go after the obese. I’ve always said once they started putting heavy taxes on cigarettes trying to get smokers to quit, the next thing they would do is tax fattening food (snack foods specifically) to get people to eat less. It’s always cracked me up looking at the “big picture” when it comes to cigarettes because once everyone quits, they’ll and they are losing a lot of revenue. Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot. LOL.

Well, so far at least in the grocery stores, the taxes on snackfoods hasn’t happened yet, at least not in California. I still say it’s only a matter of time. What really caught my attention this morning was an article about a new law in Japan that went into effect a couple of months ago.

According to an article posted on ediets.com, “Companies and local governments must measure the waists of Japanese citizens between the ages of 40 and 74 (about 44 percent of the population of Japan, or 56 million people).

If people are over the prescribed waist size — 33.5 inches for men, 35.4 for women — then they are given dietary guidance first and “re-education” after six months if the dietary guidance isn’t effective. If companies fail to have their employees meet these new weight guidelines they could face huge fines.”

Boy, talk about “big brother” taking over! Oh my gosh, and if it ends up working in Japan don’t you think they’ll be looking at something similar here? They may not be able to pull out a measuring tape, but they probably could say something like “You’re above the weight limit for your height” or “You’re too round for our health policies here”.
 

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Where does it stop? Is the law against discrimination going to have to say no discriminating against “fat people” as well as race, creed, color, age, or religion? I don’t know, smokers are discriminated against and that just keeps getting worse. Looks like I’m a double whammy. I smoke and I’m fat! LOL.

I don’t know how familiar you are with “Alli”, the wonder drug for dieters that came out a year or two ago? Everyone was so excited for this drug to hit the shelves. Then came the stories of anal leakage, etc. It still boiled down to watching what you ate and exercise. When you look at the stats on how much Alli really helped people lose, they’re really not very impressive. I can lose more faster using the herbal supplements I have and not put up with bad side effects.

This morning I read about a new drug trying to make it’s way into the US. Not only is it supposed to be another “Weightloss Miracle” drug, but also a smoking cessation drug that keeps you from gaining weight when you quit. The name of the drug is “Rimonabant”. The manufacturer who currently sells the drug in the UK applied to the FDA a couple of years ago, but the FDA said their studies of the side effects of this drug were inconclusive. When they couldn’t make it into the US as a weightloss drug, they tried as a smoking cessation drug. Thank God that didn’t work either.

Now in the UK it comes out that they are having a second look at Rimonabant. It appears that not only does it raise lipids (cholesterol and  triglyceride levels), but it turns out it causes deep depression and is being linked to suicide in its users. And, the bottom line is, you still have to watch your diet and exercise! The depression affects 1 in 10 patients. That’s pretty often. In fact depression was great enough in a number of participants, they dropped out of the study.

What is super scary to me is if you google “rimonabant” you get a ton of ads to buy it without a prescription online under it’s generic name Acomplia. They’re saying it’s the safest weightloss wonder pill. No doctor, no supervision. The one site I went to says you can read what people have to say about it, but they have the comments turned off and just a bunch of entries trying to sell it.

I, as much as anyone else, would love to have a magic pill to take the weight off. Get real My Dears. It’s not here yet and trust me, “Big Pharma” doesn’t give a damn about who they hurt on their way to the big bucks they earn from someone’s misery. What ever you decide to do besides changing to a healthier lifestyle, make sure you do your research and get all the facts. Many times I have asked the question “Why would I want to take a cure that is worse than the disease?”

It looks like we’re in for a long, hot summer. For the last few years we’ve had a week of hot weather sometime in May, and then it’s usually just “nice” until the middle to end of June. This year the hot weather started early and stayed. If you’re anything like me, this is the time you really wish you had stuck to all those weightloss goals you set earlier in the year. Those summer fashions and a bathing suit doesn’t look nearly so good hanging off a body that’s almost 200lbs. as it did when I was 145. I also don’t take the heat as well. Being heavier I guess I carry my own internal furnace with me. I’m always surprised when a larger person gets cold easily, as this usually isn’t the norm. Then I look at their lifestyle, and like me they’re pretty sedentary so circulation isn’t all that good. Like I tell my mother “If you’d get up and do something, you wouldn’t be so cold.”

