Oh No! FAT!

There's an obesity epidemic in the western world! Our overfed under-motivated sedentary lives are making us all fat! What can we do? What shall we do?

First, panic, and run screaming to buy up every diet book you can find and of course the must have "Lazy Person's Way to Exercise Without Doing Anything."

When reading and eating three or four lo-cal cakes instead of one (real) cake doesn't work, we can then go online and sign up and join in on mailing lists, guide blogs, support groups, "Your Diet Plan", and sit a little longer in yet another chair.

Next, go to the doctor and get pills that will make sure you exercise because you will have to run every time you need to go to the bathroom -- and that will be often!

Watch television programs like "The Biggest Loser."
Or even the race and survival shows and smirk at those who fail at feats when you can't tie your own shoes without panting. Not to mention the way that race to the toilet leaves you gasping.

Or, better yet, why don't we all quit pointing at other people, quit blaming this or that, quit eating super-size when large is more than enough.

Let's put down the phones and tablets, turn off the television and the computer, and go outside. Take a walk around the yard. (Maybe even push a mower instead of riding one while sitting on our fat asses.) If we have time to do it on a machine, we have time to do it for real.

Throwing worry and money at the obesity problem will not solve it.
Giving money away to publishers, to pharmaceuticals, to doctors, to manufacturers will not help.
If walking uphill is your exercise of choice, you can probably find one to walk up. The cost is nothing, the benefir is priceless. And the only people the process enriches is you and your loved ones.

Mashed Potatoes: An adventure.

Am I an adventurous eater? I don't know. Most people would say no, because there are a lot of things I haven't eaten and don't want to try. Things like Chinese food (sounds like lots of bits and pieces. If I want leftovers I'll just eat leftovers. I also prefer  to be filled up by my meals, and rmor has it that doesn't happen with Chinese.

I don't like soy sauce or teriyaki or other Oriental seasonings, although I'm not always clear on the country of origin.

I just plain don't like seafood. I have yet to taste anything that does not overwhelmingly taste of vast anounts of stale salt water.

I don't eat Mexican food, either. It is way, way too spicy for me. Hot spicy. I've sampled this, while cooking, but not eaten as a meal or part of one. I don't like the ingredients.

I don't like  hot spices. I want to taste the food. I don't want my taste buds burnt out or overloaded to the point where they don't function. I want to enjoy the taste, to savor the flavor, and to be able to take in all that the food item has to offer.

If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

I like food. I like to smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, .and see it. Eating should be a sensual experience. Not all the senses will be used with every offering, of course. Mashed potatoes are pretty quiet.No crisp snap of the fresh potato. No crunch at the first -- or last -- bite.

But they can be cheesy, golden, salty, lightly garlic, smooth, lumpy, snowy white, steamy, dry, peppery, and even food-colored if you have a kid who will only eat green. 

Mashed potatoes are mundane and boring, but they sure can be jazzed up. 

That can be an adventure.

Seasonings and combined ingredients should enhance one another and especially the main ingredient. Too many people  and places do not use balance or moderation. jalapeno flavored should include the taste of jalapeno -- not taste like jalapeno and nothing else. 

So, if my adventures in eating aren't what you expect, I'm sorry.

But let me share with you my cheesy mashed, and maybe you will learn that true adventures start with the familiar.

Listen to the Folks.

The FDA has approved two new drugs for weight loss. They are supposed to work well with diet and exercise. Of course, this is NOT for the morbidly obese. If they are that fat, they had better have bariatric surgery before doing anything. (Ka-ching, Ka-ching! Anyone else hear that?)

Now, I had a couple of different reactions to this. According to my doctors and the doctors of everyone I know, the way to lose weight is "diet and exercise."Nothing else. Oh, if you have metabolism issues, they'll prescribe stuff to help with those, but you want to lose weight -- Diet and exercise. And if you don't lose weight, you aren't dieting or exercising. Never mind Tuesday's heat stroke or Friday's collapse -- if you aren't losing weight, you aren't exercising or dieting. Not even if your stomach is complaining loudly because of its emptiness.

