I Never Tell the Truth: I’m Lying

Tags

diets, food, Intermittent fasting, lifestyle

So I lied.

So sue me.

I said that I was through with dieting and I meant it.

Until I didn’t.

I have walked 6 days a week and swam 3 days a week for eight months–nine hours of continuous physical movement per week.

I have stronger legs, stronger arms. I have a back that hurts a great deal less. I have more stamina. I have better wind. (no, I don’t fart better!) I have bigger muscles, not that I or anyone else cares.

I have lost not a single ounce.

It’s not about vanity. I dumped vanity as my companion about three years into my marriage, figuring it was a “for better or worse” thing and well, appreciate the meals and cleaning, because I’m not dying my hair, or worrying about stubble no more.

It’s not about health per se, since I’m feeling fine, and figure my exercise routine does a pretty fine job keeping things running normally. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better.

No, it’s about not being able to bend over very well, or being able to kneel down and get up again without a winch. (kidding, but damn it’s a struggle all the same) It’s about not being able to do yoga because downward facing dog is more likely to end up with my face planted in the tiling.

It’s about my weight impinging on my back and my feet. Sooooo, as they say, I found another diet.

But, it’s not a diet per se. It’s more like a lifestyle change. It’s called the Intermittent fasting, or 5-2 diet. You fast 2 days and eat regularly 5. You don’t fast 2 consecutive days. You try to not be a pig on the five, but eat normally. On the fasting days a woman consumes 500 calories, and a man 600.

It seems reasonable. It has not yet been studied long-term, but short-term results are promising in terms of blood chemistry and weight loss. Blood pressures go down, blood glucose return to normal, and there is some evidence that it suppresses cancer and heart problems and increases longevity. Mice live longer than normal on it.

People anecdotally claim that they mostly lose weight (although some find that their “feast” days are so out of whack that they have to learn what is “normal”). They claim that they feel more energetic. Many claim that they feel they can stay on this forever when they finally reach their norm. Apparently the fasting days are not so extreme that the body has time to go into starvation mode which is what ruins most diets in the long run. And it’s not a diet per se so much as a way to control calories for life without having to try very hard.

I’m game.

Because it’s calorie restricted on two days it encourages foods that are low in calories yet bulky, like veggies and fruit. You are encouraged to eat a wide range of healthy food the other days.

I’ve made some changes already. I haven’t had chocolate since Ash Wednesday and I’m finding that I don’t miss it that much, substituting my afternoon snack of chocolate with an apple. I’m off all corn syrup fructose drinks, drinking about two traditional 12 oz Cokes a week, instead of about six a week of the bad coke. I also can get Sprite and Fanta Orange!  I just love the orange, wish they would have the grape too!

So, I’m giving it a ride. Because I don’t have to give up anything, just amounts a couple a days a week. One day will be Sunday, since it’s FFY day (fend for yourself). The other? I’m not sure. Tuesday I suspect.

Everybody is doing something it seems. Even Michael Moore walks every day for thirty minutes. He doesn’t care about losing weight. He cares about feeling better and he finds walking enjoyable.

I haven’t changed my basic premise. Diets don’t work. Because diet implies an end. And the end is where things go wrong again. For most of us at least. And I do think you can be big and healthy. And I don’t think ultra skinny is healthy or attractive. And I do believe in eating real food as opposed to boxes of crap. And I do just want to enjoy doing things as long as I can.

So there it is.

Call me a hypocrite, or a liar, or a dumb broad who finally woke up. I’m all, none or something else entirely. I’m just doing what I want to do. And I don’t care who thinks what.

But, seriously, what do you think?

And NO, that’s not me! I’m still rockin’ gorgeous!

 

Related articles

• How Intermittent Fasting Stacks Up Among Obesity-Related Myths, Assumptions, and Evidence-Backed Facts (livingfreeofnature.wordpress.com)
• The FastDiet (budgetcouponcooking.wordpress.com)
• Hot New Diet: Eat for 5 Days, Fast for 2 (newser.com)
• Why you should starve yourself a little bit each day (io9.com)

Food, Huh! What Is It Good For?

