A study has proven the importance of keeping an eye on the time as well as what's on your plate.
Trying to lose weight? It’s all well and good to watch what you eat, but a new study has shown that keeping an eye on the clock is just important as counting those calories.
Researchers found that people who eat their main meal earlier in the day have a better chance of shedding weight than those who eat later.
Monitoring the weight loss of two groups, those who ate lunch before 3pm and late eaters who had their main meal later in the day, the study published in theInternational Journal of Obesityfound that the latter group lost significantly less weight.
The weight that late-lunchers did lose dropped off at a significantly slower rate.
Study leader Dr Frank Scheer from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said the study of 420 overweight people who followed a 20-week weight-loss treatment said the findings could help develop more effective weight-loss plans.
“This is the first large-scale prospective study to demonstrate that the timing of meals predicts weight-loss effectiveness,” he said.
The researchers found that timing of other, smaller, meals did not play a role in the success of weight loss, suggesting the timing of lunch was an important and independent factor in weight loss success.
Late eaters were also more likely to eat fewer calories during breakfast or skip the day’s first meal all together, and exhibit risk factors for diabetes.
“This study emphasises that the timing of food intake itself may play a significant role in weight regulation,” said study co-author Dr Marta Garaulet from the University of Murcia.
“Novel therapeutic strategies should incorporate not only the caloric intake and macronutrient distribution, as it is classically done, but also the timing of food.”
Photography by Michelle Holden. Styling by Nell Simpson.
You know her as Rhonda from those car insurance ads, but there are plenty more reasons why actress Mandy McElhinney is hotter than a sunrise right now.
Every so often, a series of TV commercials comes along and everyone can recite the lines. Here’s a couple from Australia’s current favourite:
You look hot today, Rhonda … like a sunrise!
Eyes on the road, Rhonda!
Kiss me, Ketut!
Yes, they’re all from AAMI’s “safe driver” car insurance campaign, starring the hands-down most popular couple on Australian TV right now: racoon-faced Rhonda (with her beautiful brake foot) and her Balinese cocktail waiter, Ketut.
The series of ads has been on air for more than a year and they’ve gone viral. One Facebook page, set up by a fascinated consumer to examine the “sexual tension” between Rhonda and Ketut has more than 100,000 “likes”.
In case you haven’t noticed — which, in all likelihood, you have — the latest ad is the one where Rhonda has just come back from Bali. A friend picks her up from the airport and on their way home, she looks at Rhonda and says, “So, did you get lucky?”
Did she get lucky? You bet she did and we’re not talking about Rhonda any more. We’re talking about the smart and spunky actor who plays the role, Mandy McElhinney.
Make no mistake, Mandy was an accomplished stage and screen actor before she agreed to star in AAMI’s ads.
She was in New York last year with Cate Blanchett, performing in A Streetcar Named Desire. She’s played wonderful characters in All Saints, Blue Heelers and Water Rats, and she appeared in four consecutive seasons of Comedy Inc.
She’s currently playing a lusty swinger in the new stage play, Dreams In White, that is based on the secret life and sudden seedy death of a successful Melbourne businessman, Herman Rockefeller, in 2010 (he died while pursuing his secret swinger’s sex life).
In addition, Mandy will take the lead role as Nene King, former editor of the mighty Woman’s Day, in one of this year’s most anticipated TV drama series, Paper Giants: Magazine Wars.
Given all she’s done and is still doing, it’s such a relief to find that Mandy hasn’t gone all snobby and silly about the success of Rhonda.
“Rhonda has created opportunities for me, so of course, I’m grateful,” Mandy says during a break in a fun photo shoot for The Weekly, during which she slipped in and out of tiny, silky dresses (she is much smaller in person than she appears in the ad and she’s got lovely laugh lines all around her eyes).
“Rhonda is a character. She’s not in a book or a film, she’s in an ad. But that’s okay. People really like her. They like the story. And that’s great.”
There’s no question that the audience wants her to get together with Ketut (maybe they could buy a house, for which they’d need home and contents insurance?), played by Melbourne forklift driver Kadek Mahardika.
It’s not yet clear whether they will appear together again. On one hand, AAMI is probably willing to pay whatever it will take to get them both, which is great for Mandy, who has lived the financially uncertain actor’s life for two decades.
