exercise - what is too much?

A blog recently stated:

>>What is MIA in health recommendations, intent on getting everyone exercising 60-90 minutes a day, is balance and the other side of the story.<<

Apparently the writer of this blog, a RN, BSN, feels that the recommendation of the committee which wrote the 1996 Surgeon General paper on exercise was excessive (the recommendation in the paper was 30-40 minutes moderate intensity cardio, most days but the committee all agreed that 60 minutes was ideal, stating that they had reduced the 60 minutes most days to 40 minutes most days because it was thought the public would totally reject the idea otherwise).

The blog author went on to quote Dr Edell's opinion (popular in a society which feels that getting up and changing the TV channel without the clicker is excessive exercise):

>>>There is little to support “more is better,” and certainly not for everyone. What may be most surprising is how everyday things we do around the house compare favorably to “real” exercise, he said. Things like gardening, raking leaves, painting the house, washing the car, mobbing the floor, cleaning windows, dancing, playing table tennis, and chopping wood.<<<

To illustrate this point, the blog quoted several newspaper articles accusing aerobic dancing and exercise in general, as being responsible for the increasing number of joint replacement surgeries being done now.

Early as the hour is, I couldn't let this go because I feel that THIS MISINFORMATION could risk the lives of those reading the blog if they followed such BAD ADVICE as to not do regular CARDIO.

First of all, there is a BIG difference between Jane Fonda low impact aerobics (which no, does NOT cause injury!) and the high impact aerobics of the early 1980's. Low impact aerobic dancing is one of the best exercises one can DO (i.e. Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda, Denise Austin, Kathy Smith et al) because not only does a person do cardio vascular exercise but also a lot of range of motion and moving most muscles in the body under slight resistance. If one does NOT move all these muscles REGULARLY, one can get sarcopena or muscle wasting, which has been suggested in SEVERAL studies to be the cause of a large part of the disability associated with aging. The news articles quoted in the blog made NO DIFFERENCE whatsoever in types of aerobic dancing (typical - news media is NOT known for accuracy). I with a BMI of 43 at the age of 62, can easily do a Richard Simmons tape with no injury whatsoever (on the contrary, it feels great!)

Secondly, CARDIO VASCULAR exercise which directly exercises the heart has been overwhelmingly suggested in MANY excellent studies to significantly reduce the risk of ALL illness regardless of what people weigh. In such activities like cleaning the house or gardening, we do NOT directly exercise the heart (which is a muscle and needs exercise). We do not necessarily raise the heartrate to an aerobic level and keep it there for 20 minutes or more. We do not induce a higher body temperature which has been suggested in several studies to beef up our immune system. It is VERY WRONG and VERY MISLEADING to suggest that people do not NEED regular (and daily if possible!) cardio. (and the impact of daily cardio on diabetes type II has been well documented in medical literature!)

The 1996 Surgeon General's paper on exercise stated that NOT DOING 30-40 minutes CARDIO MOST DAYS, was MORE RISKY than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Thirdly, the type of exercise which MAY raise the risk for hip and knee replacements is RUNNING. Excessive running such as is done, in marathons has been suggested to RAISE rather than lower the risk of heart attack, cancer etc. But doing 40 minutes daily of low impact cardio like the health rider or the Gazelle Freestyle or even the trikke scooter is a whole different beastie than running a 26 mile marathon. Elite athletics has NEVER been about health.

Although I am not much of a fan of running marathons and calling it "healthy", to say that marathons or even high impact aerobics are the cause of increasing joint replacement surgery seems very incorrect when only 5 percent of the population actually follows the recommendation of the 1996 Surgeon General's paper on exercise and 25 percent of the population exercises (cardio!) as much as three times a week! Likely a STRONG factor in the increasing amount of degenerative joint disorder (and hip and knee replacements) is a lack of regular cardio especially if combined with the CHRONIC DIETING which is so popular in our society.

In the 30 year Cooper Institute studies of 29,000 people, it was found that doing cardio exercise as little as 3 times a week, lowered the risk of heart attack and/or dying early, by 40 percent. It also lowered the risk of cancer by 40 percent, and this was REGARDLESS of what the individuals weighed!

But this benefit is ONLY obtained from CARDIO or aerobic exercise and NOT just "cleaning the house" or "gardening" or taking the stairs or parking further away from the store (much as people would like it to be so!).

It is sad that we often, do NOT hear from our medical providers just HOW important CARDIO exercise IS, on a regular basis! And yet Lawrence Maharam in THE EXERCISE HIGH stated that he did not know ONE cardiologist who did NOT do cardio. Interesting, isn't it?

