Recent Posts
- To the Wire, To the Limit
- An Issue More Pressing than Terrorism
- Slow or Grow
- 50 Tips to Help Overweight Children Stay Healthy
- The Truth about Low Carb and Illegal Happy Meals
- "Normal Weight" Obesity?
- Double Your Weight Loss, Save Plants and Trees
- Obesity on the Map
- Moms' Obesity Harming Babies
- Mayo Clinic Says "Hold the Mayo"
Click here to follow this blog on your google home page
Click here to subscribe to updates on MySpace.com
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Running from Death
Jumping back into it proved a little more difficult than I imagined. I was going to start this weekend ... but then, wasn't it better just to have a nice swim at the pool? Then Monday morning came ... and wouldn't just a little more sleep be nice?
So last night I made The Decision. I was actually laying in bed, watching T.V., when I thought, "Do I REALLY want to be in bed, watching T.V.?" NO! I wanted to be focused on falling asleep, gettling plenty of rest, and waking up early to start my routine again.
The remote went "click." The box turned off. The room grew dark and quiet. Then, I simply visualized my next morning: having a nice, full night of sleep then waking up promptly to go down and get fit.
It worked! I'm up this morning, having my pre-workout cup of coffee and ready to jump back into my routine of exercising. Sometimes it's only as tough as we make it: it's HARD to get back in the routine if we make that choice, but with the right decision, we can choose to make it easy, which is just what I did!
Better Fat and Fit than Skinny and Unfit
I've covered this before: that it is actually better to be overweight and in shape (i.e. consuming proper nutrition and exercising on a regular basis) than to be thin and unfit (eating bad foods and/or not exercising). It's one of the reasons I don't lose sleep over not maintaining low body fat year round: once the novelty of looking good on the beach wears off, the bottom line is that I still maintain a healthy lifestyle and reap the many benefits. The New York Times just published a great article that can be summed up with this sentence: "Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided."
You're a Peach ... No, A Pear
Then ABC News followed up with this little gem that points out while the scale may not be as large a factor as we thought, our body shape IS important to consider, especially the waist-to-hip ratio.
Nutrition? Exercise? How About ... Both!
Another research study confirmed what we've been saying for years now. You can't JUST DIET ... first, diets always fail because you always end up OFF of the diet, right? And second, most people who only diet tend to lose muscle along with fat. But exercising alone isn't necessarily best, either, especially when it's tough to get into a regular routine or when you're starting out and are not sure what to do. According to this article about losing weight, diet and exercise together prove the best combination. The study found people who only diet DO lose muscle mass ... while ones who only go to the gym have a high drop out rate and don't stick with the plan. While studies like this are interesting, I think they miss a main, fundamental point ... regardless of nutrition or exercise or even BOTH, nothing will work until you've made the right choice and committed yourself to transforming your lifestyle.
Gastrict Bypass Surgery: 40% failure rate?
Eileen Wells was excited ... at 38, she was about to get "a new lease on life." She was 290 pounds, and about to have weight loss surgery. The surgery worked: she lost weight. She went down to 130 pounds. How did she feel? Besides the agonizing ulcer that required a second surgery, an intestinal hernia, and a fourth procedure to easy the pain of abdominal scarring, just fine. Some studies suggest 4 out of 10 people who undergo weight loss surgery have complications. You can read the rest here. My question is: is 290 pounds really heavy enough to justify surgery? We've heard success stories from people who have LOST 300 pounds without surgery. One thing that concerns me is people tend to focus on the fact that the risk of surgery is higher, and forget something more important: the benefits of NON-surgical weight loss are so much higher. That's right, I'm not focused here on how risky the surgery is, but on how doing what it takes to lose it naturally is so much MORE beneficial due to the positive habits and and positive impact on health it creates.
Eggs Over Bagels
I knew I was on to something. No, I mean eggs "win" over bagels, not SERVED over bagels! If you've followed my program for any length of time, you know I eat a lot of eggs. Now I just found out that overweight people who ate two eggs for breakfast lose more weight (and had more energy) than those who ate the same calories but had a bagel instead. Oh, and still worried about cholesterol? The 152 obese people in this study didn't see any change in their cholesterol levels despite the daily dose of eggs.
Running from Death
Looking for the fountain of youth? Researchers say to find it, you gotta keep running. After tracking more than 500 runners for 20 years, Standford University found elderly runners have fewer disabilities and are half as likely as agining non-runners to die early death. If that's not motivation to lace up your shoes, I'm not sure what is!
More Fatal Side Effects
The drug may help with diabetes, but the side effect is pancreatis and possible death. The $200 a month drug manufactured that mimics lizard saliva is being monitored by Australian health authorities.
Until next time,
Labels: body shape, fit versus fat, gastric bypass surgery, healthy eggs, nutrition or exercise, running
posted by Jeremy Likness | 6:25 AM
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Re-use is permitted if properly attributed to the author and blog URL (must be an active and direct link to the blog — no redirect URLs permitted), and content is unmodified from it's original form. Derivative works require permission from author.
Copyright © 2006 — 2008 Jeremy Likness.
Stumble Me
I "stumble" all of the pages that I use for this blog. Click the icon below to visit my stumble page!
