Tag Archives: obesity

More Diet Advice to a Friend

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You’re “fat” and you’re determined to do something about that. But you’re overwhelmed at the road ahead of you, which you’ve skipped down before, thinking, “This time! This time!” Darn it– that time and that time must have been circular highways, because somehow you ended back here at fat again.

Again. Again. Why is it always again? You’ve lost 8.1256 pounds this month’s go-round, but do you really have what it takes to ditch 50 pounds for FORever?

Forever means like, well, forever. Never stop. Ever. Suddenly, you dip your head, slump your shoulders, let out a deep sigh, and look at the ground. Maybe I can’t do it, you think. Why try?

Why try? Why try? I’ll tell you why. For every ray of sunshine that rises in the morning. For every star in the evening sky. For every smudge on the wall from the hand of your child. For every kiss from your husband. For me writing this post. For you wanting it so badly. For your liver, heart, brain, hormones, ovaries (if you have them) and knees, all weight-sensitive body parts.

Don’t be overwhelmed. You can do this! While it IS all about the long haul, the victory is won in the moment! Every moment presents each of us with the same important question: Will I keep my motivation in this moment? Not, “Will I keep my motivation for a year?” Or, “Can I eat this way for 30 days?” NO. Repeatedly for the rest of our lives the question is, “Will I keep my motivation in THIS moment?” And if you don’t, you truly, really do have the next moment.

Motivational Baloney

That’s great talk, Terri. That’s  motivational. For a moment. Till I fail. Motivational speakers help us for a moment. And only a moment. Everybody knows that.

That’s right. That’s right. That’s 100% true. The only person who can change anything is you. But I believe in you.

My mom once told me, “Terri, I wish I had your self-confidence.” I about fell off of my chair. First, this is the woman who made me most of who I am. Second, I’m not that self-confident. I believe in myself. I believe I can find a way. I don’t give up easily when handed a problem. But when I was on the volleyball end-line serving the game-point serve for the win, I really didn’t want to be there, despite a 98% successful serving percentage. When I started writing about nutrition, I was scared, thinking maybe the die-hard Paleo, Raw Foodists, low-carbers, Mediterranean dieters, or heck, even the food pyramid advocates were right. Doubt assailed, and continues to assail, me like a mad hornet. I have enough self-doubt for about 20 people. (Want some? No, no. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to show you it can be done, self-doubt and all.)

I’m helping my good friend Annie again with her forever weight loss plan, and I’m sharing things we talk about. I don’t know if I’m “qualified” or not. I’m not a nutritionist or a health coach or even a practicing physician anymore. You should check out everything you read here and not act blindly on any of it, especially health-related stuff. I can’t know the ins and outs of your story. I know I once struggled with bulimia and food addiction. I know obesity runs in my family. I know I’ve gained a new assurance around food, what I eat, and why I eat it with each passing year, and I know it’s required a hard look at my diet, my thought life, my history, my spirituality, and my driving motivation.

I’ve read about obese people losing all their weight and arriving at skinny, only to realize it didn’t provide the peace and security they envisioned. I don’t want that for any of you. This means interior work must be a priority as well as exterior work. I believe we are presented with problems in life to reach wholeness. It’s better than any video game you could ever play or design.

Doubtful and overwhelming thoughts crave full expression, not submersion. 

We’re only as strong as our ability to express our greatest weaknesses and fears. If you want to put obesity behind you, you have to face-to-face encounter your negative feelings. Instead of submerging negative feelings, they MUST be met and offered the light of day. I mean, for crying out loud, they’re there! The way people try to hide things is almost comical, if it wasn’t so sad. Hiding dirty socks under the bed for too long just keeps the room SMELLY!

I beg you to work very hard all day to catch negative emotions and name them. They are the junk food poisoning your brain and keeping you obese, telling you words like:

  • always
  • never
  • failure
  • can’t do it
  • too much
  • overwhelmed
  • stressed
  • weak
  • ugly
  • fat
  • too hard

So remember.

Permanently losing weight comes one choice, each moment at a time. You can change any bad choice now and from this choice onward.

Permanently losing weight requires cleaning up your thought life by identifying your feelings and expressing them fully to yourself. Start this assignment today. Now. (And teach it to your kids and spouse.) How did this article make you feel? Why?

Weight loss itself will NOT bring you happiness. Permanently changing the patterns that keep you on the circular highway of weight loss will.

You are worth it. Your body is worth it. Your kids are worth it. Your spouse is worth it. Your God is worth it. Persist despite your awareness of self-doubt.

I’ll keep sharing ideas that Annie and I discuss as they come up. There are MANY. If permanent weight loss was just moderately hard, you’d have done it a long time ago!

