Archive for the Weight loss
One of my guilty pleasures a few times per week is to watch Oprah while I’m at the gym. Yesterday I got part of a show which I’ll assume was about prevention and reversal of diabetes. For those of you who are new here, part of my mission is to reverse the trend and rates of heart disease and diabetes in midlife women so I paid attention to what the guests–Dr. Oz, Bob Greene, (Oprah’s trainer), and Dr. Ian Smith–had to say. (Art, Oprah’s former chef made a guest appearance as proof that you can reverse diabetes. He’s lost something like 90 pounds and transformed his cooking in the process)
Bob Greene has a new book out, The Best Life Guide to Managing Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes. He is co-author along with Dr.Jack Melendrino and Janis Jilbrin MS, RD. I’ve yet to buy the book–I disagree with Bob on many aspects of his programs–but will pick it up. Whether Bob and I see eye to eye over butter vs margarine–he touts it and I say it’s plastic and dangerous–is unimportant if his program and celebrity gets the word out that people can reverse diabetes and/or prevent it. There is one thing he told a group of women, who all looked more than well fed and heading for or suffering from diabetes, and it was this:
Exercise is non negotiable!
Amen to that! Most of you reading this are already believers in the power of movement. If there are any of you who doubt that exercise is a life saving, life extending, cure-what-ails-you kind of thing, I invite you to change your thinking. Even daily walking can change your physiology and contribute to better health.
With diabetes and pre-diabetes it is even more important that you move your muscles, get your heart pumping, and blood flowing. Exercise moves blood sugar where it needs to be which gets it out of your bloodstream. While you are exercising insulin cannot be produced so you give your body a rest from the insulin storm produced by too much blood sugar. Your blood sugar levels go down naturally. If you need to, you will most likely lose weight.
This is not a plug for Bob’s book, as I said, I don’t own it yet. From the reviews I’ve read I know I’ll have other issues outside of some of the foods given the Best Life Seal. Rather, it is a plug, no, a plea, for all of the women reading this to move your parts! I don’t want to have to drag you all kicking and screaming into a long, happy life . And since that’s impractical how about I just beat this subject to a mind numbing pulp by repeating it–you’ve got to move it move it!
I also don’t want to see you too sick to kick and scream. Diabetes is not simply a sugar issue. It is a disease with debilitating and often horrible consequences. By the time a person is diagnosed with diabetes they have had the condition for years. High blood sugar and insulin resistance have been battering your heart, kidney’s, nerves in the eyes and feet. Shall I go on? Drugs come with their own set of complications and who wants to test their sugar 2 – 6 times per day?
Exercise is not the only lifestyle change that must become a regular part of your life to prevent or turn back the diagnosis of diabetes but it is an important one.
As Bob told the church ladies–many of whom were midlife–Exercise is Non-negotiable. Love you Bob, margarine and all, thanks for getting the word out.
Hormones rule, did you know that? I’m not talking just sex hormones though in teenaged boys and middle aged women they are certainly at the top of the pecking order most days.
Everything we eat has a hormonal consequence, some helpful, some down right harmful over the long term.
Insulin is a hormone and is responsible for getting blood sugar somewhere it can be used or stored. Grehlin and leptin are the push me-pull yous of the hunger and satiety dance. These three food related hormones are in direct communication with our other messengers such as glucagon–the fat-burning hormone. Called into action when food is scarce, glucagon converts stored fat into sugar and uses it for energy. These 4 hormones worked in perfect harmony before the introduction of grains and industrial food production when all hormonal hell broke loss. It’s been a steep slide towards disease and women on the verge ever since.
So what can be done? Keep an eye on this blog cause it’s one of missions to let women know about how to eat for hormonal balance, and grab this book if you want some science and some recipes.
Dr. Michael Aziz is an internist with a practice in Manhattan; Midtown Integrative Medicine. Frustrated early on in his medical career that so many young people were coming in with cancers, diabtetes, and allergies that he couldn’t heal as well as all ages of people who had weight issues, he went in search of some answers. What he found was this connection between key hormones and the foods we eat. The main culprits?
Sugar, grains, processed fake foods like margarine, and the endocrine disruptors found in the chemicals used to increase shelf life, texture, color, etc. One of his findings goes along with mine of late–low fat diets are partially at fault in the rise of diabetes, obesity, and hormonal chaos. “The results of the research is clear, eating fat does not make you fat. Rather it’s the lack of natural fats in your diet that makes you gain weight” writes Aziz. He continues, “Natural fats are essential for your cells to work properly. Fats slow down the absorption of food, stabilize blood sugar levels, decrease, cravings, and make you feel full.”