Tags

crap I learned, diets, food, life in the foothills, lifestyle

Okay, you caught me. I’m avoiding politics. Just for a bit. I’m tired of reporting on idiots. Tired up to the tippy-top of my noggin with fools and dopes, and all manner of misanthropes who permeate our political landscape. The last was the isolated butt-stupid “law enforcement” personnel across the country who have determined that “they will not enforce unconstitutional gun laws”. These missing-links to humanity are nothing but assholes with inverted mouths. To suggest that they haven’t thought this through would be to suggest that they can think in the first place.

So.

What ya wanna talk about today?

Food? I thought so.

I been reading about food lately. I read The China Study, and now I’m reading, Healthy at Every Size. I won’t bore you with long drawn out descriptions except to say that the first does an excellent job of proving that for health reasons, a plant-based diet is probably the very best any person could choose. Of course only a tiny segment of the population is or ever will be prepared to never eat a hamburger, a glorious slice of Vermont Cheddar, or a gnaw upon a spicy rib bone. The second, fairly echoes my conclusion but goes ever so much further stating once and for all, that diets don’t work, except again for a tiny segment of the population.

I tend to agree with both. I cannot do a plant-based diet. I’m not that tiny segment. I have tried every manner of diet, and been successful on most all. Until I had lost the weight and tried to eat NORMALLY again. I do mean normally too. I put the weight back on faster than a nearing 40-year-old says “I do”, and as then some. It’s all quite predictable, for diets interfere with the bodies own dynamics, and as soon as the diet is done, the body starts to repair the damage at it sees things. It does little good by the by to try to tell it otherwise. It has a mind of its own.

You see this has to do with systems that are evolutionarily developed over millions of years to care for the body (itself) when the brain sitting atop all this mass of flesh was not smart enough to make the right decisions. A whole mass of interconnected “stuff” in our brains, bloodstreams, and so forth released chemicals, slowed them down, pushed them about, all to regulate what we ate and when. For a lot of millions of years, we did just fine.

Then the mirror was developed. And we saw that fat butt, and that round tummy, and well we became insane. We started to artificially alter our size. And our inborn systems have been rebelling ever since. You diet, the brain says, “we’re starving–quick slow systems down!” So our metabolisms fall making our calorie output slower than normal. We become hungrier, and  the normal level of our satiety is thrown off kilter. So when we stop starving ourselves, we eat more, more often.

Then the food industry comes into play. They want to make money. They don’t care about our natural mechanisms for maintaining a healthy body. They use high fructose corn syrup because it is cheap. It goes into everything now. It messes up the “satiety” bells and whistles. So we eat more and more often. They use all kinds of additives that affect the proper release of various chemicals and so forth into our bloodstream that help us to decide what to eat and when. They mess it up. So we eat Cheetos, instead of an apple.

The government is complicit. They subsidize farmers who grow corn. It stays cheap so it can be the favored supplier of sweeteners. In Europe, by the by, you can hardly find soda pop that uses HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), because it’s BANNED as UNHEALTHY. Here you can’t find any without it. It’s in bread and almost all boxed and pre-made foods.

The government promotes the use of milk, although studies suggest it plays a part in breast and prostate cancer, onset juvenile diabetes, and cant’ be digested properly by tons of people. There are no good studies that say its a good way to avoid osteoporosis either.

Fast food places supersize foods because the french fries are so damn cheap that they can double the size at about only 40% of the cost. And over time, the consumer becomes used to the larger size, and considers it the “normal” portion. The more we eat, the more we crave it. We mess up our internal systems. Go into a McDonald’s and ask for a “small” fry. They will not have a clue what you are talking about. There is no such thing as “small” any more.

We don’t eat because we are hungry. And we don’t eat what our body needs, we eat what our drunken brains have been taught to crave. We eat because it is noon, and we eat a salad because we want to be “good” until evening when we are starved and we devour a bag of chips and a twenty-ounce coke.

Now, I’m not trying to talk you into anything here. But these two books are worth your attention before you start yet another weight-loss scheme. If only to alert you that you can’t depend on the government to keep you safe, nor frankly even a lot of the various medical associations. You cannot believe how many of the things like Pediatric Doctors Associations (and similar things) are heavily contributed to by all the “bad” food makers to get a nod. These associations have a maddeningly bad habit of altering their “advice” to include “reasonable” portions of soda, chocolate, and all the other things we know are not real food in return for those hefty “donations”.

