Refuse to Regain : Pre-Maintenance & Maintenance Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#286 ^

Thu, Feb-23-12, 04:26

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

February 22, 2012

The Menopause Myth: Why It Can Be EASIER to Lose Weight Later

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

It's always healthy to be skeptical, particularly where dietary pronouncements are concerned.

In the past year, I've been asked dozens of times about HCG. Everyone is talking. It's all over the media. Does it work? The answer should be obvious to anyone. If HCG was any kind of obesity cure, 3 out of 4 people you know would be taking it already. The first pill or treatment that comes along and can really zap obesity will burn through America with such rapidity that we won't know what hit us! Lesson? Just because someone or some newspaper article says it's so, doesn't make it so. Skepticism is healthy in the diet world.

What many years of obesity practice have taught me is that we should also be skeptical of what passes for conventional diet wisdom. Alot of it is just plain wrong. And because we accept it as fact, we lose out on many opportunities to change our lives.

One of my least favorite "wisdoms" is that weight gain is inevitable after menopause. I wrote about this a couple of years ago in my post on weight loss after fifty. As time goes on and I work with more and more peri and post menopausal women, I am more and more certain that lower weights can be maintained without difficulty despite age and hormonal status. Further, I think it's often easier for women to get healthy when they are past 45.

The key to weight loss and maintenance at any age is the same: a complete overhaul of the foods you eat. This seems so simple and obvious, but practically no one who goes on a diet does it. The vast majority simply returns to a modified version of their original diet. Because modern foods are addictive, this modified version becomes the full-blown version in very short order.

The key to weight control after menopause is the strict limitation of starches and sugars, and that includes grains, whole grains and the flour-based products made from them (pasta, breads, and so on). As I explained in my earlier post, this is because we tend to be more insulin resistant as we age. This causes us to make more insulin in response to these foods, which in turn causes easier fat storage and an inability for stored fat to be released. If you can make the change to fruits and vegetables rather than grains, potatoes, breads and cereals (and you can learn how to do it in books like Refuse to Regain or others on Paleo or Primal diet) you will lose weight and your age will be immaterial.

But there are also reasons why weight loss and maintenance is actually easier for those who are post-menopausal.

One of the major reasons is the empty nest. Feeding growing children and ravenous teen-agers makes it extremely hard to adhere to personal dietary rules. If you have kids but they are now out of the house, you will find it hugely easier to make your own plans and stick to them. Most of my patients report (and this has been my own experience) that husbands are usually willing to be flexible about eating. They will often follow along even if they've eaten differently at an earlier stage in life.

A second reason that it's easier to make change is that social pressures begin to modulate. A couple of years ago, Don and I took a trip to Las Vegas. While sitting at one of the enormous breakfast buffets at the Mirage, I had to laugh. All of the people under 45 were tucking into huge portions of bacon, eggs, danish, muffins and potatoes. Those who looked to be over 50 were eating egg whites, little bowls of granola with skim milk, and prunes! Getting further along in life puts you in mind of the final third of the journey. You and your friends will start to be more conscious of health and longevity. Sayng that you no longer eat foods that make you fat and that you want to reach 95 in good health will no longer elicit eye-rolls. You'll be admired, not scorned.

Another factor that I mentioned in my earlier post is the greater ability to be yourself that comes at mid-life. The opinions that others have of you matter alot less now, and your tendency to speak your mind and live life by your own rules increases. Use this new freedom by declaring yourself and your rules for eating. You've earned the right to make your own way.

If you no longer are feeding a family at home, it's a simpler task to clean your kitchen and vow never to allow fat-promoting starches, sugars and junk foods to enter. The need to entertain and cook is often lessened. You've probably had that role for many years and perhaps younger generations will take on all or part of it now. Minimizing baking and complicated entertaining can be very helpful when you are trying to make permanent healthful changes. Keep things simple for a while and see how much easier it is to control the food environment.

Exercise is a vital component of health from mid life on. You can get away with being sedentary when you're young, but it's for sure catching up with you by the time you pass 50. The good news is that it's also a myth that exercise ability lessens with age. While no one wants to get injured, many of us take to our couch at the first hint of soreness. We are not as fragile as we think. Unless you have a very real reason not to exercise, get out there and do activities that get you excited. If this guy can run the marathon at 100, you can train to walk a 5K, shake your booty in a zumba class or conquer the downward dog.

Finally, changing your life and eating habits requires belief in your ability to get things done. That's not something many people have in their 20s and 30s. But after you've built your career, your family, your life, you clearly know how to get things accomplished. Make the same kinds of plans you did to get other important things done in your life and take on your goal with a passion. This is an advantage for mid and later lifers. Use it.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...ight-later.html

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#287 ^

Tue, Feb-28-12, 13:07

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

February 28, 2012

Traveling Outside of Your Head and Into the Rest of Your World

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

It's my contention that most of us spend the majority of our time living in the small space above our neck. It's easy to do, since our brain and 4 of our 5 senses (sight,smell, hearing and taste) reside there. But living in our heads is kind of like living in the capital of a huge country with beautiful and varied terrain...and never venturing out of the city.

It's easy to govern badly, and if those of us who live in the capital don't understand the concerns of the working people out there in the rural areas, we are unlikely to serve them well. Instead, we may simply send down edicts that suit us, but don't do a thing for them.

I am generally loathe to inject politics into this blog, but occasionally the analogy is just too apt. It's easy for male politicians to go on about the reproductive choices of women and for panels comprised solely of men to prattle about whether or not women should be able to make their own decisions about complicated moral issues like abortion. They don't live in a woman's landscape. ( Neither did the man who invented the mammogram or the endometrial biopsy, by the way.)

When you're living in the landscape of your head, it's also very easy to decide that the huge, cheesy, fatty meal you're about to eat looks pleasing. When the folks out in the boondocks of your stomach and intestines start to complain, it's equally easy to send some antacid their way. Their concerns aren't your concern back there in the land of Above the Neck. At least not until a major revolution.

I love modern medicine and I'm awed by and grateful for the opportunities it gives us. But taking medicines for conditions that could be cured by eating and life habits simply reflects the choice to stay in the comfort of the capital city above the neck, while ignoring the real concerns of the rest of the country.

So what's the best way to learn about the whole land you live in? Go on a road trip!! Once you've visited the mountains, the valleys and the plains; once you've met the good folks that send the product of their hard labor back to the capital day after day, it will be harder see the world as that small space within your skull.

Perhaps you have some favorite methods for staying in touch with the world below your head. For me, the best method by far is physical challenge. When I'm training for a run, trying to keep up with a 20-something in aerobics class, or ardently trying to put a tennis ball past the reach of a very fit opponent, the connection with my body is complete. Purposeful exercise that tries for a goal asks for total cooperation between the brain and the rest of you. Non-purposeful exercise, like watching TV while on the treadmill, is certainly good for your heart, but makes it easier to stay in that comfort zone above the neck. Try training for something or working toward a goal and you'll see the difference.

