If you’re one of the one in three Australians whose New Year’s resolution involved losing weight, it’s likely you’re now contemplating what weight-loss goal you should actually be working towards.

But type “setting a weight loss goal” into any online search engine and you’ll likely be left with more questions than answers.

Sure, the many weight-loss apps and calculators available will make setting this goal seem easy. They’ll typically use a body mass index (BMI) calculator to confirm a “healthy” weight and provide a goal weight based on this range.

Your screen will fill with trim-looking influencers touting diets that will help you drop ten kilos in a month, or ads for diets, pills and exercise regimens promising to help you effortlessly and rapidly lose weight.

Most sales pitches will suggest you need to lose substantial amounts of weight to be healthy – making weight loss seem an impossible task. But the research shows you don’t need to lose a lot of weight to achieve health benefits.

Using BMI to define our target weight is flawed

We’re a society fixated on numbers. So it’s no surprise we use measurements and equations to score our weight. The most popular is BMI, a measure of our body weight-to-height ratio.

BMI classifies bodies as underweight, normal (healthy) weight, overweight or obese and can be a useful tool for weight and health screening.

But it shouldn’t be used as the single measure of what it means to be a healthy weight when we set our weight-loss goals. This is because it:

• fails to consider two critical factors related to body weight and health – body fat percentage and distribution
• does not account for significant differences in body composition based on gender, ethnicity and age.

How does losing weight benefit our health?

Losing just 5–10% of our body weight – between 6 and 12kg for someone weighing 120kg – can significantly improve our health in four key ways.

1. Reducing cholesterol

Obesity increases the chances of having too much low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol – also known as bad cholesterol – because carrying excess weight changes how our bodies produce and manage lipoproteins and triglycerides, another fat molecule we use for energy.

Having too much bad cholesterol and high triglyceride levels is not good, narrowing our arteries and limiting blood flow, which increases the risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

But research shows improvements in total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels are evident with just 5% weight loss.

2. Lowering blood pressure

Our blood pressure is considered high if it reads more than 140/90 on at least two occasions.

Excess weight is linked to high blood pressure in several ways, including changing how our sympathetic nervous system, blood vessels and hormones regulate our blood pressure.

Essentially, high blood pressure makes our heart and blood vessels work harder and less efficiently, damaging our arteries over time and increasing our risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

Like the improvements in cholesterol, a 5% weight loss improves both systolic blood pressure (the first number in the reading) and diastolic blood pressure (the second number).

A meta-analysis of 25 trials on the influence of weight reduction on blood pressure also found every kilo of weight loss improved blood pressure by one point.

3. Reducing risk for type 2 diabetes

Excess body weight is the primary manageable risk factor for type 2 diabetes, particularly for people carrying a lot of visceral fat around the abdomen (belly fat).

Carrying this excess weight can cause fat cells to release pro-inflammatory chemicals that disrupt how our bodies regulate and use the insulin produced by our pancreas, leading to high blood sugar levels.

Type 2 diabetes can lead to serious medical conditions if it’s not carefully managed, including damaging our heart, blood vessels, major organs, eyes and nervous system.

Research shows just 7% weight loss reduces risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 58%.

4. Reducing joint pain and the risk of osteoarthritis

Carrying excess weight can cause our joints to become inflamed and damaged, making us more prone to osteoarthritis.

Observational studies show being overweight doubles a person’s risk of developing osteoarthritis, while obesity increases the risk fourfold.

Small amounts of weight loss alleviate this stress on our joints. In one study each kilogram of weight loss resulted in a fourfold decrease in the load exerted on the knee in each step taken during daily activities.

Focus on long-term habits

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight but found the kilos return almost as quickly as they left, you’re not alone.

An analysis of 29 long-term weight-loss studies found participants regained more than half of the weight lost within two years. Within five years, they regained more than 80%.

When we lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering several physiological responses to defend our body weight and “survive” starvation.

Just as the problem is evolutionary, the solution is evolutionary too. Successfully losing weight long-term comes down to:

• losing weight in small manageable chunks you can sustain, specifically periods of weight loss, followed by periods of weight maintenance, and so on, until you achieve your goal weight

• making gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.

Setting a goal to reach a healthy weight can feel daunting. But it doesn’t have to be a pre-defined weight according to a “healthy” BMI range. Losing 5–10% of our body weight will result in immediate health benefits.

At the Boden Group, Charles Perkins Centre, we are studying the science of obesity and running clinical trials for weight loss. You can register here to express your interest.

