Holiday sweetness
I have been ‘doing’ the South Beach diet the last three weeks. It is quite amazing how sweet berries, and the occasional small slice of watermelon on this hoiliday week end, tastes. Much better than corn syrup.
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
you’ll have to let us know how it works on the weight loss frontier. it’s amazing how much better you do on real food than on what they sell to people these days.
but be warned. your stomach has no brain. and one of these days when you aren’t looking you will want another slice of pizza or a doughnut or a soda… whatever your weakness is. and you’ll be trapped in another unhealthy relationship. your stomach, after all, doesn’t want to go back to the nineteenth century.
I suppose this is one area on Angry Bear that data will be unobtainable and remain unpublished, except in very generic terms. Then again, I could do something like Kirstie Alley……naaah.
Except I did find this link on the dramatic increase in energy use in food production in the last ten years or so… http://www.postcarbon.org/blog-post/102624-accounting-for-increasing-energy-use-by …he says, diverting attention away.
rdan:
It sounds especially good with a little splash of rum to it and blended. Hmmmmm.
Much of the problem today for weight gain is our sedentary life styles. Little or no physical activity beyond walking to the “big behemoth” SUV in the driveway or close up to WalMart does not equate to the physical activity necessary to burn the equivalent of the calories in intake after consuming “mass quantities immediately.” This next group of children coming up are expected to have shorter life spans than their parents due to obesity and diabetes.
10# drop in two days after weed whipping 11 hour days in the sun. You can also keep it off if you work at it. Sugar, salt, and fat are the ingredients to avoid and they are the most addictive too. I have successfully kept 35 lbs off for 5 years now.
This works, along with cardio time on a treadmill, bike or tennis court.
But calories still can go in much, much faster than they depart.
http://www.mensfitness.com/fitness/workout_routines/594
Agreed. Eating a larger percentage of real food and less processed food makes a huge difference. Eating less even more difference. It’s quite possible to drop five pounds every couple weeks or even more by restricting yourself to a 1500 calorie diet for most American men. You’re going to be real hungry that first week though.
I dropped a good sixty pounds in three months a couple years ago (from 265 or maybe more, it was 265 when I noticed I was losing weight and started keeping track, it started when I started working a job downtown that wasn’t killing me with stress and walking part of my commute), settled at 195 and eventually got back up to 240 through a combination of bad choices (taking that job at M&P was a particularly bad one) and just falling off the wagon. I’m nearly back to 205 now (205.6/18/56 this morning). Obviously I’d like to get that to something like 195/16 or thereabouts.
I’ve hit that stage where none of my clothes fit though. The trouble is that space between 38 and 36 and 36 and 34. Especially if you’re the kind of person who isn’t really used to wearing belts. In a couple weeks I’ll have to go out and buy four or five pairs of 34 band pants, I guess. Probably should get some new shirts too. Maybe a new belt 🙂
LOL….I should be so modest guys. I will put in a note every so often.
It’s amazing who gets motivated as we approach beach season. 🙂
Good luck, Dan
One of my favorite recent studies is a triple of papers espousing the virtues of eating like early Victorians. Twice as many calories, but 10x as many veggies — many roots and tubers (turnips, onions) — and, ignoring childhood mortality, a lifespan very similar to ours with none of the diseases we associate with old age like heart disease or cancer. Interestingly, they ate plenty of fat, plenty of meat, and bread.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
The authors also suggested a similar “disease of affluence” during later Victorian times, where the working poor were succumbing not from overall lack of nutrition but due to things like canned meats and sugar, i.e., fast food. That’s my interpretation on the latter bit.
Darwin on his travels discusses how gauchos would live on mostly meat for long periods of time and ate large quantities of fat, too. A doctor he talks to says that this craving for fat is not unusual. People I’ve known who have gone on very low carb diets have also craved fats.
My advice: eat like a(n early) Victorian — lots and lots of veg — burn it off, and make your kids chew rawhide. (There’s growing evidence that a lot of our toothy problems are from eating too many foods that are too soft — sugar and corn syrup notwithstanding.)
This makes for quite a list of problems eating food that is actually good for us overall, as steady sources of not only nutrition but the form of the food and the oversupply of salt and sugar, and the lack of exercise.
I have read some research in education that we are finding kids who do not know how to use a fork and knife (or equivalent) because their food was soft and packaged as finger food (I include things like quarter pounders as fingerfood…it my day it was cut up carrots).
My favorite joke from a Tibetan monk for American audiences was ending his talk with “Who wants to go get a Big Mac?” A meat eating Buddhist… our perception of proper diet can be funny.
Carbs are funny things too…white flour does funny things to our bodies overall. Carbs to an American means very specific foods…no quinoa pasta for us!
I think medical science has lost its way in the culture of food we live in, and eating is not very social either as socialbility becomes less and less important.
I have read the abstracts felipe. Thanks.
I was doing pretty good until company arrived and I spent the weekend on the ribs-beer-dessert diet – time for penance.
Right after I finish the leftover ribs.
CoRev
one of the joys of Oregon is that the water at the beach is below the freezing temperature of human flesh, and the wind will take your life away. All Oregonians, those who survive, come to understand why seals dress the way they do.
Rusty
it ain’t the ribs. it’s the beer. people tell me “can’t be. beer only has 180 calories,” or some such dumb number. what they forget is that beer does something to your metabolism that guarantees all other calories go directly to fat. without enough left over “energy” to change the channel.
Angry Bear…diet. Till now, I never really got the flavor of the blog name.
Its not easy to be normal.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/bmi_tbl.pdf
Cardiff I beg of you. Do NOT open yourself for cheap jokes like that.
MUST NOT REACH FOR KEYBOARD!!!
i hate to bring this up because i hate to promote things, but i’ve lost about 20 pounds with almost no effort on the shangri-la “diet”. (i’m 5’11 and was 205 pounds, now around 185.) take a look.
Wallace gromit,
I have about the same numbers coming from 6’0. My appoach is to run, swim, and stretch. I have fish or shrimp about every night with Italian mineral water as a substitute for alcohol. I allow myself to have one night with wine. I’m losing about 10 lbs a month and should be down to a “Normal” BMI by the end of June. My philosophy on diet is to do it fast with lots of exercise so the weight loss creates a positive reinforcement. Getting down to my high school weight and waist size is goal one, goal two is to keep it off for a year.
well good luck to you! my philosophy is to find something that was easy to do –something that didn’t require huge amounts of willpower.
if you’re losing ten pounds per month, that’s 3500 calories X 10 = 35,000 calories. if your maintenance intake is 2400 calories per day, 2400 X 30 = 72,000 calories. so to lose 10 pounds you’d be able to eat something like 37,000 calories per month or 1200 calories per day. i’ve heard of people who can do that, but i can’t. i get too flustered if i’m that hungry, and exercise makes me hungrier. what i’m doing is working really well though.