WHAT IS HEALTH?

Saw this poster at a restroom wall today and couldn't help but take a snap with my blackberry:) 

A very good definition of health! The keyword being 'balance'. Its a state of dynamic balance between the body, mind and spirit! How many of us can say that we are truly healthy? Or, are we merely 'not sick'?

WACKY DIETS

So first we hear of the junk food diet and now we have this, the potato diet! Although not junk food, potatoes have a high GI (close to that of sugar) and were thought of being fattening. But this Washington state official went on a 60 day potato only diet as a means to protest and lost 20 lbs and cut his cholesterol by a third and lowered his blood sugar. The take away lesson from both these examples is that having a healthy weight is the most important factor in managing your blood sugar and improving your cholesterol profile more than any diet consideration, at least in the short run. I am sure in the long run such an unbalanced way of eating will have other harmful side-effects so I don’t promote any such drastic diet.

Speaking of diets, I found 7 of the wackiest diets in modern times. You will be amazed that people take such drastic measures to quickly lose weight. In my opinion, any weight loss should be a lifestyle change with healthy eating habits and moderate exercise. Before I delve into these diets and my version of these diets I would like to put in a disclaimer. I am in no way promoting these diets in their original form or in my versions of them. This is written for the sole purpose of humor so read on:

7 Wackiest Diets: 

The chewing diet: This method of dieting believed that if you chewed your food enough you would mix it with saliva which has many enzymes to pre-digest the food so it would get better assimilated in your body. The practice involved chewing a bite for more than 32 times and then tilting the head back and letting the food slide naturally through and any food that is not broken down by chewing is spit out and you move on to the next bite. The reason it could work is because one would lose patience with all the chewing and stop early. Plus all the food spitting would disgust others around the table which would limit their appetite so this could be a successful group weight loss diet.

My version: I suggest putting your food in a grinder and pushing the liquefy button for 32 seconds. This way you save your jaws all the work and your food wouldn’t be appetizing enough to eat in the first place. Liquefied pizza anyone!

The Tape worm diet: This diet involved eating capsules that contained strains of tape worm so the worms would eat all the food and you would lose weight this way. This does carry the risk of infection and diarrhea and so it’s possible it might have worked for a few.

My version: I suggest eating some salmonella infested spinach (locally grown of course) or eating a powerful laxative every night. This way the bouts of diarrhea will ensure you keep losing weight. Only one suggestion is that you drink plenty of fluids throughout the day because you don’t want to get dehydrated.

The sleeping beauty diet: This diet believed that if you slept most of the time you wouldn’t eat and lose weight as a result. This involved taking sedatives and sleeping as much as possible.

My version: Become an alcoholic! Drink all week and sleep and then stay awake for a day and eat and then repeat for the next whole week.

The Vision diet: this diet principle believed that if your food looked disgusting you would eat less of it. The promoters of this diet wore special glasses that gave their food a weird color so it wouldn’t look as appetizing and you would end up eating less.

My version: I suggest watching bug and insect eating episodes of The Fear Factor just before or during your meals. Do I need to say more?

Washing away the pounds: This method used a seaweed containing soap that was used for bathing. It was believed that seaweed could penetrate the skin and dissolve the fat.

My version: I suggest keeping some poison ivy handy, so you rub it all over your body before a meal. This way your hands will be busy itching your body. Every once in a while you will grab a bite but I am pretty sure your hands will get back to itching thereafter. Plus the constant itching action will burn additional calories.

Ear stapling: It was believed that stapling the cartilage of your inner ear suppressed your appetite. Many people claim its effectiveness but no one quite understands why.

My version: I suggest stapling your nose instead because most of our appetite is intensified through our olfactory nerves and when you can’t smell the appetizing aroma of your food you are less likely to eat it.

The cotton ball diet: In this diet you eat cotton balls either dry or coated with gelatin. The theory behind this is that cotton balls are very filling and have zero calories so obviously you will lose weight on this diet.

My version:  Instead of coating cotton balls with gelatin I suggest breading them and frying them in butter and then putting them in a tomato/onion soup. This way they will taste great (crisp on the outside, fluffy on the inside) minimize carb calories and give you plenty of fiber. Organic Cotton Koftas anyone?

