Diet/Exercise/Health/Wellness Support Thread

Parent Cafe
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<p>Good to hear that the weight is coming off at a steady clip. I had always wondered how you could not be losiing weight with the amount of exercise you do between the tennis and the running. It never sounded like you were eating mass quantities of calories.</p>

<p>I found it relatively easy from a diet standpoint. I’ve been between 1750 and 2000 calories a day almost every day for 15 months now and exercising a lot. I’m not hanging on the refridgerator staring longingly at food all day. I’m not having those moments of being overcome by the desire for food, llike when I used to bundle up, get in the car, and drive 2 miles to the convenience store at midnight to buy a bag of Doritos and Pepsi or Snapple. Something has changed and I don’t think it’s suddently becomeing “good” instead of “bad”. About the only time I even have to use willpower is when I walk by the Pringles or Doritos or Sour Gummy Worms in the grocery store. I see quitting smoking as getting off the nicotine addiction so that you have a fighting chance to change the learned behaviors. I feel like something has given me the fighting chance to change my eating behaviors.</p>

<p>That’s why I’m receptive to the hypothesis that, at least for many of us, this whole weight thing is in some way hormonally driven and that, if you can throw the switch on the metabolic balance, you will start burning stored fat and eat less, not because you are using willpower, but because your body is demanding less food.</p>

<p>The theory goes like this:</p>

<p>1) Become insulin dependent (sugar seems to be a likely culprit).</p>

<p>2) Insulin resistance makes your body produce more insulin for longer periods of time which has the effect of diverting calories into fat storage (let’s call it 200 calories more a day diverted into fat storage).</p>

<p>3) Now, you are not only gaining fat, but you are getting 200 calories fewer a day available for immediate fuel needs because of the calories siphoned right off the top and locked away in fat cells. Thus, even while adding to the stored fat around your belly, your body is feeling semi-starved. (Hungry enough to get in the car and drive to the store at midnight to buy corn chips and sugar water.)</p>

<p>4) So, your appetite increases and you eat more calories. This is viscious metabolic cycle.</p>

<p>The theoretical solution:</p>

<p>1) Cut carbs, reduce blood sugar spikes, lower insulin releases.</p>

<p>2) With lower insulin, the balance tips back towards less fat storage and burning more of the incoming calories as immediately available fuel. Insulin basically regulates fat storage. Less insulin, less fat storage.</p>

<p>3) The body instantly has more fuel available (what you are eating, plus the release of calories from stored fat).</p>

<p>4) This signals the brain to eat less and results in a reduced appetite.</p>

<p>5) And, with the abundance of available fuel, your body is happy to exercise and burn calories, even while eating fewer “calories in” than “calories out”. This is a metabolic cycle headed in the right direction: burning stored fat, more energy, less appetite.</p>

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<p>Some people aren’t insulin resistant and can probably do fine on any kind of diet. But, it sure looks like this is a reasonable hypothesis for people (usually overweight) who have become insulin resistant. The Stanford study found a modest edge for the low carb diet overall. More interesing was the underlying breakdowns. The 1/3 **least **insulin resistant people did equally welll on the low carb/high fat diet and the low-fat/high carb diets. Six in one, half dozen in the other. The 1/3 **most **insulin resistant people did much better on the low carb/high fat diet – a much more significant difference than the overall results of the study. This was the third study that had shown the same thing comparing insulin resistant to non insulin resistant.</p>

<p>If these theories are true, then we all have some particular threshold of carbs that we can tolerate without getting fat. That threshold may be, in part, determined by our degree of insulin resistance.</p>

<p>What you are experiencing seems to be really common among the patients of doctors who use the low-carb approach in their weight-loss practices. Nobody disputes calories in versus calories out. The issue is how easy or hard it is to reduce the calories in part. How much of a struggle is it to maintain the caloric deficit required to lose weight? You can’t sustain it if you are feeling hungry 24/7.</p>

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<p>BTW, the theory on fiber is that it slows the digestion of carbs, preventing rapid blood sugar spikes and big insulin releases – a kind of a nutritional time-release capsule.</p>

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<p>I cut way back on my running last fall and I live within short drives to all of the fast food places that corporate america is famous for. Exercise can’t beat a crappy diet. Fortunately I didn’t go to far up the scale.</p>

