Old Habits Die Hard

This is a true story. The names have been changed (minimally) to protect the guilty.

I was on the way to an appointment today with someone I spend a lot of time with. Lets call her "Bristy." Bristy and I were in a gas station store. It doesn't matter which one. Let's call it Tuick Qrip. We had just stopped in to buy an iced tea, to take to our appointment. We went in, marveled at the ridiculously large number of beverage machines, from icees to milkshakes. We then got our iced tea and left.

After leaving the store, my wife, oops, I mean Bristy, remarked to me that even though she had just eaten lunch, she was tempted to buy a snack. She was not hungry, and had no reason to buy one, but the sheer presence of all of that food made her feel like she should buy something. Given both of our histories with being overweight and struggling with nutrition, she made a good choice, and only got the iced tea. She also made a very good point.

Weight control and weight loss are a struggle. The struggle does not end when you reach your goal weight. It continues throughout your life. From time to time, temptation will rear its ugly head. The decisions you make in those moments will be the difference between weight loss and a life of obesity. Bristy tells me it is like a whack-a-mole game, where you have to keep beating the temptation down with a mallet, I hate whack-a-mole, so you'll have to take her word for it.

Either way, since in America, you can find food in almost any store you walk into, and most of it crap, the temptation is likely to be there always. That is definitely not how it should be. It just is. As such, if you are not prepared for the temptation, you will often eat when you don't want to, or shouldn't. Here are my keys for avoiding temptation:

1. Eat before you leave the house: If you are not hungry, you are much less likely to pick up a snack cake just because it is there.

2. Avoid food when you are emotional: if you are highly emotional (happy or sad), avoid places with convenience food. Times of high emotion are eat and store triggers for cavemen, because they equal times of famine.

3. Avoid food when you are tired: ditto for tiredness. You release Cortisol when you are tired, which increases appetite, as well as fat storage.

4. Avoid food when you drink alcohol: alcohol is a dis-inhibitor. It makes you FAR more likely to engage in poorly considered behaviors, such as eating too much (other poorly considered behaviors are possible, but beyond the scope of this blog).

Take something with you: put some sort of less perishable food, such as an apple, in your car or purse, so that you can resort to something healthy if temptation is just too strong.

As always, before you eat, remember to ask why you are eating, and why are you eating THIS. If you do, hopefully you will drop the snack cake before it is too late!

New Name, Same Old Crap

 I was watching some TV this morning while working out. I saw a comercial for the brand new "corn sugar." Yes, you heard me right. Corn sugar. During my weight loss experience, I have trained myself extensively in nutrition, but I had never heard of corn sugar before. Since this piqued my suspicion, I decided to do a literature search on the topic. The result did not surprise me.

As it turns out, corn sugar is our good old friend High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). The very same friend that gives us obesity, diabetes, bad teeth, and many other health problems, just under a different, friendlier sounding name.

How, you may ask, were they able to do this? Thank the USDA. The USDA, who controls how food and beverages are labeled, granted permission to the makers of HFCS to call it "corn sugar." They did this because of the (well deserved) bad press that HCFS has gotten lately. By calling HCFS corn sugar, the manufacturers are hoping that lay people will not be able to recognize it, and the stigma will vanish. Its almost as if cigarette manufacturers got permission to relabel their product "happy sticks," and sell them to children.

Corn sugar is not the first example of creative product relabeling based on public opinion. About 40 years ago, it turned out that rapeseed oil was not very popular due to the unfortunate name, so it was changed to canola oil in order to improve marketing. There are other examples as well.

The corn sugar debacle seems somehow more sinister. They are not just changing the name because it no longer matches the time, but because it is associated with significant problems, and rightly so. I feel violated and misled. If there are health problems associated with a particular product, we know about them, and changing a name to prevent that seems sneaky.

The HFCS manufacturers do have a point. Their product is not any worse than sugar. In reality, you should try to avoid both, especially when they occur in abnormal quantities in processed foods. The only place that sugar is really OK for you is naturally occuring in fresh foods (i.e. fruits). The problem I have with all of this is that a conscious, health minded consumer looking for safer processed foods may be fooled into thinking that corn sugar is somehow safer than HFCS, and be tricked into eating processed crap.

