Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I keep hearing the phrase, “Who is to blame for obesity?” Whether it’s childhood obesity, American obesity or just obesity in general, the same thought is being thrown around: Who is to blame? This article tackles that issue:

• The Independent – Who’s really to blame for the problem of childhood obesity? You are by Richard Kilgarriff

“The truth is, we are all to blame for the society in which we live, and the finger-pointing and point-scoring has to stop. This childhood obesity problem is bigger than any political party or supermarket or manufacturer, and much bigger than food advertising on TV.”

More importantly, IT DOESN’T MATTER. It doesn’t matter which industry or institution is the cause of obesity. The longer we argue about who is to blame, the less time we have to fix the problem. Who cares if it’s television or video games or high calorie snack foods or shoddy school lunch programs or inattentive parents or… The list goes on a mile long. The most important thing with both adult and childhood obesity is that we stop it. The only people who can stop it are each and every one of us.

You… Yeah, you… Next time you think about skipping your workout or eating something that is not scheduled for your meal plan, STOP. Make sure you get your workout in. Make sure you stop that binge in its tracks. The only way to make the world a healthier place is to take personal responsibility for yourself. You are the only person on this planet that you can truly control.

The following article from Associated Press says something that many of us already know: it’s easier to exercise and lose weight with a partner, and dogs make good partners.

• Dogs make good diet buddies

In a somewhat scientific study involving 92 people and 89 dogs, comissioned by diet pet-food maker Hill’s Pet Nutrition, they found that people with dogs did slightly better at losing weight and keeping it off than those without.

Curiously, the dogs in the study lost more weight overall than the humans, and the dogs had more energy and did not increase begging. Having someone much larger than you hold absolute control over your portion size is apparently a very effective diet technique.

She was angry. The health insurance wouldn’t pay for a gastric bypass surgery for her. I was standing on the other side of her desk with no health insurance benefits and unable to find a company that would insure my husband and me for less than $700 a month and she was complaining because hers wouldn’t cover gastric bypass surgery. I just wanted something that would pay for my husband’s expensive asthma medication that kept him alive and she was considering the same surgery that almost killed her brother.

Thinking about gastric bypass surgery? Try following the diet for a couple of weeks and see if you like it:

• You can eat no more than 2 ounces of anything at a time.
• After you eat, you must wait two hours before you can eat again.
• Liquids count in that 2 ounce figure.
• If you eat more than 2 ounces in a sitting, a big man with a bad attitude will pummel you in the stomach for at least thirty minutes, and maybe as long as an hour. Or at least that’s how it will feel.
• Some foods will make you sick. You don’t get to choose. It might be your favorite food on earth, but you won’t be able to eat it anymore… for the rest of your life.
• Sometimes you will get heart palpitations (called “dumping”), even if you only eat one bite of food. You don’t get to control when this happens.
• Speaking of bites of food, you’ll have to cut your food up into miniscule pieces. Just get used to it. If you swallow anything bigger, you end up “dumping” or that big guy will come punch you in the stomach for a few hours.

Think you can follow that diet? You haven’t seen the huge guy I hired to make sure you follow it. And that’s only if you survive the surgery (1 out of 200 die within 30 days of the surgery). Maybe you’ll never get those side effects, but there is no guarantee. It’s a crap shoot with your health. Even worse, you might survive the surgery and be able to live through the diet, but you never dealt with the issues that made you fat in the first place, so you’ll be one of the lucky 15 percent of people who gain all the weight back and more.

Considering all that, I think her health insurance did her a favor. Lucky girl…

Prevention.com – Life After Gastric Bypass: The Surprising Real Story – by Dorothy Foltz-Gray

This article at eDiets talks about the benefits of making sure your diet has sufficient calcium and the foods with the most of it.

eDiets.com – Bone Up! 10 Best Calcium Foods – by Sheri Strykowsk

Ten Calcium-Rich Foods:

• Fat-Free Milk
• Ricotta Cheese
• Yogurt
• Calcium-Fortified Soymilk
• Tofu
• Spinach
• Sardines
• Swiss Cheese
• Legumes
• Almonds

Check out the article to find new ways of adding these foods to your diet and the nutritional information about them.

