June 12, 2006

• Interesting. no, but I would be interested in learning more.
• I don't know about the diet. I've seen some stuff on leptin in rats, and was of the opinion at the time that it was new, poorly understood and over-hyped. / clueless student, not a doctor by any means
• Hmmm... My bull-shit meter is going off while reading about this. My terrible, hard to read website design meter is going off as well.
• I agree with squidranch.. [quack alert code]:Scarlet Ribbons Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and far from being buff.
• Anything that begins by assuring you that diet and excerise won't work sets my bullshit meter a'singin'.
• Medusa, I did I little pubmed search myself to see what I could find and the results are pretty inconclusive about whether CLA has any effect on weight loss. If you wanted to give something like this a try, skip the website and maybe check out linoleic acid supplements at a local store. A friend of mine who works as a dietitian has a general rule when patients ask about supplements, which is that if it isn't harmful and doesn't cost too much, they may as well give it a try if they think it might help. Just maybe don't give the sketchy website your money.
• I've heard that the effects of leptin in humans are pretty negligible, and that the supplements don't really work. Of course, I'm also not a medical doctor (and I'm not a skinny minnie, either!) I have heard people have good results* by using a diet based on the glycemic index. This is basically the diet recommended for people with Type I and II diabetes (or people wanting to prevent it), and I know that body builders often use it, too. I think one of the big weight loss companies is shilling this now, but you can do it on your own. The diet is somewhat similar to atkins in that you pay attention to carbohydrates, but instead of eliminating them you eat carbs that don't ramp up your blood sugar quickly, but carbs that "stick with you" for a while. This also helps you control your appetite, because you're avoiding "sugar high" foods that'll leave you hungry again in an hour or two. Here are some links with more info: 1) glycemicindex.com (from the Uni of Sydney) 2) Canadian Diabetes Association 3) Wikipedia page on GI * I define "good results" by feeling good and having good cholesterol and blood pressure numbers, not neccesarily by weight loss/gain. Also, it's important not to take this too far and completely eliminate high GI foods, because you might miss out on some good vitamins/minerals/yummy tastes this way.
• I suggest drinking copious amounts of bourbon. It's what I do, and I look very manly.
• OMG, I drank about 1/2 bottle of Maker's sunday MORNING (long story, very drama-filled camping trip...) nasty, nasty hangover *shudder*
• Anecdotal and therefore inconsequential, but my SSRI of choice (Celexa) just makes me yawn a lot, and I am actually losing weight while not dieting nor increasing my physical activity. On the other hand, I've grown a third nipple and my left hand will not stop doing the macarena.
• when I first went on Prozac I lost weight, without trying. but I have read on some forums that many people experienced a "reversal" after longer term use (12 months) and began gaining weight without a change of eating. I have increased the amount and frequency of workout, been working hard to keep the eating very sensible, healthy, low-cal etc., yet my weight is slowly creeping up...which I find a bit disturbing :(
• Medusa, if you're eating smart and working out, it could be that your mild weight gain is muscle mass, rather than fat gain. I don't know about this Leptin thing, but MissusFes and I lost a goodly amount of poundage (me: 25 lbs, her around 20) with a sort of modified South Beach. It's a bitch at first (I found myself standing in front of the pantry eyeballing the goddamned saltines like a yard-cat eyeballs a fresh litter of chipmunks) but over time we made some significant changes to our diet and the weight came off and is staying off. Plus: better diet all around. More fish and lean meats, less taters, carrots and corn, lots of fresh greens, a lot less utter shit (i.e. "giant bowl of baby Snickers' during the Sopranos").
• I lost 40 pounds by cutting out all sugar and corn syrup. (it's amazing how much corn syrup is in foods)
• My problem is that my dryer keeps shrinking my god damn pants. What's up with that?
• I lost 48 pounds in 4 months on Body for Life. It's a fairly simple diet combined with a fitness/exercise structure, focused a little more on mental state and attitudes then doing/eating any specific things.. You don't actually need any of those supplements they hawk on the sitefor the program, and you can eat as many chipmunks as you want.
