Diet programs may not help dodge disease risk

I’m not sure what you mean to say. There are lots of reasons why folks are overweight, I just packed on the pounds over the years in a slow fashion because I love bread, pasta, and varied other processed foods. Portion control has been a downfall for me too. And once you get used to eating a certain way, I think your habits and mindset are really hard to break. You become either mentally or possibly even physically addicted to it.

I have to really really pray hard about my relationship with food. I think it borders on idolatry, or better yet some sort of hedonism. I never have been a good faster at Lent, I love the Lord, but I’m always so cranky about it. It’s a problem for me but I’m so very very tired of being a slave to my stomach!

because I love bread, pasta, and varied other processed foods.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Stop beating your self up.

If your hunger hormones ( more than 15 of them) were at normal levels you would not love these foods so much that you would over eat. You would eat what was healthy and not want any more.

Yes it’s a pregnant woman’s hormone, although present in all humans to an extent. The way I understand it is that it’s suppose to release your fat stores so that you’re actually putting about 1500 more calories into your bloodstream along with the measley 500 you actually eat. It’s a diet that a Dr. Simeon came up with in the 50’s and his book is called “Pounds and Inches”. His patients took injections of the stuff though, not ingestable homeopathic drops. You’d have to get the injections from a doctor and that would be prohibitively expensive for me, although there is a clinic that does it here in Wichita.

A while back it was noted that “see-saw” diets actually do help a person’s health far more than not dieting at all. There may be a good rationale behind this, as well.

When dieting, the selection of food is often limited, because it is the combination of carbohydrates and fats that encourages weight gain the most, and digestion is most complete when a single food is consumed at once. When gaining weight there is a more diverse selection of food, and the combination of food types makes storing nutrients as fat easier.

Fats also tend to accumulate toxic contaminants, which are taken out of your system as you gain weight, and released into the system when you diet.

So gaining weight tends to take a little strain off your liver and kidneys, and losing weight gives you the *opportunity* to eliminate toxins. That is, if you consume things that help you eliminate them.

Some people even fast with the idea of releasing as many toxins as possible, and do things like saunas during their fast, noting that their sweat, feces and urine takes on an unpleasant smell for a while before normalizing.

Fat is also an important part of the immune system, as it contains clusters of cells called MAST cells, which create numerous histamines needed to fight infections. As fat is increased to the point of obesity, however, proportionally more MAST cell clusters are created, which can exacerbate autoimmune problems.

Finally, it should be remembered that for thousands of generations, people have lived in situations of feast or famine, and so have many adaptations for that cycle. For survival reasons, the default, of course, leans towards fat gain.

Why thank you very much for the encouragement, I sure need it!

oh yeah, forgot your other question, I am a woman

I've done battle with excess poundage for most of my life. The time when I had the greatest weight swings (50 pounds or so) was when I was in my late teens and in college. Since that time, I've mostly been able to keep it under control. People who meet me now (over 30 years later) assume I've always been naturally petite. Here are some of the things I've learned. Maybe something will help you.

Probably the most important thing I realized after numerous diets, failures, and weight re-gained, is that diets don't work (for me). To the extent that I can lose weight on them, I can't keep it off because the sense of deprivation is too great. I promised myself in my 20's that I'd never go 'on a diet' ever again. That's when the weight came off and generally it stayed off. I realized that when I deluded myself into thinking that I'd never eat chocolate cake again, the thing I wanted most in the world was chocolate cake, and that I'd eat the whole darn thing before it could disappear or go back onto the 'forbidden' list. I gave myself permission to eat anything I liked, but promised myself to try to consume it in moderation. By occasionally eating that special something that I craved, even if just a taste, I sidestepped most of the 'gobbling' tendencies.