On the other, she understandably worries about getting so tangled in the role that people won’t be able to see her as anyone other than Rhonda.
That is certainly a risk, especially now that Rhonda has cult status in Australia’s favourite holiday destination, Bali, where “Kiss Me Ketut” T-shirts now out-sell Bintang singlets.
Mandy hasn’t been to Bali since the ad went to air and given that she remembers the island when it still had bicycles and chickens in the streets, it’s surreal to think she’s now “hot like a sunrise” over there.
Yet she has a sense of humour about it and she’s counting on the generous Australian public to back her as she moves into different roles.
“I think they understand that I’m playing a part,” she says, “and hopefully they’ll like what I can do in other roles, too.”
Nothing’s ever certain, but that seems bound to happen. Rhonda’s a wonderful character, but Mandy, when you meet her … she’s the real deal.
Read more of this story in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Julius is like any three-year-old, energetic and curious. He is also a child model, which his mum, Catia Malaquias, hopes will challenge the negative stereotypes that come with his Down syndrome.
“Julius is going to be a model for eeni meeni miini moh, a children’s fashion brand, and the photo shoot is in Brisbane,” I said, responding to a question of why I was going to be away from Perth for a few days. The question that came next didn’t shock me, “So is it a photo shoot for children like him?”
You see, Julius, my adorable three-year-old rascal, has Down syndrome. The words “like him” were meant as a reference to children who, like Julius, are not, supposedly, “like other children”.
“The other children in the photo shoot don’t have Down syndrome and I haven’t actually met them, but I’m guessing they are probably cute like him,” I replied, with a smile.
As Julius’ mother, I don’t see him as particularly different. Like his two adoring sisters, five-year-old Laura and 18-month-old Drea, and like every other child, Julius is his own little person.
He is very cheeky, energetic and curious. He has personality and a unique set of talents. And he can be a handful or an angel, just like his sisters.
We are glad to be on this journey together and are immensely thankful for the gift of our family. That journey feels extraordinary, in some respects, but for the most part we are just a normal family living a typical life.
So, late one night, as I sat down to do some online shopping, I searched the faces of the beautiful children modelling eeni meeni miini moh clothes, hoping to see a child like Julius, but expecting that I wouldn’t.
I contacted eeni meeni miini moh and asked them to consider more deeply the children represented in their advertising and not to overlook the beauty and value of all kinds of children, including those that may present “differently”.
I asked them to consider that, as an advertiser, they have an opportunity to say something important in the way they market their product and that they say as much by including children like Julius as by not including them.
Before I knew it, Julius and I were boarding a plane to Brisbane. I had been quite anxious that they would reject my suggestion (it would hurt, as rejection always does), but found myself feeling intimidated at the thought of meeting the other mums and their “modlers”.
How would they react to us being there? And what if Julius threw one of those spectacular tantrums that only three-year-olds know how to throw?
As it turned out, the photo shoot was a wonderfully positive experience for everyone involved and Julius had a great time.
I will always treasure the memory of standing next to where Julius was being photographed watching all the staff, mums and children on the set singing, with wide grins on their faces, Julius’ favourite song, Happy Birthday.
Everyone was willing us on and Julius was beaming. And I was bursting with pride to see him doing so well.
It is also about children like Julius feeling validated by being seen in a positive way in the media.
What did I hope to achieve? I hope that when people see Julius’ image in the campaign, they will see a little boy having fun, looking cool and just being “part of it”.
Why is that important? Because it challenges the negative stereotypes and sends an important message: children like Julius are more like other children than they are “different” and they don’t have “special needs”, they have the same basic needs as any child — to be loved, nurtured, educated and to be included in society in every way and to every extent possible.
It is about lifting expectations of what society believes children like my son can dream for and achieve as valued members of that same society, not some parallel “special” society with “special people” doing “special things” in “special places”.
As I walked out of the photo shoot with Julius, the son I didn’t quite expect, but without whom I can’t imagine being, I knew that together and with the support, acceptance and understanding of all the people around us, he will do much more with his life than smile for the camera.