Terri

 

 

Gluten-Sensitivity Validation and More Discouraging News about Obesity

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I’ve wanted to make time to share two articles with you from the last week or so. One on the brain and obesity and one about gluten sensitivity.

The first, and I’m going to summarize brutally, indicates that middle-aged obese people have smaller brains.

Now let me fill in a few details. The journal Neurobiology of Aging posted the article  “Obesity associated with increased brain-age from mid-life,” reporting that when middle-aged, obese study participants were compared to middle-aged, normal weight study participants, the obese patients had more brain atrophy. (Atrophy means shrinking or wasting.) When matched according to white matter volume, obese patients’ brains appeared the size of patients ten years older.

Make sense? Basically, obesity for some reason predicted that a middle-aged person would have a smaller brain, about the size of someone ten years older. (Brains naturally atrophy as we age.) An obese patient’s 50-year-old brain would look 60 years old.

(What is obesity? If you don’t know your BMI, I suggest you calculate it so that you are not lying to yourself about the state of your weight. Obese people tend to just call themselves overweight. And morbidly obese people tend to just classify themselves as obese. Here is a BMI calculator.)

Please focus on changing your eating for forever—not on temporary weight loss. The article (and other articles reporting on it) really focuses on the weight. I DO believe that weight is important—BUT more in light of the reflection that food choices are not being matched for the individual person. You can lose weight eating only green beans from a can and shrink your belly. But I don’t think that’s the best deal to protect your brain!

Eat real. Don’t eat anything processed. If the weight is still stubborn, eat real, unprocessed AND make it PLAIN. Protect the brain. It’s worth it. You’re worth it. Your kids are worth it. Obesity kills your life slowly. Painfully.

Next article up is about gluten-sensitivity.

Do you feel bashful saying you’re gluten-sensitive? I mean, it’s not like you’re terribly allergic and going to die. Or celiac and really killing your organs by eating wheat. You just, well, you just don’t feel good after eating that bread. And your mom gets a little frustrated with you at family gatherings, having nothing to thicken the gravy with! Can’t she use a little bit?!? That wouldn’t hurt you, would it?

The journal Gut ran a research article titled “Intestinal cell damage and systemic immune activation in individuals reporting sensitivity to wheat in the absence of coeliac disease.”

That’s a long title. I’ll explain the article really briefly:

Definite lab abnormalities were found in those who reported gluten sensitivity, and the changes were NOT the same as those found in celiac disease. Gluten sensitive patients had lab markers suggestive of systemic immune activation and a compromised intestinal epithelial barrier integrity. (Specifically, they had increased levels of soluble CD14, increased lipopolysaccharide-binding protein, increased antibodies to microbial flagellin, and elevated fatty acid-binding protein 2.)

Specific symptoms they looked at for inclusion in their study were bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, heartburn, nausea, fatigue, headaches, anxiety, memory problems, thinking problems, or numbness and tingling of your arms and/or legs. They felt these were the most common symptoms associated with non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

After six months of a gluten-free diet, the non-celiac gluten sensitive patients felt better and their labs returned to normal.

The discussion of the article is very interesting, worth a read if you are up to the terminology being thrown around.

I’m one of those people who hates to be a nuisance, but when I eat gluten, I get side effects. So I went gluten-free four years ago (and ate real, whole foods and watched out for other food sensitivities). Being a medical doctor by training, it was really hard for me when the medical field really shamed the idea of gluten sensitivity. Suddenly I was personally pitted against everything and everybody I believed to be true and right professionally. The last four years have been QUITE the eye opener professionally.

So it’s good to see validation.

I really, really encourage you to eat whole, real food. No strange added ingredients. Grains as fresh and whole as you can if you do them. Oils and fats as unprocessed and as close to the source as you can get them. Skip white sugar unless you’ve decided it’s a really special day.

The Homeschooling Doctor logoYou are worth feeling good.

Terri

 

Adiposity Index

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Firmicutes makes you fat.  Bacteroidetes keeps you skinny like a baseball bat.

“Adiposity index” refers to the ratio of one line of bacteria, Firmicutes, to another line, Bacteroidetes, in your gut.  They say:  wpid-IMAG1182.jpgIf Firmicutes is higher, you’re more likely to be obese.  If Bacteroidetes is higher, you’re more likely to be lean.  Yes.  Really.  (Take your pick of pronunciation.  I was taught Fir-mik-you-teez and Back-ter-oid-eh-teez.)

