As for the food bit. . . We continue to eat like crap, I continue to guzzle tea, BD continues to subsist on little more than 12 oz cokes and my daughter is now nearly taller than my son. It's like raising Jack Sprat and his wife, because we encourage him to eat and I try to limit her portions to something less than what I myself am taking in. I continue to watch the diabetics in the family as they struggle - Mamacita has turned to diet drugs in an attempt to lose weight and get off the pump insulin. It has worked - the doctor is talking about switching her back to insulin-control pills - but you and I both know that the minute she stops the diet pills, poof! Back up the weight will go. Because if I have learned anything in the almost-year since our last blog entry, I have learned that what we eat is as much about lifestyle choices as food choices, and without changing your lifestyle, you'll never change your food. And lifestyles are nearly impossible to change.
To wit: since Christmas, I have been reading a book called Younger Next Year for Women, by two guys named Harry and Chris. (Yes, they have last names, but the names escape me and the book is upstairs on the bathroom floor - the only place I reliably read these days. Which might explain why it took me three months to finish the book.) Younger Next Year for Women is the offshoot from the first book in the series, which was directed toward men and called (predictably) Younger Next Year. Because, of course, only men care about looking younger. lol The book has rules which are very simple - I will get them all later but for now the main ones that I remember are:
- Exercise hard six days a week for the rest of your life
- Quit eating crap
- Do a combination of strength training and aerobic exercise
Not too hard, one thinks. The book gives explanations based in science for why it is essential to exercise - basically, two parts:
- Our human anatomy and brain structure developed over millions of years in which it was fight or flight, we were constantly moving, periods of feast alternated with periods of famine and nobody had enough of nothing reliably. Accordingly, our bodies are equipped for constant motion, constant wear and tear, and constant regeneration. They all depend on each other for a trigger. So, when you get into the comparatively recent Western phenomenon of having more than enough food and not nearly enough physical activity, our bodies go nuts and believe that the famine is right around the corner. We hoard fat.
- Not getting enough exercise does not tear down our muscles so that they can be rebuilt stronger. Instead, the body perversely believes that we are old, we are unnecessary, and before the famine arrives and we eat up all the food healthier people need, it is time to let go. And so we let go - our bodies begin to decay, to rot. And so we end up with all the diseases of old age that make so many people's older lives miserable. (The book is written for folks past middle age, incidentally.)
- The only way to activate the chemical structures in the body that rebuild it from scratch is also the only way to slow or prevent societally-induced decay: EXERCISE.
- It follows that as one exercises, one begins to care more about one's body and one begins to choose more carefully what one puts into one's body. With more caring food choices, what happens? Some weight loss. But weight loss is not the point - it is better to be a healthy, bigger exerciser than an unhealthy nonexerciser who hence suffers from osteoporosis, back problems, loss of motion, etc. - leading to decay and the nursing home.
Anyway - and I know this is not a graceful ending - this is what has been on my mind, food-wise and health-wise. That and a few other things that maybe I'll get to one day.
4 comments:
Wow....that book....yes, yes, and yes. It's sad but true. We are conveniencing ourselves to death basically.
Also--I worry about you, and maybe K becoming the next diabetics in the family. On Mamacita. Diet pills rev the metabolism so you burn more calories and/or feel less hungry. When you go off them, the metabolism goes back down to where it was before, and, yeah, poof. People can actually ruin their metabolisms long-term that way, and if you think about it, it's a fake revving anyway. When it stops being revved chemically and you haven't changed your lifestyle in such a way that you can continue to rev it naturally, then your body says, oh, okay, back to square one, the crisis must be over. Ya gotta move and build muscle mass to rev your metabolism naturally. And it's a grind, but so was walking to school five miles each way and plowing the fields back in the day--when folks were thinner, but I guarantee, stronger.
And finally--yes, lifestyles need to change, and one's lifestyle does include how one incorporates food into one's life, but I think you can change foods even without changing lifestyles, if that seems too much to do all at once--only in the sense that one could make better food choices without taking up an exercise regime per se. The key to better eating habits are less processed foods, which offers more calories to less nutrients, and more portion control. People don't realize how much they eat at each sitting, and they get used to basically taking in the equivalent calories of two meals each and every time. Of course it's better all around to eat better AND exercise more. To take up the cause of healthy living all around.
But, the big question is--what are you going to do about it?
That is the rub, eh?
AS with the DDD, we've been talking about me and food for years, in one way or another. And not a damn thing has changed, except that I can track that since I met Stoopid and had kids, I have put on 30 pounds that I didn't have in 1992, which was the last year that my weight was anywhere close to what the doctor's and diet people say it should be. And chronologically, menopause is right around the bend, which means another what, 10 pounds at best? Expanding ass (already seeing that one) and a gut that won't go away.
Talking about food doesn't work. Tracking food is useless, because I frequently and unapologetically eat like crap, and what is the sense of tracking crap? I can give up the tea again - that made a difference the last time I was serious, right before I met Big Daddy and started gorging on steaks and guzzling tea. Unfortunately, it turns out that too much splenda gives me yeastie beasties, and plain water is plainly nasty.
And giving up the tea did some good - I remember the month after we met, he and I went out with Pottie in Atlanta and I was wearing a pair of capris that were so baggy that I probably shouldn't have worn them. I was just proud that I had lost so much weight they were baggy! Today? Can barely button them, and rip them off as soon as I get home. But love them, because they are very good capris.
I really don't know what I'm going to do - but that's the theme of a whole 'nother discussion. For now, I'm just going to try to quit drinking tea. And when I get past that for a few months or so, I'll try something else.
I do think that a gradual thing isn't going to be enough. It may be time for a radical change that stretches through my whole life.
Whee!
Well, I think at some point you are just going to have to decide not to eat crap. Why track crap, like you say, and when you know that your greatest problem is eating crap, and you choose to continue eating it anyway, well, then, there's your lifestyle change right there. You either do it or you don't.
Think about what you are putting in your body--how much sugar/corn syrup is in that gallon of tea or so you drink every day, along with soda and sweetened fruit drinks. Sweetened drink are one of the chief driving forces of our diabetic epidemic. You know it works to cut those out, so what are you saying if you don't--I'd rather drink sweet drinks and wreak my health than get used to water and juice w/o added corn syrup and be healthier. That seems like a fairly good starting point.
Oh--for sweeteners if you can't handle sucralose (Splenda) or Aspartame (Equal), try Stevia (comes in powdered form in packets or liquid in dropper) or Agave nectar--both are plant derived. The latter is basically a thick liquid much like honey--it is not calorie free, but like Stevia it is super-sweet, so you require very little, AND it is easily digested by the body w/very little glucose-load. (I'm not sure that it's diabetic-safe so before mentioning it to mamacita, Google it). I should mention that the Blue Agave, from which this comes, is also the source of tequila---I believe....
Post a Comment