Source material:
Powter, Susan: STOP THE INSANITY
Maharam, Lawrence: THE EXERCISE HIGH
Gaesser, Glenn, PhD: THE SPARK
Ornish, Dean, MD: REVERSING HEART DISEASE

The Atkins Diet works the best!

So our newest article on dieting from the prestigious medical journal, the JAMA, tells us that in a study lasting one year, people lost the most weight on the Atkins diet. The study with an over 300 individual cohort, compared the Atkins low carb diet to other diets like the Zone (which is also low carb but does not encourage ketosis) and the Ornish program which albeit heart healthy, is very low fat and very difficult to totally comply to.

At the end of a year, the 77 women assigned to the Atkins group had lost an average of 10.4 pounds. Those assigned to LEARN lost 5.7 pounds, the Ornish followers lost 4.8 pounds and women on the Zone lost 3.5 pounds, on average.

Did anyone notice that the year end results on a non diet like that of Dr Oz in which you cut 100 calories a day, promises a similar result to the "best diet", the Atkins diet?

We also must look at the funding of these studies - I suspect the Atkins corporation might have funded this one. Because in a study funded by Weight Watchers by Stanley Heshka, researchers found that, people on the Weight Watchers diet had lost an average of 11 lbs in the first year. (same as attributed to the Atkins). However, in the second year, the picture had changed a bit. The average weight Loss on Weight Watchers was down to 7 lbs overall. (The cohort was over 400 on this study)

The Weight Watchers group lost 4,3 to 5 kg (11 lbs) by the end of the first year, and 2,7 to 3 kg overall by the end of the second year (7 lbs).

Did anyone notice that neither of the studies showed a really impressive result from (any kind of) dieting? Perhaps the media hopes we will just read headlines and not the details (which are usually hidden way down in the article) and come away thinking we should buy this or that diet.

None of these studies we've seen lately have lasted 4 or 5 years - funding is always a problem but beyond that, drawing out a study like this for a longer term, might have results which the diet industry does NOT want people to see.

For it seems that the greatest ongoing scam in the American society today is the myth that ANY diet works! One wonders why we continue to buy into this scam when for most of us, diets have failed.

We would consider it a bit ridiculous to blame the driver for a car which stalls on the highway and yet, when diets don't work for us and our automatic system kicks in and forces a regain, we DO blame ourselves.

So the greatest scam in history, diets, upon which people spend some 45 BILLION dollars a year in the USA alone, continues with willing repeat customers!

And that is, I guess because none of us want to realize that our bodies basically control our weight and NOT US. We'd rather berrate ourselves for being "pigs" or having "no character" and then, go and buy the next diet to reinforce our desperate hope that we, too, will somehow be magically able to attain the mythical "perfect body".

But is a perfect body one which WORKS well, or one which looks like a model? Spending time with people who severely restrict calories to stay slim suggests that MOST of these do NOT enjoy very good health. And when we are sick in bed, or chronically fatigued, it really doesn't matter how fat or slim we are. Here in the USA, we have increasing numbers of young people dropping dead from sudden heart attack and are also riddled with autoimmune disease like LUPUS and Fibromyalgia and CFS. Some estimates theorize that 1 in 100 has some kind of chronic pain syndrome. So not only has our affinity to constantly diet NOT rendered many of us "slim", it might also be a factor in the -not so good- general public health observed today in the USA.

In a study at USC which compared living a healthy lifestyle (frequent cardio exercise and healthy food choices) without a focus on weight loss, to dieting,and DID last for 2 years, the researchers found that those who just LIVED healthy and did NOT lose weight, remained healthy at the end of the second year but those who dieted, not only gained back all the weight they'd lost during the first year, they also regained their health issues AND sustained psychological damage (it's extremely disheartening to gain a bunch of weight back). The non dieters had a self image which had IMPROVED in the second year.

Bottom line? Time to realize what a scam dieting is, and simply live healthy because health, it has been found in MANY studies (including the Cooper Institute studies of 30 years duration and 29,000 individuals) that health is mostly dependent on your lifestyle and NOT your weight.

less people dieting

According to a recent news article, even though our society is totally fat phobic and food obsessed, only 16 percent of the population is dieting.

Frankly, I don't believe this statistic for a second.

What is happening is that LESS people are ADMITTING to dieting. Calling restricting calories (to lose or maintain weight) by other names is very much in vogue these days.