Nick Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Whether you enjoy chocolate milk regularly, as a weekend treat, or as an occasional dose of childhood nostalgia, it probably wouldn’t be the first option you think of for post-workout recovery.

Unless you’re on TikTok, perhaps. According to many people on the social media platform, chocolate milk is not only delicious, but it offers benefits comparable to sports drinks after a workout.

So is there any evidence to support this? Let’s take a look.

Rehydrating after a workout is important

Water accounts for somewhere between 50% and 60% of our body weight. Water has many important functions in the body, including helping to keep our body at the right temperature through sweating.

We lose water naturally from our bodies when we sweat, as well as through our breathing and when we go to the toilet. So it’s important to stay hydrated to replenish the water we lose.

When we don’t, we become dehydrated, which can put a strain on our bodies. Signs and symptoms of dehydration can range from thirst and dizziness to low blood pressure and confusion.

Athletes, because of their higher levels of exertion, lose more water through sweating and from respiration (when their breathing rate gets faster). If they’re training or competing in hot or humid environments they will sweat even more.

Dehydration impacts athletes’ performance and like for all of us, can affect their health.

So finding ways to ensure athletes rehydrate quickly during and after they train or compete is important. Fortunately, sports scientists and dietitians have done research looking at the composition of different fluids to understand which ones rehydrate athletes most effectively.

The beverage hydration index

The best hydrating drinks are those the body retains the most of once they’ve been consumed. By doing studies where they give people different drinks in standardised conditions, scientists have been able to determine how various options stack up.

To this end, they’ve developed something called the beverage hydration index, which measures to what degree different fluids hydrate a person compared to still water.

According to this index beverages with similar fluid retention to still water include sparkling water, sports drinks, cola, diet cola, tea, coffee, and beer below 4% alcohol. That said, alcohol is probably best avoided when recovering from exercise.

Beverages with superior fluid retention to still water include milk (both full-fat and skim), soy milk, orange juice and oral rehydration solutions.

This body of research indicates that when it comes to rehydration after exercise, unflavoured milk (full fat, skim or soy) is better than sports drinks.

But what about chocolate milk?

A small study looked at the effects of chocolate milk compared to plain milk on rehydration and exercise performance in futsal players (futsal is similar to soccer but played on a court indoors). The researchers found no difference in rehydration between the two. There’s no other published research to my knowledge looking at how chocolate milk compares to regular milk for rehydration during or after exercise.

But rehydration isn’t the only thing athletes look for in sports drinks. In the same study, drinking chocolate milk after play (referred to as the recovery period) increased the time it took for the futsal players to become exhausted in further exercise (a shuttle run test) four hours later.

This was also shown in a review of several clinical trials. The analysis found that, compared to different placebos (such as water) or other drinks containing fat, protein and carbohydrates, chocolate milk lengthened the time to exhaustion during exercise.

What’s in chocolate milk?

Milk contains protein, carbohydrates and electrolytes, each of which can affect hydration, performance, or both.

Protein is important for building muscle, which is beneficial for performance. The electrolytes in milk (including sodium and potassium) help to replace electrolytes lost through sweating, so can also be good for performance, and aid hydration.

Compared to regular milk, chocolate milk contains added sugar. This provides extra carbohydrates, which are likewise beneficial for performance. Carbohydrates provide an immediate source of energy for athletes’ working muscles, where they’re stored as glycogen. This might contribute to the edge chocolate milk appears to have over plain milk in terms of athletic endurance.

Coffee-flavoured milk has an additional advantage. It contains caffeine, which can improve athletic performance by reducing the perceived effort that goes into exercise.

One study showed that a frappe-type drink prepared with filtered coffee, skim milk and sugar led to better muscle glycogen levels after exercise compared to plain milk with an equivalent amount of sugar added.

So what’s the verdict?

Evidence shows chocolate milk can rehydrate better than water or sports drinks after exercise. But there isn’t evidence to suggest it can rehydrate better than plain milk. Chocolate milk does appear to improve athletic endurance compared to plain milk though.

Ultimately, the best drink for athletes to consume to rehydrate is the one they’re most likely to drink.

While many TikTok trends are not based on evidence, it seems chocolate milk could actually be a good option for recovery from exercise. And it will be cheaper than specialised sports nutrition products. You can buy different brands from the supermarket or make your own at home with a drinking chocolate powder.

This doesn’t mean everyone should look to chocolate milk when they’re feeling thirsty. Chocolate milk does have more calories than plain milk and many other drinks because of the added sugar. For most of us, chocolate milk may be best enjoyed as an occasional treat.

Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.