Along with the summer heat comes all the good-for-us food. The berries are in season. The melons are coming in. I love it and have gotten really good at reaching for healthier snacks. (Smashed strawberries over Fatfree ice cream or frozen yogurt and a small slice of angelfood cake is pure heaven and doesn’t set the diet into a tailspin). I add fresh fruit to my yogurt and add more fiber. It’s all good! Unfortunately, it’s also time when you don’t want to cook because of the heat, and potato salad and macaroni salads make the best side dishes.

I am not going to give you a bunch of tips here on how to avoid those things, because I can’t. What I can do is give you a couple of tips to make eating them not so bad.

1) If you find any you like in the supermarkets you can buy just what you need for a meal and then you don’t have a bunch left over that you feel you have to eat. Personally I do this on occasion but I like to have control over my ingredients. When I make it at home not only do I like it better, but I use less fattening ingredients to make it.

Which brings me to tip #2.

I don’t care for the taste of light mayo. All I can taste is the vinegar. Everyone talks about Best Foods or Hellman’s being the best tasting Mayo, but when it comes to the light stuff I have to go with Kraft. What I do is mix half light mayo and half regular mayo in my salads. While they’re still definitely not fatfree, it does shave off quite a few calories and fat grams. If you scramble eggbeaters instead of using real egg, you can shave off even more.

What I’m truly looking for is a “pasta” diet. I’m afraid it wouldn’t get promoted very much as I can already see how unhealthy it would be. The diet would consist of all things pasta, and fruits and veggies, and a guarantee that even with alfredo sauce, I could still lose weight.LOL.

Yesterday while watching “The View” (I don’t really watch. I have it on while I’m working) a guest of theirs was a guy who specializes in tea. It caught my attention because he was calling what he was talking about “The Tea Diet”. At first I thought “yeah, yeah”, but he started talking about teas and was actually saying some things I hadn’t known.

He says all tea is tea. It’s supposedly just a matter of processing what color it is. White tea is the least processed with the least caffeine, then green, etc.  That in itself was interesting to me, because I thought all those teas came from different plants.

Here’s the good part. He had flavored teas on the show that were named “Candy Bar” “Chocolate Chip Cookie” etc. The girls were going along behind him tasting them and actually gave good reactions. What he was saying was

1. Drink tea instead of coffee in the morning for added benefits (I’ve tried this one. Can’t do it).
2. When you have a craving for a candy bar or a cookie, reach for the flavored tea instead.

You’re getting the taste you’re craving without the calories plus the added benefit of all the antioxidants that are so good for you. I think this is a great idea, and I can see how this could work. I know I have switched to diet green tea with ginseng and it is sweet, which for me has taken some getting used to. I drink my tea and coffee both without any sweetener at all.

My problem with this would be my need to actually chew. They say that gum can cure that, but I’m not sure I would want to chew gum while I’m drinking a flavored tea. Sometimes I just feel the need to “pick”. I usually keep a portion of honeynut cheerios or something like that handy so I don’t chomp on chips or something like that.

I’m thinking I might try a couple of these teas and see just how good of an idea it is. Maybe if I’m getting the flavor, I won’t need to have something chewy. If it works, it could be very beneficial. I’ll have to let you know after my “experiment”.

I was going to write about something else today, but came across this in my inbox. I don’t know who wrote it, I wish I did. I would gladly give her credit for expressing so well how I feel.

When I was a child in the 1960s the bathing suit for the mature figure was boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift and they did a good job.

Today’s stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a figure carved from a potato chip.

The mature woman has a choice-she can either go up front to the maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming away looking like a hippopotamus who escaped from Disney’s Fantasia or she can wander around every run of the mill department store trying to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of florescent rubber bands.

What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room.

The first thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe, by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which give the added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one, you are protected from shark attacks as any shark taking a swipe at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash. I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder strap in place, I gasped in horror - my boobs had disappeared!

Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my seventh rib.

The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature woman is meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take a full view assessment.

The bathing suit fit all right, but unfortunately it only fit those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out rebelliously from top, bottom, and sides. I looked like a lump of play dough wearing undersized cling wrap.

As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, admiring the bathing suit.

I replied that I wasn’t so sure and asked what else she had to show me. I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of masking tape, and a floral two piece which gave the appearance of an over sized napkin in a serving ring.

I struggled into a pair of leopard skin bathers with ragged frills and came out looking like Tarzan’s Jane, pregnant with triplets and having a rough day.

I tried on a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish in mourning.

I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

Finally, I found a suit that fit…a two-piece affair with a shorts style bottom and a loose blouse-type top.