Research stuff:  Pretend you’re a mouse, created by researchers with a germ-free gut.  The researchers inoculate your gut with bacteria from an obese human who has higher levels of Firmicutes-type bacteria.  You now have Firmicutes in your gut.  Even though they keep your chow rations the same, you gain weight!  Your brother is a mouse with a germ-free gut, too, and they inoculate your brother’s gut with bacteria from a lean human who has higher levels of Bacteroidetes and lower levels of Firmicutes.   On the same chow rations as you, he stays a lean, mean, eatin’-machine.  Yes.  Really.  I know.  Your doctors just can’t believe you’re not sneaking Twinkies.

(There is more to this experiment, and it is interesting and leaves some questions.  The researchers put an obese-flora inoculated mouse and a lean-flora inoculated mouse in the same cage.  Mice eat each other’s poop, and so the floras were spontaneously able to be cross-inoculated.  The lean-flora predominated!  The obese-flora mouse should have gotten fat; it did not because the lean flora it yummily ate was able to “take over” in its gut.  The obese-flora was not capable of seeding itself in the gut of the lean mouse over the lean flora.  So both mice types stayed lean.  They took the experiment a step further, and changed rations to reflect a low-fat/high vegetable matter or high saturated fat/low vegetable matter (pizza pellets, for example–nice choice).  With the “bad” food, the obese flora persisted and the lean flora didn’t come in and overtake. This is where I look forward to seeing them isolate variables better in the future:  dairy fat, saturated fat with typical carb intake, saturated fat with low carb intake, no grain, and etc).

The amazing thing here is defiance of a cherished euphemism.  “Calorie in, calorie out.”  Calorie in, calorie out?  No.  Not quite a pure picture.  However, we can’t lie to ourselves.  It is still a pretty good picture, just not quite so clear.

Metametrix’s GI Profile Adiposity Index

The Metametrix 2100 Gastrointestinal Function Profile reports the “adiposity index.”  Basically it seems they just report your percentage of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes with regards to each other.  My Firmicutes was 67 and my Bacteroidetes was 33 (67+33=100%).  I couldn’t find a ratio or percentage of ideal that I can quote.  Thought I saw somewhere 2:1, but I couldn’t re-find it.

Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes are phyla of bacteria (phylum, order, class, genus, species).   In the Firmicutes phyla are many that you know:  Clostridia, Streptomyces, Lactobacillus, Mycoplasma, and Bacillus.  In the Bacteroidetes phyla are  Bacteroides and Prevotella.  “Hey,” you say, “those are the bacteria reported in the Predominant Bacteria section of the Metametrix GI Profile.”  Yes, you are right.  It’s kind of a regrouping and refocusing of information.  Most all of the bacteria in the gut fall into either Firmicutes or Bacteroidetes.

I’m not sure what the adiposity index on Metametrix really helps with.  Or knowing the ratio of your Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes.  You know your body habitus.  It sounds like that may be enough for you to report your own index.  The best way to eat is to rely on whole foods (apples, oranges, bananas, raisins, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, squash, pork chops, chicken, turkey, almonds, walnuts, olive oil, and I could go on–I’m just trying to prove that there is a lot to eat) and not packaged 100-calorie snack packs from Nabisco that I used to pop in my lunch box.

Back to the Skinny of the Matter

Firmicutes-type bacteria can actually metabolize more of your food and thus make more calories available to your body, making you gain weight.  They also stimulate the uptake of fat and may do something to your fat cells to make you store more fat.  More calories are absorbed, whether they be fats or carbohydrates you just ate.  The more you eat, the more weight you gain, the more Firmicutes-type bacteria you appear to get.  Firmicutes levels are able to be decreased:

  • Firmicutes decrease with fasting, as Bacteroidetes increases
  • Firmicutes decrease with weight loss.

I was very excited to share this information with my husband.  He has firmly stood by “calorie in, calorie out” in all of our debates.  Now he has nothing to stand on.  On the other, he is right.  We do need to be aware of empty-calories and ditch them.  Overall, it does have to do with what we put in our mouths, much more than genetics or bacteria.  My family has a history of obesity, and with my carbohydrate reliance/processed food reliance, I would have followed in the path of those set before me over the next 15-20 years as my metabolism slowed down.

Please Learn More

If you don’t know about gut bacteria, you are behind the game.  Gut bacteria is being found to, maybe not determine, but certainly play a role in immunity levels, obesity (as mentioned above), mental health disorders, cancers, vitamin status, and much, much more.   Nowadays, blaming your body’s bacterial flora for your problems is maybe more popular than blaming genetics.  That isn’t right either; it is ALL a balance.

