Posts by: Zero to Hero Fitness!

Regardless of the season, fad diets are always abound, but it's only recently that one diet has drawn major controversy for its pseudoscience. Called the Alkaline Diet, proponents of this plan claim your body's health doesn’t simply rely on eating a healthy diet--it's all about ensuring your body's pH is balanced. "According to some alternative practitioners, the shift to an acid-producing diet is the cause of a number of chronic diseases," says Cathy Wong, an alternative health expert for About.com.…
read more

While most Americans use marijuana for leisure or to treat serious health conditions, such as cancer, one marketer is claiming you should smoke more for a different reason--it could help you lose weight. Art Glass, the maker behind The Marijuana Diet, recently released a book detailing how this semi-illegal herb (it's still illegal in many states) helped him get slim after ballooning up to 345 pounds. "Losing weight is one of the most challenging things there is," says Glass. "Marijuana…
read more

If you're one of the millions of Americans currently on a diet, then you know how hard it is to stay on track, especially with temptations such as parties, family outings, and fast food restaurants. Now a new study from Monash University says there's a fool proof way to stay on track: Make a plan. "Recent research suggests that novel strategies drawn from behavioral economics may prove to be much more effective than mainstream approaches (such as information provision) to…
read more

Struggling to lose weight? There's good news: Eating a vegetarian diet could help you have a lower body mass index, or BMI. The study, which was published in the online version of The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, examined more than 71,000 people to determine how certain diets, like vegetarian diets, affected their weight. And, like many experts expected, those who choose to go meat-free fared the best: Strict vegetarians had a mean BMI of 24, 4.7…
read more

While there isn't any magic pill that can turn you into a svelte supermodel in just days, researchers say there may be a supplement that can make losing weight easier--a supplement called chitosan. Extracted from the shells of crabs and shrimp, this natural polymer was recently identified as a "weight loss accelerator" in a study published in the October issue of PLoS ONE, a health journal. "In the present study, supplementation of the 1200 ppm chitosan resulted in a significant…
read more

If you're one of the millions of Americans currently trying to lose weight, then you know how hard it is to stay on track--but now a new study from the Baylor College of Medicine says doing this could help you lose weight nearly 9 times as fast. "It’s one of the harder changes people make in their lives, to lose weight, and we’re social animals," says Craig A. Johnston, a Baylor School of Medicine psychologist who led the study. "Being…
read more

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1.5 million American women suffer from infertility--a problem most women feel ashamed of. And while better medical treatments, such as in vitro fertilization, have allowed some women to bear children while dealing with infertility, a surprising new study says there's a better way to treat it: Simply eat a better diet. "Establishing a healthy eating pattern and weight is a good first step for women who are looking to conceive,"…
read more

While most nutritionists agree that getting your fill of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains is the best way to a slimmer bod, an Arizona man is losing weight doing the unthinkable: Eating sausages and drinking up to 6 beers a day. Consuming an average of 2,100 calories per day, Evo Terro, who has embarked on this monthly diet during Oktoberfest every year for the past 3 years, says this diet could help you lose up to 14 pounds in a…
read more

To lose weight, most experts agree: Counting calories is the best way to a slimmer bod. Yet research published in the British Medical Journal says that many of us underestimate how many calories we're really eating--especially when we eat at fast food restaurants. "Nearly a quarter of adults, adolescents, and (parents of) school age children underestimated meal calorie content by 500 or more calories," say researchers, whose work was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "Noticing calorie…
read more

President William H. Taft may be best known for weighing more than 300 pounds, but now new research published by the Annals of Internal Medicine sheds light on the diet Taft followed to drop 60 pounds--a finding which researchers say could have implications for obese people today. "This correspondence is one of the few archival collections documenting physician and patient perspectives on the treatment of obesity, and it took place at the precise moment when obesity began to be framed…
read more