Rain rain go a way.....and don't come back til next year!! Ack it is sooooo wet here. BUT I thank the heavens I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, my health and a full (kinda) belly.

I hope you all have a great weekend. I'll be working thru it all! hehehe...

Angel good luck tomorrow!!

Dee we've been having bad weather here also. My power was down for a few hours tonight because a transformer pole blew over.

Fri,April 5, 2006

post daily:1 egg
water goal:10 eggs
Exercise 10 (10 hour curves, 15 minutes walking)
Only favorable carbs: 5 eggs
track calories: 10 eggs (1879 calories)

36 eggs
Total: 3028

wooohoooo....Thanks for all the well wishes!!! We're heading off pretty early in the morning, so I"ll check back in after the race.

eggs for today...Friday.
posting daily total: 1 egg
water goal: 10 eggs
excercise:15 eggs
carb limit: 5 eggs
tracking calories: 10 eggs (1257 calories)
daily total: 41 eggs
challenge total:2640 egg-eroos

They are calling for Rain & thunder here today but the walk is "rain or shine" haha my EX EX boyfriend was driving down from DC but he emailed me and said he was going back to sleep cuz it was realing pouring up there ( he was gonna walk with me) hmmmmm am i that dedicated that i am gonna do this in the rain???

he said i sure hope u dont get sick thats a long way to walk in the rain.. i told him the "hot flashes" will keep me warm.. plus its 63 degrees...

hmmm well i am walking in memory of my aunt... so i think i will just trust in the "big guy" and go for it so far its just gray ominious skies here...

laterz.. have a great day pic a doodles!


P.S. I didnt get 1 thing done yesterday not even 1 pc of laundry lmao

I'M BAAAACKK!!!! What a fantastic feeling!!! It sure changed weather wise though....yesterday it was a balmy hot day of 78 and today? a high of maybe 55 !!!! We were up at 5:30 and out of the house by 6:15am. Very cold
(41) and very windy I might add....but I finished in 34:10 and dh pushed ahead to finish with 31:45 !!!! After getting scanned and a little snack....we were in the car heading home by 8:15am. hehe...amazing!!! A friend of mine was there with her 10yo as he was doing the kids 1mile fun run and she took a picture of me at the finish line!!! woooohooooo now I can add this to my list of accomplishments!!! I was talking to dh on the way home and said...I couldn't imagine doing this with the extra 45 lbs on me, and we were talking that it would be like carrying a 5yo piggy back and jogging!!!

GO CURLY GO!!!

Awesome Angel!!!!! You Rock girlie!!! u have to post the pic for us!!! i am so proud of you!!!!!!!

guess what it never rained till i was getting in the car to come home!!! I walked it in 40:25 not too shabby for a 45 yo, overweight chick with asthma!!! and at least 1/4 mile was straight up hill!!! that about killed me.. but i said if i slow down... it will be over with lmao

Congrats Curly and Angel! Great job to both of you

I have some really good news my current foster cat Katie was adopted to her forever home at an adoption show today. I really liked the couple that took her!

WoooHOOOOO AngelEyes(&dh) and Curly!!! You guys ROCK!!

Angel~ How cool your friend got a picture for you!!! Have you got a frame and a place of honor all picked out yet? hehehe... So, now is it time to start training for the half marathon? Good job Woman!

Curly~ I'm glad you went, even without the wussy-man lol.... Walking for a cause, and a memory is wonderful. I wish we had stuff like that out here, and not on weekends cuz SOME people have to work lol. good Job GF to you TOO!!!!

Val~ I'm soooo ready for spring to get here. We've been real lucky powerwise. Only 2 short outages at home, and none at work! (I'm keeping my fingers crossed big time)! I'm happy to hear about your foster kitty! It's even better you like the people too! She'll have a good home
When you started, what was your Curves schedule and what did you do there? LOL I'm looking for some guidance in my own schedule of what and how much to do.....

Other PIC's~ howdy-DOO!!!!

YEAH CURLY!!! geez, you must have just been a power walking machine!! Great time. Did you call your ex ex and rub it in?