Probably the biggest impact factors on these gut bacteria are what we eat and antibiotics.   Eating foods that are just a step or two away from the way you’d catch or pluck them in the great outdoors has to be one of the best things you can do for you and your family’s health and well-being.  In the name of “healthy,” we were brought Splenda; Splenda has been shown to decrease the beneficial gut bacteria.

So, please, ditch the processed food in its processed box.  Stop the madness.  I know it’s more expensive and requires you to shop more.  What you save in allergy medicines, doctor’s appointments, missed days of work because you or your kids are sick, eating out, and processed soda/juice/junk food will probably catch up balance out over time.

Science and drug companies may muck around with ways to manipulate Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, but the natural way still seems best.  Focus on a whole foods diet, shunning high-calorie foods with little or overly-repetitive nutrient density.  YOU CAN DO IT.

Terri

Sources:

http://www.nature.com/news/bacteria-from-lean-cage-mates-help-mice-stay-slim-1.13693

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120912125114.htm

A Real Food Story

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Inappropriate weight is a SIGN from the body that it is struggling with our food choices.

Our bodies function best on whole foods.

Thank you to my mother-in-law for sharing her whole-foods conversion story.  Yesterday’s post contains the introduction to her story.  Choosing nutrient-dense foods is allowing her body to start functioning like it should, and she deserves that.  We all do.  You do:

Terri, here it is.  For better or worse.

My name is Mary and I’m overweight.  My cholesterol number is 11 points above the desirable number and I have an irregular heartbeat (supraventricular tachycardia).  [Allow me, Terri, to mention the time we were walking and her irregular heart beat acted up and her blood pressure dropped.  I had to leave her supine on a park bench while I sprinted 1 and 1/2 miles home to get the car.]  I walk 2 miles a day, 4-5 days a week and spend summers in Indiana and winters in South Carolina.

I never meant for it to happen, but over the years I’d added a pound here and a pound there until I was 20 pounds overweight on my 71st birthday.  [At some point in life, we get to forget about weight!  I don’t care about my mother-in-law’s “weight”, but I do care about her “function.”]  It was then that I decided to do something about it.  Doctors on TV had said that one way to reduce cholesterol was to lose weight.  And I remember back in the 60s my husband attended a science convention in Atlantic City where the keynote speaker presented information about his topic:  “Man is getting too big for his heart.”  I reasoned that maybe I could improve my cholesterol number and improve my heart condition by losing a little weight.

So I began my daily diet regime:  a bowl of cereal with skim milk for breakfast and then a little meat, chicken, or fish, a serving of fruit, and 3 servings of vegetables divided between the other two meals.  I did allow myself a little grain (bread or pasta).  By November I had lost 5 pounds.  But then came Thanksgiving and my weight spiked up again.  Before I could lose the weight again, along came Christmas and a repeat of Thanksgiving.  Then there was New Year’s Eve.  I just could not seem to move ahead with my weight-loss goals.

Then in late February, my daughter-in-law told me about the success her family was having with whole foods and eliminating grains and dairy from their diets.  [Our success came in “function”:  Energy levels, coughs, headaches, stomach aches, constipation, inability to concentrate, sleep, runny noses, stuffy noses, etc.  Weight did follow.]  I decided to give “no grains” a try.  I wasn’t ready to give up ice cream altogether, but I would try to give up grains.  That in itself seemed a daunting task – goodbye pie, cake, pasta, yeast rolls, corn, even cereal.  Was there anything left to eat??!!  What I was expected to live on was a little meat or fish, a little fruit, and lots of vegetables.  I took it a step further and eliminated white potatoes; and although I did not eliminate dairy altogether, I did significantly decrease my intake of milk, cheese, and butter (choosing olive oil instead).  And, yes, I decreased the frequency of ice cream treats.  To be sure I didn’t fudge the results, I kept a daily log of my weight.

The Results

Although I kept a daily log, I will present only the weight on the first day of the new diet and each month after, as close to the anniversary date as possible.

Date                                                      Weight

March 3                                                114.0

April 2                                                   111.6

May 3                                                    108.6

June 10                                                 106.0

July 3                                                     104.8

Health Benefits

I have noticed a number of health benefits as a result of losing 10 pounds, some of them hoped for, some expected, and some a complete surprise.

  • My waist size has decreased 2-3 inches
  • I can bend more easily to tie my shoes
  • I can walk all the way up the hill without stopping to rest midway
  • My heartbeat is more regular during exercise
  • My blood pressure has decreased about 10 points
  • I have more energy and really notice I have sluggishness with increased grain and/or sugar intake

You May Wonder:

1.  What do you eat for breakfast?  Normally I have a smoothie for breakfast made with ½ c. coconut water, a banana, ¼ apple, some cinnamon and/or nutmeg and then another fruit (blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and mangos are favorites).  Ice is optional.  If I am traveling, I will opt for egg, sausage, and fruit.