For instance if you ask most people, "Are you dieting" they will probably answer "OH no!" (perish the thought). But if you go on to ask them "well, do you 'watch what you eat'?", their answer will be opposite. "Definitely... yes have to do that!" and of course "watching what you eat" is another way of saying dieting.

We haven't stopped dieting - we are dieting more than ever (of course, another no brainer). We have just stopped CALLING it a diet.

Weightwatchers restricts most people to 23-26 points a day even on maintenance but they never call it a diet. It's "staying on program" or "lifestyle change" Jenny Craig and other mainstream programs have pretty much followed Weight Watchers in their terminology so now, the only ones which CALL themselves a diet are the liquid diets etc. And that's probably what explains the 16 percent in the new study.

Child obesity epidemic? Where IS IT?

A recent blog mentioned a campaign in which "childhood obesity" was targeted on billboards as a "public health issue". As understandable, many objected to this pointing out that it would traumatize fat children even more than they are being traumatized now. But the sponsors of the campaign, The MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation says they are NOT backing down.

Peggy Howell, spokesperson from NAAFA stated that:

“It’s just simply reinforcing the fact that the children who are already bullied and teased mercilessly by their own classmates now are being made the butt of even more (teasing),”

Which of course seems a no brainer.

But I am wondering something. Where IS this great "obesity epidemic" among kids? I teach in an elementary school and I also visit my grandkids' school often and I just haven't seen all these "dangerously fat" kids that the news media seems to want us to believe, exist. Seems the same percentage of genetically fat kids there were when I was in school (in saner times) in the 1950's - about 2-4 per 30 kids.

What I DO see a lot of is painfully slim kids. When I taught 20 years ago, there was maybe one or two very slim kids in the class and those were invariably the ones who were sick a lot and had a poor attention span. In fact, I remember wondering whether things would be better for them if they were more 'robust'.

Now those very slim kids form the majority of kids in elementary schools. And have the same high rate of illness (like vacinated kids getting whooping cough) and same poor attention span that super slim kids had 20 years ago. And they are all obsessive about food. Know the calories of every food and painfully aware of everything they eat.

Sounds like we may be raising a lot of kids with eating disorders and you know, being slim as a kid, if one has "fat genetics" does NOT stop fatness as an adult.

And fatness as an adult does not mean lack of health either. In several comments about the campaign targeting childhood obesity, people have pointed out that they are rather large and still very healthy and fit. I will add MY comment to that - I weigh 261 at 5'5" and haven't had a cold since Dec 2005. Also I can do yoga and ride a trikke cambering scooter, dance. Pretty good for a 62 year old - truthfully, I am a whole lot healthier and stronger than some of the slim folks around me.

So what IS this all about? Selling diets? Fear mongering on the news to get people to watch so they see the ads? I know one thing it is NOT about. It is NOT about health, and it's NOT about the welfare or well being of our children and that is FOR SURE.

too fat to love? Maybe not!

Apparently Pat Buchanon is the one who started the "is Al Gore too fat to run for president" news which has hit the media like a ton of bricks. He was quoted in an interview as saying:

Another thing. Al Gore came in 40 pounds overweight for spring training, Joe.

So with that in mind, I took a survey on one of the large news sites which asked whether we would vote for Al Gore if he runs for office, still carrying the extra baggage. I of course, voted that his size wouldn't make any difference to me. That was expected with me but what was very surprising is that 62.5 percent of the survey respondents voted exactly the same way I did... and only some 17.5 percent said the fat would make a difference in their vote and another 20 percent stated they wouldn't vote for him in any case, fat or thin.

That, of course begs the question about whether the general public is really buying the "fat is ugly" stuff that the media is constantly pushing down our throats.

Another interesting tidbit is that Oprah, America's favorite talk show host, has high ratings... we all know that, but how many folks know that when Oprah is fatter, her ratings are even higher than when she's slim (she yo yo's a lot).

And Anna Nichole Smith, whose autopsy STILL has not been released ( why is that, I wonder - maybe because they DIDN'T find a lethal dose of meth in her system and she might have just had a sudden heart attack, a common ailment of those crashing weight off quickly as she did) - Anna Nicole Smith was just as popular when SHE was fat as when she was slim.

Other stars like Carnie Wilson actually had more of a career as a fat girl - after gastric bypass, she's been very stereo-typed as the "gastric bypass girl" with most fans ignoring the fact that she's extremely musically talented and even was a fairly good talk show host.

And then, there is Tyra Banks. She's not fat but she IS normal weight for her height (which is horrendously fat in the world of modeling) and since she's gained the weight, most agree she looks even MORE stunning than before and her ratings have picked up also.

