I was wondering if a different approach to using our food might benefit us. As a biologist, I know our gut needs different conditions to digest different foods. For example, a fatty food is broken down using bile, which is alkali. Starchy food is broken down using amalyse in the saliva and acid in the gut. It then makes no sense to try and digest fatty food high in starch. The body is being asked to do two contradictory jobs. Maybe when we have a meal, we restrict it to foods of similar nutritional components. Say, a breakfast high in carbs, a lunch high in fat and a supper high in protein. Doing this would, it seems, keep the whole digestive tract in perfect balance. I'm not sure it was designed for the modern diet of carbs, protein and fat all at the same time. Any insight into this would be most welcome...
Well, the advice given on dinner is to keep it light so it doesn't just turn to excess sugar in your bloodstream or excess fat on your arse. At my age (60) the many years of a low fat diet have rendered my gall bladder unable to process high fat meals, for lunch or otherwise. Those will give me a gall bladder attack for sure, and those really hurt (took me 2 tries to figure that one out). Other physical constraints and proactive health measures have given me a current diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, low in saturated fats and red meat. I swing heavily towards the Mediterranean diet, replete with nuts and berries, olive oil and lots of green leafies. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Since I run every morning I need protein for breakfast so I don't hit the wall before I get home. Any starches are unrefined and minimal so my blood sugar stays good, and I have salmon 2 times a week (fish oil supplements on other days) to fight atherosclerosis and dementia. Also because I like it - especially grilled. Probiotics are a good idea too, you need to keep your guts happy and functional. Much of my dietary regimen is driven by seeing several friends and family members succumb to poor lifestyle choices, most recently my mom who just died in nursing care with a bunch of very serious lifestyle - generated health issues. If it is OK to 'super set' biceps and triceps, it is likely fine to use ptylin to break down simple starches at the same time (actually a whiles before) as using bile to break down fats without harm to either system, because that is how we are built. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
ULTRA, Why not read up on food combinations from the perspective of ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine? Their perspective is that some combinations are fine, while others may cause issues for the body. About the combination of meat and starches one website (won't let me put link) says: "Avoid at same meal: Proteins and Starches If you do combine them, never do so in equal proportions. (A 3:1 or 4:1 ratio is much better) You will notice that when you consume them in equal proportions 1:1 (like in a chicken breast sandwich on whole wheat bread) you will become sleepy, lethargic and tired, they can often result in acid reflex. If the starch is processed or cooked like white bread, fries or a baked potatoes (less healthy) the starches are slightly coverted to simple sugars and often do not react the same as starchy foods. Therefore processed/cooked starches and protein do not always result in poor combination. (Complex starches are converted to sugars through cooking as in beer and hard alcohol production. The byproduct is called the wart). A similar effect takes place in baking."
I eat most of my food at night. It helps me sleep. If I eat a big lunch I spend the afternoon asleep at my desk and my boss doesn't like that. Ouch!! I'm a few years older than you and I've always eaten a fairly high-fat diet. Since the discovery of the evils of transfats I've done a pretty good job of avoiding them, and I never was a big junk food junkie so I probably don't have a lot of the nasty residue from it. I eat a lot of sweets but only the high-class kind that don't have transfats and other preservatives. (My wife is a chocolatiere.) Saturated fats don't do any more harm than unsaturated fats if you burn them and don't store them by building up body fat and gaining weight. And even if you do, they still aren't doing you any more harm than the same quantity of grapeseed oil--or fill in the name of the current trendy "health food" cooking oil. It's transfats that do all the harm and they occur very rarely in nature. You have to eat a lot of processed food--or be a bad cook who routinely burns your food--to load up on transfats. Did you ask those people if they enjoyed their lives while they were living them? I'd rather die this summer at 68, having enjoyed my life, than to live ten or twenty years longer by torturing myself with uncomfortable, time-consuming exercises, denying myself the foods I love, and giving up all the other happy but "unhealthy" things I've been doing, like allowing my dogs in the kitchen while preparing food, taking pain killers so I can dance with my torn meniscus, or using combat-level doses of caffeine to stay alert. Remember, you can give up red meat, alcohol and all drugs, go to bed at 9pm and get up at 4am, spend two hours a day running, avoid TV, spend your vacations whitewater rafting the Amazon, and never go to concerts or other events where people smoke. There's no guarantee that it will make your life any longer, but it will sure as hell FEEL like it! Also remember that the French, Italians, Mexicans and Japanese do all of the things that the health-fitness-safety-and-sobriety-at-any-cost nannies warn us will kill us, and they live longer than we do. Clearly it's speaking English that is killing us. Oops, Yo quisiera decir, "Hablar inglés es lo que nos mata."
