off throughout the night and day. The other mice had access to food only for eight hours at night, when they were most active.
In human terms, this would be rough: No ice cream while watching "Glee." No second glass of wine while talking things over with the spouse. Not even a late-night glass of warm milk.
The difference was astonishing. Even though they ate a high-fat diet, the mice who wrapped up their eating day early and were forced to fast for 16 hours were lean — almost as lean as mice in a control group who ate regular chow. But the mice who noshed on high-fat chow around the clock became obese, even though they consumed the same amount of fat and calories as their counterparts on the time-restricted diet.
Extra weight wasn't their only problem. The obese mice developed high cholesterol, high blood sugar, fatty liver disease and metabolic problems. The mice who ate fatty food but were forced to fast showed hardly any signs of inflammation or liver disease, and their cholesterol and blood sugar levels were virtually indistinguishable from those of mice who ate regular chow. When put on an exercise wheel, they showed the most endurance and the best motor control of all the animals in the study.
The data suggest that the stomach, the brain and the body's digestive machinery need to take a break from managing incoming fuel; otherwise, we may be working ourselves into a state of metabolic exhaustion. When combined with high-calorie, high-fat diets, the result is weight gain, a liver clogged with fat, accumulation of cholesterol in the arteries and unused glucose in the blood.
In the mice who fasted for 16 hours daily, measures of digestive hormones, cholesterol and glucose suggested that liver enzymes were working hard to break down cholesterol into bile acids. The body's stores of "brown fat," the stuff that converts extra calories into heat, were revved up, and the liver ceased production of glucose. As they burned fat, their body temperatures were actually higher, Panda said.
The results of daily fasting were "phenomenal," he said.
If only we were mice.
Leo Garcia, a 37-year-old auto mechanic whose adult years have been a steady march up the scale, said he was intrigued by the notion that he could lose some of his 250 pounds by wrapping up his mealtime early and resisting the urge to nibble. "It seems easier to do something like that than to join a gym and do cardio," he said.
But the study drew both exasperation and cautious interest from obesity researchers, who underscored that lab mice aren't tempted by fast-food restaurants with late-night specials and have no alternative to the menu and feeding schedule set by lab technicians. Being nocturnal, they also have different circadian clocks. The conclusion that humans could prevent or reverse obesity by wolfing down steak and chips for eight hours and then stopping for 16 would be premature and almost certainly dangerous, some said.
"I hope it's true, but I doubt it," said Barbara Corkey, director of obesity research at Boston University School of Medicine.
Barry M. Popkin, a nutrition expert at the University of North Carolina, said the study plies "uncharted territory" that needs exploration. A clinical trial published in 1992 suggested that eating frequent, small meals resulted in better insulin control and longevity.
"This one study cannot tell us that this science is wrong," Popkin said. "However, it is suggestive that scholars in the diabetes, obesity and other areas related to heart disease need to test this issue further in animals and humans."
Panda acknowledged that his research would need to be refined and tested in humans before it could be used to fight the war against obesity. The 16-hour fast that was so effective in preventing obesity in mice "may not be a magic number" for people, he said.
But extending the nighttime fast is a cheap and simple dietary adjustment that has no discernible side effects and doesn't require anyone to count calories or even deprive themselves — unless you just can't watch a playoff game without a beer or can't fall asleep without tea and honey.
All you need is a clock, said Panda, who noted that most after-dinner snacks are high in fat, sugar, salt and calories, and are best cut out anyway.
Research into the basic drivers of obesity — both social and biological — are under greater scrutiny than ever. Pharmacological help for the nation's 78 million obese adults and 12.5 million obese children has been elusive, as have the keys to behavior change for enduring weight loss.
Scientists acknowledge that obesity results from a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors, such as sedentary lifestyles, consumption of sweetened soft drinks, growing portion sizes and the increasing role of calorie-rich restaurant meals in American diets.
Panda thinks researchers may be overlooking the role that timing has on the body's response to food. In the agricultural lifestyle of an earlier time, Americans ate heartily but were thinner. They did chores, then had a big breakfast, followed by more physical activity, a hearty lunch, work and an early dinner. Soon after the sun set, it was time to sleep.
"Most people ate mostly in daytime," Panda said. Today, "our social life starts at sunset. Family time starts at the evening. So essentially, we have increased our eating time in the last 40 to 50 years."

