The Difference Between Diet and Weight Loss

You can lose weight by walking wearing a steam suit or using a sauna. However, these methods only work by removing water from you body and do not reduce your fat. Burning fat is different from losing water weight.

Water consists of 50-60% of our total body weight. 8-10% of our water weight is found in our blood.

Reducing water weight only leads to temporary weight loss. However, dieting burns fat. Water has zero calories and therefore you will not gain fat no matter how much water you drink. In addition, if you lose too much water weight you run the risk of dehydration. While dieting, you intake less water from food so it becomes very important to drink more water than usual.

Dangerous Diets

It is extremely dangerous for your health to reduce your calorie intake to below your basal metabolism no matter how eager you are to lose weight. Doing such will cause you to lose bone and muscle mass as well.

Taking pills that cause diarrhea put a heavy burden on your organs. There is also a risk of damaging your intestines. Also, pills that weaken the appetite or prevent fat from being absorbed should only be taken under a doctor's supervision. Individuals should not take these pills on their own, even if they are available without prescription.


Liposuction and surgeries such as stomach stapling or gastric banding are also questionable since we do not know what the effects of these treatments will be in 20-30 years.

Purposely causing an internal disease or starvation puts a heavy burden on our body. Therefor.e it is important to know the correct and healthy theory for dieting, such as the teachings of Diet Master. You lose the purpose of dieting when you create an unhealthy condition for yourself.

Our Stomach is Not a Trash Can

It is not good manners to have left overs. However, we cannot afford to say that while we are dieting. In fact, it is better to leave food left over in order to lose weight. Just a few extra bites may cause us to consume too many calories. For example, one dumpling has about 60 Kcal and one piece of sushi has about 40-50 Kcal.

Do not eat extra food just to clear them off the table. Your stomach is not a trash can. If you feel guilty throwing food away, pack them up and store them. Be careful, these foods may become easy foods to snack on when you feel like eating something. Try storing them in the freezer so that you can plan when to use them. Unless you are confident that you can endure your cravings, throw leftovers away.

For your information, here are the calories of a few possible leftovers:

one soft boiled egg	60Kcal
one dumpling	60Kcal
one piece of sushi	40Kcal
one bite fried noodle (yakisoba)	40Kcal
1/4 Japanese Salisbury steak (hambagu)	100Kcal
1/2 Japanese croquette (korokke)	100Kcal

For more information, visit our website or feel free to contact us.

The Importance of Keeping a Journal When Dieting

When we write down what we do each day, we will know:

1. How many empty foods we are eating
2. How much we are not exercising

The merits of writing down our daily activities are the following:

1. Knowing how much excess food we eat subconsciously
2. Knowing how well or poorly we balance our nutrition
3. Knowing which of our habits are leading us to weight gain
4. Knowing the relations between out eating habits and lifestyle
5. Knowing our personal balance between calorie consumption and calorie intake
6. Preventing overeating

Regardless, gaining weight is caused by excessive calorie intake. Do you know how many calories you can get from soft drinks, juices, alcohol, cakes and sweets? Do you know how many calories exceed your daily limit?
It is said that when we have the craving to eat something but are not really hungry, the feeling will subside in 5 minutes. Also, we sometimes feel hungry when we are actually thirsty. When you feel this craving, it is best to drink a small amount of water or tea then wait 5 minutes to see if this feeling subsides.

Lawsuits Against Fast Food

There was an incident last year where a labor court Brazil accepted a lawsuit from a worker in McDonald’s who claimed that he gained 12kg (26.5lb)because the company forced him to eat hamburgers. The company was required to pay him 30,000 BRL ($17,500 USD) in compensation.

A similar lawsuit occurred in the US as well. A group of teenagers sued McDonald’s claiming that their skillful PR encouraged continuous eating of their burgers, which encourages obesity in the US. The suit was not accepted however the result was easier access to nutritional information such as calorie amounts on fast food menus as well as some improvements to the menu.

The responsibility of the fast food industry in causing obesity is handled differently in each of these circumstances. Although we have been aware for a long time that fast food is not generally healthy, these lawsuits help us to increase our awareness and should encourage us to better inform ourselves on how to eat more healthily.

Worldwide Views on Dieting

Earlier this year, Reader’s Digest in the USA brought up research results on the worldwide consensus of dieting.

According to the research, surveying 16,000 people throughout 16 countries, the country that is most concerned about dieting is Finland in which 83% of the population has tried dieting at least once in their life. The second is Poland even though they were far behind Finland. Also, the country in which people sought a nicer figure the most was Brazil. This may be related to the many carnivals held there. The country where the most people use dieting pills is China. 37% of the population has tried pills for dieting. The report tells us about the differences in the views on dieting among different countries.

We are in a so called “worldly obesity age.” We at Japan Diet Academy would like to introduce our DietMaster program to each country someday in the future.

Make Lifestyle Changes, Not Just Diet

The most fearful situation for dieters is rebound. What can we do to avoid it? The only solution is to improve your lifestyle by adapting behavior modification therapy and developing a body that is less likely to gain weight.

Even after you successfully lose weight, you will return to your original weight once you return to your previous lifestyle.

