I was surfing through some of the sites in the Be Naturally Well Community and thought I would share some of the articles I found. I think I will do this regularly. There are a lot of great author's out there!

From Robin Plan

How Super Sized Drinks Were Born

Do you know how supersized foods and drinks came about? Think it was McDonald's? You're not too far off but no it wasn't McDonald's or 7-11 with the Big Gulp.

The history of Supersizing:
In the 1960's a man named David Wallerstein worked for a chain of movie theaters, where he struggled to expand sales of soda and popcorn, the high-markup items that theaters depend on to make profits.

Wallerstein tried everything he could think of to boost sales, two-for-one deals, matinee specials, but found he couldn't get customers to buy more than one soda and one bag of popcorn. Why? Because going for seconds makes people feel like pigs.

Wallerstein discovered ……Read More

From Althea Hughes Wills:

For the love of Aaron and Paula

I love the Food Network. I love food, food, food…but raw vegan food because I know that is what's best for me. But…when I watch Food Network, I'm always thinking, "how can I vegan-ize that?" And since my husband and kids are still cooked vegans, anything that calls for chicken can easily become tofu. (And I was SO happy yesterday when they had an episode of Rescue Chef where Dan helped a sister named Zion in the kitchen. Everything was vegan.)

Today my whole family watched  Read More

From Tom Rooney:

We Are Eating Ourselves To Death

Have we finally reached the point where we “as a society” can’t control our weight?  The disturbing trends of overweight Americans is an epidemic now and there is no clear change in sight.  Today’s people have gotten to the point where things are too convenient.  Fast food, comfortable cars, video games, and remote controls have made our life so easy that we don’t do the things our parents and grand parents did in order to control weight gain. 

I blame the start of this all on McDonalds as Read More

From EJ Cooksey:

Exercising and You – How to Get Started

We all know it's necessary, but we don't want to get up early in the morning to do it.

What is this "it" I'm talking about?

It is exercise and it is essential for a long and healthy life. I'm not just saying that either. Ask anyone who has lived to be sixty, seventy, and over who move better than some people half their ages. They have used exercise to turn their life around.

Exercise is getting our bodies moving and burning calories. To lose one pound, it takes a deficit of 3,500 calories. I know what you're thinking – it might as well be a million calories. But, it is not as hard as you think. Exercise doesn't have to be organized at a gym for it to be legitimate and to "count."

The best thing about exercise is that it is cumulative. That means Read More

From Mark:

Fat How Much Are You Eating ?

We know as people that we all need to eat less fat but when you’re eating foods like take-away’s and eating food in restaurants there is no real way to tell how much you are exactly eating.

The only way to get a idea of the amount of fat you are eating is by reading  Read More

From Carb Queen:

Be the Turtle

My favorite leader, Karen, has been enamored of Uno, the beagle, since he won best in show at the Westminster Dog Show in February. She has talked about "being the beagle" off and on since then.

I'm about to celebrate a birthday — my double-nickel to be exact — and a very good friend of mine recognized my birthday by giving me a small turtle. It's heavy for its size, which makes it just perfect for dropping into a pocket to fiddle with or holding while on the phone with a computer user (I do tech support, among other things, for a living) who is having trouble with a Word document. When I opened this marvelous little package, my friend told me to "be the turtle."

I knew immediately what she meant:  Read More

From Cynthia:

The good, bad and the ugly

Monday could've gone better for me…

The good part is simple, a one pound loss!

The bad, well, I went too hard in the pool, aggravated upper right arm and shoulder again. Had no idea until this morning when I could barely move it. Gack! New goal… go a little easier for a bit. I do not HAVE to do my water aerobics like I'm on speed! Though that will take some of the fun out of it!

But then there's the UGLY. Apparently, my body was just raving for calories and when I Read More

That's just a few excerpts from the bloggers in our community this last week or two. To visit more bloggers from the Be Naturally Well community you can click <===  there, or up above where it says  Health Links.

The entire news report is below, followed by my reaction.

In addition to limiting calories, overweight and obese women may need to exercise 55 minutes a day for five days per week to sustain a weight loss of 10 percent over two years, according to a report in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

More than 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, a public health concern, according to background information in the article. "Among obese adults, long-term weight loss and prevention of weight regain have been less than desired," the authors write. "

Therefore, there is a need for more effective interventions." Current recommendations prescribe 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week, for a total of 150 minutes per week. However, a growing consensus suggests that more exercise may be needed to enhance long-term weight loss.