Weight Loss Success: Tammy Garcia Ditched The Fad Diets And Lost Nearly 80 Pounds

Name: Tammy Garcia
Age: 29
Height: 5'5"
Before Weight: 204 pounds
How I Gained It: I was never really a thin person, but I grew up doing ballet and other various forms of dance since I was 3 years old, so I was a healthy size up until I graduated from high school. At that point, I quit dancing, started college and I let the freshman 15 get to me. But it didn't stop there. I kept gaining weight through my time in college, and graduated at about 155 pounds. Once I graduated from undergrad, I moved away from home. That was the first time I was required to do all my own shopping and cooking, and it did not go well. Have you ever noticed that the foods on sale are the unhealthy ones? Chips, sugary cereals, cookies, bagels -- I got caught in that trap. I got caught in the "I'm too busy to cook between work during the day and school at night, so I'll just have fast food" mentality.
After four years of eating unhealthy and focusing more on work and grad school studies than on making sure I was healthy, I had allowed myself to get to over 200 pounds. Only once did I even try to lose weight. In 2009, when I couldn't fit into a bridesmaid dress I had just ordered about two months before, I knew I needed to do something about it. I tried a fad diet plan I was recommended. It worked in the short term, and I lost almost 30 pounds and ended up having the dress taken in for the wedding. But then I moved to a small, backwoods town. I stopped the fad diet, and I allowed those excuses to be in charge again. It was back to fast food and making excuses that it was "too hard" to find the healthy foods in a small southern town that didn't believe in eating healthy. So that weight came right back on in a matter of a few months.
Breaking Point: My breaking point came in August of 2010 when it was time for me to buy some new pants. My work pants were old and they were getting kind of tight so I went shopping for some new ones. But I couldn't fit into a size 14, and I struggled to fit in a size 16. I refused to buy pants that were a size 16 or bigger. It would have been the biggest size I would have ever bought and I just couldn't allow myself to do it. I had simply had enough of being big. I had enough of being unhealthy. I wanted something better for myself. I knew that I had lost weight before, so I was sure I could do it again.
How I Lost It: I had family coming into town in about two months and so I created an eight-week challenge for myself. It was "Operation Make Pants Not Fit in a Good Way in Eight Weeks." I realized this time that I didn't want a gimmicky fad diet. I wanted something that I would be able to maintain for the rest of my life. I wanted to really learn how to live healthy instead of relying on some sort of pre-packaged nonsense that wouldn't really teach me how to eat in the real world.
I knew the best way to do that would be to cut out fast food, cook healthy meals at home and start exercising. I went to the bookstore to buy some healthy food cookbooks, hit Amazon.com to buy some workout videos and the sporting goods store for some exercise clothing. I joined the site Livestrong.com to track my calories and joined a group challenge.

At first, I only did cardio (I didn't have a gym membership, I had my workout videos and an elliptical machine at home, but no weights). By the time my family came into town, I was able to buy a size 12 pair of pants, and I had lost around 20 pounds. I was proud, but I knew there was a long way to go. So I kept at it, adding in weight training with a nice little set of weights my husband bought for me and learning how to make more and more healthy meals using fresh ingredients. Now, I sit down with my husband every Sunday and we plan out our meals for the week, and then hit the grocery store together. When we plan vacations, we make them active vacations where we can go hiking in the mountains, for example. It makes it so much easier being in this new lifestyle journey together.
I've been maintaining my current weight for almost a year now, but I've worked on getting stronger. I'm always challenging myself to lift more weight or go one more rep when I'm weight training. I've done the Insanity program and I throw in those workouts on my cardio days and it's still a challenge. I'm always pushing myself to go further, harder and longer.
The biggest realization I've had, and why I've been able to maintain this time around, is that I've realized there is no "easy" way to lose weight. There's no magic pill, no magic "diet," nothing like that. It's a matter of working out, staying active and eating healthy. It really is a lifestyle, not something you do for a little bit and then go back to what you were doing before. It is simple, but it takes dedication and commitment to make the changes that are necessary. It takes time and effort. But the rewards are more than worth it. I've gone from not being able to fit into a size 14 to wearing a size 0 or 2. I am happier, more positive, less sick, in pain less and I just feel better all around.
After Weight: 127 pounds

100 Million Dieters, $20 Billion: The Weight-Loss Industry by the Numbers

Getty Images

When you're trying to lose weight, the number that seems to matter most is the one you see on the scale. But there are plenty of other compelling numbers coming out of the growing weight-loss industry. Check out a few below and watch the full story on "Losing It: The Big Fat Money Pit" on "20/20," Friday at 10 p.m. ET.

