Lose Weight While You Sleep, Get Fit In Just 5 Minutes a Day, Don't Worry About Fat In Your Diet

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Saturday August 02, 2014 · 4:09 PM PDT

2014/08/02 · 16:09

You've probably seen variations on the headlines above. They sound too good to be true - or are they? We're not quite at the "Everything you know is wrong" stage yet, but Science keeps redefining what we do know. In the process of doing so, we find an expanded understanding of something can seemingly contradict first impressions. The above may seem like tabloid fodder, but it turns out there is some substance to it all.

If you are worried about your health, if you want to do what you can to stay active and feeling good for as long as possible, then keeping track of what we are learning and how we can use it in our own lives is of no small passing interest. The increasingly powerful tools we have today for biology, things like molecular tools for investigation, new imaging tools, powerful computational models, etc., are overturning earlier health paradigms. And, it just might have implications for the whole planet.

More below the Orange Omnilepticon.

Poll

62 votes Show Results

When it comes to diet and exercise, these new findings are:

62 votes Vote Now!

When it comes to diet and exercise, these new findings are:

Meh.

5 votes

Probably just junk science.

0 votes

May be valid, but it's too soon to jump on the bandwagon.

10 votes

Interesting.

23 votes

Fascinating.

9 votes

Really exciting!

5 votes

Would matter more if I was actually exercising or watching my diet.

7 votes

See my comment.

2 votes

...

1 vote

I Did It (And So Can You)

allergywoman for Daily Kos Weight Loss

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Wednesday August 07, 2013 · 2:33 PM PDT

2013/08/07 · 14:33

Join this new group, that is!

Daily Kos Weight Loss. Interested in losing weight? Maintaining weight loss? Becoming healthier?

Please do.

Poll

29 votes Show Results

Join us? We have pie!

29 votes Vote Now!

Join us? We have pie!

Okay.

13 votes

What kind of pie?

8 votes

Only if you don't have pie.

4 votes

Nope.

0 votes

Other, see below.

3 votes

So Who Should I Believe?

allergywoman

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Sunday August 04, 2013 · 3:51 PM PDT

2013/08/04 · 15:51

I had an interesting conversation with an acquaintance of mine on Facebook recently. I've lost a little weight over the past year and three months, as you might have noticed.

Owl in Black 3 by *Windthin on deviantART

Rachel and the Birch Grove 25 by *Windthin on deviantART

I told her the truth, which is that I lost this weight by cutting calories and increasing how much I exercise. However, she decided that I actually did it by "cutting carbs."

zenbassoon

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Sunday July 28, 2013 · 6:32 AM PDT

2013/07/28 · 06:32

" I can look at my daughter and see that she is healthy, active, and athletic; but seeing the word “obese” on the paper left me feeling like the world’s worst mother."

That's the reaction a mother felt when seeing the results of her seven year old daughter's state mandated BMI screening. Even though the letter specifically and emphatically says only a doctor can fully determine if she was obese, and that BMI is often not an accurate indicator of obesity, that word in that letter is "triggering so much concern, shame, and anger".

Obesity is an issue. It can lead to a myriad of health issues like diabetes and heart disease.

But obese people are also the last socially acceptable group to bully and stigmatize. last month, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller tweeted: “Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth.” In Georgia, billboards of overweight children are going up with messages like "Chubby kids may not outlive their parents," for example. Or: "Big bones didn't make me this way. Big meals did."

It's called "fat shaming". The idea being that stigmatizing, bullying, and discriminating against obese people will somehow make them motivated to lose weight. After all, they're just "concerned about their health", that's all.

But guess what? Fat shaming DOES. NOT. WORK. In fact, studies have shown it to have the OPPOSITE effect.

mhanch

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Saturday September 22, 2012 · 11:56 AM PDT

2012/09/22 · 11:56

I had a great discussion with my wife Yulia this evening about exercise, health and food. anyone who has read anything that I write or post knows that I am obsessive about trying to be, at least, generally healthy. Growing up as a “skinny kid” I never thought about health growing up. I had a super-fast metabolism all the way through college, and didn’t gain weight, and even when I exercised a lot, never really built muscle.

So I never looked at what I ate. It didn’t matter. I ate entire cakes, drank endless beer, whatever. I just never gained weight. and the problem is that if you don’t get actually fat, you never think about if you are actually healthy or not.

Poll

25 votes Show Results

What your experience with Fitness?

25 votes Vote Now!

What your experience with Fitness?