At our last Refuse to Regain group meeting, we were treated to a presentation by a meditation expert. For the past 30 years, this very evolved woman has been meditating and teaching others to do the same. Her mission is to spread the benefits of this practice, something that she does by giving her time generously and at no cost. Since attending her talk, I have started meditating again, something that I have tried periodically over the past 20 years. I believe that it can be a powerful tool for connecting our head to our physical body. Meditative practice involves being aware of breath, which immediately connects mind and the rest of us. It cultivates a feeling of peace, spirituality and gratitude. It is not until we recognize the value of the gift we have been given in the form of our physical body that we truly want to protect it.

Many of my patients tell me that they avoid looking at their whole body in the mirror. Some don't even own a mirror that reflects their full length. We spend our lives in modern America distracting ourselves with cell phones, TV, texting and almost constant connection to media. We need to stop, look, and listen. Ignoring the mirror, the scale, and that recent photograph of yourself is a temporary fix, but ultimately it's just a way for the rest of your "country" to deteriorate further.

For all the books on diet and all the headlines about obesity, most people seem relatively disinterested in how to remake their lives. They are willing to accept the conventional wisdom (eat less, exercise more) and when it doesn't work for them, blame it all on a bad metabolism. One of the keys to treating your country well is to use your head to become fascinated with and involved in a grand experiment. How can your country become the healthiest country in the world? This life-work means casting off previous beliefs about food and diet and doing true research and field work. Reading, exploring, and trying various practices and theories are key to this very important effort. Those of you who read this blog are already doing this, and it's a great thing.

How do you connect with the larger world that is you? Once you have made this profound connection, taking care of yourself is no longer a tiresome burden, it's an exciting and fascinating prospect and a source of great joy.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...your-world.html

#288 ^

Fri, Mar-30-12, 12:43

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

March 30, 2012

Mind vs. Body: Who's In Control?

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Hi everybody! I'm back from a couple of weeks of vacation in the sun and my solar batteries are feeling nicely recharged. Thanks to those who wrote and asked about my absence. All is well.

On my return, I found a long email from a reader (let's call her Ms.X) that piqued my interest. She wrote about a phenomenon which she has dubbed "Passive Dieting" and which can be defined as the mistaken belief of some dieters that the body is in control and knows best. Her hypothesis is that Passive Dieters are hesitant to take the reins and thus control the process of weight loss and maintenance mindfully. Here are some quotes from her email:

Passive Dieting is a way of removing yourself from the driver's seat and acting as though your body pilots itself. You're not in control; your body is in control--and it's a mysterious, fickle entity, operating independently from you, with its own agenda, its own demands, and its own will. You're just along for the ride.

I would guess you've encountered these types of attitudes:

"No matter what I do, the scale hates me. The scale is evil!"

"I'm craving _____. My body must be telling me I need it."

"I can't get any lower than this stalled 'set point', because my body likes this weight."

"Just let [whatever plan] work its magic!"

"My body must think I'm starving and that's why I'm not losing weight."

"I need to listen to my body and eat whenever I'm hungry."

"You need to eat more calories to trick your body into releasing fat."

"Even if you're not losing pounds, are you losing inches?"

To me, there is an irrational belief contained within this common type of "body talk", in which "your body" does things and you're at its mercy. Personally, if I "listened to my body", I'd probably still be extremely overweight. My body wasn't "telling me" what I should be eating or what my portions should be, or how a person at my current weight needs to eat. I had to dictate those things.

My body never "liked" being at a heavier weight; bodies don't "like" things, and if they did, they wouldn't "like" being obese. No plan ever worked its "magic" for me while I sat back and let it work. I had to work it.

The Passive Diet Talk turns the process into something that is happening to us rather than something we are creating and actively fostering. This is just as important for the psychological components of weight loss as the physical actions, in my opinion. We create cravings and attitudes--and magnify them. We can learn to shut them down, even as persistent and annoying as they are sometimes. Your body is not "telling you" it wants fast food. My body doesn't "need" chocolate or ice cream just because I'm expecting my period. If I crave that stuff, that's because my mouth wants it or my thoughts are glamorizing it.

These childish attitudes truly bother me, because we need to be in charge of our weight loss and maintenance--decisively and actively--rather than believing we are limited by the capricious will of our bodies.

It's not "our bodies" that steer us wrong. Not on "their" own, anyway. It's our unwillingness to accept and inhabit the role of "pilot". It's the fears and excuses we hide behind, and the distancing mechanisms we use to protect ourselves. That doesn't mean we're bad people; it just means we're a little deluded. I'm sure we all would rather avoid uncomfortable self-confrontation; it's not a lot of fun. But the answer is not to distance ourselves from "our bodies" and act as if "they" control us.

Since Ms. X asked my opinion on these things, I will offer it here. I hope that you readers will respond as well, because the interface between the body and mind is a truly complicated issue and the ability to (at times) willfully exert control over biological urges is definitely a key to success in weight maintenance.

There are a number of lessons I have learned during my journey as a doctor and counselor to those trying to lose weight. The primary one is that there is quite a bit of biologic variability in the way our bodies react to an unhealthy food environment. Secondarily, there is a wide degree of variability in the psychological elements that overlay weight problems. Psychological tie-ins may be completely absent or may utterly dominate an individual's efforts at weight control. I believe in the ability to exert control but I also believe that the body does "speak" to us with cravings and compulsions. The intensity of this "talk" is highly individual and while no one has an easy time controlling it, some people are more able to find strategies that work to disable the dialogue.

Our ability to exert control over biological urges and to stay focused is not infinite. Studies have shown that repeated attempts at exerting focused attention eventually break down. So, I am a believer in the importance of devoting more early maintenance attention to creating a truly pleasurable new life that avoids old triggers. We are safe on the maintenance island when movies are no longer linked to popcorn but feel just as good with grapes, or when the Pasta Alfredo on the menu just no longer looks as good as the Grilled Salmon Salad. The reason that I believe that we can get to this point is that I myself have experienced it. In my life prior to weight gain I was a huge and uncontrolled eater who weighed 110 pounds at 5'6". I loved nothing more than hot fudge sundaes, loaves of bread, cookies, pasta and french fries. Today, after about 10 years as a 90% Primarian, I have no particular craving for any of these things but truly and honestly enjoy eating plain, clean, fresh, simple foods. Like meditation skills, success comes from the practice. Continuing to eat this way and to associate it with pleasurable feelings of lightness, health, and attractiveness carves a deep path that no longer feels like a desperate trudge up a mountain.

Does our body "speak" to us? Yes. And is our body in control of us? Ultimately, yes. 99% of our body processes run on auto-pilot, from keeping the levels of potassium, sodium and about 100 other elements stable in your blood, to telling you when to eat, when to sleep, when to breathe and when to eliminate. We can temporarily override these messages, but eventually we do have to obey the body's imperatives. But the body's messages are meant to help, not harm. What is most important for us to understand, is that the body is no longer sending beneficial messages when we expose it to confusing and harmful environments.i These "wrong" messages are the ones we must tease out and learn to circumvent.

