Guest Post - Weight as a Disability

A quick thought from my darling husband - Thomas - who I've spoken about with recurring frequency around these parts. Hope you enjoy his thoughts on an issue that came up at work and the discussion it spawned which he later shared with me, and now with you.

Okay, so the topic that your usual host asked me to talk about is 'Weight as a Disability' after we'd talked a bit about it.

First, let me cover how it came up. A while back the AMA was asked to review whether obesity should be counted as a disability. As is typical, it was the fluff reporting on the new channel that was on at lunchtime at work, and became our topic of conversation (our lunch conversations are not for the faint of heart, and have gotten us in trouble with bystanders on a few occasions). So Sam turns to me and says “That must really burn you up, what with all the weight you've lost.”

So I had to have an opinion now, as the weight loss 'expert'. I told a bit on Enzo's story as a good example of why it should be considered. Enzo was heavy enough he caused the floor to shake when he walked. BIG GUY. When I met him, he'd started Weight Watchers at his doctors recommendation. While he was working on his weight he was out twice on medical leave, once for each knee to have them replaced. Eventually his weight loss stalled out around 125 pounds lost. He and his doctor decided that it was necessary to get the gastric bypass surgery to get his weight under control fast enough to keep from damaging the knee replacements.

Over the time (about nine months to a year) that all of this occurred, Enzo and his doctor had to fill out the disability paperwork and get the approvals for the procedures and time off, and all the other items required to get things lined up three times.

I can see a wonderful argument that if obesity were counted as a disability, they could have lined all of the surgeries under a single disability and saved huge chunks of time filling out paperwork. That doesn't even take into account the advantages of having the last surgery (the bypass) requiring huge amount of effort to prove as 'necessary'.

Unfortunately, I can also see problems with 'if you just gain another 20 pounds, you'll qualify for the disability and then we can use the surgical solution' as a horrible abuse caused by labeling obesity as a disability. Not to mention the 'I can get Social Security Disability and not have to work if I just get heavy enough'. I have friends who are considering the bypass surgery as a replacement for changing lifestyles (I have a separate rant in my pocket about that), and can see them taking a ruling of disability as proof that that is the way to go.

So, in the end, no it didn't burn me up that it was being considered, but I do understand why the AMA did eventually returned the answer of 'No'. It's not that it may not in some cases be true, but that there's too much risk of abuse of the label, and many people can address their weight without the 'issue' being a 'disability'.

Guest Post - Ideal

Hey y'all, just a note from your full-time, snarky blog writer here. I'd like you to give a big hello to my best friend. We've known each other for... oh, about 18 years now... pretty scary sometimes. Some friendships are fleeting, some endure. Ours has been through fire and back; tempered over the years and the mileage. I don't even think I could begin to explain how much this one particular friendship means to me... aside from my husband (and honestly, she's got seniority on him!) this is the most important person in my life. So please, give her your undivided attention (as you'll see, enough in her life is already divided!)

I have no idea how you do it.

Lynn says this to me, from time to time, and when she does, I always feel the same way about it: Half of me is flattered -- pleased that someone I love and admire so much has noticed the incredible juggling act that is my life (work and a child with diabetes and another child in that constant-supervision-required stage of toddlerhood and dieting and exercising regularly and maintaining a semblance of a social life and multiple hobbies and...) and is impressed enough to comment on it. The other half of me is comprised of an exhaustion-fogged panic that she might ask how I do it, when I myself sometimes have not the foggiest notion.

Some days -- by which I mean most days -- I feel like a Japanese subway attendant, pulling on my neat white gloves and pushing as hard as I can to cram just one more thing into the day before it disappears down the tubes. But not doing it is not an option. As Lynn put it, I just put on my big girl panties and get on with it.

I do it one day -- sometimes one minute -- at a time.

I have no idea how you do it.

From time to time, I've heard this from people at work. None of them ask me how I do it, though, or I might tell them: I sacrifice.

I've sacrificed a lot of my precious "me" time, and some of my husband's time, as well. I get home from work an hour and a half later than I used to, so I have no more than five minutes to relax and make the transition from "working" to "housework" because there's only half an hour between when I get home and when dinner needs to be on the table if the kids are going to get to bed on time. I sacrificed playing World of Warcraft entirely when I realized that having to choose once a week (on average) between the game and the gym was making me resent the gym, and I'd rather not play the game at all than risk it interfering with the best thing I've done for my health in the past twenty years.

