Friday, March 29, 2013


Ways to remove extra calories from your food & drink....

Today's Post:  Friday, 3-29-2013

Intro: 

You CAN lose fat by adding muscle and doing other things that boost your metabolism.

But calories DO count and removing some kinds and a bit of others will speed your fat loss and help you to keep it off.

First:

Because they are the building block of your body and health you want to keep or even eat a bit more of health OK proteins and foods that are high in fiber such as nonstarchy vegetables.

In fact, many people losing fat need to eat MORE health OK proteins. 

And, almost everyone losing fat needs to gradually eat MORE and more kinds of nonstarchy vegetables. 

Beans and lentils have both protein and LOTS of fiber.  Unless you are allergic to them, eat those but don’t overdose since they are slightly glycemic; and overdoses can be uncomfortable!

Eating these few kinds of foods also helps prevent the famine response with its increase in hunger and reduced metabolism.

Protein and foods high in fiber fill you and make you less hungry and make it take longer until you are hungry next.

Second:

Here’s a list of ideas to cut calories from everything else.

1.  Fruit with its higher glycemic index and sugar, health OK oils such as extra virgin olive oil, and raw and unsalted nuts, if you aren’t allergic, be sure to eat in moderation.

Only drink one glass of real fruit juice a day with breakfast.  And, drinking organic 100 % cranberry juice has about half the sugars and calories of other juices.

Only eat fruit at breakfast if it’s higher glycemic such as bananas and only eat one serving of one kind each day.

Eat mostly low glycemic fruit such as organic wild blueberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, and plums.

Extra virgin olive oil is wonderfully good for you.  But a low moderate amount has a lot fewer calories than twice that much.

Guacamole is so good for you and avocados are so good for you and their fat is actually good for your heart.  It’s OK to eat extra once a week or so.  But be very careful to limit how much you eat on the days you are cutting calories extra.  And eat a low moderate amount most days.

Milk is a good food for drinking just after a hard workout since it’s anabolic and will help you build or keep muscle.

But take in less calories and avoid milk’s fattening effect at all other times by eating nonfat Greek Yogurt, nonfat Cottage cheese, and small amounts of cheese from cows fed only grass and hay – and drink ice water the rest of the time.

Cutting calories with that switch works! I just lost 5 pounds mostly from doing just that.

Third,

Stop drinking all soft drinks—both regular and diet! 

The people who do are hungrier and eat more extra foods than people who don’t!  They are routinely MUCH fatter and heavier too!

a) For people who have been drinking regular soft drinks, they get 10 % of their calories from this source!

They tend to have ALL that 10% stored as extra fat! 

You know what you weigh.  Subtract 10% of that from your current weight.  Unless you are very young and have very little fat now, you can lose all that fat by losing soft drinks completely!

b)  Whether rebound hunger, other bad food choices, and causing your liver to make you fat, drinking diet soft drinks and using the artificial sweeteners in them have been found to make you fatter than drinking regular soft drinks!  They also cause more diseases than even regular soft drinks do such as type 2 diabetes.

As fattening as regular soft drinks are, even more fattening is NOT a desirable neighborhood!

Do NOT stay there.  Stop diet soft drinks!

c) Ice water promotes fat loss. 

Tea and green tea are good for you and best for you with no milk or sugar added. 

Coffee is actually very good for you and a good fat loss choice if you have it with no  sweetener.  Small amounts of half and half or coconut milk are OK. 

Double servings of half and half or coconut milk or milk is too fattening.  That’s doubly true if you have it with tons of sugar. 

Some people who have fancy coffees each day with both too much fat AND sugar can cut up to several hundred calories a day by switching to no sweetener and far less fat in their coffee!

(Green coffee bean extract is a way to get the health supporting part of coffee with virtually no calories.)

Never use nondairy creamer!  Because it’s made out of hydrogenated oils which are a direct cause of heart disease, heart attack starter, and the stuff builds up in your body from even small amounts, never ever use that stuff!

Four, in fact there are a whole list of things that tend to be quite harmful to your health to eat or very fattening or both.

Guess what? The best fat loss solution is to never ingest that stuff!

You need to cut calories from somewhere to lose fat and keep it off.

Why not delete almost all fattening foods and ALL foods and food components that harm your health!

You may be consuming enough of that stuff now to cut 10% of your body weight or more as fat!

Because you may need to eat more real food, it may not be quite that much.  But because these food and drink components are so fattening it may actually turn out to be even more effective even after adding some real foods to compensate!

Most people are eating several things every day that are on that list!

a)  We just covered that foods made out of hydrogenated oils which are a direct cause of heart disease, heart attack starter, and the stuff builds up in your body from even small amounts, never ever use that stuff!

So, if a food has ANY kind of hydrogenated oil listed as an ingredient or any trans fat amount other then zero, lose ALL the calories in that harmful food and don’t eat it!

b)  Recent discoveries have shown that high fructose corn syrup is so incredibly fattening that it could get approved as a drug to make people fat!  If a food or drink has ANY high fructose corn syrup – sometimes listed as HFCS or corn sugar, do your fat loss efforts a favor and do NOT buy or consume it.  Worse, consuming high fructose corn syrup boosts triglycerides which means that consuming high fructose corn syrup is ALSO giving yourself doses of heart attack starter.

c)  Oddly, artificial sweeteners, despite having no or very few calories, make you fatter than high fructose corn syrup studies show, so take a pass on them too. It counts as if you cut that many calories or more!

d)  Despite the huge availability and seeming normality of foods made with refined wheat flour, stop ALL calories from that source to the very best of your ability!

Refined grains are very high in glycemic index – even more that sugar and are almost as fattening as high fructose corn syrup!

Worse, today’s hybrid and GMO wheat is fattening for many people even when eaten as 100 % whole wheat or wheat germ!

Most bread today fails people who want to lose fat and keep it off. 

The wheat and gluten free versions have high glycemic refined rice flour and added sugar!

But you can cook quinoa yourself as a rice substitute because it is NOT GMO is higher in protein than wheat and low glycemic too!

Barley does have gluten but is so very low glycemic people eating it routinely lose weight!

Whole grain buckwheat flour is far less fattening than wheat and the Bob’s Red Mill version has no gluten.

And for those not allergic there is almond flour.

So you can cook with these components and make a bread that is both low glycemic and not fattening.

A local cook even makes desserts with real sugar and a mix of quinoa and buckwheat flour and said it works great!  (You just want to eat even such desserts far less often!)

e) Real sugar is not as directly harmful if you eat it rarely and after you eat a low glycemic food.

But it is fattening.  So a way to cut calories is to have real sugar far less often!

The average American takes in 7 tablespoons a DAY of sugar or high fructose corn syrup.  After subtracting the 3 or 4 tablespoons from soft drinks and other sources of high fructose corn syrup that's still at least 3 tablespoons a day.  So stop all soft drinks and high fructose corn syrup to cut your sugar and sweetener at least in half.

