Thursday, February 9, 2012
Friday, November 4, 2011
Choices from the past inform us today
Don't dis what your ancestors knew...
Where were you 4000 years ago? I mean, where were your ancestors and their friends? Mine were in Northern Europe, possibly in the British Isles. Of course we've all had a lot of ancestors, hundreds of them in the past 4000 years, so ‘we’ could have been in many different places.
Of all our ancestors living back then, it is likely that most struggled to get enough food to survive. Some grew their food, others went out looking for it. And as they grew or found what they could, they adapted to it. Or else they didn’t. We sitting today at our computers are the survivors of a long journey of adaptation. Other family lines died out along the way as they failed to grow, find, and adapt.
Where were you 4000 years ago? I mean, where were your ancestors and their friends? Mine were in Northern Europe, possibly in the British Isles. Of course we've all had a lot of ancestors, hundreds of them in the past 4000 years, so ‘we’ could have been in many different places.
Of all our ancestors living back then, it is likely that most struggled to get enough food to survive. Some grew their food, others went out looking for it. And as they grew or found what they could, they adapted to it. Or else they didn’t. We sitting today at our computers are the survivors of a long journey of adaptation. Other family lines died out along the way as they failed to grow, find, and adapt.
They balanced their diets by taste and the messages their bodies sent out: "I'm just dying for some salt" probably had a literal meaning back then. They were lucky when they had enough of anything! A plump salmon or young reindeer were probably life-saving in the bounty they provided.
Anyone who grew his own food chose which squash or green to save the seeds from, so crops changed over time. If you tasted a squash from just 200 years ago, it would have been far different from anything available today. Tastes change: we grow what we like, and we’d better like what we grow! What satisfies today’s palate is no doubt far different from what was even acceptable in a different era. (Have you had a hankering for beetles recently?)
What hasn’t changed are the body’s nutritional requirements. How we get them - the food we eat today - has changed, but what we need - the list of nutrients - hasn’t. We still must have the 3 (or 4) macronutrients: carbs, fats, and protein, (and possibly fiber goes here). And we must have a large number of micronutrients, 80 of them or more, some in the most minute amounts. What we need is what we grew or found long ago that allowed our lines to survive when other lines didn’t.
Since the 1980s, for politics and profits, one of these macronutrients has taken a bad rap. You can read about it here. One of these essential sources of normal body function has been and continues to be villified as bad. (How can a fundamental building block of the human body be deemed bad?)
That macronutrient is fat.
You know how bad fat is! You hear it all the time. You are probably drawn to low-fat alternatives, to margarine (a manufactured product) over butter (a natural product). To lean meat over fatty. To egg whites over yolks. To low-fat cookies. And of all absurdities, to non-fat sour ‘cream’. (How can there even be such a product? Cream is the fat of the milk!)
No doubt you recognize these choices, and you have probably made them. I certainly have.
Twenty or so years ago, we took our family to a remote spot every summer to camp in our travel trailer. We’d carry all our food, including snacks. I had read a lot about the importance of low fat, so I chose that option whenever possible.
For cookies, this meant choosing ones similar to fig newtons, with gooey fruit-based filling inside and a cakey outside. The fat content was less than 30%, the well-publicized new recommendation for a healthy diet. Yay, cookies that were good for us! Perfect!
HOWEVER, that gooey filling was based on the new healthy wonder sweetener high fructose corn syrup, now well known as the basis of our overweight epidemic.
When the percentage of fat is lowered, the percentage of carbs has to go up. (You have to make cookies out of something!). And this trade-off happened not just in the cookies I bought. For 20-plus years we all have been buying low-fat foods, and that of necessity means high-carb foods. High-carb foods mess with our blood sugar and lead to obesity and diabetes, which leads to heart disease and so on and so on.
I want to leave politics and profits out of it for now. The bottom line is that we have all come to feel that FAT IS BAD!
How can a major nutrient be bad?
