I Drive My Husband Crazy, Too

I know nobody reads this blog - my counter service tells me so - but the few people who have managed to find this place over the years probably quickly run away as soon as they see the posts. They haven't changed much over the years - Dieting for weight loss versus size acceptance. The debate still rages today, but it's leaning more towards eating the healthier lower fat vegan foods and getting some fun exercise in than obsessing over the numbers on a scale.

We were recently "on vacation," in quotes because we're probably the first couple in NJ to have never gone away for any vacation in our 31 years of marriage, except for our 5 days in the Poconos for our honeymoon. Instead of going away we spend our money on such "luxuries" as a few extra goodies in the weekly grocery basket, or replacing broken or worn out/outdated items with more modern ones. This vacation we bought a few CD's (on sale) to replace those that was still had on vinyl (most from the 1960's) but were so worn and scratched we didn't dare play them any more for fear of ruining our 32 year old diamond needle on the turntable. We replaced the broken digital camera (only 2 years old) with a better Canon Powershot and broken Singer serger sewing machine (24 years old) with a newer Singer model. We bought 7th Heaven season one on DVD to replace the home-taped VHS version I had (the remaining seasons are in my Amazon shopping cart for future splurges). Now we can use those old tapes for the upcoming summer season of tv.

And we bought books, which brings me to the topic of this post. When the Amazon package arrived my husband had a good laugh at my expense. Included in the order was Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby's size-acceptance book Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere along with Kip Esselstyn's Engine 2 Diet which pushes the same very low fat, high starch strict vegetarian food plan as his parents and Dr. McDougall. Yeah, at first thought they are extreme opposites, but if you look back on this blog you'll see that the times I felt my best, physically and mentally, were the times I was following the vegan food plan and avoiding all dairy. My husband unpacked the box and just shook his head when he saw the titles and said "We're in for another bumpy ride, aren't we?"

During vacation we ate a lot of crap - fatty meats, bakery goodies nearly every day, as well as almost every lunch from a fast food restaurant, then a chocolate cream pie with three inches of whipped cream on top for the finale on Mother's day. My son and husband really don't like chocolate pudding so the pie was all mine, and I devoured the entire thing in 2 days. Yesterday was my first non-goodies day in a week and a half, and I was in agony! I could barely sleep, my snoring and snorting, as well as hip pains, kept waking me up every hour or so. My head was ready to split open, and when I described the pain to my son he said it sounded like his typical migraine headache. It was the worst headache of my life and didn't go away, even with three doses of extra strength Tylenol. Usually one regular strength tablet taken only once gets rid of any headache I get, but this one was a killer, and the first time I ever had eye pain to go along with it. I never want to go through that kind of pain ever again!

So, with that in mind, yesterday was day 1 of no sweets or any other crap foods. I know the dairy in those things is causing the sinus problems, and I know yesterday's headache was probably a sugar hangover. I'm now going to make a strong effort to avoid all things dairy, have only a little bit of sugar (In iced tea or lemonaide), and continue to make dinners the whole family enjoys, which will save not only my sanity but a few bucks at the grocery store, too. Most meals will be low fat vegan, but not all. I already made one of the soups in the Engine 2 book and see a lot more recipes I'll be trying, just as I'll be making a lot more McDougall recipes, but not only very low fat vegan ones. In fact, yesterday Isa's newest book, Vegan Brunch, went on sale and I ordered it.