This is my attempt to raise public awareness of the name change, so that we can all avoid being victims of advertisers and manufacturers, and make independent healthy decisions. Good luck!

Thag Fail

Most of you have probably heard the old time management addage:

Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail

This is an old addage, but very true. I have talked many times about how you need a plan for what to do, otherwise you will just flounder and spin your wheels. I have another saying that is equally important:

Those Who Don't Plan to Fail Will Quit

If you are going to strive for any sort of difficult goal, failure will be nearby. In fact, if you try for anything even remotely difficult, it is highly likely that you will experience failure at some point. Nobody succeeds at everything they attempt. Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, took his chicken recipe to over 900 different restaraunt owners before someone took a chance on it. That means that he had 1 success to over 900 failures. If he was a baseball player, he would have a batting average of 0.001. That's not too good, but his story is one of the greatest success stories in all of commerce.

This is just one example, but if you examine the background of most successful people in the world, you will find a lot of failure. I have a third addage for you:

Failure is an Event, not a Person

Just because you don't succeed on a particular attempt, does not mean that YOU are a failure. It only means that you probably learned something important, such as how not to do what you wanted to do. The true failure comes in if you then stop trying, or if you don't apply that knowledge to your future attempts.

Now I am not making a case for pessimism. Quite the contrary. I want you to expect to achieve your goals, but unless you have a realistic view that takes into account that every day will not be a resounding success, you will give up the first time you experience a setback. Thus, you must have an understanding that failure will occur from time to time. When these failures occur, you must get up and strike back. I suggest that you SLAP failure. The steps to failure recovery are as follows:

Stop- Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. If it is clear that something isn't working, STOP!!! Don't keep running into the same wall.
Learn- After you stop, the first thing you should ask yourself about the failure is "what did I learn from this?" To do this, you have to turn off the embarassed, overwhelmed, and sad voices in your head which tell you that you cannot succeed. We all have these, but the people who succeed have learned how to quiet them.
Alter- Using the experience that you gained from step two, you must now alter your course. This could mean anything from making a minor tweak to changing your entire world view. The important thing is to recognize that a change must be made, and make it.
Persevere- Winston Churchill made a speech during World War II, when the British people seemed on the brink of losing to Hitler. In this speech was the iconic phrase "never, never, never give up!" Mr. Churchill knew that the most important component to the success formula is perseverence. If a goal is truly important to you, then how many times you "fail" should not matter. Just pick yourself up, dust off, learn what you can, and try again. Even if you have already failed 900 times, that next time may be the one that puts you over the top!

So good luck to you, and never, never, never give up.

The TOFI Tribe

Everybody has them... The friends that just seems to magically be thin. While you and I have to watch every single thing we eat, and spend hours at the gym, these people can eat whatever they want. They can gorge on double cheeseburgers and french fries, down milkshakes without a care, and trade their gym time for a double feature at the movie theater. Even though they apparently neglect all of the eating and nutrition rules, they never seem to gain weight. In fact many of them are downright skinny. You probably secretly hate this person, but you also envy them.

Don't.

I spend a lot of time counseling people on how to live like cavemen. There is one tribe out there that I very much worry about. It is the TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside) Tribe. From everything I wrote in the last paragraph, they seem to have it made. They eat whatever they want, don't exercise, and never really gain weight.  Unfortunately, reality is far more complex than that. TOFI's have several problems:

1. Their risk profile is more like that of an obese person than a thin person. TOFI's may look thin, but they have a fair degree of intra-abdominal fat around their visceral organs. This is the fat that really increases the risk of heart disease, type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and early death. According to recent studies, TOFI's have 2-3 times the heart disease risk of fitter people, similar to an obese person.

2. They are largely unaware of their risk. We as a society put some social stigma on being overweight. It is hard to ignore the stigma, as well as the obvious health risks of being an overweight person. Trust me. Since TOFI's are thin in appearance, they do not suffer the social stigma that obese people do. In addition, they probably don't know that they are at an increased risk of diseases until they actually happen. I have seen this many times in my capacity as a physician, and they are always shocked to find out that they have diabetes or heart disease. Don't assume that being thin is all that matters.