The fact is, fat isn’t bad. Fat is essential. Our brains are made of fat! Fat keeps us happy. It satisfies our hunger and leaves us satisfied for hours. (Carbs stimulate our appetite.) And it doesn’t make us fat! Here is a post that links to several articles to read for more information about what’s good about fat, and why you should be very wary of low-fat foods. Everyone should be wary of low-fat foods, including those who want to lose weight.
Losing weight was just what our ancestors feared. They did all they could to eat when they could. Times change in terms of the food supply. It's odd that today we are in danger of starvation just as they were, but for different reasons: ours ignorance is in not trusting our bodies to know. Don't you just love butter, real butter? That's because it's good for you. More on this important topic soon.
Anyone who grew his own food chose which squash or green to save the seeds from, so crops changed over time. If you tasted a squash from just 200 years ago, it would have been far different from anything available today. Tastes change: we grow what we like, and we’d better like what we grow! What satisfies today’s palate is no doubt far different from what was even acceptable in a different era. (Have you had a hankering for beetles recently?)
What hasn’t changed are the body’s nutritional requirements. How we get them - the food we eat today - has changed, but what we need - the list of nutrients - hasn’t. We still must have the 3 (or 4) macronutrients: carbs, fats, and protein, (and possibly fiber goes here). And we must have a large number of micronutrients, 80 of them or more, some in the most minute amounts. What we need is what we grew or found long ago that allowed our lines to survive when other lines didn’t.
Since the 1980s, for politics and profits, one of these macronutrients has taken a bad rap. You can read about it here. One of these essential sources of normal body function has been and continues to be villified as bad. (How can a fundamental building block of the human body be deemed bad?)
That macronutrient is fat.
You know how bad fat is! You hear it all the time. You are probably drawn to low-fat alternatives, to margarine (a manufactured product) over butter (a natural product). To lean meat over fatty. To egg whites over yolks. To low-fat cookies. And of all absurdities, to non-fat sour ‘cream’. (How can there even be such a product? Cream is the fat of the milk!)
No doubt you recognize these choices, and you have probably made them. I certainly have.
Twenty or so years ago, we took our family to a remote spot every summer to camp in our travel trailer. We’d carry all our food, including snacks. I had read a lot about the importance of low fat, so I chose that option whenever possible.
For cookies, this meant choosing ones similar to fig newtons, with gooey fruit-based filling inside and a cakey outside. The fat content was less than 30%, the well-publicized new recommendation for a healthy diet. Yay, cookies that were good for us! Perfect!
HOWEVER, that gooey filling was based on the new healthy wonder sweetener high fructose corn syrup, now well known as the basis of our overweight epidemic.
When the percentage of fat is lowered, the percentage of carbs has to go up. (You have to make cookies out of something!). And this trade-off happened not just in the cookies I bought. For 20-plus years we all have been buying low-fat foods, and that of necessity means high-carb foods. High-carb foods mess with our blood sugar and lead to obesity and diabetes, which leads to heart disease and so on and so on.
I want to leave politics and profits out of it for now. The bottom line is that we have all come to feel that FAT IS BAD!
How can a major nutrient be bad?
The fact is, fat isn’t bad. Fat is essential. Our brains are made of fat! Fat keeps us happy. It satisfies our hunger and leaves us satisfied for hours. (Carbs stimulate our appetite.) And it doesn’t make us fat! Here is a post that links to several articles to read for more information about what’s good about fat, and why you should be very wary of low-fat foods. Everyone should be wary of low-fat foods, including those who want to lose weight.
Losing weight was just what our ancestors feared. They did all they could to eat when they could. Times change in terms of the food supply. It's odd that today we are in danger of starvation just as they were, but for different reasons: ours ignorance is in not trusting our bodies to know. Don't you just love butter, real butter? That's because it's good for you. More on this important topic soon.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Walking: Is that all it takes?
Walking is not all it takes. The real formula for health includes:
Good food - fresh, garden-fresh if possible, with lots of fruits and veggies
Weight management - We recommend Cinch Inch-Loss Plan because the high leucine and balanced carbs and protein mean building lean muscle mass and feeling satisfied. Read more about it here.