Plans for today include hitting the park with my new camera, and finally opening the box with the serger. All my fabric is washed and ready to go, and I've got a lot of sewing to catch up on. Once this headache is gone and I catch up on housework, the first thing to get made is a new Lazy Girls purse. I've had the patterns and fabric for over a year now and really should get started on them again. After that I have a few aprons to make up (Again, the fabric has been waiting about a year), and last week I bought more fabric for summer caftan shirts. I'm so glad I found her directions again after she moved them. I've been using them for almost 10 years now and just LOVE how those shirts feel and fit. I even wear them during the cold wintry days, layered with other shirts. They're best in the wildest fabric designs possible. For this year's batch I have a tropical print (Parrots!), ladybugs, multi-colored sprinkles (known as "jimmies" to some parts of the country), subdued beige butterflies, and my favorite (and the most expensive piece), Japanese fans. My apron and purse fabrics are wilder than these, so I really can't wait to get started. Hopefully now that I'm away from dairy again my arthritis and neck neuritis won't act up as much and allow me to work at the machines for more than a few minutes at a time without pain.

Expect photos. :)

And I Thought Only Magazines Did This

Our local newspaper had these two articles practically side by side:

Eating fatty foods may boost your memory, say scientists

15 fat-burning foods

You may have to enable Javascript or Java or lower security settings to see past page 1 of the article. In Firefox with AdBlock Plus I had to disable AdBlock on this page to go forward.

Of the 15 items in the article, three were hot peppers, 2 were caffeinated drinks, and 6 were meats. How are these things - especially the fatty meats - supposed to burn fat??

To quote John Cleese: "This is all much too silly!"

Great Winnie the Pooh Comic Strip

This is how I feel about dieting - I've been trying my whole life to "be like other (thin) people and have failed.

Here We Go Again

In the past month I've sampled 4 different weight loss plans. My weight had gone down a few pounds AND up a few plus one on each plan. I've eaten as low as 600 calories in one day and as high as 2000 calories, both my daily requirement for the plan I was on at the time. Yes, I gained weight on 600 calories a day. I'm ending March 2 pounds heavier than I started it.

I keep promising myself I'm going to put a stop to this insanity.

Again.

So this morning I unpacked my Overeaters Anonymous literature again and spent my laundromat reading time looking over old Lifelines. OA may not be perfect, but it's the best thing I can think of right now.

Although I said I was going back to strict McDougall, it was more like 50-50 instead of my usual 90-10, and my body is paying for it with all kinds of aches and pains, blood sugar dips, brain fog out the wazoo, and now my blood pressure is higher than it ever was. I had a nice McDougall soup for dinner last night and every 2 hours had to get up to hit the bathroom. At 3:30am it hit again and I rolled over and stood up and WHOA!

The room started spinning!


I immediately sat back down and started to panic, even though this has happened to me in the past, and thanks to my very sensitive inner ears, will happen again in the future. But at the time, the tailspin of panic sent my blood pressure soaring to 210/104, stroke levels. I eventually calmed myself down enough to go to the bathroom (or else I would pee in my pants and panic me even more) and got back to bed, but by then sleep was out of the question. By 4:30am the dizziness was completely gone, my pulse rate was back to normal, and my chest no longer felt as if were going to burst open from the force of my heart beat. It was at this time I got out of bed and checked my blood pressure and got that reading - who knows how high it was back when my head was spinning?! I've been checking it every hour as the morning goes on and the last reading was back to my normal of around 140/70. Whew!

But what, besides rising too fast, caused the BP to go - and stay - that high? My money is on yesterday's bad food choices, as there were more bad than good ones. For breakfast I finished off the hash brown patties that were in the freezer. That was 6 patties. With about a half cup of ketchup, and not a lower sodium variety, either. Lunch was a balogna and cheese sandwich, and not a lower sodium version of the lunch meat. Dinner was a little something called Paul's 2-Cup Soup from a post on the official McDougall forums that I made with no salt added tomatoes and salt-free broth, thank goodness. But to go with the soup I made a loaf of white flour potato bread that got not just buttermilk powder in it but 4 teaspoons of butter. And because veggie soup and white bread digests fast, when I was hungry again a few hours later I had myself a banana with peanut butter.

Now, why is my blood pressure sky high? Do I really need to ask that question?