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<p>Okay, met my daily requirement of fiber. I had been totally ignoring fiber but I guess that’s one more thing to watch. 2.5 slices of the Trader Joe’s Bread (yummy with a turkey burger), an apple, and a salad, and 0.4 cup of mixed nuts took care of it. That bread is the most efficient thing on my list for keeping down carbs and calories while getting a good dose of fiber. Maybe I should take a look at pumpkin pie filling. My guess is that my pistachio nuts and bananas took care of fiber needs recently. The thing about bananas is that they aren’t that good in terms of fiber vs carbs but they help to get you enough for your RDA.</p>

<p>Looking forward to making sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.</p>

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<p>“exercise can’t beat a crappy diet”…LOL, true, unless your name is Michael Phelps, and you spend 8 hours a day in a pool burning 12,000 calories :wink: </p>

<p>I just caught up with what’s been going in this thread. So sorry to hear about your new troubles, MOfWC! I hope the appointment that you had today was of some help. Knowing how resilient and determined you are, I’m convinced you will be able to overcome this new stuff. I see more new pairs of running shoes in your future! I have to thank you again for inspiring me to push my lazy tush beyond the 3 mile limit. If it weren’t for your encouraging posts on this thread, I probably would not have tried hard.</p>

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<p>Yeah. Fast food joints are bad news. The only thing I ever ate at McDonalds was breakfast: </p>

<p>Bacon, Egg, and Cheese biscuit
Hash Browns
Orange Juice</p>

<p>A cool 730 calories and 84 grams of carbs. Just for breakfast. And, I couldn’t figure out why I got fat? :)</p>

<p>Wendy’s: A spicy chicken sandwich. High carb, but under 500 calories. Until I add the baked potato on top of it. Then, it’s just packin’ on the pounds. The potato spikes blood sugar higher than eating straight table sugar. With the white bread sandwich bun and washing it down with a Coke. Yeow. 1050 calories and 144 grams of carbs.</p>

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<p>Front Squats 3 sets of 7 reps @85 pounds</p>

<p>3 rounds for time:
–21 KB Swings (30 pounds)
–15 box jumps (20")
–9 pull ups</p>

<p>Time: 8:21
Average HR: 180 BPM
Max HR: 190 BPM</p>

<p>Really liking my new book: Never Let Go by Dan John. It’s a great book and I’ve been flying through it the last few days. Some of the previous diets were unbelievable…</p>

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<p>If you really like the bread, that’s great. What I realized after about 6 months of eating a similar bread (similar in terms of carbs and fiber though maybe not taste–we don’t have a Trader Joe’s here) was that for the calories, I could do better in terms of taste satisfaction. Lately I’ve been eating my “sandwiches” without the bread–a bowl of turkey or egg salad, with diced tomatoes and a few teaspoons of sunflower seeds for texture, is just as tasty as a sandwich.</p>

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<p>Yeah. I take a different approach with bread. If I’m going to have it, I want bread I really enjoy. So I get Pepperidge Farm or Beefsteak Rye or Pumpernickel. Stick it in the fridge, where it will keep for a couple weeks and enjoy a turkey or tuna sandwich two or three times in a week. When it’s gone (or gone stale), I don’t buy any bread again for several weeks or a month.</p>

<p>I’ve learned lately to pair a carb-y lunch with a non-carb dinner or vice versa. Like today was bacon and eggs for lunch (no carb) so, I had a 6 inch flour tortilla with my chicken fajitas. Tomorrow is a low-carb beef stew and salad dinner, so I’ll have a carb-y chicken and wild rice soup for lunch.</p>

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<p>No workout for me today. I was sore in the hips, thighs, arms, and shoulders. I think I had increased the weight for yesterday’s workout just enough to get things feelin’ it.</p>

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<p>I just had a week of matzos so I can handle anything for bread, taste or not.</p>

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<p>hops:</p>

<p>Dan John is great. His little deadlift hip hinge drill might be the single most valuable exerise tip I’ve ever seen. It instantly made me understand what the deadlift was all about.</p>

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<p>I’m trying to read 2-3 chapters a day. Sunday I was in the car for a few hours so I was able to do a lot of reading. I’m on chapter 20 already…</p>

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<p>Compact chains yesterday–trainer gets really excited when the first drop of sweat hits the mat. All I could muster today was a short jog. Took my new running skirt for a spin–I love it!</p>

<p>Saw my ob/gyn yesterday for my annual. I was down about 25 lbs. when I saw him last year and his only comment was “losing weight is very hard”. Kind of sounded like “Don’t get your hopes up, tubby.” Yesterday he actually asked me if I had the lap band! Uh, no, and I’ll be naked in a few minutes if you want to check for scars.</p>