To calculate the amount of exercise needed, John M. Jakicic, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues enrolled 201 overweight and obese women in a weight loss intervention between 1999 and 2003. All the women were told to eat between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day. They were then assigned to one of four groups based on physical activity amount (burning 1,000 calories vs. 2,000 calories per week) and intensity (moderate vs. vigorous). Group meetings focusing on strategies for modifying eating and exercise habits, as well telephone calls with the intervention team, also were conducted over the two-year period.

After six months, women in all four groups had lost an average of 8 percent to 10 percent of their initial body weight. However, most were not able to sustain this weight loss. After two years the women's weight was an average of 5 percent lower than their initial weight, with no difference between groups.

The 24.6 percent of individuals who did maintain a loss of 10 percent or more over two years reported performing more physical activity (an average of 1,835 calories per week, or 275 minutes per week over the baseline level of activity) than those who lost less weight. They also completed more telephone calls with the intervention team, engaged in more eating behaviors recommended for weight control and had a lower intake of dietary fat.

"This clarifies the amount of physical activity that should be targeted for achieving and sustaining this magnitude of weight loss, but also demonstrates the difficulty of sustaining this level of physical activity," the authors write. "Research is needed to improve long-term compliance with this targeted level of physical activity. Moreover, continued contact with the intervention staff and the ability to sustain recommended eating behaviors also may be important contributing factors to maintaining a significant weight loss that exceeds 10 percent of initial body weight, which suggests that physical activity does not function independently of these other behaviors."

 

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There are a few things about this study that are "missing" for me. What kinds of jobs do these women have? What is their average physical activity NOT including their exercise? Do they really need MORE exercise to maintain, or did they slip back in some regard to their previous eating habits?

The bottom line in weight gain, or loss (half full or half empty?!) is that you need to burn more calories than you take in. You can effect your metabolism to hang on to those calories and may need to exercise more, and yet for someone else matabolism may differ and they don't need to exercise as much in order to maintain.

This study (and so many studies that I've read on weight loss) always try and put people into groups as if they are all the same, and they really are not. I haven't had a McD meal or a fast food meal of any kind more than 2 or 3 times a year for many years now, and yet.. I have a LOT to lose. My neighbor has terrible eating habits and she drinks like a fish, and wears a size 2, and her muscles are all very well defined. She is 50 years old and doesn't go to the gym or workout in ANY way.

Everyone is different. Let us STOP spending so much money on why people aren't maintaining, or why ethel weighs 300 pounds. Let's get rid of the garbage people are eating, ban fast food and soda commercials to late night, focus more on helping people exercise and make healthy whole food choices. If everyone focussed on weight in the same way that the focus has been on cigarettes, we would be so much further ahead!

Well here we are. The second day of our  ‘walk’  together. I’ve been through this before, so I know that I should still be feeling motivated and excited. The drudgery of the day to day routine hasn’t kicked in yet. I am also somewhat obsessed (as I think many people are) with my weight, and body image, especially since I have started so publicly on my program. I go to sleep thinking about my fat, and wake up thinking about my fat. I am going to try to shift my thinking a bit. If I HAVE to think about it, I should go to bed thinking about my muscle! (more on that later!) I got a bit more of the website done yesterday and meant to get back to post what I did yesterday but didn’t get a chance. (TOO many things to do!) So I’ll just give you a run-down on how my first day went.

• Food -I made a decision NOT to diet! Been there, got the T-shirt (it’s too small now I might add). So I am trying to make a conscious effort to change my food habits and also my eating habits. See I work in my office pretty much all day long. Often when I get hungry I grab something quick, and take it back to my office. I eat while I am working on the computer, talking on the phone or whatever. Meal times have no real meaning to me at all.  So I’ve made a decision to eat ONLY at the kitchen table when I am home. I’ve also made a decision to try to make healthier food choices.
• Exercise - OK, well as I mentioned I spend all day in my office. I am a total workaholic. I love pattering away at the computer, I love my office, and I do not have any idea what to do when the power goes out! So sedentary is a mild word for what my life has become. I have to MOVE every day. I am going to work up to 3 planned exercise periods a day. It sounds like a lot right now since I barely move all day, but I think it is reasonable. I am starting with baby steps.
• Motivation – I need to do something to keep myself motivated daily, and I don’t want this to be as dry as a caesar salad  crouton for those of you who are reading, so each day 4 or 5 days a week I am going to try to do some research on a method, product, exercise, or anything else that would be helpful, funny, or interesting and we’ll collect them here as well. If you have suggestions as to what you would like to learn more about, let me know here.
• Support – I am very fortunate… I have a supportive spouse, and teenagers who don’t spend a lot of time at home, so there is no huge obstacle at home. Not everyone has that, so I am going to encourage you to join a support group, enlist the help of a friend, find an online forum or whatever you have to do to find a buddy to encourage you when you are down. I will have a forum here on the site eventually as our community grows.