Read more of this story in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Two million Australians are currently battling eating disorders. Here, personal trainer Lucy Birss opens up about her secret battle with anorexia and bulimia for the first time.
It started when I was 14 and a bit overweight ;— a size 12 or 14. At my heaviest, when I was 13, I was 82.5kg. I’m now 39, about 1.7m tall and 62kg.
I remember overhearing my mum say that I took after my aunt, who was a large lady. My mum is tiny; she’s about 1.57m and she’s always been between a size 6 and 10.
When my friends met my mum, they would say, “Oh, your mum’s so tiny.” And I’d think, “What am I, an elephant?”
It was always weird to me that Mum was so small. I felt enormous by comparison.
Mum was very body-conscious. She followed all the diet books ;— high-fibre, low-fat. But we still had a lot of biscuits, crisps, chocolate and ice-cream in the house.
When I was about 10, my brother, Jeremy, went off to a school as a day boarder, so he didn’t get home until around 9pm. That was when I started gaining weight — I was lonely. I’d come home from school and get the biscuit tin out.
It was anorexia first. I can pinpoint exactly when. I had glandular fever when I was 15 and I was off school for three weeks. I didn’t eat very much because I was not well and so I lost weight.
When I went back to school, people were saying, “Lucy, you look fantastic.” It was like the dots just joined up in my head.
Don’t eat, lose weight, look good, get attention. My bedroom walls were plastered with photographs from magazines of skinny models. Those were my role models, that was how I wanted to look.
The following year, I went on a holiday with mum, dad and my best friend, Karen, and by that time I had started making myself sick. Karen noticed what I was doing.
Apparently, she phoned my mum, who said, “No, no, she’s just taking care of herself, she’s just eating well.”
But then I remember the day that our form tutor called me in and said straight off the bat, “So, what’s going on with your eating?” I was completely sidelined and I just burst into tears.
That was when I became seriously anorexic. It was like I was given a green light to do what I wanted because I didn’t have to hide it anymore. I didn’t have to even pretend to eat anything because everyone knew I had a problem.
I just didn’t eat ;— there was a point where I ate five grapes in a day and each one I would peel the skin off with my teeth very slowly to make it last longer.
I got down to just under 44kg. There’s this weird feeling when you don’t eat. You feel euphoric and that kind of gives you energy. There’s a school photograph from that time and when I look at it now, I don’t know myself.
When I left school, my friends were going off to uni. I fell into another crowd, who were more interested in having fun, and I suddenly felt like I belonged and gradually, over time, I started eating more.
I’m happy with myself now. I’m fit and healthy. I eat well, but I also know the signs and how to manage things. For me, exercise has become a kind of meditation and a way of coping with stress.
When I look back, it makes me want to cry. I had no self-esteem and I wish I could go back and give that anorexic girl confidence.
No one encouraged me to be anything because all they wanted me to do was to eat. All they wanted me to do was survive. I never felt that I had anything to offer and I really feel that failed me in life. Nobody failed me. I failed myself.
FOR HELP: The Butterfly Foundation operates a national helpline and a range of facilities and recovery groups for all people affected by eating disorders, sufferers, their families and friends.
Read more of this story in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Photography by Michelle Holden, styling by Nell Simpson.
She’s 41, single and breaking new ground. Today Tonight host Helen Kapalos talks to Michael Sheather about divorce, TV and taking on Tracy.
Helen Kapalos fell in love with her childhood sweetheart when she was just 18. They dated for nearly six years before they married when she was 23 and still studying at university. In many ways, it was a dream start to a promising life.
And for the next 13 years, Helen, a young aspiring journalist trying to make her way in the cut-throat world of prime- time TV, lived that dream, believing that the man she was married to was the man who would be her life partner.
“But, sometimes, dreams don’t turn out the way we expect,” says Helen. “Sometimes, you find yourself on a different path. That’s what happened to my husband and me. We simply grew apart. We each had visions of life that simply didn’t align. It was one of those unfortunate things where we didn’t see things in the same way anymore.”
Her divorce six years ago left her “bereft and devastated”, but Helen tells The Weekly she feels very fortunate to have had that part of her life.
“In some ways, I feel that I share so much more with other women now, having had a relationship that failed and being a single woman for the past six years, being a woman in her 40s who has had to grapple with the question of whether she would have children or whether that opportunity has passed me by, questioning the balance of career and a personal life,” she says.
