About Salt
- POSTED ON: May 20, 2013

The idea that "salt is bad for you" is entrenched in the American mindset; sodium's right up there with trans fats and cigarettes. We now commonly see ads warning us of the high sodium content of processed foods.

 I take the idea …"that a normally healthy person should restrict salt"… with a grain of salt.
i.e. to take a statement with 'a grain of salt' or 'a pinch of salt' means to maintain a degree of skepticism about its truth. The phrase has been in use in English since the 17th century;

In reality, the IDEA THAT SALT IS BAD FOR US IS NOT (and has never been) BASED ON SOLID EVIDENCE. Even worse, the idea is dangerously wrong: we need salt to live, and not eating enough can make a person die.

Salt does not cause our bodies to gain or lose fat.
Salt has no calories.

High consumption of salt only results in temporary weight gain as it causes the body to retain water. Low consumption of salt can result in temporary weight loss as it causes the body to expel water. It is normal and healthy to see these water weight fluctuations.

Our blood is 0.9% salt and it is continually flowing through our lymphatic system. Salt is also necessary for the production of hydrochloric acid, the digestive enzyme secreted by the stomach in order to digest protein. It’s important for nerves and muscles. When we sweat we can taste the salt coming out of our skin. Salt is vital for life’s existence. Put a salt block outside and all animals will consume it.

A diet low in salt can eventually lead to dehydration. Salt holds water in the body, and without it, people can actually dehydrate and die even while drinking water.

The anti-salt campaign began in the 70s, based on two pieces of flimsy research. Although researchers quietly acknowledged that the data were 'inconclusive and contradictory' or 'inconsistent and contradictory'... publicly, the link between salt and blood pressure was upgraded from hypothesis to fact, probably because there was no other good suspect at the time to blame for hypertension.

After studying new research conducted since 2005, a committee commissioned by the Institute of Medicine and CDC issued a report that "said there was no rationale for anyone to aim for sodium levels below 2,300 milligrams a day" .

One study found that among people with moderate to severe heart failure, those who consumed less salt were more than three times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital; another found that older folks with high blood pressure consuming less than 3,000 mg of sodium a day were as likely to suffer heart problems and strokes as those eating more than 7,000 mg a day. The average, across cultures and generations, is around 3,700 mg, suggesting this is probably around a naturally healthy range.

Despite this evidence, the American Heart Association has not amended its low-sodium recommendations.

Here’s an recent a...

Food as Fuel?
- POSTED ON: Apr 20, 2013

A statement often quoted is:

“Eat to live, don’t live to eat.”

This was a statement made by Socrates, a Greek philosopher who lived from 469 BC to 399 BC. He was the teacher of Plato, and he was executed for corrupting the young.

There are many ways to look at the issues and values of life.
Thousands of years ago, Socrates stated his own opinion on the value of food in life, which has been quoted many times since then. 
               

 

I disagree. 

Yes, eating food is required for the body’s survival, and our bodies are designed to make us regularly fulfill that necessary function. However, I choose to value the process of eating highly, simply in and for itself. Food tastes good. I enjoy eating it, and find it to be one of the most pleasurable ongoing activities of life.

As far as I’m concerned, “living to eat” is a perfectly acceptable value choice. 

Life requires us to constantly deal with conflicting values. I want to eat as much delicious food as often as possible. But I also want my body to be a “normal” weight. My vanity; my wish to move my body without pain and be generally in good health are some of the basic reasons for my desire to avoid obesity. So, how do I handle these conflicting values? 

Below is an article which involves that issue.
 

Food is Not Just Fuel,
and That Matters for Your Diet

                               by Dr.Yoni Freedhoff, M.D. - April 17, 2013

Some 12,000 years ago, on the banks of a small river in the western Galilee region of northern Israel, the Natufian people were burying one of their elders. She was a shaman—a medicine woman—and they buried along with her the wing tip of a golden eagle, the pelvis of a leopard, the front leg of a boar, the horns of a male gazelle and a severed human foot.

And while the true meanings of these burial accoutrements were unclear to the archaeologists who found her in 2008, the meaning the 70 charred tortoise shells and the gnawed and marrow-stripped bones of three aurochs— giant extinct cattle—was obvious. They were evidence of a great feast. As well, they were proof of the fact that food isn't simply fuel for our species—food is used for comfort, food is used for celebration and, in all likelihood, food has been used that way since we took our first figurative steps in the savannahs.

Yet, for many modern-day dieters, the use of food for comfort or celebration i...

Calories: Males vs. Females
- POSTED ON: Apr 13, 2013

 
Even siblings consuming similar diets may respond to calories differently, let alone people of different age, shape, gender, and lifestyle.

One calorie for one person is often more, than one calorie for someone else, and this is one reason why weight-loss diets, and weight maintenance diets, can fail.

AGE DIFFERENCE. Younger women of the exact same shape, weight, height, and even genetic background will always lose weight faster on the exact same diet as older women.

You are not your 20+ year old daughter. She is at the peak of her procreation mission with a metabolism to match. She is still learning about the world around her and has an incredibly busy brain, which is a large consumer of glucose. Her body may still be growing. She is healthier. She may be taller. Her body has more muscles, even if she is the exact same size and shape as you are. She has only half of your genes; the other half is from her father. She is more active simply because she can be. She sleeps better than you, even if she sleeps less. She needs more calories simply because she is younger. As the body ages, it needs less and less calories to maintain the same weight.

