I woke up today convinced it was Friday. Don’t you hate that? It was sprinkling a bit this morning and I was going to go to the gym and walk, but then I figured I wouldn’t melt and decided to walk around town. It was 35 degrees out, so I dressed for 55 and headed out listening to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Initial plan was for 2 miles, but it had stopped sprinking and I was in the zone, so I did the whole 5K loop before breakfast! Go me 😀
I got home and made up some coconut flour waffles, which I enjoyed mightily with some coffee!
I read the news while eating, and a couple stories kind of annoyed me. The first one was about broccoli. Now scientists have fiddled around with broccoli to make it more nutririous. As if it really needed any help. Come on! Stop trying to turn real food into complete multivitamins. There is no one single super food out there and we need to stop expecting to eat 1 food item to get all our nutrition. Let’s not even mention the fact that this broccoli costs 1/3 more than regular broccoli – cause it has a health claim, you know.
Speaking of broccoli, I had some unadulterated broccoli with lunch today –
That flower-looking thing is an egg puff (cooked in the microwave) on top of a tortilla with laughing cow and hot sauce. Good stuff.
So on to the next rant today (I am on a roll, I tell you!). There was another article about how weight maintenance is hard (duh) and it is because of hormone changes from weight loss. I agree with that. The body wants to gain weight, not lose it biologically speaking.
Well, in looking closer at the study, the participants were put on a 500-550 calorie per day diet to lose weight (Optifast).
The scientists checked the blood levels of nine hormones that influence appetite. The key finding came from comparing the hormone levels from before the weight-loss program to one year after it was over. Six hormones were still out of whack in a direction that would boost hunger.
Well, duh – DUH!!! After 10 weeks of eating so little, why on earth wouldn’t your hormones be out of whack? No wonder they put weight back on. Starvation does not make a good weight loss program! It’s just starvation… period. (Heck, I eat 500 calories just for breakfast after a workout. ) This is one reason people fail at dieting. They completely restrict calories and types of food and expect that once the weight is gone, they can transition back to regular food and be okay. It just doesn’t work, people. If it did, these programs like Optifast would have cured obesity by now and we would all be singing its praises – and the company would be out of business.
Bodies adapt. They adapt to lower calories, to new foods, to exercise, whatever it is you throw at the body, it will become efficient in how it deals with it. That is survival. You have to work *with* your body and properly nourish it. You can’t beat it into submission without consequences. Weight loss maintenance is a lot easier if you respect the mechanism instead of mucking it up.
Whew…. I need something to calm me down. Good thing John brought me this:
He said there was a ‘secret ingredient’ in there as well. 😉
A little after lunch, that cold drizzle turned to snow. Upstate NY isn’t like Colorado where snow can happen in September and then it will be 70 degrees again the next day. It just feels like winter here. By the time dinner time rolled around, it started to stick:
Normally I love the first snow of the year, but last winter was so bad I guess I didn’t quite get over it LOL! The snow didn’t stop me from making John take me out for my football dinner, though 😈
We went to O’Tooles, where this weather was perfect for a hot turkey sandwich with mashed potatoes and stuffing!
It hit the spot. O’Tooles had their fireplace going and we could look outside and see the snow falling. It feels more like Thanksgiving than Halloween right now.
Here is the happy man shelling out bucks for dinner!
Heeheeheehee!
We stopped and got a sweet for dessert, too. I plated it up to show. A Reeses Pieces cookie. Yum!
Settling in for the night. I am not shoveling tomorrow. No matter how much snow – I refuse to shovel. Not to mention that the shovels are in storage…
Pink item of the day – gumball in a candy machine!
Thanks for sharing more details of that weight loss study. 500 calories per day is ridiculous and makes me discount the study. I heard very superficial news reports on it for the past couple of days.
Amazing what they are spending time on – really, broccoli?!? – instead of, oh, I don’t know…curing CANCER??? I feel your rant.
Just say no to snow. I can’t believe it arrived so early in your part of the world. I just hope it stays on your side of the lake.
Some days are more ranty than others…rant on!
Honestly I’m not sure what the point of these “studies” is supposed to be. That we shouldn’t eat 500 cal a day and then try to maintain that weight loss? Duh! I guess a study about slowly cutting down your calories and eating more whole foods and increasingly your activity would prove it’s possible, but hard and boring – which doesn’t make for good sensationalist journalism? hee!
Pretty much every “study” puts me in a bad mood. Unless, of course, it supports some odd idea I have. 🙂
That cookie looks downright yummy, but you know, if I was going to splurge right this minute, I believe I’d go for the mashed potatoes! (C’mon, Thanksgiving!)
I popped over to the super broccoli news. The good thing about that is that it is supposed to have less sulphur (which would equal less gas). But a study I read said that if you get rid of the sulphur, then you get rid of those sulphur antioxidants. So maybe we should just leave it alone.