There's a lot of things going on in obesity studies and research, and a lot of it is good. A drug or two that will kick start a dieter over a plateau isn't a bad thing. Bariatric surgery for someone who eats until too full is a good thing. It's not going to help much with someone who doesn't eat all that much to start with. Or a grazer.

Until doctors and nutritionists are able to look beyond this whole "Diet and Exercise" combo, they are not going to make any great inroads in battling the obesity "epidemic'.

The old folks had it right. Some folks are born to be fat. It's in their genes. No, that's not just an excuse. (There have been some intriguing research and discoveries into fat genes.) It's not a stereotype, either. Lately research is finding all sorts of things more prevalent among certain ethnicities, even when environment is not a factor.

Treat the genetic type, and how that body works, and you'll be abler to manage the weight.

One concern that's twinned with the obesity concern is that it is the cause or related to diabetes. There is a connection, but the scientists are so wrapped up in finding a cure (or ongoing treatments; much more profitable) that they are ignoring, once again, folk wisdom.

Diabetes is caused by lack of insulin, which the body (is supposed to) produce(s) in the pancreas. That has been the scientific wisdom for just shy of a century.

What if that's wrong?
What if, instead of producing insulin, the pancreas -- still very much a mystery organ -- stores it? What if, like the ovaries, the human body comes with a measured amount of insulin or the base ingredients to turn (stuff) into insulin? What if our modern refined diet is just using up a lifetime supply in a few years?

The old folk used to tell kids not to eat so many sweets or they'd end up with sugar in their blood.
Science came along and said that's silly, that's not how it works. So everyone eats refined sugars and uses up all their insulin and -- voila -- sugar in their blood at a young age.

Insulin is playing a role in the diet/exercise dilemma as well. No one is sure exactly how that all factors together, but they've discovered things like insulin resistance and glucose intolerance and gluco-this and glycemic-that. If they look, they'll probably be able to relate that to ethnic origins -- genetics.

If they look.

But they won't, or very few will. They'll continue to preach "Diet and Exercise" until they've killed all the people they haven't operated on. And maybe even those. Much easier to follow the party line, blame the patient, than take time to know the patient and actually help them.

The old folks had it right all along.
As usual.
That family is  usually fat, and if you eat too much sugar while you're young, you'll end up with sugar in your blood.

Listen to your parents and grandparents, if it's only in your memory. They knew your body and background before doctors knew anything.

Who's Hungry Now?

I am getting sick and tired -- and mad -- over the defamatory snide comments and patches and things about food stamps. That includes, big time, the media slanders.


First, some facts.
There are more people than ever needing help,.

These are people who have been working for 25, 30, 50 years and they have never -- NEVER -- had to ask or look for any help whatsoever for daily living. They have been paying into the system for years, even decades, and taking nothing out of it.

They have been living on savings and retirement funds and are 'just now' running out of money.

Or they are just now entering the work force and the unemployment line -- returning soldiers come to mind.


The 'advertisements' for food assistance is NOT advertising. They are Public Service Announcements, meant to inform those who don't know where to begin of a place to start. If it's your son returning to his wife and children from overseas, should they go hungry out of ignorance? If it's your grandparent forced into early unrecompensed retirement, must they starve because they bought things when they were working? Your gramma should stand on the street corner selling her Ipod you gave her for Christmas last year because you don't think a person getting assistance should have 'things'?

I thought not.


These newly broke bought and paid for their stuff when they were working, just like the SuperSnobs have done. When you lose your job or get sick for a year, will you be selling your car? Your house? Your electronics that depreciate faster than an automobile?
I think not.

So quit dumping on people for having things. You don't know where or how they got them, or why. Could have been gifts, for all you know.Things could even not work properly but it's all they have.
You may see they have something. It may be something that you don't. You probably have something that they don't.


Big effing deal. That's life.

