DIET PISANG

mageKalau Anda adalah seorang penggemar berat buah pisang dan hobi jalan-jalan, tahan dulu keinginan Anda untuk berkunjung ke Jepang. Anda tidak akan menemukan dengan mudah buah kaya serat itu karena orang-orang Jepang sedang memburunya habis-habisan.

Tren makan pisang ternyata sedang melanda Negeri Matahari Terbit. Mereka menjadikan pisang sebagai menu makan pagi agar berat badan mereka berkurang. Program diet menurunkan berat badan tersebut berdasar pada buku berjudul “Asa (morning atau pagi) Banana Diet”.

Seperti yang dialami Keiko Akai, mahasiswa berusia 21 tahun yang telah merencanakan untuk menjalankan diet ala Morning Banana Diet, tapi gagal karena kehabisan stok pisang. “ Saya sudah mencarinya di supermarket lokal tiap hari, tapi tak ada pisang disana, dan ini sudah terjadi selama sebulan, “ keluh Keiko, seperti dikutip situs majalah Time, 17 Oktober 2008.

Menurut situs The Japan Times, 7 Oktober 2008, telah terjual lebih dari 230 ribu buah pisang sejak buku Morning Banana Diet dipublikasikan Mei lalu. Sejak saat itu, penjualan pisang mulai meningkat. Namun, keberadaan pisang di toko dan supermarket menjadi semakin langka sejak 19 September lalu.

Dalam sebuah acara televisi yang ditayangkan pada tanggal tersebut, diceritakan bagaimana Kumiko Mori-mantan penyanyi opera berbobot sekitar 100 kilogram, berhasil menurunkan berat badan sebanyak tujuh kilogram. Kumiko ternyata menerapkan program Morning Banana Diet untuk menurunkan berat badannya. Esok harinya, toko-toko di Jepang langsung kehabisan persediaan pisang.

Pasalnya, pernyataan Kumiko menjadi magnet bagi warga Jepang untuk melakukan program serupa, sehingga mereka ramai-ramai memborong buah pisang. “Ini pertama kalinya pisang sulit ditemukan,” kata Hiromi Otaki, juru bicara Dole Japan Company- perusahaan importir pisang terbesar di Jepang, seperti dikutip dari situs The Japan Times, 7 Oktober 2008.

“Pisang biasanya tidak banyak dikonsumsi saat musim panas. Buah-buahan seperti semangka lebih populer. Namun musim panas tahun ini, buah pisang sangat laku,” lanjut Otaki. “Sayangnya, walaupun permintaan akan pisang meningkat, kami tidak dapat memasok lebih banyak lagi buah pisang karena butuh 10 sampai 15 bulan untuk menumbuhkannya,” kata Otaki.

Diet menurunkan berat badan dengan makan pisang, pertama kali diperkenalkan oleh seorang apoteker, Sumiko Watanabe. Rahasia program tersebut adalah meningkatkan metabolisme tubuh. Watanabe menerapkan program Morning Banana Diet kepada suaminya yang terlalu gemuk. Melalui program tersebut, suami Watanabe berhasil menghilangkan sekitar 17 kilogram lemak di tubuhnya.

Berikut lima langkah untuk menurunkan berat badan ala Morning Banana Diet. Pertama, untuk sarapan, makanlah sebuah pisang dan minum air putih. Kedua, untuk makan siang dan malam, makanlah sesuka hati sesuai selera. Yang perlu diperhatikan, jangan makan lebih dari jam delapan malam. Ketiga, selingan berupa makanan ringan pada pukul tiga sore sangat dianjurkan. Keempat, jangan pernah makan makanan pencuci mulut setelah makan. Terakhir, tidurlah sebelum tengah malam.

Namun, Profesor Masahiko Okada dari Sekolah Tinggi Kedokteran Niigata menentang program tersebut. “Tubuh manusia membutuhkan tiga nutrisi penting: karbohidrat, lemak, dan protein. Aturan yang baik adalah menyeimbangkan ketiga nutrisi tersebut dan memperhatikan pemasukan kalori tiap harinya. Sekali kita memahami aturan tersebut, kita tidak akan terombang-ambing oleh tren diet seperti diet dengan makan pisang” kata Masahiko, seperti dikutip dari situs News10 ABC, 17 Oktober 2008.

Jepang selalu menjadi negara yang menganut tren menurunkan berat badan. Tahun lalu, penjualan natto- kacang kedelai fermentasi, meningkat tajam setelah media gembar-gembor bahwa mengonsumsi natto bisa membantu menurunkan berat badan.