I've written before about my feeling that the body does not care about excess fat or even act as if it is aware of it. Our bodies react swiftly and with stunning specificity to any threats to our health, creating rafts of antibodies to combat bacteria, sending complicated clotting cells and chemicals to staunch bleeding, and releasing a host of mind and body sharpening chemicals when we need to flee from danger. Yet someone who is hugely threatened by a fat mass of over 100 pounds, does not benefit from bodily help. The body is silent, almost uncaring. It continues to send the same messages of hunger (or even more urgent messages) than it did before. These messages are not right for the organism, but not because the body has made an error. In my view, the confusin occurs simply because we were not genetically programmed during a time when massive fat storage was possible. We don't have the programming to respond to it and so the succeeding messages are wrong. Our bodies therefore behave as if fat didn't exist, and this vastly compounds the problem.

The work of weight loss and weight maintenance is the work of putting our bodies in the position to give us the correct messages. This means pulling ourselves out of the modern food environment and the sedentary world in which we live. It is a tough task indeed, and one that involves accepting the role of "pilot" that Ms. X aptly describes. But my argument would be that neither you nor your body is in ultimate control. What ultimately controls us is the effect of the environment we live in. Control your environment as much as you can and you will effectively control the messaging of your body, making the job of pilot a much easier one.

I've often used the analogy of an island when I've talked about the life of successful weight maintainers. To master weight once and for all, don't be a sometime visitor, pick up and move to the island with all your belongings and with a happy heart.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...in-control.html

#289 ^

Thu, Jun-28-12, 01:42

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

June 14, 2012

Mayor Bloomberg's War vs. The Freedom to Eat Whatever

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

It's the debate du jour. Should the government step in to control health behaviors or do such measures represent the dreaded "Nanny State"? In the past week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his latest front in the battle on obesity. First it was the banning of trans-fats from restaurant kitchens, then menu labeling. Now Bloomberg is going after liquid calories with a ban on sugary drinks that exceed 16 ounces. This has raised many concerns, among the fear of continued banning. Clearly there are endless unhealthy products in the marketplace. Once the precedent for food bans is set, the possibilities are infinite. While this is a point worth debating, it is not the issue I want to speak to today.

The response to government intervention in eating behaviors always comes down to a defense of individual freedoms, a sacred cow to most Americans. Can we force people to do things that are healthy or are we abridging a basic right to live freely in doing so? If the issue were simply this, the answer would be an easy one. Individual rights are paramount. But the issue is not simple at all. Unhealthy behaviors are turning us into a sick, obese, diabetic society with health care costs that are untenable. We all suffer the burden of these costs, so the issue is no longer individual, but collective. The very future of our nation is impacted. This,too, is an important point for discussion.

But I want to talk about something else.

Has if occurred to you that the food freedoms we so long to protect may be something quite different?What happens if we are actually NOT free to choose at all, if in fact the freedom we believe we are protecting is simply the defense of a gripping addiction? Suddenly, the argument changes. Should we protect the right to choose something that is, in fact, not freely chosen? This is how I see this issue and it is a perspective that I have not heard discussed.

An increasingly significant line of research confirms the fact that sugar and the things that become sugar after digestion (i.e. grains and starchy carbs) are addictive. In a recent segment on 60 Minutes, Dr. Sanjay Gupta subjected himself to an MRI while sipping Coca Cola. The MRI shows an immediate hit to the brain's pleasure centers, the very areas which are stimulated by drugs. Animal behaviorists confirm the fact that animals will choose to overconsume pleasurable substances both in the lab and in the wild. Like other species, we are suckers for a food high. Once hooked, we can't figure out why we keep going back for more. Our world has started looking alot like a lab in which we are drenched in a bath of addictive foods and observed by those who create them. The foods are then tweaked to provide further "irresistibility". It is the "right to choose" these foods that we fight for. Is it really a choice? Is free will really involved?

I am always struck by the following observation: suggest that people become vegetarian and they are quite willing to consider it. This eating style eliminates an entire food group, yet it falls within the range of possible diets for most people. On the other hand, ask someone to eliminate carbohydrates other than fruits and vegetables and you will be accused of nutritional extremity. A life deficient in bread, cake and pasta seems like a punishment. I submit that the inability to imagine life without carbs testifies to the degree of pleasurable addictive response created by these foods. The problem is not that we need freedom to choose any foods we like, it is that foods we like choose us..and addict us....to our great detriment.

I don't think we need worry that wholesale food bans will pop up across the nation like so many McDonald and Burger King franchises. I do think we need to worry, however, that we will go on blissfully ignoring the damage being wrought by addictive pleasure foods, and even fighting to defend our right to eat and be consumed by them. Mayor Bloomberg's gutsy initiatives are important and to be commended. Individually they will not solve the obesity problem of course. But they call national attention to the degree to which we have fallen under the spell of modern sweet and starchy food. They give cover to companies like Disney who has now called for a ban on the advertising of junk food on its cable channel. They get headlines and start conversations. And perhaps they open a few eyes to the idea that the foods that are killing us have so seduced us, that we may need a "nanny" to remind us of the truth.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...t-whatever.html

#290 ^

Thu, Jun-28-12, 01:44

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

June 22, 2012

What Causes Weight Gain? What I Believe Today

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

I have now been specializing in obesity for close to 22 years. With each passing day I become more certain that the endlessly repeated weight "truths" are utterly wrong. We are doing irreparable harm to ourselves and our society by believing in them. These supposed truths? Overeating makes you fat. Exercise makes you thin. Calories are the be all and end all of weight control. People who are overweight lack willpower. Obesity is, in some way, a moral failing.

The body is far too complicated for such (excuse me) dumb explanations.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know that the answers we've been giving (eat less and exercise more) are leading us down the garden path.

Here's where I stand today.

The entire body is built on homeostasis, (simply a fancy word for balance). This balance is achieved automatically through hugely sophisticated systems which monitor each aspect of our biology and keep each controlled within a narrow range. Small perturbations in normal are enough to make us very ill indeed, as for example when the ph of our blood becomes too acidic, or the calcium levels get too high. To kill someone, we need only overwhelm the capacity of our body to balance potassium. Inject enough of it and death will quickly ensue.

There are many people in the world (and each of you knows several) who can eat without much thought and exercise sporadically or not at all, yet remain thin. This is as it should be. The process of staying at stable weight is another one of the homeostatic mechanisms of the body. Under conditions of normal balance, your body knows who to choose to either burn food or store it in order to keep you at a stable weight. Just as you do not have to run to the gym and sweat to burn off the salt you ate at the local deli, you don't have to run to the gym to correctly apportion food so long as balance functions are working.