And blood sugar levels will make or break our health over the long haul. I’ve included a link to a 2.5 minute video of Dr. Aziz live, he explains his philosophy and his book a bit more. His solution is an easy, delicious way of eating, protein, fat and fresh fruits, veggies, beans and legumes pretty much.
It’s becoming harder and harder to hide from the latest message on food as medicine–eat what’s natural, eat foods you can recognize as such, don’t fear the fat, and eat organic (meats and dairy) and grass fed (meats) when you can. In case you don’t remember how delicious a dollop of half and half is in your coffee or whole egg poached or fried–it’s The Yumm Factor to the 10s. You may have to let go of some long held beliefs to take on these new ideas but if you find hormonal heaven vs a daily roller coaster from hell, wouldn’t it be worth it?
Dr. Michael Aziz
Use this link to get to his video.
How many of us feel the need or urge to drop some poundage you ask? By tallying up the answers to that question in my surveys and combining it with the results of others I’d say round about 80%. That’s a whole lotta poundage that wants losing.
So what to do besides the usual; buy latest diet book, read by bedside now and again, try to remember what it suggested as you drifted off to dreams of the bikini clad you, then decide the latest John Grisham or re-reading Eat, Pray, Love would be far more entertaining and a better use of your time.
Or you do what’s worked in the past and you manage to drop a few pounds. This success lasts as long as your next weekend away or frantic work schedule kicks in and the muffin top returns, victorious.
At midlife–anytime after 40 really–the game of losing weight changes. And the science of weight loss has changed but the conventional wisdom has not been updated.
Low fat, non-fat, plenty of grains, counting calories, exercising more–all of these ideas are just plain wrong for most people. Have you noticed that the world has gotten bigger not smaller since these recommendations began?
Ok so let me cut to the chase, if you want to know the latest science on how to get the pounds off, flatten your belly and murder the muffin top once and for all, check out my newest website: Easy Midlife Weight Loss. There is a fr*ee 7 day e-course that is guaranteed to give you practical information to get you started from day one. Keep reading and you will begin to lose the weight. And it’s not all about deprivation and starvation as the graphic says. I believe we should be able to enjoy life while getting healthy and fit.
Let me know what you think.
Arianna Huffington and one of the eds of Glamour magazine, Cindi Leive, have teamed up to bring awareness to the lack of sleep most American women are suffering from. Brava girls, this is a serious issue and one I’ve been harping on for like, ever. (Said in my best Valley Girl tone)
They even brought one of my fave sleep experts, Dr. Michael Breus, into the conversation for some recommendations. “Women are significantly more sleep-deprived than men,” confirmed Dr. Breus who is the author of Beauty Sleep: Look Younger, Lose Weight, and Feel Great Through Better Sleep. “They have so many commitments, and sleep starts to get low on the totem pole. They may know that sleep should be a priority, but then, you know, they’ve just got to get that last thing done. And that’s when it starts to get bad.”
Bad in Arianna’s case was that she passed out from exhaustion, broke her cheekbone and got 5 stitches above her eye. While most of us will not have that severe a “wake up call” sorry for the pun I couldn’t help myself, sleep deprivation shows up in subtle ways. Over time it adds up and can limit our career and personal success. Without the proper amount of sleep the brain gets foggy, we are not as quick with our decision making skills, greater stress and more.
One of the things in the “more” category which will interest many midlife women is the relationship between not enough sleep and weight gain. It’s proven that shorting yourself on zzzzs will cause you to store fat right where we don’t want it–in the belly. The reasons are many and have to do with hormones for the most part. In short, stress hormones are released or continue to circulate when we don’t get enough sleep. More cortisol means a rise in blood sugar, which means more fat storage among other things. And we make poorer food choices when we are tired in an effort to boost serotonin-the feel good hormone. And we don’t usually feel like exercise, our mood is generally low and so we might comfort ourselves with something sweet and or carbie. And so it goes.
By the way, if you think you are somehow a lazy cow if you sleep a full 8 hours, think again. The HuffPost goes on to say that many women feel they must be workaholics to be taken seriously by the old boys network. In some circles that may be true but in the long run it’s counterproductive if working all the time cuts in to your beauty sleep. I’d suggest reading post #1, and #2 which continues the discussion. In this post the women discuss their successes and challenges in sticking to their commitments to get more sleep for 30 days. Arianna and Cindi have done a smart job at pointing out the limits we are putting on our success as women by continuing this crazy lifestyle habit.
Let me know where you are on the “full night’s sleep” challenge in the comments section. Do you feel better when you sleep more or less? And if you want more tips on losing weight at midlife, why not go take a gander at my new site, Easy Midlife Weight Loss.