THE OBSOLETE FOOD PYRAMID

How many of us go by the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) food pyramid when planning our diets? The figure above shows the food pyramid and I think people pay too much attention to the top and bottom of the pyramid without much consideration to the middle. Too much importance is placed on carbohydrates (up to 11 servings) without regard to the type of carbohydrate consumed. On the other hand fats have been lumped with sugars and banned, without regard to the type of fat. Due to this the food pyramid is to blame for most of today's obesity problems. Just as all carbohydrates are not created equal, so is the case with fat. There are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates and by the same token there are good and bad fats. This low fat/high carbohydrate  dictum  has spawned a whole industry of low-fat foods. So we now consume low fat cookies, low fat ice-cream etc without regard to the calorie content, thinking that its healthy to do so. In one of my previous articles, I talked about how fat slows the absorption of sugars in your blood stream. Also good fats (MUFA) and omega 3 fats are healthy for your heart and mind. Fats are also necessary to transport important fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K).

A comparative study lasting 31 years (starting 1960) and spanning 7 countries (Italy, Greece, former Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Finland, United States, and Japan) looked at dietary habits of these populations and the incidence of deaths from heart disease and various cancers. 13,000 people between the ages of 40-59 years participated in this study. At the conclusion of this study 50% of the participants from Crete (island of Greece) were still alive while there were no survivors from the participants of the other 6 countries. In the Cretan diet, olive oil accounted for 33% of caloric needs apart from the fat from fish, eggs and some cheese. Their diet consisted of as much as 40% of total calorie intake from fat (29 percent monounsaturated fat, 8 percent saturated fat, and 3 percent polyunsaturated fat). The rest came from vegetables, fruits, whole grains and moderate amounts of cheese, fish and occasional red meat. Based on these findings researchers suggest rebuilding the food pyramid from the ground up with fat, vegetables and fruits occupying the bottom of the pyramid, with whole grains, fish, milk and cheese in the middle and sugars and simple carbohydrates on top. 

It is now argued that the USDA was the wrong organization to be building the food pyramid in the first place. The USDA is affiliated to the department of agriculture that is responsible for the productivity of grains for the most part and so has a vested interest in promoting grain consumption. On top of that the USDA is not a research organization with any ability to perform dietary research so it should have no role in the formulation of the food pyramid. I am just thankful that the American Sugar Alliance didn't have a role in formulating the food pyramid, otherwise we all would be looking like the Thanksgiving turkey!

CHOLESTEROL: VITAL FOR LIFE

Here is a good video! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awA2fsa94MI

HDL, LDL, ratios, all marketing buzzwords meant to scare you and put you on the mega billion $$$ generating statin drug machines. Like I mentioned in my earlier articles, its inflammation and too much high GI carb intake that causes heart disease, not cholesterol! Type II diabetes causes heart disease and not cholesterol!   Without cholesterol men wouldn’t be men and women wouldn’t be women. We wouldn’t even make new cells in the body. And guess what, the number one consumer of cholesterol in your body is your brain and the central nervous system because nerve and brain cells don’t regenerate like the rest of your body’s cells. So cholesterol provides them longevity and without which we would be literally ‘losing our minds’. So eat a diet rich in anti-oxidants, get plenty of exercise and reduce the stress in your lives and stop worrying about cholesterol.

WEIGHTLOSS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Just to prove this simple point, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, put himself on a 2 month junk food diet consisting of twinkies, candy bars and other vending machine goodies and guess what? He lost 27 pounds! He set out to prove a simple point that loosing weight is simply a matter of consuming fewer calories than you burn. It proves that you don't have to go on a fancy diet of exotic berries or drink tomato juice for the next month, but just ensure that you reduce your caloric intake to a point where you burn more than you consume. This experiment brings forth an important point that health and weight-loss aren't necessarily synonymous and puts a big question mark on the conventional markers of heart disease risk, HDL and LDL cholesterol, because he lowered LDL and increased HDL eating this junk food diet. To read more about this experiment go to the CNN.com article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

While I wouldn't call this diet healthy or balanced it does prove that you don't need to avoid any particular food group in order to lose weight as long as you spread out your meals into small portions through out the day. So while I advocate healthy eating habits it wont destroy your weight-loss goals if you indulge in some comfort food once in a while. I am reaching out for some brownies after this....