• I now only get cross-eyed pissed once a week, instead of three or four - no booze most days at all now. I've stopped eating sweets and crisps and having anything but marge on my toast etc. My belly has shrunk in just a couple of weeks. I don't care what I weigh, I just don't want a gut. ...eyeballing the goddamned saltines like a yard-cat eyeballs a fresh litter of chipmunks...is, apart from the funniest thing I've read in ages, exactly how I was feeling about peanut butter last week.
• I quit drinking and more-or-less quit eating. Worked great. Seriously. I got on the Fast track! Ha! Ha ha! . . ehhh . . . Oh God I'm so lonely . . Ooh! ooh! MonkeyFilter: I found myself standing in front of the pantry eyeballing the goddamned saltines *tips cap to Fes*
• darn you kit! get yer chocolate outta my peanut butter!
• mmmmm...chocolate AND peanut butter......
• I'm with argh and kitfisto. I started bringing 5 pieces of fruit to work each day, to eat instead of the m&ms and toffee candies and donughts that people keep leaving around in cube land. Between that and running a couple times a week, I lost about 30 pounds over the course of a year, kept it off for a year since.
• After my old lady asked me to help her shed some unwanted pounds, I stopped buying fattening TV snacks and substituted crisp celery. While she was unenthusiastically munching on a stalk one night, a commercial caught her attention. As she watched longingly, a woman spread gooey chocolate frosting over a freshly baked cake. When it was over, my old lady turned to me. "Did you ever notice," she asked, "that they never advertise celery on TV?"
• Oops. Sorry. Wrong thread.
• well I want to thank all the fabulous monks who posted in this thread. I realize today that I was in a pretty weird mood yesterday, and kind of spazzing out. the fact is that altho in general I am dieting/"on the program" right now, over the last week I have eaten like a pig...today my head is clear so back on the program: workout 5-6 days/week moderate atkins lean protein lots o' veggies and modest amounts of whole-grain carbs (oatmeal!) lots of water (and less wine and bourbon) less wine and bourbon (cause I need the reminder) it always works when I stick to it, its just frustrating how hard it can be to lose 10 pounds, and how incredibly easy it is to find it again ;) thanks!
• As you probably know,about every 10 years, once you hit your 30s, you'll gain about 10 pounds maintaining the save level of activity you did in the past. If you've increased the workouts, you'll probably lose weight. And a slow loss generally means that it'll last better than any fad dieting regiem. At least until you're 10 years older than you are now.
• Ack! Say it ain't so, path! Turned 30 yesterday, and is also going through the Oh my God, my body is weird! part of early pregnancy (My body image was pretty darn good prior to this, now I'm trying not to freak out. Basically? I'm saying I feel your weird mood, Medusa!)
• well Meredithea, you have a lovely excuse for feeling weird! I turned 38 this year and am definitely struggling with changes in my metabolism and lifestyle/activity level. ahhhh! I'm getting old :)
• How does it feel being 30? I'm thirty next month. Don't tell me how it feels to be pregnant, I know that bit...
• Same thing happened to me at 30...almost overnight none of my pants fit anymore, and I had to get new ones 2 inches bigger at the waist. I've held that in check for a while now, and 40 passed without incident...
• It's true, my dryer started shrinking my pants just a few months after I turned 30. I don't know how that rascally machine knew.
• tracicle - apart from the weight thing, the 30s decade is great! That extends through the 40s and 50s, but the increase in self confidence and having learned how to deal with pretty much everything that comes along is pretty exciting when you realize how far you've come in the mid-30s. Don't take this the wrong way, but I think the 30s is when people really, finally grow up.
• I can see what you're saying, path. I liked my 20s so much more than my teens that I'm hoping I like my 30s that much more than my 20s. I feel a little more me each year, I think (though the me-ness of me changes).
• 'Tis true. I drink and eat less than I did in my twenties, and I'm growing a baby gut. I'm 31, and used to have the metabolism of a ferret with a kilo of crack up its ass.
• And the thirties do indeed rule. This is shaping up to be my decade. It's certainly been just about the best fucking year of my life so far.