Valerie.....I'm so glad that your foster kitty was adopted. I know she will miss you, but she will get lots of lovin' for sure!!

Iwmonn.....WASSSUP? hehe...a half marathon? Let me think about it....uh...NOT ME!!! I think I'm just a 5K kinda gal.

Here's my next to last set of eggs (I think.....)
daily total post: 1 egg
water goal: 10 eggs
excercise: 25 eggs (race, 30 min treadmill,and a body sculpt class )
carb limit: 5 eggs
tracking calories: 10 eggs (1488 calories)
daily total: 51
challenge total: 2691 beautiful eggs

Hi everyone. I made it safely home. Congrats to the 5K runners/walkers. You guys are amazing!! The conference was pretty good although one of the speakers for an obesity lecture didn't show up which was disappointing. I went to two really interesting talks on obesity yesterday. One was from a public health/global epidemic perspective and the other was on what is happening to kids. On Friday I went to one of lipid disorders and one on The metabolic sydrome/Insulin Resistance that was given by Gerald Reaven. He is the God of this concept. He is the guy who first indentified the whole syndrome and called it "syndrome x." Most of the low carb diet doctors quote him or sometimes misquote him in their books.

First I'll tell you about the lipid lecture. He referenced a couple articles I want to pull and read for myself. One is titled "Effects of Protein, Monounsaturated Fat, and Carbohydrate Intake on Blood Pressure and Serum Lipids. Results of the OmniHeart Randomized Trial." That was published in JAMA last year. This apparently showed benefits to lowering carbohydrate intake and increasing monounsataturated fat intake on those particular cardiovascular risk factors. The other one was in Circulation last year. He didn't give the full title but apparently shows the contribution of various lifestyle modifications to improved cardiovascular health. Really, the first line of his handout says it all. "The health benefits of dietary and lifestyle changes in patients with coronary heart disease have effects on all-cause mortality that are comparable to or exceed the effects of aspirin, statins (cholesterol lowering meds), beta-blockers (a class of blood pressure meds), and ACE Inhibitors (another class of blood pressure meds.)" He also talked about a study that came out this year that showed no real benefit from taking omega 3's. His opinion is that there are problems with this study and he still recommends omega 3's and takes them himself.

Next to Gerald Reaven's lecture. This is actually the second time I"ve heard him. He spoke at the American Psychiatric Association meeting last year believe it or not. Psychiatrists have gotten very interested in this topic because some of the drugs we prescribe are inducing insulin resistance in our patients. He really talked about whether the label of "metabolic syndrome" has any diagnostic utility. There are now 3 different definitions of metabolic syndrome and he feels that makes the whole label useless. He pointed out that what they all have in common is underlying insulin resistance. For those of you who have read the protein power books, where they do talk about Gerald Reaven and his research in detail, this is what Gerald Reaven really says. Based on his rather extensive research, the population can really be divided into thirds. 1/3 is insulin sensitive, 1/3 is insulin resistant, and 1/3 is in between. The more insulin resistant you are, the higher your risk of getting all of the other features we associate with insulin resistance: central obesity, type II diabetes, high cholesterol, etc.... 50% of the variability in insulin resistance is accounted for by genetic facors (which we can't do anything about), and 50% is accounted for by differences in lifestyle: 25% related to obesity, and 25% related to physical activity. These are factors we can modify. He did not talk specifically about the role of restricted carbohydrate diets in his talk but a few of us went up afterwards and asked questions privately. He did say that restricted carbohydrate diets do improve insulin sensitivity but he is in favor of limiting saturated fat based on current research. (Can you say Four Corners). I'll continue in a second post since this is getting long.