EAT FAT TO LOSE FAT

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis did a study with genetically engineered mice where they engineered the mice such that their liver lacked a fat producing enzyme. As we all know fat is processed and converted in the liver to form triglecyrides which is then used up as energy in the body. So a healthy liver is a major fat burning organ converting fats into fatty acids in the blood stream for use as energy. But when the liver is malfunctioning it can work in the reverse direction and become a fat storing organ. This is referred to as a fatty liver disease. A healthy liver is red in color but when the liver starts to accumulate fat it starts turning yellow and enlarging in size. A sign of fatty liver disease is a bulging midsection, an increased cholesterol level, stubborn weightloss and constant lethargy. Also remember the liver is capable of producing its own fat from carbohydrates so a zero fat diet can still lead to fatty liver disease. So why this lecture about fatty liver disease? Because the mice in this study were not capable of making any fat in their liver and the only fat they would get is from diet or from the body's own fat reserves. So guess what was the finding of this study? The researchers found that mice that were fed a zero fat diet developed fatty liver disease! So essentially the fat from the body moved into their liver but the liver didn't process that fat, but instead stored it! Mice that ate the normal fare didn't develop a fatty liver. So the researchers concluded that the liver needs new fat in order to metabolize old fat. In other words you have to supply new fat to the liver in order to regulate fat burning in the liver. Or as I say "Eat fat to lose fat!"

So we can see how we can mess up the liver's fat burning ability by eating a low or zero fat diet. So eat healthy fats found in nuts, sea food, flax, avocados and make sure you get 33% of your daily caloric intake in healthy fat. Folks, you need fat in your diet if you want to stay healthy and keep that stubborn fat off!

METABOLIC EFFECTS OF LIFTING HEAVY

I see many women in the gym ‘toning’ their bodies with little pink weights for hundreds of reps accumulated over an hour long workout. I just wonder why don’t they just jump on the tread mill and spend the hour there. I mean why delude yourself that you are weight training when you really are doing aerobic style workouts. Just to make it clear weight training is a weight bearing exercise that requires anaerobic pathways of energy breakdown which happens when you lift heavy for a few reps. Weight training shouldn’t make you go out of breath and panting for air. This is not the mode that builds muscle. For building muscle you need to lift heavy enough to perform the full range of motion for 10-15 reps and no more. If you are able to do a 16^th rep, then you need to increase the weight.  

A concern I hear from women (and many men) is that they don’t want to ‘bulk-up’ by lifting heavy. To address this I would say that women don’t have near as much testosterone as men do, to really bulk up. Testosterone is the hormone that burns fat and builds muscle and is responsible for sex drive in men (and women). This is why men are leaner than women and this is why teenagers (both boys and girls) lose baby fat as they enter puberty. And weight training has shown to boost the production of both, testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH). So even for women a little extra testosterone is a good thing as it burns fat and builds muscle (which burns even more fat). And HGH has been shown to be essential to prevent many age related degenerative diseases. Recently it has also been shown that intense weight training also increases insulin sensitivity that can prevent the onset of type II diabetes. So you see there are benefits beyond the obvious when you weight train. So if you really want to tone your body, weight train with the right amount of weight for 10-15 reps and if possible do compound movements that involve multiple joints (squats, lunges, dead lifts, bench press, lat pull-downs etc). Having one extra pound of muscle will burn 35 extra calories a day which may not sound like much but will add up to 12775 calories in a year or 3.5 lbs of fat burned. So imagine this! If you have 10 extra lbs of muscle, its equivalent to running for half hour (or 3 miles) every day, 365 days a year even when you are just watching TV. So what would you take, and extra 10 lbs of muscle (traded for fat) or running 3 miles everyday all year around? Its a no-brainer, eh! So even though aerobics has certain cardio vascular conditioning advantage it comes nowhere near weight training for permanently boosting your metabolism and building that firm toned body that you always dreamed of.  So dunk those pretty little pink weights and lift real weights instead. And don’t worry you will never look like those anabolic steroid freaks you see on the cover of magazines like muscle and fitness. No woman (or man) can achieve that kind of muscularity and definition without relying on synthetic testosterone derivatives. Also remember muscle is denser than fat so a 110lb woman with 15% body fat will be trimmer and better toned than a 110lb woman with 25% body fat!