Bacteria Makes Me Fat!
It’s not my fault! Bacteria makes me fat! I am so relieved! (But I am still fat đŚ )
This is an excerpt from Newsweek Magazine, part of a much longer article which you can read for yourself by clicking on the blue type, above.
The grapefruit diet, the Atkins diet, low-fat diets, low-carb diets, the cabbage-soup diet: they and all the other fad diets make the health establishment roll its collective eyes. The only way to lose weight, says every reputable textbook and medical society, is to burn more calories than you consume. And if you are adding pounds, the reason is, pure and simple, that you are consuming more calories than you expend. Weight gain is a straightforward matter of calories in minus calories out, they maintain.
But while the basic math is right, the meaning of âcalories inâ isnât what weâve been taught, according to a growing pile of studies of chubby mice, obese people, svelte mice, and slim people. The calories that matter are not simply the number printed on grocery items, fast-food menus, and those guilt-inducing signs next to Starbucksâ brownies.
The calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes andâas more and more research is showingâthe trillions of bacteria in your intestine. People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighborâs will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendlyâs Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer. So even in people with identical metabolisms, the effects of eating identical foods can be different.
Victory at the Shrimp Basket
This is a moral victory. AdventureMan and I ate at the Shrimp Basket last week and we DID NOT eat fried food! We tried their non-fried platters, AdventureMan had the grilled fish and shrimp, and I had the blackened fish and shrimps. I took the photo before eating! (another victory, woooo HOOOO!)
Yes, I did dip my shrimp in the melted butter. I could not resist. This is one of the best seafood meals I have had in a long time, it was totally delicious.
On the table was this sign:
The oil has started coming ashore in Louisiana. It is thick and gooey, and it is sticking to the marshlands, clinging to delicate feathers on birds and suffocating wildlife. This is the beginning of a long, long, ugly process of trying to reclaim what nature never intended the oil to touch. It is devastating.
Pensacola Ale House and Customer Service
“I think she’s having a problem,” I said to AdventureMan as he huffed because the waitress hadn’t been by the table and he needed something. She – and the manager – were at the table behind AdventureMan, and that couple was raising a stink about something and the waitress and the manager were placating them.
No matter what they did, the woman kept complaining. The man looked embarrassed; you get the impression the woman was trying to get their meals comped or something.
When the waitress came to our table, she took our orders and then we waited again, a long time, before our meals came. The waitress was running around, there was a huge crowd in the Ale House, and we could tell she was a little flustered from her experience with the couple at the next table.
This being retired and living temporarily in a hotel is a real change for us. It means when things are slow, it’s OK. We aren’t in a hurry, we don’t have anywhere we have to be and AdventureMan is only as tired as his exercise program and jet lag force him to be.
Our appetizer came, smoked fish spread and crackers and oh, YUMMM. So good. When our main dishes came, AdventureMan got salad and a big bowl of chili, but I got Chicken Oriental, not Oriental Chicken Salad. I sent it back. No big deal, but I really, REALLY love their Oriental Chicken Salad.
The waitress apologized, and apologized, and we could see she was having a bad night. Of course, it took a while for me to get my order, but it was worth it. Did I mention how I love their Oriental Chicken Salad? There used to be a chicken salad at Chili’s that I liked, Crispy Chicken Salad, and I loved that, except I only wished the chicken were grilled, not fried. At the Pensacola Ale House, the chicken is grilled. There is nothing not to love. The crispy noodles, the tangy salad dressing – it is all good.
It was our son and his wife who told us we would like this place, and they were right. It has a great variety – we could see a lot of burgers, steaks, chicken, Osso Bucco – and everything that went by us was something we would love to try sometime.