(I may also have sacrificed bits of my sanity. I cried myself to sleep, the night I cancelled my WoW subscription. And I actually wound up in therapy when I realized that my determination to find a schedule that included everything I wanted had gone terrifyingly far down the path to true obsessive-compulsive behavior.)

I have no idea how you do it.

My husband doesn't say this to me, because he already knows how I do it. He's watching me do it, and picking up the slack whenever I need him to. He's taking care of the kids when I need to go to the gym in the evening. He's not keeping junk food in the house. He's not complaining when I've had a bigger-than-planned lunch and halve our dinner portions without warning. He's taking on more than his fair share of keeping the kids on their schedules so I can keep all these commitments to mine. He knows, because while I'm putting on my big girl panties, he's manning up to do whatever it takes to help me.

However it is that I do it... I couldn't do it without him.

It's a common question, in dieting/exercise circles. How do you do it? Everyone wants to believe that they'll eventually find the answer that lets them flip the switch in their own brain that makes eating right and exercising easy. But it doesn't work like that. I don't do it because I acquired some Zen wisdom that makes me want to go to the gym, or because I uncovered a secret Tibetian technique for making undressed salad taste like chocolate brownies. I do it because at some point, I re-evaluated the priorities in my life, and entirely to my own surprise, correcting my health had filtered up toward the top of the list. I simply reached a point in my life where this was what I had to do.

Will it last? I don't know.

I do know that I'm more than 75 pounds lighter than I was last year at this time. I do know that I'm thinner now than I've been at any point in my life since before I started dating my husband. I do know that I can do things I haven't been able to do in years, and that I'm beginning to find ways to get a little of that sacrificed "me time" back.

I do know that I can do this, now.

About that, I've got a pretty good idea.

Guest Post - Your Body's Design

I'd like to take a minute to introduce you to one of my followers who's been with me since the beginning. The lovely and talented Hanlie, who follows a very interesting food plan (or, forgive me for saying it, but she's on an unusual diet...) Many of us cut portion sizes, count calories, or switch over to some low-fat, low sugar version of our normal crap intake. Whilst I can't quite see myself going her route, it's fascinating to read about! I greatly admire Hanlie and her determination. I hope you enjoy her views as much as I do... without further ado, I give you... Hanlie.

PS - I personally adore the fact that she has citations. I love citations.

Thank you Lynn for asking me to do a guest post!

This is NOT a post about giving up meat, but about returning to the food your body was designed to eat.

I follow and advocate eating a whole-food, plant-based diet. In other words, what you do eat is just as important as what you don’t eat. I eat mostly fruit and vegetables, and much smaller amounts of legumes (beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils), whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, millet, oats, etc.), nuts and healthy fats. Once or twice a week, usually when we’re eating out at other people’s houses or at restaurants, we may have something of animal origin. We’re not fanatics!

“Plant-based” means eating lots and lots of plants and very little animal products. I will never tell anyone to give up meat, and I haven’t given it up completely myself, but I do believe, based on reams and reams of independent, peer-reviewed research, that eating meat is a health compromise.

You don’t even have to be scientist to figure that out for yourself. You just have to look beyond the advertising and the cultural indoctrination and examine your own body to realize that you were not designed (or evolved) to eat animal flesh, especially not in the quantities that we’ve been led to believe we should consume.

Can you move your jaw from side to side? What about backwards and forwards? Sure you can.

Congratulations, you are a natural herbivore or plant-eater!

What’s that? Oh, you thought you were an omnivore? Sorry, that’s just another popular myth. Physiologically humans are actually not classified as omnivores, since omnivores (bears, raccoons, etc) more closely resemble carnivores, while we humans resemble herbivores.

Here are a few more reasons why animal flesh is not suitable for human consumption.

• Carnivores and omnivores do not have any digestive enzymes in their saliva. Humans and herbivores secrete carbohydrate digesting enzymes in the mouth, which is why our jaws have such a wide range of motion - we have to chew our food well to mix the food with the saliva and start the digestive process.
• Meat can only be digested in a very acidic environment, which is why the stomachs of carnivores and omnivores have a pH of 1 or less when there is food present. Herbivores and humans have a pH of 4-5, which means that we struggle to digest flesh.
• The small intestines of humans and herbivores are long – between 10 and 12 times the length of the body, while carnivores and omnivores have short intestines – 3 to 6 times the length of the body.
• The colons (large intestine or bowel) of carnivores and omnivores are short and smooth and serve only to absorb salt and water, while humans and herbivores have long, highly specialized colons, often full of sacs, nooks and crannies where vitamins are produced and absorbed, water and electrolytes absorbed, and fibrous plant-materials fermented.
• The livers of carnivores and omnivores can detoxify vitamin A, while those of herbivores and humans can’t.
• The urine of carnivores and omnivores is much more concentrated than ours, and that of other plan-eaters.