• Eh, forty's a dim memory, and just turned 53 on the tenth. It's not a bad age, if you can stand the parts falling off. Trouble with having neuromas in both feet, crap for knees, a lousy back, and general arthritis is trying to exercise. Plus, I NEVER craved sweets in my twentys like I do now. If I could just have my twenty year old body with my 53 year old brain!
• Man, I wish I had high school with my thirty-one-year-old brain and my eighteen-year-old hormones. I would rule that place.
• I may not see too much more of my 30s, though, because the darn Mavericks are trying to give me a frickin' heart attack! Darn them! Darn them all to heck!!! Shucketty hecky darn! /ends basketball freakout. Return to your regularly scheduled thread
• Happy Birthday BlueHorse! weight aside, yes yes yes!! the 30s are infinitely better than the 20s. I have been told by a number of women I know that they consider their 40s to be even greater (like path said, confidence, wisdom....) and just because I can: monkeyfilter: the metabolism of a ferret with a kilo of crack up its ass
• BlueHorse - it was just the opposite for me. When I was younger, I ate sweets, usually due to sudden cravings, but in my 40s I began to leave them behind. I'll still eat an occasional cookie, but not a dozen, and I don't know how long it's been since I had a candy bar. I've also backed off salt to the point that the food sometimes tastes bland, even to me. All with no intent or effort. Strange how different bodies demand different things.
• Being in your 30s is great if only for the fact that you stop taking as much shit off other people. I am much more prepared to call someone on something now than I was. Fuck 'em all, I say!
• No, fuck YOU!
• Sorry, that was meant as a proposition ... I'm getting impatient in my old age ...
• Well, today I turned 64; and so far, I feel exactly like I did at 63 a few short hours ago. Lifelong, have had more problems keeping my weight up than down. Like eating flavoursome food well enough. But never have enjoyed feeling stuffed. Suspect my eating temperately (Dammit, boy, will ye stop picking at your food and just eat!) is no credit to my will-power, I just get bored with the sameness of flavours more quickly than most folks seem to. (Turn me loose at a buffet, though ... you'll eat my dust.) The kitchen gods discourage me from using the microwave. Truth is, I tend to blow things up in it. Or set fire to them. Who would have thought burritos or a simple bowl of oatmeal and milk would asplode when microwaved by the experimental/curious - (oh let us be candid for our birthday!) the absent-minded and (at least intermittently) dim-witted.
• HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
• If I could write a poem Like only Beesy can I'd wish him happy birthday, the rhyming, skinny man! Shamefully, my skills are week A picture's more my stle (Note to self, think on young man Become more versatile) Beeswacky is our Laureate Today's his special day We've ordered in a buffet feast And we'll keep out of your way!
• *clapclapclap*
• happy birthday bees!
• ♪♫ When I get older, losing my hair Many years from now, Will you still be sending me a Valentine, Birthday greetings, bottle of wine? If I've been out 'til quarter to three, would you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty four? You'll be old then too! And if you say the word, I could stay with you. I could be handy mending a fuse When your lights have gone You can knit a sweater by the fireside Sunday mornings go for a ride Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more? Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty four? Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not to dear. We shall scrimp and save! Grandchildren on your knee Vera, Chuck and Dave. Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view Indicate precisely what you mean to say Yours sincerely, wasting away! Give me your answer, fill in a form, Mine forevermore! Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty four? ♪♫ hoo!
• Wow, kokey, that's good! You should totally go into the greeting card business or something!
• Happy Birthday, bees...and happy belated to BlueHorse!
• Thanks! I've got a whole bunch more too! DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA! YOU SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA! IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY ON MAY 25 YEAH! DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA! YOU SAY IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! HAPPY BEESWACKY BIRTHDAY! DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA! I'M GLAD IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA! HAPPY BEESWACKY BIRTHDAY!
• Do you know any about frogs? Maybe frogs that, like, all sing together? That would be cool.
• I missed Koko's birthday? Good. *gives Koko a wedgie*
• *turns volume on Koko down* Happy Birthday bees! Happy Belated Birthday GramMa!
• Happy Birthday Bees!!
• Happy birthday to all the other Gemini monkeys!
