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VOA - Voice of America |
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A special English
Health Report |
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This
is the VOA Special English Health Report. |
A
listener has written from China
for advice
about how
to lose weight. Michael in Shanghai says he is twenty-six
years old and
has battled obesity for most of his life. |
Doctors say obesity,
also known as severe
overweight, is a
complex condition. A doctor may advise medical interventions
in addition to changes in
behavior. But
experts say the most
successful
weight-loss plans include a well-balanced diet and exercise. |
People who want
to avoid
weight gain have to balance the number
of calories they eat with the number of calories they use. To lose
weight, you can reduce the number of calories
you take in, or
increase the
number you use, or
both. |
Experts at the National Institutes of
Health
say to lose weight,
a person
should do an hour of moderate to intensive physical
activity
most days of the week. This
could include fast walking,
sports or
strength training. |
You should also
follow a nutritious eating plan and take in
fewer calories than your body uses
each day. |
A recent study looked at four of the most popular dieting plans
in the United States.
Researchers at Stanford University in
California studied more than three hundred overweight women,
mostly
in their thirties and forties. |
Each woman
went on
one of the four plans: Atkins, The Zone, Ornish or LEARN. The women
attended diet classes and received
written information about the
food plans. |
At the end of a year, the women on the Atkins diet
had lost the
most, more than four and one-half kilograms
on average.
They also did better on tests including cholesterol
levels and blood pressure. |
Christopher Gardner
led the study,
reported in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. He says the Atkins diet may be more
successful
because of its simple message
to lower intake of sugars. |
Also, he says the advice to increase protein in the diet
leads to more
satisfying meals. He says
there was not enough money to also
study men, but that men would probably have similar results. |
But last week, another report suggested that only a small
minority of people have
long-term success
with dieting. The report
in the journal American Psychologist
was based on
thirty-one
studies. |
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical
School
found that most
dieters
regained
their lost weight
within five years. And
often they gained back
even more. But
those who kept the weight off generally were the ones who
exercised. |
And that's the VOA Special English Health Report, written by Caty
Weaver. I’m Katherine Cole. |
Source:
VOA - Voice of America |
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MAS "SALUD Y BIENESTAR"
FORO
INICIO |