Then gradually have other sources of real sugar far less often once a week instead of 3 or 4 times a DAY is dramatically better for you and far less fattening!  Once a week or less is MUCH better for you and far less fattening!

Losing those calories counts at least double for fat loss!

f)  Fat from animals fed grains is very high in omega 6 oils.  And, the cheap to make corn and soy and canola oil from GMO crops is very high in omega 6 oils.

People today eating this stuff have 10 to 15 times too much omega 6 oils because of this.  This is now thought to be major cause of both heart disease and cancer!  It also helps cause osteoarthritis and then makes it hurt worse!

So, do whatever you can to eliminate close to all the fat from beef or chicken you get from animals fed grains.  Get lean cuts, cut off any visible fat, in chicken that includes removing the skin, then when you cook, discard the fat that melts and runs off.

(Eating wild caught fish and animals fed ONLY their natural foods makes for a fat that is actually somewhat good for you to eat.  And the wild caught fish and maybe the beef and chicken raised this way have omega 3 oils which is an anti-inflammatory and an antidote to omega 6.

There is even some evidence that this excess omega 6 oils is directly fattening.  So every bit of it you remove from what you eat counts as removing calories!  And it also protects your health.

g)  Excess salt tends to add water weight and the foods that contain it almost always contain these other ingredients.  Eating excess salt also helps cause gout, heart disease, high blood pressure and even autoimmune diseases recent research has found.

You’ll be less fat and far healthier if you avoid these foods.

h)  MSG is thought by many to produce some serious health harms.  This may be a bit on the controversial side.  But it is proven to add to excess chronic inflammation and it has been shown to make people fatter even when they seem to consume the same calories.

So, NOT eating a food that contains MSG counts as removing calories.

The problem is that it’s often listed as autolyzed yeast, natural spices, or just spices on labels.  To be sure to avoid it, if any of those show on a label, I take pass on that food.

This includes many spice blends and condiments!

Surprisingly, for example, almost all mustards on the market list “spices” as an ingredient for example.  The far better news is that the yellow mustard from Annie’s Naturals
 has no such “spices” listed as an ingredient.

Five:

Ways to cut a few calories from recipes.

One is to replace some, perhaps half of the butter or oil in recipes with applesauce.

Half extra virgin olive oil and half applesauce with only a bit of butter from cows fed on grass such as Kerrygold Irish butter added just after cooking is a combination I like.

You get the taste of butter but with only half the calories and dramatically less saturated fat.

Another is to use flavored kinds of sugar and a bit less.

Use half a cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of dark molasses instead of a full cup of regular sugar would be one example.

You can also add raisins or nuts to add flavor when you cut sugar in this way.

Yet another is to use the natural and relatively side effect free erythritol half and half with real sugar.  I think your body then will process this normally yet you just removed half the sugar and half the calories.

Since erythritol can produce some gas in large amounts though it does this far less than comparable natural low cal sweeteners just minimize how much you use this.

Or you can combine the methods.

Instead of two cups of sugar, use half a cup of brown sugar and a quarter cup of dark molasses instead of a full cup of regular sugar for one cup and half a cup of erythritol and half a cup of real maple syrup for the second cup. 

Then add a few bits of raw walnut if you like.  

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Thursday, March 28, 2013


What the Best health producing diets share in common....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-28-2013

Intro:  The Mediterranean diet is considered one of the best ways to eat for good health.

But despite the fact that the Mediterranean diet IS one of the best ways to eat for health, the other ways to eat for good health and fat loss show some versions of it are far more effective. 

I’ve long posted that making those upgrades to the Mediterranean diet or adding extra virgin olive oil to those other ways to eat for good health tend to create a more diverse and effective way to eat for good health.

When a very important recent study came out, it found that even people with existing heart disease or very high risk factors, when switched to a Mediterranean diet got fast and significant protection from heart attacks and more.

But something I missed is that it did so more than what was called a “lowfat” diet.

And, of course, after this rather conclusive study, some people talked about the Mediterranean diet being the best way to eat for health.

I’ve long posted that the Mediterranean diet IS that protective for three key reasons. 

1.  It completely removes all soft drinks and all the several kinds of junk food when people eat the Mediterranean diet.  That alone is a HUGE asset! It really tends to stop or prevent obesity – and many diseases.

2.  It replaces almost all junk omega 6 oils and some animal fats from grain fed animals also excessively high in omega 6 oils which cause excess inflammation and disease to olive oil which does NOT do so!  That too is a HUGE asset because it does so much to prevent heart disease and cancers.

3.  And, many of the people following the Mediterranean diet also use extra virgin olive oil.  The many micronutrients in extra virgin olive oil are extremely good for health. 

For example, people eating the Mediterranean diet are less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease. 

But just in the last few days research was announced showing that extra virgin olive oil has a micronutrient the prevents the formation of beta amyloid which is one of the causes of Alzheimer’s disease.

That means that people eating the Mediterranean diet who use extra virgin olive oil have even better health and less mental decline than those who just eat olive oil that is not extra virgin olive oil.

But a very knowledgeable director of one of the organizations that uses one of the truly low fat diets wrote an article that was posted on Medscape.

She is Gayl J. Canfield, PhD, RD & the Director of Nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Miami, Florida.

In her article, she makes several good points.

The group labeled lowfat in the study were not eating that much less fat than those in the Mediterranean diet but WERE eating the standard American diet including junk fats, omega 6 oils, excess sugars, and likely drank soft drinks.

Then she lists their current upgrade of the Pritikin Diet and the Ornish diet as getting very desirable health results too but are actually true lowfat diets.

Then she notes as I’ve often done that the DASH II diet also gets great health results and lower blood pressure for people who eat it.

She wrote:

“Healthy "Low-Fat" Diets

A substantial body of research exists that has documented the heart-healthy benefits of 2 well-known low-fat diets, Pritikin and Ornish. In fact, the data are so strong that Medicare now covers cardiac rehabilitation programs based on the Pritikin and Ornish plans for people with a history of cardiovascular disease.[2] Both programs also include exercise and lifestyle-change components.

The Ornish Program has been proven to regress heart disease,[3,4] and the Pritikin Program has been proven to significantly reduce many modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease, including low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose, hypertension, inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein, and excess weight/obesity.[5-7]

Both programs recommend an eating plan with about 10% to 15% of calories coming from fat, and both emphasize hearty consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes such as beans. The Ornish Program is completely vegetarian, whereas the Pritikin Program allows up to 4 oz of animal protein daily, such as omega-3-rich fatty fish, skinless white poultry, or lean meat such as bison.