• Bees is older than GramMa And GramMa is older than mees. And mees, I'm as old As Path, I am told; Add 17 to MiddleClassT's.
• Happy Beeday!
• Happy birthday, everyone who has had a birthday, because I can't keep track. I need some sort of...paper, with some numbers, and maybe the names of the months, on which I can track important events. WHY HASN'T SOMEONE INVENTED THIS? I really love the age range we have on MoFi, because it allows for viewpoints that you might not get from the hipster (:P) generation.
• Geminis are a strange breed! this past weekend I went beach camping for a quadruple gemini birthday celebration. after not being able to get to the beach due to the student film crewing filming some freaky horror movie on the trail, then discovering that that beach would be under water at high tide, and yes, that was the night of the full moon! so we go to another beach where a hostile pack of teenagers attempted to steal various things from us and then threw various items over a 40' cliff onto our camp...and friends of mine broke up that night, and much drug-n-alkyhole related drama ensued...
• Happy birthday, if bee-lated birthday, BlueHorse!!! Thanks, everyone, and kitfisto, that was a grand poem! Koko, so far, they're still feeding me.
• Looking for a valid thread to post this on... The entire food industry – the restaurant industry, the diet industry, hospitals, drug industry -- everybody profits from people being sick and overweight. The whole system's backwards. We need to stand up for policy changes that can help, such as getting junk food and vending machines out of schools and stop advertising of junk food to children and so forth. Awaken Your Fat-Burning DNA interview.
• Oh, and happy birthdays all around.
• So, Ralph, you're 469 in dog years? Wow! ;:-) (Bifocals.)
• "Most of us think of our DNA as sort of locked in our body, waiting to be passed onto our children, but in fact your DNA at every moment is interacting with your environment, interacting with every bite of food you take, interacting with your thoughts, your feelings, and various things, so when you take a bite of food, literally, the information -- beyond the calories in the food -- goes right into your cells, into your DNA, and switches on genes, or turns off genes based on what information is in that food. " Woah. Good article smithy. "Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, we think that the French are healthy and don't have heart disease because they drink wine and eat butter, and that's not true. Actually, they're getting more sick and more overweight because we're not only spreading Democracy, we're spreading obesity across the globe, including in Europe. What they used to do was eat real unprocessed and whole foods. "
• The truth of the matter about diet/health issues: no one knows, no one has the final word. Except me. he said with his customary modesty. And that is that tomorrow all the diets will have changed, all the opinions will be different, and in ten years' time no one will believe how ignorant we all were of fundamentals in 2006.
• > Awaken Your Fat-Burning DNA the dietary recommendations here remind me of mark fuhrman's eat to live.
• Happy Birthday meredithea, Blue Horse and Bees!
• Oh, and I'm eating a Cheesecake Brownie. Is that bad?
• Just tell your DNA it's a tomato.
• I think the 30s is when people really, finally grow up I'm still hiding from that, here in the 40s. Dang- I was avoiding this thread, not wanting to face guilt about my lack of discipline lately. Happy happy birthday, beeswacky!! Happy birthday GranMa! Happy birthday, meredithea!
• Lara, I suspect that cheesecake brownie is very very good, but I am BACK on the program and already 160 has become 157 :)
• May be weighing in late here, but: Leptin works great in rats! Interacts with other feeding peptides in the ventral hypothalamus. It's a signal that says to the rat "Hey, you're chubby enough now - stop storing extra food as fat!" Sounds great, doesn't it? Too bad we aren't rats, because for 99% of the people out there leptin doesn't do diddly.
• already 160 has become 157 One Adam Twelve, One Adam Twelve, three pounds of Medusa reported missing, presumed loaded and dangerous . . .
• caution live frogs, I resemble that remark!!! how do you know I am not a rat??? (a rather large one!)
• snap!
• oh yes, dangerous for sure, but its a little early here to get loaded, altho I've got good reasons today...
• Happy Birthday to the Gemini Monkeys!! I didn't know I was in such elite company. *pokes finger into cheesecake brownie
• Hey, look! We're nicer now, BlueHorse - this says so, anyway. Here I just thought it was 'cause all the sharp edges got eroded off our wits. /drools fetchingly