DIET PISANG,PENURUN BERAT BADAN YANG AJAIB

IET pisang di pagi hari atau the morning banana diet kini sedang populer. Kabarnya, teknik melangsingkan tubuh yang diperkenalkan di Jepang ini cukup cespleng menurunkan berat badan meski tanpa olahraga. Seperti apakah metode diet ini?

Diperkenalkan pertama kali oleh Hitoshi Watanabe dari Tokyo, Jepang, metode diet ini langsung populer berkat cerita yang menyebar dari mulut ke mulut, publikasi di internet, televisi, artikel majalah, serta buku yang ditulis Watanabe.

Pada prinsipnya, diet ini sangat sederhana. Saat sarapan pagi, kita hanya perlu mengonsumsi pisang dan minum air putih hangat. Di siang dan malam hari, kita boleh makan apa pun, ngemil pun boleh. Pantangannya hanya satu, jangan makan di atas jam delapan malam dan hindari es krim, produk olahan susu, alkohol, atau dessert setelah makan malam. Camilan manis boleh disantap tapi hanya di siang hari.

Yang membuat metode diet ini sangat populer adalah tidak dimasukkannya unsur olahraga. Para pelaku diet hanya disarankan untuk berolahraga bila memang mau dan hanya boleh melakukan olahraga yang tidak membuat stres. Pokoknya santai.

Mempercepat pencernaan
Cukup banyak orang yang mengakui keampuhan metode diet ini, salah satunya penyanyi opera asal Jepang, Kumiko Mori, yang mengaku berat badannya turun 6,7 kilogram setelah menerapkan diet pisang ini dalam waktu singkat.

Ada banyak versi yang mencoba menjelaskan mengapa diet pisang ini bisa mengurangi berat badan. Salah satunya teori yang menyebutkan bahwa pisang mengandung enzim yang bisa mempercepat proses pencernaan dan buang air besar, yang berakibat pada turunnya berat badan.

Memang benar makanan berserat, termasuk pisang, bisa membuat sistem pencernaan bekerja lebih cepat dan seluruh makanan tidak diserap semua, juga kalori. Namun para ahli berpendapat berkurangnya kalori tidak akan berpengaruh banyak pada penurunan berat badan.

Sementara itu teori lain menyebutkan penyebabnya adalah zat tepung yang membuat perut selalu terasa kenyang dan meningkatkan pembakaran lemak. Zat tepung ini secara alami bisa kita temukan dalam makanan berkarbohidrat seperti pisang hijau, kentang, biji padi, dan buncis, tapi hanya bila kita makan dalam keadaan dingin. Zat tepung ini akan membuat pencernaan terjadi di usus kecil dan langsung ke usus besar.

Masih Kontroversi
Meski populer, banyak ahli yang meragukan kemampuan diet ini. Pisang dan buah-buahan lain memang sering menjadi santapan wajib bagi orang yang ingin langsing. Tapi, sebenarnya pisang tak punya kandungan khusus yang efektif untuk menurunkan berat badan.

Selain itu, tidak berpantang makanan bukanlah hal yang cocok dalam usaha menurunkan berat badan. Agar usaha pelangsingan sukses, kita harus aktif secara fisik dan mengontrol kalori. Dan untuk tetap sehat, tentu kita harus mengonsumsi makanan sehat. Para ahli sepakat tak ada satu makanan pun yang bisa membakar lemak. Bila memang ada, tentu masalah obesitas dapat dengan mudah diatasi, bukan?

mesin penghitung berat ideal

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The Blood Type Diet Eat Right for Your Type

Eat Right for Your Type

The blood type diet, as its name suggests, is a diet based on your blood type. According to this diet, if your blood type is A, you should eat a mainly vegetarian diet, if it’s type O, you should eat mostly meat and avoid grains, and if it’s type B, you are in luck—you can eat a variety of food, including dairy, which is excluded for type As and Os.

Developed by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, a naturopathic physician, the premise of this diet is that by eating foods that are right for your blood type, you will feel better, be less likely to store the food as fat, and be less likely to develop certain diseases and cancers.

According to Dr. D’Adamo, your blood type is an evolutionary marker that indicates which foods are best suited for your body and which foods can be harmful. He believes that we should be eating what our ancestors with the same blood type did. For example type Os were apparently meat-eating hunter-gatherers, while type As were vegetarian farmers, and type Bs were nomads, eating a more varied diet.

