Today's round-up

Breakfast - granola and milk
Lunch - raw food bar
snack - banana
dinner - 5 pieces of tortellini in sauce
snack - McDonalds vanilla milkshake.

Total cals... well the milkshake has 420 alone. The bar is 100, the granola and milk 235 and a banana is about 100. The tortellini...about 100 aswell.

So roughly 1000 cals.

Feel like crud.

Went to see the film IGOR. It was ok, but came away wondering how I can claw back the wasted hour and 30 minutes of my life. Guessing I'll probably not be getting the DVD.

Work = Hmmm Good knowing that tomorrow I only have 1 pupil, even if it does mean that the 6 that have cancelled because of 6th form parents meetings, vomiting bug, colds and other assorted ills means I have lost £70.

Pessimistic? Who me?

Ok... positive stuff:

DAD CAME HOME YESTERDAY!!! Yes, he is back on the ranch and feeling ok. His wound/hole in gut is now the size of a small tea plate rather than a dinner plate which is good news. There is a lot of new skin growing. His old stoma site his like a woman's breast and he jokingly says that he doesn't need Mum any more now that he has it!! Its so swollen underneath where his old bag was, but healing. Apparently its 'normal'. Must say i haven't seen anyone else with a breast growing out the side of their tummy, but there we go. His new stoma is working well, and everything is ok by the sounds of it. He is wired up to a battery charger on one side of him, and the vac wound suction machine on the other, so he wont be doing any hiking any time soon - which is a seriously good thing! He is so hyperactive that he cant sit still usually, so this will put paid to that and force him to chillax.

Another cool thing... We now have 7 kittens... yes 7! Our 6 kittens have all been named now - BOB by the Moore family, LOLA but the Green family, SUMMER by the Elliot family, OREO and KIMBA by Steph and Nick and SQUIGGLES by Ally and Dan. However, SQUIGGLES gained a sister today. At work, Ally could hear squeaking and found a little stray feral kitten about 2 weeks old abandoned under a prickly hedge. It was not too well and she took it to the vet. He had to remove two pieces of plastic from its little throat and then give it treatment for a week. They gave it back to them on Friday and they had been feeding it every two hours and helping it go for a poo and a wee (normally the mum does this you see by licking). They brought Her - called PRICKLES - to visit her brother when I came up with a plan. PRICKLES has been adopted by Mary. We placed her near to Mary and Mary licked her all over and didn't show any signs of a problem at all. Prickles then joined her brothers and sisters, who are all a bit older and more boisterous as they are 4 weeks old today, but seems no problem. I kept a close eye on them all morning and then saw her have her first feed. She was straight in there and latched on for a full 7 minutes same as all the rest of them... well except one which I kept swapping over on rotation seeing as Mary only has 6 nipples!! Then I left them alone for a bit. I came back just before I went to work and weighed all the kittens. The fattest was Summer at 15oz, and Prickles was 10.7 oz. I thought this would be a good indicator of her growth in comparison to the others or if we have to top it up a little bit. Anyway, then Mary laid down again ready to feed, so I let her feed them and Prickles was straight in there again. I weighed her again and she had taken 0.3oz milk on board which is perfect. As its from Mary as opposed to formula its got to be more nutritious for her. So far, so good! I looked in on them a minute ago and they were all cuddles up together in a big pile with Prickles in the centre. Ahhh

Ok, this is it... dont get scared now

I am getting those jitters again guys...

Its been 6 days since starting to really work with the band again, so tomorrow is weigh in time.

I jumped on the scales today and it said 16st 7lb. Thats EXACTLY the same as last wedensday when I started doing my UTMOST to get going.

Only... on Saturday morning it said 16st 4lb...

I AM GUTTED. I am trying very hard not to stuff my face because of feeling so rubbish about this.

Maybe saturday was a wrong read... (although it was same time, same clothes, post toilet, pre breakfast/foodstuff consumption and they are elcectronic things -so thats not sitting too well in my logical mind)

Maybe I put on 3 pounds in the last 3 days (although I have done nothing other than eat the stuff that came with the pack, and have reasonable snacks and have stayed well within ALL limits and not cheated AT ALL - so that doesnt sit in my logical mind)

Maybe I just am not supposed to be thin

Maybe I cant do this

I feel like a piece of scum and I want chocolate, sweets and tasty treats to eat.

stuff it all.

HOWEVER > I am not going to do those things (oh man I so want to though!)

I am going to weigh in properly tomorrow as I should do and see what it says. I will decide how to celebrate or commiserate after tomorrows weigh in.