Gee Frag, since you did not ask about diet and exercise regimens, no way am I gonna give you advice on that! :itold: I will miss you if you croak on us this summer though, even if you enjoyed doing it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I enjoy that 2 - 3 hour run with puppy every day - even on the broken ice out there this AM. (Even though she jumped in the river and then her wet fur froze up when she came back out.) I also enjoy my healthy diet, even if it lacks saturated fats, trans - fats and refined carbs. I also really enjoy my Taekwon Do, weight training, alcohol and red meat. (remember moderation is my thing though) Yeah, 9:30 PM may seem early to many, but when you get up at 4:15 rearing to go it doesn't. 'Course that 45 minute nap in the afternoon assures I get enough rest to do it all again the next day - and some may consider that a luxury. My wife enjoys that I have breakfast on the table every morning so we can have some quality time before we go to work too. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yeah, on a serous note, I did speak with old mom about this very thing after she ended up in nursing care. She enjoyed her lifestyle right up until it caught up with her, but then it was too late and she didn't have the juice left to participate in her own care or therapy. The last 8 years of her life were...limited and painful. She was not real happy, but appreciated that she had put herself there and was lucky to have the assistance. (Parkinson's, dementia, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, crippling arthritis, wheelchair bound , incontinent, no teeth) My friend Jimmy just couldn't quit smoking ciggies and couldn't start exercising so at the end he couldn't even walk the 800 feet to get to my place when he locked his truck keys in the house. Just sat at the side door smoking and angry until his wife got home. Ate what he wanted, drank Coke like a fish. They replaced his carotids then stripped his leg veins, it was a heart attack at 63 that got him, he said it really hurt while he was in hospital that last week. John across the street from him just fell over dead while mowing the lawn, like the fellow 4 doors down from him. Ah, but these are just anecdotal accounts, folks that have come and gone in the last few years. I know better than to lecture you about health stuff - you make your own decisions in that area, gratefully! Don't misunderstand though - I enjoy my lifestyle very much, even if it is pretty healthy.
eat what you want . I like beef ribs my self . It is a great diet. Meat diet . Cigarettes and meat go real good with a beer . My cholesterol is low, blood pressure good and all the above . I get lots and lots of exercise though. Most important Exercise. Get stress out of your life also. I don't get stress . I give stress . Lot healthier way of living for sure
I eat very large amounts of red meat. I also exercise regularly (2 hours 3 times a week) and consume lots of olive oil. At age 62, my cholesterol is very high, but that is the 'good' cholesterol. My 'bad' cholesterol is very low. Lung capacity high. ECG test excellent. Blood pressure low. etc. So eating red meat is not bad in itself. It is the combination with lousy exercise, poor genes, and other wrong foods that is a killer. As to living to a great age .... When someone dies, it is a tragedy. It is an equal tragedy regardless of whether they die as a baby, or as a very old person. Life is good, and many elderly people with poor health and even constant pain, will tell you they love life. A lot of the food advice that is bandied around appears to be based on urban myths rather than science. For example : the old advice to have a big breakfast and a miserly evening meal. I have never seen any good scientific study to support that idea, and I have been looking out for it for many years. As for unorthodox advice, like traditional Chinese medicine. Forget it!
Meh, try it and see if you feel better? I went vegan in 2000...not the magic bullet for weight loss I hoped it would be, but at the same time, I never gained back to 320 pounds (145 kg) Right now I'm at 65.7 kilograms (145 pounds) and trying to drop. I have been doing an extreme version of calorie cycling for a while now... On the days when I eat food (and not just around 300-400 calories of protein shakes) I either eat a relatively big dinner or I will have insomnia, so I have to cut calories at lunch to compensate. I'm not able to eat much before I gain weight, I'm going to have to restrict calories permanently... so my diet...would probably only work for someone like myself-a chronic binge eater and dieter. I've jettisoning sugar, white flour, and nuts also, because I binge on those. So that like meat and dairy, I'm not really tempted by them, because they aren't on the menu, period. Thinking about adding white rice to that no-go list, also deep-fried foods-not that I eat deep fried foods much. Not going to fry that at home-they stink. I eat a lot of texturized vegetable protein these days-I found a place that carries it for cheap, plus beans, corn tortillas, soy protein smoothies, some bread(but try to stick to high-fiber diet bread) and lots of raw vegetables/fruits. I use stevia as a sweetener. I drink a lot of white tea.
