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.

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.

Why Eating Fast Causes Us to Gain Weight

Our appetite is controlled by our satiety and feeding centers in our brain. Once food is in the stomach, glucose in the blood increases. Then, blood-sugar and insulin increase. This stimulates the satiety center which makes us feel full. At the same time, while we feel full, the feeding center becomes inactive which tells us to stop eating. When we become hungry, the feeding center becomes active again and we want to eat.

It takes us 15 to 20 minutes to start feeling full after we start eating. Therefore, those who eat fast eat too much before they feel full. When they continue this, they cannot exactly feel when they are full or hungry, causing them to eat food while they're not hungry.

Those who usually finish eating first should try to keep the same pace as others. This will work not only to stop overeating but also makes those eating with you feel more comfortable. It is also more polite this way. When you eat food alone, it is recommended to put the fork and knife down each time you put food in your mouth. Please bare in mind that fast eating should be avoided when dieting.

Top 7 Ways of Dieting

Japanese internet research shows the top 7 dieting methods:

1. Being mindful with what they eat
2. Reducing the food they eat between meals
3. Reducing portion sizes and the number of meals
4. Jogging and exercising
5. Stretching and muscle exercise
6. Taking diet pills and supplements
7. Taking long baths

Though I do not recommend all of these methods, any of these should work when trying to reduce weight if continued for three months or so. Losing weight is not very difficult; it’s keeping the weight off that’s hard.

Reducing the amount we eat leads to lower calorie intake. As a result, we are sure to lose weight. Be careful not to eat less than your basal metabolic rate otherwise you may hurt your body. Another issue is that if, once you lose your desired weight, you return to your previous eating habits, you will likely gain rebound weight. When you lose weight, you will lose fat and muscle, especially if you are not exercising. When you gain rebound weight, you only gain back the fat. This is the serious point.

If you continue a cycle of losing and gaining weight, or yo-yo diet, your body will end up with an increasing body fat percentage. There is only one way to diet without gaining rebound weight. That is to learn the correct theories to dieting healthy so that you can make proper lifestyle changes. Dieting the healthy way, which includes aerobic and resistance exercises, can help you prevent weight rebound.

If you really want to learn the healthy way to diet, you should first understand the following:

1. Your personal basal metabolic rate
2. How much energy you use and how much you take in
3. The metabolic system

Please feel free to contact us if you wish to gain more knowledge on how to diet correctly and healthily.

Fuji TV Reports Diet Research

Yesterday I saw an announcement by Fuji TV, a major TV news channel in Japan.

The program said Tsukuba University had concluded from research that knowing the correct theories and education on dieting can be good motivation for dieting. This was also reported in the Europe Dieting Institute’s periodical. The TV program showed several people in Europe who were successful in losing weight including one old gentleman who reduced his weight from 113kg (250lb) to 75kg (165lb) by learning good diet information.

2/3 of Japanese people die of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart diseases, stroke, cancer, hyperlipidemia and others. In most cases, lifestyle diseases can be prevented by avoiding obesity. Though it seems as though many people know enough about lifestyle diseases, the fact is not so many do.

The Japan Diet Academy has sold their own educational materials on how to diet correctly for 7 years now, and have sent a few thousand dieting experts to share this information to the public.

- Chairman

Diet Communication

If you are in Japan, knowledge about dieting is very useful. Whether you are in Japan for business or even for personal travel, knowing basic topics that appeal to the Japanese are really useful to make your conversations go more smoothly.

Did you know about 70% of people in Japan are interested in dieting? If you have enough knowledge about proper dieting, you will gain popularity among the people you speak with. If you work in sales, gaining popularity and supports is very crucial in making your business successful. In order to get supporters, it is necessary to take these steps:

1. Gain supporters for yourself
2. Convert these supporters for your business
3. Get them to purchase your company’s products

These are the basic steps for a successful salesman. You may be wondering how knowledge on proper and healthy dieting techniques can help you. Dieting knowledge can work as a “break the ice” topic, something that is easy for everyone to understand and easy for you to learn as well. People will be especially impressed if you are an American outside of the US since Americans tend to have a bad reputation for poor eating habits. Not to say all Americans have poor eating habits, this is just how we are generally perceived outside of the US.