Maybe just maybe, the public is tiring of the super slim types who look like they spent some time in a concentration camp? Or perhaps they are tiring of the ever growing list of very talented young people who have dropped dead from starving - young women who should have NOT had to die and who still could be sharing their talent with us had they been more sensible about size and eating...

Thoughts to ponder!

Older adults have more fat and less muscle

A "double whammy" for adults, announces an article in "Medical News" reporting on a study at Wake University which included over 1800 older adults, 70-79. The "double whammy" according to Medical News is that older adults start in their Autumn years fatter and tend to gain more weight because of the "obesity epidemic".

How much is "more weight"? Turns out that an 80 year old born in 1927, is 10 lbs heavier than his/her counterpoint born in 1918 with 3.75 lbs less muscle.

Sorry but 10 lbs heavier doesn't sound like a whole lot to me.

The result is an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and disability, according to Jingzhong Ding, M.D., Ph.D., lead author and a researcher on aging at Wake Forest Baptist.

The same old tired phrases which ignore the fact that slim elderly suffer from identical maladies. I guess they hope we won't figure that out.

More bodyfat in the elderly has been shown to be an advantage in several areas, another fact which you will NOT see in the media.

For example, fat people in general tend to survive hospital stays better after a heart attack - they also tend to survive chemo therapy better than slimmer people.

One study of nuns suggested that those who GAINED weight after the age of 65 were the only group which had a zero chance of senility. (Those who lost weight had the highest risk of senility about 25 percent and those who stayed the same had a 10 percent risk of senility).

As far as muscle wasting in the elderly this IS a problem however, not at all related to obesity, but rather lack of exercise which is a problem in our society in general.

I notice the good scientists at Wake forgot to mention that osteoporosis is a serious problem which many elderly face - a problem which occurs 40 percent less in overweight elderly. (see Gaesser, Glenn, PhD: BIG FAT LIES, CA 2004)

This article is typical of the "obesity epidemic" articles. If you read it carefully, it's not really saying anything new nor is it saying anything scary. Unfortunately, many people will read the title and the first sentence only and come away thinking that Wake University has discovered yet more problems in the "obesity epidemic"!

Is all Food really FOOD?

We read every day that certain foods are bad, other foods are "good". The opinions (I suppose similar to many other topics) seem to run in two extremes:

1. Eat only "whole foods" - no sugar, no white flour items and nothing with anything you cannot pronounce in it.
2. Food is food and it's all good. (This is the "don't worry- be happy sentiment" that seems so right just because it sounds so good)

Both of these are popular - because either one is easy to follow... you either eat everything with no discrimination or you eat practically nothing.
As usual the truth lies somewhere between.

One article in a medical journal, attempting to solve the mystery of what is proper to eat, brought up the apparent contradictions in what we consider "good food" and "bad food"

>>>SAMA Health and Medical Publishing:
South African Medical Journal (1990) 78:441 (Editorial).<<<

It stated for example:

"French-fries are junk-food, but roast potatoes are not"

Unfortunately, perhaps because the article was written in 1990 when we did not know as much about trans fat as we do now, this is NOT a contradiction at all. If you take a good food and add unhealthy chemicals to it, then it's kind of a no brainer that the food will no longer good. Which is exactly what happens with French Fries. Even if they are NOT fried in transfat, we know now that in deep frying anything, chemicals are formed which are suspected somewhat toxic and these are added to the food, and thus it can be, without a contradiction that the same food which is healthy when cooked in the oven BECOMES unhealthy when deep fried.

The same article states:

>>>"bread is a basic food-stuff, but biscuits [cookies] are junk; wine comprises "empty calories," but fruit juices are health foods"<<<

Anyone who has made cookies, knows that they are composed of pretty equal parts of fat, sugar and flour. Where is the food in that? How does the author even compare that to bread?

The statement about wine is outdated - wine is now known to have antioxidants in it and fruit juices are no longer considered very healthy if they have "high fructose corn syrup" in them.

Let's look at "high fructose syrup" - this is highly concentrated sugar, probably added because today's "diet sweetener" generation is used to things which are 100 times sweeter than sugar. It is a manufactured product which is highly concentrated modified sugar and according to some nutritionists, not as easily assimilated by the body as natural sugar. Some rat studies have suggested that fructose can cause liver problems if consumed in high amounts (and a person who drinks a lot of pop could possibly reach those amounts). According to "The Murky World of High Fructose" by Linda Joyce Forristal, CCP

>>> "The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."<<<<

Back to the SAMA article, it goes on to state that:

>>the sugar in cake is detrimental to health, but the sugar in honey and grapes is not<<

Here, the concentration of sugar is the difference. Pretty much anything in high concentration can become toxic. Two aspirins cure a headache. Ten aspirins might land a person in the hospital for a stomach pumping.

