Recipe for a Veggie Burger

Holly shows us how to make delicious veggie burgers at home. It's an easy recipe and the two key ingredients are lentils and walnuts - two of the most nutritious foods that most people don't eat enough of.



From Before and After TV;

Veggie burgers are a nutritional alternative to beef burgers. Many people don't think of making their own veggie burgers but they are really easy to make at home. Store bought veggie burgers are nutritional but often very high in sodium and preservatives.

Lentils are high in fiber which makes them a good protector against bowel cancer. They are an excellent source of protein and are an important source of B vitamins, especially B3, which is essential for both a healthy nervous system and digestive system. They are high in iron, zinc and calcium and are a good replacement for red meat. Like meat, the iron in lentils is better absorbed when they are eaten with a good source of vitamin C like leafy green vegetables.

Walnuts are an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, a special type of fat that is essential for our bodies, but that the body cannot produce. Walnuts are also a very good source of monounsaturated fats.

Walnuts contain many powerful antioxidants, including ellagic and gallic acids, pus antioxidant phenols and vitamin E. The minerals copper and manganese are also found in abundance in these tasty nuts.

Blessed relief

My brothers wedding was fabulous, and we had such a lovely time. They were so cute and in love and I am thrilled for them. The above was DS in his penguin suit as Paige Boy and Ring Bearer, and then one of my get up...

Check out the wedding 'cake'. What a nightmare for us bandsters huh? Thank goodness I hadn't had my band relaxed at the time of the wedding!! there was 240 Krispy Kreme Donuts and even a chocolate fountain in the evening. No I didn't succumb!

But back to banding... My appointment with Wendy went well on Sunday. I had a WHOLE millilitre out of my band.

I cant tell you how wonderful it feels. Strangely enough, although I never thought I could feel my band inside me, I must have been able to in some way because my chest actually feels different.

When I hopped on the table I told her I wanted all the fluid - everything - out of my band because I couldn't take it any more. she told me that 1 ml would be fine.

She said that when people are too tight she can tell. Its in their eyes and skin condition and general behaviour... lethargic and lacklustre all around. She said that I wasn't that tight because I looked healthy, rosy cheeks and was bright and attentive etc. Apparently some people are literally starving themselves and think they are going to be able to lose weight, but in fact the very opposite is true and they are seriously jeopardising their bands and the integrity of their stomach.

So when she stuck in the needle it immediately popped out fluid - a clear indication of tightness. She drew all 6.5mls out of my band to check for leaks, fluid loss, colouration etc and all was fine, then she just put 5.5mls back in.

I felt the relief immediately. I was hungry before having the fluid out as she doesn't like you to eat before a fill, so we went straight to KFC afterwards. I was able to COMFORTABLY eat half a twister. That was unbelievable. No puking, no worries, and a natural full feeling where I just wanted to stop eating.

I actually didn't eat anything else the rest of the day as it was about 5pm when we had the KFC anyway.

Yesterday I had a bit of crap carb day, and spent a lot of time in bed with horrible period pain, but today I am determined to not think about having a band and try and eat to satisfaction and stop. I don't want to push the band, and I don't want to overeat just because I might be able to.

So today's day started off with 28g muesli and skimmed milk - a previously unimagined delight.

Weight wise I was 15stone 8 according to the scales at the weightloss surgery group appointment. So that's good. Last time I weighed 16 stone 4, so at least I have lost 10 pounds since April.

Anyway, I am gonna crack on with this band lark and start behaving myself. No wine, no junk. Actually, it feels great to know I DON'T have to eat junk. I was relying on it to keep me going for the last couple of months, but now I can eat regular food its a real relief.

Letter to the Editor

I wrote a letter to the New York Times about their recent article "The Overflowing American Dinnerplate", which I trashed here. The letter didn't get accepted, so I will publish it here:

In the article "The Overflowing American Dinner Plate", Bill Marsh cites USDA data showing a 59% increase in fat consumption from 1970 to 2006, coinciding with the doubling of the obesity rate in America. However, according to Centers for Disease Control NHANES nutrition survey data, total fat intake in the US has remained relatively constant since 1971, and has actually decreased as a percentage of calories. The apparent discrepancy disappears when we understand that the USDA data Marsh cites are not comprehensive. They do not include the fat contained in milk and meat, which have been steadily decreasing since 1970.

The change Marsh reported refers primarily to the increasing use of industrially processed vegetable oils such as soybean oil. These have gradually replaced animal fats in our diet over the last 30 years. Since overall fat intake has changed little since the 1970s, it cannot be blamed for rising obesity.

Losing 45 Pounds Since January

Catie has lost 45 pounds since January. She used to weigh 173 pounds and now weighs 128 pounds.

She says the best moment, that she will never forget, is when she was picking up her sister at the airport and her sister didn't recognize her.

Catie lost the weight with the help of Weight Watchers and a regular exercise program. Check out her before and after photos and her weight loss story here.