Dr. D’Adamo recommends that everyone eat mostly fresh, natural foods, and cut out processed foods. Modern day indulgences such as chocolate, coffee, and alcohol should also be limited or avoided according to Dr. D’Adamo. But this is where most of the commonalities between different blood types end. In addition, Dr. D’Adamo also provides exercise recommendations. Here is a summary of the different eating plans on this diet:

Blood Type	Foods Allowed	Foods to Avoid	Exercise
Type A	Vegetables, fruit, grains, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds	Dairy, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and processed foods	Calming exercise (eg, golf or yoga)
Type B	Vegetables, fruit, grains, beans, legumes, meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy	Nuts, seeds, and processed foods	Moderate intensity exercise (eg, walking, hiking, and tennis)
Type AB	Foods allowed on both the Type A and Type B diets are all okay, but following a vegan diet most of the time is recommended	Processed foods	Both calming and moderate intensity exercise
Type O	Meat, poultry, fish, and olive oil; in moderation: certain vegetables, nuts, seeds, and eggs	Dairy, grains (eg, cereal, bread, pasta, rice), beans, and processed foods	Vigorous exercise (eg, running)

Although the blood type diet sounds novel and intriguing, it is not recommended. In addition to not being based on solid science, this diet severely restricts the food you can eat. This makes it tough to meet nutrient needs and difficult to follow in the long-term. If you are looking to lose weight, choose a sensible diet plan that is supported by scientific evidence and matches your personality and lifestyle.

A sensational medical story in the news this week was mostly seen as a curiosity, a lurid anomaly. The true significance of this story was missed both by mainstream media and healthcare professionals.

A woman in Oklahoma suffered for twelve years with a growing ovarian tumor that went undiagnosed. Everytime she went to the doctor, she was told she was just fat and needed to lose weight. After awhile she stopped going to the doctor. It wasn’t until she’d become so swollen that the circulation in her legs became compromised and they began to crack and ooze that a doctor finally took her seriously and admitted it wasn’t just a problem with “overeating.” During an exploratory surgery they discovered a 93 pound ovarian cyst. Yet even then, it was compared to a “big balloon, a big beach ball” and the news reports wrote mockingly of her walking around with a tumor she didn’t know was there.

Luckily, this woman’s tumor was benign. But “obese” women have higher death rates from many cancers than “normal” weight women. Several researchers have looked for reasons for this health disparity and have learned it isn’t because of their fat in the way that is popularly believed.

In the May 2000 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors reported on a survey of 11,435 women which learned that the heaviest women had received less preventive cancer screenings — screenings that might identify cancers early at more treatable stages. They found 78% of fat women had had a pap smear compared to 84% of “normal” weight women. These differences remained even when accounting for age, education, illness and health insurance. They couldn’t explain the barriers to appropriate preventive care.

A study published last October in Cancer Detection Prevention did a chart review of men and women in 22 primary care practices and found obese patients were 25% less likely to be screened for colorectal cancer than non-obese ones. They said research was needed to identify the possible barriers.

Two other observational studies controlled for recognized barriers to care, such as access, insurance and education, and found that obese women are still less likely than normal weight women to obtain preventive gynecological services (pap smears, gynecological exams, clinical breast exams and mammograms). The barriers to fat women receiving health care were unidentified.

Those possible barriers were identified in a renowned study led by Dr. Marlene B. Schwartz at the Department of Psychology at Yale University in 2003. They administered an Implicit Associations Test and questionnaire of explicit attitudes and personal experiences with obesity to 389 medical professionals who specialize in the treatment and study of obesity. They found, on both implicit and explicit measures, significant anti-fat bias among health professionals. These professionals saw obese people as lazy, stupid and worthless. Their findings confirmed other published studies, but this one was noteworthy, they said, because these were primarily professionals who knew “that obesity is caused by genetic and environmental factors and is not simply a function of individual behavior” or “lifestyle choice.” They wrote:

The stigma of obesity is so strong, that even those most knowledgeable about the condition infer that obese people have blameworthy behavioral characteristics that contribute to their problem. Furthermore, these biases extend to core characteristics of intelligence and personal worth.

Similar negative attitudes towards fat people had been documented among medical students, dietitians and nurses. In one study, 31-42% of nurses said they would prefer not to care for obese patients at all. In another study, 17% of doctors said they were reluctant to perform pelvic exams on obese women. And in this study, anti-fat bias was highest among younger medical professionals, indicating a need to address fat stigma in medical training.