When we had finished, the waitress came by again and we assured her we were fine, she had done fine with us, and the mistaken order was no big deal, and it wasn’t. She brought the bill, we paid, and then, when she brought back our change, she brought this – “on the house,” she said, “for being so nice:”
We were so full. Dinner had been so good. But we took a couple bites, just to be polite. It was an Oreo cookie crust, with vanilla ice cream, and another layer of gooey warm caramel before another layer of Oreo crust. It was DIVINE. We ate the whole thing. Well, we left a couple bites, just to be polite. We have a very funny Kuwaiti friend; we could hear him saying “haven’t you ever seen food before?” It was irresistible. It was amazing. Can you tell, we hardly ever eat desserts?
Qatteri Cat in the Pensacola Sunshine
Haven’t done a shot of the Qatteri Cat for a while, and I am always getting requests. He is sleeping with his Dad (AdventureMan) right now, keeping him company while he takes his JetLag Nap.
Here’s a shot from earlier in the day. We get the early morning sunshine, and the QC takes his morning sunbath, watching the world go by:
He is losing a little weight, slowly, the way the vet recommended. When you know how many people in the world are going hungry, it is obscene what a Diet Cat food costs. đŚ The QC now weighs under 20 lbs; this is a good thing.
This is a tiny little Qatteri street cat, found wandering, cold and hungry, with an eye infection, on the Corniche in Qatar about 7 years ago. We have promised him no more long airplane trips; it was just too traumatic for him. But – that was yesterday. As long as the sun is shining and the Qatteri Cat is warm, hey, life is good. đ
Y.M.C.A.
Last week I joined the Y.M.C.A. I joined it because I really really need to exercise, and I don’t think exercise is a lot of fun. In fact, mostly I think it is boring, and I don’t keep up with it. The only exercise I ever keep up with is water aerobics, and I don’t know why, except it isn’t as bad as all the other kinds of exercise. I might like dance-aerobics, if I could ever learn the moves, but I always get discouraged – or embarrassed – before I have been there long enough to figure out the sequences.
So this morning, I attended my very first aqua aerobics class. I was late. I think the devil didn’t want me to exercise; I slept badly last night and then overslept this morning. I walked into class late, and if you have ever taken an exercise class, you know that all the best spots are taken, and I had never been in the pool before. I got in, and discovered where I had entered the pool was over my head.
In the meanwhile, the class goes on, and it is kick-a$$.
I had been trying to talk AdventureMan into considering taking the class with me, but he pooh-poohed it and said aqua-aerobics was girly. No No No, AdventureMan, not this class! This class has participants from teen-age to creaky, men and women, all trying to keep up with the instructor, who sets a relentless pace. We have one hour to get through the entire repetoire, including cool down stretches, and then O-U-T so the next class can get started. There is a hot tub and a steam room, and a totally dry floor policy – like after you shower, you have to be dry before you enter the locker room so no one will slip and fall. There are several elderly women, and people are very protective of them.
I was lucky. There was a very nice young woman who would whisper explanations to me as we went along, and, of course, in the water the fact that you are totally out of your league is not so obvious. She clued me in to the dry floor policy as she helped one of the elderly women get her pool-shoes off, and told me to hang out in the hot tub so my muscles wouldn’t seize up. You wouldn’t think an water exercise could be so demanding, but I can feel some of those muscles already. đ
“Think you’ll be coming back?” she asked as I was leaving.
Oh, YES. đ It was actually . . . fun!
Foods That HELP You Lose Weight
Wooo HOOOO! Eat AND Lose!
This is from AOL + That’s Fit
7 Foods That Help You Lose Weight
Posted on Mar 18th 2010 12:00PM by That’s Fit Editors
by Melanie Haiken, Senior Editor, Caring.com
Don’t get sucked into the idea that food is your enemy when you’re trying to lose weight. In fact, it’s just the opposite: Befriend the right foods, and the pounds are much more likely to peel off than if you just try to cut calories across the board. Here, seven foods known to nutritionists to boost your body’s fat-burning potential.
1. Oats
Wait a minute; aren’t oats a carb? Yes and no. Oats are a whole grain, and they’re high on what nutritionists call the “satiety index,” meaning oats have tremendous power to make you feel full. Not only that, they’re also high in soluble fiber, so they cut cholesterol and blood fat. Oats digest slowly, so they don’t raise your blood sugar, and they keep you feeling filled up well into the late morning. Old-fashioned steel-cut and rolled oats, with up to 5 grams of fiber per serving, are best, but even instant oatmeal has 3 to 4 grams of fiber per serving.
2. Eggs
Nutritionists have been trying for some years to restore the reputation of the lowly egg. No longer thought to be a cholesterol-booster (eggs contain a different type of cholesterol than that in humans), eggs are a concentrated form of animal protein without the added fat that comes with meat. Dietary studies have repeatedly found that when people eat an egg every morning in addition to (or instead of) toast or cereal, they lose twice as much weight as those who eat a breakfast that’s dominated by carbs.
3. Skim Milk
Studies in reputable publications such as the Journal of Obesity (in addition to the controversial ones funded by the National Dairy Council) show that the combination of calcium, vitamin D, and low-fat protein in skim milk and nonfat yogurt trigger weight loss and help build and maintain lean muscle.
4. Apples
To keep the pounds at bay, eat an apple — or two — a day. Numerous studies have found that eating an apple a half hour to an hour before a meal has the result of cutting the calories of the meal. Why? The fiber in the apple makes you feel full, so you eat less. Recent research suggests eating apples has other benefits, too; the antioxidants in apples appear to prevent metabolic syndrome, the combination of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and prediabetes that tends to accompany thickening around the waist.
5. Red Meat
Not exactly what you think of as a diet food, right? But research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared diet results for women who ate red meat and those who didn’t, and the meat-eaters lost more weight. Experts think the dense protein in lean red meat helps you maintain muscle mass — but of course this assumes you’re exercising to build that muscle.
6. Cinnamon
This simple spice appears to have the power to help your body metabolize sugar, according to surprising data that came out of a USDA study involving diabetics. Eating as little as 1/4 to 2 teaspoons of cinnamon a day was found to reduce blood sugar levels and cut cholesterol from 10 to 25 percent. So add cinnamon to smoothies, sprinkle it on your cereal, or flavor your coffee with it — particularly if you take your coffee with cream and sugar. The cinnamon will boost the health benefits of the coffee while helping your body rid itself of the added sugars.
7. Almonds and almond butter
Another counterintuitive choice; aren’t nuts and nut butters supposed to be incredibly fattening? Well, almonds are calorie-dense, but they also pack a huge nutritional punch — and they’re particularly effective in counteracting cholesterol and triglycerides. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that eating almonds was as effective as taking a statin. Spreading almond butter on your morning toast gives you a nice protein boost while preventing the carbs in the toast from spiking your blood sugar.
“Health Care Could be Fixed Overnight . . .”
Today, AOL ran commentaries on American health care and whether the new proposals will make a difference. The comment of one CEO who runs an enormous health provider, caught my eye. As I read it, I thought “he is talking about the USA, but the exact same thoughts apply to Qatar, to Kuwait, to Germany, where an epidemic of self-inflicted health problems is growing wildly.” And it also occurs to me that he is laying the accountability squarely where it belongs – on our shoulders.
David Feinberg, M.D., M.BA.
CEO, UCLA Hospital System
“The debate they’re having now in Washington is the wrong discussion,” says Feinberg. “They’re not talking about health-care reform. They’re talking about health insurance reform. The bill in Congress has nothing to do with health care.” He explains that health care could be fixed overnight if people would stop using alcohol and drugs, eat right and exercise.
“I have 800 patients in this hospital today, and I bet 50 percent of them have illnesses that could have been completely prevented,” Feinberg says. “That situation is not going to get better with a ‘public option.'”
He points out that even people without health insurance can receive care when they need it in the emergency room, and, while it’s not ideal, they’re not being denied care because they don’t have health insurance. “It’s impossible to give high quality, low cost care to everyone. What we need is to decrease demand for health care.”
According to Feinberg, some 75 percent of illnesses are treated at home, whether that’s a bad cold or a sprained ankle, and he says that health-care reform should be focused on home care. “When you compare us to other countries with similar Gross Domestic Products, they spend half what we do on health care because they have a different lifestyle,” he says. “We either need to change our lifestyle, or it’s going to be very expensive.”
“With all due respect,” he adds, “the surgeon general is obese. I don’t think the President of the United States should be solving this.” Rather, he says, each individual needs to come to terms with the fact that eating right, exercising, and avoiding smoking and alcohol will transform not only their own lives but the ever increasing cost of health care in this country.
You can read all the commentaries on AOL Health News. I know most of us in my age group need more exercise (not you, Big Diamond!) and are beginning to stave off the common age-related problems of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, aches and pains, etc. We all KNOW we could be eating better and exercising more. We are smart educated people – but do we do what we know is best for ourselves? NNoooooooooooo!
I see the same epidemic striking in Germany, in Qatar and in Kuwait, people who have enough to eat are eating too much. Yes. Yes. I’m guilty. And I exercise a lot less than I need to. I was so happy to get back into a house, with stairs, so at least I would get the exercise of going up and down stairs a few times a day.
Japan has instituted a national policy of health, measuring citizens waists and penalizing them for carrying too much weight. I will be interested to see how it works out, if it pays off in health benefits and lowered costs down the road. It’s an inspired mandate.
Papaya Fights Cancer
Researchers: Papaya May Fight Cancer
From AOL Health News
By Marrecca Fiore Mar 11th 2010 11:23AM
A study from researchers at the University of Florida finds that papaya has a dramatic anticancer effect against a broad range of lab grown tumors such as those that cause liver cancer and lung cancer.
In a paper published in the Feb. 17 issue of the “Journal of Ethnopharmacology,” University of Florida researcher Nam Dang, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues in Japan say they made a tea using an extract made from dried papaya leaves to fight cancers of the cervix, breast, liver, lung and pancreas. The researchers say the anticancer effects were stronger when cells received larger doses of the tea.
Dr. Dang and his colleagues also documented for the first time that papaya leaf extract boosts the production of key signaling molecules called Th1-type cytokines, which help regulate the immune system. In addition to papaya’s direct antitumor effect on various cancers, the signaling of Th1-type cytokines suggests possible therapeutic strategies that use the immune system to fight cancer, researchers said.
The papaya extract did not have any toxic effects on normal cells, avoiding a common and devastating consequence of many cancer therapy regimens, such as chemotherapy.
The success of the papaya extract in acting on cancer without toxicity is consistent with reports from indigenous populations in Australia and his native Vietnam, said Dang, a professor of medicine and medical director of the UF Shands Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office.
“Based on what I have seen and heard in a clinical setting, nobody who takes this extract experiences demonstrable toxicity; it seems like you could take it for a long time — as long as it is effective,” he said in a statement.
Researchers exposed 10 different types of cancer cell cultures to four strengths of papaya leaf extract and measured the effect after 24 hours. Papaya slowed the growth of tumors in all the cultures.
In a similar analysis, the team also looked at the effect of papaya extract on the production of antitumor molecules known as cytokines. Because the papaya was shown to promote the production of Th1-type cytokines, this raises the possibility of future use of papaya extract components in immune-related conditions such as inflammation, autoimmune disease and some cancers.
Bharat B. Aggarwal, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, already is so convinced of papaya’s restorative powers that he has a serving of the fruit every day.
“We have always known that papaya has a lot of interesting things in there,” Aggarwal, a professor in the center’s department of experimental therapeutics who was not involved in the UF research, said in a statement.
“This paper has not gone too much into identifying the components responsible for the activity, which is just fine. I think that is a good beginning,” Aggarwal said.
Losing Fat Easy and Painless – Too Good to be True?
In an article in today’s Peninsula I learned that I can go in for six treatments, just lie there, no sweat, no starvation diets, and fat can be . . . melted (?) by laser and then massaged away, drained away by my lymphatic system.
It sounds wonderful! No sedation, no risk of infection, no long term ill effects like stomach stapling or banding. The fat just goes away! My dream come true!
I am such a cynic. There is a part of me that just can’t believe it could be that easy. What do you think?
Al Emadi Hospital unveils new technology for fat reduction
Web posted at: 1/6/2010 1:43:36
Source ::: THE PENINSULA
DOHA: Al Emadi Hospital has launched fat reduction services by âZeronaâ, the latest device to break down body fats, becoming the first medical facility in Qatar to have the new technology. The technology saves patient a great deal of time and works without any side effects eliminating Cellulite and fat from the skin, embroidering and strengthening the figure without any surgical interference.
âThe significant role of the device has been scientifically proven success in detecting fat under the skin and fragmenting its sizes into liquid body fats which can be disposed of. The machine uses cold laser technology to break down the fat cells under the skin in several stages. The results do not appear until after six sessions – around two weeks,â said Dr Mohammed Al Emadi, Director, Al Emadi Hospital.
The body fat broken using cold laser can be disposed through the lymphatic vessels with an added help of several massage sessions.
âIt can help to get rid of fats in areas which do not respond to exercise and diet. The device works on the upper and lower limbs, breast and abdomen, neck, back and hips. It helps to dispose of cellulite that leads to distortions in the skin, and helps remove the fat masses in the abdomen and buttocks where a difference can be seen in the outer thigh or waist after the completion of the required sessions,â said Dr Kamal Hussein Saleh, a consultant in medical and plastic surgery and replacements and laser treatments.
A clear change in all clothing measurements has been noted after the sessions, according to Dr Saleh. The fact that it does not cause sudden changes in weight is an added advantage of the device compared with other of laser devices. The device is easy to use and can be used at any time, with no sedation or surgical interference.
Since it is a cold laser, it does not generate any heat or redness on the skin and is makes it possible for the patient to continue normal work after the session. Since the device does not touch with the skin, it is superior to regular lasers which may lead to the transmission of some skin diseases. It does not cause emission of fumes or gases, as it is the case of laser hair removal.
Real Age: 5 Foods that Boost Weight Loss
“I miss the church bells,” I said to AdventureMan last night as we welcomed in the New Year. In Germany, all the bells peal at midnight on New Years, it is a wonderful, rollicking sound. Here in Qatar, where New Year’s is a little suspect, a Western innovation, there is no official countdown, no fireworks – but there are parties. We could hear them!
Traditionally, January is when people get serious about weight loss and better health habits, partially in response to the excesses of the Thanksgiving/Christmas celebrations and partially in anticipation of the austerity of Lent. And the swimsuit season . . .
RealAge sends me the greatest tips, and this is one of them:
5 Foods That Boost Weight Loss
Ready to lose a few pounds in the new year? There are five foods that can help.
And the best part is that you won’t feel like you’re “eating light” with this group of weight-loss-boosting noshes. In fact, it’ll still feel like the holidays!
Salmon: Seems the omega-3 fatty acids in this fish may turbocharge your body’s fat-burning engines — especially when coupled with exercise, one study found.
Eggs: They’re back on the healthy-foods list. In one study, dieters who ate eggs for breakfast were able to stave off hunger longer than the folks who loaded up on carbs at breakfast.
Peanuts: May seem counterintuitive — after all, they are high in fat and calories — but a small daily serving of peanuts may discourage weight gain, research suggests. Possibly because the healthy fats in peanuts are easier to burn off than the unhealthy fats from other fatty treats, like cheesecake and chips. Just make sure you substitute the nuts for another high-calorie food.
Apples: Munch on an apple before every meal and you’ll be less likely to clean your dinner plate, research shows. Apples are fiber-filled yet low in calories, which means you fill up on less.
Fava beans: Why fava beans? Because these creamy beans are loaded with flavonoids. And a 14-year study in women showed that high flavonoid intake may help ward off belly fat.
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