SCIENTIFIC PROOF LIFE IS NOT FAIR!

I loved the twists in the article I read in the NY Times about diet and exercise.  There has been some question about just how valuable exercise is when dieting.  Mostly because exercise at the level most of us actually participate, we just doesn't burn that many calories.

“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and an expert on weight loss. It’s especially useless because people often end up consuming more calories when they exercise.

“The body aims for homeostasis,”wrote Barry Braun, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in the American College of Sports Medicine’s February newsletter. It likes to remain at whatever weight it’s used to. So even small changes in energy balance can produce rapid changes in certain hormones associated with appetite, particularly acylated ghrelin, which is known to increase the desire for food, as well as insulin and leptin, hormones that affect how the body burns fuel."

Here's where it gets unfair:

In physiological terms, the results of one study “are consistent with the paradigm that mechanisms to maintain body fat are more effective in women,” Braun and his colleagues wrote. In practical terms, the results are scientific proof that life is unfair. Female bodies, inspired almost certainly “by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction,” Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every ounce of fat.

On the other hand, if you can somehow pry off the pounds, exercise may be the most important element in keeping the weight off. “When you look at the results in the National Weight Control Registry,” Braun says, “you see over and over that exercise is one constant among people who’ve maintained their weight loss.”


At least the very latest science about exercise and weight loss has a gentler tone and a more achievable goal that the study that came out suggesting women needed vigorous exercise an hour a day, every day to maintain weight. “Emerging evidence suggests that ­unlike bouts of moderate-vigorous activity, low-intensity ambulation, standing, etc., may contribute to daily energy expenditure without triggering the caloric compensation effect,” Braun wrote in the American College of Sports Medicine newsletter.

In a study Braun just completed in his energy/metabolism lab, volunteers spent a day sitting and then a day standing.  The volunteers who stood all day not doing anything in particular, metabolised  a significant number of calories without triggering their appetite hormones.  So you don't necessarily have to get on a treadmill, just get off the chair more!

I THINK I CAN DANCE

No matter how much I change up my exercise routine, I get bored sometimes.  I really enjoy it more when I have new music and I frequently change my playlists.  I am always switching around the music so it always seems fresh, adding new tunes in here and here.  I recently added a whole playlist of old Stevie Wonder tunes, they are really compatible with rowing.

Even so.  There I am, day after day at the gym.  On the equipment.  Yes, sometimes I go for a walk or ride my bike outside, but when I am at the gym.  I am at the gym...again.  So it is up to me to take myself somewhere else -  in my head. 

My favorite thing to do when I am on the Nu Step is to close my eyes and just get lost in the music.  I can really shut out all the sounds of the gym and transport myself back in time to the many places where I danced and danced through the nights.  I am no longer a big, old woman in the gym, I am young, graceful and rocking out to the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac.  In those days we didn't go to "clubs."  We went to bars.  Bars with music. 

In my head, that's where I go while I am working out in the gym.  And the time just flies away.

NOT WHAT YOU EAT BUT WHAT YOU ABSORB

We have all known those people who eat the same things we eat, sometimes a lot more, and never gain weight. So that must mean they are expending more calories, right? If you stick with the old calories in, calories out theory that would be the case. However, new research shows that calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes and the trillions of bacteria in your intestine.

People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighbor’s will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendly’s Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer.

A study done at Washington University showed that obese mice and slim mice have different populations of gut bacteria. Crucially, they showed that the bacteria caused obesity, rather than obesity producing a specific mix of bacteria. When the scientists plucked bacteria called Firmicutes from obese mice, then put them in the bacteria-free guts of mice raised in a sterile environment, the latter bulked up within 10 to 14 days—even though they ate less.

Why? Firmicutes, it seems, are more adept at liberating calories from food than are bacteria from the other common lineage, Bacteroidetes. Firmicutes can digest complex sugars that neither the mice’s own enzymes nor Bacteroidetes can, breaking them into simple sugars and fatty acids that the mice’s intestines then absorb and turn into more mouse. People harbor bacteria from these same two lineages, with the obese among us having more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes than slim people, exactly as in fat and lean mice.

The study then had 12 obese people follow either a low-fat or a low-carb diet to lose weight, the result was more Bacteroidetes and fewer Firmicutes—the profile of slim people. The more Bacteroidetes, the more weight the volunteers lost.

Although the diet experiment shows that losing weight can tip the bacterial balance away from bugs that extract the maximum calories from what we eat, what’s needed is a way to tip that balance and thereby lose weight, rather than lose weight and thereby tip the balance of gut bacteria.

So the next big push is to determine if there is another way to alter the bacteria (in a safe way) before making the dietary changes. There will certainly be those questionable marketers who will rush out with claims they can change your intestinal bacteria with their product However, at this time, there is no support for that approach.