It has been said that three meals a day isn’t right. I have heard that you need to eat five to six mini-meals a day to stay satisfied. I have lived on that principle for the last few years and snacking between meals keeps me from feeling hungry. That might not be the case for everyone, but it has helped me.

If you are a snacker, eDiets has an article for you:

• eDiets.com – Get The Skinny on Snacking!

They have a whole list of low calorie snacks to nosh on and some tips on living the snacking lifestyle.

Carol’s mom got the cheese because she was a senior citizen. We got the cheese from her. It tasted like Velveeta and I remember thinking, “This isn’t real cheese.” Suddenly, that’s how I imagined the government. They think Velveeta is cheese. They probably think Lifesavers are fruit.

Since then, I’ve learned that the government is not one single entity. What scares me is exactly which entity would be put in charge of “Junk Food” if there was a Twinkie Tax. You probably think I’m joking. “Twinkie Tax, ha ha! That’s funny!” You say this with a smile to yourself…

(more…)

Ediets.com is featuring an article from Harvard Health Publications. It talks about the scientific data supporting (or lack of data, as the case may be) various diets and weight loss aids.

• Harvard Health Publications: Weigh Less, Live Longer: Strategies for Successful Weight Loss

Make sure you get all the way down to the section, “Rating the Weight Loss Supplements.” They have a graph showing the proof given for various supplements and food items that have been marketed as weight loss aids.

With all the celebrity diets that have been splashed across the magazine covers lately, there is one that has gone completely unnoticed. Margaret Cho, a comedienne and activist, wrote a blog entry about her dramatic weight loss over the last year or so.

The “F**K It” Diet by Margaret Cho

(more…)

Starting in 2006, the FDA is requiring food companies to provide trans-fatty acids on the nutritional facts. Because of this, the food companies are scrambling to make their food healthier. Rather than truly admit how much hydrogenated oil is between those dark and chocolately Oreo cookies, they are working on a new formula to reduce the fat.

Of course, this is going to change the taste of Oreos. Instead of the choice between regular, Double Stuf and generic brands trying to copy their style, there will be a new addition to the group: Trans-Fat Free. That doesn’t mean calorie free. It doesn’t even mean fat free. All it means is that it has a slightly less chance of giving you heart disease and clogging up your brain.

On the whole, I’m happy about it. Even if the trans-fat free version goes the way of New Coke, at least I’ll know how much trans-fat is in the Double-Stuf version. It’s the knowledge that is empowering. I can’t wait for 2006. For now, I’m checking my labels for hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oil.

What made me so happy with the US government’s down to earth advice and recommendations has made this writer angry and frothing at the mouth.

• SFGate.com – Weak Links in the Food Chain: Why Uncle Sam won’t tell you what not to eat by Michele Simon

She’s angry because they didn’t protect the unwashed masses from the evil food industry, which strips us all of our responsibility. She assumes that we are too stupid to know what whole grain foods are without informing us the difference between them and the evil processed food that she is so willing to shield us from. In fact, she even goes as far as to say, “People don’t think in terms of ingredients. Most consumers don’t even buy ingredients anymore because they don’t cook.”

I want to put my arm around her and say, “There, there… Calm down… We’re not THAT dumb.”

I don’t want Uncle Sam to tell me what I can and cannot eat. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I eat healthy food, not the government. The minute I pass the responsibility over to the government (or anyone else, for that matter) is the minute that I start deluding myself. I am the only one who has the power to put food in my mouth. The food industry isn’t cramming unhealthy food down my throat. They are making food that tastes amazingly good. It’s my responsibility to eat it in moderation, if at all.