[I, Terri, have a whole list of breakfast ideas if you click here.  Although I like smoothies, they don’t stick to my ribs.  Protein and fat last me longer and don’t give me a post-breakfast sugar drop, which may be what she’s experiencing.  Real fats, if we remove processed sugars, excessive sweet consumption, and carbohydrates from grains should not scare us anymore.  However, convincing somebody who has been trained to be afraid of animal fats for 40 years is very tough.]

2.  Do you ever get hungry between meals?  Yes, especially after the breakfast smoothie.  Usually I walk 2 miles after breakfast, and after that walk I am very hungry.  The trick is to get very busy and stay that way until lunchtime.  If hunger is too overwhelming, a handful of nuts helps.

[Here I, Terri, would again point out “the smoothie crash” I mentioned above.  I would also add that any whole foods snack will work:  a banana, an avocado, olives, apple slices with almond butter, a leftover hamburger patty, a boiled egg, a can of tuna in olive oil.  Something with protein and fat will curb true hunger.]

3.  When is it hardest for you to resist grains?  When the person across the table from me is eating a warm, fluffy, yeasty-smelling, buttery-topped pan roll, or a piece of warm rhubarb custard pie topped with ice cream, or a stack of pancakes with maple syrup dripping, or a piece of hot pizza.  You name it.  It’s a struggle. 

[She mentioned to me once that she knew exactly what an alcoholic must go through.]

4.  Do you ever fall off the wagon?  Oh, yes!  But I just climb back on again.  And to compensate, I may adjust by eating only vegetables for the next meal, or a small piece of fruit and a handful of nuts.  Or I may exercise a little more.

[For myself, I focus on how poor my energy level is,  how irritable I feel, how bloated I am, how my constipation flares up, or my headache.  Reminding myself that I like to feel good helps me start renewed the next morning.]

Conclusion

This life style change for me seems to be working, although I seem to have reached a plateau at around 105 pounds.  Maybe there have been simply too many graduation parties, holidays, and family picnics.  But when I fall off the wagon, I get right back on.  I’ve come too far to turn back now.  The prize is just around the bend – 5 pounds to my optimum weight and whatever health perks come with it. 

[Here I would encourage people to focus on the “health perks” and not the weight.  IT IS NOT YOUR WEIGHT THAT DETERMINES HOW GOOD YOU FEEL.  IT IS THE REMOVAL OF EXCESS FOOD/EXCESS CARBOHYDRATE-FOODS AND THE INSULIN EXTREMES THAT ACCOMPANIES THOSE FOODS.  THE REMOVAL OF CHEMICALS.  THE ADDITION OF MICRONUTRIENTS ABSENT FROM GRAINS.  The feeling better is the key that something good is happening.  The weight will come.  Focusing on weight will bring failure.  Focusing on that horrible sluggish feeling grains often gives some people is a much better incentive.  Or the supraventricular tachycardia symptoms that are so uncomfortable and now going away.]

Thank You For Reading

My mother-in-law is a wonderful woman!  She deserves to feel good, have great energy, desirable cholesterol, and be able to walk without a racing heart.  For me to hear that her irregular heart beat (which is under the great management of her cardiologists) and stamina seem to be improving is joy to my ears.  She is losing about an average of 2 pounds per month, a perfectly sustainable weight-loss.

wpid-IMAG0924.jpgI didn’t hand her a book to read on any particular diet.  Although I am self-experimenting by following GAPS diet, the word “diet” sets my teeth on edge. We would all function (and therefore feel) much better if we could simply choose foods in a more whole state.  (After achieving that wonderful feat, discerning individual food intolerances and adding in a few tweaks will complete “The I Feel Good Conversion.”)

Free to do what she chooses, I laid down these ideas (I’m sorry if you follow along that you have to see these again.):

  • No processed foods or drinks.
  • Nothing with artificial colors and preservatives (including drinks).
  • Nothing with added sugar, corn syrup, or artificial sweeteners.
  • No grains except for special occasions, hopefully not more than a couple of times a month.
  • No dairy with anything added to it (sugar, colors, carrageenan).  Read labels.
  • Added fats in the form of olive oil, butter, coconut oil, and animal-sources are fine and do not need regulated.
  • Eggs are not bad.
  • Most calories need to come in the form of fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats.

I hope you feel good today.  I hope, if you don’t, you can find what it is that will help you.  Whole food is the perfect start.  (And a check-up with a doctor will help define any serious problems!)

Terri