October 24, 2005

Kick in the Tush Club

I subscribe to lots of inspirational and informational newsletters about weight loss. One of my favorites is Our Lady of Weight Loss and I tried looking around for a subscription address but my eyes failed me. Check out the link, though, and maybe you'll have better luck!

I enjoyed this message:



The color Orange represents the changing of the seasons. It is a color on the edge - on the threshold – of change. Orange transports us from the hot dog days (not hotdog days) of summer to the fragrant first oranges and mandarins of the fall. Orange is the color of October sunsets, and it evokes images of autumn leaves, pumpkins, and together with the color Black, Halloween.
Orange is the color of October.
Orange - a mixture of red and yellow - is a brilliant and dazzling color. It symbolizes energy, warmth, and the sun. Orange commands attention as does red, but with the presence of affable yellow, orange gives way to a slightly less intense experience.
Orange is a stimulant. It stimulates emotions, thoughts, conversation and even appetite. With Halloween upon us and its pumpkins piled high at every green market, perched on every doorstep, along with those mountains of haunting little orange devils called candy corn found at every turn of the supermarket, it’s no wonder we’re in danger of caving-in to the call of the candy-filled Jack-O-Lantern.
Stay strong my friends. Limit your treats, lest Halloween haunt you for months to come.
Fun Orange Facts:

In Ireland, the color orange is associated with the protestant religion.

Black boxes on airplanes are painted orange so they are more visible to the human eye. (Why not call them orange boxes?)

If you dream in orange, you can expect an unexpected change in your life! (Expect the Unexpected, I always say.)

Orange has the optical illusion of making objects look like they are in the foreground, whether they are or not.

Orange Blossoms are a symbol of love.


There was a little table that explains the colors:


RED - The color of power, vitality, motivation, strength
ORANGE - The color of confidence, energy, joy, warmth
YELLOW - The color of strength, intelligence, joy,
happiness, optimism
GREEN - The color of balance, harmony, caring,
tenacious self-reliance, and healing
BLUE - The color of calmness, concentration,
healing, relaxation, loyalty, and trust
INDIGO - The color of soothing, power, connection
with knowledge, idealism, introversion.....and martyrdom?
VIOLET - The color of creativity, intuition, spirituality,
self-awareness

Check out the link for the entire newsletter as well as links to other articles, pictures and information!

October 22, 2005

Portion Size Shock

For week 2, Heidi and I got booklets called "Portion Smart" (from Weight Watchers. Our leader stresses that Weight Watchers doesn't try to tell us what we can or cannot eat. All they ask of us is to stay within our point limits for the day or week.

It seemed so easy years ago.

I think it's because portion sizes have become so much bigger. I looked through the booklet to get an idea of portion sizes. It's a bit of a shock!

A serving size of cereal is like a tennis ball. Only my tiniest Tupperware bowl holds that amount. All of my cereal bowls hold at least 2 cups or more.

A side dish--like mashed potatoes or baked beans--should be about the size of my computer mouse. Whaaat! You mean that stuff isn't supposed to fill the huge dinner plate?

A portion of fish would be the size of a cassette tape. Good. I don't like fish anyway. However, all the meat I do like -- steak, pork & chicken -- also should be about the size of a cassette tape.

A mouse and a cassette tape...this is supposed to make me feel full? Thank God for vegetables!

October 20, 2005

Peripheral Neuropathy

About a month ago, (where have I been? it's been a busy month!) I wrote about bariatric surgery. It's an option I'd been considering until I started doing some real research and have become more and more convinced it's not for me. I got a comment from a reader who suggested I read up on peripheral neuropathy (PN). I'd heard of it before and kind of understood what it was but didn't get the connection between it and bariatric surgery. Then I began reading.

I knew that neuro had to do with nerves and so figured it must relate to touch, the ability to move, and so on.

Because every peripheral nerve has a highly specialized function in a specific part of the body, a wide array of symptoms can occur when nerves are damaged. Some people may experience temporary numbness, tingling, and pricking sensations (paresthesia), sensitivity to touch, or muscle weakness. Others may suffer more extreme symptoms, including burning pain (especially at night), muscle wasting, paralysis, or organ or gland dysfunction. People may become unable to digest food easily, maintain safe levels of blood pressure, sweat normally, or experience normal sexual function. In the most extreme cases, breathing may become difficult or organ failure may occur.


Wow, that's bad stuff!

The commenter suggested I look into the research published in the AMA. I fought this article. They compared groups of really heavy people who'd had abdominal surgery--bypass compared with gall bladder surgeries. They found that patients having gastric bypass were more likely to develop this PN.

"People who had had bariatric surgery were significantly more likely to have PN than the people in the control group," Dr. Dyck said. "The most common PNs were carpal tunnel syndrome and sensory neuropathy, but a small number had a more severe form of PN which can lead to extreme pain and weakness, sometimes confining people to a wheelchair."

"The risk factors that we found correlated with PN included very rapid weight loss, not taking vitamins and prolonged nausea and vomiting. Factors including age, gender, pre-surgery BMI and general health had no association," Dr. Dyck said.