Breakfast today was my old-faithful oatmeal & raisins with some brown sugar mixed in. Lunch will be veggies, rice and garbanzo beans with some McDougall Right Foods pea soup poured over the top. Dinner is going to be a McDougallized version of Nava Atlas' Pasta Twists with Cauliflower and Spinach, using California Blend frozen veggies (cauli, broccoli and carrots) instead of the plain cauliflower, and no spinach, mainly because I was positive I bought spinach but the freezer ate it sometimes between Saturday and today. My son was happy about that because he really doesn't like spinach all that much. And if I want a snack tonight, well, I'm thinking of making another banana bread. Maybe this time my husband will leave enough so we can have it more than twice.

I keep saying I have to treat my food plan as if it were medically prescribed, like my thyroid and asthma meds. It's the only way it'll sink in to this swollen throbbing brain.

I need to make healthier food choices. This sinus infection is because of all the dairy I've been eating lately, and although I know dairy does this, it tastes so good and is so addicting I can't help but eat it. It's got to stop.

And my blood pressure is going up again from all the meat and salt I've been using. Again, I know these things affect me this way, so why did "God lead me" to these foods? Is it as I wrote in an earlier post, that my God is the mean and vindictive one? Must be.

I'm taking back my will and going back on a mostly McDougall food plan. If I keep eating the "God directed way" I'll die of a heart attack before Easter.

The Thin Within book calls this decision "Phase 2." I call it a return to sanity, that it wasn't God but the devil that drove me away from my former healthy eating habits and into the world of unhealthy meats and fatty foods again.

The World Is Spinning By

First of all, I'm sick. It started coming on a few days ago, that sinus yuckiness, the congested and fuzzy head, poor sleep. Yesterday it settled into a full blown sinus infection, complete with the aggravated tinnitus and weird smell in my nose. I'm also a bit on the dizzy side today. A double dose of dizziness - the changing air pressure always makes me dizzy and sinus infections do, too. I'm sitting here at the keyboard holding on because I'm listing to the left with these clogged ears affecting my equilibrium.

I took a deep breath . . .

and calmed down a bit. The more I read in the official Thin Within forums the more I see that many others have gone through exactly what I'm going through. For instance, the list in this thread would be identical to mine, except substitute "McDougall" for "Atkins" and "Foodmover" for "Zone."

And the feelings about not being deserving of a thin body that's in this thread looks very familiar - I probably felt this way for decades.

After yesterday's rambling post I spent a lot of time obsessing over "healthy eating" and choosing the "right" foods to eat, going as far as making up a pot of soup because I felt that was all I deserved to eat. I made plans to go back to strict McDougalling, heck, maybe even forgoing my pasta and going on MWLP to jumpstart the weight loss. Then I thought long and hard and realized I didn't want to go back on that food plan because it might lead to weight loss again, as it did once in the past when I followed the super strict form of it.

No, I wanted to go back on McDougall because it's an "eat to satisfaction" food plan and I could fill my stomach again. I like the sensation of being full, even if it is only veggies and rice. Thin Within eating leaves me hungry even after a meal because we're to stop at a 5 out of 10, eat only half of what we usually eat to start, to live in a constant state of hunger. To live the rest of my life with a level 5 being the fullest my stomach ever gets would be sheer torture. I would constantly be thinking of food and how much longer I have to wait until I finally get down to zero again so I could eat again.

This web page compares and comments on some of the popular diet plans out there, and the author has some harsh words about plans like WDW and TW:

Similar to Weigh Down, Thin Within tells members to only eat when they are hungry. The program tracks eating patterns based on a hunger scale where 0 denotes real hunger and 5 denotes fullness. The scale is a way to gage "God-given signals of hunger and fullness." There are no dietary restraints or forbidden foods uses.

According to Gerbstadt, fasting can be unhealthy especially for people who have diabetes and who have a history of binging.

"Food plans that don’t have you eating three to five hours is probably not going to give you a lot of energy – you’re going to have highs and lows in your blood glucose," states Gerbstadt.

