An interesting programme on BBC1 last week about the science of losing weight.

At any one time in Britain, around 10 million people are trying to lose weight. This programme, fronted by doctor-turned-journalist Michael Mosley, investigates the latest scientific breakthroughs in slimming, uncovering 10 of the simplest ways to shed those pounds. The programme was backed up with research and practical demonstrations.

Don't skip meals. A CT scan of the brain showed the brain lighting up when a volunteer who had skipped breakfast was shown pics of high calorie, high fat food and little reaction to low-cal food. The volunteer who had eaten breakfast scan showed no difference between pics of low cal food and High cal food. The area of the brain lighting up was one associated with appetite so the brain was guiding choice towards calorie laden food (think pastries at morning break)

Eating a protein rich breakfast (or any other meal) keeps you satisfied for longer because it triggers the release of more of the chemical that tells the brain you are full. At last someone questioning the value of breakfast cereals.

Eating low-fat dairy products helps the body to excrete more unabsorbed fat than usual. Dairy calcium binds with fat in the small intestine and passes through without being absorbed. So skimmed milk, low-fat yoghurt, cottage cheese, fromage frais etc all help to carry away fat in the gut. To prove it, Blur guitarist-turned-farmer Alex James sportingly agreed to follow a high-dairy diet for one week, while sending off regular poo samples to a lab in Holland. He followed this with a week-long low-dairy diet, which contained exactly the same number of calories. Amazingly, Alex excreted more than double the amount of fat on the high-dairy diet.

The 'burn' from exercise carries on well into the next day. The volunteer ran at 4mph for 90 minutes and his fat burn measured. It wasn't that impressive but next day showed how it had carried on. The body accesses carbohydrates easily during exercise and has to use stored body fat to run everything over the next hours - impressive

Building small amounts of 'activity' into daily routine significantly increases heart rate and calorie expenditure. The volunteer was Aimee Lamee, US comedienne and broadcaster. She was more active at home, spent less time sitting at lunchtime and more time walking and talking, she did her radio show standing up and moving around. It made a significant difference.

People generally under-report their intake by 40 to 60%. Count and record everything, including every snack and calorie laden sauce.

Change your plate size from 12 inches to 10 inches. And choose low-calorie options of all your favourite foods.

Soup fills you up for longer it's all to do with the particular way the stomach shrinks and expands and was demonstrated using ultrasound scans of Territorial Army recruits. The same food was served to two groups of soldiers. Half ate chicken, rice and veg on a plate with a glass of water. The other half ate the identical food and water liquidized and served as a soup. Stomach scans showed the soup still in the stomach long after the other group's stomachs were empty and calling to be fed

Here are more tips on the science of weight loss from Herbal Vitality. Why protein shakes for breakfast help someone to lose weight.  

Typical deficiencies in the modern diet are fibre, protein and nutrients. Excesses in the diet include carbohydrates, sugars, saturated fats and salt.

Fruit is a good source of fibre and can contribute to the recommended 25-30 grams per day.

Here are some fruits rich in fibre and nutrients:

Apples - 1 medium apple (80 calories, 0 g fat): An apple's 3 g of fibre help you meet your fibre goal of 25 g to 30 g daily. Foods rich in fibre can lower heart disease risk.
Apricots - 3 apricots (51 calories, 0 g fat): A good source of beta-carotene (which is converted to vitamin A by the body), providing the equivalent of 35% of the RDA for vitamin A. Fibre-2.1g.
Bananas - 1 medium (105 calories, 0 g fat): Bananas are a great source of potassium, which plays a key role in heart health and muscle function. Plus each one has 3 g of fibre.
Blackberries - 1 cup (64 calories, 0 g fat): This fruit boasts a whopping 8 g of fibre in a single cup.
Blueberries - 1 cup (81 calories, 0 g fat): Blueberries help prevent and treat bladder infections by making it hard for bacteria to stick to urinary tract walls. Fibre- 3.5.
Cherries - 1 cup (84 calories, 1 g fat): A good source of perillyl alcohol, which helps prevent cancer in animals. Heart-protective anthocyanins give cherries their colour; Fibre- 2.8g.
Grapefruits - 1/2 fruit (39 calories, 0 g fat): A good source of vitamin C and a compound called naringenin, which helps suppress tumours in animals. Fibre-2g.
Kiwi - 1 medium (46 calories, 0 g fat): Just one little fruit packs a mean vitamin-C punch (74 mg) and 2.3 g fibre.
Mangoes - 1 mango (135 calories, 1 g fat): A single mango has enough beta-carotene to cover your RDA for vitamin A while racking up 57 mg of vitamin C; Fibre-3.7g.
Oranges fruits- 1 medium orange (61 calories, 0 g fat): One orange provides an impressive 50 mg to 70 mg of vitamin C, 40 mcg of folic acid and 52 mg of calcium. Fibre-3.1g.
Papayas - 1 cup, cubed (55 calories, 0 g fat): Loaded with vitamin C (86 mg per cup), a healthy dose of fibre (2.5 g) and a sprinkling of beta-carotene and calcium.
Purple grapes - 1 small (113 calories, 9 g fat):Offer three heart-guarding compounds: flavonoids, anthocyanins and resveratrol (green grapes are not rich in them).
Prunes - 1/3 cup, stewed (87 calories, 0 g fat): Prunes' famed laxative effect is no mystery: There are 5 g of fibre (both soluble and insoluble) in just 1/3 cup.
Raspberries - 1 cup (60 calories, 0 g fat): Teeming with 8 g of fibre per cup, they also boast vitamin C, ellagic acid and anthocyanins.
Strawberries - 1 cup, sliced (50 calories, 0 g fat): Strawberries have high levels of ellagic acid and anthocyanins, and are rich in vitamin C (95 mg per cup) and fibre (3.3 g per cup). 