“So, being someone who has walked all those paths and who is still walking those paths is something that connects me with women on so many levels.”
This surprisingly intimate and deeply personal revelation comes from a woman about to embark on perhaps the biggest gambit of her career.
Helen, a former Sydney-based reporter who until recently co-hosted the nightly Melbourne news bulletin for Network Ten, is the new face of the Seven Network’s tabloid current affairs show, Today Tonight.
Her appointment may also herald a new era in Australian broadcast journalism in which women are finally a dominant force. For the first time, the hosts of the three major current affairs shows — Today Tonight, the Nine Network’s A Current Affair and ABC TV’s 7.30 — are women, something that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.
“It’s a different path to the one that I originally envisioned for myself, but I am comfortable with that path whatever it brings. That’s certainly not to say that children are out of the question in the future, but the possibility that it might not happen is something I had to come to peace with and I have.”
Helen’s new role has brought with it a wider recognition of the Melbourne newsreader, made most evident when widely-reported comments in a recent newspaper article made the gossip rounds, suggesting she thought her new job would impede her chance of finding romance — leading the question of work/life balance.
“At the moment, my career is at centre stage and that is wonderful. But that is not to say I have to dim the switch on every other aspect of my life,” she says.
“Honestly, why can’t there be room for everything?”
Read more of this story in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Deborah Hutton and Rebecca Gibney. Photography by Steven Chee, styling by Judith Cook.
Most people think that looking after your health means eating well and getting a little exercise. Yet many medical experts now believe that looking after the mind is just as vital as taking care of the body. In fact, as actress Rebecca Gibney and TV personality Deborah Hutton tell Michael Sheather, taking care of your emotional and mental health may sometimes be even more important.
At 48, Rebecca Gibney has learned that it’s incredibly important to maintain mental health as well as physical wellbeing.
“The mind and the body are, after all, different sides of the same coin,” she says.
The Aussie actress, who meditates every day, has learned the importance of keeping stress from building up and focusing on how we feel rather than how we look, but it hasn’t been an easy journey for her to strike such balance.
“I suffered anxiety attacks for more than 20 years,” she tells The Weekly.
“They probably only started to recede when my son, Zac, was born. I still have them every so often, usually when I am working too much and I feel overwhelmed and under pressure.
“I can feel my heart rate start to quicken and I start to feel physically ill. It’s a feeling that you are losing control and, sometimes, it can be so bad that you feel like you are having a heart attack or that you are going to day. It’s awful.”
After mustering the courage to seek help from psychiatrists in her 20s and mastering the art of meditation and controlled breathing and mental exercises, Rebecca has learned to control her anxiety and live a happy and secure life.
“I am incredibly lucky that I have a wonderful, supportive family and friends. My husband is my rock and my safe place. But we are also very aware that you can’t depend solely on one other human being to be your saviour,” she says.
“Your wellbeing, mentally and physically, is your responsibility. I could have spent my life blaming my father or my childhood, but the truth is that doesn’t help anyone. I had to find a way to get through it because I am responsible for my own life and happiness.”
Deborah Hutton has also had to work hard at finding happiness.
“It doesn’t just fall in your lap,” she says.
“You have to have it in your mind first before you can make it a reality and you have to know what it is that is going to make you happy. Defining the things that are important to you is part of that.”
Deborah says keeping your mind active will help you face the challenges of getting older, and at 51, she’s learned that the key to being healthy is balance between your mind and body, but achieving this is not without its challenges.
“It’s a delicate matter because you need to pay attention to both the mind and the body for them to work in harmony,” she says.
“Of the two, the mind is probably the most important, above the physical health of the body but they are both important.”
Read more of this story in the February issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Elijah Rainbow was not yet seven months old when he fell to his death from a footbridge over Brisbane’s Logan River last June, the fourth child in as many years to die in such circumstances.
Elijah’s father, David Fisher, has since been charged with murder.
His mother, Lauren Fisher has taken her grief onto the road, and can now be found travelling from town to town in her brightly-coloured rainbow van, as she tries to come to terms with what has happened.