"So, any diet that tells you to wait until you’re hungry and it happens to be in six to seven hours, you won’t be at your optimum whether you realize it or not. I’m not against the idea of waiting until you’re hungry but you should be within every five hours."

Because I do have a history of BED (binge eating disorder) and hypoglycemia, and because I can go 12 or more hours without my hunger hitting a zero (and because I feel hungrier after eating than before), I think Thin Within may not be right for me.

As I wrote the other day, I will continue to read the books and see where it takes me, but right now the tide seems to be taking me in a different direction.

Hit Me With A Clue Stick

Actually, I found out it's called the "club of condemnation" in Thin Within parlance. We're told not to beat ourselves up, but to "observe and correct" ourselves when we eat out of anything other than a zero-level hunger or fail to stop before we hit a 5.

But my God is not the flower-child, peace-love-happiness God of born again Christians. No, my God is the vengeful God of the Old Testament, the God who drowns babies, tortures Job and taunts Moses. This is why I had a hard time with Overeaters Anonymous, too. Ask God to help you? My God would toss me down on the ground, stomp on my head, and tell me to pull myself up and take care of my own problems, then like a Marine drill sergeant tell me to drop and give him 20 (Our Fathers, not push-ups in this case).

I spent the three day weekend following Thin Within - not eating until I hit a zero, stopping at 5 or below. I ate what I wanted to eat, including the cake my husband bought for Valentine's Day, even though I told him not to. "Trust God" and follow the rules? I broke the first rule and got on the scale this morning and saw I gained 3 1/2 pounds in the past 3 days. Yeah, this is the God I know. And I've spent the past decade trying to get rid of Him and accept the God within that Tao teaches.The more I read about Tao De Ching and the writings about Jesus Christ, the more I see that the writers of the Bible just rewrote a lot of the old Chinese writings to fit into a new religion, a new deity, just like they changed other pagan holidays and celebrations around to fit in Christmas and Easter with the pagan calendars.

What to do next? Continue along this track and trust that it all turns out right in the end? Trust God? Trust Tao? Trust Dr. McDougall? I already know I can't trust myself if weight loss is my goal.

Curses! Foiled Again!

I got taken in again with a weight loss plan. Don't eat until your hunger hits zero, stop eating when (or before) you hit a 5 out of 10, eat one bite more than what will satisfy your hunger and you're being a glutton and gluttony is one of the 7 Deadly Sins and you'll make Jesus and God cry, but God loves you anyway because he made Jesus die for you so remember this the next time you want to take a bite to eat if your hunger isn't exactly at zero but don't feel guilty about all this because God (and Jesus) loves you anyway.

ARGH!!

As I wrote in another post, it's an eating disorder waiting to happen, as not eating anything is the safest (theologically) thing to do. I just can't do this any more, even though I've only been doing it this way for a week and didn't even finish reading the Thin Within book and the other book hasn't even arrived yet. I'll probably continue with the reading, but I doubt it's going to change my mind.

Thin Within doesn't seem to be a good program for life-long Catholics. We're into rules and regulations, guilt, confession and punishments for our mis-deeds and sins, and if it's a sin to eat when not at zero or eating beyond a five, a Catholic not following the program 100% would be in confession and doing penance 24/7 and still walk around in a constant state of fear and guilt..

Perhaps I should go back to reading the Overcoming Overeating books, instead. No fear, no guilt, and you still learn to get back in touch with natural hunger signals without all these silly rules.

Viable Food Plan or Eating Disorder in Training?

I don't know when I'm hungry. I get a bit spacy-headed after not eating for 12 or more hours, but there's no change in my stomach's feelings. Not until I figure I better eat something, hungry or not. Once I do start to eat, I feel I've had "enough" after just a few bites. Is that a 5? Was I right for stopping? Should I have instead eaten half a regular meal? Should I just stop thinking and just not eat if I have no gnawing hunger? I hope my Thin Within books get here soon!