Although this article is 17 years old and very outdated, the sentiment still exists in many circles today... "it's all food and it's all good".

Today's advocates of "all food is food and good to eat" sometimes use the excuse that "well, we have a longer lifespan today than we did when we did not consume any "junk food" or "fast food". This reason may be a straw man. The longer life span may have a lot to do with many factors from better work conditions and antibiotics, to the flush toilet which eliminated a lot of bacteria and viruses. It also should be noted that today we have an extremely high incidence of cancer in our society and some of the chemicals in junk food have been suggested in some research to be a factor in this cancer epidemic.

Today we have whole classes of substances that I would call "non foods". They are basically mostly fat (often transfat) and/or chemicals with virtually no nutritional value whatsoever but they often have lots of calories. Potato chips, donuts (now there's a real unhealthy combination of deep frying chemicals, transfat and sugar) and much of what you find in the super market isn't REALLY good to eat.

And we have other classes of foods which are perhaps no calories but pure chemicals, stuff which under different circumstances we would never consume as food. This class of "food" includes things like diet soda, coke etc.

Coke is a solvent and has phosphoric acid in it so it's in no way, any type of a food. Sure it tastes good, so does anti freeze but that doesn't mean we go and drink it.

What to do is a matter of opinion but I don't think it's healthy to restrict one's food drastically to exclude whole food groups such as the "whole food" advocates suggest but neither is it healthy to assume that everything in the supermarket is "food" in the real sense of the word and eat indiscriminately.

The best which seems to be a lot of work, is to learn to read labels and decide carefully.

If it's got chemicals in it like nutrasweet or splenda, avoid it... these just give you more sugar cravings and may actually cause weight gain because they unbalance the insulin levels - some research suggests that when you consume artificial sweetener, your body tasting the sweet taste, produces more insulin to deal with the sugar which of course, never comes. Wouldn't it be a hoot if the high rate of diabetes we are seeing today, has more to do with the consumption of artificial sweeteners than it does with "obesity"?

The sweetener, aspartame or nutrasweet has also been suggested in some 90 worldwide studies to be a factor in the incidence of brain cancer and leukemia. Aspartame contains a neurotoxin - an excitotoxin which can kill neurons in the brain. Excitotoxins are newly identified - for the last decade only those in neurology were familiar with them. MSG is an excitotoxin also.

If it's got mostly chemicals that you cannot pronounce in it, then there might not be much food in it.

If it's got "high fructose corn syrup" in it, it probably is best avoided.

But some processed foods can be, I feel, ok. For example, if they have a lot of vitamins in them like health bars.

Drink water instead of soda but get bottled water. Tap water has a lot of chemicals in it which are NOT removed by reverse osmosis filters.

Forget things like donuts and most "sweets" - regardless of what one weighs, these are definitely "non foods" and not healthy to eat.

Sorry but today, sadly speaking, it's NOT "all food" and it's NOT all good.

WLS - Weight Loss Surgery - the real question is quality of life

One blog that I read, the medpundit, has an excellent article about bariatric (weight loss surgery i.e. WLS). In it the physician gives a very unique point of view from her clinical experience with her patients who have had weight loss surgery.

The interesting thing is that she has observed in her patients the following:

1. none of them regret having the surgery, regardless of the medical conditions they may suffer after WLS, even some nasty stuff like kidney stones every 2 weeks, frequent vomiting and re-operation procedures.

2. The patients' view of their condition of health is quite different from the doctor's clinical view. The patients all view themselves as "healthier" after WLS than before WLS but the physician commented that from her prospective, this was not true from a clinical standpoint. She commented:

>>>If asked, every single one of them would call themselves healthier, but from my perspective their health is worse. They all require more monitoring and more interventions than they did before having the surgery.<<<<

I feel this is significant and should be pointed out to those seeking surgery (and also to physicians advocating this for their patients) based on patient testimony that WLS has improved their health. There is good evidence to suggest robust health after WLS would NOT be the case with the nature of the nutritional deficiencies and other health issues introduced by this surgery and this physician's observations of her post op patients, confirm what one may suspect. I've actually heard this from not only physicians and gastroenterologists but from family members as well. One of the patients of a friend of mine, a patient who was very obese herself, remarked to him that her daughter had had a gastric bypass 5 years ago and had stayed slim but "has been sickly and frail ever since".