Physical activity - How much? More than you are doing now. That statement is the latest news in fitness.
Good supplementation - Click here to read about the recommended program.
These 4 are considered the essentials for building or maintaining health.
Good food - fresh, garden-fresh if possible, with lots of fruits and veggies
Weight management - We recommend Cinch Inch-Loss Plan because the high leucine and balanced carbs and protein mean building lean muscle mass and feeling satisfied. Read more about it here.
Physical activity - How much? More than you are doing now. That statement is the latest news in fitness.
Good supplementation - Click here to read about the recommended program.
These 4 are considered the essentials for building or maintaining health.
Philosophizing: Why walking works
These are my thoughts about why walking works so well to make us healthier:
Once upon a time, long long ago, we walked everywhere we went. This is before cars, before horses and camels, before reindeer....
Not much before reindeer, though.
Here's the story I tell myself when I think of the time before cars and domesticated animals:
'We' (my ancestors, and maybe yours) left Africa and wandered to the Fertile Crescent. But this was before agriculture. Then we started following the retreating glaciers of a long-ago Ice Age. We walked northward well into Europe. Then came another Ice Age, and we went south again, possibly to Iberia. Then the ice finally retreated and we walked back to the north country, and some of 'us' found our way to the British Isles.
Even though all that took more than 50,000 years, it was still a lot of walking! And those for whom walking was good survived to pass that trait on to their kids and those for whom walking was not good did not survive to pass that trait on to their kids.
Walking takes us to where the food is. Walking takes us to shelter. And since we walked everywhere, our whole bodies are adapted to walking. For example, the motion of the muscles in our legs while we're in motion supplements the efforts of our heart. Walking aids digestion. Walking uphill builds our endurance, while the stretching we experience going downhill helps cells metabolize better. (This isn't understood, but it's true, and when someone walks up and down hill today it causes better heart function AND prevents diabetes!)
We evolved walking. We are adapted to walking. THEREFORE, walking is good for us. And if we do it, we will thrive. And if we don't - we don't at our peril.
That's it for now. Much more could be said, and I need to show the citations for these claims. I'll do it later, after I take a walk.
Once upon a time, long long ago, we walked everywhere we went. This is before cars, before horses and camels, before reindeer....
Not much before reindeer, though.
Here's the story I tell myself when I think of the time before cars and domesticated animals:
'We' (my ancestors, and maybe yours) left Africa and wandered to the Fertile Crescent. But this was before agriculture. Then we started following the retreating glaciers of a long-ago Ice Age. We walked northward well into Europe. Then came another Ice Age, and we went south again, possibly to Iberia. Then the ice finally retreated and we walked back to the north country, and some of 'us' found our way to the British Isles.
Even though all that took more than 50,000 years, it was still a lot of walking! And those for whom walking was good survived to pass that trait on to their kids and those for whom walking was not good did not survive to pass that trait on to their kids.
Walking takes us to where the food is. Walking takes us to shelter. And since we walked everywhere, our whole bodies are adapted to walking. For example, the motion of the muscles in our legs while we're in motion supplements the efforts of our heart. Walking aids digestion. Walking uphill builds our endurance, while the stretching we experience going downhill helps cells metabolize better. (This isn't understood, but it's true, and when someone walks up and down hill today it causes better heart function AND prevents diabetes!)
We evolved walking. We are adapted to walking. THEREFORE, walking is good for us. And if we do it, we will thrive. And if we don't - we don't at our peril.
That's it for now. Much more could be said, and I need to show the citations for these claims. I'll do it later, after I take a walk.
Recipes: Garden recipes for late spring
This pair of recipes uses things that you might find in your garden right now. I've made each of them from my garden: first rhubarb and then kale. Even if you have to buy these in the store, they're in season now and at the peak of their taste and freshness.
Rhubarb chutney - a versatile spicy/savory concoction using rhubarb - could be canned
Savory creamed kale - very satisfying!
Rhubarb chutney - a versatile spicy/savory concoction using rhubarb - could be canned
Savory creamed kale - very satisfying!