Thus, I see weight gain as a dysfunction of the normal balance apparatus for fat storage. This leads to two interesting questions:

1. Where is this balance mechanism located?

2. What might be the reasons the balance function is injured or broken?

I believe that the answer to question one is most likely the insulin system. We know that insulin controls fat storage and that excessive insulin produced when the body starts to resist normal levels leads to obesity. We know too that the elimination of carbohydrates, as demonstrated by diets like the Atkins diet, Primal diets, and low carb plans that go back as far back as the Banting diets of 19th century England, cause and preserve weight loss. Carbohydrates call for insulin, where animal proteins ask for very little. Thus these diets lower insulin. Low levels allow for fat burning rather than fat storage. In truth, most standard diets also vastly reduce carb consumption because they rely on calorie cutting. If you are only eating 1200 calories per day, the total carbohydrate consumption cannot be very high. There may be many other pieces and parts to this explanation, but why bother about them? Controlling carb consumption works. Eating diets that are made up of natural carbs like low sugar fruits and vegetables and high quality animal proteins work exceedingly well for weight loss and maintenance. I believe we have made an end run around the broken system when we eat this way.

The answer to the second question is much more problematic. We may have become increasingly broken in the insulin department as a result of chemicals in our world. We are certainly exposed to enough of them. And we know that certain drugs, like SSRI antidepressants and many antipsychotics are strong promoters of weight gain. If these chemical compounds can make us fat, why not others?

Another explanation may be simply that we have passed a crucial limit of tolerance for insulin stimulating foods. Children born since the second half of the 20th century have been exposed to increasing levels of carbohydrates in utero. Perhaps we have created a number of generations who are already weakened in the insulin department. Further repeated stimulation of this system by eating carbs multiply at every meal and snack for years on end leads to its destruction.

A combination of the two elements is most likely. And there are many other potential explanations.

However, knowing the reason we break does not necessarily help us. There are no drugs in the pipeline and no particularly promising lines of research at the moment. What does help us is an understanding of what is broken and how we can work around it. I have described that above and in my book.

What about overeating? Well, just like the ability of a potassium infusion to kill you, any homeostatic system can be overwhelmed by enormous overconsumption. There are some obese people out there who fit this description. These are people who are consuming 30,000 calories a day, or who have binge eating disorder, or have other derangements of normal eating. However, the vast majority of patients I see and overweight people I speak to, eat within normal American limits. That is, they eat too much but not at a level that should explain their degree of overweight. They often eat similar amounts of food to what is consumed by thinner friends. They describe gaining weight when they "just look at" certain foods. In other words, they pay more for what they eat. I theorize that these people have broken weight homeostasis.

It is not easy to become a Primal or Primarian eater at first. But I assure you that with each day that you eat this way, it will become easier and more preferred. The power of making that end run around what is malfunctioning is intense, and the freedom that comes from eating without gaining weight is completely delightful. Finally, as you know, I believe that the original diet of humans is the healthiest diet we can adopt. Without the modern elements, your diet will allow your body to run on the proper fuel for the first time.

The voice inside of you that says that you can't give up bread, cereal, rice and cake is not you talking. It is the voice of the food itself. Try purging yourself of these things and you will be amazed that in the ensuing quiet, you will be able to hear your own healthy inner voice for the first time.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...ieve-today.html

#291 ^

Sun, Jul-01-12, 05:27

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

June 30, 2012

JAMA Study Confirms Maintenance Benefits of Low Carb Diet

By Barbara Berkeley, MD

The debate about whether a calorie is a calorie rages on, but not I think, in the minds of most successful weight maintainers. The same may be said for successful dieters who reflexively cut carbohydrates from their menu when they start a weight loss plan. While their thought may be to reduce calories, something quite different may be occurring when they ditch the bread and pasta for meals of chicken breast and salad.

Too few scientific studies have looked at the metabolic differences that occur in response to differing nutrients. Some readers may find my continued harping on the insulin system simplistic, but it has been my way of conceptualizing a consistent observation: limiting carbohydrate in the diet to natural fruit and vegetable sources appears to decrease hunger, clamp down on cravings, preserve weight maintenance, and promote health. While I am well aware of those readers who say that they do perfectly well eating other carbs, I still think that they are likely to represent a minority. In my own experience, there is nothing so threatening to the maintenance of long term weight as a return to modern carb consumption. When patients come back to me with a significant regain, there has uniformly been a reassertion of carbs and carb craving in their lives.

The June 27th issue of JAMA has a study that comes from researchers at Harvard and Baylor . It is neatly done and quite thought provoking. The idea was to induce about a 13% weight loss in overweight men and women. These would-be maintainers were then placed on one of three diets whose calories were calculated to preserve that weight loss. But the types of calories in each diet were different and were constructed to follow one of three models. Each study subject was given each of the three diets in turn, with the order of the diets being random.

The maintenance diets were as follows:

Low Fat: This diet followed the more traditionally prescribed guidelines for weight control being low in fat and high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables. (60% carbs/20% Fat/20% protein)

Low Glycemic Index: This diet actually achieved a moderate (not low) glycemic load by replacing some grains and starches with healthy fats, fruits, vegetables and legumes. (40% carbs/ 40% fat/ 20% protein)

Very Low Carbohydrate: This diet was modeled on the Atkins diet. (10% carbs/ 60% fat/ 30% protein)

Each diet was eaten in random order for four weeks. The subjects were tested to determine whether their metabolic rate (the speed and efficiency of calorie burn) was affected by the varying nutrient compositions. They were also evaluated for insulin sensitivity, cortisol, leptin, thyroid hormone, and subjective levels of hunger and satisfaction among a number of other parameters.

The fascinating result was that both resting and total metabolic rate was significantly greater when people ate the very low carb diet. In fact, the difference in metabolic advantage between the low fat and low carb diet was about 300 calories per day, “an effect corresponding with the amount of energy typically expended in 1 hour of moderate-intensity physical activity.”

In addition, the study revealed a number of other beneficial advantages to the low-carb diet. These included better sensitivity to the action of insulin, and improvement in markers for metabolic syndrome. Leptin is a hormone which is often invoked as a reason for failed maintenance. Leptin should theoretically decrease food intake and one would assume that higher levels would be a good thing. However we know that obese people (and obese lab animals too) have a resistance to leptin. Levels may be high but they don’t work appropriately. In this study, leptin levels were lowest in the low carb group, but leptin sensitivity appeared to be restored by eating this way.

There were two negatives to the low carb diet, both related to inflammatory stress. Two stress markers were elevated in this diet: cortisol and C Reactive Protein. However, the diet used for the low carb choice was a 60% fat plan based on Atkins. We know that certain fats, particularly saturated fats, can be proinflammatory. Once again, there was no testing of another kind of low carb diet: a primal style diet that eliminates grains and starches but preserves fruits and vegetables and which uses lower fat protein choices. I don’t need to tell you that my belief is that this diet would have triumphed over the others.

But enough of my biases. We finally have a study that shows that different foods create different responses in the body and that calories are only one property of food. The other properties of food can easily trump calories by activating differing pathways through digestion and metabolism.

A calorie is just a calorie that’s true, but unlike what we’ve been led to believe, it is not the be all and end all of how the body burns or stores food. Can we finally begin to get past this simplistic and unhelpful maxim?

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...-carb-diet.html

#292 ^

Sun, Jul-01-12, 05:36

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

June 30, 2012

Waiting for Gateau: Will a New Weight Loss Drug Let Us Eat Again?

