Have you noticed how difficult it is to eat while you are laughing? Unlike talking and crying, it is almost impossible to chew and laugh at the same time. This came to mind when I received an e-mail from a friend who had gone to see this summer’s funny movie, “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.” She writes:
“You know I am always complaining about how hard it is to go to the movies and not munch on nachos and cheese, a tub of popcorn or one of those gigantic boxes of candy. So until I lose my weight and, I hope, my desire to eat these foods, I have been avoiding the big screen. But my husband dragged me to the Zohan movie and promised me that I would not miss munching my way through the story. He was right. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt afterward. I was so busy laughing that I never thought about munching. If I could laugh my way through every meal, I would be skinny by next week.”
She is right about laughter taking away the desire to eat. Her letter made me think back upon countless dinners with friends in which we would sit around the table telling funny stories. If the stories started before dessert, the food would be forgotten while we would hang on the sometimes interminable stories with the absurd endings.
One of the problems with going on a diet, or trying not to gain back lost weight, is that we often forget to laugh. This may be especially true when people go on diets that decrease their brain comfort chemical, serotonin. A dear friend e-mailed me yesterday saying that his wife was put on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet and is now very grumpy. She was a very funny woman, full of sparkle and a way of turning every day events into a vehicle for amusing stories. Now, according to my friend, she rarely laughs and has turned into a glass half-empty sort of person. “Sally has lost her sense of humor along with her weight,” complained my friend. “I told her that a few bowls of pasta might restore her good humor without the weight but she only snapped at me.” Privately I am afraid he is in for a long humorless summer as her lack of carbohydrate is decreasing her brain’s level of serotonin, and her good mood will continue to suffer.
Perhaps the next generation of weight-loss books, support groups and diet foods by mail order will provide humorous books, comedy DVD’s and stand-up comedians to help the dieter. Wouldn’t it be fun to go to a Weight Watcher’s meeting and spend an hour laughing instead of hearing, once again, what to do with leftovers? Instead of reading lists of calories and vitamins and minerals on a package of diet food, how about reading a funny cartoon instead? When you feel like a treat because you are bored or disappointed or feeling tired, how about taking out a book like Plato and the Platypus (a book of philosophy and the funniest jokes I have ever read) and indulging in one or two of the funny stories?
It has been said that laughter is the best medicine. It seems to be the best way to also lose weight.
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( 4 / 3 )Even though clothes sometimes come with a label saying ”One size fits all” or as a friend says, “One size fits no one,” the same cannot be said of a diet plan.
The Serotonin Power Diet, however, does fit everyone’s brain by making sure that you are making sufficient serotonin to keep your moods steady and appetites under control. But Nina, my co-author, and myself believe that the foods on the plan are suggestions, not demands, and certainly not engraved on a stone tablet. Sure, we want the dieter to eat some protein for breakfast along with toast or cereal. And we do insist that protein be eaten at lunch time as well. The dinner for the first two weeks of the program is basically carbohydrates and vegetables in order to boost serotonin, through that meal as well as the snack that precedes and follows it. But we realize that the foods we suggest as protein or carbohydrate foods or the vegetables and fruits listed on the page may or may not be acceptable to the dieter. Moreover, the portion sizes that may be work for a woman who wants to lose 40 pounds may be too small for someone who has to lose 240 pounds and is hungry at the start of the diet. For her, we suggest following the men’s diet until she finds it is too much food.
Recently, a woman in Australia wrote to us asking about snack foods, since many of the foods we suggested were not available in her supermarket. (I suspect, though, that she had access to some foods, like kangaroo, which we had not listed as a protein option.) After a few e- mails, we were able to work out some substitutes that seemed similar to some of the snacks on our American list.
Then there are vegans. They do not eat any animal products, including eggs and dairy products. Breakfasts of cottage cheese and lunches of grilled chicken breast won’t work for them, so it was necessary to see what soy or bean-based foods might work as substitutes. And we recommend calcium supplements in case the foods they did eat are not rich enough in that critical mineral.
But most of our queries are not so much about the food itself as how to fit the diet into the dieter’s lifestyle. And this is probably the most difficult aspect of following a diet. Food lists, recipes, menu suggestions, and food shopping and preparation tips may simply not work for the dieter who works a midnight to 8 AM shift, or for someone traveling from city to city or even from office to office within the same city. One client said that she would be happy to eat a hot lunch but could do so only by giving up her day job. “I am always in the car because I work as a visiting nurse,” she wrote us. “On occasion I may be able to stop the car and eat my lunch by a park. But there is no place I can get a hot lunch on my route and nowhere to heat up food I bring with me. Can I eat a sandwich for lunch? If I am driving to a client at least I can manage to eat and drive.”
Obviously the answer was yes—with the suggestion to pack a lot of napkins.