In fact, it is possible that one component of the obesity epidemic is actually the widespread use of antibiotics which have changed the bacterial make-up of millions of Americans. This may even explain the upsurge of diabetes on the theory that the bacteria changes are altering the immune system. “I think the idea that foods, drugs, or other things in our environment might contribute to the epidemic by changing gut microbes is a distinct possibility" says Randy Seeley, an obesity researcher at the University of Cincinnati.

So all those years you though your metabolism was shot? Or that you were just so different from other people when it came to calories? You just might have been right!

BAGGY CLOTHES

I have always loved clothes and fashion. One of the most frustrating things about being overweight is the shopping. the clothes are so limited and ugly and poorly made. I have long felt that the dregs of the fabric industry are saved for the plus size manufacturers because it is so rare to find an attractive print.

Anyhow, I look forward to the day when I can shop the whole store and not one tiny "department." I really look forward to the day when shopping online for clothes is something I choose to do instead of the only option. Right now I am in a strange clothes phase. I have posted before about taking in my pants. I have done it a lot...the front pockets are starting to migrate toward the back! But that's OK.

It's the tops I am troubled with. I have a lot of polo shirts and short sleeved cotton blouses which are not suited to being taken in. But when I shop for new ones, they feel skimpy. I know the shirts I am wearing are really baggy and unattractive, but I can't seem to find anything that fits right. I must be between sizes, or the shirts are just not cut with the right proportions for me. I agree with Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear that oversize clothes make you look bigger, but I also don't want my clothes to be tight. Skimming the body, maybe. Some space between me and the fabric, definitely!

I have a few tops that I save for going out because they still fit pretty well. Not quite so baggy, yet. And I have some old ones boxed away that I still don't quite fit back into - I tried some on this morning just to see.

Maybe by fall my weight loss and the clothes in the stores will make for a better fit!

FOOD FANTASIES

I bought a 2 pound container of blueberries at a great price the other day. They are that perfect sweet/tart and juicy and I am enjoying them for breakfast with my low carb cereal.

My fantasy is to take that big container of blueberries and make a delicious blueberry crisp. Every time I open the refrigerator and see that nice big container I think of a blueberry crisp. Something about the abundance of blueberries gets my mind going...so from now on, I am only buying blueberries in smaller containers because that does not seem to stir up the same desires. It is so odd the way the mind works.

I was thinking about this when I was grocery shopping. As I walked the aisles I thought What would I buy if I could eat anything I wanted with no repercussions, no guilt? I thought of sweet things. And chocolate things. I looked at the breads. I considered chips and crackers and the things I could dip and spread on them. I looked into the bakery and through the freezer cases. And, yes, some of my old friends beckoned. I saw those Hagen Daaz bars and gave some thought to polenta.

Weird thing is? Nothing stood out. There was nothing that seemed to be that one perfect thing. Here I was giving myself permission (in my mind) to pick the "ultimate cheat" - and there was nothing I especially wanted.

Like I said - so odd.

Or is it just me?

BACK TO BASICS IT IS

I just posted a comment on Karen's blog say that we are all looking for something great and it isn't going to be found in food. Now why is it that I have that great insight when I am commenting on some one's blog but not when I am in the middle of my own grazing forays in my kitchen?!

I know, I know. None of us do, and that is why we band together in tribes and therapy groups and blogospheres! It takes a village to get healthy.

So my shipment of my program product came yesterday and I am back on with the small addition of 2 fruits a day. I will not miss out on my beloved summer fruit.

Thanks all for your comments and support!

I FLOPPED THE FOURTH

I don't know what has gotten into me this weekend - oh! Yes I do - too much food!

I just don't know why I suddenly started eating so much. And not even particularly special food. Just so much of it. I even had a stomach ache last night. It has been a very long time since I have had so much to eat that I caused myself pain.

It didn't make me feel better. I wasn't feeling bad. Just sort of bored and at loose ends. I made Tom his special cookies from his sports nutrition book - they are for him to take on bike rides for energy. I tasted the batter. I ate some of the cookies. It just got me going. A taste of this and that. Grazing around. Nothing satisfying because, of course, I wasn't hungry and food wasn't really what I was looking for. I kept telling myself that and then half an hour later I would be wandering into the kitchen again.

It didn't help that I was watching a movie with lots of good food in it, I suppose. (I finally watched "It's Complicated.") And yes, I made that connection, too. But I kept wandering into the kitchen tasting this and that until I went to bed.

Then this morning I was dressed and ready for the gym when I decided to work in the yard first while it was still cool. So I changed and worked in the yard for an hour or so and just when I was about finished, I got a call that Tom's bike had broken down and he needed me to go pick him up. I changed out of my dirty gardening clothes and drove off to get him. By the time we were back I made his lunch and then I made myself a sandwich, too. A whole sandwich on a ciabatta roll. I have not had that in over 8 months.

So was that a expression of my frustration? I suppose so. I couldn't say what I was feeling. I think I am very closed off from my feelings right now. Maybe I am eating to try to stir up some feelings.

I don't know if this is a publish worthy post. No insight. I am wondering If I need to go back on my program for a few weeks to get myself back on track. I have been so on and off this past month and now this.