Both of these programs are a far cry from the "low-fat" diets of the 1980s and 1990s, many of which were anything but healthy. Often, the "low-fat” and "fat-free" products people were eating (remember "fat-free" cookies?) were essentially junk food themselves -- very high in sugar, salt, and/or refined white flour.

Low-fat plans such as Pritikin and Ornish, by contrast, focus on real food -- whole, minimally processed, naturally fiber-rich foods that, as Michael Pollan wrote in his superb book In Defense of Food, "are foods our great grandmothers would have recognized as food."

Another low-fat diet that has proven to be particularly beneficial for blood pressure control is the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet. Several studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have found that the DASH diet lowers blood pressure as well as or better than medications. DASH also promotes menus that are high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans; low in fats, salt, red meats, and sweets; and moderate in fish, poultry, nuts, and low-fat or nonfat dairy foods.”

My comments.

These three diets share with the Mediterranean diet that the people on them remove all soft drinks and all the several kinds of junk food when people eat any of these 3 lowfat diets also!

They also, by virtue of being so low in fat and avoiding meats or the fat of meats of animals fed grains high in omega 6 oils and avoiding omega 6 oils too, share a very low intake of omega 6 oils with the Mediterranean diet.

These 3 diets also tend to stress eating vegetables, fruit, and beans even more than the Mediterranean diet.

Clearly any of these four diets that adds or uses extra virgin olive oil and raw nuts for those not allergic will get great health results.  And eating a Mediterranean diet that adds even more vegetables, fruit, and beans as those 3 diets do, will get great health results.  (The people in Crete who once had one of the lowest rates of heart disease ever found in fact, ate that version of the Mediterranean diet.)

But, those 4 diets can do even better in several ways.

Dr Canfield notes one.  She points out that boosting the intake of omega 3 oils is proven to be health protective.  (I’ve posted that combining boosting omega 3 oils with removing hydrogenated oils and omega 6 oils slashes excess chronic inflammation and the diseases it helps cause.)

Eating wild caught fish not high in mercury, eating other seafood not polluted and sustainably harvested, and taking omega 3 and DHA supplements combined with one of those 4 upgraded diets begins to create close to the world’s most healthful diets.

But there are two things that tend to cause excess fat that are still in all of these diets. 

1.  They tend to include some to a lot of whole grain foods.  These foods are very high in glycemic index and are often made from GMO grains and very commonly use wheat or whole wheat which turns out to be extra fattening for other reasons.

So one upgrade they all need is to make even whole grain foods occasional rather than daily foods and wheat even whole wheat as a very occasional food.

2.  One of the surest ways to lower hunger effectively and lose fat by building muscle and preventing its loss is to eat a diet a bit higher in protein than these ways to eat suggest.  That’s most true for the Ornish and Pritikin diets.

The critical thing is to eat a bit more beans and for those not allergic to eat more raw, unsalted, nuts than are in the 3 lowfat diets. 

It’s nice that eating wild caught fish not high in mercury and eating other seafood not polluted and sustainably harvested is also a very health supporting source of good quality protein.  Except for the Mediterranean diet, the lowfat diets don’t stress this enough.  (Farmed fish are very heavily polluted and the fish are usually fed grains high in omega 6 oils.  They are NOT safe to eat at all in my judgment.)

And, eating eggs from chickens fed on pasture only and beef and lamb from animals fed only grass or hay or sprouts is also far better than eating these foods from animals that are grain fed.

What if you can only afford or have access to eggs and chicken and beef and lamb from factory farmed animals fed grains?

Only the DASH II diet includes them.  And, it teaches to get lean cuts and remove visible fat and cook in ways that remove even more fat.  All of the diets suggest eating less of them than most people do.

That approach is sound, not optimal but sound.

Eat more fish and seafood and beans and nuts and eat those less often and do your very best to de-fat the meat from animals fed grain.  (You can add back extra virgin olive oil to make them taste better or use a mechanical tenderizer before cooking or cook them in a slow cooker. 

These steps also work with the leaner meat from naturally fed animals but removing their fat is not necessary.

So what is the world’s most healthful diet.

It’s a way of eating that combines the best of the diets and approaches that YOU actually find enjoyable and practical to eat.

Do be sure to eat a lot of nonstarchy vegetables and health OK protein foods, and beans and lentil AND use only extra virgin olive oil.

But beyond that experiment within these guidelines to see what works best for you!

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013


Prevent or help stop back pain by NOT smoking....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-26-2013

This post is about why avoiding tobacco smoke is a key to getting back pain far less often and to make back pain better if you have it now.

First:

1.  Other research has found that high chronic inflammation doesn’t just increase pain from osteoarthritis of all kinds, it CAUSES the damage itself too!

Breathing tobacco smoke -- whether self-administered or in second hand smoke -- causes immediate damage to the inner surfaces of your blood vessels and boosts and causes chronic excess inflammation.

2.  And, your body can’t repair areas of you well that receive no or too little blood flow. 

Every single exposure to tobacco smoke causes your body to add to the plaque in your blood vessels to try to patch this damage.  This happens to people even if they only smoke 3 cigarettes a day or are in their teens and NO SMOKER escapes!  It is certain and happens every time.

This means that the smaller blood vessels into your back and spine that might deliver repairs to your back and spine and remove damage may deliver none or too little to do the job!

Does that mean that smokers get back pain in the first place in part from smoking?

Yes.

But of more importance, it means if you have back pain you want to get rid of and not get it back, avoiding tobacco smoke is essential to get rid of the pain.

And continuing to avoid tobacco smoke is essential to not get back pain back or get it so often.

Does that mean if you have back pain you want to get rid of and now smoke, quitting is an essential part of getting rid of it.

Is this just theory?

Nope.

A recent Medical News Today email had this:

(Note the parts I put in bold!  These statements were not in bold in the article.  But you’ll see why they deserve to be!)
“Smoking Cessation Improves Pain In Spine Patients

http://mnt.to/a/4cr7

Smoking is a known risk factor for back pain and disc disease.
In a new study presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), researchers reviewed smoking cessation rates and related pain in 6,779 patients undergoing treatment for spinal disorders with severe axial (spine) or radicular (leg) pain.

Smoking Cessation Improves Pain In Spine Patients

  Article Date: 21 Mar 2013

Smoking is a known risk factor for back pain and disc disease.

In a new study presented at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), researchers reviewed smoking cessation rates and related pain in 6,779 patients undergoing treatment for spinal disorders with severe axial (spine) or radicular (leg) pain. Information on each patient's age, gender, weight, smoking history, assessment of pain, treatment type and co-morbid depression also were assessed.

Overall, 8.9 percent of patients over the age of 55 smoked compared with 23.9 percent of those aged 55 and younger. Twenty-five percent of the patients older than age 55 had quit smoking, as did 26.1 percent of those younger than age 55.


Current smokers in both age groups reported greater pain than those who had never smoked.