Now, to those of you who are gonna tell me it takes my body some time to adjust - DON'T BOTHER. Its junk. If you don't eat, you lose weight.

I went to slimming world WITHOUT a band and lost weight eating far more than I did this week. I even lost weight when I used to pig out on all kinds of stuff (see previous posts of about 3 years ago if you don't believe me).

So, my body is not in starvation, or holding water or some rubbish. I obviously am doing something wrong or need less calories.

I am in a seriously foul mood, so responders to this post beware I might BITE!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

DART: Many Lessons Learned

The Diet and Reinfarction Trial (DART), published in 1989, is one of the most interesting clinical trials I've had the pleasure to read about recently. It included 2,033 British men who had already suffered from an acute myocardial infarction (MI; heart attack), and tested three different strategies to prevent further MIs. Subjects were divided into six groups:

• One group was instructed to reduce total fat to 30% of calories (from about 35%) and replace saturated fat (SFA) with polyunsaturated fat (PUFA).
• The second group was told to double grain fiber intake.
• The third group was instructed to eat more fatty fish or take fish oil if they didn't like fish.
• The remaining three were control groups that were not advised to change diet; one for each of the first three.
  

Researchers followed the six groups for two years, recording deaths and MIs. The fat group reduced their total fat intake from 35.0 to 32.3% of calories, while doubling the ratio of PUFA to SFA (to 0.78). After two years, there was no change in all-cause or cardiac mortality. This is totally consistent with the numerous other controlled trials that have been done on the subject. Here's the mortality curve:

Here's what the authors have to say about it:

Five randomised trials have been published in which a diet low in fat or with a high P/S [polyunsaturated/saturated fat] ratio was given to subjects who had recovered from MI. All these trials contained less than 500 subjects and none showed any reduction in deaths; indeed, one showed an increase in total mortality in the subjects who took the diet.

So... why do we keep banging our heads against the wall if clinical trials have already shown repeatedly that total fat and saturated fat consumption are irrelevant to heart disease and overall risk of dying? Are we going to keep doing these trials until we get a statistical fluke that confirms our favorite theory? This DART paper was published in 1989, and we have not stopped banging our heads against the wall since. The fact is, there has never been a properly controlled clinical trial that has shown an all-cause mortality benefit for reducing total or saturated fat in the diet (without changing other variables at the same time). More than a dozen have been conducted to date.

On to fish. The fish group tripled their omega-3 intake, going from 0.6 grams per week of EPA to 2.4 g (EPA was their proxy for fish intake). This group saw a significant reduction in MI and all-cause deaths, 9.3% vs 12.8% total deaths over two years (a 27% relative risk reduction). Here's the survival chart:

Balancing omega-6 intake with omega-3 has consistently improved cardiac risk in clinical trials. I've discussed that here.

The thing that makes the DART trial really unique is it's the only controlled trial I'm aware of that examined the effect of grain fiber on mortality (without simultaneously changing other factors). The fiber group doubled their grain fiber intake, going from 9 to 17 grams by eating more whole grains. This group saw a non-significant trend toward increased mortality and MI compared to its control group. Deaths went up from 9.9% to 12.1%, a relative risk increase of 18%. I suspect this result was right on the cusp of statistical significance, judging by the numbers and the look of the survival curve:

You can see that the effect is consistent and increases over time. At this rate, it probably would have been statistically significant at 2.5 years. This result is consistent with short term trials I've found showing that wheat bran causes insulin resistance. In one, feeding five healthy subjects wheat bran for 7 weeks in addition to a controlled diet initially reduced blood glucose levels but resulted in insulin resistance, insulin hypersecretion and reactive hypoglycemia by the end of the seven weeks. Other trials show a non-significant trend toward insulin resistance on a whole-grain rich diet. The longer the trial, the stronger the effect.

I think the problem with whole grains is that the bran and germ contain a disproportionate amount of toxins, among which are the lectins. I've speculated before that grain lectins could contribute to leptin and insulin resistance. The bran and germ also contain a disproportionate amount of nutrients. To have your cake and eat it too, soak, sprout or ferment grains. This reduces the toxin load but preserves or enhances nutritional value. Wheat may be a problem whether it's treated this way or not.

Subjects in the studies above were eating grain fiber that was not treated properly, and so they were increasing their intake of some pretty nasty toxins while decreasing their nutrient absorption. Healthy non-industrial cultures would never have made this mistake. Grains must be treated with respect, and whole grains in particular.

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