Rats on Junk Food

If diet composition causes hyperphagia, we should be able to see it in animals. I just came across a great study from the lab of Dr. Neil Stickland that explored this in rats. They took two groups of pregnant rats and fed them two different diets ad libitum, meaning the rats could eat as much as they wanted. Here's what the diets looked like:

The animals were fed two types of diet throughout the study. They were fed either RM3 rodent chow alone ad libitum (SDS Ltd, Betchworth, Surrey, UK) or with a junk food diet, also known as cafeteria diet, which consisted of eight different types of palatable foods, purchased from a British supermarket. The palatable food included biscuits, marshmallows, cheese, jam doughnuts, chocolate chip muffins, butter flapjacks, potato crisps and caramel/chocolate bars.

It's important to note that the junk food-fed rats had access to rat chow as well. Now here's where it gets interesting. Rats with access to junk food in addition to rat chow ate 56% more calories than the chow-only group! Here's what they had to say about it:

These results clearly show that pregnant rats, given ad libitum access to junk food, exhibited hyperphagia characterised by a marked preference for foods rich in fat, sucrose and salt at the expense of protein-rich foods, when compared with rats that only had access to rodent chow. Although the body mass of dams was comparable among all groups at the start of the experiment, the increased energy intake in the junk food group throughout gestation was accompanied by an increase in body mass at G20 [gestational day 20] with the junk food-fed dams being 13 % heavier than those fed chow alone.

Hmm, this is remarkably reminiscent of what's happening to a certain group of humans in North America right now: give them access to food made mostly of refined grains, sugar, and industrially processed vegetable oil. They will prefer it to healthier food, to the point of overeating. The junk food then drives hyperphagia by interfering with the body's feedback loops that normally keep feeding behaviors and body fat within the optimal range. These data support the hypothesis that metabolic damage is the cause of, not the result of, "super-sized" food portions and other similar cultural phenomena.

The rest of the paper is interesting as well. Pups born to mothers who ate junk food while pregnant and lactating had a greater tendency to eat junk than pups born to mothers who ate rat chow during the same period. This underscores the idea that poor nutrition can set a child up for a lifetime of problems.

Savory Raspberry Salad

Hello Neighbors!In my part of the world the raspberries are in harvest - oh what a beautiful day! Nature's rubies. Raspberries are a great source of Vitamin C, fiber, and pectin that is known to lower cholesterol. Best eaten right out there in the raspberry patch as they are picked, raspberries are a summertime favorite of mine. Raspberries and blackberries are odd little sweets: soft, furry,

Hyperphagia

One of the things I didn't mention in the last post is that Americans are eating more calories than ever before. According to Centers for Disease Control NHANES data, in 2000, men ate about 160 more calories per day, and women ate about 340 more than in 1971. That's a change of 7% and 22%, respectively. The extra calories come almost exclusively from refined grains, with the largest single contribution coming from white wheat flour (correction: the largest single contribution comes from corn sweeteners, followed by white wheat flour).

Some people will see those data and decide the increase in calories is the explanation for the expanding American waistline. I don't think that's incorrect, but I do think it misses the point. The relevant question is "why are we eating more calories now than we were in 1971?"

We weren't exactly starving in 1971. And average energy expenditure, if anything, has actually increased. So why are we eating more? I believe that our increased food intake, or hyperphagia, is the result of metabolic disturbances, rather than the cause of them.

Humans, like all animals, have a sophisticated system of hormones and brain regions whose function is to maintain a proper energy balance. Part of the system's job is to keep fat mass at an appropriate level. With a properly functioning system, feedback loops inhibit hunger once fat mass has reached a certain level, and also increase resting metabolic rate to burn excess calories. If the system is working properly, it's very difficult to gain weight. There have been a number of overfeeding studies in which subjects have consumed huge amounts of excess calories. Some people gain weight, many don't.

The fact that fat mass is hormonally regulated can be easily seen in other mammals. When was the last time you saw a fat squirrel in the springtime? When was the last time you saw a thin squirrel in the fall? These events are regulated by hormones. A squirrel in captivity will put on weight in the fall, even if its daily food intake is not changed.

A key hormone in this process is leptin. Leptin levels are proportional to fat mass, and serve to inhibit hunger and eating behaviors. Under normal conditions, the more fat tissue a person has, the more leptin they will produce, and the less they will eat until the fat mass has reached the body's preferred 'set-point'. The problem is that overweight Westerners are almost invariably leptin-resistant, meaning their body doesn't respond to the signal to stop eating!

Leptin resistance leads to hyperphagia, overweight and the metabolic syndrome (a common cluster of symptoms that implies profound metabolic disturbance). It typically precedes insulin resistance during the downward slide towards metabolic syndrome.

I suspect that wheat, sugar and perhaps other processed foods cause hyperphagia. It's the same thing you see when wheat is first introduced to a culture, even if it's replacing another refined carbohydrate. I believe hyperphagia is secondary to a disturbed metabolism. There's something about the combination of refined wheat, sugar, processed vegetable oils and other industrial foods that reached a critical mass in the mid-70s. The shift in diet composition disturbed our normal hormonal profile (even more than it was already disturbed), and sent us into a tailspin of excessive eating and unprecedented weight gain.