Too many people are going hungry, are letting their children go hungry, because of ignorance.
The ignorance of the self-important self-approving.

bone crushing

My husband had to go to the doctor Monday. The office called him and made the appointment. You can bet that set off alarm bells. He has so many health concerns we didn't even know which one to worry about. They did say something about his spinal x-rays, but that really didn't narrow it down a whole lot. Because we have had things show up in x-rays that are not what he was being x-rayed for. An enlarged kidney showed up in chest x-rays.

We were referred to a urologist who saw Rex once, sent him for some kind of test at a hospital that had to have cash before doing anything, and we never heard from that specialist again. Don't know to this day what, if anything, the test determined, in spite of calling and both asking and leaving messages. When our family doctor bulldozed us into this appointment, she felt the matter was urgent. Then, she left the group practice she was with and has apparently fallen off the face of the earth. Could it be his kidneys?

He fractured his spine forty years ago, could it be something from that?

Did something in his lungs show up in the background?

He has osteoporosis. Well, he's had that for a while, but this is advancing, which means getting worse. We've been referred to another specialist, this one out of state. His spinal column is collapsing and disintegrating. The T1 through T4 vertabrae are crumbs, with 'significant wedging' on almost all the rest.

Our doctor, who is new to us, says he has never ever seen anyone with such an advanced case of osteoporosis.  Especially not so young. Especially not a male.

We discussed smoking, we discussed heredity, we discussed childhood malnutrition. All factors. But, to figure out what to do, he needs to be seen by an endocrinologist. My guess is that they are considering he'll need the IV type treatments. (He was on Fosamax but began having too much bone pain in his hips and thighs, and we dropped that stuff like it scalded.)

So, we're again hanging in Limbo, and I'm bouncing from wall-to-wall maybes.

I'm also looking for information on what to expect if the deterioration continues. What do I need to be especially watchful for? How can I help? What needs to be reported to the doctors? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

And I can't find out. There are a few  million definitions of osteoporosis available on the internet. There are a few million treatments being sold, or advised, or encouraged. So far, there has not been one site that answers my questions. Apparently everywhere on the Internet is the belief that calcium, vitamin D and the magic of medicine cures osteoporosis, or at least halts it in its tracks.

Therefore, no one needs to know what advanced severe osteoporosis will do to a middle-aged severely emphysemic man with one big kidney.

I really hate that all the different websites say the same things over and over and over. Sometimes in different languages, but still the same-old, same-old.

In this great Information Age, can no one answer my questions?

Should RDA be RYA?

The experts are quick to blame our expanding waistlines and backsides on a lot of things, including sedentary lifetimes and overprocessed foods.

It never seems to occur to them that it may be their advice that's stuffing us.

Some commercials once came close to addressing this problem, showing people pulling and tugging overloaded groceries carts of broccoli commenting about how much of this you have to get to get the RDA (Recommended Daily Allotment) of a specific nutrient.

The truth is, no one can get ALL the RDA nutrients, even if they eat all day every day and eat only 'good' food.

The RDA is something created by statisticians. In some laboratory somewhere, after months and years of study, it was discovered that if people eat nutritionum monthly, they won't fall ill fron nutritionum deficiency. However, a medium sized person has to ingest a medium sized portion. One applies math and realizes that this amounts to 30portion sizes per pound (pspp). If you extend the math out, that means that in a month, the person needs 1 pspp per day. Then the body won't have to store anything, if you just eat your 1 pspp per day.

They are forgetting that the human body was made to store nutrients. That's what's making us all fat. Our bodies just keep on doing their job no matter how hard we make them work to do so.

Let's forget RDA. If we can't do it right away, maybe we can try for RWA -- a weekly dose of what we don't need every day.

Humans are adapted -- or were -- to live in a seasonal world. Fruits in the summer, veggies whenever they can be found, meat when it is available. Many a person living some form of vegetarianism will tell you -- you don't need all that 'stuff'\.' You don't need vitamins if you eat right.

If you do eat by the charts, even cutting out fats and processed foods, you will still get fat and your body will still take early retirement because of overwork.

Don't eat well -- eat REAL.
And heal.