It's only the calories that count

Confused about which diet to go on, low carb, no carb, high protien, low fat? Well, it's all about the calories, according to a recent article in the Baltimore Sun. In a recent study done by the New England Journal of Medicine tested four different diets and found participants lost similar amounts of wieght on all of them. At the sixth month mark the all participants lost an average of 13 pounds and maintained a 9 pound lost after two years.
"The determining factor ended up being calories. It really comes down to people doing what is most effective for themselves, as long as they are healthy and prevent heart disease," Dr. Frank Sacks, professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study said.

I fully agree with this article. For years and years people have been attracted to fad diets that in long run get them nowhere because they are unable to maintain their weightloss. The article was very well written as well, it covered both sides of the issue, noting that one of the drawbacks of the study was that only one third of the participants adhered to their diets. Also, I liked that the study went on for two years so the readers can see how the participants maintained their diets over time. However, I would have liked to seen the study more weight specific; people slightly over wieght as compared to obese people and more participant feedback; how they felt, which diet made them feel the least hungery and which was the easiest to maintain.
*picture

Workout Your Choices

Stop! Before you start throwing out everything creamy, crunchy and chocolaty; you need to start exercising.

The first step to getting healthy is to just start exercising at least three times a week. Luckily as a Towson University student, you are already one step ahead of the game; you have a free gym membership to Campus Recreation Center in Burdick.

At the C.R.i.B, you can do all sorts of cardio and weight lifting. In addition, they offer group exercise classes including, yoga, kickboxing, pilates and even aqua aerobics for water lovers.

"My favorite class is the AB Attack; it's short but still get a great workout from it," Sophomore Lauren Caldwell said.

If you just don't feel like the gym is for you don't worry; you can exercise from the privacy of your own home or dorm room for most us. Exercise TV offers over 100 free full length workout videos, some of which are even geared towards dorm room workouts.

The choice is yours so get ready, get set and get moving!

The sleep diet

On the Today's show for this past Monday, they had segment based on the recent Glamour Magazine article about the so called "sleep diet". While research has linked weight gain with lack sleep, can you really lose weight by just by sleeping? To test this theory, sleep and medical experts Micheal Breus, Ph.D and Steven Lamm, M.D developed a plan for seven Glamor readers of different weights. All the women had just one goal, get at least seven and a half hours of sleep at night without making any significant changes to their diet or exercise plans. At the end of the seven weeks, six of the women had lost six or more pounds.
So why is this? Well, the more tired you are the more prone you are to eat more. "When women are deprived of sleep, they have an increase in ghrelin--what we call the 'go' hormone--because it makes you want to go eat more," Breus said. Also, when you sleep more your body is able to break down fat for fuel because your brain is able to secrete a larger amount of growth hormone. Finally, the more sleep you get the more energy you'll have which in turn makes it easier for you to want to exercise.
Ready to start? Here's the four steps the Glamour magazine volunteer's followed:
1. Go to sleep at the same time every day
2. Have a bed time routine
3. Watch your caffeine and alcohol consumption
4. Experiment to figure out how sleep you really need

The sleep diet does makes a lot of sense to me. If you're tired all the time, you don't have the energy to exercise nor do you want to put the effort into making healthy eating choices. Although, I'm not too sure this is the be all, end all solution to weight loss. The sleep diet does not address the importance healthy eating. Instead they seem to emphasize that "more sleep, store less fat", as well "more sleep, eat less". I'm concerned that people may see this as way to eat whatever junk they want and just burn it off by sleeping a lot, which clearly will not work. Or that will just eat less of unhealthy foods without adding in important nutrients such as fruits, vegetables, protein, etc. I would like to see a more depth study following these seven women for a longer amount of time, maybe a year or so, to see how well they actually stuck to getting at least seven and half hours of sleep and if they still continued to lose weight.

Introduction

In my blog this semester, my beat will be fitness and dieting on campus. I will be blogging about topics such as which diets work best on campus, the best group exercise classes on campus, workout tips and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle on campus.

As someone who has both lost and gained weight throughout my life and a chronic dieter, I am truly passionate about my beat. In eighth grade I went on weight watchers and lost about 35 lbs, which I kept off throughout high school. However, once I got to college, that changed. I found it hard to stay healthy campus with a meal plan and pretty much gave up, gaining twenty extra pounds along the way. Over the summer, I had a wake up call and decided this school year I would make an effort to lose the weight and stay healthy, which helped me shed about 15 of those 20 extra pounds.

After talking with a lot of my friends and seeing increased crowd at gym in January, apparently a lot of other college students are trying to stay healthy and lose weight as well. Hopefully, my blog can help Towson students reach their health goals and gain knowledge on maintaining a healthy lifestyle. So get ready and be sure to read my post next week!

About Me

My name is Rachel Rothwell and I am now in my second semester of my sophomore year at Towson. I really hope that this class again will improve my technological/computer skills and also improve my writing. I feel more confidant than I did last semester about MCOM 257 and I am really excited to do more in depth reporting. I think working with video though might be hard so I'm kind of nervous about that. Additionally, I want to improve my grammar skills and remember more about AP style, since I have forgotten some of it over winter break. I would eventually like to write for Vogue or a similar high fashion magazine in New York City. Also, I hope this class will help get internships when I apply for them next summer.

The three most imortant rules for a journalist to follow

In my opinion, the three most important rules for journalists to follow are accuracy, fairness, and using taste and sensitivity in determining what to put into a story. If a journalist is not reporting accurately, then basically their whole story is a lie. As our book, "All in the news", tells us "...if a piece of journalism is not accurate, it has no value." In order to prevent a false story, a journalist must always check and double check all their facts including sources names, titles, phone numbers/web links, all quotes attributed correctly, etc. In addition, it is also important that a journalist strives for fairness; basically representing both sides. It is important to present all facts from both sides so that you, as a journalist, are not giving your audience a biased story and instead are providing your audience with enough information to make their own decision about the story. When reporting, it is also important to use your own taste and sensitivity. This is especially important when dealing with stories about showing people that have died. You want to get your story out, but it is more important that you show respect to the family of the deceased. There are ways to get your message and story out without being too graphic or gory. A journalist must consider whether showing a picture or video clip of a person dying will really serve a greater good.

Towson's efforts to go green

The event I plan on covering is tomorrow's GA for University Residence government. URG is an organization that represents all the students in residence halls as well as providing events for the students living on campus and promotes student concerns. As part of their efforts to help Towson go green, URG ensures that every floor in every residence hall has a way to recycle and as well have created a new position to help plan going green events. For my potential sources I plan on using Chelsea Harris, who is the director of special projects(basically event planner) as well as the Kathrine Douraghty, who is in the new position concerning going green. As well, I will be attending the executive board meeting so I will potentially use all the board members and in addition the building reps. Some questions I have are do feel your recycling plan is working and helpful to students, what other going green plans/events do have, why do you feel going green is important to Towson/URG/residents, what prompted you all to create this new ex. board position?. Some photo opportunities are the executive board meeting, the actual GA, and pictures of the recycling in the residence halls. For audio opportunities, I would like to use discussions during the GA or an interview with Katherine.