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6907. judithathome - 4/9/2007 7:17:14 PM I'm going to up my walking each day by going out 2 or 3 times a day...I'm doing so much better with the morning walk but need to do it more than just mornings.
Okay, I'm about to admit something that is shameful...knowing all I do about my bones and what is good for them and what is bad, I became addicted to Diet Lime Coke...I'd drink a 12 pack a week and have been doing this for more than a year.
I quit cold turkey a week and a half ago because I was having muscle pains and low energy and all sorts of other unpleasant side effects...all that has completely stopped since stopping the evil Diet Coke. I am so energetic and wake up without pains in my muscles and I feel very GOOD. I have decided if I want a coke, I will drink a real one, nothing diet...I am never going to ingest artificial sweetener again.
I'm not a sweet tooth at all...can live without desserts, chocolate, sugar...that's not my weakness. My weakness is salty stuff like chips and crackers and breads and pastas. I don't keep that stuff around so it's not a problem except occasionally at parties or dining out. I don't understand why I started with this Diet Coke crap but it's over now and I am feeling much, much better.
Okay, that's not true...I do understand it. It was because during the summer, I'd have Captain Morgan rum with the diet lime coke with my friends after a swim. But then, I started just drinking the diet cokes (plain) throughout the day...thankfully, I decided to quit both. It's decaf teas over ice for me from now on.... 6908. thoughtful - 4/9/2007 7:21:16 PM J@h, my grandmother was very sensitive to any kind of artificial sweetener too. The only ones that aren't supposed to be a problem are a) xylitol, with the caveat that it does have calories and is a sugar alcohol so it can give you the trots if you have too much and b) steevia which is an herbal sweetener.
If you like something bubbly to drink without sweeteners, you might try the flavored seltzer waters. I like the wild berry and the black cherry especially, but there are lots of flavors...no calories, no sweeteners. 6909. betty - 4/9/2007 7:33:39 PM thoughtful,
that has been the thing that keeps me running...the mental. Running manages my depression better than anything else I've ever tried. Honestly, my life is almost entirely out of control but at the end of the run, well, at least I've accomplished one thing that day. And it's funny but I have absolutely no desire to run on a treadmill, being outside and seeing my community is so much more appealing, although I'm probably going to have to get a treadmill in order to keep my training level up this next year.
6910. betty - 4/9/2007 7:37:42 PM I have thankfully, never had a Soda problem so I can't even imagine what that does to a body but I'm glad you are over it J. 6911. judithathome - 4/9/2007 7:40:54 PM If you like something bubbly to drink without sweeteners,
That's just it...I don't really like bubbly stuff except for champagne. It had to be the delivery system for the rum that got me hooked...because I was definitely hooked. Not on the rum but on the coke! 6912. thoughtful - 4/9/2007 7:53:32 PM betty, i agree. when the weather was really bad, I'd try using the treadmill indoors but even with the tv on, I'd get bored to tears...outside there's so much to see and watch and smell and feel...it's very mentally stimulating.
So now, unless it pouring rain, I go out. 6913. clydefo - 4/9/2007 8:14:04 PM I don't think we're going to solve this argument here any more than ornish v. atkins solved it over the years they were fighting about diet too.
Thoughtful,to the extent that it's a matter of preference, mine is a low-fat diet because it seems to work best at facilitating the beneficial effects of exercise. High fat content blood is less efficient at doing what blood is supposed to do. In addition, whether it's weight maintenance or a weight loss program, the Pritikin or Ornish approach gets rid of excess body fat without inducing ketosis. The body prefers clean burning glucose as fuel and a complex carb diet delivers a steady supply without insulin spikes. Pritikin pointed out that in the 10/9/82 Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, of 850 contestants, "first, second and fourth places were won by men on the Pritikin diet." 6914. alistairConnor - 4/9/2007 10:32:29 PM Wow, great story Judith...
Beware of rum, boys and girls... it seems harmless enough, but it can lead onto harder stuff... like Diet Lime Coke! 6915. alistairConnor - 4/9/2007 10:37:49 PM Mago : I'm 180 cm, so it's not an excessive weight for my height, just a matter of what feels right.
