SuperBowl Sunday

SuperBowl Sunday is a major Holiday in our house.
My husband is a long-time faithful 49er fan, and he has been looking forward to this day all season. 
His personal choice of Foods will be available to him throughout the day, and I will deal with it as best I can. I'm hoping to keep my personal calories reasonable, and for the 49ers to win the Superbowl.  

 
Something that I keep in mind while I exercise my Dieting Hobby is the process of aging.

I’d like to live the rest of my life as a small woman, and die at a normal weight.

Although I’m currently in good health, this will end one day … no matter what food or exercise plan I choose, or how well I follow a “Healthy” lifestyle plan.

I am older at this moment than I’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest I’m ever going to get. The mortality rate is 100 percent.  Eveyone dies.

Large and moneyed industries thrive on sustaining the ILLUSION that with enough money and information we can control how we age and die.

But an Illusion is something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality, and although we would like this fantasy to be true, it is not.

Here is an excellent and thoughtful article on this Reality.

You Are Going to Die
                      by Tim Kreider -The New York Times 1/20/2013

My sister and I recently toured the retirement community where my mother has announced she’ll be moving. I have been in some bleak clinical facilities for the elderly where not one person was compos mentis and I had to politely suppress the urge to flee, but this was nothing like that. It was a very cushy modern complex housed in what used to be a seminary, with individual condominiums with big kitchens and sun rooms, equipped with fancy restaurants, grills and snack bars, a fitness center, a concert hall, a library, an art room, a couple of beauty salons, a bank and an ornate chapel of Italian marble. You could walk from any building in the complex to another without ever going outside, through underground corridors and glass-enclosed walkways through the woods. Mom described it as “like a college dorm, except the boys aren’t as good-looking.” Nonetheless I spent much of my day trying not to cry.

You are older at this moment than you’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest you’re ever going to get.

At all times of major life crisis, friends and family will crowd around and press upon you the false emotions appropriate to the occasion. “That’s so great!” everyone said of my mother’s decision to move to an assisted-living facility. “It’s really impressive that she decided to do that herself.” They cited their own stories of 90-year-old parents grimly clinging to drafty dilapidated houses, refusing to move until forced out by strokes or broken hips. “You should be really relieved and grateful.” “She’ll be much happier there.” The overbearing unanimity of this chorus suggests to me that its real purpose is less to reassure than to suppress, to deny the most obvious and natural emotion that attends this occasion, which is sadness.

My sadness is purely selfish, I know. My friends are right; this was all Mom’s idea, she’s looking forward to it, and she really will be happier there. But it also means losing the farm my father bought in 1976, where my sister and I grew up, where Dad died in 1991. We’re losing our old phone number, the one...

Below is an interesting video presentation by Paleo Guru,
J. Stanton of Gnolls.org, on his view of the way our mental and physical processes interact to produce Hunger, 

 

“Palability” and “reward” are not actual properties of food. Our likes and wants are subjective properties that we assign to food based on our past experiences and our current state of satiation and satiety." 
 

 
What about eating frequency? How often should we eat?

Should we eat 3 Square Meals?

Or should we eat 6 Small Meals?

Or should we eat only inside a window of 8 hours or 5 hours?

Or should we, intermittently, have days with only one small meal, or even zero food in a total water fast?

Or should we eat whenever we feel Hunger?

Each of these “Diets”, “Non-Diets”, “Ways-of-Eating”, or “Lifestyles” claims that Scientific Research supports their individual position.

So what DO we do?
The following article by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff of WeightyMatters, supports my own personal position on this question.

Does New Study settle the
3 Square vs. 6 Small vs. the 8 hr Diet Debate?

So this month yet another study in a never-ending line of studies looking to compare the impact of meal frequency on fullness and biochemistry came out. This one suggested that small frequent helped decrease energy intake in normal weight men.

Honestly I pretty much disregard all of these studies.

Not because I'm doubting or questioning their results, just that I don't think their results really matter.

What I mean is that all of these studies fail to address the practical aspects of living with their recommendations, and as a clinician, that's really all that matters to me.

I've seen people controlling calories, loving life and preserving health with 6 small meals daily. I've seen people do the same on 2, 3, 4, and in some cases even 1 meal a day.

Regardless of the research that comes out, what matters more than what a physiology paper says is how you personally feel.

In my office we do tend to start people on small and frequent meals and snacks. But if that doesn't suit or help the individual we'll shift to 3 square meals. We've also recommended the intermittent fasting style that's suddenly finding some traction on the diet book shelves.

You need to find a life that you enjoy, and just because a new study or diet book suggests there's a "better", or "right", way, if you don't happen to enjoy it, it just isn't going to work.

The specific new study referred to is: Psychology and Behavior
www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938413000243

According to all of the scientific research I’ve read, when we get right down to it, any actual “Health” or “Metabolic” Benefit Differences between all of these eating plans are truly miniscule, and therefore, not even worth the individual effort of personal consideration. The question to consider is which one can we DO?

I ask myself: