Horrible

My Dad has cancer.

What is it with that word? Cancer... it's HORRIBLE

Alien

Today my food started good... and ended bad. Surprised? I'm not.

Breakfast: banana
Lunch: bit of pasta
Dinner: Chilli con Carne and rice (Home made)
Evening snack: 200g bar of Dairy Milk Whole Nut and 3 glasses of red wine.

Cals: 2100 - the highest since my 2nd surgery I think!

Food is evil. Its like a drug for me. I abuse food.

I am glad I have my band because otherwise my food intake today would have made a heinous bulk up of my body mass index.

Convenience Store Survival Training

I was on the road yesterday driving to a county court to defend myself (unsuccessfully) against a speeding ticket. I reluctantly stopped into a convenience store on my way back, to see if there was anything I would eat for lunch.

I actually did find two things that were palatable and not too unhealthy: canned sardines and toasted cashews. The total was $2.50, affordable even for a grad student.

The sardines were canned in "tomato sauce", which I realized later contained soybean oil. Oops. Well I suppose when you get your food at a convenience store, you have to expect such things.

The main thing that bothered me was the trash. I posted a mugshot (above) of the can, fork and plastic bag that I either trashed or recycled as a result of the meal. The total volume of trash was probably almost as much as the total volume of food.

I think if you stick to nuts, canned fish and fresh fruit, it's possible to survive a convenience store stop. And Baby Ruths. Those are healthy, right?

Two Tons of Steel

While I was waiting for the bus one morning, I decided I'd count cars to see how many were single-occupancy vs. two or more. I came up with a ratio of roughly 20 single-occupancy vehicles for every multiple-occupancy vehicle. The multiple-occupancy vehicles were most often work trucks, containing plumbers or construction workers going to a job.

People have to get to work. Maybe they don't have public transit where they are, or maybe they just don't feel like sitting next to smelly commuters, but for whatever reason, here in the U.S. they drive their cars.

The average American weighs about 180 lbs. Due to our love affair with SUVs, the average American car weighs over 2 tons and climbing. That means every time a person drives a single-occupancy vehicle to work, they aren't just expending the energy it takes to move 180 lbs 15 miles. They're also lugging around a hulking two-ton chunk of steel and plastic. The passenger of the average single-occupancy vehicle is only about 1/24 (4%) of the mass that's being moved to and from work. That's ridiculous!

Of course, we make up for the big weight of our cars with big engines so they can go vroom. That adds up to a lot of gasoline burned, for no clear benefit. In other words, most of us could easily be driving vehicles that perform the exact same function but burn 1/3 the gasoline. I'm not talking about space-age technology here; these vehicles are already on the market.

Why do we commute so inefficiently when better options surround us? I think there are several reasons. First of all, gasoline is dirt cheap. We have no incentive to be efficient beyond our own consciences. Even with the recent price jumps, gasoline doesn't cost much more than it ever has, if you adjust for inflation. In Europe, where high taxes mean gasoline can cost four times as much as in the US, vehicles are lighter and more efficient.

Secondly, we've always been a very car-centric society. Cars appeal to our desire for independence, power and control. A large, powerful car is a status symbol in the US. We've inherited these attitudes from previous generations and we're just beginning to question them. Are there healthier and less wasteful ways of getting to work?

There are, and many of them are very simple. The first and simplest is a carpool. If we put two average Americans in our two-ton car, all of a sudden the people are 1/12 the weight of the vehicle. With four people, the number jumps to 1/6. We've just made our vehicle almost four times as fuel efficient, per passenger! 1,000 lbs per person is still a lot of weight to be lugging around though, so let's look at some other options.

If you are on the market for a new car, fuel-efficient models abound. The new hybrid cars by Toyota and Honda are twice as efficient as their non-hybrid brethren, and not much more expensive. Some people truly need SUVs for their business, but I have good news for them too: there are now hybrid SUVs as well. That's right ladies and gentlemen, they're the most efficient gas guzzlers on the market.

Public transportation is another great option where it's available. Buses are big and heavy but they can accommodate many people.

Now let's get into the really efficient vehicles. Motorcycles and scooters weigh from 250-500 pounds, meaning that a passenger would be from 1/2 to 1/4 the total weight of the vehicle. Now we're beginning to make some sense. Certain scooters can go over 100 miles per gallon of gasoline.

An even better option is to use vehicles that don't burn gasoline at all. A bicycle weighs about 20-30 pounds, making the passenger about 9/10 of the total vehicle weight. That weight ratio might change as the average American loses some weight however. Even if you factor in the extra food you eat when you cycle regularly, it's still terribly efficient. Best of all, bikes allow us to get exercise and feel the sun for a while.

The title for the most fuel-efficient and low-tech vehicle around goes to feet. When using a pair of these, the passenger is 100% of the weight of the vehicle. You can walk until you wear them out and you still won't have burned a single molecule of gasoline. Now that's efficient.

Thanks to lairdscott for the CC photo.

Thudsay whinge

I am SO glad I didn't jump on those scales now! I have the dreaded curse again. How come it seems that 1 month can flash by so fast in that sense, but waiting for pay day is like torture???

Anyway, the curse has staved off all thoughts of jumping on the scales thank goodness. There is no way I would do it now as I know I always retain water with it. My guts feel like a water bed.

So today...

Breakfast was essentially tablets, because I felt so horrible this morning. I got up and had a coffee and then went back to bed until 2:30pm. Unlike me these days, but I felt so weak and tired.