I'm reducing the carbs at the moment : I'll cook meat or fish and not do potatoes or rice. I don't need to eat a lot to feel satisfied, so it should be easy enough to control.
I'm a little bit light on fruit and veg at the moment. Mostly because I buy what's grown locally, and there isn't much variety at the moment. But otherwise I'm not too far off a Tful diet. 6916. judithathome - 4/9/2007 11:32:48 PM Beware of rum, boys and girls... it seems harmless enough, but it can lead onto harder stuff... like Diet Lime Coke!
Trust me, the Diet Lime Coke is far worse for me than the rum!
6917. clydefo - 4/10/2007 3:01:44 AM 6780. thoughtful - 3/27/2007 9:30:05 AM
Consider your typical 'healthy' american breakfast. It is nothing but a total sugar load, so everyone starts their day with a sugar high and insulin rush.
orange juice
Raisin bran
Skim milk
banana
coffee
You're looking at about 85 grams of sugar or about 21 teaspoons, depending on if you add milk and sugar to your coffee.
6879. thoughtful - 4/5/2007 5:27:51 PM
clydefo, you assumed i meant complex carbohydrates. Well carbos are carbos the way the body sees them. It all gets converted to sugar which, as I said before, must be burned immediately or converted to fat.
The difference between complex and simple carbs are of course the amount of fiber that comes with them, which helps slow digestion and eases the 'sugar shock' that comes with carbs. And complex carbs like whole grains and starchy vegetables carry a boatload of nutrition...
How do you reconcile the two highlighted statements?
An orange, banana, 1C raisin bran and 1/2 C skim milk works out to be 15g fiber, 5% fat calories, 11%protein calories and 84% complex carb calories. The "sugar" is fuel and it is a slow feed. The 12 grams of protein provides all the amino acids the body can't produce on it's own to get off to a good start on tissue repair. Same idea with two and one-half grams of fat. The body neither needs or wants protein and fat as fuel. They create more work for the body when used for that purpose. This breakfast is ideal and will easily get one through to the mid-morning meal. 6918. arkymalarky - 4/10/2007 4:52:47 AM Thanks for the info and the personal stories, y'all! I read through and will read and commment more tomorrow.
Food-wise was fine today, and otherwise the day sucked. Not much to do about that, but I felt physically a lot better today, which helped me with the sucky aspect. I think I will sleep well too, (though I wish I were already asleep) whereas a day like this often really takes a toll on my sleep.
I think this whole thing and the way the thread is going is great. 6919. arkymalarky - 4/10/2007 11:32:45 PM Great experience wrt the running, Betty.
My exercise is going better more quickly than I thought, even though outside exercise is out. Since I'm doing several different things, it's fun, and when I go back to the Ada Basic Training tapes, they are very varied and balanced and I've never gotten bored with them. 6920. arkymalarky - 4/10/2007 11:33:17 PM And having a (very) sucky day yesterday didn't affect today at all. 6921. judithathome - 4/11/2007 12:20:44 AM I drink V8 juice every day and finally checked the sodium content and nearly fainted. Today I bought the Low Sodium and discovered it tastes just as good with 70% less sodium. Gah! 6922. arkymalarky - 4/11/2007 12:26:54 AM I do the low sodium, and it tastes salty to me--not bad, at all, just right. 6923. judithathome - 4/11/2007 12:30:05 AM Yeah...I can't believe I could drink it the other way! You know how we never add salt to anything and this V8 stuff is FINE without it. 6924. thoughtful - 4/11/2007 2:11:17 PM We only drink the low sodium V8 too. 6925. thoughtful - 4/11/2007 3:14:45 PM clydefo, I should've been more specific. Though technically not correct, when I think complex carbs, I think carbs that come with more fiber to slow down digestion, though clearly not all complex carbs are high fiber. And that's the difference.
See this article which does a good job of explaining the difference between simple sugars, complex sugars and dietary fiber and the impact on insulin levels.