These are just some of the scientific differences that make meat-eating problematic for humans. It is thought that herbivores, and by definition humans, are further evolved than meat-eaters, since our bodies are more sophisticated and complicated.

Our hands are beautiful and flexible, made to pick fruit from trees and pull vegetables from the ground, not to bring down prey. We don’t have the speed for it anyway! Our mouth openings are small, because we are meant to eat small morsels and chew them well. Our teeth are not suited to tearing raw flesh from bone, but rather to bite, chew and grind our food.

We are not even psychologically equipped to eat meat. Have you ever watched a kitten or a puppy stalking things and pouncing on their “prey”? The hunting instinct is so imprinted that even thousands of years of domestication has not eradicated it. Human children don’t do that. To quote Harvey Diamond, “Place a small child in a crib with a rabbit and an apple. If the child eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.”

When you’re out walking in nature and you spot a squirrel, your first thought is not to tear it apart and devour it. We find all baby animals cute and our instincts are to protect them, not harm them.

Yes, our brains have evolved to the point where we can fashion weapons and tools, hunt in groups, cook our meat, confine and keep animals, etc., but the truth is that our bodies have not evolved to tolerate the eating of animal flesh. Just because we don’t get sick or die right away when we do it doesn’t mean that we don’t pay the price in the long run. People who smoke cigarettes also don’t pay the price right away. The problem with meat-eating, as with smoking, is that prolonged strain on the body causes degeneration, which is the collective term for most of the health problems we face these days.

Medical research is telling us that people who eat little (less than 5% of calories) or no animal products not only have far less heart disease than the rest of the population, but also have much lower rates of cancer, hypertension, diabetes, gallbladder disease, kidney disease, obesity and colon disease. They live on average six to ten years longer than the rest of the population, and in fact seem to be healthier by every measurement we have of assessing health outcomes.

Add plenty of raw fruit and vegetables to a low, or non-existent, consumption of meat and you can virtually disease-proof yourself and your family. And your waist line will return to normal.

When it comes to food, habit is stupendously powerful, so don’t expect to change the habits of a lifetime overnight. The following books can help you (and your family) to make a gradual transition to a healthier life:

• “Eat for Health” by Dr. Joel Fuhrman (this is more gradual and less restrictive than his “Eat to Live” program and includes loads of healthy recipes)
• “Perfect Health: The Natural Way” by Mary-Ann Shearer (the program we follow)

You will immediately notice an increase in your energy levels (it’s no coincidence that carnivores spend most of their time sleeping!). Before long you will feel better, “lighter”, healthier and mentally sharper, yet more peaceful, than you ever have before.

Additional reading:

• “The Food Revolution” by John Robbins
• “The China Study” by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell
• The Comparative Anatomy of Eating (http://www.vegsource.com/veg_faq/comparative.htm)
  

Guest Post: - Less To Lose

Hey everyone, your friendly neighborhood Spider Man here... oh, wait, wrong script... anyway, I just want to let you know that I have a lot stored up for August including some guest posts (If you'd like to write a guest post on a weight loss/exercise/lifestyle topic that you want to share with my readers, I'm happy to discuss it with you. Hit me up in an email - tisfan at gmail.com and we'll see what we can do for each other. I have a few open slots remaining!) Also coming up in August, I have a book review and some giveaways.

Right now I'd like everyone to say hello to my friend Leigh and - ok, I won't call her my "inspiration" because that would be rude of me, after going on my multiple rants about "inspirations" and honestly, she wasn't - but she was my go-to girl when I was researching what would be a possible weight-loss program. I've talked about her quite a bit, and I hope you enjoy what she's got to say. I know I have, and I want to take a minute to say thank you to her for all her help, support, suggestions, commiserations and otherwise being as good a friend as I could possibly ask for... and without further ado, I give you Leigh's guest post.

For most of my life, I've been the "skinny girl". Growing up, I could eat pretty much whatever I wanted. Granted I was taking 2-4 dance classes a week, so that helped. But my weight was never really something I thought about. When I went to college things stayed mostly the same. I didn't have the "freshman 15" issue that many college students have. Actually, I briefly thought I was seriously ill because I'd lost 6 pounds, until I realized I was spending several hours a week riding a trotting horse (which for those who don't know is pretty close to spending several hours a week doing squats... while balancing on two straps... attached to a large quadraped).