Mean improvement in reported pain over the course of treatment was significantly different in non-smokers and current smokers in both age groups.

Those who quit smoking during the course of care reported greater pain improvement than those who continued to smoke.

As a group, those who continued smoking during treatment had no clinically significant improvement in reported pain, regardless of age.”

Now for the better news.

These same effects of smoking do cause up to 30% of all cancers and all smokers have heart disease.

The good news is that the food and drink changes that help people stopping smoking recover from that damage and avoid cancer and heart attacks ALSO make quitting easier and more likely!

The initially moderate exercise that helps people stopping smoking recover from that damage and avoid cancer and heart attacks ALSO makes quitting easier and more likely!

So if you stop soft drinks and packaged snacks and desserts and eat more health OK proteins and fruit and vegetables, you not only get the health protection, your shot at quitting smoking goes WAY up too. 

Similarly, if you begin even a regular walking program of 10 minutes a day or visiting the gym to strength train for half an hour twice a week, you not only get the health protection, your shot at quitting smoking goes WAY up too.

And, there’s more!

If you avoid all corn and soy and canola oil and use extra virgin olive oil and avoid animal fats from animals fed grain, and use only extra virgin olive oil plus take omega 3 supplements and eat wild caught fish once or twice a week, you’ll remove the inflammation causing omega 6 oils most people eat and get the inflammation reducing omega 3 oils.

And THAT means that your back will hurt less and be less likely to hurt you again later.

The bonus is that eating right in this way and the regular exercise will just about stop the weight gain most people get when they stop smoking.

And avoiding that extra weight will help your back get better too.

Here’s some more good news!

With knowledgeable support, your chances of quitting smoking go up even more.

Just today I found out that support not only exists and works with the Mayo Clinic, it’s free too!

This was in an article today on Yahoo.  So I’m very thankful to them for showing it!

“Cheryl Healton, DrPH, president and CEO of Legacy (the nonprofit behind the tobacco prevention counter-marketing campaign, truth), says that since tobacco companies can no longer legally target teenagers-they've circled the wagons around the over-18 crowd (which includes marketing at bars and in college towns).

Healton says the best advice she can give to those trying to quit is that if you experience a relapse, keep trying to quit until you do. "Practice makes perfect. Basically, you are practicing quitting and eventually you will," she explains. "The biggest myth out there is the story of old Uncle Tom who threw his cigarettes out of the pick-up truck and never smoked again.

 While that does in fact happen, that is probably not the first time he tried to quit. Smokers [who desire to quit] may have [attempted] to quit up to 11 times."

She also advises checking out  BecomeAnEX.org  - Legacy's free online support resource in partnership with Mayo Clinic. "I highly recommend it-

close to 3 million people have been to BecomeAnEX.org and the site has more than 600,000 registered users."

"There is nothing to be ashamed of," says Healton, who is a former smoker herself. "Smoking is no different that any other substance abuse issue-and the big thing we need to do is destigmatize it so people are not off in corners getting ill and staying ill."”


"The EX Plan

The EX Plan is a free quit smoking program, one that can show you a whole new way to think about quitting. It’s based on personal experiences from ex-smokers as well as the latest scientific research from the experts at Mayo Clinic.

The EX Plan helps you see quitting not as one big war, but as a number of little battles you can actually win."

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Monday, March 25, 2013



Why soft drinks ARE that harmful....

Today's Post:  Monday, 3-25-2013

We post often about the health harm of soft drinks and how fattening they are.

That’s true enough I have topics I’ll post later this week that have other subjects.

But there are two reasons for this post. 

1.  Soft drinks now are such a massive problem because most Americans drink them and most who drink them drink something like 10 times too much.

The average person gets 10% of their calories from soft drinks and up to 10% of their calories from packaged foods they eat with the soft drinks that they could eat real food instead and take in half the calories.

And, for many reasons, people who drink diet soft drinks are fatter than people who drink regular soft drinks.

That means that if no one drank soft drinks, the average American would be 15% of their current bodyweight less fat.  And, they would NOT be any hungrier!

Since half of all Americans are too fat, that means that if no one drank soft drinks, that percentage would drop dramatically with no other actions needed!

2.  But why do this post now when I’ve posted on it so often?

Last week in the online health news a study done from population statistics showed that the poor health and obesity caused by soft drinks kills many people each year -- 180,000 or so worldwide with the worst problem here in the United States.

The soft drink industry immediately replied that association does not prove soft drinks were responsible.

This happens to be false in this case.  But it is true that knowing that things appear together does not by itself prove that one causes the other. 

The people doing the study replied back that their statistical analysis did too show that soft drinks were the cause.  And, they made a very strong case.

But despite coming to a correct conclusion, they had a better defense!  The soft drinks DO cause the problems and we know why.

The studies that are the smoking gun that show soft drinks cause the diseases and obesity causing the deaths has been done and shows clearly that soft drinks are the cause and the direct cause in many cases of these deaths.

Both regular and diet soft drinks do cause obesity and heart disease and type 2 diabetes and the research showing this is strong, detailed, and consistently finds the same results.

This email makes some key points:  (I’ll put those in bold.)

David Blyweiss, MD sends out an email, Advanced Natural Medicine, and last Weds, 3-20, he had this:


When Sweet isn't so Sweet
Today I was going over questions from my readers and discovered there is still a lot of confusion over high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sugar.

On one hand I get a question asking "If HFCS is so bad, should I just stick with sugar?" On the other someone asks "We've been using sugar forever; why is it suddenly 'bad' for us?"
So let me clear up some confusion…

It's true that sugar has been around since ancient times. So I can understand why some people are wondering why it's such a big deal today.

The thing is, until about the 18th century, it wasn't widely available. Back then it was considered a luxury and few people had access to it. They were lucky just to get a few ounces of it here and there.

Fast forward to today. The average American consumes between 41 and 50 pounds of "added" processed sugar each year. That makes the average consumption between 150 and 175 pounds of sugar per year.

"Added" sugar is the amount above and beyond what you would naturally find in the food supply. And this is a huge leap from the few ounces a year we were consuming in ancient times.

Here's another big difference between then and now: The addition of HFCS into our food supply. When you add that to the amount or processed sugar we're eating, it takes the amount of "added" sugar per year up to between 80 and 96 pounds per person.

HFCS wasn't widely used until the late 1970's.

And look what happened next; from 1980 to 1991 obesity rates rose by 52.9 percent in women and 61.5 percent in men. Today, over two-thirds of adults over 20 years of age are considered overweight or obese.

Many people are placing the U.S. obesity epidemic squarely on the shoulders of HFCS.
And while I don't think HFCS deserves all of the blame, I do believe it's one of the key players in the epidemic. Let me show you why…

Just a few months ago analysts performed an interesting analysis. They compared the amount of HFCS that was used in 43 countries. Guess what they discovered?

