Double Weight Loss By Writing Food Diary

Earlier this month eMaxHealth conducted a weight loss poll asking Do You Think Keeping A Food Diary Could Improve Weight Loss? Out of 553 responders 74 percent believed that yes, writing a food diary can improve weight loss. Now a new study, released by Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research shows that food diary not only improves weight loss, but doubles the amount that we can lose weight.
This study found that the best predictors of weight loss were how frequently food diaries were kept and how many support sessions the participants attended. Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records.
The Kaiser study is important because the findings are from one of the largest and longest running weight loss maintenance trials ever conducted. This is one of a few trials to recruit a large percentage of African Americans as study participants (44 percent), significant because African Americans have a higher risk of conditions aggravated by being overweight, including diabetes and heart disease. More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.
The study was coordinated by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research and involved participants and co-authors from Duke University Medical Center, Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Johns Hopkins University.
While one commentator at eMaxHealth has written that he doubts that many people will be honest in writing their food diaries, another person writes “I totally agree that a food diary helps you to lose weight. Of course it is only as good as the person doing the journaling. It makes you conscience of what you are eating so maybe you won’t eat it if you think about it. I feel good when I look back to see how “good” I was all day. Then, I know if I can have that extra piece of cheese.”
Some say that keeping a food diary helps you to see how much junk food you eat and if it’s helping you to lose weight. Food diary enables you to improve your eating habits and thus, to lose more weight, up to the point of doubling your weight loss.

FDA Rejects Both Lorcaserin and Qnexa as Medical Weight Loss Treatments

It does not appear that obesity will be cured by a pill any time soon. Two of the three most recently introduced weight loss pills have been rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration, including lorcaserin (Arena Pharmaceuticals) and Qnexa (Vivus Inc) this month. Meridia by Abbott Labs was pulled from the shelves in October as well. Unless Contrave (Orexigen) is approved in December, the only available prescription medication for is Roche’s Xenical.

Weight Loss Drugs Have Many Side Effects, but Fewer Benefits

The FDA rejected Qnexa, a combination of phentermine and topiramate, yesterday due to safety concerns. An advisory panel voted against approving the drug back in July. Vivus has stated that the agency requested that the company provide a thorough evaluation of the drug’s potential for causing birth defects and heart problems. They have said that they will provide this information to the FDA in about six weeks.
Lorcaserin, an investigational selective serotonin 2C receptor agonist, was not approved because of concerns that it caused mammary tumors in rats. In September, an FDA committee voted 9 to 5 against recommending the drug due to side effects such as depression and memory loss.
Meridia (sibutramine) was recently withdrawn from the market because of the risk of heart attacks and strokes in certain patients. Meridia was initially approved in 1997.
Experts are concerned that the FDA’s recent trend toward rejecting anti-obesity medications will halt drug development from other companies as well. Agency director of the Office of New Drugs, Dr. John Jenkins, says that the FDA is “committed to working toward approval, so long as they are safe and effective for the population for which they are intended.”
As for other medical treatments for obesity, an FDA advisory committee will consider a proposal from Allergan to lower the weight threshold for use of its adjustable gastric banding system, called Lap-Band. Currently, the device is only approved for patients with a BMI greater than 40, or greater than 35 with documented obesity-related health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease.