Daring Young Mom writes about how to lose weight and asks for comments. Some of the answers are serious, such as “don’t graze. Only eat sitting down. And don’t do anything else but eat.” (That last actually doesn’t work for me. If I only eat, I eat a lot more because I’m paying attention to the food.) Some are less so, such as “Dye all your food blue. Go into a coma or onto Survivor.”

Some thoughts on how to lose weight:

1. Start your morning with caffeine. Green tea is the best, if you can drink the stuff.

2. Quit eating at 7 pm. (Assuming you have a semi-normal day schedule.) The later you eat, the more likely the stuff is to end up as excess because you aren’t doing enough to use it up.

3. Eat smaller portions. This can mean several things. Eat smaller meals. Eat on a smaller plate. Even eating five times a day can help, if you eat around 300 calories each time. (You use up about 100 calories on the eating/digesting. So 1500 calories with 300 calories to digestion or 1500 calories with 500 to digestion.)

4. Add steps to your day. If you normally take everything upstairs at once, don’t. Make several trips. If you are the parking spot guru, give up that close one and walk a little farther. Go down every aisle at the grocery store, if you can manage not to buy the bad stuff. Take the dog out for a walk instead of just letting her into the backyard. This is in addition to 30 minutes of “exercise” a day.

5. Lift weights. If you lift weights you will,
gain muscle.
lose fat.
gain bone density.
look fitter.
tone up.
The only way you will look horrific because of lifting weights is if you take lots of steroids or more testosterone than the average teenage male has in their system.

6. Add veggies and limit refined sugars. Add a huge helping of veggies to each meal and only eat half of the refined sugars you would normally have. For example, when I’m making spaghetti, I make myself a salad and skip the garlic bread. Switch to whole wheat (not enriched whole wheat flour, but whole wheat) instead of processed foods. It takes your tummy longer to digest.

7. Don’t eat lots of veggies that turn to sugar quickly: peas, carrots, potatoes, corn.

8. Buy smaller or individual packets of your junk foods, if you are going to have them in the house. Buy the boxes of Oreos that come in 100 calorie packages instead of the cheaper, but far easier to abuse, Oreos bag.

9. Eat slowly. The slower you eat, the more likely it is that your tummy will send your brain the full signal before you’ve polished off enough calories for a sumo wrestler.

10. Make a list of 1o things that make you feel better and post them on the fridge. When you are tempted to eat because of a bad day, read the list and go do one of those. My list includes “have sex, walk, read a book.”

11. Drink water. Lots of water. If you have enough that you are sufficiently hydrated, your body will not hold on to so much water weight. You can lose up to 10 pounds just from drinking water. But you have to do it every day. Drink at LEAST 64 oz a day. But then drink half your pound weight in ounces of water. (If you weigh 150, drink 75 oz of water.) Tea will work. Flavored water will work. Soda does not count.

12. Don’t just measure your weight. Also take inches measurements. Five inches off my waist is a great motivator to keep up the good work!

13. Fall in love. I know some people lose weight when they’re sad, but I don’t. I did, however, drop 15 pounds in three months without any effort at all when I first fell in love with my husband.

16. Eat protein at every meal. It’s harder than fat to digest and it helps you build muscles and bones.

17. Don’t skip any meals at all. You’ll be starving later.

18. Eat the least amount of carbs you can manage at breakfast. It will help you not have sugar cravings later in the day.

There you go. Tip Tuesday from DYM and me.

On swelling and time:

Sensitivity to certain alkaloids naturally present in “nightshade” vegetables causes pain and swelling in a significant minority of individuals with degenerative arthritis. Nightshade sensitivity is not the same as allergy, and is not detectable by any laboratory tests in current use. The only way to figure out whether nightshade vegetables bother you is to totally eliminate tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplant from your diet, along with tobacco exposure in any form. Even if you’re nightshade sensitive and totally eliminate all of these, it can still take three to four months for symptoms to recede.

from Tahoma Clinic on Degenerative Arthritis

On what plants are included and doctor reactions to discussions of nightshade allergies and attendant problems:

the Fijian headhunter Cannibal Tomato or the Tasmanian Kangaroo Apple, not to mention the tasty tropical Zombi Apple.