Speaking exclusively to The Weekly, Lauren says that she and David were devoted parents not only to Elijah but to all five of their children, and she would happily welcome him home.
“I miss him,” she said. “The girls miss him,” she added, of Elijah’s four, older sisters.
Lauren isn’t allowed to talk about what happened on the day that Elijah died, but she can talk about her approach to life, and to grief.
She tells The Weekly that she was raised by evangelical Christians parents, mainly in Africa, where her father was a preacher.
She attended American boarding schools, and was “separated from my sisters by class and from my parents. There was loneliness in my childhood that I did not want for my children.”
Her own approach to parenting was very different: she has long preferred a “free-range” approach, with lots of love and guidance, but few iron-clad rules.
None of the girls go to school. There is no arbitrary bed-time. They can wear what they like, and cut their own hair.
Lauren, David and the girls had already been on the road for more than a year when she became pregnant with Elijah.
She’d given birth to all four of her girls in hospital, but given that so much else about their lives had become unconventional, she decided to at least try to “free birth” their son.
“Women have not always gone to hospital to give birth,” Lauren says, “but as women, as a society, we have forgotten that.”
The family was staying at a “rainbow gathering” near a swollen river about20 minutes from Singleton, NSW, when Lauren gave birth to Elijah on November 26, 2011, without any medical intervention.
Dearly loved, he didn’t get to live a full year.
Some of Lauren’s friends and family believe that Elijah’s death should have been a catalyst for change in her life, that she should move back into her house and put the children in school.
They want her to forget David, too. “I know some people find it hard to forgive,” she says, and she knows that some people “assume that the way we live means that we must be crazy. Therefore, what happened to Elijah must be the result of the fact that we are crazy.”
But, she says, what befell Elijah could have happened had they lived in a house.
Australian dental experts are calling for soft drinks to carry warning labels about tooth decay.
New research from the University of Adelaide has found that 56 per cent of children aged between five and 16 consume at least one sugary drink, such as a soft drink or juice, each day.
Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health senior research fellow Dr Jason Armfield, the lead author of the new study, said the results highlighted the role soft drinks play in tooth decay.
The research, the results of which were published on the American Journal of Public Health website, studied 16,800 Australian children and showed the number of decayed, missing or baby teeth with fillings was 46 per cent higher in children who had three or more sweet drinks a day than in those who consumed none.
“There’s a lot of problems that excess consumption may cause and these should be included as part of any potential warning package on sweet drinks,” Dr Armfield said.
“But the potential tooth decay caused by the drink’s high acidity and sugar content should be a focus.
“Consistent evidence has shown that high acidity of many sweetened drinks, particularly soft drinks and sports drinks, can be a factor in dental erosion, as well as the sugar itself contributing to tooth decay,” Dr Armfield said.
“If health authorities decide that warnings are needed for sweet drinks, the risk to dental health should be included.”
But Australian Beverages Council chief executive Geoff Parker believes that placing health warnings on soft drinks about the risk of tooth decay is ”way over the top”.
“’Teaching kids from early on about good dental hygiene practice is important. But singling out one particular part of the diet is a misguided approach to dealing with an issue such as dental hygiene,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Cancer Council has joined forces with Diabetes Australia and the National Heart Foundation of Australia in a campaign to tackle soft drink over-consumption, which it says is a key contributor to obesity in Australia.
“Basil is my miniture schnauzer. He is nine years old now and was given to me by a friend who bred him and wouldn’t take no for an answer – so I ended up with him! Everyone falls in love with him, he is just such a part of our family we would be lost without him!”
“This is our family dog, Millie. We got her when she was 8 weeks old and she is 18 weeks now. She’s very crazy and has a great character. She loves to make us all laugh and is always keen to help out.”
“Milo is a one-year-old Staffy. We saved him from a rescue centre when he was just nine months old. He loves dressing up and loves the attention, and the camera!”
“Molly is a 12-year-old Maltese x Mini Foxy who recently spent 2 months holiday at the Adelaide Hills Pet Resort whilst her dad was travelling the world.”
“This is Ruby our guinea-pig and her mate Rex, my sister’s Border Collie. Rex will sit all day not moving away from Ruby’s cage. He is besotted by her.”
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