About one week should be enough for you to gain the knowledge and theories of healthy dieting. In Japan, such should be required teaching in Junior High School in a 5-6 hour lesson. Unfortunately, it will be difficult to impose such a requirement because it can create conflict with the food industry.

While discussing this topic in our office, we were talking about the differences in diet education in primary school in Japan and the US. How did your school treat nutrition and diet education? Let me know and feel free to discuss no matter what country you are from.

When I was in Junior High in the US, I took Home Economics which taught some diet and nutrition. Although, it was an elective and the only reason why I took it was because I had transferred schools and so was late in registering. It was the only course available so I had the impression it was not a very popular course. I wasn’t required to learn about nutrition until High School and it was something I could have taken at any time as long as it was before graduation. I’m not sure how the school systems are like now.

An Irregular Lifestyle Leads You to Obesity

According to statistics surveying when people began gaining weight, most people started to gain weight when the joined the work force after graduating from school. For some people, it began within 1-2 years and others noticed their body’s shape changing between 4-5 years after graduating. These people tend to become conscious of dieting just before reaching 30 and tried many times to reduce their weight but were struggling.

The major reasons for this change are:

1. They may have had more time for healthier lifestyle habits as a student.
2. They sometimes skipped meals.
3. Desk jobs do not require much activity.
4. They regularly drank alcohol which is high in calories.

Irregular meal times, frequent consumption of alcohol and lack of exercise all lead people to obesity. In this modern era, it does not take long for an individual to develop an unhealthy lifestyle.

At some point in our lives, we need to learn proper dieting in order to maintain our health as well as improve upon it.

For more information, feel free to contact us.

The Functions of Parasympathetic Nerves

Autonomic nerves are divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve. Mainly, the sympathetic nerve works during the daytime and facilitates energy consumption. When night comes, the parasympathetic nerves start working. Energy consumption slows and the body works on fixing damaged cells.

Dr. Shigeki Shibazaki, a Ph. D. of Nippon University has concluded after his investigations that BMAL-1, a sort of protein which takes part in our body's rhythmic clock (circadian rhythm), has a close relation with the accumulation of inner fat.

The BMAL-1 is hardly generated during the daytime but is produced during the night time. Based on this fact, researchers try to conclude that gaining weight can be avoided by not having meals late at night.
It is reported that BMAL-1 is generated most actively between 10pm and 2am, which is 15 to 20 times more than what is produced around 3am (Asahi Newspaper on September 2005).

The level of BMAL at different times 

based on a 24-hour clock. 

There are many areas that have yet to be researched in our body functions as well as diet theory. However, it is evident that going to bed right after eating contributes to gaining weight and more and more researchers tend to think the reason is because of BMAL-1.

For more information, please contact DietMaster New York Inc. We are open to International inquiries as well.

Obesity

Do you know the actual definition of being obese? Don’t you think it means weighing too much for your height? In actuality, being obese is not just about how much you weigh. The fact is that being obese means your fat ratio in comparison to your body weight is abnormally high.

The largest component of our bodies is water, including blood, which amounts from 50-60% of our body. The next biggest element is fat which amounts from 15-25% in the average male body and 20-30% in the average female body. The rest of our body’s components include protein, minerals, fructose, and so on. Our bones also include lots of proteins and minerals such as calcium. We start to gain weight when fat or water increases in our bodies. When fat increases, it can lead to obesity. When water increases, it is only swelling.

If you would like to learn more about the correct theory for dieting, please contact us about our DietMaster products.

Is Sugar Toxic?

NY Times - Is Sugar Toxic?

A very interesting article about research done on the effects of sugar on our bodies. One thing the author mentions is that "we should always keep in mind... that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup might be toxic, as Lustig argues, but so might any substance if it’s consumed in ways or in quantities that are unnatural for humans.”

Another interesting point is how he mentions the effect of the Western diet and compares it to a Japanese diet among other groups who tend to have less occurrences of lifestyle diseases. Such is similar to the philosophy behind DietMaster.

Although the concept that sugar may be toxic to our bodies needs more research, if anything, we should learn that we need to be concerned not just about our size but also our inner health as well. That is why when you think about dieting you shouldn't just think about how much weight you need to lose, but also what lifestyle changes you need to make to keep your body healthy.

Feel free to add comments discussing your viewpoints on the article. Also, if you are interested in learning more about maintaining inner health, please feel free to contact us.