Friday, July 23, 2010

Weight loss protects your heart....

Today's Post: Friday, 7-23-2010


Today HealthDay online news had a story they titled, “As Weight Goes Up, So Do Heart Risks.”

Having more than a small amount of excess fat adds to you weight on the scale.

If you have enough of it, just the weight of it causes problems. Your mobility and desire to exercise are reduced because it takes so much more energy with that added weight.

The extra pressure on your blood vessels tends to cause high blood pressure. Joint problems in your knees, hips, and back become more likely and more severe if you develop them.

The reduced mobility and exercise and the high blood pressure increase your risk of heart problems.

But the real zapper to your heart health is that the combination of NOT exercising with eating and drinking the things that make you fat, and that we now know directly cause heart disease and the indicators of heart health to read in the danger zone.

Even worse, your doctor or doctor may well try to protect you somewhat from these effects by prescribing drugs. These cost money. They have both unpleasant and sometimes dangerous side-effects. If you take enough of them, you even get interaction effects between them sometimes.

But there is some really good news in this too. If you gradually to quickly reverse the things that made you fat, you not only lose the fat, the heart health indicators your doctor sees begin to get better or a lot better.

(For example, it may take you a year to build up to doing decently well on vigorous exercise. If you aren’t really fat, imagine going on a mile walk with an extra 185 pounds in a backpack, a belt pack front and back, and a chest pack. But if you know how extremely fattening they are, you can successfully decide to completely stop drinking regular and diet soft drinks forever in ten seconds.)

And, once these heart health measures begin to drop out of the danger zone, your doctor is much more willing for you to stop the drugs he or she may have prescribed for you.

Over a couple of years time, you not only will lose fat weight; but every time you get these health indicators checked, they will be better. That can be a huge extra motivation to keep doing the things that continue your fat loss.

The HealthDay article quotes several knowledgeable doctors to the effect that sustained weight loss produces improvements in all these indicators.

I also read recently about a real person who experienced this. She was so fat, she was more overfat in pounds than her entire body weight when not fat. She weighed 325 pounds. She had high blood pressure; very high blood sugars; high cholesterol; and was getting serious stress indications from her heart. Her doctors told her she would die soon if she failed to lose enough weight due to the severe danger to her heart.

And, they started her on drugs for each of these things. For example, her blood sugar reading was so high, they started out putting her on insulin.

At first, the half an hour of walking they suggested was so hard for her, she had to replace it with two ten minute walks. And, it sounds like even that was very challenging at first.

In her case, though, she did the right things and kept doing them. Since she now weighs 135 to 140, she lost 185 to 190 pounds. That was over half her initial total weight!

But as she lost the weight, her blood sugar levels went down enough she could stop taking drugs; her high blood pressure went down; her HDL went up; & her LDL and triglyceride readings went down.

It sounds like, she was getting better readings on almost all these things every time she got measured.

By the end, she was almost happier with her improved heart health readings than she was the weight she lost.

The weight loss advice in the HealthDay article was pretty weak. Some of it was good and some was not.

Our posts recently have had better information than their suggestions.

But to summarize,

1. Stop or very nearly stop those foods and drinks that either make you fat or harm your health. These foods make you hungrier or eat extra calories or store fat. They make your heart risk readings worse directly and begin to harm your heart even before they make you fat. It’s best to totally and completely stop the worst of these such as regular and diet soft drinks, hydrogenated oils and any food containing them, foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, and oils high in omega 6 oils such as corn and soy. With foods made with refined grains and real sugar, it can be much harder to reduce your intake to zero. But many people can cut back by 95% or more. We strongly recommend you do so!

Cutting back as much as you can on whole grains, meats and poultry from grain fed animals or at least as much of their fat as you can manage also helps.

2. Wild caught fish not high in mercury, nonfat and very lowfat dairy, nuts, beans an lentils, and some meat and poultry, ideally from grass or pasture fed animals or birds all produce far better health results. The protein helps you feel full and avoid losing bone and muscle as you lose fat weight. Eating these foods also helps avoid having your body trigger its famine response and shut down your fat loss.

3. Also, eating some wild caught fish not high in mercury that are high in omega 3 oils, nuts, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil and possibly taking omega 3 supplements, allows you to be healthier, more able to continue your fat loss efforts, and still succeed in fat loss than eating only an extremely lowfat diet, research has found.

4. And, to the maximum extent you can engineer it, add as many nonstarchy vegetables to your meals as you can. Go for variety and include as many cruciferous vegetables and others that prevent cancer as you can. These foods fill you up, protect you, turn off hunger, and have so few calories Weight Watchers rates them as having ZERO points.

5. Get vigorous exercise almost every day. Strength training, interval cardio, and fast martial arts practice all work. Even five to 15 minute sessions at home can work wonders if you are short on time and are dramatically better than nothing at all. See yesterday’s post for example and many of our other posts.

6. If you can fit it in, also walking briskly for 30 minutes a day really helps.

7. In addition, some kind of sustainable but not severe calorie restriction of even these better for you foods can help. There are many ways to do this. Research has validated Jon Benson’s every other day calorie restriction for example. But other methods also work. The trick is to find several ways that work for you and that you can keep doing without hassle.

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