Just comes naturally

1 vote

Completely Impossible

3 votes

I watch my Diet

6 votes

I exercise more

9 votes

I keep trying something new

3 votes

I gave up

3 votes

I Want A Pony

zenbassoon

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Saturday September 22, 2012 · 11:56 AM PDT

2012/09/22 · 11:56

No, not that kind of pony. I'll bet you thought I was going to jump in to the Sux/Rox thing we had going back a couple of years ago.

Nope.

I want another kind of pony:

onanyes

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Wednesday July 11, 2012 · 12:26 PM PDT

2012/07/11 · 12:26

Reading this diary inspired me to gather my thoughts on this subject. This interests me because I struggled with overeating and morbid obesity; I reached my top weight of 320 pounds (size 52 pants; I am 6 feet tall) back in the winter of 1992.

I am at normal weight (188 +- 7 pounds or so) since 1995.

I'll talk about what I've learned through personal experience and through research.

More below the fold...

muzzleofbees

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Tuesday July 10, 2012 · 2:18 PM PDT

2012/07/10 · 14:18

Lately, I've been going to the gym. Not because I have some focused plan to get healthy and lose weight. Though I do hope to get healthy and losing weight is great since I'd love to go shopping for clothes at a store like a smaller-sized person. I go every morning and I usually spend around 2 hours there. Soon it'll be 3 as my workouts will continue to expand. I can't do much right now compared to some. My lifting isn't so great and it takes me 30 minutes to swim a half-mile, but that's okay.

I go to the gym because I like to go to the gym. I go to the gym because I am fascinated by the physicality and possibility of the human body. I go to the gym because even though I was always a very active child, I was humiliated and mocked, told again and again that I was too fat, too disgusting, and when I tried to play organized sports, tried to participate in PE, I simply could not keep up. Slow and clumsy and fat, I quickly decided that physical activity was not for me. That I hated it. I could not separate the physical exertion from the endless horror and humiliation that was PE and recess. A horror and humiliation that the teachers were either blind to or as helpless as I was to correct.

I go to the gym because I met a man who showed me that it didn't have to be that way. He literally changed my life when he said, "You're an athlete. Forget about all the shit you went through and don't worry about how you got to where you are today. You're an athlete and your body knows it."

I go to the gym because it's my daily adult recess. Recess I never got to enjoy as a child. I cannot stress the importance of that enough. It's a complete reversal of the very mindset that kept me homebound, anxious, overweight, and self-conscious for so many years. See, going to the gym is not about losing weight. It's about healing my body from years and years of psychological and physical damage--some was external and some was internal and getting to where I am now has been very difficult, sometimes painful, sometimes scary, but it's a constant journey.

My sister posted this picture on facebook last night.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Yes, that's me and a difference between fifteen months. The responses from friends and family were very kind and complimentary, but every single one of them completely missed the point. They look at me and they see somebody with "great determination" and wonderful "self-control" and "Will-power" and they wished they could "work as hard" as me.

But I'm not working. I'm not using "will power" to starve myself--I'm not even remotely dieting! I eat what I want and I eat when I'm hungry and I don't give a fuck what anybody says about my habits (Everybody has an opinion about what would work "best" and after listening to those opinions for years I realized "Wait a sec. Why am I listening to them when it's my body I need to pay attention to?").

I'm healing and I'm losing weight in the process because my weight gain was a direct result of a complex problem...I was very ill and now I'm convalescing.

So join me under the squiggly for my story...

Poll

575 votes Show Results

Have you "struggled" with your weight?

575 votes Vote Now!

Have you "struggled" with your weight?

Yes

481 votes

64 votes

PIE!

30 votes

So I Did This Triathlon...

zenbassoon

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Monday June 11, 2012 · 11:21 AM PDT

2012/06/11 · 11:21

Most of you that regularly read me know that I've been on a weight loss journey. Since November of 2009 I've lost about 300 pounds (I weighed in at 600).

As far as my weight loss is going, I've been fighting with the same ten pounds for about a year. I've been fluctuating between 300 and 310. Part of that has to do with some food choices I've made--I haven't been as disciplined as I need to be. But lately, part of it involves increasing muscle mass.

You see,earlier this spring I decided to enter a triathlon.

zenbassoon

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Saturday April 07, 2012 · 9:37 AM PDT

2012/04/07 · 09:37

Not in a race, though. As you know, I've decided to enter a triathlon. I've been training for the past month so far, and here's an update.