The lectures yesterday were from a different perspective. The first one was called Diabesity: A Global Health Challenge. It was given by a guy who works for the Harvard School of Public Health and used to work for the World Health Organization. He didn't really talk about "medicine" he talked about public health. He showed how obesity is becoming a bigger problem around the world as some countries that used to be quite poor develop and urbanize, and how diabetes is following the obesity. One of the most interesting things that I think he said was that if government approached this epidemic like they did tobacco, they might have some impact. There has been a major public health campaign against smoking and the price of cigarettes has skyrocketed. If the USDA decided that it wanted to manipulate the price of certain foods, people would begin to make different food choices. For instance, if a bag of Oreos cost $20, people wouldn't be eating too many oreos. Interesting concept. It might also motivate companies to start producing healthier foods which would be priced lower. Don't kid yourself, the USDA already does manipulate the price of certain foods so this is not such a far fetched idea. He also talked about whether or not medicine and public health was to blame for some of the obesity problem for pushing "low fat" in the 1980's and 90's and said he believes there may be some truth to that argument. He also showed what a terrible job we are doing at controlling diabetes not just in third world countries but right here in US. Only about 10% of diabetics in this country actually meet guidelines for being "under control." That's pathetic!!

The second lecture on adolescents and obesity was interesting. The first guy to speak was a pediatrician. He talked about the influence of the media on kids and how the amount of TV they watch correlates to how heavy they are. How they are constantly bombarded with mixed messages: first commercials for all kinds of non-nutritious food and then messages that they should be as thin as sticks to be "attractive." His feeling is that there isn't much that we as individuals can do about this problem, that it needs to be addressed at a public policy level. The other guy is a med/peds physician from Hershey who has a "non-dieting" approach to weight loss that he uses in his office. He didn't give statistics about how effective it actually is and it doesn't include any recognition of the underlying psychological factors. I went up afterwards and talked to him about the fact that he was missing that piece and that might turn out to be a problem down the road. He might get short term success but long term failure because he didn't address the underlying psychological issues. He seemed to appreciate my comments.

Hope you guys found that as interesting as I did. If anything, I got a little more motivated to exercise. I did learn it has some real measurable health benefits even if it doesn't make a big difference on the scale.

thanks for sharing that Petra... very interesting... very much so the ideas of "Gerald Reaven" kinda makes me wonder about the diets of newborns and how after the 1st few months they stuff babies ful lof cereals..(carbs)... but i tend to think its a genetic issue... i am thinking that maybe its a combo of genetics and serotonin issues..

if i can clarify it... i think many are just carb sensitive.. and we can sure see that the more carbs u eat the more u want .. the more carbs u eat the fatter u get... the fatter u get the more carbs u crave... i think carbs are like "CRACK" for some of us.. what i am not toally sure about is...

do the extra carbs affect your serotonin levels? and then u eat more carbs and your serotonin levels are whacky? or is it just the increased sugar levels in your body from all the carbs that makes u want more....

i really think that "serotonin" comes into play in this as well... becuz if u recall the "phen -fen" approach to weight loss also adjusted the serotonin levels of the body... making you feel satisfied with less food.... i find eating a low carb diet i am satisfied with less food...

anyways after all that rambling... i would be curious to see research on the effects of serotonin by a low carb diet... doh! myabe i can google that..

who knows one day maybe they will find those that tend to gain weight are missing the "carb gene" or something...

i know i am missing chicken pox immunity gene Ive had the dam things 7 times! and the shingles 3 times ...


P.S. I didnt get 1 thing done yesterday not even 1 pc of laundry lmao

There is actually an entire book devoted to the topic of carbs and serotonin called Potatoes not Prozac. This was an Internal Medicine conference, not a psychiatry conference so they were not going to talk about the "addictive" nature of carbs things like that. The take home message from Reaven was that 50% of insulin resistance is genetic but 50% is lifestyle related so it is not a lost cause to try to do something about it. Even if you have the gene, you can still make an impact on your own health by improving your lifestyle.

You have a point about the babies. Maybe pediatricians should be rethinking what they recommend parents feed their babies. Although I suspect most of the damage gets done a lot later when we start having more control over what we eat.

BTW, there is a vaccine for the shingles coming out probably some time this year.

I hope I have not "scienced" you guys out. I went and got those articles and they are really interesting.

