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.

Merry Christmas

Sad, Confused, Wheezy, and Soon to Be Hungry

So depressing to see the sale go up again, but what did I expect after a week-long binge.

And why did I binge? Because it was vacation and the foods I ate were "forbidden" ones - mostly bakery donuts. I ate my regular breakfast and lunch most days and enjoyed a few days of burgers with the boys, and most of those I ate low-fat veggie burgers. We ate take-out just once — Chinese food, and I chose one of the all-vegetable dishes from the "healthy" menu — and because we didn't hit any mall or movie theater during the week there were no extra snacks. We didn't even do a big traditional meal for Thanksgiving but had burgers with the holiday side dishes (stuffing & cranberries, and my snack later that night was a bowl of Brussel sprouts).

My official gain for the vacation is only 3 1/2 pounds. I used to gain or lose that in one night, depending on how salty the food was that I ate the night before, so why am I so obsessed over it this time? Is it because I really enjoyed eating the same foods as my family for a change? That I ate those treats without any thought of guilt and now it's all come crashing down on me?

Maybe I really should make an effort to re-read the Overcoming Overeating book as the group is doing on Friends of Overcoming Overeating. I really need to absorb the message again.

And I really should toss out that scale!

I think part of my problem is the fact that I've been a bit short of breath and phlegmy from my asthma the past few days. I stopped taking my Singulair at the start of vacation in an effort to see if that medication was the cause of my fatigue, since my doctor says it can't be from my thyroid and fatigue is one of the side effects. I also really didn't get much exercise in this vacation. Usually we're roaming miles through malls or the streets of Manhattan, but this time we had a lot of little pissy things to do closer to home and no money to spend in malls. I really can't do one of my exercise videos while my husband is asleep just a few feet away on the other side of the wall, so that could be a reason for the breathing problem, too. And the weather. We had some rain outside, dry heat inside, and both bother my asthma. So why am I blaming this on my weight?

So this morning I took my Singulair first thing in the morning and already did my Mindful Movements video. I'll be grabbing my oatmeal breakfast as soon as I finish this post, will have my usual salad, rice & veggies for lunch, and dinner is Greeny Beany Soup with a loaf of some sort of whole-grain bread. Even last night I had my traditional banana as an after-dinner snack, but if I feel like some banana bread, I have some slices in the freezer, and I'll eat one without guilt.There's really no way that I want to throw myself back on the dieting merry-go-round. I might not lose much weight, but I'll have my sanity. Well, at least getting a little closer to finding it, that is.

Then again, I do have a doctor's appointment soon, and if I weigh more than the last visit I'll never hear the end of it. Maybe that banana bread better stay in the freezer.

Damn Donuts! And Day 30 of 30

I stepped on the sale yesterday. I didn't want to do it, especially not when fully dressed and after a 24 ounce glass of water, 12 ounce mug of coffee and cup of oatmeal plus fruit breakfast, but it was calling me. When my husband went into the bathroom I gently removed the item of torture and placed in on the flat kitchen floor, took in a deep breath, and stepped on.

It reads 5 pounds heavier than it did at 5 in the morning on November 21st.

I'll get an official reading tomorrow morning at 5am, after my husband goes back to work. I'm certain of a gain - one doesn't share in a few dozen donuts and fudge brownies over a ten day period, plus a few very salty meals (like Chinese food, even though it was low fat and vegan) and not suffer the consequences - but I'm sure it won't be a five pound gain.

I put the sale back into its lair under the bed and promised myself to stick to strict McDougall MWLP until I lose not just those 5 but an additional 130 pounds. We were on our own for dinner again so I made a pot of Broccoli Cheese soup from a post on the McDougall forums earlier this year, and Rainbow Skillet Medley, a MWLP recipe.

Three hours later my husband comes into the room with the dregs of the donuts and insists we finish them off. Like a good little wife I did as he requested. At least those things are now GONE and even he realizes we really can't handle them any more at our age. If either of us feels like something sweet, more than just a piece of fruit, it's going to be made from a McDougall-legal recipe.

Here's to a healthier December!