Good god, how tall are you and what gender? That's an awfully low weight, in the 21st century when you youngsters are so much taller than we were. In the 1950s when I was a six-foot-tall (1.8m) teenager I was one of the tallest people in town. Now I'm not far above average. Especially in Washington with all these Afro-Americans--both men and women--towering over me. I'm the same way. All this business about eating your food early in the day is bullshit as far as I'm concerned. I have a decent breakfast but I eat the tiniest of lunches and then have a nice big dinner and eat candy and cookies all night. Then I fall asleep just fine. You've identified your own problem right there. It's only been a few hundred generations since the end of the Paleolithic Era, so we're still cavemen in both psychology and physiology. (Unlike dogs, who in the same time have had twenty thousand generations and have evolved to be completely adapted to the civilization we built together.) In the early Stone Age when we pretty much had to catch every day's food in real time, famines were not uncommon. When your body senses a drastic dropoff in calorie intake, it says, "Omigod it must be another drought! I've got to do whatever it takes to survive." So your digestion becomes more efficient and doesn't waste anything, your metabolism adjusts to burn less energy, you lose your nervous tics, and probably even sleep more, or at least spend more time sitting down and less time walking. Then when the famine is over it relaxes back to normal. However, if these famines occur too often, your body starts to outsmart the universe and goes into perpetual famine mode. It wants to store up calories in fat, so the next time you go on short rations, you'll have a little something to get you through until the next bountiful year. Fat is an insulator so it's a tremendous advantage in winter, when you won't need to eat more of the scarce food supply to maintain your body temperature. This is what people who go on yo-yo diets do to themselves. They convince their inner caveman that the food supply will always be unreliable, so it had better make more efficient use of the calories it can get while it can get them, and store up a nice healthy layer of fat to ensure survival. The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to start eating the normal calorie intake for your target weight. Then when you reach it you don't have to toggle back into some other mode of eating, you're already eating exactly what you need. Instead of training your body to panic and store up fat, you're training yourself to eat a good healthy diet which you can stay on for the rest of your life, and letting your body relax and stop trying to outwit the famine cycle. Sure it might take a while to do it so slowly. You might start out losing a pound a week, but as you get closer to your target the change will be slower. But how many years have you been yo-yo dieting, and you always end up right back where you started? I've known many people like you. They've gone on and off diets for years, gaining and losing the same 100-150 pounds (45-70kg) six or eight or ten times. And then when they finally get tired of it and accept themselves at some weight that is reasonable but just not movie-star caliber, they discover that their maintenance diet is now 900 calories. Their inner caveman has outwitted them, and he's so proud of himself. He's not going to let you ever starve to death! My maintenance diet is about 2500 calories because I have never once gone on a diet. I get to enjoy my life. You need to stop fixating on your weight. There are hundreds of more important things in your life. Besides, worrying about it constantly only makes it worse, and there's nothing worse for you than the yo-yo of dieting and bingeing. Both your physical and mental health will be far better off if you just stabilize at a weight that's somewhat higher than ideal and then forget about it for the rest of your life. If you find that people look down on you or don't want to hang out with you because you're not beautiful or handsome or whatever the proper adjective is for your gender, then shit, those are some pretty shallow people! Cut them loose and find some kinder, healthier friends and lovers.
Well, it bounces around, I'm back up to 150...but I'm a hair under 5'9". I'm female...um, physically...although the adjective I guess I'd go for mostly is "dashing?" And,well, I'm still blobby.:wallbang: The threshold for underweight for my height is 125, so not close to it. I wanted my asthma under control, I was told I would get drastically better if I got my weight down. The doc was right. I didn't need the stomach-stapling he suggested, though, but the suggestion itself really shook me into changing. You see...research has found that fat produces inflammatory proteins...so anyone with inflammation-based illness ought to drop weight. Being fat and ugly wasn't motivation enough. Gasping for air tends to occupy your attention more thoroughly. :shrug: And the funny thing is, the few times I've lately just gone off diet? my asthma and allergies seem to immediately get worse-like within a day. So, having screwed up my metabolism, I can do the perpetual diet or I can gasp like a beached fish. Salad really does grow on you.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You are 1.75 metres tall and 65 kg? That gives you a BMI of less than 22. Got news for you, Chimpkin. You are already of 'normal' weight, and do not need to lose any more. You are not 'blobby'. You may need to exercise to tone muscles, of course, but not to lose any more weight.