The OmniHeart Trial is a little complicated. It came from another trial called the DASH trial in which they recommended a particular high carb, low fat diet to reduce blood pressure. Unfortunately, this diet had a bad effect on patients lipids so the people who designed OmniHeart wanted to see if they could come up with a diet that improved both blood pressure and lipids. They designed 3 diets: 1 similar to the DASH diet (27% fat, 58% carb, 15% protein), one high protein with half the protein coming from plant sources(27% fat, 25% protein, and 48% carb) and one high in unsaturated fat (37% fat, 15% protein, 48% carb). Notice, none of these could really be called low carb diets. Also, they deliberately designed the diets so that people WOULD NOT lose weight because they did not want that to be a factor to be considered in the analysis. People ate each diet for 6 weeks with a 2 week wash out period in between. Their blood pressures, and lipid profiles were drawn at regular intervals during the study. All their food was provided and they were required to keep records of food that was consumed while they were not at the center. Adherence was actually around 96%. They were weighed every day to make sure no one was losing weight.

This is what they found. All three diets lowered blood pressure but the high protein diet was the most effective. It's the only diet that reached statistical significance for lowering blood pressure. The high protein diet also lowered LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol (reminder, this was not a low carb diet). The high unsaturated fat diet raised HDL cholesterol. The high protein diet also lowered triglycerides the most of the three diets.

It appears they are getting closer to identifying an "ideal" diet for reducing cardiovascular risk. In the discussion section they actually say "it is possible that a reduced intake of carbohydrate, rather than an increased intake of protein or monounsaturated fat, is the dietary factor that lowers blood pressure..........Because the glycemic index influences the metabolic effects of dietary carbohydrates, there is a need for additional research that explores the effects of different types of carbohydrate on blood pressure."

The other study is titled "Effect Size Estimates of Lifestyle and Dietary Changes on All-Cause Mortality in Coronary Artery Disease Patients: A systematic review." This is what is called a meta-analysis where they review all of the available research on a particular topic and pool the data to give some sort of summary finding.

This study came from the idea that we often tell heart patients that they should do a bunch of things to improve their health and help them live longer but is there really any scientific evidence to back that up? This study specificially looks at studies in patients with known heart disease: patients who have had a heart attack, an angioplasty, a bypass surgery, etc. So this may or may not apply to the rest of us.

There are 9 things that heart patients are often told to do, and those are studies the authors looked for when doing this analysis. Those 9 things are:
1. stop smoking
2. engage in moderate physical active (30 min. at least 5 days per week)
3. use alcohol in moderation (no more than 2 drinks/day for women and 3/day for men)
4. maintain or attain a healthy body weight (BMI <25) Obese patients should try to lose 10-15% of their body weight.
5. Limit saturated fat intake to no more than 10% of calories
6. Consume fish regularly (1-2 times/week)
7. Consume sufficient amounts of fruits and vegetables (>400 g/d)
8. Use sufficient fiber containing grain products, legumes, and/or nuts
9. Reduce your salt intake.

Here's the shocker. There is only convincing evidence for smoking cessation, regular physical activity, moderate alcohol intake, and one study on combined dietary interventions. However, the evidence for these factors is powerful. Smoking cessation can reduce mortality up to 35% in heart disease patient, increased physical activity showed at 25% reduced mortality benefit, moderate alcohol consumption 20%. There was no good evidence for reducing saturated fat, increasing fish intake by themselves but there was one good study of increased fiber rich foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes), increased fish, and increased monounsaturated fat that showed a mortality redcution of 45%! However you can't figure out how much is accounted for by each component. This is where that line in the hand out comes from. None of the medications that we currently give to heart patients lowers mortality as much as these lifestyle changes. I think we need to change our priorities in medicine a little, don't you?

Surprisingly, there was also no evidence that losing weight reducing mortality in heart patients but that is confusing given the data on physical activity. There is certainly convincing evidence that obesity leads to premature death but not necessarily in heart patients. Strange, huh? The authors think this is just something that has been overlooked so far and someone needs to do a well designed study to see what the real mortality benefit is of weight loss in cardiac patients.