These exotic fruits, along with his familiar favorites of tomato, potato, peppers, and eggplant are all members of a class of plants called the Nightshades (named after the Deadly Nightshade plant), to which he had apparently developed a sensitivity. The botanical family known as Solanaceae, also contains a number of poisonous and hallucinogenic plants, as well as medicinal herbs, some of which are used to manufacture commonly prescribed medications, such as atropine and belladonna.
…
Some patients claim that certain foods cause them a host of more ill-defined symptoms, like fatigue, irritability, muscle pains, hyperactivity, or depression. These peculiar reactions are labeled “food idiosyncrasy”. Patients with food idiosyncrasies are often felt by their doctors to have “Prozac Deficiency Disease”, and may even be referred to a mental health professional for evaluation, as their symptoms can be rather bizarre and difficult to relate to food ingestion.

from Killer Ketchup

Subtle food allergies, that attack physically, emotionally, or mentally, along with time frame for symptoms:

Most people are familiar with the kind of food allergies that make you swell up or break out. These obvious “violent reaction” allergies are caused by a single food like Shellfish or Peanuts. However, it’s estimated that up to 50% of Americans suffer from more subtle food allergies, or sensitivities. More difficult to pinpoint, these allergies don’t immediately make you puff up like a blowfish or break out in horrible hives. Hidden food allergies affedt your quality of life in more insidious ways: physically, emotionally,and mentally. Symptoms are highly individualized, including a muddled brain, mysterious diarrhea, or multiple ailments. Some symptoms do not appear until 3 days after eating an allergic food.

What Causes Hidden Food Allergies?

Essentially, a body out of balance: any single food can upset your body’s delicate mineral balance, and then start a chain reaction that impairs your digestion and immune ystem. One of the biggest culprits may be the Standard American Diet (SAD). Refined flour, white sugar, and processed foods are new inventions that don’t come with the minerals we need to spark digestion. SAD also centers on only a few foods like beef, eggs, dairy products, wheat, corn, and sugar. We unwittingly eat these foods every day – yet many of us are allergic or sensitive to them. These foods damage our tissues and our bodies need 3 to 4 days between eating allergic foods to recover.

How Can I Be Allergic To Food?

When you have a food allergy, your immune system is responding improperly to a substance that is not usually harmful. Of course, wholesome food is not innately bad. Yet, even good foods can turn bad in a body out of balance.

from GeoCities, Food Sensitivity and Allergies

Foods such as potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant sometimes referred to as “nightshade foods” could be the cause of stiff joints, pain and inflammation.

from Arthritis Support

Whenever I feel bad, I want to touch my husband. It always makes me feel better. But if he knows I’m not feeling up, he says it feels like I am trying to suck the life out of him. It’s made me a lot less likely to reach for him, good or bad, because I know he doesn’t feel comfortable with it.

But now at least I know I’m not the only person who feels better after holding hands or some other physical contact…

The Washington Times has an article that says:

A touch of her husband’s hand is one of the most effective ways to calm and comfort a woman, said University of Virginia psychologist Jim Coan, who looked inside the brains of 16 wives to discover that yes, hubby held the key to their peace of mind.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, Mr. Coan found that women under stress who hold their husbands’ hands show signs of “immediate relief,” with a powerful decrease in threat-related brain activity. What’s more, the better the marriage, the better the relief.

They also referenced two other studies which have shown that women get positive benefits out of marriage.

Women in satisfying marriages have a distinct health advantage over single or unhappily married women, according to an American Psychological Association study that found that solid marriages benefit blood pressure, cholesterol and other cardiovascular factors.

The “bliss of a steady marriage” is also a strong antidote to a life of crime, a University of Florida study found.

It doesn’t say what benefit men get out of the whole thing, but I would expect that there would be some. I guess they’ll have to do more studies for that.

Thanks to All Things Conservative for pointing in the right direction.