It takes 5-10 years for the human body to be changed by both genetic and environmental factors. Therefore, we must solve the lifestyle factors that are causing weight gain or obesity; otherwise it is hard to anticipate a more simple solution.

Carbohydrates are good energy for your brain

I often hear about diet methods that don’t recommend people to eat carbohydrates. In fact, it’s not true that carbohydrates, which include lots of starch, cause people to gain a lot of weight. Of course, if you eat lots of rice at every meal you’ll gain weight easily. However, eating a reasonable amount of rice won’t make you gain weight.

The starch included in rice, bead, noodles and grains are major complex carbohydrates and take longer to digest than simple carbohydrates like fruit or sugar. Complex carbohydrates don’t make us feel hungry so they are indispensable for dieting. Also, carbohydrates, in the form of glucose, are the only source of energy for the brain, so we feel apathy when we lack it which will lead us to an unhealthy condition. We recommend you to be wary of diet methods that restrict carbohydrates.

Weight Loss Plateau

We can clearly see our weight drop during the 1st or 2nd week of a diet. The main reason is that we lose a lot of water weight during this period. However, after the 3rd of 4th week, our pace starts to slow or stop.

During this time, the human body starts to consume calories more effectively to prevent our fat storage from being used, regardless of reducing calorie intake. This results in a cease of weight reduction and is called the plateau period.

A plateau is caused by the splendid ability our bodies have to survive starvation. The plateau period usually lasts for 1-2 weeks. Most of us who fail at a diet do so during this period. They give up dieting and return to their usual eating habits and sometimes become so frustrated they end up eating too much. Then, rebound begins.

It is important not to give up even when you feel your weight reduction stops. This is the period in which you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The theory is that as long as we reduce our calorie intake by a few hundred calories less than those needed to maintain our size, we are sure to lose weight.

Obesity Prevails in Any Developed Country

Do you know the term “global obesity”?

According to statistics conducted by WHO, the population of people with a BMI over 25 in developed countries are as follows:

USA	66.7%
Germany	66.5%
UK	61%
Canada	59.1%
Australia	49%

As we can see, obesity is prevailing in developed countries.

The main reason for this it too much intake of high calorie foods as well as the convenience of fast food. Also, the increased usage of the internet leads people to lack exercise, which means less energy use.

The same situation is happening in Japan as well. Nowadays, 13 million Japanese men and 10 million Japanese women are at risk for obesity.

Alcohol & Dieting

The reason why alcoholic drinks cause people to gain weight is because they contain a lot of calories. Pure alcohol has 7kcal per gram and 5kcal of those 7 are used as energy in the body. Protein and saccharides, complex sugars, have 4kcal per gram. Alcohol is second to lipids, or fat which has 9kcal per gram, for highest calories per gram.

Some people think that beer and sake have high calorie amounts while whiskey and shochu do not have as much. While it is true that beer and sake do have a high calorie amount, only 3 shot glasses of whiskey (about 130cc) has about 400kcal. When you try to get the same amount of alcohol through beer, you would need to drink 3 medium sized bottles (1100cc). In the case of sake, you would consume 400kcal in about two and a half bottles (500cc). Also keep in mind that the higher the alcohol content, the higher the calories will be.

As we can see, whiskey does include a high amount of calorie so we can’t say that whiskey does not contribute to weight gain. In short, any type of alcohol, if we consume too much, can easily lead to obesity.

The Importance of Exercise

It is important to exercise as well as develop good eating habits when dieting. However, exercising does not work to reduce weight. For example, walking for 30 minutes is almost equal to burning the calories for one banana. Nevertheless, exercise is a very important element of any diet plan.

Some research was conducted on measuring the effects of dieting without exercise and dieting with exercise. It was found that those who dieted while exercising were able to reduce their body fat more easily. In other words, exercising reduces your body fat percentage.

In contrast, if you do not exercise while dieting, you might lose some of your muscle mass. If you regain your weight, you will end up with a higher body fat percentage.

Let’s work towards keeping a good figure! If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Global Poll: A Look at Weight Around the World

Last year, Reader’s Digest published an article detailing a global diet poll they commissioned. Such information is very valuable in letting us know how people in other countries think about dieting.

To summarize:

• Reader’s digest reported that Americans have the hardest time in dieting than any other country after surveying 16,000 people in 16 countries. In addition, Americans feel overweight women are stigmatized the most for their weight.
• Brazilians feel the biggest pressure to reduce their weight while people in Finland are the most aware of obesity risks due to previously having a high rate of heart disease.
• Hungarians are the most accepting of weight, even in spouses.
• People in Russia still tend to smoke to reduce weight and that that obesity mainly results from genetics.
• Almost 75% of Americans believe the American diet leads to obesity.
• There are more people in Mexico that know the proper and healthy way to diet. Most of them understand that the key to improving weight is a healthy diet and increasing physical activity.

No matter what country you live in, unless you’re from Hungary, people everywhere are feeling pressure to maintain their weight. In modern society, especially developed nations, food is very abundant and easily accessible, leading us to overeating and lowered activity. Let’s try to reduce our habits of eating too much food and eat until we feel 80% full. Practicing this also keeps us from feeling over-stuffed.