$20 Billion

The annual revenue of the U.S. weight-loss industry, including diet books, diet drugs and weight-loss surgeries.

108 Million

The number of people on diets in the United States. Dieters typically make four to five attempts per year.

85 Percent

The percentage of customers consuming weight-loss products and services who are female.

1 Hour

The amount of time spent on daily exercise by people who lost and kept off at least 30 pounds of excess weight for five years.

220,000

The number of people with morbid obesity in the United States who had bariatric surgery in 2009.

$11,500 to $26,000

The average cost of bariatric surgery, which reduces the size of the stomach.

$500,000 to $3 Million

The average salaries paid to celebrity endorsers of major weight-loss programs.

$33,000

The amount of money celebrity endorsers, on average, earn per pound lost.

$5,594

Cost for a week-long (six night) weight-loss program at Beau Rivage Palace, a luxury hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland. The program includes massages and personal training sessions and discourages deprivation.

2

The number of glasses of wine per day allowed to guests of the Beau Rivage Palace weight-loss program.
Sources: John LaRosa of MarketData; National Weight Control Registry; American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery; Jo Piazza, author of "Celebrity Inc.: How Famous People Make Money.

Diet Doc hCG Diet & Weight Loss Introduces Lowest Priced hCG Diet in USA

Stacey showing off her amazing weight loss on Diet Doc!

Diet Doc hCG Diet & Weight Loss is the only modern-day diet that is less money than most over-the-counter diets and is capable of shaving 25-30 pounds per month!

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) May 07, 2012

Diet Doc hCG Diet & Weight Loss recently conducted a survey of other leading hCG diet clinics across the USA and found that Diet Doc is the lowest priced (prescription), medical, weight loss program in the USA!
Diet Doc hCG Diet provides medically, supervised weight loss nationwide and is the only modern-day hCG diet in the USA capable of shaving 30 pounds per month reports Julie Wright, president of Diet Doc.
Many doctors only offer the original 1950's Dr. Simeons HCG diet which promises dieters they will lose 1 pound per day if they consume 500 calories per day while taking injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (hcg), a human hormone made by chorionic cells in the fetal part of the placenta during pregnancy reports Wright.
The reason other doctors are offering an extremely outdated version of the hCG diet is because there is no where to obtain this specialized training unless the doctor spends a few years studying the original hCG diet protocol and updating to present day medical knowledge on how hormones interact with weight gain and weight loss.
Diet Doc is an all-inclusive weight loss program which offers a specially formulated weight loss shake that helps burn fat and reduce cravings for carbohydrates. The shake is consumed 4x/day along with eating food purchased from the grocery store (unlimited vegetables, chicken/lean beef or fish and fruit). Diet Doc also formulated a weight loss oil which is flavorless, but used to make salad dressing and for cooking. The oil burns fat within 30 minutes of consuming reports Wright. Dieters receive one month of shake, weight loss oil, unlimited doctor and weight loss nurse consultations/support, and one month of injection or tablet (both are prescription) hCG and are given a large cookbook and doctor written weight loss workbook on the Diet Doc hCG Diet Program.
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*These weight reduction treatments include oral hCG or an injection of hCG–a drug, which has not been approved by the food and drug administration as safe and effective in the treatment of obesity or weight control. There is no substantial evidence that hCG increases weight loss beyond that resulting from caloric restriction, that it causes a more attractive or "normal" distribution of fat, or that it decreases the hunger and discomfort associated with calorie-restrictive diets. Results may vary and cannot be guaranteed. Medical supervision and compliance with our program is required.

Manchester Chiropractor Provides Ideal Protein Weight Loss Program

MANCHESTER, Mo., May 6, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Manchester chiropractor Dr. Brad Mawer, of Morningstar Spinal Correction Center, now provides the Ideal Protein weight loss program to his patients. According to Dr. Mawer, he decided to start offering the diet and nutrition program because of all the research pointing toward obesity as a major factor in a long list of diseases and painful conditions. Dr. Mawer's center provides nutritional counseling, support and an assortment of the program's gourmet food products. After researching various nutrition programs, he felt this protein program effectively addressed the metabolic processes behind obesity in order to help people lose weight over the long term.