Another client who worked the midnight shift had a problem following the diet because the hospital cafeteria was closed, vending machines were useless as a source of nutritious foods and often her break time was spent catching up on computer entries. This is what we worked out:
Sleep: 9 AM to 4 PM
Breakfast: 5 PM
Lunch: 9 PM (this was her big meal because she could eat it at home. She ate about 5 ounces of protein with 1 cup of rice, potato, or pasta, along with vegetables.)
Work: 11 AM
First snack: 1am She loved cherry Twizzlers.
Dinner: around 2 AM. It was quiet then and she could microwave a potato or some hot cereal and fruit
Second snack: 5-6 AM. She usually ate graham crackers and had her fruit at this time. It was important that she eat a snack before leaving for home an hour later so she would not be tempted to stop for some fast food breakfast on the way home.
She arrived home at 8 AM and we told her to eat an English muffin or some toast and juice if she felt hungry. But the snack satisfied her and relaxed her enough so she was able to sleep soon thereafter.
It is important to make your diet fit into your life rather than the other way around. After all, the diet and all the changes in eating and exercise that it brings into your life should, ideally, continue after you have lost the weight you want to lose. Obviously you don’t have to diet any longer. However, all those pesky logistical problems that caused you to reach for fast food, or lunch on a diet Coke and a large bagel, are going to return unless you have figured out, during the diet, how to make those life style changes stick.
This may be why diet spas, diet foods in a box or pouch, or daily monitoring of what you are eating really doesn’t work in the long run. You have to work out the best way to eat the foods that you need for physical and emotional nourishment while juggling and balancing the sometimes overwhelming demands of daily life. And if you make a mistake, so what? You can start all over again tomorrow.
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( 3.2 / 13 )One of the stories about the effects of high gas prices mentioned the increase in candy bar sales at gas stations. Apparently after paying upwards of $40.00 for gas (and sometimes much more) people pay another dollar for a candy bar. It is unclear whether the reasons are: a) What is an extra dollar?
b) I need a treat after the shock of filling the tank or c) I guess I will be doing a lot of walking so I can afford the calories.
Whatever the reason, it is interesting that despite all the negatives written about candy, people still eat sweet snacks. I was thinking about this today during my town’s 4th of July parade. It is a tradition for the people on the floats, along with the guys driving the fire engines and police cars, to throw wrapped candy at the spectators. Tiny Tootsie Rolls were the most abundant but some other wrapped candies were also thrown. We were sitting on the sidewalk next to a group of kids and most of the candy was thrown in their direction. However, all the adults around us scrambled to get their share as the pieces landed around them. Pretty soon, the whole street was happily munching away. Fortunately, there was no float hauling the “wicked witch of the low carb world” to warn us of the perils of eating something with sugar in it.
What is amazing is that there still are many people who believe that eating anything with sugar will be devastating to their health, both physical and mental. They regard a miniature Tootsie Roll, or a dollop of ketchup, with horror. “ It has sugar, sugar is bad for you, I never eat anything with sugar,” they will cry.
Obviously, a diet loaded with sugar is bad because sugary foods usually lack the vitamins, minerals and protein that nourish us. They also tend to be low in fiber and high in fat. Think of cookies, doughnuts, chocolate bars, brownies, ice cream and sheet cake with frosting. They may be more appealing than broiled halibut, Brussels sprouts and brown rice but contain nowhere near the nutrient value. Indeed, they have just about no nutrient value at all.
But sugar is not without its virtues. To begin with, sugary foods taste good. That is why having a Tootsie Roll thrown at parade watchers rather than a turnip is so appealing. Sugary foods are also treats. Treats are not a steady diet; they are foods dolled out for special occasions or after certain chores or tasks are completed. Birthday cakes tend to be sweet, as do wedding cakes.
Sugar does the same thing for the brain as starchy foods. When eaten, it gets the brain to produce the brain chemical serotonin. And serotonin helps us feel better, calmer, more focused and, just as important, less hungry.
We hear all the time from nutrition people and health professionals that we should eat a variety of foods and eat everything in moderation, from wine to wieners. And it should be the same with something containing sugar. A small piece of candy at a parade, or a small candy bar when you fill up the car (and if you walk more, you will fill it up less often), is certainly not overdoing the sugary snacks. And if it makes you feel less grouchy about fuel prices, it might be worth it.
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( 3 / 32 )Earlier this month, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism published a review article by Dr Daniel Bessesen on the best approaches to help obese individuals. There was a lot of “good news” in the paper, especially the report that the number of people becoming obese in the United States seems to have hit a plateau. So it is possible that attempts to get people to eat better may be having some effect. Aggressive treatment of diseases like diabetes and coronary heart disease means that people suffering from these obesity–linked disorders are living longer. And your chances of becoming obese are decreased by 43% if your friends are thin. Still, parts of the article could have been written 50 years ago. It says that weight comes back after the diet is over unless changes are made in eating and exercise. Anyone who has been on a diet and gained back weight could have written that section. Were any new ways of getting the dieter to maintain a changed lifestyle mentioned? No.
But the paper also pointed out, as have previous reviews, that overall mortality is much higher among obese individuals and even among people with only a modest increase in weight.