How-to: Rules for walking mailboxes
Walking the mailboxes is a technique invented by the man I call Jack (see story: The man who walked back through time). Here's how it's done. These rules are mine, based on my experience.
1. Add one new mailbox each walking day.
2. Return home by the same route, doing the same mailboxes as on the way out, in reverse order. (This one sounds simple till you begin to apply it...)
3. If you miss a day, make no change in applying Rule #1.
4. If you miss another day, back off one day (one mailbox).
5. If you miss because you are sick, back off one mailbox each subsequent day; if you miss because you just didn't get out there and do it, back off one mailbox every two days.
6. Each mailbox counts as a mailbox. If several come together in clumps, count them separately.
7. If you don't have mailboxes at the street, you can count driveways instead.
Try it, then report back here on how you're doing. PL
1. Add one new mailbox each walking day.
2. Return home by the same route, doing the same mailboxes as on the way out, in reverse order. (This one sounds simple till you begin to apply it...)
3. If you miss a day, make no change in applying Rule #1.
4. If you miss another day, back off one day (one mailbox).
5. If you miss because you are sick, back off one mailbox each subsequent day; if you miss because you just didn't get out there and do it, back off one mailbox every two days.
6. Each mailbox counts as a mailbox. If several come together in clumps, count them separately.
7. If you don't have mailboxes at the street, you can count driveways instead.
Try it, then report back here on how you're doing. PL
True Story: My walking miracle
Back in 2007, John retired earlier than we'd ever dared hope for. That freed us to undertake a long-term service project we had thought would be years in the offing. All we had to do was pass the physicals!
I didn't know it, but at that time I was seriously anemic. I knew I didn't have a lot of energy, and though anemia would explain the way I felt, I never considered it as a possibility. Instead I had secretly concluded that I was in the early stages of heart disease. My mom had had it....
All I could think to do, as I prepared for the physical some months off, was to build up my heart function with exercise, specifically with walking. I had had experience before with walking and knew I would experience at least some improvement.
So I began walking the mailboxes.
"Walking the mailboxes" was my name for what Jack did. (See The man who walked back through time.) I had walked the mailboxes with my dog 10 years before, and had ended up walking miles and miles every day, losing weight, and gaining stamina and endurance.
But now we lived in a new area. I didn't want to walk on any busy streets. I looked around our neighborhood: plenty of mailboxes, some quite far apart, some in bunches. Some flat, some hills. I would give it a try!
The first day always seems a bit silly. The first mailbox is our own. Out and back takes a minute or two. But over time the distances start to add up. By the time the day of the physical rolled around, I was walking at my fastest speed something between 2 1/2 and 3 miles at a time, 6 days a week.
I had the physical. Part of the form required a trip to the cardiologist for a stress test. As I sat in her office, I saw a chart on the wall describing various levels of cardiac fitness, bright red at the top, dusky purple at the bottom; bright red - grade A - for great heart function, dusky purple - grade F - for heart failure. I thought to myself, oh please let me a B! I'm too young to be worse than that!
She examined me and set up a date for the nuclear stress test, about a week later. More waiting! I kept walking, going a little farther and a little faster each day.
The test took place on a treadmill. They hooked me up to an IV and measuring devices and so on. They asked me if I was worried about being able to walk on the treadmill. I said no, as long as they started slowly so I could warm up. I put my feet on the belt, they pushed the button, and we were off to the races! Full throttle! I started chugging away, striding out as fast as I could.
Soon I settled into a rhythm. It wasn't particularly hard. I was surprised when they said I could stop or keep going. I said I would keep going. They said to let them know when I'd had enough. After a bit I thought I should just stop. I had no idea how long it would take to taper down and when I'd actually be able to hop off, and I didn't want to fall over dead before the machine let me stop.
No worries! It stopped as fast as it had started. I could have gone on for another minute or two, at least.
They had to inject things and time things and take blood pressure and watch me for several minutes. Finally we were done. I found out then that I wouldn't get the results for another week.
