Beware: Your phone can make you fat

IF you are trying to lose weight, and you sincerely wish to succeed in your weight loss plan, you need to ditch your cell phone. Really!?

Short answer: Your cell phone is making you fat.That smart little gadget of yours which has become the centre of your world of late, is slowly but steadily transforming you into a lazy bag of bones and if care is not taken, you’ll end up a fat  slob before you know it.Remember how you woke up this morning, all fired up to go to the gym – for  the first time in ages – and you really meant to go, but then your phone buzzed before you even got out of bed.It turned out to be your colleague at work texting a delicious tidbit of gossip. You had to respond – back and forth for about 10 minutes. And since your phone was in hand, it only made sense to check  Facebook and to see what else was going on in the world, which led you to a friend’s Instagram profile,  then pinterest, twitter, etc.
Suddenly, those 40 minutes you had dedicated to going to the gym had been eaten up by all those little apps on your smartphone.

According to a new study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity,   persons in the habit of staying glued to the cell phone 24/7, are most likely to get less exerciseand  are likely to end up being in worse physical shape than those who use their phones less frequently.Unlike all of the other sedentary devices such as TVs, video games and computers, cell phones, regardless of their portability, tend to discourage  movement and on-the-go activity much more readily.

Researchers studied 300 students at Kent State University involving low-frequency cell phone users (90 mintues a day); moderate users (average of 5 hours a day); and heavy users (up to 14 hours a day).They measured their fitness levels by having them run on a treadmill till exhaustion, as well as measuring their body fat. As expected, those who used their phones the most were in the worst physical shape.Some students even reported that certain phones were more of a time suck than others.

One interview subject said: “Now that I have switched to the iPhone, I would say it definitely decreases my physical activity because before I just had a Blackberry, so I didn’t have much stuff on it. But now, if I’m bored, I can just download whatever I want. I really cannot get bored using it. Before I would always get bored and I would have to find something else to do.

My advise. .. Ditch your cellphone! Is that even remotely possible?

Health: Dish Size, Meal Frequency May Affect Kids’ Weight

Shrinking the size of kids’ plates and bowls and encouraging them to eat more frequently throughout the day might help them eat less and keep off extra weight, new research suggests.

In one study, researchers found first graders served themselves smaller portions when using miniaturized dishware – and ate less food when they had less on their plate.

Another review of past research found kids and teens who ate most often during the day were 22 percent less likely to be overweight than those who ate the fewest meals and snacks.

Jennifer Fisher, who worked on the dish-size study, said it was preliminary but could still inform parent choices.

She and her colleagues studied 42 elementary school kids who were given the chance to serve themselves lunch. On four days the kids used child-sized plates and bowls; on another four they used adult-sized dishware, which was twice as large.

First graders served themselves an average of 300 to 500 calories worth of the lunch entrée – pasta or chicken nuggets – each day.

When they used adult dishware, the kids took an average of 90 more calories of food, the researchers found. And kids who ended up with more food on their plates also tended to eat more, Fisher’s team wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

“It doesn’t appear that simply because you might have large dishware at home, your child is going to overeat,” said Fisher – because it depends on who’s doing the serving and how much is served.

But, she added, “If more food appears on the plate, they’re going to eat more.”

“The results are very interesting and confirm our expectations that the impact of plate size on adults in the laboratory also apply to children,” Dr. Thomas Robinson, a childhood obesity researcher at Stanford University in California, told Reuters Health in an email.

“This study provides very important preliminary evidence that using smaller dishware may help reduce children’s energy intakes.”

The overall pattern showed that youth who ate most often – typically at least four or five times per day – were least likely to be overweight or obese. However when they looked closer, the researchers found that link only held up in boys.

Robinson, who was not involved in the new research, said it’s hard to tell which came first in those studies: eating frequency or extra weight.

The results “do not look very convincing one way or another,” he said. “It is also hard to come up with a convincing reason why boys and girls would be different.”

The researchers said their findings don’t prove that a given child will lose weight by eating more often. But schools, for example, may be able to make a difference by integrating smaller, more frequent meals into the day.

“Instead of providing three big meals per day, it would be better (for parents) to have their children eating smaller meals and more snacks throughout the day,”

However, she added, parents still need to pay attention to the quality of those snacks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of kids and teens in the U.S. are obese – a proportion that has almost tripled since 1980.

“We know that it’s so complex that there’s absolutely not one cause or solution,” Fisher said.

A third study also published this week in Pediatrics found teens who spent more time focused on the TV were heavier than their peers. However, time spent playing video games or on the computer was not tied to weight.