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<p>Real encouraging guy. If you lose 25 pounds in my office, you get compliments. People in the office are weight and fitness aware.</p>

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<p>He* probably could have been more encouraging and supportive about it. He has probably seen a lot of yo-yos, though…</p>

<p>*Odd that you have a male primary physician. Most primary physicians, at least around here, are female. I have read that choosing a primary physician of the same gender and similar age might be slightly favorable if other factors are similar, since then the physician may be more personally attuned to gender and age specific health concerns that you have.</p>

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<p>I think seeing patients lose weight is so rare that doctors really don’t know what to make of it or what to say to help their patients. I mean, most doctors are pretty smart. They have to know that the standard health provider weight loss advice they are taught to offer doesn’t exactly have a great track record.</p>

<p>I mean, what is my doctor supposed to say to me? Did I use the patch to quit smoking? “No. I just decided I’d had enough and quite smoking. No nicotine replacement. Cold turkey.” </p>

<p>What kind of diet have I been following to lose 80 pounds? “Mostly a high fat diet… Lots of meat, bacon and eggs, cook with butter, us a lot of olive oil. Cut out most grains and starches…”</p>

<p>I do know what you are saying. I expected that my doctor would be a little enthusiastic. He was pretty much like yours. He didn’t ask about the lap band surgery, but I think he was probing to find out if I had been taking diet pills or anything.</p>

<p>He did appreciate when I handed him a printout of my blood pressure several times a day for the prior month. That gives them so much more than one random measurement taken in the doctor’s office.</p>

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<p>This should go on Saturday Night Live - that’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a while.</p>

<p>My dentist works at at my YMCA. He runs, lifts weights, plays tennis and he has a lot of muscles and he can run but he’ still overweight. He noticed when I went from 245 to about 205 and that was all will power. I think that he’d like to lose more weight but he has a lot of stress running his business and I think that he has the same problem that I had - you can keep it up outside of stressful times.</p>

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<p>This reminded me of something I meant to ask here. A few days ago I was reading a book about aging (one of those "how to live to be 100) that mentioned a connection between eating animal products and cancer. I am pretty well convinced at this point that protein helps with weight loss. But I am curious what you other low-carbers think about the possibility that eating meat might increase the risk of cancer.</p>

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<p>I’ve learned to be skeptical of most of these “cancer link” scares. The health establishment has been crusading against meat for a while now.</p>

<p>The one that’s been around the longest is a link between the nitrosamines of cured meats (like bacon) and increased risk of stomach cancer. This is a bit clouded by the fact that the same chemicals are in tobacco. But, there was enough of a link to make changes in the amounts of sodium nitrate and other processing changes in cured meats several decades ago. </p>

<p>There’s a more recent study that got a lot of publicity:</p>

<p>[Arch</a> Intern Med – Meat Intake and Mortality: A Prospective Study of Over Half a Million People, March 23, 2009, Sinha et al. 169 (6): 562](<a href=“http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/169/6/562]Arch”>http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/169/6/562)</p>

<p>This one looked at death rates among 600,000 mostly white AARP members (aged 51 to 70) who returned surveys estimating their dietary consumption. Those who ate the most red meat had slightly elevated death rates compared to those who ate the least red meat. Those who ate the most white meat had slightly lower death rates within a 10 year period than those who ate the least white meat. This stuff is hard to sort out because of self selection. The most “health conscious” people at the least red meat (presumably because they’ve been told to do so for about thirty years). They smoked less, exercised more, ate fewer calories, and were less overweight – all factors that also correlate with lower death rates. I feel quite sure that I have lower chances of dying eating bacon as a 170 pound ex-smoker who exercises five days a week than I would have as a 250 pound vegetarian smoker who sat on the couch!</p>

<p>As someone pointed out in an article I read lately, if the media started pounding on the theme that eating celery causes cancer, you would see a correlation with lower death rates among people who don’t eat celery in a few years. Not because celery had anything to do with it, but because the most health-conscious people read the warnings and stopped eating celery. The most health conscious people are skinnier, exercise more, eat less, smoke less, drink less and tend to die less often, without regard to their celery consumption.</p>

<p>Here’s the way I look at it. In the last five years, I’ve quit smoking, lost 80 pounds, started vigorous exercise five days a week, and am more fit than I’ve been in decades. After all that, if I die from eating an occasional rib eye steak, then so be it.</p>