I came back and ended up sitting in the same room waiting for the doctor as before and looking at that red-to-purple chart. Again I hoped I could make the B grade.
Finally the doctor came in, with some papers in hand. She sat down to talk to me. She said, "You passed." I was so relieved! But I had to ask: what level, what grade? How well did I do?
She said, oh, A+ of course. No problems at all.
I was ecstatic. We would be able to do the service project! And I didn't have heart disease! What a huge relief!
It was later that I found out I had serious iron-deficiency anemic. In fact, the anemia almost kept us home from the service project.
That just pointed out how much walking had done for me. I had done the whole 'walking the mailboxes' program with impaired oxygen-carrying capacity due to the anemia. I had passed the stress test with anemia. What would it be like when I got a little iron in my system?
That's another story. This story is about walking and the miraculous things it can do for the body.
I didn't know it, but at that time I was seriously anemic. I knew I didn't have a lot of energy, and though anemia would explain the way I felt, I never considered it as a possibility. Instead I had secretly concluded that I was in the early stages of heart disease. My mom had had it....
All I could think to do, as I prepared for the physical some months off, was to build up my heart function with exercise, specifically with walking. I had had experience before with walking and knew I would experience at least some improvement.
So I began walking the mailboxes.
"Walking the mailboxes" was my name for what Jack did. (See The man who walked back through time.) I had walked the mailboxes with my dog 10 years before, and had ended up walking miles and miles every day, losing weight, and gaining stamina and endurance.
But now we lived in a new area. I didn't want to walk on any busy streets. I looked around our neighborhood: plenty of mailboxes, some quite far apart, some in bunches. Some flat, some hills. I would give it a try!
The first day always seems a bit silly. The first mailbox is our own. Out and back takes a minute or two. But over time the distances start to add up. By the time the day of the physical rolled around, I was walking at my fastest speed something between 2 1/2 and 3 miles at a time, 6 days a week.
I had the physical. Part of the form required a trip to the cardiologist for a stress test. As I sat in her office, I saw a chart on the wall describing various levels of cardiac fitness, bright red at the top, dusky purple at the bottom; bright red - grade A - for great heart function, dusky purple - grade F - for heart failure. I thought to myself, oh please let me a B! I'm too young to be worse than that!
She examined me and set up a date for the nuclear stress test, about a week later. More waiting! I kept walking, going a little farther and a little faster each day.
The test took place on a treadmill. They hooked me up to an IV and measuring devices and so on. They asked me if I was worried about being able to walk on the treadmill. I said no, as long as they started slowly so I could warm up. I put my feet on the belt, they pushed the button, and we were off to the races! Full throttle! I started chugging away, striding out as fast as I could.
Soon I settled into a rhythm. It wasn't particularly hard. I was surprised when they said I could stop or keep going. I said I would keep going. They said to let them know when I'd had enough. After a bit I thought I should just stop. I had no idea how long it would take to taper down and when I'd actually be able to hop off, and I didn't want to fall over dead before the machine let me stop.
No worries! It stopped as fast as it had started. I could have gone on for another minute or two, at least.
They had to inject things and time things and take blood pressure and watch me for several minutes. Finally we were done. I found out then that I wouldn't get the results for another week.
I came back and ended up sitting in the same room waiting for the doctor as before and looking at that red-to-purple chart. Again I hoped I could make the B grade.
Finally the doctor came in, with some papers in hand. She sat down to talk to me. She said, "You passed." I was so relieved! But I had to ask: what level, what grade? How well did I do?
She said, oh, A+ of course. No problems at all.
I was ecstatic. We would be able to do the service project! And I didn't have heart disease! What a huge relief!
It was later that I found out I had serious iron-deficiency anemic. In fact, the anemia almost kept us home from the service project.
That just pointed out how much walking had done for me. I had done the whole 'walking the mailboxes' program with impaired oxygen-carrying capacity due to the anemia. I had passed the stress test with anemia. What would it be like when I got a little iron in my system?
That's another story. This story is about walking and the miraculous things it can do for the body.
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