3. They don't have to work for their thin body. If you have ever lost weight and tried to maintain an exercise regimen, you know what a struggle it is. Personally, I work out for at least 60-90 minutes a day. Exercise is not an easy thing to do, even if you find it fun like I do. The upside to all of this difficulty is that you truly value the product. The amount that we value something goes up in direct proportion to how difficult it was to obtain it. Since TOFI's are thin with little or no effort, they usually do not value what they have. Also, when they get older, and their ability to remain thin without effort goes away (as it usually does with age), they lack the abilities to exercise hard and eat right that formerly overweight people would have had.

So the next time you look at John or Jenny, the person who never has to work at it and is always thin, remember the burden of being part of the TOFI tribe. Value the hard work that you put in, and the harvest of fitness that you will reap at the end. Also mention this post to your TOFI friend*. You may just save their life.

*DevolveHealth and the Devolve Your Health blog assume no responsibility for ruin of friendship or bodily injury that may occur from telling your friends, colleagues, or enemies that they are fat on the inside, or on the outside for that matter.

Thag Eat Like Baby

So I was feeding my 7 month old the other day, with commercial baby food. Spinach and rice was the dish of the afternoon. He is just learning how to eat solids, and the process is far from efficient yet. Fully two thirds of what goes into his mouth comes back out, but with diligent chin scraping, eventually he can consume the whole jar.

Since I spend so much time thinking about nutrition and what food goes into my body, I decided to have a look at the ingredient list of the baby food in between bites. Keep in mind this is spinach and rice. The ingredient list was as follows:

Spinach
Rice
Water

That's it! Three ingredients, and exactly the ones advertized on the front label. I was shocked to discover that there were no preservatives, chemicals, or other nasty items. For a "processed" food, this was pretty awesome. It seemed that the only processing that went into the food was putting it through a blender, and putting it into a jar.

Why is it that we know what good nutrition is when giving it to a baby, but not when we give it to ourselves? Obviously the makers of this baby food (I will not say the name, but it is a mainstream brand) know that salt, preservatives, sugar, and artificial flavors are not good for us. If they truly thought that these things were OK, they would have no qualms with putting them into baby food. Yet they don't, because we all know that these food additives are no good. This same company makes food for adults as well, and those foods are full of added sodium, sugar, coloring, flavoring, and other miscellaneous chemicals.

I am not singling out this one company. Virtually all of the food companies offer processed foods that are very poor nutritionally. Yet we seem to be able to get it right when it comes to babies. I know that we adults have more complex tastes than babies, but if you have read my earlier posts, then you know as well as I that our tastes only serve to mislead us when it comes to food choices here in the 21st century. In short, we should all eat like babies.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that you go and buy hundreds of jars of baby food. Economically that would not be very feasible. Also, think what your next dinner party would be like. Actually, that might be kind of funny. Instead, the very same ingredients in that baby food are offered for purchase at your local supermarket. Seriously. You don't even need to be a VIP or celebrity to get them.

Kidding aside, the fact of the matter is that fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts are what we were designed to eat in the first place. I don't know about you, but I've never seen aspartame growing in nature. I have seen spinach and rice, however. We should all take cues from the types of food we choose to introduce to our youngest children once they begin to eat solids, and like our younger versions, we would probably be less plagued by heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity.

M. Jacob Ott, M.D.

Thag Hurts

So I was running the other day. Nothing unusual for me, an easy five miles on the treadmill because I had to work later that night. I wasn't running particularly hard, but all of a sudden I got a severe pain in my right knee. It lasted only a minute or two, then went away. I finished my run and went to work.

The next morning, I was a little sore, but not too bad. I decided to give it a rest day, and see how things went. I took a day off, then ran the next. The knee got sore again when I was running, but felt better when I stopped. OK, I thought, not too bad.


The trouble really started the day after that, when I decided to put in a fast three mile tempo workout, to "really test my knee." All hell broke loose, and afterward, I was unable to walk without limping. It was clear that my injury was not as minor as I was pretending it was.

The fact of the matter was that I was being stupid. That tends to happen to me from time to time, especially when injuries are concerned. If you are going to choose physical activity as a way of life, then injuries will be part of it. Even if you don't, you will still be susceptible to injury, perhaps even more than those who exercise, as your body will be weaker. I will assume since you are reading this blog that you either exercise, or want to do so.