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

This week saw the approval of a new weight loss medication by the FDA. It is the first time in 13 years that a drug for obesity has been green-lighted. Lorcaserin (lor cah SAYR' in), which will be marketed as "Belviq" (which sounds like birth control pill or a hearing aid to me), clawed its way to an FDA go ahead after initial rejection on safety grounds. The door may now be open for other hopefuls like Contrave and Qnexa. Investors certainly hope so, because with obesity dogging one in three Amercans, weight loss drugs can explode out of the gate with a consumer market like no other. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that a reasonably effective weight loss pill could become the best selling drug of all time.

An understanding of this dynamic is what has led the FDA to be circumspect in its consideration of new meds. It has already been necessary to unring the bell with Phen-Fen and Meridia and the huge potential distribution of any new anti-fat pill means that millions are immediately exposed to any unknown risks. In fact, the FDA has asked Arena Pharmaceuticals to conduct a number of studies on heart and stroke risk after the drug is in use. Those who take these drugs should be aware that they are essentially part of a huge, ongoing clinical trial.

Having said this, there is a risk to any new drug. As we know so well, medications that seemed safe in pre-market testing and later enjoy years of use can turn out to be bad actors. This was true of the anti-inflammatory Vioxx and the widely prescribed diabetes drug Avandia, both of which were pulled from the market due to heart risks.

But let's get to the heart of the matter shall we? Can diet drugs work and should we take them?

Like most questions that involve obesity, the answer is complicated.

If we assume that a safe drug could be developed, we are still left with a central problem: treatment with medication for obesity is based on a concept that (in my opinion) is wrong. The principle? That weight loss itself is the endpoint. Weight loss interventions that target only the acute state (weighing too much) are useless. Obesity represents a metabolic dysfunction or dysregulation that occurs when a susceptible person eats the modern diet. This dysfunction is not eliminated or even made better by loss of weight. The formerly heavy person feels better, but this state is temporary since the problem remains and quickly reasserts itself. Thus, the need for books, blogs, and an ever-increasing focus on weight maintenance. This seems obvious to me, and probably to you as well (since you are reading a maintenance blog), but it is not obvious to anyone else.

Weight maintenance, and not weight loss, remains the true problem for our country. Yet we continue to devote millions to the development of drugs that promote weight loss. It's nonsensical. Even treatments that last beyond the initial loss like surgery, lose effectiveness when the ability to eat the modern diet returns.

You will note that Belviq, like other weight drugs before it, will carry the restriction that it be used only in those who have a BMI of greater than 30 or of 27 with co-morbid conditions. This means that it cannot be used in those who successfully lose weight. If the drug is the primary intervention, the reward for exposing oneself to medication risk is very likely to be regain.

Drugs are not meant to work as social agents which block the consequences of behaviors that are harmful to us. We could, for example, try to develop drugs that mitigate the harm of smoking so that we could keep on puffing away if we wanted to. But no one suggests that. There are so many potential harms to smoking that a single drug that protects us would be unlikely. More to the point, it seems senseless to try to make a bad habit healthier. We can extend this to weight loss medications. No single drug is likely to protect us from the consequences of eating a diet to which we are intolerant. Yet this is what we all seem to be seeking: a pill that both lets us have our cake and stop worrying about it.

Belviq is a minimally useful agent for weight loss if studies prove to be correct. It's not going to be the magic bullet. Yet it might have been a useful drug for solidifying a year or two of weight maintenance, perhaps cutting appetite enough to allow maintainers to establish new habits during a treatment phase. Unfortunately, the drug is already being heralded as yet another way to shrink without thinking.

As if that were enough.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...-eat-again.html

#293 ^

Wed, Aug-08-12, 12:57

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

August 08, 2012

The "Slow Metabolism" Thing: Not a Useful Construct

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Nothing better illustrates our poor understanding of weight balance and obesity than our continued belief that something is wrong with our "metabolism". Most people who present to doctors for weight loss insist that their metabolism is "slow". After all, this is what a parade of magazine articles and books say. Further, these sources claim that metabolism is a single entity which can be "boosted" in some way via various interventions. This belief is so entrenched and accepted that no one bothers to look at its veracity.

I have written about this issue before in the posts The Faulty Metabolism Myth and Stuck on Fill. The first post addresses metabolism and the weight loss process. The second discusses the reason that some people gain weight so easily. Neither has to do with "metabolism" as we currently conceive of it.

In the past month, a very interesting study shed additional light on the metabolism issue. Researchers from a diverse group of schools including Hunter College, Yale, and Washington University undertook a study of metabolism in a tribe of hunter-gatherers. This group, the Hadza, has survived in Tanzania into modernity. They remain completely traditional-- hunting and foraging for food and eating what humans ate for millenia prior to agriculture.

The point of the study was to compare calorie burning in the Hadza with that of people living in sedentary western cultures. The assumption that we gain weight in modern society because we don't move around enough is so entrenched that it is a given and proving it was the goal of this research.

Metabolism has many pieces and parts, but for simplicity's sake, we can look at two basic elements. We can roughly say that metabolism is composed of resting metabolic rate (RMR) which equals the amount of calories we burn daily at rest plus whatever calories we burn in physical activity. The total is called total energy expenditure (TEE). There are some other contributions to metabolism such as calories given off by the burning of food, but we can discount these for purposes of this discussion.

Because hunter gatherers live in the wild and have to hunt their food with a bow and arrow, the Hadza investigators hypothesized what seemed to be the obvious: that Hadza TEE would be much higher than ours. It wasn't. Here is a quote from the study, published in the journal PLoS One:

"We compared energy expenditure and body composition among the Hadza, measured using the doubly labeled water method [18], to similar data from other populations taken from previous studies [19]–[26] and new measurements of U.S. adults (Methods). Given their traditional, physically active lifestyle, we expected the Hadza to have lower body fat than individuals in Western populations. Further, if current models for obesity are correct, the Hadza, with their natural diet and lack of mechanization, should expend more energy than individuals living in market economies with comparatively sedentary lifestyles and highly-processed, sugar-rich diets.

Contrary to expectations, measures of TEE among Hadza adults were similar to those in Western (U.S. and Europe) populations. In multivariate comparisons of TEE controlling for FFM and age, Hadza women’s energy expenditure was similar to that of Western women (n = 186) and Hadza men’s TEE was similar to Western men (n = 53); lifestyle had no effect on TEE (women: F(139) = 0.18, p = 0.67; men: F(49) = 0.17, p = 0.68)"

Particularly fascinating was the fact that TEE was not correlated with daily travel distance. Whether the Hadza walked alot, was a lactating woman, or did more sedentary work, the TEE remained consistent. These results led researchers to two really important conclusions. The first:

The similarity in TEE among Hadza hunter-gatherers and Westerners suggests that even dramatic differences in lifestyle may have a negligible effect on TEE, and is consistent with the view [4]–[7], [16] that differences in obesity prevalence between populations result primarily from differences in energy intake rather than expenditure.

In other words, increasing exercise will probably not increase total energy expenditure--- despite our desire to believe differently. In fact, this study showed that the degree of fatness displayed by Hadza members did not correlate either with their physical activity levels or their total energy expenditure. Similar results have been found with western populations. This data puts the responsibility for obesity squarely on food intake and utterly downplays "metabolic" contributions.