Dr. Schwartz and her colleagues suggested several potential implications for adversely affecting the care obese people receive. Perceptions of laziness might lead to blaming a person for his/her obesity, “which may influence the professionals’ behavior in both overt and subtle ways,” they said. “Factors such as time spent with patients, empathy, quality of interactions, optimism about improvement and willingness to provide support might be affected.” It would be understandable that these patients would avoid seeking care if they felt uncomfortable in the health care setting.

A study led by Nancy K. Amy, Ph.D., at the University of California, Berkeley, specifically sought to better define these barriers to fat women seeking care by looking at gynecological cancer screening. Their study was published in October, 2005, in the International Journal of Obesity, but received little notice, perhaps because its findings are uncomfortable to confront.

These researchers surveyed 498 white and African-American women with body mass indexes of 25 to >55. Over 90% of the women had health insurance. This study was not about access to care, but low utilization of available services.

Unrelated to their education, employment or health insurance status, 83% reported their weight was a barrier to getting care and more than half delayed seeking care because of their weight. The problem was especially significant among the women at the highest weights, with 68% of them delaying primary and preventive health care. Among women with BMIs of 25-35, 86% had received regular pap smears compared to only 68% of women with BMIs >55. Similar numbers for found for mammograms.

In revealing what fat women experience in the healthcare environment that they said were barriers to them seeking care, the researchers found that barriers increased in prevalence and severity with the women’s size. A negative attitude from healthcare providers had been experienced by 59% of fat women, with 46% reporting they had been treated disrespectfully. Most of the women felt they had received a lower quality of care because of their weight. And nearly two-thirds reported that a barrier for them in seeking preventive care is that they had been told to lose weight even if they were seeking medical care for a condition unrelated to their weight. And like the dismissive care this Okalahoma woman had experienced for years, fat women are often told their health concerns are simply because they're fat and that they just need to lose weight.

A surprising number of fat women, for instance, report that they’ve been counseled to have bariatric surgery and told they are going to die unless they lose weight, even when they sought a doctor’s care for a totally separate issue, such as eczema or an ear infection.

These researchers also surveyed 129 healthcare providers and more than half admitted they had no education about caring for larger patients. Also cited as a concern was the unavailability of appropriate supplies and equipment for larger patients, a problem seen regardless of the medical setting.

Professor Amy and colleagues concluded that women could be helped by learning what is appropriate care and attitudes, and for each woman to choose a caring provider she is comfortable with and can communicate her concerns to. They added:

Obese women will need assurance that they will receive the same quality care and respect as other women. Second, the providers need to be aware of the effect of barriers on women of different sizes. Long-term solutions involve enhancing the patient-provider relationship through training for positive attitudes and mutual respect.

Hypnotherapy can help with weight loss and weight management in many ways

• Developing a new self image. See yourself in the future after losing weight and make that your desired future outcome.
• Learn to be more relaxed about weight loss and weight management. Stress is often a serious factor in bad diet and comfort eating.
• Positive thinking about weight and diet. Stop worrying about your weight and about weight loss and start looking forward to losing weight and achieving your goals.
• Create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, start to feel better about yourself. This will help you to lose weight and, of course, losing weight will help you to feel even better about who you are and what you can achieve. The whole thing becomes a very positive cycle which goes round and round. Most people expect to have to lose weight in order to feel good about themselves. Interestingly, when you start to feel good about yourself, weight loss, health and happiness often follow.

The healthiest way to lose weight is neither crash diets nor bursts of exercise. The body likes slow changes in terms of food and exercise.

For example, someone who has not exercised for years should not rush into running miles a day or pounding the treadmill. Not only will the struggle to do so leave you feeling disheartened and demotivated, you're also far more likely to injure yourself and set your fitness levels back further.

The same goes for people who suddenly start starving themselves. Diets that severely restrict calories or the types of food 'allowed' can lead you to be deficient in the nutrients and vitamins that your body needs.

So if you need to lose weight, what should you do?

Energy needs and weight loss

Your body uses food for energy. It stores any excess energy as fat. This means if you eat more food than your body needs for daily activities and cell maintenance, you will gain weight.

To lose weight, you need to get your body to use up these stores of fat. The most effective way to do this is to:

• reduce the amount of calories you eat
  
  
• increase your levels of activity.
  
  

This is why experts talk about weight loss in terms of diet and exercise.