So what exactly did my day look like yesterday?

Food- I didn’t do too badly. As I mentioned I am not dieting. I am just trying to make better choices overall, and become aware of the amount of calories I take in. I am going to be moving towards a mostly raw, live food diet, but right now I am about as "average North American" as I can get, so I think ‘slow’ is the key. One of my biggest problems in the past has been that I tend to go full steam 100% and then crash because I can’t keep up the pace. The real secret is to gradually make changes and let them become a habit. All of the research I’ve done on diet indicates that we should be consuming an 80% raw diet made of mostly fruits and vegetables, so that is what my ultimate goal will be. The biggest problem I have now with that is that my blood sugar tends to crash if I eat just fruits and/or vegetables without protein. I suspect that by gradually introducing the new way of eating my body’s insulin response will adjust. Right now, it’s used to refined carbs (white sugar, white flour etc). I am going to be switching to protein shakes and I have ordered them. (I am not really into raw meat and eggs! haha)  I’ll tell you which company I chose for the shakes and why in another article. So on to what I ate:

I started the day with a glass of water, then my coffee! Give up coffee??? HA no way! I don’t put sugar in my coffee, just a bit of 2% milk. Breakfast was an orange, 2 whole wheat toast with real butter and an egg (poached yummy!). I had a big fresh salad for lunch, and some hard cheddar cheese. Supper was another huge fresh salad and a small fresh cut of pork grilled on the barbecue. I also had a granny smith apple, 2 tangerines, and a chocolate frozen treat on a stick (like a fudge-sicle only the no name kind. hehe) Then I had a bowl of cheerios in the evening with milk.  I am pretty fortunate that I mostly drink water all day anyway, and not a lot of anything else except my coffee (3 or 4 cups) in the morning. I am going to try to add green and herbal teas for health benefits, but summer in Canada is not a good time generally to want to drink hot beverages any time of the day besides morning.

Exercise – Man I am in SUCH bad shape. Just coming up one flight of stairs from the lower level of my house with a basket of laundry leaves me short of breath. I can hardly believe that I’ve allowed myself to get to this condition. This might be the time to confess that I quit smoking 4 months ago after smoking since my first cigarette at 12 years of age! So imagine my totally inert lifestyle, coupled with over 30 years of cigarettes and just imagine the shape of my body! I know I need to get moving, but again (for me anyway) the key is going to be slowly adding things that I can continue to do every day. I also don’t want to over-do it and pull a muscle or be so sore that I need 4 days to recover.

As soon as I got out of bed, and flipped on the coffee pot, I went to the livingroom and just did some body stretching. WOW I can’t believe how good that felt. After I felt ‘stretched’ I did some simple marching in place while I moved my arms ‘jumping jack’ style. I did that for about 10 minutes. Then I did some stomach crunches with feet flat on floor. (I didn’t count how many… just did as many as I could…. a little less than 2 minutes) then I place ankle on knee of other leg and crunched across my body, then changed legs and did the other side. I then stretched out on my side, head propped, and did some lateral leg raises both sides.   Later in the day I did 20 minutes on my exercise bike. I have a recumbent stationary bike from Sears a couple of years ago. I paid around $400 for it so it isn’t ‘top of the line’ but it works great. I also have some hand held weights in a variety of sizes for strengthening. You can pick them up quite readily just about anywhere.

So that was my day yesterday, and I feel pretty good about it. I am going to try to weigh myself just once a week or so. I may not even remember to weigh myself regularly, and I am not going to focus on it. An acquaintance of mine says (wisely I might add) that we should not be concerned with weight loss, rather our focus should be ‘fat loss’. This is a reminder that our goal is to gain muscle, which helps increase our metabolism and in turn burns even more fat. Muscle weighs more than fat , and it looks nicer too. You can see why we have dimples on our rear ends from this piture! HEHE

Now I am going to go do my exercises for today. I am also going to write my first article on "WATER" so watch for that later today!

Many Blessings,

Shelley