The countries using the most HFCS have a 20% higher rate of diabetes. The analysts came to that number after adjusting for other things, like regular sugar consumption, body weight and overall calorie intake.
The country that consumed the absolute most HFCS was the U.S. The researchers estimated that we eat an average of 55 pounds of HFCS per person each year.
Much of the HFCS in the U.S. is found in soft drinks.

In fact, beverages sweetened with sucrose, HFCS and other sweeteners are now the primary source of added sugars in the U.S. diet.

There's been a lot of research done on these sweet, syrupy beverages. In a meta analysis of 11 studies on these beverages, the results were consistent. They increase the risk of diabetes… and in more ways than one.

Not only do these sugary beverages contribute to obesity, they increase your glycemic load. This, in turn leads to insulin resistance, insulin beta cell dysfunction and inflammation.

But that's just the beginning of the story. There are other health concerns you need to be aware of when it comes to added sugars. They increase your risk of…

Heart disease and stroke: People who consume the most added sugars have worse triglyceride and cholesterol profiles. This occurs in both adults and adolescents. In adults who get more the 10% of their daily calories from added sugar, the odds of having low HDL (the good kind) cholesterol was 50% to 300% greater than those who used less than 10%.
When you combine these changes in HDL cholesterol with insulin resistance and inflammation, it increases your risk of arterial plaque and blockages. And increases your risk factors for both heart disease and stroke.

Fatty liver: Fructose intake, in particular, is associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver. This is a disease that can lead to inflammation, scarring and even cirrhosis. Researchers now believe this excess consumption of fructose might be a contributing factor. Studies show patients with this disease consume two to three times higher amounts of fructose than those without it.

Gout: Men who drink five to six servings of sugar sweetened soft drinks are at greater risk of gout. Their risk is 85% higher than men who only have one or two servings a week. And it's not only men who are at risk. Women who consume one fructose sweetened soda a day had a 74% higher risk.
Remember, you're the one in charge. Simply cutting out soft drinks and sugary snacks is something you can control.”

And, most regular soft drinks use High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Mike Geary writes on health nutrition and in a recent email had this:

“New Princeton Study reveals that HFCS can stimulate more weight gain than sugar

Leave it to those geniuses at Princeton to give us some good evidence that HFCS can make you fatter than sugar! 

In a 2010 Princeton University study, researchers found that rats given water sweetened with HFCS gained significantly more weight than those given water sweetened with plain sugar, despite calorie intake being the same between both groups.

Princeton researchers also state:  "In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides".

And what about those claims by the Corn Refiners Association that HFCS is "no worse than sugar"?  Well, let's get past the propaganda, and hear what an actual researcher has to say:

According to professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction... "Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests. 

When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Princeton researchers also noted that the HFCS groups in the studies gained significant amounts of visceral fat around the belly.  As you might know, visceral fat is more deadly than subcutaneous fat and is a serious health concern as it releases inflammatory molecules into your system.

One reason that HFCS appears to cause more weight gain than plain sugar is that HFCS doesn't trigger a leptin response in the body.  This means that it won't signal the body to decrease appetite despite those HFCS calories that were consumed.

Another reason that HFCS affects our bodies differently is this... according to Princeton researchers, although HFCS only has 10% more fructose than table sugar (55% fructose content vs 50% fructose content in sugar), the fructose in HFCS is more sinister... According to Princeton, "as a result of the manufacturing process for high-fructose corn syrup, the fructose molecules in the sweetener are free and unbound, ready for fast absorption and utilization. In contrast, every fructose molecule in sucrose that comes from cane sugar or beet sugar is bound to a corresponding glucose molecule and must go through an extra metabolic step before it can be utilized." “


Between the parts it’s very clear, sweetened soft drinks create massive overdoses of sugars even if they use real sugar.  And, for the past 15 years or so, most of those overdoses have been high fructose corn syrup.

This overdose, particularly of high fructose corn syrup, is a proven cause of obesity, excess inflammation, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and lower but harmful levels of high blood sugar.  They also cause massive increases in triglycerides.

Increases in triglycerides according to research done at Harvard show that the person in which they occur has dramatically more of the small particle LDL that is a direct cause of heart disease.

So, the statistics show that soft drink consumption does show up almost identically to increases in obesity, heart disease, strokes, and diabetes – the increased deaths related to them.

Since excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup has been directly shown to cause these conditions, this is not just that they appear together.  The soft drinks DID cause the problems and the extra deaths.

Worse, people who drink diet soft drinks, studies show, are even fatter and get even more of these diseases!

Conclusion:

If you don’t want to be far too fat, and develop diseases you’d rather not have, and die early, never, ever drink ANY soft drinks!

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Thursday, March 21, 2013


Why canola oil is NOT good for you....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 3-21-2013

We post often about the health harm of too much omega 6 oil in your diet.

In excess, they tend to cause high levels of chronic inflammation.  And, because omega 6 oils are in the corn and soy fed to grain fed animals, people who eat animal fats from these grain fed animals or use corn or soy oil have 10 to 30 times too much omega 6 oils in their bodies.

To put it bluntly, most Americans now do both.  And the result is a health disaster. 

This causes or helps cause extra osteoarthritis, extra damage to the insides of your blood vessels which causes heart disease and vascular dementia and even helps cause many cancers.

And, it gets even worse if these oils are heated since they are fragile and become oxidized and even more inflammatory and harmful to your health.

Some people to avoid animal based fats have begun to use canola oil.  Why is that?  It has a bit more monosaturated fat than these harmful oils and for people who are vegans or don’t like fish, canola oil has some of the plant based omega 3 oil.

It also helps that canola oil is cheaper than olive oil which is almost all monosaturated oil.

But I’ve noticed that the profile of canola oil still has far too much omega 6 oil in it as a percentage.

More recently, I’ve found out 97% or more of the rapeseeds that canola oil is made from are GMO.

It’s simple, canola oil is cheaper because it’s a GMO factory farm product, just like wheat and corn and soy.

The companies who make the genetically modified foods are simply bad folks.  If the GMO foods they create don’t kill people immediately who eat them and seem like the real thing and result in crops that cost factory farms less to grow, these companies make money.

But the rest is really horrible.

These companies are making an enormous special effort by inserting things into needed laws to see to it that GMO foods are used before the long term effects have been tested at all, let alone tested well.  They've even tried to insert language that would prevent courts from stopping GMO foods from being used even when they test as harmful to your health.

Yikes!

To me it has always been simple.

If you buy strawberries that have been sprayed with insecticides in the field, you can wash off a good bit of the pesticide residues before you eat them.

But if you buy GMO corn on the cob, the inserted genes to act as insecticides or protect the plant from herbicides are PART of the food & cannot be washed off!

I really don’t think, given this that it is even possible for GMO foods to be safe.