But about a half hour after I eat, then I feel ravenous and can eat the pain off the kitchen walls if I could. I've been holding off as long as I can, then go back into the refrigerator about 2 hours later and grab the container with my leftovers. Sometimes I eat one bite and feel just as I did after "dinner," and other times I eat an entire 3-cup container of a casserole plus a banana plus some cookies plus a bowl (2-3 cups) of veggies and still feel ravenously hungry.

This morning I felt no hunger even at 11am, although I haven't had anything to eat since 6pm last night, but my head was spacey (Remember, I have hypoglycemia) so I grabbed a banana. After one bite I really didn't want to eat any more but felt I should or else I would probably pass out from low blood sugar. I'm now telling myself that'll be it until dinner time, when I eat a tiny bowl of salad and one chicken patty on a bun, and hope I can eat it. I know on Thin Within no food is forbidden, that all food is neither good nor bad, it's just food, but after a decade or more of tooling around with low-fat vegan I just feel guilty. I felt the same way Monday with the meatloaf, which is why I ate maybe an ounce and then ate a few teaspoonfuls of potatoes and spinach.

I guess I should pray about it.

1) Scaring people and hoping it will cause weight loss does not work. If it did it would have worked when our parents used it on us as fat kids.

2) Once diagnosed pre-diabetic (a stupid diagnosis started by the pharmaceutical industry to sell more meds) or diabetic and put on meds, people usually GAIN weight because these meds have that exact effect.

3) Fat people have already tried to lose weight, probably most of their lives. Being told they're fat by their doctor is not news to them. Being told (the lies) that being fat causes everything from hang nails to cancer isn't going to make their bodies miraculously release the weight they've been fighting all their lives.

Health Scares Reduce Smoking but Not Waistlines, Survey Finds

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: February 10, 2009

Smokers are three times more likely to quit if they get a wake-up call in the form of a heart attack, stroke, lung disease or cancer diagnosis, a new study has found.

But obese and overweight people lose two to three pounds at most after being diagnosed with a serious illness like heart disease or diabetes, according to the same report. The study, which looked at weight loss only in people under age 75, was published on Monday in The Archives of Internal Medicine.

It’s not entirely clear why heart disease would motivate patients to quit smoking but not to slim down, but the author of the paper noted that many health plans don’t cover weight-loss programs, with the exception of bariatric surgery, while many businesses and local health departments offer free or low-cost smoking cessation programs.

“People really are open to changing their behaviors after a health event, and this could really be a window of opportunity,” said study author Patricia S. Keenan, assistant professor of health policy at Yale School of Medicine. “I’m not sure the health care system is capitalizing on it, in terms of giving people the support they need to make these changes as they go forward.”

To do the study, Dr. Keenan analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a survey containing detailed health information about middle-aged and older adults collected every other year between 1992 and 2000. The data included information about 20,221 overweight or obese people under age 75 and about 7,764 smokers.

While only about one in 10 smokers who hadn’t been diagnosed with a serious illness quit cigarettes, almost one-third of smokers who had had a stroke or were diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or lung disease quit, the study found.

When smokers were diagnosed with two serious diseases, they were six times more likely to quit than other smokers, the study found.

Obese people lost very little weight after most diagnoses, though they lost up to half a point from their body mass index after finding out they had diabetes, the study found.

“One of the reasons they may not have found a big weight loss is because physician counseling alone is not going to impact weight loss,” said Sherry Pagoto, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who co-wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. “The evidence for behavioral weight loss treatment suggests an intensive program is necessary.”

She added, “If there is a window of opportunity for weight loss, we’re missing it.”

OK, if anyone has been reading this blog from the beginning many years ago (many posts have already been deleted, going back to 2001) you know that although I can curse like a sailor moonlighting as a truck driver, I'm a fairly devote Catholic. You also know that I've been on diets for the bulk of my 55+ years on this earth, 99.9% of them unsuccessful for weight loss, gaining weight while sticking strictly to the plan of the day (week, year, decade).