But the second conclusion is the one that is a complete eye-opener for me and makes so much sense that I find it stunning:

We hypothesize that TEE may be a relatively stable, constrained physiological trait for the human species, more a product of our common genetic inheritance than our diverse lifestyles. A growing body of work on mammalian metabolism is revealing that species’ metabolic rates reflect their evolutionary history, as TEE responds over evolutionary time to ecological pressures such as food availability and predation risk [49], [50]. In this light, it is interesting to consider human TEE as an evolved trait shaped by natural selection.

Translation: Everything in the body is homeostatically controlled to keep it within a certain range. This is true for human levels of potassium, calcium, sodium, sugar, the acid/base balance of our blood, our body temperature and countless other parameters. Even though we challenge the body (by eating salty pastrami sandwiches, acidifying our blood via the consumption of acid-making foods, and eating levels of sugar that are hugely unanticipated for example) the body is able to wrestle things back into the narrow zone of the permissible. So too, it appears, it is with metabolism. Perhaps metabolic rate is predestined and needs to be tightly controlled. Perhaps no matter whether we add exercise or take it away, we will basically burn the same number of calories per day. Sure, we can exercise for 10 hours a day like the Olympic athletes and overwhelm that system for a time. But for the vast majority of us, it appears that metabolism is a given and that physical activity may have little to do with it.

This begs another question. If the body can keep everything stable, why can't it keep weight stable when we eat too much? That, dear reader, is discussed in many other posts on this site. Suffice it to say that I believe that weight gain occurs when we damage the mechanism that normally decides whether to burn or to store food. It is not our "metabolism" that is broken, but our food partitioning machinery --- a dysfunction that, in my view, is either caused by or vastly encouraged by eating large amounts of sugars, grains and starches over a lifetime.

http://refusetoregain.com/refusetor...-construct.html

#294 ^

Mon, Aug-27-12, 01:52

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

August 26, 2012

Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout - NYTimes.com

DARWIN isn’t required reading for public health officials, but he should be. One reason that heart disease, diabetes and obesity have reached epidemic levels in the developed world is that our modern way of life is radically different from the hunter-gatherer environments in which our bodies evolved. But which modern changes are causing the most harm?

Many in public health believe that a major culprit is our sedentary lifestyle. Faced with relatively few physical demands today, our bodies burn fewer calories than they evolved to consume — and those unspent calories pile up over time as fat. The World Health Organization, in discussing the root causes of obesity, has cited a “decrease in physical activity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation and increasing urbanization.”

via NYTimes.com: Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout

This article from Herman Pontzer in the NY Times is required reading for those who insist that boosting exercise will cause weight loss. It may help for a bit in some, but appears to be far more effective in weight maintenance. The reason would seem to be that, just as the body controls the amount of potassium and salt in your blood no matter how much of these substances you eat, the body also controls the basic amount of calories expended each day...no matter how much you exercise. It makes sense in the larger scheme of "homeostasis" (the body's ability to keep all factors tightly controlled), and places the responsibility for obesity elsewhere.

http://www.refusetoregain.com/2012/...nytimescom.html

#295 ^

Mon, Aug-27-12, 04:20

bkloots

Senior Member

Posts: 10,150

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Location: Kansas City, MO

Interesting as always.

In my n=1 experiment, I've found that both cardio exercise (running, etc) and resistance training have been helpful as an adjunct to dietary discipline. But not necessarily as "calorie burning" activities, let alone "metabolism boosters."

Quote:

It is not our "metabolism" that is broken, but our food partitioning machinery --- a dysfunction that, in my view, is either caused by or vastly encouraged by eating large amounts of sugars, grains and starches over a lifetime.

Considering that there seem to be a growing number of fat babies who become fat children, I submit that the "broken" partitioning machinery might be an evolutionary edge. Tendency to fatness sets in long before we begin to make our own food choices. Also, body composition and shape clearly (?) have a hereditary component.

The puzzle remains: How much is too much? And why? And why such variance between individuals?

I seem to do better with weight management when I'm worrying about "what" not "how much."

#296 ^

Sat, Sep-01-12, 03:21

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

August 30, 2012

More on Weight and Politics

This post written last year is getting an enormous number of hits from online searches during the Republican Convention. I thought I'd recycle it here for other readers. It seems like a great many people are paying close attention to the weight sagas of our politicians. The struggles of men like Huckabee and Christie should be more than just tabloid fodder because they illustrate the extreme difficulty of weight control in the modern environment....even for closely observed public figures.

Huckabee: Eating His Words, Unfortunately Pancakes Too

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Ah, the addictive power of modern food. Never underestimate it.

On a recent trip to New York I happened to be flipping through the channels on my in-flight TV when I ran across Mike Huckabee doing an interview on Fox News. I was surprised to see that he had gained his weight back. The former governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate had staked quite a bit on the success of his 100 pound reduction in 2003. He ran marathons, wrote a book about diet and made obesity and healthy living a central issue in his political portfolio. He was appointed to expert panels and interviewed endlessly about his success. Yet even this very public and seemingly committed person could not avoid regain right in front of our eyes. In other words, he did an Oprah.

Huckabee's weight loss was motivated by a doctor who told the Governor that he would likely die in less than 10 years if he remained obese. To his credit, Huckabee took this message seriously, lost the weight and became a flag bearer for the healthy living movement. What could have caused him to put it all back on?

I have worked with enough maintainers over the years to know that even long term, successful POWs(previously overweight persons) fear that they are just one wrong spoonful from total regain. Huckabee's weight saga and the many other cautionary tales that play out in the public arena validate this concern.

Did anything that Huckabee said during his lean years foreshadow his return to obesity? I believe he left some clues.

1. In an interview with CNN's Sanjay Gupta , Mr. Huckabee said this about his weight loss:

"I had to learn that it was a change of lifestyle. And my goal wasn't to lose weight. And that's why this time I was successful, as opposed to previous times in my life. And I would lose weight, but then gain it back and add some to it."

Whether it's Huckabee speaking or someone else, there is rarely a discussion about weight loss that doesn't include the words "change of lifestyle". For me, this phrase is a red flag, a shorthand for nothing. Governor Huckabee's words sound very reasonable because they restate the conventional wisdom. But conventiona wisdom can often be just that: conventional. Few realize that it is crucial to delve into the details of "lifestyle change". The assumption is that it means fewer calories and more exercise. But truly successful maintainers would tell you that a maintenance life is something quite different. It is a well-reasoned, controlled existence that is structured around a healthy avoidance of specific trigger foods. It involves a specifically designed and executed eating style, a reliance on supported environments, specific and consistent exercise routines, and the maintenance of extreme vigilance. This is because modern food is addictive, and it takes several layers of planning to oppose it.

2. In 2010, when Huckabee's weight regain was already apparent, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox called, In Praise of McDonald's. It was written after efforts by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to eliminate toys from Happy Meals. Here are some exerpts:

"Blaming the packaging of a toy for overeating and under-exercising of kids makes silly what ought to be a serious issue: Obesity is a serious problem that has stunning health consequences and staggering economic consequences. But it hasn't been caused by toys and won't be resolved by getting rid of toys.

When a person is overfed and then under-exercised so that more calories are consumed than used, there will be weight gain. A 3-year-old probably isn't counting calories, but parents can. The 3-year-old probably isn't measuring activity levels and aerobic activity, but parents should.

Unless you take your kids to McDonald's and drop them off to be parented, it's stupid to blame McDonald's because they put a toy in a Happy Meal. When I was a kid, there was a prize in the Cracker Jack box, but I really can't blame my own weight challenges throughout my life to overdosing on Cracker Jack because I was digging for the prize. A person would have to be addicted to crack, not Cracker Jack, to blame the toys in the box for eating too much stuff in the box.

What makes my Happy Meal happy is that as a corporation, McDonald's didn't cave to the pin-headed pressure to political correctness, but pushed back to the loons on the left who seem to forget that Americans not only have personal freedom, but personal responsibility."

This also sounds logical. Parents should protect kids. Toys don't cause obesity. But it reflects a crucial misperception of the larger problem. Toys in Happy Meals are just one of the many marketing ploys used to lure buyers to an addictive drug: modern, processed food. And the practice is a particularly heinous example as it plays on the vulnerabilities of kids. It also sets up an unneccessary situation which pits the child's desires against those of a concerned parent.

The misperception is in play when we shift the argument to personal responsibility. If we believe that a lack of personal fortitude causes obesity, we can hoist Huckabee on his own petard. He talked the talk, led the charge, and failed. By his reasoning, he must be weak...just like all those parents who give in to the Happy Meal. I don't believe that.

Karen Tumulty, who interviewed Huckabee in February for the Washingotn Post observed this scene:

"Huckabee was tucking into a breakfast of eggs and butter-slathered pancakes at a trendy New York hotel overlooking Times Square. His much-discussed diet - he famously lost more than 100 pounds after a diabetes diagnosis in 2003 and wrote a book about eating right - is apparently on hiatus."

What are we to make of a man who has been told he has a possible death sentence if he's over-fat,who writes books about the importance of avoiding obesity, who stakes a political career on advocacy for better habits and then goes ahead and chows down in front of a reporter for a major newspaper? Unlike Huckabee, I wouldn't call him irresponsible. I'd say he's acting like someone with an addiction. An addiction that has re-established itself.

What else but a powerful, powerful urge could motivate someone to behave in a way that makes him look foolish? To betray an entire belief system once espoused? To perhaps give rivals a powerful wedge against future political ambitions?

The key to successful, permanent maintenance lies in a healthy respect for the damaging effects of the food that got you fat. To avoid being overwhelmed again, each maintainer needs to build many walls of defense. Otherwise, and sadly, he might easily find himself eating more than his words.

http://www.refusetoregain.com/2012/...d-politics.html

#297 ^

Sun, Oct-21-12, 02:11

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

October 18, 2012

When Carbs Look Bigger Than They Really Are

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

As those of you who routinely read this blog know, I spend a great deal of my time advising people to get rid of the carbs in their diet. Not all the carbs, but specifically sugars, grains and grain based products. When I suggest this to patients at our first meeting, I am met with blank stares or with outright resistance. I expect this. The idea of vastly curbing carbohydrates is overwhelming to most American eaters. But I also know that a great many of those who follow the advice to quit carbs will eventually report an indifference to them. It is almost as if these foods recede into the background, or go from hugely important to minimally so. It is hard to imagine this happening with foods other than carbs. Quitting meat, chicken, fish or vegetables seems much less onerous from the outset. Approximately 7.3 million Americans are vegetarian. While giving up starch and sugar is viewed as "extreme", removing the entire food group consisting of animal products is a well accepted dietary strategy. This is because most people don’t feel that they simply can’t live without animal protein. They do, on the other hand, feel like life will be impossibly bleak without a bagel, bowl of pasta, or a chocolate chip cookie.

I would submit that substances that people "can't live without" take on a dysmorphism or type of inflated distortion. This makes these substances seem much larger than they really are. We are all familiar with this distortion in people with addictions. While an occasional cigarette might mean nothing to one person, it has an intense and driving importance for another who is hooked on nicotine. Alcoholics feel that they cannot live without alcohol and drug addicts can't imagine surviving without drugs. I believe that this same dysmorpism holds true for sugars and starches. A clue to the fact that we view S Foods dysmorphically is the fact that we feel the urge to consume them multiple times each day. While many of us could easily go days without a fruit or a vegetable, few of us can go days without sweets, bread or potatoes.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion stood trembling before the great and powerful wizard whose voice shook the very foundations of his palace. As we all know, however, that wizard turned out to be nothing more than a snake oil salesman working some dials behind a curtain. It’s the same with modern carbs. Getting them out of your life allows you to pull the curtain and see them for what they really are. In a short time, those great big influences shrink to normal size and when they normalize it is much easier to simply ignore them.

How is it done? Here are some of the ways in which I have greatly decreased my own exposure to carbs:

When I eat breakfast out, I order a small applesauce instead of the potatoes and toast that usually come with eggs.

Instead of eating sandwiches or wraps, I take out the middle and eat whatever is in the center. I always ask for extra slices of tomato and a slice of onion if they have it. Or I order a tuna salad, egg salad or chicken salad plate with plenty of vegetables on it.

I love bagel and lox, but guess what? I have found that this dish tastes just the same without the bagel. I just put a shmear of cream cheese on the side, and eat the lox covered with tomato, onion and some capers. Great!

I eat ice cream pretty much every evening, but alternate between sugar free and diet varieties. I also only eat ice creams that come in single wrapped servings like pops or bars. I found that taking servings out of a tub meant eating more than I intended.

My standard dinner is a huge plate filled with salad, steamed vegetables, salsa, sliced fruit, a little cranberry sauce, and some kind of chicken, meat or fish. I eat practically no red meat. I don’t have a problem with red meat itself, I am just suspicious of the way we feed cattle so I personally avoid it.

Here are the S Foods I continue to eat: I use our practice's Optifast bars as snacks (20g carbs) here and there. I have skim milk in my breakfast mocha. I eat a lot of grapes, which are pretty sugary. I eat a diet ice cream every day. I often have a small side of cranberry sauce (which contains HFCS) with dinner. If I use applesauce, I get a no-sugar-added variety.

My excluded foods (except for an extremely occasional exception) are bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, things made with flour, cookies, muffins, bagels, crackers, chips, cereal, popcorn and any dessert other than those mentioned in my S Food list.

Carbs used to be enormous in my life, close to a raison d’etre. Ten years ago I couldn’t imagine a life without candy, cookies, bread or pasta. For me, a diet was eating a baked potato with sour cream for lunch. French fries and hash browns were my drug. Bread was my foundation. Chocolate cookies and candies were the friends that comforted me.