You say that you love to eat bread, pasta, etc. I love food too. I like to cook, and I'm a bit of a 'foodie' in that I try new recipes, work with very fresh ingredients, and stay away from processed foods. If you look at how the French eat, they have a tendency to eat wonderful, rich and high quality foods. They consume them with good wines, and accompany it all with conversation. There is an important lesson in that, I think. We are meant to enjoy our food, our drink, and our social lives. When we converse over our meals and when we savor our food, we slow down. Our bodies know when they are approaching satiety, and we have less inclination to over-eat than we do when we gobble quickly and mindlessly. I've also found that high quality food is far more satisfying emotionally as well as physically. So if you love bread, I'd suggest you enjoy bread, but make it really excellent quality, team it up with other quality food, and really savor it.

Skinny people don't really eat everything in sight, or at least most of them don't. As a thin person who has worked at it for years, I can assure you I'm very selective. For example, I don't eat store-bought cookies (unless I'm completely famished). Likewise box mac and cheese, frozen pizza, artificially sweetened foods, low-fat yogurt, etc. I go for homemade cookies, full-fat milk (raw if I can get it), full-fat yogurt, real sugar and honey, etc. Those foods are good, and they really satisfy me without consuming mass quantities.

Watch the liquid calories. Sodas with high-fructose corn syrup and alcoholic drinks can really pack on the pounds. Moderation. I don't like the syrupy sweet taste of corn sweetener, so I keep the really good sugar sweetened sodas on hand for those rare occasions when I want soda. It tastes lighter and fresher, and I don't have to worry about whether fructose is leading to extra weight gain.

I'd like to say I exercise, but I don't do nearly as much as I'd like. Mostly I just fetch, carry, climb stairs, chase kids, chase cats, etc. Domestic work, not major aerobics. Improving on that is my next personal goal, as my aging joints and muscles need more attention.

I wish you luck. I agree you shouldn't beat yourself up, but I also encourage you to take a hard look at your eating habits, what you really enjoy, and how you can change your patterns gradually to a more healthful balance. It doesn't sound like you got to where you are overnight, and to re-train yourself properly also won't happen overnight, but it's entirely feasible and possibly even enjoyable.

My weight still fluctuates a bit, but in the past 25 years, I've never put back more that about 10 pounds, except for pregnancy weight. It's important when a few pounds creep back to just attend to the problem quickly. For me, that usually means cutting down on snacking.

I think a lot of the problem is in the use of hormones in our food chain and the genetic altering of our food. Added to that the so called fillers etc to make food last our natural life time {well almost}. As a kid we ate raw hot dogs for snacks and ate bologna sandwiches. No one got sick. Now a raw hotdog is dangerous and a bologna sandwich can cause violent gastro reactions with minutes. We are consuming parts of animals once intended as pet food. Milk used to taste good. Bread used to taste good as well and not like it was a week old when you buy it. Most of us ate the same foods as kids and stayed fit and fairly trim we eat now but now it makes us sick and fat.

Fresh fruits and veggies used to tastes good as well. Now you can play baseball with tomatoes. Bought any store bought grapes in the past decade or two actually ripe and tasted like a grape? Now you can't get a decent watermelon even in season. All are the size of a basketball and green as a gourd inside.

I've gone from regular soft drinks to ones sweetened with Splenda so they at least taste decent again. It's the way foods are being produced and altered I see as the main culprit. Kids won't eat apples that have no taste neither will most adults. Most oranges and tangerines are dried up in side. You buy a bag and hope maybe half are actually edible.

It has been my experience that dieting fails in many ways, including weight regain and preventing disease. Americans need to realize that focusing on weight-loss does not insure good health - mainly because the most common method used (calorie restriction) causes water and muscle loss, rather than body fat. Muscle is a very precious tissue; it helps regulate metabolism as well as supporting the immune system. Therefore, when muscle is lost due to calorie restrictions, metabolism slows down and people tend to regain weight very rapidly - and this is at the expense of the suppressed immune system. Finally, losing weight does nothing to correct one of the biggest reasons Americans are unhealthy, which is an imbalance of omega-6 to omega-3 fats. The typical Western Diet produces a 30 to 1 ratio of these fats promoting an inflammatory state, whereas a 2-4 to 1 ratio is less inflammatory and immune system friendly. There is so much more to good health than losing weight, and changing one’s focus from shedding pounds to becoming healthy and fit through proper nutrition (diet and supplementation) and exercise is essential.