Insanity. Merriam-Webster definitions:

1: a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia)
2: such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility
3 a: extreme folly or unreasonableness b: something utterly foolish or unreasonable

Nah. Neither of these quite says what I want to say. I much prefer this one, one I've posted here many times before (Which is insanity in itself):

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

Time to stop the cycle of insanity once and for all. What is insane is flitting from food plan to food plan, following all kinds of rules and regulations about what to eat, how much to eat, and when to eat it. Eat this, not that. Don't eat this, eat that instead, but not too much. Eat all you want of this, never let a drop of that pass your lips.

Also insane is thinking I can eat everything that I want, as much as I want, whenever I want, and not suffer any health consequences from it. I know too much sugar causes a reactive hypoglycemia event. I know too much dairy gives me painful joints and clogged sinuses. I know too much salt will raise my blood pressure.

Notice I said "too much" of all of those foods.

I also know that by denying myself all of these things I will crave them, think about them constantly, and eventually eat them anyway and binge on them to the point of harming myself. Then feel not only sick but feel guilty.

ENOUGH!

Thinking about that guilt got me searching for another way of eating, one that will satisfy me physically, psychically, and now spiritually. Who here has not been moved spiritually by some food? Most women I know feel this way about chocolate!

I began investigating various faith-based weight loss programs. Weigh Down Workshops have been around for many years, but in this very-Catholic city of ours none of the few non-Catholic churches are running the program. I read the book when it first came out but laughed at the notion of stopping eating after one bite of food. I recently read that the philosophy of this program has changed so much that it's not quite a faith-based program as a shame- and scare-based one, with people being told they're going to burn in hell for taking one bite more than their body needed for physical nourishment. Sorry, WDW people, but my family and friends tried to shame me into weight loss as a kid and it just doesn't work. Also, I've read that the scripture has been twisted so much to fit their agenda that the originator started her own religion.

Catholics retaliated and there's now a Catholic faith-based program called Light Weigh, but unlike the other programs, this one doesn't have a book or literature so a person can do it at home, on their own, but must go to (and pay for) organized meetings. Many parishes won't allow non-parishioners to participate, I read (It's like that with everything our local churches sponsor in our city since before I was born). Doesn't matter, anyway, as none of the churches in our city sponsor one, anyway.

Then there's Thin Within. I was introduced to this program by a member of the 100-Plus group on Yahoogroups. She had been on it in the past, lost a good amount of weight, but still needed to lose more and lost faith, signing up for Weight Watchers for a year or so, but got so tied up in counting Points and obsessing over every little bite she returned to Thin Within and immediately felt more at ease and peaceful around food. She, too, is Catholic and found the program fits in with the teachings of the Church quite nicely. Thin Within is Christian based, and many members have been "born again," but the program can be followed by a Catholic with no threat to their faith.

I spent the past 4 days reading every post on the Thin Within official message board, and learned a lot. I ordered the books Thin Within and Get Thin, Stay Thin (also known by three other names, so be careful if ordering) from various Half.com vendors. I joined a mailing list and popped about a dozen Thin Within blogs into my Bloglines blog reader. I picked up my Bible and did some reading. I even ordered a Catholic prayerbook to keep in my purse to replace an OA book I have there now for reading when stuck in a waiting room or while sitting down the park. I own a few, but none small enough to carry around comfortably. Now I will.

And I'm not eating. Not totally, no. Just not eating for reasons other than a Zero-level hunger. And I'm not over-eating, either, but stopping at a 5. See The Program page from the official web site to see what the heck I'm talking about. Yes, I may be slightly hungry all the time, but as Sister Mary Martha would say, I just: "Offer it up to God."