But here I am and those carbs have gone away. I remain at normal weight and I really love the way I eat. If you have not tried getting rid of the carbs, including those whole grain products, please humor me. Once you have moved on and they are far down the road, they look a whole lot less important. And you know what? They really are.

http://www.refusetoregain.com/2012/...really-are.html

#298 ^

Sat, Nov-17-12, 04:33

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

From Refuse to Regain
November 15, 2012

Meatless Fruitless Mondays

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Cue the gorilla in the room. Can you please start roaring and waving your arms? What's that you say? Despite a killing rampage, still no one notices you?

Attention America.

You are dying of diabesity. You are living in a country where 46% of the adult population has some form of impaired sugar metabolism--either pre-diabetes or diabetes itself. Let me shout this. FORTY SIX PERCENT!!!! Adult diabetes is a disease that develops most commonly when people get overfat. Once it happens, it is a disease that revolves around sugar. It is a disease in which insulin, the master hormone that controls sugar in the blood, is not working properly. As a result, too much sugar is made into fat and/or sugar levels get too high in the bloodstream. This problem wreaks havoc and destruction throughout the body.

Our bodies are fastidious about controlling the amount of each and every element that floats within our blood vessels. Sugar is no exception. In the 5 quarts of blood we possess, our blood vessels are allowed to carry one teaspoon of sugar. When we eat foods that turn into sugar after digestion (sugars themselves or starches), untold teaspoons of sugar flood into the bloodstream. If insulin is not working properly, we are in big trouble. And believe me, we are in trouble.

For some reason, our insulin systems are struggling and failing. Could it be something we breathe, something we ingest, something we are exposed to? Or could it simply be the fact that we overtax the sugar system so hugely and so routinely that it eventually quits on us? Either way, we are sugar sick.

Not meat sick.

Last week, a debate arose around a Los Angeles City Council proposal advocating Meatless Mondays in L.A. The usual positions were taken. On one side, those who think that giving up meat is the key to health cheered, on the other, those who are outraged at any suggestion that government might intervene in food choice complained.

While I don't advocate the eating of meat that is poorly raised or stuffed with grain, I don't think that meat is our primary problem. But in this, I do agree. Government should not be making dietary pronouncements without fully exploring their truthfulness and utility.

What do we do when we suggest that people eat less animal protein? For the vast majority of people, we tilt them toward an increased carbohydrate intake by allowing them to substitue pastas and grains. And, lest we forget, this is a country that is sick to death as a result of the sugars that are produced by these foods.

If we are to make a suggestion, why not promote Low-Carb Wednesdays--one day a week that we vow not to eat sugars or starches other than vegetables and fruits? Why not, indeed? Because carbs remain the third rail of dietary politics. Suggestions that people limit the foods that addict them most and kill them most readily invites prosecution for dietary overreach and heresy. Forgo steak for a day? No big deal. Breadless Tuesdays? Forget about it.

The howls that are raised when decreasing carbs is suggested have been enough to drown out the bellowing of the gorilla in the room. But with ever increasing rates of death and disability from our growing sugar problem, it's time to quiet down and listen to the frightening sound that really should be keeping us up at night

http://www.refusetoregain.com/2012/...ss-mondays.html

#299 ^

Tue, Nov-27-12, 12:31

Demi

Strong Girls Rock!

Posts: 26,727

Plan: Muscle Centric
Stats: 238/153/160 Female 5'10"

BF:
Progress: 109%

Location: UK

Quote:

November 26, 2012

Our Seasonal Mantra: No Holiday Weight Gain. Stick With Me!

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

With Thanksgiving receding in the rear view mirror we now enter the most challenging time of the weight loss year: December. The obstacles for maintainers are obvious: temptation, memory, comfort, emotion, celebration and anxiety. Put them all together and you have the perfect recipe for 5 to 20 pounds.

While no one knows exactly how much Americans gain over the holidays, I do subscribe to the belief that whatever is put on is rarely lost. This appears to be true for most adult weight gain. Whether the weight comes on during pregnancy, at the menopause, or little by little each holiday season, it often creates a new body benchmark. Despite efforts to get rid of it, that weight will want to come back. Readers of this blog can testify to the fact that maintenance is a skill that needs to be practiced religiously and consistently. The one thing we DON'T want to do is add to the burden of weight that needs tending.

To this end, I'm going to try to post more frequently until the New Year. Let's all pull together and support each other through December.

I would welcome hearing from those of you who have figured out clever tricks (or just ways to grind it out!) for avoiding holiday weight gain. Here are some of the things I suggest to my patients and that I practice in my own life:

1. Become even more religious about daily weighing during December. If you are gaining weight, do not hesitate to institute your reversal regimen until weight gets down below Scream Weight. The holiday period (or any stressful or exciting time) encourages us to avoid the scale (as in: "I won't look today!"). Don't give in to this temptation.

2. Conceptualize the goal of maintaining your weight as a gift you are giving yourself this season. Whether you want to lose weight or avoid putting it back on, your goal is long-lasting health. This present to yourself is worth far more than any piece of pie or sugar cookie. Don't pull the gift away before you get it!

3. Declare your intention rather than camouflage it. If you tell people at that cookie exchange that you are determined not to gain this season, it will be harder to gorge on cookies that afternoon. It's ok to be proud that you've lost weight and to make it plain that you are working on making things permanent. Trying to blend in by pretending that you are doing what everyone else is will probably lead to disaster.

4. Stick with your normal, everyday plan. Don't make holiday exceptions unless they are extremely limited and really, really worth it. If you do eat off-plan, return to your everyday eating regimen the very next day and be very tough about sticking with it.

5. Enter holiday events with a "scan and plan". That means that you should anticipate situations and challenges before you go to the event and should plan a specific response to each one. See how many you get right and take stock of how many hurdles you successfully jumped after the event is over.

6. Take careful note of whether you enjoy holiday events just as much if you don't include the usual sweet eating and overconsumption. Coming to realize that there's still alot of fun and meaning without the usual junk foods is a key step in staying a permanently lower weight.

7. Wear your "revenge clothes". Dress for success takes on a whole new meaning over the holidays. Dress in form fitting clothes that make the most of the smaller you. This will make you proud, but will also make it more possible for you to achieve successful control over eating. Tighter clothes make you more aware of even small food deviations.

8. Dilute alcohol. Remember that alcohol has 7 calories per gram, almost as many calories per unit as fat. It also disinhibits you and makes you more likely to eat too much. Mix wine with seltzer or liquor with water so that you can consume less alcohol in a larger volume.

9. This tip, which I've mentioned before, is one of my favorites and comes from a successful maintainer. Set a goal of finding out at least one fascinating new thing about each person you talk to. This puts you in interview mode, involves the person with whom you are speaking, and presents a fascinating challenge. Nurse a diet soda or wine spritzer while you roam the room.

Please send me your tips. Keep weighing and watching. And enjoy the season AND your continued success!!!

http://www.refusetoregain.com/2012/...ck-with-me.html

#300 ^

Tue, Nov-27-12, 18:44

Enomarb

MAINTAINING ON CALP

Posts: 4,838

Plan: CALP/CAHHP
Stats: 180/125/150 Female 65 in

BF:
Progress: 183%

Location: usa

thanks Demi!