If and when you get injured, here is what you do:

1. Don't be like me- do not stupidly try to ignore your injury. It may be minor or it may not, but at least pay attention to it.
2. Seek professional assistance- If you have an injury that seems like more than just muscle soreness, particularly if it involves a joint, go to a sports medicine specialist for an exam, and possibly some testing. Athletes can be prone to stress fractures and other odd injuries that generalists are not well versed in diagnosing, and which don't show up on regular X-Rays, like the one above.
3. Rest- This is the part that I have the most trouble with. You need to stop activity and let your body heal. The good news is that the body is fantastic at rebuilding itself, and can heal the vast majority of injuries, provided that you give it time. If you're like me, you just need to get your obsessive compulsive nature out of the way and let it heal
3.5 Find Other Activities- This is what I failed to do that is so important. Even though I could not run on my bum knee, I could bike, swim, weight train, or any of dozens of other exercises that will let me get in my cardio and strength training and calorie burn. Just because you can't do what you want to do, doesn't mean you can't do anything.
4. Remember, Injuries are a Part of Athletics- If you are going to pursue athletics, you will get injured from time to time. It's that simple. There is really no way around it. None of us is impervious to injury. Remember that you are not alone, and everyone else gets injured from time to time as well. If you stick to your recovery plan and listen to the doctor that you saw in step 2, then you will be back to your chosen sport sooner than you think.

In summation, don't be stupid, like your local blog author. Realize that you are injured, trust your instincts, and follow these steps to recovery!

Plates and Pyramids, oh my

The pyramids are gone. No, not the ones in Egypt. I mean the food pyramid. For decades now, the USDA has offered a food pyramid like the one above as a guide to how to eat. It has been taught to nutritionists, and in public schools across the country (with the funding of dairy and food corporations, although they don't tell the students that).

After much political maneuvering, the USDA has changed the food pyramid to a plate. Instead of groups and groups of food with various numbers of servings, they have greatly simplified things. Now you have a plate divided into four quadrants. Half of the plate is fruits and vegetables. Half is grains and protein, with what is apparently a cup of dairy. Along with this comes some recommendations such as "enjoy your food, but eat less of it." or "make half of your grains whole grains." All in all, it was a brilliant marketing plan to make the USDA seem relevant. Unfortunately it will probably do nothing to solve our obesity crisis.

As I have discussed in earlier posts, we are hard wired to like salty, sugary, and fatty foods. The food industry has figured out over decades of practice how to best capitalize on this. Foods in stores today are formulated to maximize the flavor at the expense of nutrients. As such, their salt and processed sugar content is high. As if that isn't enough, the companies spend billions of dollars on lobbyists who try to influence groups such as congress and the USDA to allow them to purvey their crap. Thanks to these lobbyists, your new "Myplate" has a dairy group just like the old pyramid did, even though dairy is not even close to essential for a healthy diet, and may instead be harmful in some cases.

Cosmetic changes aside, the USDA really hasn't altered their recommendations at all. This is not too surprising, since they are using a flawed paradigm of nutrition that is not compatible with our bodies. Only in the modern era have we been able to eat large quantities of meat and grains. Only in the modern era have humans consumed dairy past infancy. Yet as a society, we base our meals on these two foods.

Until we get away from eating like modern people, and return our diet to that of our caveman ancestors, we will continue to suffer from the diseases of modern society, such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer. No fancy graphic will save you from that.

My dietary recommendations are unchanged. I still suggest that you follow these guidelines:

1. Eat foods like they grow in nature
2. Eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and very little if any meat, dairy, or eggs
3. Choose foods for nutrition first, flavor second

Until the government gets it, and expels the lobbyists and food corporations from the recommendation process, you are better off not following their advice. None of them are looking out for your best interest, and they have demonstrated their willingness to alter the recommendations to maximize profits and re-election chances at the expense of the public. That is rather shameful.

I personally and publicly challenge our so called "representatives" to be brave and speak for us, rather than for big food corporations. After all, they are supposed to be OUR lobbyists.