I don't think I should say any more at this point. Once I've lived it a bit longer, read the books and blogs, and just live with myself eating this way for a while I'll post more. I will say this - it's certainly different from everything else I've tried in the past to handle my eating, that's for sure! But for now, I've got a lot to learn so I'll shut my mouth (and still my fingers).

Why I'll Never Be Thinner

Every day I'm reminded that not only to lose but to maintain any weight loss you have to treat it as your full time job. From a post on the McDougall forums:

People tell me that I am lucky to be slim.There is no luck about it. I have worked hard over the years to keep my weight as a lower level. That is hard work, week in and week out. I have only rarely let my hair down and that has led to me gaining these pesky eight pounds.

This is why I will never lose weight. I'm too . . . well, I was going to write "lazy" but I'm not, really. In the past I did do all the right things that should have lead to weight loss, but they never worked. I would lose a few pounds - much less than the plan promised and in a much longer amount of time - and while still working the program the weight would start to come back on. "Eat less and exercise more." Well, I was already eating less than 1000 calories a day and exercising for an hour on top of working 8 to 16 hours in a strenuous job and taking doctor prescribed amphetamines appetite suppressants. How much more was I expected to do? I'm now 30 years older and 50 pounds heavier. Now what am I supposed to do?

Learn to accept myself as I am and tell the doctor who wants me to somehow magically get down to a weight I couldn't even sustain when I was 10 years old to go stuff it in his stethoscope, I guess. But how?

Study: Women less able to suppress hunger than men

Study: Women less able to suppress hunger than men
Jan 20, 12:17 AM (ET)
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

WASHINGTON (AP) - Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests. Researchers trying to understand the brain's mechanisms for controlling food intake were surprised at the difference between the sexes in brain response.

Gene-Jack Wang of Brookhaven National Laboratory and colleagues were trying to figure out why some people overeat and gain weight while others don't.

They performed brain scans on 13 women and 10 men, who had fasted overnight, to determine how their brains responded to the sight of their favorite foods. They report their findings in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There is something going on in the female," Wang said in a telephone interview, "the signal is so much different."

In the study, participants were quizzed about their favorite foods, which ranged from pizza to cinnamon buns and burgers to chocolate cake, and then were asked to fast overnight.

The next day they underwent brain scans while being presented with their favorite foods. In addition, they used a technique called cognitive inhibition, which they had been taught, to suppress thoughts of hunger and eating.

While both men and women said the inhibition technique decreased their hunger, the brain scans showed that men's brain activity actually decreased, while the part of women's brains that responds to food remained active.

"Even though the women said they were less hungry when trying to inhibit their response to the food, their brains were still firing away in the regions that control the drive to eat," Wang said.

Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Addiction and a co-author of the paper, said the gender difference was a surprise and may be because of different nutritional needs for men and women, although she stressed that idea is speculative.

Because the traditional role of the female is to provide nutrition to children, the female brain may be hard-wired to eat when foods are available, she said. The next step is to see if female hormones are reacting directly with those specific parts of the brain.

"In our society we are being constantly being bombarded by food stimulus," she said in a telephone interview, so understanding the brain's response can help in developing ways to resist that stimulus.

Eric Stice, an expert on eating disorders at the Oregon Research Institute, called the findings provocative.

"I think it is very possible that the differences in hunger suppression may contribute to gender differences in eating disorders and that they are likely linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones," said Stice, who was not part of Wang's research team.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35.3 percent of American women and 33.3 percent of men were considered obese in 2006.

Rosalyn Weller, a professor of psychology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, said she was surprised by the results and "thought the dissociation between subjective reports of hunger and brain activation in women but not men was very interesting."

The results suggest that training in reducing food desires or in reacting to food cues could be effective treatments to combat obesity, said Weller, who was not part of the research team.

Weller was a co-author of a recent paper in the journal NeuroImage that studied women's brains when participants were shown pictures of food. They found that obese women had a much stronger reaction than normal-weight women in brain regions related to reward.