And you can’t blame obesity on your genes. Although research with animals seemed to point to a connection between some abnormal genes and the tendency to gain weight, the amount of weight gained was small. We are far from claiming that our overeating is due to our DNA.
One intriguing research direction is looking at the bacteria that live in the intestinal tract. Obese animals and humans seem to have more of one type of bacteria and much less of another than normal weight animals and people do. And if the bacteria from an obese mouse is put into the intestine of a lean mouse, the lean one gains weight. The opposite is true as well; when obese people lose weight, their intestinal bacteria look like that of thin people. So one could daydream about eating slimming bacteria (certainly better than eating tape worm eggs) and losing weight. But don’t look for this in your supermarket any time soon.
Fitness is always a component of weight loss and maintenance but seems to take a back seat to dieting. It shouldn’t. Even moderate amounts of exercise have some impact on reducing mortality. One study showed that individuals with large amounts of abdominal fat were at no higher risk of dying than people who were thinner—if the obese individuals were fit. So dust off those weights and oil that treadmill.
Drug therapy may offer some promise of making weight loss easier (although there are no drugs for weight maintenance). Unfortunately, a drug that did produce more weight loss for the people being treated than those getting placebo won’t be available in the United States. There was concern about an increased incidence of depression and anxiety among individuals receiving medication. But there is an enormous amount of effort to find new compounds by drug companies and the National Institutes of Health, so we may be seeing some effective agents in the near future.
In the meantime, there is surgical intervention. It works. A large study compared over nine thousand patients who had bypass surgery to a control group who started out at the same weight. After seven years, the researchers found that mortality among the surgically treated patients was 40% less than the untreated control group. There was a 92% reduction in death due to diabetes and 60% reduction in death due to cancer.
As with every disease or disorder, the best treatment is prevention. Surgery has risks, and there are deaths associated with the type used to help the obese lose weight. Also, by the time people are ready for the surgery, they may have already developed diabetes, heart disease, and bone and joint problems, just to mention a few of the medical problems obese individuals face.
The most important message from this current review is that curing obesity is not a simple problem. Losing weight is not just a matter of pushing yourself away from the table while you are still hungry and then exercising like a lumberjack before going to bed. The article never mentioned weight gain due to antidepressants or inactivity because of a bad back or prolonged stress. Effective treatments, hopefully available in the near future, combined with an understanding of the complex reasons for overeating, may be the ultimate obesity solution.
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( 3 / 48 )We are at the peak mental and physical energy time of year. June 20th marks the longest day. If you live in the northern tier of states, you finally are rewarded for putting up with winter sunsets at 3:45 in the afternoon along with lethargy, difficulty in getting yourself out of the house after dark, endless cravings for something sweet to eat, and feeling grumpy during the late fall and winter. For the next few months, the long hours of sunshine should be pushing your mood and energy upward and your appetite downward. It is a perfect time to lose weight.
Many of us leave the winter and even most of the spring with some extra pounds. Often this is the result of restricted activity due to weather, long hours at work, commuting and being inside near the refrigerator. This changes in the late spring and summer since the extended hours of daylight give us the chance to go for a walk before or after dinner, do yard work, or play catch with the kids. Most of the school carpooling that marked the rest of the year is over and Moms are released from being imprisoned in their cars every afternoon. This gift of more time means that bike tires can be pumped up for a spin or there is an hour free for a walk with a friend.
During this season, winter cravings for carbohydrates lessen or even go away entirely. Scientists now think that the activity of the brain chemical serotonin, which regulates carbohydrate craving and appetite, is more active with longer hours of sunlight. So instead of longing for sweet or starchy foods because our brains need to make more of this chemical, we switch our food choices to the luscious summer fruits and vegetables. The berries—strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries—have arrived, along with golden apricots, juicy pink watermelon and luscious peaches, plums and nectarines. Salads become more interesting as farmers’ markets give us the chance to buy local produce rather than the stuff trucked in across a continent. Vegetables roasted on a grill tempt even non- vegetable eaters and newly picked sweet corn is as sweet as dessert.
And just as important as the summer gifts of time and seasonal food is the gift of emotional well-being. Do you find yourself waking up earlier without an alarm? Do you find yourself humming more? (I have been singing, off key, all the songs to “South Pacific” for days). Do things that normally bother and irritate you seem not so important? Do you sometimes just feel good? A sense of feeling content is the best gift of summer. Maybe changes in the brain, or the environment, cause it. Sitting outside, looking at a garden, hearing the birds, and feeling a soft breeze on your face can do this. We don’t have to invoke the presence of brain chemicals. But it is probably them as well. Whatever the source or reason for feeling better, we’ll take it.
So, try to use these weeks of changed lifestyle to shed a few pounds. They should come off easily. Just adding some, or more, exercise to your daily schedule and eating more vegetables, fruits and fewer snacks and high-fat carbs (like doughnuts) is probably enough to move that needle on the scale downward. And if you lose enough weight, you will have an excuse to buy something new to wear in the fall.
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