I feel that WLS is more of a quality of life decision than a health decision. Health-wise, it would appear that the body, pretty much regardless of size, is totally happy and healthy if the person exercises regularly and makes reasonably healthy food choices and avoids obviously unhealthy things like tobacco and alcohol usage etc. But quality of life-wise, some people find "living fat" so intolerable that they are willing to take at least a few health hits in order to be able to live thin. And that is their decision but I try to point out to them that the bottom line may be that health hits can reduce the quality of life even MORE than being fat. i.e. being slim and having a new set of clothing "off the racks" is not fun if the patient is stuck sick in bed or so fatigued or weak that they don't feel like changing from their night clothing. Likewise the daily inconvenience of having a digestive tract which has been basically surgically disabled, may be more of a dealbreaker than people realize i.e. the concept of taking extremely small bites and chewing to liquify or having things "get stuck" and having to take "food breaks" to wait and make sure the last bite has "gone down" before taking another bite, and having to restrict to certain foods, eschewing many - what we consider - treat foods and every patient, at least occasionally, getting bites of food stuck in the stoma which apparently delivers at least 2 hours of rather intense pain until it either has to be surgically removed or "goes down".

The quality of life index of a GERD patient has been said to be 2 out of a possible 10.... and lately an article suggested that although WLS was effective in many people to keep SOME weight off, their quality of life took a serious hit according to what patients themselves, described about their daily lives. Another study which suggested that WLS patients tended to live longer than fat people who did not have WLS, also observed that WLS patients had a far higher rate of death from suicide and accidents, thus again suggesting a serious quality of life hit.

Some people may be surprised that prospective patients can read about the "hard cases", the so called "gastric bypass gone bad" stuff and then, still have the procedure themselves. I've actually seen patients who have had a "gone bad" case in their own family who still go ahead with the surgery. This may be because it seems that most patients or prospective patients and/or medical professionals will dismiss the hard cases as "exceptions to prove the rule" which may or may not be true.... we simply don't know what the case of the "AVERAGE" patient is on the long term as it is evident that some patients have incorporated themselves into society as slim people, and may not identify themselves as weight loss surgery patients. But yet other patients, quietly die or become ill, and although WLS is pretty likely a factor in their illness or death, it is not documented by medical providers as such.

It may be a far better idea as far as helping the individual make the choice which works best for them, to present information about what the daily quality of life hits may be and also with what the REAL clinical health status may be after WLS, a condition including some concerning health issues, which may greatly different from the rosey patient descriptions.

Artificial Sweetener - really a diet aid?

Artificial sweetener is considered a good thing in our society because it doesn't have any calories and thus, people feel they can have their sweets for free.

Well, seems nothing is for nothing.


Here is something the diet industry did not publish but it's in the Congressional record:

>>>>From
the Congressional Record, Senate, Page S5511 (protest of the National Soft Drink Assn against the use of aspartame):

"Aspartame has been demonstrated to inhibit the carbohydrate induced synthesis of the neurotransmitter serotonin (Wurtman affidavit). Serotonin blunts the sensation of craving carbohydrates and thus is part of the body's feedback system that helps limit consumption of carbohydrate to appropriate levels. Its inhibition by aspartame could lead to the anomalous result of a diet product causing increased consumption of carbohydrates."
<<<<

A couple of epidemiological studies have shown that people actually gain weight when they consume diet soda.... perhaps this is one reason.

Another thing I have read about artificial sweeteners is when your body senses the sweetness in your mouth, it starts producing insulin to handle the increased (what it thinks was) sugar. But when no sugar is forthcoming, the higher insulin levels can cause carb craving and actual weight gain.

This is true of ALL artificial sweeteners - it's the nature of the beast.

Finally, here is another side effect I've noticed. If you eat small amounts of sugar, you lose your taste for super sweet stuff. But I have noticed that folks who regularly consume diet soft drinks, have - if anything - a heightened taste for sugar and can consume super sweet stuff with nary a blink of the eye.

Probably why manufacturers have felt it necessary to put stuff like "high frutose syrup" into non diet foods - because consumers of artificial sweetener (which is SUPER sweet) would not find NATURALLY sweetened products, sweet enough.

There is no winning a battle with mother nature.... she always wins....

The Childhood Obesity Hysteria only makes our kids unhealthier

On a show in October, Tyra Banks, host of "America's top models" featured two children with eating disorders. One of them, started in when she was five, eating paper to avoid eating food.