Wang noted that behavioral studies have shown that women have a higher tendency than men to overeat when presented with tasty food or under emotional distress.

This may result from differences in sex hormones, he said, and further research is planned to see if that is the case.

Alice H. Lichtenstein, an expert in eating behavior at Tufts University, called Wang's research "very interesting ... I hope to see more like it."

But, she added, a lot of different factors figure in what and when we eat.

"As we learn more about the different factors that go into making that decision we'll be better at helping people regulate" their eating, said Lichtenstein, who was not part of the research team.

Obesity has been increasing and Wang also suggested that another part of the reason is changes in society.

While food choices were seasonal and more limited for our ancestors, choices today are wider and the food is so tempting, he said.

"You go to the buffet, you see the food, you want it," Wang went on. "Some people go to the buffet, they don't eat so much, some do. There is something different in the people."

The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and by the General Clinical Research Center of Stony Brook University.

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On the Net:

PNAS: http://www.pnas.org

Is Richard Simmons Spying On Me?

Richard Simmons puts out a daily Message of the Day on his web site. Right now it's about the ONLY thing that's for free over there. Anyway, today's is all about pain. Sometimes I wonder if he has hidden cameras around my apartment. Just yesterday I was complaining to my husband about how painful my joints have been lately, blaming it on the change in weather (We had minus-zero wind chills this week) and some recent dairy and sugar consumption.

I was even talking to my podiatrist about pain in my foot (my plantar fasciitis is acting up again), but in that case the pain isn't food related, it's exercise related. All the exercise I've been doing is harming my foot again. Weight loss might prevent the injury from reoccurring. I can't lose eight without exercise. But exercise causes pain. . .

Here's Richard:

OUCH!
Sunday, 18 January 2009

It seems that every other E-mail I receive is from someone who is in pain...all the time. Well, they need to know and you need to know that your body, depending on your height, is made to carry a certain amount of weight. And the body works better when its at an ideal weight. Once you start putting additional pounds onto your body, it affects the way your body works.

When you gain weight, you don't know exactly where on your body those extra pounds are going. People gain weight in different parts of their bodies. Some people gain it in their upper backs while others may gain it in their chests or on their thighs. Some people gain weight in their buns or on their legs. And where ever people gain the weight, chances are, the added weight will lead to pain.

Millions of Americans suffer from back pain. And that pain is caused by too much weight in the upper part of the body or too much weight in your tummy area. When that kind of weight-strain is put on the back, your back reacts with daily pain, no matter what you do.
Another place people may feel pain is in their chests. The heart gets overloaded and so do your lungs causing them to perform less efficiently. With those added pounds, you can end up with serious pain in your chest and around your heart because those parts of your body are forced to overwork for you.

Then there's knee pain, another one of the most common pains for many Americans. Did you know that for every pound you're overweight, you're adding four pounds of pressure to your knees? That means, if you're 30 pounds overweight, your knees feel like you're 120 pounds overweight. Hey, no wonder they hurt!

Then there's lower leg and foot pain caused by the added weight. And I have to tell you, I've had many of the kinds of pains I've just described before, myself. And they're all, well..."a pain in the neck!" The sad result of all this is that a great many people in this country are on daily doses of pain medication.
So whadda you know, pain...ouch! One more reason for you to get serious about losing weight! And when you do, your upper and lower body, in fact, all of your body will thank you for it.

Just remember, only you can make the pain go away!

Love,

Richard

Interesting article by Dr. McDougall in December's newsletter called Fat Vegan. It's worth a read.

It does seem that Dr. McDougall is eliminating just about ALL prepared foods from his allowable foods list. Boca Burgers have been allowed since the days of his The McDougall Plan book, and now they're taboo. He's now against all mock meats, including seitan. Other foods that were allowed before and are now gone are soy cheeses and Gimme Lean. In previous articles he mentioned how tofu shouldn't be eaten, either, yet Mary McDougall still writes recipes using it. Confusing.