I’m simply trying to make better food choices, and exercise because I find it fun, and because it makes me feel better. I’m trying to make most of my diet from real foods, and meals created from whole ingredients.  Being healthy is, at my age, increasingly much more important than whether I can pop my buns into a pair of sexy jeans. Way more.

Related articles

• High fructose corn syrup linked with diabetes (thenaturopathicnutritionist.com)
• Soybean Oil: One of the most harmful ingredients in processed foods (sott.net)
• Dr. Mercola: Why Americans Are Less Healthy, and Die Sooner Than People In Other Developed Nations (consciouslifenews.com)
• This is how the food industry makes Americans fat and hungry (rt.com)
• Fructose Sugar Tells the Brain To Keep Eating (livescience.com)
• Imaging study examines effect of fructose on brain regions that regulate appetite (esciencenews.com)
• Diabetes Rates Higher in Countries Using Lots of High Fructose Corn Syrup (nlm.nih.gov)

Exploding Brains

Tags

bailout, Barack Obama, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, diets, economy, GOP, HHS, Howard Dean, Humor, Iraq, Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Wynnona Judd

It makes no sense to me:

• Republicans continue to call a lot of the bail out bill “typical Democratic spending” instead of money to help the economy. Do they have some special way of “helping the economy” sans spending money?
• Republicans claim that Obama wants a spending bill that will put us in a financial hole forever, with no guarantee it will work. Do they have a plan that is guaranteed to work? If so, let’s here it!

***

Joy Behar, from the View had a point to make worth repeating:

Cudo’s to Obama for using the words “I screwed up” in reference to the tax problems of some of his appointees. We never heard that from Bush in eight screwd up years!

And a big 😛 supposed to be a tongue stuck out!–to those appointees who lied to the Prez, and sabotaged his economic drive because they didn’t come clean with their tax problems to him privately before all this!

***

If you need a few chuckles today please step over to Desert’s  Child, and read Katie’s post, What is Butt Dust? It’s that great little kid humor that just can’t help but curl your lips into a smile at the very least!

Or for more adult fare, don’t miss DistributorCapNY and his wacky sense of political humor here. You may never watch Imitation of Life the  same way again. The cast consists in part of Sarah Rice and Condi Palin!

***

Wynnona Judd was hawking her new album–about pain and joy. First song was about how she was going to keep trying at love. So I guess another marriage down the tubes. She’s also a “paid” spokesperson for Alli that new diet product that’s hot right now. The problem is, Wynnona was all sobbing and such on Oprah a good year or so ago, and was on the way to slimmery. If what I saw today is any indication, the Alli is not working much either. When will these people shut the Freakin’ up about their failed weight loss? The truth is, weight loss like most personal problems, are a combination of things personal to the individual. We are damned lucky if we can sort it out and find what works for US. It most likely won’t work for anyone else anyway.

***

There is something out there called Blog Roll Amnesty day. I don’t understand what it is. I love the blogs on my roll, most of them are current, I visit them regularly, thought I admit I don’t comment as often as I’d like.

***

Stop by Agitprop and read about how congressional aides invited Joe the Plumber to their meeting to discuss the economic package. The Contrarian brought this to my attention I think yesterday, and I kept saying “why?” I am still asking “why?” Perhaps the entire lot of them should be fired?  I am still asking “why?” Oh and before you lose you mind completely, it was the GOP staffers who sent out the invite. Making more sense now? Yes of course. Idiots do that kind of thing, idiot things.

***

Iowans do come up with ideas, and some of them aren’t half bad. How bout nominating Howard Dean as Secretary of Health and Human Services? So asks Century of the Common Iowan. Not a half bad idea in my estimation. Dean had a lot to do with Obama’s win I think and I also think he hasn’t received the cudos he deserves. He’s a doctor too. CCI laid out his further qualifications at Huff Po.

***

If you didn’t just hate Rush Limbaugh enough, here’s another gem:

Limbaugh: Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the heads up!

***

And finally, I recall a chill going down my spine when I learned on Inauguration day that Darth Cheney was not going home to Wyoming. I’m sure that thrilled Wyomians, seeing they could keep out that pollutant, but still. It seems my undefined fears were not baseless. I think our sick piece of sludge is still trying to run a shadow government. Emptywheel gives the details that suggest he is behind efforts to unhinge the Obama plan to remove our military presence from Iraq. Read it and get scared!