It was cheap, comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search had a successful outcome, I figured. When I got home, I found a label which read — ‘Material might become transparent in water.’

So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water this year and I’m there too I’ll be the one in cut off jeans and a t-shirt!

I got a little sidetracked yesterday, but here’s the rest of what I learned about dieting and osteoporosis that I was going to share.

First of all, if you are on any of the drugs that are supposed to help build bone mass, please do your research or talk to your doctor. My mother was on Fosomax and it turns out it was a good thing we kept forgetting to give it to her. I have taken her off it completely and her doctor when I spoke to him about it, wasn’t at all surprised nor did he argue with me about it. Many of these drugs are being found to just make the bone harder, not actually help rebuild, causing complications with women’s jaw bones when they go to the dentist, etc. For more info see my blog at http://www.lauriannsnewlife.blogspot.com

Now for the other stuff. I don’t know how many of you have heard high homo-cysteine levels are the true predictor of strokes vs. cholesterol levels, but it turns out high levels aren’t good for your bones either. Both men and women are twice as likely to suffer from hip fractures when their homo-cysteine levels are elevated. Supplements of folic acid, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12 and either choline and/or betaine can lower elevated homocysteine levels. By contrast diets high in fatty meats and particularly processed meats like hot dogs, sausages, bologna and pepperoni markedly increase the level of homo-cysteine in the blood for several hours after every high protein meal. Fasting homo-cysteine levels and LDL levels are also elevated in people who eat more fatty animal products and fewer whole grains, fruits, vegetables and nonfat dairy products.

This one’s a tough one for me. Caffeine, especially in women who don’t get the recommended daily allowance of calcium, is a culprit in the loss of bone mass density. I drink a pot before anyone in the house is even awake, which is probably one of the reasons my BMD is already in trouble. The lifetime intake of the amount of caffeine in as little as 2 cups of coffee per day is associated with decreased BMD in older women. It’s also important to make teenagers aware of their dietary choices to protect them in the future. A diet high in meat, with the regular use soft drinks instead of nonfat milk as a beverage, will likely reduce peak bone mass in the young and increase the risk of developing osteoporosis in later years.

A diet of potassium rich fruits and vegetables is also reported to help reduce bone loss. For many this isn’t really an option as some of the prescription drugs for high blood pressure warn against extra potassium. The drug itself causes your body to collect potassium in your system, so be sure to read the warnings on the labels.

Many trace minerals are essential for maintaining bone density. The American diet is so full of white flour, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and refined fats and oils, that we generally don’t get the amount of trace minerals necessary. Here again are where more fruits and vegetables help fill the bill. Whole grains, legumes and dark green vegetables are the best dietary sources of magnesium and supply trace minerals and other factors that may improve bone health.

We all try to switch to more fruits and vegetables when we decide it’s time to lose weight, but there are so many other reasons to do it, the weight really is more of the “icing on the cake” and should happen as a natural side effect. Right now is the season to take advantage of so many wonderful fruits and vegetables that are fresh and make such great snacks. Have you tried getting in your “9 fruits and vegetables” (it used to be 5) a day? There’s hardly room or time to be eating all the “wrong” stuff. LOL.

For more info on magnesium of vitamin D deficeincies, see my blog at http://www.lauriannsnewlife.blogspot.com

Disclaimer: I am in no way a healthcare provider of any  kind and the stuff I pass on here is only from my own research. You should always consider consulting your physician if you plan on making dietary changes.

I ran across something this morning that was quite disturbing to me, not to mention grossed me out a bit. I haven’t decided whether or not I believe it or it’s just another gimmick. I’m still trying to decide, but in the meantime I did find this video quite interesting, and at the same time a little sickening if it’s true. If anyone’s familiar with this please write a comment. I’m not only looking at this because of weightloss, but just for health in general. I’m also curious what your thoughts are. This is not the first time I’ve heard of this which is probably one of the reasons I’m considering it. Please let me know what your thoughts are. (A little long, but interesting).

Supposedly this lady doctor claims this accounts for a lot of our fat and that she has the answer. http://ldbeams01.fatsecret.hop.clickbank.net

I try to pay attention. I know that with dieting you have to be careful about losing muscle instead of fat. I’ve heard about that forever! I know that as we get older we lose bone mass which can lead to osteoporosis. I didn’t realize that dieting could slow closely also result in bone loss. Where the heck was I during that class?