When I got up I was hypoglycemic. My hands were shaking and I couldn't walk straight, so I immediately ate some chocolate spread in a slice of bread. Little tiny nibbles washed down with orange juice. Seemed to stop the shaking, but was still feeling decidedly odd. I had another slice of bread and some maple syrup in it and washed that down with orange juice too and by 20 minutes later I was feeling fine.

I always crave sugary food around my period... so maybe its not a case of just wanting, but needing! Anyway, later on I went to work and had a banana about 4pm. When I got home I made dinner and we all had quiche, baked beans and potato croquettes. I managed 2 croquettes and a 1/4 quiche, but it took a while.

I am still really pleased with my portions.

My body still wants to snack though! Especially at this time of the month. Towards the end of the evening I grabbed a couple of yoghurts and a nutrigrain bar - what a naughty girl I was. I cant believe that this amounts to a pig out day for me now!! HA HA its amazing!

Desperate to jump on the scales...

I am desperate to. I just wanna know if I have lost any more weight! It's all I think about... I even take a drink to bed with me so that I can have a drink instantly in the morning so it puts me off of weighing myself.

Yes, I am crazy.

Jumping on and off the scales is NOT good for me. I have been so good, but I always get to Wednesday and I can't take it any more.

'So jump on!', I hear you scream.

No, its not good because if its the same weight, then I will be really disheartened and sabotage myself. If its a gain I will be gutted. If its a loss... well that's cool, but I am too worried about the other two to just go for it.

Thankfully I am only obsessing about the scales. Everything else is seemingly normal.

Food wise, I still have monster restriction. I am not tempted to be an idiot and eat crap. I am making meals every day, and eating a varied diet.

Today's food

Breakfast: 1 mouthful of pancake, puked up 10 minutes later.

Snack: banana

Lunch: Chicken curry and rice

Dinner: Chicken casserole... well a bit of it.

And here's what was left when I had finished. took me the best part of 40 minutes to eat.

This was such a lovely dinner too...

Sweet potato, Onion, Carrot, lentils, Potato chicken breast cubes and stock.

Y U M

So that's me done for the day. I don't know how many calories the casserole has, but it didn't have any extra fat or anything... just veg and water. The rest of my food for today adds up to about 300 calories, so I guess I am under 500 today.

So even though I keep worrying that I am going to start putting on weight, or that my portion sizes are getting bigger, or any other paranoid thoughts, everything seems to be going swimmingly.

I wish SO much that my band never went wrong. Its really stressing me out. I am so close to being 16 stone 3, where I was end of last May... I know its dumb as anything, but I cant help but feel like its going to go wrong, or its going to just stop working, or something.

I never realised how much this is still affecting me really. I think once I am past that 16 stone 3 mark, I will start to relax and really settle my heart on the prospect of actually achieving my goal weight...

I can't wait until the next 3 pounds are over with.

That's another reason why I am so eager to get on those scales.

Natalie Cassidy Loses Weight

Natalie Cassidy lost about 56 pounds recently. She's got five new habits that led to her weight loss. See her tips here.

The French Paradox

According to the World Health Organization, 82 out of every 100,000 French men between ages 35 and 74 died as a result of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the year 2000. In that same year, 216 out of 100,000 men between the same ages in the U.S. succumbed to the same disease.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, during roughly the same time period, the average French person ate slightly more total fat and almost three times more animal fat than the average American. Animal fats came from dairy, lard, red meats, fish and poultry, and contributed to a much higher overall saturated fat intake in the French. This has been called the "French paradox", the paradox being that saturated fat is supposed to cause CVD.

Researchers have been scrambling to identify the factor that is protecting French hearts from the toxic onslaught of saturated fat. What could possibly be preventing the buttery sludge coursing through their arteries from killing them on the spot? One hypothesis is that wine is protective. Although the modern French don't actually drink much more alcohol than Americans on average, wine contains a number of molecules that are potentially protective.

One of these that has gotten a lot of attention is resveratrol, an activator of SIRT1, a deacetylase enzyme that is involved in stress resistance and lifespan regulation. But lo and behold, it turns out that there isn't enough of it in wine to be helpful. Now researchers are turning their attention to a class of molecules called procyanidins, but I suspect that this will turn up negative as well. The protective molecule is probably ethanol, but no one wants to hear that because it doesn't resolve the paradox.

As a person with a French background who has spent quite a bit of time in France, the notion of a French paradox is insulting. It implies that the French are eating an unhealthy diet, but are somehow miraculously protected by a compound they're ingesting by accident. Any French person will tell you there is no paradox. When you make a commitment to seek out the freshest, most delicious ingredients available and cook them yourself, your diet will be healthier than if you count the grams of this and that on your TV dinner.

There's more. Americans consume almost twice the amount of sugar as the average French person. I find this surprising, given the large amount of sugar I've seen on French tables, but I think it speaks to the huge amount of sugar we consume in the US. Much of it probably comes from the high-fructose corn syrup in soda. I'll save my rant about that for another time.

Another thing that stands out about French food habits is the absence of snacking. Mealtimes in France tend to be well-defined, and grazing is looked down upon. I think this is probably essential for maintaining adequate insulin sensitivity in the face of (delicious) refined carbohydrates like baguette.

And finally, the French enjoy their food more than the average nation. I wouldn't underestimate the value of this for health and overall well-being.

So what was the paradox again? I can't remember. Maybe a more parsimonious explanation of the data is that saturated fat isn't so bad after all, and enjoying wholesome food and limiting sugar is the true prescription for health.

Thanks to Gaetan Lee for the creative commons photo.