Dr. Mawer says that the Ideal Protein program has helped many of his Manchester weight loss patients reach their goals. "This program is working for my patients because it isn't just another diet; it was medically developed to address metabolic disorders common in the Western Hemisphere from the overabundance of refined carbs in our diets. Dr. Tran Tien Chanh developed this program over 25 years ago and it's still going strong, helping people burn excess fat while maintaining the muscle mass critical to maintaining a healthy body structure." Dr. Mawer says that even patients who had struggled to lose weight for years are finally losing weight and keeping it off on this program.

Dr. Mawer says that helping people lose weight is one of his major goals. He cites a growing library of scientific literature demonstrating how obesity worsens everything from diabetes and heart disease to arthritis and back pain. He explains that he sees obesity's negative effects in patients almost daily. He says that excess weight puts stress on a person's posture, causing the spine to shift out of alignment, which then leads to pinched nerves in the spine. He provides spinal adjustments to correct the misalignment, but until the weight comes off, the extra weight threatens to keep stressing the spine. The key, he says, is to help the patient lose weight.

According to Dr. Mawer, people who want to lose weight are often more successful on a medical program with doctor supervision. He says that because each of his patients undergoes a complete exam and nutritional counseling before beginning the diet, they know what they need to do to succeed. The extra support from the doctor and the gourmet foods also provide the incentive they need to stay focused on their goals.

Dr. Mawer says that helping people feel better about themselves and their health is the biggest benefit of the nutritional counseling program. "True health is a state of body and mind. When people experience how much better they feel physically and mentally after losing weight, they want to stick with it. Their risk factors for disease, their pain levels; all of those things decrease and they feel energized. I love seeing that."

Dr. Mawer has been practicing in Missouri for the past 8 years. His website is located at http://www.morningstarscc.com .

Women Who Lost Over 100 Pounds Reveal Clever Weight-Loss Tricks That Actually Worked

Today show nutrition expert, Joy Bauer, has come out with a new book, The Joy Fit Club: Cookbook, Diet Plan & Inspiration, where she profiles 30 formerly obese people who have each lost over 100 pounds and transformed their lives. In the book, these “biggest losers” share some of their best and most clever tricks that they used to shed so many pounds–and we gotta say, some of them are quite ingenious. Here are a few that may help you, too:
Trick #1: Pull out a bag of tricks (Our favorite)
Kim, who lost 110 pounds, fights off cravings for junk food with a bag that is filled with cards listing fun, motivational activities. This includes everything “read a book” and “treat myself to a manicure” to “call a friend” and “exercise for 10 minutes.” The deal is, when an urge for cookies or candy strikes, Kim has to finish the activity she randomly selected. By the time she’s done, her desire to eat has usually passed.
At first glance, this “bag of tricks” may sound corny, but it’s actually a great idea. Most cravings for junk food are emotional (you’re bored, tired, angry, etc.) and will pass if you divert your attention to something more positive. The key here is to hold yourself accountable for actually doing the activity you select.
Trick #2: Exercise during commercials
Simply getting off the couch during every commercial break helped Sheri drop 141 pounds and become half of her former self. When watching TV, she made a deal with herself to get up during each commercial break and squeeze in some crunches, squats, lunges or even some time just walking in place. This could add up to burning 100 calories during an hour-long program–and if you watch an average of two hours of TV a day, that could mean an extra 1,400 calories a week.
This two-minute break also works well for push-ups and jump roping. Who cares what the neighbors think! Leave your blinds open and maybe you can motivate them too.
Trick #3: Create slim-downed versions of your favorite foods.
Who says that pizza is a no-no when you’re trying to lose weight? One woman who lost a whopping 300 pounds says she created a healthier version simply by using a whole-grain tortilla or flatbread for the base and then topping it with low-fat cheese and tons of fresh veggies.
Another woman who lost 109 pounds jazzed up her salads with a healthy, homemade dressing that was low in fat and calories. She uses flavored vinegar (like raspberry) and goes light on the oil to trim even more calories. She also adds nonfat plain Greek yogurt to the vinaigrette for a creamier version that helps to keep her satisfied longer.
These examples just go to show that weight loss is still all about diet and exercise–and some fun, creative tricks to keep things interesting.