"I would eat a little bit of breakfast, a bite or two at lunch and a bite of each thing that my mom gave me at dinner and then the rest was paper," Justine Galleger, now 14-years-old, told Tyra. "I had a little baby fat on me and I saw other kids being teased, and figured if I didn't put on weight then I wouldn't be made fun of."

During her period of fullblown anorexia, Justine only weighed 32 lbs.

Another child Tyra had on the show chews food, then spits it out to avoid gaining weight.
Tyra who has gotten in the news lately, by allowing herself to gain up to 161 lbs which puts her in the low part of the "normal BMI range", has been trying to bring a message to the public which they need to hear ... our obsession with size and "childhood obesity" is very badly affecting our kids... for anyone who thinks these kids described above are exceptions, keep in mind that many of the kids I know personally, even those as young as 9 years old, are totally calorie conscious, can detail how many calories and how much fat is in most foods (they read labels of most of what they eat), consider being fat as horrible, ugly and negative, consume large amounts of green tea and/or water and chew gum to avoid eating and try to exercise off any food "indescretions". Since most of them do not eat healthy, I suspect that they, regardless of what they weigh, may be poorly nourished. They drink little to no milk, they take no multi vitamins and they don't eat much in the way of veggies but they all eat a lot of fast food and junk food.

In school, most teachers who taught in the 1980's and are still teaching now, have commented that the attention span of the kids, is markedly less now than it was 20 years ago when they were better nourished and not so fat phobic.

We can hope that Tyra gets through to the public where others have not.

Living with a defective digestive tract

I have GERD, (gastro-esophagal reflux disorder) as a result of a hiatal hernia which I was born with. From the lifetime of reflux, and adhesions from a medical procedure, I have developed a stricture of the esophagus which means there is a narrowing which doesn't stretch very well and can easily get plugged if I take too large a bite or eat too fast.

Most of the time I remember that and try to eat slowly, chew well and take small bites as well as staying away from foods like steak which don't easily liquify, but occasionally, I'm upset or anxious and I forget and take a couple of large bites and then, the trouble starts.

This morning as I was writing my other blog post, I committed the sin of biting 1/2 of a boiled egg, and not chewing well enough, something a normal person would toss down with no problem.

Said egg got stuck so I did my usual thing of gulping water to try and force it down. It stayed obstinately put and didn't move and I could feel that the water I drank was going to come up so I flew toward the bathroom and started to do with the adjustable lap band patients call, "PBing" i.e. "productive belching". In other words, I coughed to try and dislodge the stuck stuff. I finally, got enough up to make the rest of the stuck egg go down but it was a bad moment.

Because if I could not have gotten it down, I would have had to have an scope to push it down and would not have even been able to drink water until it was dislodged. That did happen to me once and it was so not fun.

I see people rushing to get weight loss surgery "done" - gastric bypass which is a permanent change to the digestive tract or even lap band which at least, can be reversed and adjusted. People whose digestive tracts work fine. Who can eat things I only dream about eating like steak, and toss it down with nary a thought. And I think about how they will feel after surgery when they have to wait for every little bite to go down, every time they eat.

When a gastric bypass patient gets something stuck in the opening between the pouch and the small bowel, they can suffer two hours of rather intense pain until it hopefully goes down.

And yet, this inconvenience which they will endure for the rest of their lives after their bypass is never even discussed at seminars or in weight loss surgery groups.

Having GERD as I do, my eating choices are limited (as are those for gastric bypass patients although few will admit this). And I go through this fight to swallow with every meal. Even with this stumbling block to eating, my "weight advantage" (how much less I weigh than if I didn't have this problem) is about 20 lbs. For 20 lbs, I'd druther be able to eat normally.

The quality of life index for a GERD patient has been said to be 2 out of a possible 10. And lately an article in a medical journal which will never hit the light of day in the mass media, observed that gastric bypass patients also experience a quality of life hit. A unpublished study, heralded in the mass media under the headline that gastric bypass patients live longer, also included a forgotten line... that deaths by accidents, and suicides were "significantly" higher among gastric bypass patients than among fat people.

When you decide on surgery that NO ONE guarantees, not even the AMA, remember that being slim if you are among the 7 percent who GET slim and can stay there, wears off but what you live with is fighting with a digestive tract which no longer works as it should, several times a day. (Surgeons state in the medical papers that they expect most patients will only keep off 50 percent of their excess weight and that about 30 percent will gain it all back).