How to get a healthy source of protein and rich source of fibre into the diet

Over the past several decades, the United States has seen dramatic increases in the incidence of obesity. But the epidemic is not confined to this country; similar increases are being seen worldwide as other countries adopt Western high-calorie foods and a sedentary lifestyle.

Recent data from the National Statistics Office in Korea, for example, indicate that nearly a third of Koreans - about 10 million people - are overweight, with numbers increasing by about 400,000 annually.

Researchers at the Seoul National University Hospital in Korea recently reported that the use of meal replacements twice daily was an effective strategy for reducing body weight and body fat, and for improving indicators of obesity-related conditions.

The study, published in the February issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice, followed 75 obese men and women with the metabolic syndrome - a cluster of factors including high blood pressure, a large waist measurement, elevated blood sugar and triglycerides, and low blood levels of 'good' HDL cholesterol - for a period of 12 weeks.

All subjects replaced two meals a day with liquid meal replacements (Herbalife Formula 1, Korean formula) but were randomly assigned to consume a diet of either a standard amount of protein - about 15 percent of total calories - or double the amount of protein from a higher protein plan.

At the end of 12 weeks, both groups lost weight and both groups lost weight in the belly area. But, in the subjects who followed the diet most strictly, the people in the high protein group lost more body fat (and less lean body mass) than the people consuming the standard amount of protein.

"These findings indicate that meal replacements are a very valuable strategy for losing weight and body fat," said Belong Cho, M.D., Ph.D., of the Department of Family Medicine at Seoul National University Hospital and lead researcher on the study. "With the increasing incidence of overweight and obesity in Korea, there is a critical need to find ways to help individuals lose weight and decrease their risk of developing obesity-related disorders such the metabolic syndrome," he added.

The incidence of the metabolic syndrome in Korea has increased from 18.6 percent to 23.6 percent between 1998 and 2001, paralleling similar increases - from 34.5 percent to 39 percent - over the same time period in the U.S. Dr. Cho added, "We have demonstrated the effectiveness of meal replacements for weight loss, and this approach could have far-reaching benefits in addressing obesity which has become a worldwide problem."

Cho is a member of Herbalife's Nutrition Advisory Board (NAB). The NAB is made up of leading experts around the world in the fields of nutrition and health who educate and train Herbalife independent distributors on the principles of nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle.

The NAB is chaired by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Losing weight with meal replacements

Clinical Study Shows Increased Protein Leads to Improvement in Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors

Obesity often goes hand-in-hand with the Metabolic Syndrome - a cluster of five factors that include high blood pressure, a large waist circumference, elevated blood sugar and triglycerides, and reduced blood levels of HDL cholesterol.

Weight loss is one of the first lines of defense in treating the syndrome, and researchers from the University of Ulm, Germany, have found that increased amounts of protein in the diet lead to greater improvement in metabolic syndrome risk factors when compared to a standard level of protein.

The study, presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society in Phoenix, enrolled 110 overweight subjects with the metabolic syndrome who were randomly divided into two groups, and were followed for one year.

For the first three months - the weight loss phase - those in the high protein group were instructed to follow a diet that supplied about twice the protein obtained from a typical diet; they also replaced two meals a day with Herbalife's European Meal Replacement Shake. The other group was instructed to eat a standard amount of protein from an all-food diet.

For the remaining nine months of the study - the weight maintenance phase - everyone used one meal replacement shake a day as part of their meal plan, and both groups maintained the level of protein intake in the diet they had consumed during the previous three months.

Everyone lost weight after a year, but the high protein group lost more weight (nearly 25 pounds, compared with about 14 pounds for the standard protein group) and more body fat, and preserved lean body mass. More significant, however, was the finding that at the end of the study, 64 percent of those in the high protein group no longer met the criteria for the metabolic syndrome, compared with 41 percent who consumed the standard amount of protein.

"We knew that weight loss would improve risk factors for the metabolic syndrome," said Marion Flechtner-Mors, Ph.D., one of the researchers on the study and head of the Obesity Research Group at the University of Ulm, Germany, "but we found that more subjects showed improvement in these risk factors when we increased the protein in the diet."

Nearly 47 million Americans have the metabolic syndrome, and the numbers continue to grow - in parallel with the rise in the incidence of obesity. Flechtner-Mors added, "Effective interventions, such as the use of high protein meal replacements for weight loss, could improve the risk factors associated with the metabolic syndrome and affect the lives of millions of people." Flechtner-Mors is a member of Herbalife's Nutrition Advisory Board (NAB). The NAB is made up of leading experts around the world in the fields of nutrition and health who educate and train Herbalife Independent Distributors on the principles of nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle.

The NAB is chaired by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).