Including:
Excess carbohydrates also causes generalized vascular disease. The high-carbohydrate diet which is now so popular causes the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin, and if this happens for many years in a genetically predisposed person, the insulin receptors throughout the body become resistant to insulin. Because insulin's action is to drive glucose into the cells, this results in chronic hyperglycemia, also called "high blood sugar." A large portion of this sugar is stored as fat resulting in obesity. Excess insulin also causes hypertension and helps initiate the sequence of events in the arterial wall which leads to atherosclerosis and heart disease.
Adult onset diabetes is known to be greatly benefited by the adoption of a low carbohydrate diet, moderate in fat, which stresses the importance of a regular intake of sufficient protein. You will not hear this advice from the American Diabetes Association, (or from most doctors) since they are still operating on the research as it was twenty years ago.
You might ask yourself why pritikin has to go back to 1982 to find ironmen following his diet....they've learned a lot in the last 25 years.
Further, you keep talking about protein and fat as "bad" sources of energy. The fact that the body has to do more work means the energy gotten out of those foods is acquired more slowly, thus reducing insulin rush. But the nutrition story is not only about energy. It is also about necessary amino acids and essential fatty acids and other nutrients that are required for body function. Yes a body can live on a lot of different diets ... it does a terrific job of accommodating whatever deprivations it can, including leaching calcium from bones and teeth if it's not getting enough of it in the diet. But that is not the same as feeding it well. Consider, (from the same article linked above):
While it is true that fiber is an important part of your diet, even necessary to protect you from some diseases, carbohydrates themselves are not necessary. There are "essential" fatty acids and "essential" amino acids (from protein), however there are no known essential carbohydrates.
I'm far from recommending a low to no carb diet. I am however recommending a balanced diet. Pritikin, as by your own admissions, is not balanced...it is significantly biased to carbs, with the consequent damage to the body. 6926. clydefo - 4/11/2007 6:57:41 PM Pritikin died in 1985. Show me a modern marathon runner on a high fat diet and I'll show you a Jim Fixx waiting to happen. He proved you can't "outrun" a bad diet.
Dr. Kennedy at your link is sadly misinformed. (ask to see his diploma) He said:
...There are two groups of complex carbs: high fiber and low fiber. High-fiber, complex carbs are not digestible, at least not by human beings...
This foolish statement is contradicted at the start of his next paragraph; to wit:
"High-fiber (high-cellulose) vegetable foods are the healthiest choices for human nutrition, and intake of these foods is associated with lowered incidences of hypertension, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, etc. Examples are lettuce and broccoli. Examples of low-fiber, complex carbs are banana, tomato, squash and all cereals and grains (therefore bread and pasta), potatoes and rice...
He obviously is unaware of the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber and their sources. The banana he calls low-fiber has the same amount as his "high fiber" broccoli. He seems not to recognize that it is the soluble fiber that plays the greater role in regulating sugar digestion. His cellulose, or roughage, mostly serves to keep things moving along through the gut.
...Most of our carbohydrates come from cereals and grains, both products of the agricultural revolution. Our bodies are not genetically designed to thrive on large amounts of these fiberless complex carbs..."
Fiberless? This is incorrect even using his erroneous definition. Grains are an excellent source of "high fiber cellulose". (I would also ask to see his credentials in Anthropology and Genetics)
...While it is true that fiber is an important part of your diet, even necessary to protect you from some diseases, carbohydrates themselves are not necessary. There are "essential" fatty acids and "essential" amino acids (from protein), however there are no known essential carbohydrates.
Why this disingenuous nonsense? "Essential" means that it is not synthesized in the body. What part produces the "necessary", essential anti-disease fiber? Fiber comes with carbohydrates and so is in fact "essential" by his own fractured logic.
Frankly, "balanced diet" is a meaningless phrase because it has so many meanings. A little of everything on the smorgasbord? Moderation in all things? To look at them, most Americans seem to think it means a third each of calories from fat, protein and carbs. I prefer a weighted diet. Enough of all that's needed with more of the good and less of the bad.
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