The doctor seemed to imply that the patients got PN because they didn't go for nutritional counseling after surgery. I don't know if that's so or not. I did get that you can get PN because your body's not absorbing the vitamins and minerals it needs. I think that should be emphasized strongly!

I read some more on bariatric surgery and will write more later. So far, Weight Watchers is going well for me and my daughter. We'll stick with that!

October 05, 2005

Weight of the victims in the boat accident tragedy

On a calm, sunny day a charter boat carrying 48 senior citizens on a tour of Lake George, NY was swamped and sunk. No one could figure out what happened. Was it the wake of another boat? Was it because most of the passengers were sitting on one side? It couldn't be because there was just one crew member (the captain) instead of the required two!

Maybe...it was the fact that we weigh more than we did when the regulations were set for how many people could get on a charter boat.

Just days before the boat overturned, the Coast Guard began rethinking its per-passenger weight limits to take into account Americans' expanding waistlines. The current standard, set 25 years ago, assumes a 140-pound average for each man, woman and child.

At the time it flipped over Sunday, the 38-foot Ethan Allen was just under its capacity of 50 people — a figure that was arrived at by using a New York standard that assumes a 150-pound average, authorities said.
...
The Coast Guard awarded a contract a few weeks ago to a research firm to determine how increasing the average weight per passenger would affect vessels around the country, spokeswoman Angela McArdle said.

McArdle said the Coast Guard knew the weight requirement has been outdated for some time, but it did not move on the issue until the NTSB warned about the problem after five people were killed when a water taxi sank in Baltimore.

Asked why the Coast Guard did not move more quickly, McArdle said: "It has such wide-ranging implications. You need to address the economic impact on the industry, looking at the scope. It's not something where we can just say, `Now passenger ferries must carry 20 fewer people."'


Read the whole article here.

Today, my daughter and I are joining Weight Watchers--first time for her, fourth for me...this time, though, I'm going until I get to maintenance.

October 03, 2005

Rut Roh

Study: Most Will Be Fat Over the Long Haul By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 4 minutes ago



Just when we thought we couldn't get any fatter, a new study that followed Americans for three decades suggests that over the long haul, 9 out of 10 men and 7 out of 10 women will become overweight.

Even if you are one of the lucky few who made it to middle age without getting fat, don't congratulate yourself — keep watching that waistline.

Half of the men and women in the study who had made it well into adulthood without a weight problem ultimately became overweight. A third of those women and a quarter of the men became obese.

"You cannot become complacent, because you are at risk of becoming overweight," said Ramachandran Vasan, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University and the study's lead author.

He and other researchers studied data gathered from 4,000 white adults over 30 years. Participants were between the ages of 30 and 59 at the start, and were examined every four years. By the end of the study, more than 1 in 3 had become obese.

The study defined obesity as a body mass index, which is a commonly used height and weight comparison, of more than 30.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, show obesity may be a greater problem than indicated by studies that look at a cross-section of the population at one point in time. Those so-called "snapshots" of obesity have found about 6 in 10 are overweight and about 1 in 3 are obese, Vasan said.

The findings also re-emphasize that people must continually watch their weight, Vasan said.

The research subjects were the children of participants in the long-running and often-cited Framingham Heart Study, which has been following the health of generations of Massachusetts residents.

Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which supported the study, said the findings show "we could have an even more serious degree of overweight and obesity over the next few decades."

Susan Bartlett, an assistant professor of medicine and an obesity researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said the study was one of the first to look at the risk of becoming overweight.

"The results are pretty sobering, really," said Bartlett, who was not involved in the research.

While the health risks of being obese are much more severe than being overweight, those who are overweight are much more likely to go on to become obese, Bartlett said.

The study shows Americans live in an "environment in which it's hard not to become overweight or obese. Unless people actively work against that, that's what's most likely to happen to them."

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, some cancers, diabetes and arthritis, and being overweight raises blood pressure and cholesterol, which in turn can raise the risk of heart disease.

The number of deaths linked to obesity has been heavily debated. Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said obesity caused only about 25,814 deaths annually in the United States — far fewer than the 365,000 deaths the agency had earlier reported. Other scientists have disagreed with the revised conclusion, while organizations representing the food and restaurant industry think weight-related ills have been overstated.

As for the Framingham study, Mark Vander Weg, a Mayo Clinic psychologist who researches obesity but was not involved in the study, said it is one of a few to track a group of individuals over an extended period.

"What's particularly concerning is that these results actually may underestimate the risk of becoming overweight or obese among the general population" because minorities, who are at increased risk for obesity, were not included in the study, Vander Weg said.

Recent trends also suggest that people currently coming into middle age may be even more likely to become overweight or obese than those who were studied, Vander Weg said.

While more studies that include more diverse populations are needed, he said, the results "add to a growing body of evidence that makes it increasingly apparent that more effective prevention and treatment strategies are urgently needed."

October 02, 2005

Spammed

What a PITA. My blog's been spammed with a dozen or more comment messages so I've turned on word verification. I hope that keeps the spammers away. :P