Mrs. Fraggle is 5'7" (170cm). She looks and feels perfectly fine at 140 (64) and doesn't start to complain until around 160 (73). I do believe you're overdoing it. Just because the doctor tells you that he won't put you on the pizza-and-truffles diet until you drop to 125 (57) doesn't mean that you have to see how close you can get to it without blowing away in the next strong wind! You probably look gorgeous at 150 (68) and like a movie star at 140. I have a friend who is 5'5" (140cm) and weighs 95lb (43kg). She looks like a refugee from Auschwitz. No subcutaneous fat, her features are so sharp they're almost birdlike. She sometimes doesn't eat for two days straight. She is in such bad health because of the way she has abused her body that even though I'm 15 years older, I know that I will be the one to bury her. She went to modeling school instead of a university--even though she's an inch too short to work the runways in America and too much of an Ugly American to last a week in Europe. (What kind of parents let their kid do a dumb-shit thing like that???) She picked up a lot of bad habits from hanging around with all those other model-wannabees. Anyway, my point is that despite the old slogan, it is indeed possible to be too thin. You're not too thin now, but you're as thin as you need to be. Another ten pounds will be really pushing it. If you think you look "blobby" at this weight, you have what my wife has learned to call "an inflated self image." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! What other things have you got going on in your life? Do you hang out with a bunch of girls who are also trying to reach an unhealthy weight? Are they encouraging you to do the same thing, or do you just feel "fat" next to them? If so, it's time to tell the bitches to get lost. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Me too, though my maintainence diet is about 4500 calories a day. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Likely the exercise regimen. I won't blow away in the breeze either, especially if I hang onto my delicate little 90 pound Labradorette. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Gonna bake up a fresh strawberry pie today, just picked up the strawberries yesterday afternoon. Want me to save you a slice?
Exactly the same as I did when I married my beautiful wife some 21 years ago - 200 pounds at 5'7". I used to do power lifting and TKD power breaking when I was younger, still carry a lot of muscle. I enjoy being pretty strong. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I bang through a couple thousand calories every day working out and running with my puppy. Gotta stay in shape for deep bush backpacking and upstate NY mountain climbing in the summer.
If anybody is interested in what foods are good/bad for you, have a look at my new blog: http://lou904718.wordpress.com/ There's loads of facts/resources and I just wrote it today coincidentally..
I eat pinto beans fairly regularly-probably more than other beans-at 2 pounds for $1, a good deal. Black beans have been found to be quite high in antioxidants: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/12/031205053236.htm But if the lentils you're referring to in your blog are French lentils-they may stack up closely, and their nutritional content is superb. Besides that, they are exceedingly tasty. Just hard to find here-only one store carries them-Whole Foods (I'm one of those people who calls it "Whole Paycheck"). I'm not going to drive an hour to get to said Whole Paycheck unless I have some other reason for being in the area, and they cost more per pound than the regular lentils. OTOH, thinking about it now, the next time I'm there, maybe I ought to stock up. The article above says US consumers only eat an average of 8 pounds of beans per year, which I find absolutely stunning-my goodness, so little beans? I have to wonder...have they not discovered the hot pepper yet? I mean, you just can't eat beans without hot sauce. These days, I'm fond of this stuff in my beans and bean tacos: http://www.amazon.com/Huey-Fong-Chili-Garlic-Sauce/dp/tech-data/B0006SKCVI We have a huge Asian population here, so it's a readily-available condiment...but can only be bought in the gallon jug size at Asian supermarketsPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! We go through the size pictured in the link in a week or less which means I ought to move up to something hotter...My body does not deal well with salt content in the colder months. We'll have fresh jalapenos from the garden soon enough-they grow quite easily here. Maybe I just need to make my own hot sauce. Hot peppers, BTW, are not only great for clearing any congestion you might have...they're loaded with vitamin c. And there's this-Cornell scientists (back in '98) found evidence that people cook with spices that kill food-spoiling bacteria native to their region: http://www.news.cornell.edu/chronicle/98/3.5.98/spices.html
Yeah Chimpy, I like chilli beans..or curried beans. I thought lentils shoud get a mention as they're great - I love 'em. Did you like the blog?
Excellent. I try hard with my serious journalism. If your family are interested in healthy choises, maybe you could help spread the blog around. You said they were large, so nice foods that are good for them might be interesting...