I also didn’t realize what an astounding effect a sedentary lifestyle has on bone mass density (BMD). As I read more, the opposite is also true. Excessive exercise also can lead to a lower BMD. I’m sure I won’t have to worry about that being a problem in my case. What I do need to worry about is making sure I do some sort of weight bearing exercise and strength training, as definite results were shown in greater BMD after just one year.

My mother has osteoporosis. One year she fractured her back 3 times and spent most of that year in the hospital. I don’t want to go there.

Other things we were not made aware of, and I still don’t hear about and I have 2 daughters, is how teenage girls involved in athletics and also frequently diet, are at high risk for osteopenia (low bone mineral content), stress fractures and broken bones. It also puts them at risk for early osteoporosis. This isn’t only common in teenage girls, but men and boys as well who frequently diet.

These are things that seem to help prevent or help cause osteoporosis. First let me say, with all the hype about soy products, there doesn’t seem to be enough evidence of it really doing any good to warrant using soy for treating osteoporosis. There is the suggestion that vegans, etc. use soy milk as a substitute for cow’s milk for calcium and vitamin D.

We all know how important calcium is. That is a given. Luckily there are many ways to get the calcium we need, but remember that vitamin D is necessary for absorption. If you’re getting your calcium from sources other than milk fortified with vitamin D, it’s probably essential to be taking a vitamin D supplement. We should be getting between 1300 and 1500mg. of calcium per day.

Too much Vitamin A may contribute to Osteoporosis. In Norway and Sweden they fortify low fat milk and margarine with retinol. They have seemed to find that the added retinol is at least partly responsible for osteoporosis in these two countries, along with cod liver oil. They advise people at risk of osteoporosis to limit their intake of pre-formed vitamin A (retinol) to the RDA level of 800 RE or 0.8 mg of retinol per day. This means food supplements with retinol should be avoided, as should supplements of cod liver oil. Now there is a slight conflict here in the way that most dairy products also contain retinol. A better way of getting your vitamin D is to go get some sunshine every day. 10-15 min. should be enough and not to much to harm you.

One I was surprised to hear about that isn’t widely publicized is Vitamin K, or the lack there of contributing to bone loss. Unfortunately if you’re on blood thinners, this is probably not a good solution for you. A recent meta-analysis examined 7 studies in which elderly subjects were given either 15 (one study) or 45mg of vitamin K2 or a placebo. Remarkably those taking the supplements of vitamin K had reductions in hip fractures of 77% compared to those given a placebo. Fractures of the vertebrae were cut by 60% and all other fractures were reduced by 81%. If you’re following a good healthy diet, you should be getting vitamin K from all those green leafy veggies you’re eating.

Tomorrow I’ll go into the minerals etc. for preventing osteoporosis. It’s amazing to me how young I should have been paying attention and what I’ll be telling my daughters now that I know.

Disclaimer: I am in no way a healthcare provider of any kind and the stuff I pass on here is only from my own research. You should always consider consulting your physician if you plan on making dietary changes.

Today’s post is not about me and my weight loss (or lack there of), but of someone who is working diligently at losing weight and making a difference at the same time. His name is Ben. He’s lost 88 lbs. since he started his website. He’s actually lost over 100 since he began his journey. This is truly awe inspiring. Please just take a couple minutes to look at his site and see how we can all make a difference when you have the desire and a great idea.

http://www.donatemyweight.com

Have a blessed weekend.

The health article that caught my attention today was from issue 2658 of New Scientist magazine, 29 May 2008, page 12. It was all about how “thoughts of death make us eat cookies.” I’m serious. There is a study about how people who wrote essays on death vs. dentists ate more cookies and had lower self-esteem. “The authors believe people with low self-esteem use consuming as a way of subconsciously escaping self-awareness, which is heightened by thoughts of dying.”

I found this fascinating in the way that I always thought thoughts of dying would help you control your eating and make you exercise. You want to have a healthier lifestyle. You want to live longer. Instead, they are saying that eating is a possible mechanism for dealing with “death anxiety”.

I would say that my self-esteem probably isn’t what it should be, especially since I’m home so much more now and socialize so much less. Also the fact that I have gained a lot of weight hasn’t exactly lifted my self-esteem to new heights. I also worry a lot about dying (before I’m ready) because I know I don’t lead a healthy lifestyle. It seems to me, the fear of dying too soon would cause you to quit eating cookies instead of making you eat worse.

Maybe it’s time for yet another “paradigm shift”!