My routine started as follows: I would begin with a 2 mile run-walk. The track at my local Y is 1/8 mile. So I would run a lap, walk a lap (8 cycles). I would then spend 20 minutes on the stationary bike (random hill setting), followed by a half mile swim.

So far, so good.

Jump below the Itzl for more:

Muskegon Critic

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Saturday April 07, 2012 · 9:37 AM PDT

2012/04/07 · 09:37

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBrrrrr!

After all my hand wringing about and adoring the super warm March weather we've had, tonight I'm COLD! Down to just about freezing tonight. Got some logs on the fire. But still...BRRR! I hope my plants survive. I got a little ahead of the weather and started puttering around in my garden, and even planted some of the hardier cold weather crops. Radishes. Cabbages. Lettuce and whatnot. We'll see how those guys do.

In other news I've lost 33 pounds since last October. I've passed the threshold from Obese to merely Overweight. This is awesome. Just another 27 pounds and I'm officially at a healthy weight. Then I gotta maintain. For the Rest...of...my...life. Let me say this: Weight loss is hard.

I don't much like to admit it to myself or others, but the weightloss journey has absorbed a large and central part of my life. Early on I thought it would be a side show. A portion of my life. Something I'd just have going on in the background. But since October I've thought about it just about every day.

I looked at all the diets: low carb, low fat, etc. etc. and figured out that pretty much everybody agrees on one thing: vegetables are good for you. So I figured I'd focus on that. More high volume low calorie foods like cabbage, and fewer low volume high calorie foods like breads.

So...

I don't eat beef as much as I did. I drink very little milk.

I don't eat breads or carbs in the quantity I used to.

I eat a lot of cabbage and vegetables. I genuinely enjoy cabbage and I eat a huge plate of it just about every day (there was an awesome cabbage sale at Meijer recently...9 cents per pound! I bought 8 heads). I occasionally fortify my cabbage with mustard greens or kale or green peppers. Usually I fry it up in olive oil or butter, maybe 4 to 5 cups of shredded cabbage fried up and then I put a couple of over easy eggs on top of it. I get the eggs from a guy down the street with chickens -- I get a mix of brown and blue eggs cuz the blue eggs look awesome. I put tons of hot sauce on it. Man do I love hot sauce these days.

Once I have a massive, heaping pile of veggies in the morning, it holds me over pretty good until 2 or 3 on a few hundred calories.

I eat more fish now...which is easier now that tilapia and whiting are cost comparable to beef and now cheaper than bacon.

Also, also...I take a little more time to exercise. Run around the yard more with the kids. Take a little walk. Do some push ups from time to time.

The theory I'm following right now is, whatever I do to lose weight I have to be able to do for the rest of my life or I'll just regain my weight. I'm not going to overdo it. I gotta be able to do what I'm doing forever.

I'm really enjoying being 33 pounds lighter. Sometimes I'll be walking along and I'll feel like I could just jump and float up into the sky. Also...I've noticed my At Rest heart rate has slowed significantly.

I didn't lose much in March. Maybe 2 pounds. That's fine. Baby steps. I'm still in the right direction. I'll lose the weight in April.

Howsabout you? Watching your weight?

Dying to Be Thin: Scale of Self-Worth

Liberalindependent28

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Saturday March 10, 2012 · 11:27 AM PST

2012/03/10 · 11:27

Intense coldness is an uncomfortable feeling for humanity due to the absence of a normal body temperature. There were nights that required me to wear a heating pad as if it were an extension of my clothing. My body temperature was too low, but that was just the beginning. My hair which normally grew like plants in a greenhouse slowed, and my nails became very brittle and were blue more times then not because of poor circulation as well as the low body temperature. Also, the cycle of sleep was in pure disruption with my waking at before 3 AM on most days so I could exercise. Even as my skin began to turn yellow, my speech began to slow, and I had little energy after the hours of exercise I just kept on going. If I didn't really pay attention to what I saw and felt in the pain of these medical conditions it was not real. Denial was my best friend because as long as I could still go power walking or lifting weights I was "healthy".

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Lose Weight While You Sleep, Get Fit In Just 5 Minutes a Day, Don't Worry About Fat In Your Diet

I Did It (And So Can You)

So Who Should I Believe?

New Study: "Fat Shaming" Leads To Greater Obesity

Downhill from here

I Want A Pony

Recovery from Morbid Obesity: 17 years and counting

Obesity is the Symptom, NOT the problem (with small update)

So I Did This Triathlon...

I Just Ran A 5K For The First Time

I've Lost 33 Pounds

Dying to Be Thin: Scale of Self-Worth