Since the introduction without much notification of massive amounts of GMO foods in the American diet, the incidence of autoimmune diseases has gone up.  Some of the rising amounts of asthma and other allergies may be from this cause. 

And, some studies have shown a big drop in the fertility in people eating GMO foods which may be passed on to future generations. 

Since the US and California laws do not yet require all foods containing these GMO products from being used or even fully labeled and disclosed, the only way to avoid them is to avoid foods known to be mostly GMO such as corn, and wheat, and soy… and rapeseed.

And avoiding GMO rapeseed means avoiding canola oil.

Extra virgin olive oil has a dramatically better track record in being safe for your health to eat and even has many proven health benefits.  And, the olives it’s made from are NOT GMO.

For me, that’s enough.  I do not buy canola oil and avoid products that contain it as much as I possibly can.

What about you?

Are you convinced to do the same?

If not, this blog has a bit more for you.

Mike Geary is one of the most knowledgeable writers now alive writing about foods and health.

He sent this out by email & even suggests sharing it with others like friends and family at the end.

Here’s what he had to say:

“Avoid canola oil as much as possible... despite the false marketing claims that canola oil is "healthy" and contains lots of monounsaturated fats just like olive oil, canola oil is NOTHING like olive oil from a biochemical standpoint and how it reacts internally in your body. 

Read this article for the full story on why to AVOID canola oil at all costs.  Note that most canola oil is genetically modified too, so yet another reason to avoid it.

The Canola Oil Marketing Deception -

Have you been lied to about the health benefits of canola oil?

by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
Author of best selling program:  The Truth About Six Pack Abs

If you've been following my fitness newsletters for some time, you may have noticed that I NEVER include canola oil in any of my recipes or any of my lists of healthy foods.

Many people have asked me why, because all they hear in the mainstream media is that canola oil is "heart healthy" and a good source of monounsaturated fats similar to olive oil.

Well, first of all, you need to realize that much of what you hear in the mainstream media has been influenced by heavy handed marketing tactics by big food companies.  Canola oil is cheap for them to produce so they want to fool you into thinking it's a "health oil" so that people, restaurants, etc will buy it up as their main oil of choice.

The dirty truth about canola oil

Yes, it's true that canola oil is high in monounsaturates, but let me explain why canola oil is anything but "healthy".

Canola oil is made from something called rapeseed. Rapeseed actually had to be bred over the years to reduce the percentage of a problematic component of rapeseed, which is erucic acid.

Important note on canola oil "urban legends":  There is a problem with most websites that DEFEND canola oil, saying that internet "urban legends" on the dangers of canola oil are unfounded.  The problem is that these websites that defend canola oil ONLY talk about the issue of erucic acid.  The issue of erucic acid IS an urban legend, because erucic acid has been bred out to very low levels over the years, so it is a non-issue.

However, these websites that defend canola oil are barking up the wrong tree because they don't address the issue of the processing of canola oil and oxidation of the polyunsaturated component of canola oil, which is what makes it unhealthy for human consumption.  THAT'S the real issue that they either don't understand (because they are not nutrition experts) or are simply ignoring.

Let's look at the REAL issues with canola oil:

Canola oil typically ranges between 55-65% monounsaturated fat and between 28-35% polyunsaturated fat, with just a small amount of saturated fat.

While we've been led to believe that high monounsaturated fat oils are good for us (which they are in the case of virgin olive oil or from unprocessed nuts or seeds), the fact is that canola oil has more detriments than it does benefits.

As you may have heard me talk about in other newsletters or in my Truth about Six Pack Abs program... one of the biggest problems with highly processed and refined vegetable oils such as corn oil, soybean oil, and yes, even canola oil, is that the polyunsaturated component of the oil is highly unstable under heat, light, and pressure, and this heavily oxidizes the polyunsaturates which increases free radicals in your body.

The end result of all of this refining and processing are oils that are highly inflammatory in your body when you ingest them, potentially contributing to heart disease, weight gain, and other degenerative diseases.

The reason that extra virgin olive oil is good for you is that it is cold pressed without the use of heat and solvents to aid extraction. EVOO also contains important antioxidants that help protect the stability of the oil.

Canola oil, on the other hand, is typically extracted and refined using high heat, pressure, and petroleum solvents such as hexane. Most canola oil undergoes a process of caustic refining, degumming, bleaching, and deoderization, all using high heat and questionable chemicals.

Does canola even have trans fats?

Even worse, all of this high heat, high pressure processing with solvents actually forces some of the omega-3 content of canola oil to be transformed into trans fats.

According to Dr. Mary Enig, PhD, and Nutritional Biochemist, "Although the Canadian government lists the trans fat content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans fat levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid canola oil".

And this is the crap that they are marketing to you as a "healthy oil"!

As you can see from the details above on how canola oil is processed, it is barely any healthier for you than other junk oils like soybean oil or corn oil.  The bottom line is that it is inflammatory oil in your body and should be avoided as much as possible.

The only canola oil that might be reasonable is if you see that it is "cold pressed" and organic. Most canola oil is NOT cold pressed or organic, so you might as well choose oils that you know are healthier.

Your best bets are these truly healthy oils:

extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) - for lower temperature cooking or used as a healthy salad dressing oil

Virgin coconut oil - great for all temperatures of cooking due to its super high stability under heat.  A great source of healthy saturated fats in the form of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), one of which is Lauric Acid, which helps support the immune system and is lacking in most western diets.

Organic grass-fed butter - I like to use a mix of grass-fed butter, coconut oil, and a small bit of olive oil for most of my cooking. Grass-fed butter is a great source of the healthy fat, CLA, which has even been shown in studies to have muscle building and fat burning properties.  Grass-fed butter also has a much healthier omega-6 to omega-3 ratio than standard butter at your grocery store.  Kerrygold Irish butter is my favorite grass-fed butter.”


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Tuesday, March 19, 2013


Get health BENEFITS from the substitutes for soft drinks & other fattening foods....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 3-19-2013

We post often about the health harm of regular and diet soft drinks and such foods as those made from refined grains – mostly GMO wheat – or that include ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, excessive real sugar, excessive salt, and oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed.

These foods either fatten you directly or add calories from foods you don’t need and the make you sick from things like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

A.  Case in point is soft drinks. 

The average person in the United States who drinks soft drinks gets 10% of their calories from them.  Every bit of those 10% unneeded calories eventually adds to their fat. 

That means that if they switch to water, tea, green tea, or coffee instead over time they will lose all that fat.  Since regular soft drinks add calories without registering any less hunger AND add rebound hunger later, doing this makes people LESS hungry!

Plus that 10% weight loss all as fat, produces astoundingly positive changes in their blood markers of health and heart health!

Similarly, people who drink diet soft drinks reliably test as fatter and have more type 2 diabetes than people who drink regular soft drinks!  One reason is they drink more of them than people who drink regular soft drinks.

