Hi Everybody!
My apologies for the absence of a newsletter lately. I have been buried by the demands of my "day job" during the past few months(Oxycise! is an enjoyable part-time obsession!) and now my family is in the process of moving from Nevada to Colorado (arrgh! I hate moving!)
But in between packing boxes, I wanted to share the following information, which I believe is very important.

Healthy eating goes hand in hand with exercise (or Oxycise!) in the equation for a healthy lifestyle. A recent study shows that we should be extra careful about avoiding "trans fats", which are natural oils that have been transformed into solids by adding hydrogen. So please read your labels and avoid any food that has "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" anything in it! This includes vegetable shortening and many processed foods. The following are a couple of different articles about the same study.

Happy Breathing!
Julie
Oxycise! Staff


http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/0002296/78/

Study: Trans Fats Linked to Dangerous Belly Fat
Written by Rita Jenkins| 12 June, 2006 20:31 GMT

A calorie is a calorie, many diet experts insist. However, new research shows that calorie counts being equal, people who consume more trans fats in their diets are likely to gain more weight and accumulate more fat in the abdomen -- leading to the dangerous "apple" shape physique that has been associated with diabetes and heart disease risk.

This conclusion, based on animal studies by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, was presented Monday at the 66th annual Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in Washington, DC.

Trans fats are found in vegetable shortenings, margarines, crackers, cookies, snack foods, and other foods made with, or fried in, partially hydrogenated oils, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Trans fat is formed when food manufacturers add hydrogen to liquid oils, which turns them into solid fats like shortening and hard margarine.

Trans Fats Trigger Weight Redistribution

Consumption of saturated fat, trans fat, and dietary cholesterol raises low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol, levels, which increases the risk of coronary artery disease, the FDA warns.

"Diets rich in trans fat cause a redistribution of fat tissue into the abdomen and lead to a higher body weight even when the total dietary calories are controlled," said Lawrence L. Rudel, PhD, professor of pathology and biochemistry and head of the Lipid Sciences Research Program at Wake Forest.


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Eat Trans Fat, Get Big Belly

Trans Fats Add -- and Move -- Weight to Belly By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD
on Monday, June 12, 2006


June 12, 2006 - Want a big fat belly? Eat lots of trans fats.

Trans fats make you fatter than other foods with the same number of calories -- but that's not all. Researchers at Wake Forest University find that trans fats increase the amount of fat around the belly. They do this not just by adding new fat, but also by moving fat from other areas to the belly.

"Trans fat is worse than anticipated," Wake Forest researcher Lawrence L. Rudel, PhD, says in a news release. "Diets rich in trans fat cause a redistribution of fat tissue into the abdomen and lead to a higher body weight even when the total dietary calories are controlled."

Rudel colleague Kylie Kavanagh, DVM, reported the findings at this week's annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association in Washington.

In the study, researchers fed 51 male vervet monkeys a western-style diet -- that is, 35% of their diet was fat. Half the monkeys got a lot of trans fat, totaling 8% of their diet. The other monkeys were fed unsaturated fats such as olive oil.

Both types of diets were calorie-controlled. In theory, the monkeys should not have gained weight.

But they did.

Over six years -- what would, in humans, be a 20-year span -- the monkeys who ate unsaturated fats upped their body weight by 1.8%.

Those fed trans fats packed on 7.2%. In humans, that would be enough weight gain to significantly increase risk of diabetes and heart diseaseheart disease.

"Trans fatty acid consumption increases weight gain," Kavanagh says in a news release. "In the world of diabetes, everybody knows that just 5% weight lossweight loss makes enormous difference. This little difference [of weight gain seen in the study] was biologically quite significant."

Trans fats are found in vegetable shortenings, some kinds of margarine, and in manufactured baked goods such as cookies, crackers, and snack foods. A major source of trans fat in American diets is fast food fried in the stuff.


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SOURCES: Kavanagh, K. 66th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, June 9-13, 2006, Washington; abstract 328-OR. News release, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Julie,

Thank you so very much for this article. I found it very interesting and will heed the advice. Yesterday on the Oprah W show, she had on a guest doctor that was talking about this very subject. So I got a double dose of this info. Yeah!!

Until next time...
Susie
Susie

Hmmmm...this might explain why my weight spiked when I got into snacking on crackers. Normally I never eat margarine and other foods with trans fats. Makes a lot of sense! I think that picturing those crackers as adding a lot of unhealthy fat around my middle will help me avoid them.

--Phyllis

I just read this article. I have noticed that in the last few months I've put on weight on my belly. Well, it is in the last few months that we have taken several trips and on those trips I have snacked a lot. I though I watched the calories, but I guess the trans fats are more the problem. Thank you for the article. I have known how bad trans fats are, but thought just occasionally it wouldn't be bad, but seems like I have been wrong.
Ruth Roberts