Compliments are nice and so is wearing a smaller size but it's the moments day to day that you live with the most. Make sure there are no dealbreakers in those daily moments or MOST of your life (outside of the compliments occasionally) will have a poor quality.

sick n tired of being sick n tired

I received an email from a weight loss surgery (WLS) patient who complained that since his gastric bypass 5 years ago, he'd had a major surgery every year and now, in 2007, he was facing another. He wrote that this is getting very old and that he's sick and tired of being, sick and tired.

This same patient has also complained about the lack of energy, the daily fight he has with his body to not eat and more.

The story struck me because many people use that reason FOR GETTING weight loss surgery in the first place i.e. that they are sick n tired of being sick n tired and yet, so many older post ops complain that after a gastric bypass they are MORE sick and tired than when they were fat.

And of course, those people have bought into THE myth that losing weight is so going to solve all their problems, that they ignore the fact that the surgery they requested will destroy their ability to digest most vitamins and most nutrients that they eat. Of course when someone is vitamin depleted, they will be "sick n tired" because we NEED 100's of vitamins and nutrients on a daily basis and our bodies can only exist well without these for a limited amount of time.

We all are upset about the starvation in Africa but how often do we realize that many folks trying to keep up, not only with fashion but with their medical provider's advice, would, if they removed their clothing, look similar to the gaunt, boney figures we see of the starving Africans?

We pass the buck to the fashion industry and I'm sure it doesn't help when teens see magazines filled with size 0 models but I suspect the motivating factor for most teens is their parents being "worried" about "the obesity epidemic" and this scare they did NOT get from magazines but from their local medical providers who are so sold on the "dangers of obesity" that they are even more and more, are advocating surgery to partially destroy the digestive system for teens!

And if you think of it, how crazy is this? Destroying one of the most important systems in our bodies for a look, and a size which has never really been proven to be healthy at all?

Isn't it a no brainer that starvation wouldn't be healthy for our bodies on the long term, however you achieve it? The only difference between starvation by weight loss surgery and starvation by dieting is that, as a friend who had weight loss surgery for 22 years, states, "you can walk away from a diet but you cannot walk away from a weight loss surgery".

so many fat people or so many ultra slim people?

I read that 20-25 percent of the people of the USA are obese. "Obese" is defined as a BMI over 30 which is not even fat for many people.

The reason this came up is because someone asked if there is no "obesity epidemic" why does he sees so many fat people?

In looking through the latest issue of SHAPE Magazine, I saw one possible answer. One of the photos was of two normal sized people adjusting things (like makeup) on a model. I was astonished that the model looked "normal" and the people right in front of her (by comparison) looked HUGE.

Maybe the reason he sees so many fat people is because anymore a normal sized person LOOKS fat when compared to the extremely slender stylish person.

Kind of a no brainer.

Another no brainer? The article in the magazine told the reader how this model (who resembles something from the concentration camp in girth) keeps "so slim". They described her meals.... tiny portions of fruits and veggies. In other words, she doesn't eat. Well duh. Not eating will always make someone super slim. It might also make them unhealthy but who really cares about health.

Not 60 percent of the public who do not exercise regularly (according to a new study reported in SHAPE). And not another 25 percent of the public who do not exercise at all. So lessee, that means 15 percent of the public exercises regularly (usually defined as 30 minutes cardio a few times a week). And less than 5 percent of the public exercises enough to affect their weight (i.e. 60 minutes of cardio, 7 days a week or more)

That means if it follows through that not exercising makes you fat, then 95 percent of the people should be obese. But even at their bloated numbers in which normal sized people are counted as obese, only 25 percent of the public is obese. Really less than 15 percent of the public is REALLY obese (BMI over 35) and a full 1/3 of those are manufacturing a hormone (says obesity researcher, Rudy Leibel) which causes them to be fat.

Finally, same magazine (a fitness mag) stated that women who exercise to be slim or toned, exercise 40 percent LESS than women who exercise for other reasons like HEALTH. (what a novel concept, exercising for health!) Probably this is true because exercising does NOT (as the media tries to tell us) make people with the wrong genes, slim.

It's all looks with our society. I've seen stomach surgery patients who look (and feel) like death warmed over but they are lauded as being healthy because they are slim. And I've seen healthy fat people who are living a healthy lifestyle of frequent exercise and good food choices who are told they MUST be sick because "they don't look good" (according to the whims of society). I remember a terminal cancer patient who was so ill from the chemo, she couldn't walk more than a few steps but she managed to get on a scale and rejoice at all the weight she'd lost.

Sick society? Yes, I think so. Time to get real because....

"Nothing LOOKS as good as HEALTH FEELS!"

new blog

This is new for me. So anyway, hi. will write more later