What’s really interesting is that ice water, tea, green tea, and coffee (if you don’t add tons of a fat and sugar too it) all have health BENEFITS on top of being dramatically less fattening than soft drinks.

1.  Drinking lots of plain ice water directly helps fat loss and helps fat loss indirectly too!

Drinking ice water chills your body a bit and to warm up that bit causes your body to use some extra calories.  And, if you drink ice water relatively often each day, some evidence suggests it increases your brown fat which burns far more calories than regular fat.

2.  A recent study reported in Medical News today found that people who drink more coffee &/or green tea less are less likely to have strokes  This is thought to be because coffee contains chlorogenic acid &  green tea contains catechins which produce this effect.  2 or more cups of coffee a day or 5 or more cups of green tea a day tested to do this the best.

(Note that for those who cannot or prefer not to drink coffee, green coffee bean extract has chlorogenic acid.  And, for those who don't like green tea, green tea extract contains catechins.)

But if you like coffee or like green tea, you can wake up without the caffeine in colas, get less fat and increase your stroke protection at the same time!

But there’s more!  High consumption of green tea tends to block the formation of beta amyloid plaques that are a possible cause of Alzheimer’s disease while high consumption of coffee is directly linked to a lower chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease even more than green tea.

And, still there’s more.  The chlorogenic acid from drinking 2 or more cups of coffee a day helps prevent insulin resistance and is proven to reduce the chance of getting type 2 diabetes very likely because of this.  This may also partly be why 2 or more cups of coffee a day tends to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. 

(Note that for those who cannot or prefer not to drink coffee, green coffee bean extract has chlorogenic acid.  And, to the extent taking green coffee bean extract helps with fat loss, besides the caffeine, the reduction of insulin resistance and high blood sugar may be a reason.)

ECGC and other phytonutrients in green tea and green tea extract also show as likely cancer preventers too!

So between iced water, green tea, and coffee, people who drink those instead of soft drinks or diet soft drinks, are not only dramatically less fat, they are WAY healthier and for far longer than people soft drinks or diet soft drinks.

B. Oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed produce excess chronic inflammation if you eat them at all often to help cause heart disease and even some cancers.  They also tend to have bioconcentrated herbicides and pesticide from having those sprayed on the corn, soy, and rapeseed crops.

We’ve long known that extra virgin olive oil, an omega 9 oil, does NOT have this pro-inflammatory effect. 

And we’ve long known that people who use almost only olive oil as part of a Mediterranean diet are healthier and get less heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease than people who eat junk food and these oils high in omega 6.

A recent study found that -- even in people with existing heart disease or very high risk factors for it -- that having them use olive oil only and for those not allergic also eating walnuts noticeably reduced their risk of heart attack, stroke, and death.

They added olive oil or walnuts to the food of thousands of people many of whom had not been using olive oil and got those results!

That means that it’s not too late for most people to protect their health by switching to olive oil!

And, using only olive oil for years is even more protective.

But, again, there is an even bigger benefit to using olive oil -- and even better extra virgin olive oil!

Very recently reported research in Medical News Today reported a study that people who used and ate olive oil had significantly reduced hunger! 

This was more true by far for olive oil. 
And it was more true if extra virgin olive oil was used. 

Best was an aromatic extra virgin olive oil from Italy – though I suspect extra virgin olive oils from California using the same or very similar olives would also work.

The research found this seemed to be because eating extra virgin olive oil caused extra serotonin release.

That makes having extra virgin olive oil as a part of your dinner is a great way to wind down in the evening.

But it also means that eating extra virgin olive oil has mild anti-depressant effects too!

C.  People who eat most packaged dinners, almost all packaged snacks, and almost all packaged desserts and most commercial baked goods wind up eating mostly foods made out of refined grains – mostly GMO wheat – with ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, excessive real sugar, excessive salt, and oils too high in omega 6 such as corn, soy, and canola – again mostly from GMO corn, soy, and rapeseed.

Not only do they harm your health, they reliably fatten you too!

So between deleting the calories from things that are just really bad for you and the fattening components from these foods completely from what you eat, you can be far healthier for longer and find permanent fat loss doable and not too hard to do.

But what to eat instead?

Besides health OK proteins such as wild caught fish, beans and lentils, and eggs from pasture fed hens, two of the best things to eat instead are nonstarchy vegetables and low glycemic fruits that are very high in protective nutrients.

1.  For fat loss, eating lots of every kind of nonstarchy vegetables is a superb solution.  They have high fiber and are low enough in calories that you can eat enough to be quite filling and leave you far less hungry for more food.  Weight Watchers even lists them as having zero points almost as if they have no calories at all.

But these vegetables have incredible health benefits from making you look healthier and be healthier overall to preventing cancers and metastatic cancers two ways!

More recent good news about green and cruciferous vegetables was in a study reported in  the Medical News Today earlier this month.

The Importance Of Eating Your Greens
http://mnt.to/a/4c7j
Eating your greens may be even more important that previously thought, with the discovery that an immune cell population essential for intestinal health could be controlled by leafy greens in your diet.

This is very important news!

Many bacteria that grow in your gut if you have too little probiotic or beneficial bacteria there are harmful or very harmful and some no longer respond to antibiotics!

Having enough h. pylori to cause ulcers, becoming seriously ill from bad e coli diseases which have caused fatal kidney damage, or contracting c diff which has caused horrible and unstoppable diarrhea and even killed people  may be prevented or made far less likely by eating these vegetables!

Raw broccoli florets may work and iceberg lettuce may work.  But it sounds like the ideal is to have salads once or twice a week with kale and watercress.  And adding some diced raw broccoli florets likely would help.

Of course, also eating yogurt with probiotics and taking probiotic supplements may well increase this effect.

BUT, due to the other health benefits of these vegetables such as significant anti-cancer effects AND making fat loss easier, this is HUGE GOOD news!

What about artificial sweeteners?  One to be sure to avoid is Splenda aka sucralose.  Recent research found ingesting it tended to kill most of the probiotic bacteria in your gut!

To put it mildly, people who eat and drink the right things are not only WAY less fat than people who drink soft drinks and eat these harmful foods, they are dramatically healthier too!

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Monday, March 18, 2013


My monthly fatloss progress report....

Today's Post:  Monday, 3-18-2013

As is often typical, this month's monthly report is mixed; but this one is MUCH better than last time.

Over the last four weeks, a bit of the MAJOR improvements I think are coming finally began to show up.

I lost 4 & a half pounds on the scale this month!

The much more effective strength training and resulting muscle gain;  the greater control of my evening snacks; and my big drop in wheat and lactose intake are totally repeatable!  And, I am now doing these by habit and plan to continue them all.