And then I graduated. I got a fabulous job as a software developer. Instead of riding horses and sprinting between classes, I was riding an office chair and occasionally walking down the hall to the snack machine. And since posteriors are like goldfish, the pounds soon followed.

Two years out of college, I realized I'd gained almost 20 pounds since graduating. Some may be tempted to prefix that number with "only", but after sitting at a steady 121 pounds through most of high school and four years of college it was an alarming trend. One that I wanted to stop sooner rather than later.

I settled on Weight Watchers as a potential solution. A friend of mine had been a Weight Watchers member in the past, so I knew a little about it, and it sounded like a good program. But I was concerned. Would I be the "skinny girl" that looked silly coming into the meetings? My friend assured me there were a variety of shapes and sizes at the meetings, so we joined together (yay buddy system!)

At the first meeting, my starting weight was 132.5 pounds. I got all the materials, and jumped into the whole process of tracking foods and calculating Points for things. I hunted down the mathematical formula for Points online and learned to approximate things while grocery shopping so I didn't have to stand in Farm Fresh with my slide rule in hand - though I did write the calculated-out Points per serving on almost everything as soon as I got it home. I made a game out of finding 0-Point and 1-Point foods. I didn't always follow the plan perfectly, but I did follow it.

And I lost weight. In little bits. Half a pound there, a pound here. I had weeks where I maintained (aka didn't lose any), and I had weeks where I got the ever-so-sympathetic "Oh, you're up by 0.2 pounds. Well that's not bad! Are there any questions I can answer for you?" (Well, no, probably not. Not unless you can tell me why I opted to eat that second slice of cake the other day. But I think my therapist is more qualified there.)

After some period of time, and I honestly can't remember how long at this point, I was down to 121.6 pounds. So very close to the 121 I remembered as being "my weight". And the next week, I came to the meeting and stepped on the scale and... maintained. Disappointed, I talked to my meeting leader, and decided to set my official Goal Weight at 122 pounds instead of 121. Still feels a little bit like I cheated, but there you have it.

Those of you who are Weight Watchers members know what comes next. After maintaining my goal weight for 6 weeks, it was time to become a Lifetime Member. Woo! I went into the meeting that week feeling pretty good. When the time came for Celebrations, I was happy to stand up and talk about what got me there (tracking, finding 1-Point foods, portion control) and so forth. And then the leader asked me to share how much weight I'd lost total.

"17 pounds."

::snort::

The snort came from a woman behind me who quite clearly had more than 17 pounds to lose and quite clearly thought that having made Lifetime after losing "only" 17 pounds was scoff-worthy. I could practically feel the eyeroll she directed at her friend beside her. I deflated. Collected my little gold key from the meeting leader and slouched back into my seat.

If you've ever tried to lose weight, especially to lose weight in a safe and healthy way, you know it takes work and dedication. That's true for the first pound, the last pound, and each one in between. So why was my 17 pounds lost less important or impressive than the 17 pounds anyone else has lost? Just because I only did it once?

Kudos to anyone who's ever needed to lose 17 pounds and done it in a safe and healthy manner. Heck, kudos if it was 5 pounds. Kudos again if you've done it more than once, and kudos a third time if you've changed your habits and kept the weight off.

I've done all of the above. Lost, maintained. Gained (needed to start exercising), lost again. Maintained for several years, got older, gained a little, readjusted my goal weight (yes, it's allowed), maintained some more. Life happened (huge relationship break up, moved twice within a year, bought a house, got laid off, got new job... ack!), gained more than I'd lost the first time (depression and unemployment will do that). Got life back under control, maintained for a year. And then finally at the beginning of 2009, jumped back on plan and lost the 15 pounds to get me back down to my goal weight (now 125 pounds).

We'll see where life takes me from here. The comforting thing is the knowledge that I can do it. I know how to eat the right foods in the right portions to maintain a healthy weight. And if life happens and throws me off track for a little while, I know how to eat the right foods in the right portions to get back to where I need to be. To be a happy and healthy me.

For most of my life, I've been the "skinny girl". The most common reaction I get when I tell someone that I'm a Weight Watchers member is "Why? You don't need to lose weight." I just offer the person a knowing smile and say "Exactly."