SMALLER MUSCLE MASS. The female body contains significantly less muscle than males of similar shape and weight. Women experience faster loss of muscle throughout pregnancy, breastfeeding, and natural aging. Since muscles are one of the most demanding users of energy, their age-related loss reduces the rate of energy uptake, and, correspondingly, increases the gain of body fat.

GLUCOSE UPTAKE BY MUSCLES. Along with the brain, central nervous system, and blood, muscles are the most prolific consumers of glucose. That is why most men on a low-carb diet lose weight faster than women and don’t gain it as quickly with a larger intake of carbohydrates.

Women require fewer carbohydrates than men, yet at the same time improperly structured ultra-low-carbohydrate diets can be inappropriate for older women because these may tend to accelerate muscle wasting.

GREATER FAT MASS. Women have a higher ratio of body fat to total body weight than men. Body fat is essential for reproductive functions, healthy pregnancy, and nursing. As body fat falls below a certain level — around 10% to 15% — infertility and amenorrhea (the absence of a period) set in.

Because body fat plays such an essential role in female reproductive and overall health, women gain fat faster than men on similar or smaller amounts of foods.

THERMOS  EFFECT. As one gains fat, the body lowers the internal rate of energy metabolism (i.e., produces less heat) because the internal organs are cuddled in the warm blanket of one’s own fat, or, as doctors would say, adipose tissue. That is why overweight people are far less sensitive to cold than skinny ones. Unfortunately, this effect has a profoundly negative impact on the ability to lose weight because the rate of metabolism is so much lower, and this has little or nothing to do with thyroid or adrenal glands that one might think are “underactive.”

HEIGHT. A person’s height is an important factor in energy metabolism and, correspondingly, in obesity and weight loss. All other things being equal, taller peop...

WHY Count Calories?
- POSTED ON: Apr 06, 2013

Why Count Calories?

Weight loss is difficult.
No Diet / “Way-of-Eating” /” Lifestyle” / “Non-Diet” transforms our eating habits overnight. Nor will it change the fact that we live in a culture where overeating is the national pastime. To lose a significant amount of weight … especially when one has had great difficulty losing weight in the past, …. it’s a good idea to count calories.

Counting calories is tedious.
Yes, this DOES require keeping some kind of food log and then laboriously converting that food into calories (or buying a software program that will do it. My own personal choice is DietPower) Yes, it is especially difficult to count calories when eating a lot of meals away from home and on the run.

As irksome as this task may be, it is not the main reason people hate to count calories. The heart of this resistance is the reluctance to become Accountable for our own behavior.

If we record every morsel of food that we eat, we can no longer deny the way we regularly overeat.

Most overweight people eat far more than they realize. The statistics are sobering. A paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that obese women were eating 47 percent more calories than they were aware. These women truly believed that they were eating modest amounts of foods and that their obesity was caused by a physical problem, such as a slow metabolism or other disorder. When their physical tests came back normal, they were forced to take a closer look at how much they were really eating.

Virtually everyone … even people without weight problems … underestimate how much they eat. In one study, a researcher was working with a group of lean, healthy young women. Part of the study involved having the women live in a metabolic ward where they would have no access to food other than their hospital meals. The researcher wanted the women to maintain their current weight, so she asked each one to estimate how much she normally consumed. Later, when she served the women the amount of food they thought they had been eating, they lost weight. The researcher had to add as many as 1,000 more calories a day to what they THOUGHT they had been eating, before they stopped shedding pounds.

  Why do we all eat more than we realize?
We know quite well that eating too much will make us fat. But we also have a very strong and understandable desire to comfort ourselves with food. Food tastes good. Food triggers soothing brain chemicals. But, above all else, eating is one of the most basic, primal ways to feel loved. When the road gets rocky … we've been turned down for a job, our lover doesn't call, we've been snubbed by a friend … that chocolate bar or plate of pasta will always be there for us, faithful, rewarding, and soo...

Why Diets Fail - The Salt/Water/Waste Issue
- POSTED ON: Apr 03, 2013

Whatever method one chooses
as a “Diet”…

including Diets that are called:

• “Way-of-Eating”,
  
• “Lifestyle-change”, or 
  
• “Non-Diet”

… this Truth always remains.



 When a body with excess fat consistently takes in LESS food
(meaning: calories within one or more of the three macronutrients)
THAN IT USES as energy, that body will access stored fat for energy.

The process of losing excess fat takes a long time.

Weight-loss diets ultimately fail approximately 95% of the time.  This means that most people fail to lose very much weight on any type of diet, and very few manage to maintain any long-term weight loss.

Losing weight and losing fat isn’t exactly the same thing. However most doctors, nutritionists, dietitians ... and the people who follow their advice ... don’t clearly distinguish the process of reducing body fat from the process of reducing body weight.

Most people sort of KNOW that body weight and body fat are different, and vaguely understand that the scale can register body weight higher due to “water gain”.

 To understand the difference between these two things, it is important to understand that there are two principal components of body weight. We can label these two: constant weight and variable weight.

• The variable weight is a sum of all the digestive fluids inside the GI tract, the undigested foods already in the stomach and the small intestine, the stools inside the large intestine, and water, which can be safely lost with sweat, urine, and perspiration. These variable components of body weight normally represent between 7 and 30 pounds, depending on one’s original diet, one’s current weight, and one’s digestive health.
  
  
• The constant weight is everything else — the remaining fluids, such as the blood plasma and lymph, the weight of one’s skin, bones, internal organs, muscles, and adipose tissue, or body fat. Of course, body fat is actually the only substance in the body one actually wants to get rid of.
  
  
• Variable weight swings from day to day depending on the amount of foods and fluids one consumes and expels, workl...