But the mixed review part is: 

a)  I lost the 4 &  a half  pounds in the first 3 of the four weeks and remained the same the last week. 
So, to lose the last one & a half pounds on the scale to reach my goal weight and lose the rest of the 21 & a half pounds of excess fat I still have, I likely need to cut a bit more from the foods I normally eat each week.

b)  I lost no inches at all on my waist.  My hip measurement went down a half inch and my muscle definition in my thighs improved.

So I need to do what I just listed and cut a bit more from the foods I normally eat each week. 
But I mostly need to begin to make faster progress on adding 20 more pounds of muscle.

The cuts I've come up with to add are these.  When I removed the 2 ounces of wheat germ I was adding to 4 ounces of rolled oats 7 days every two weeks -- roughly every other day 6 of the 7 times each two weeks, I boosted the rolled oats to 6 ounces.  So from now on, I'll leave just the four ounces.  That way my breakfast will take up less room and stretch my stomach less; and I'll cut enough calories to lose all or part of the remaining 1 & a half pounds to my goal weight.

I also decided to remove one of the remaining slices of whole grain bread that contains wheat every two weeks.

Once I find a good low glycemic, high protein, high fiber, no gluten bread I'll switch to that 3 of the remaining 4 slices of bread every  two weeks that still have whole wheat in them.

Then, I'll finally only eat a food with wheat once a week. 
When I started deleting wheat, even 100 % whole wheat, I was eating 6 slices of bread that was mostly 100 % whole wheat every two weeks and the 2 ounces of wheat germ with my oatmeal 7 times each two weeks.

Soon I'll only eat one slice of bread that is mostly 100 % whole wheat one week and 2 ounces of wheat germ the next week – or only one serving of a wheat food a week.

Between those two strategies I think that will help trim my calories a small but fat loss effective amount.

I've finally begun to rehab my right shoulder effectively that has been limiting my arm and chest strength training.  And, I found a couple things to do that seem to be speeding its healing. 

Meanwhile, just today, Sunday, 3-17, as I write this, I've begun increasing my leg work and weights.

So between the parts, I'll begin to resume adding muscle more effectively over the next 3 months.

Andre Jackson, a personal trainer I met with last Friday, in fact said that if I became able to do three times as long workouts three days a week instead of one for the super slow strength training, I might have a shot at adding 20 pounds of muscle in one month.

I may be a bit too old to respond to that much more exercise that well and don't have the time for it.  But it still is inspiring to me to do more than I have which I think WILL add the 20 pounds but just take a bit longer.  I can do some of these extra sets for my calves and buttocks and thighs and for push ups in my once a week exercises to force a bit more progress on these big muscle exercises. And, I can keep using more weight and repetitions for my calf exercises as I've already begun to do. 

Also, until my shoulder rehab is done, I can also do those extra sets for it with lighter weights until I can gradually get it back to where it was before.

Conclusion:

Between cutting more calories with the exercise bike at work and adding that extra muscle in my at home strength training, I NOW EXPECT to see no more weight gains on the scale AND to see some lower waist measurements!  I'll lose fat and add muscle.

At the very least, the added cuts in my calorie intake each week will help me lose a few pounds on the scale.

I still feel I now feel I am in control of the process.  Now it will be mostly adding just a few more tweaks to what I eat and maintaining what I'm already doing; but really making an extra effort with the strength training.

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Friday, March 15, 2013


Diabetes & heart disease improved by Safer Sauna....

Today's Post:  Friday, 3-15-2013

Alex Ortner is a health and raw foods writer. 

(Raw foods tend to be vegetables and whole fruit. 

So people who eat raw foods more or a lot most days are less fat, healthier, and eat fewer harmful and fattening foods as a result. 

And, though there is a separate way that many cruciferous vegetables prevent cancer that cooking and eating with extra virgin olive oil give you – it makes their carotenes more bioavailable, some of the most effective cancer fighting compounds in cruciferous vegetables are destroyed by heat.  Notably raw broccoli an cauliflower florets prevent the aggressive kind of prostate cancer BUT only if they are eaten raw.)

Earlier this week, Alex sent this email about the Sunlighten infrared sauna:

“If you suffer from type I or type II diabetes there may be a new tool to add to your healing arsenal.  We all know that an effective diet and exercise plan can help alleviate the symptoms of diabetes, but the treatment below might surprise you.

In a study published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Dr. Richard Beever of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada found that infrared saunas help diabetics.

In another study at the Fraser Lake Community Health Center in rural British Columbia, all patients with type II diabetes were invited to participate in a study consisting of 20-minute infrared sauna sessions three times a week for three months. The study used Sunlighten infrared saunas.  

"Sauna use may be associated with improved quality of life in people with type II diabetes mellitus," the research concluded.

 "Uptake of infrared saunas use is greater than the uptake of other lifestyle interventions."

When I found out about this new treatment, I looked a little deeper into how infrared technology actually works to reduce the symptoms of diabetes.  Here's what I found out:

Infrared saunas have been shown to improve the condition of diabetic neuropathy.  Infrared lighting reduces the numbing conditions and causes molecules of nitric oxide to be released from hemoglobin in the bloodstream, which, in turn, increases blood flow.

This is particularly beneficial to diabetics who suffer from poor blood circulation to the feet and other extremities.

Saunas with infrared heaters are also less hot than typical saunas, so the heart does not have to work so hard in these saunas to manage the heat….”

My comments:

He goes on to say that he and health oriented friends have had very good experiences using the Sunlighten brand of infrared sauna.

Note that in order to use one you have to have the space to install it and time to use it on top of your other life and exercises you do.  Timewise, “20 minutes 3 times a week” is doable for many people however.


But if you do have, use of an infrared sauna may be even more beneficial than his article suggests.

“Infrared lighting reduces the numbing conditions and causes molecules of nitric oxide to be released from hemoglobin in the bloodstream, which, in turn, increases blood flow. “

Better blood flow and more relaxed blood vessels caused by this nitric oxide release does a lot more than that!

Nitric oxide release can help heal people with injuries heal faster once the swelling goes down. 

It lowers high blood pressure.  It can improve ED -- and done before lovemaking can make it work better from the better blood flow.  And, it can, like vigorous exercise, get more blood flow to your heart and brain.

So using one while doing slow breathing Yoga style or Resparate style or Qi Gong style while using an infrared sauna can be a superb way to de-stress or lower high blood pressure.

Though you sweat less, the sweating you do will help you remove organic and metal toxins.

Note that although you do sweat less, drinking 9 ounces of ice water before and 9 ounces of room temperature water after is likely a good idea.

And, on days that are already a bit too hot & for people taking diuretics or who are already a bit dehydrated before their session be extra careful! 

Have someone who can check during the 20 minutes and you can call for if you suddenly feel too hot or light-headed.

And be totally sure to have the 9 ounces of ice water right before you use it.

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