🙂 Marion
Okay, if I was there in person, we would be talking on top of each other, ranting away, especially about the stupid starvation diets. Honestly, when I hear a long time weight loss blogger say “I just want to get this weight off and be done with it” I want to clobber them. WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE READING? ARE YOU LEARNING ANYTHING FROM YOUR EXPERIENCES??
Okay, I could go on and on and on. I don’t feel quite as strongly about the brocolli…
John looks a little bit diabolical in that picture. A little like Jack Nicholson in The Shining…
Oh noooooo It’s way to early for snow!!!!!
I get so annoyed at articles like that too. Everyone will lose weight eating 500 calories a day because that’s a starvation diet. Duh. And I hate how food is manufactured now. No thanks! One more reason I loved having a veggie garden of my own this summer.
Good rant, Lori!
I read the same article about weight loss and hormones and thought what a stupid piece of research it was.. Especially the idea that maybe we should start popping hormone pills after a diet to keep off the pounds we lost.
The snow sprinkeld pumpkins look really good. 🙂
Holy crap: snow! Way too early if you ask me. In fact I’m keeping my fingers crossed we won’t get any this winter. Holland is not a country where snow is common but the last two years we have had our share.
Stupid idea about the broccoli, broccoli is already a great food just the way it is. And I’m not even going to start about the stupid study.
Have a great weekend Lori.
That’s weird – Thursday felt like Friday to me as well. Hate that!
I’m reading more and more about what we are finding in our food. These additives are put in either to fool us regarding item weight (think we are getting more than we actually are), or to preserve the food, etc. It’s scary. What’s more frightening is all you hear about the FDA approvals in question. I’m surprised we stand a chance!
They say years and years ago, our soil was so much more rich that our foods had more nutrition. Spinach for example: to get the same amount of nutrition from spinach these days as you would years ago, you have to eat X amount more. Sad,so sad.
Rant in the title is like a magnet to me hahahahaha! Love your views and agree with them. How ridiculous do things need to get before somebody says cut it out?
That snow photo made me feel bad for that poor basil plant sitting there. Even CT is predicted to get some snow this weekend and it’s WAY. TOO. EARLY :>/
I couldn’t agree more. It’s so annoying listening to these stories. I wish people would just wake up and use common sense to lose weight, rather than all these “get thin quick” schemes. They don’t work. It’s a lifestyle change! OK I’m off my soapbox now. 🙂
I read the article too. It was such a small study. They started with 50 people and then 16 people withdrew at various times of ‘the study’. Interesting, but not worthy of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Ditto on your rant. I heard about that broccoli…crazy people. And starving and wondering why weight comes back on…hello ! *rolling eyes*
Snow…wow. I’m with you – no shoveling and more enjoying of hot lattes indoors. 🙂
Have a nice weekend, Lori!
Ugh I totally agree! Drives me crazy how so many people jump on to the food-news bandwagon – all of a sudden they’re eating whatever Dr. Oz or whoever recommended – just eat good food, REAL food and enjoy how good your body feels when you actually FUEL it rather than FILL it!!
I’m on the podium too! Feels good! 🙂
Dawn
PS I’m on vacation, on DH’s laptop and it’s not showing my blog link up there…
If people would stop looking for a quick fix, they wouldn’t have issues like they have. I know someone who has a lot of weight to lose and it’s causing discomfort, disease, you name it, she’s got it. Instead of actually doing something about it, her solution is to find a pill that will make it all go away. I can’t even talk to her anymore because she drives me bat shit crazy!
I totally agree with you on both rants!
And snow, already – ugh! Way too soon, in my book.
Rant away Lori!!! I agree with you 100% on both counts!!! SNOW??? NOOOOOOOO!!!! It’s too soon!!!! I feel your pain. Have a great Friday!!!
OK, Lori, now you got me started since you know I have been writing about the hormone changes for a long time now! 😉 OMG, DUH is right!!!! And 500 calories!!!!!!!!!!!!! As you know & have read over at my place, I am not willing to go down to low calories even with this new stage of weight gain. I will manipulate to a certain point BUT if I can’t enjoy life then it is not worth it!!!! Hey, anyone out there want to talk to a person that has gone thru every symptom, call me! 😉 And Lori, now, after a year & my recent posts, this week the monthly showed back up – WTF!!!!! And I still have the weight gain & all the menopause stuff going on to with my bod & face – craziness!!! WISH YOU HAD NOT MENTIONED IT NOW, RIGHT!!! 😉
And the broccoli & super foods – totally in agreement with you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YIKES on the snow! SCARY!!!!!! Congrats on getting that walk in first!
I am ready for my weekend cookies! 🙂