NBC's Tim Russert was "Overweight" ..he died,yetCNN/ MSNBC/NBC is saying FAT PEOPLE are Problem?

This morning on that "Morning Joe Show" with Zbignew Bzhezinski's daughter "Mika the Fair" they were pushing that "Health Care Reform" should be on Prevention...and that Fat Americans were the cause of their own health care problems.

Here's my problem with that: They left out Genetic Disease..stuff we can't control that goes beyond lifestyle and is just in our code that we need to be monitored for. Their emphasis on "Fat Americans" didn't take into account that their own fat "Tim Russert" had a sudden heart attack on the set of his NBC Show and they spent DAYS Eulogizing and fawning over the FUNERAL which was broadcast as if REAGAN II had died!

Now ALL the Cables (not just MSNBC) are blaming HEALTH CARE RISING COSTS on FAT AMERICANS!

Where do these people like Joe Scarborough, Sanja Gupta,(CNN), "Dr. Nancy", Zbignew Bzhezinski's daughter (Mika) and the rest of the toned bare-armed females and tarted up silk suited male anchors on these Cable channels who push this JUNK SCIENCE for THINK TANKS get off preaching to the rest of us?

When one has to work two and three jobs their only meals might be what they can get through fast food burger joints and the rest to get through the day. Maybe they are working so hard to keep above water..they have to give their kids what the "Food Elitists think are Crap" to get through the meal to help the kid with homework or whatever. Their lives are SHIT...while the rest Vacation in exotic spots with lots of perks and fun, fun, fun and lot's of "hired HELP!" Only two classes...many worker drones and nannies and we feed and care for the Queen Bee and America is the Giant Hive...The Hive being the Military/Media/Corporate/Industrial State.

Average American Lifestyles today are not like in the 1950's where Mom stays home and packs nutritional lunches and has the family meal at 6:00 p.m. filled with lots of lively conversation and filled with the latest "Food Pyramid/s Most Nutritious." Most Americans live lives on the "Fly." Scrabbling and Scrambling to juggle jobs and family and seeing their wages so puny and declining they are just "holding on" by whatever way they can. If they have to eat Pizza and McBurgers seven nights a week..they have to do it....to get by.

Obviously Russert and the rest of the CABLE CROWD have Nannies, Cooks, Drivers and much STAFF/HELP to get them through the day.

No One ever complained about Time Russert's LIFESTYLE causing his DEATH! Do we really KNOW what Russert ATE? What about those folks who are "overweight" who live to their 90's? That new movie "Julie and Julia" shows that Julia Child and her husband lived into their 90's and Julia smoked and at gobs of butter, lard, chicken, duck and other fat and lots of animal products that folks say would kill us today. So...is it all about what you eat that you should be condemned? Should there be a war on Overweight People without addressing the other causes? :shrug:

WHY DO THE PUNDITS NOW CLAIM THAT "FAT AMERICA" doesn't deserve HEALTH CARE unless they give up their FAT WAYS? Like we are "Pigs at the Trough" ...when we know that the REAL PIGS are WALL ST. BANKERS and the REST OF THE CORPORATIST INSURANCE SUCK UPS that CONTROLLED AMERICA!

So...the Fix is In. American Lifestyle and Eating Habits are what's causing Insurance Rates to Rise...so any Obama Health Care Bill has to address this issue! I can't wait to see how the "Fast Food/Monsanto Industry" reacts to the Insurance Industry "throwing them under the bus" over the Dems Health Care Intitiatives. Should be VERY INTERESTING TO WATCH it all PLAY OUT! :D

BTW...YES our AMERICAN DIET with CRAP FAST FOOD IS BAD! We need to eat more local, fresh foods and have them prepared at home. BUT...how can folks working two and three jobs do this? How? And as far as exercise goes...WHEN DO WORKING FOLKS with that kind of schedule have the TIME if they have families? We can do better...but this media BLAME BLITZ isn't being helpful. It's casting blame on Americans at the bottom...who have been hoodwinked by everyone...

:rant:

He looked that way because all his interviews were sitting down. Once he stood up, he had a normal build, with a 36 waist. Unfortunately for him, his hat size was also a 36.

The Ballad of Tim Russert



Eyes sewn shut, embalmed & dressed,

Just like each broadcast at his best,

Rigor mortis, Insect mess,

Remove your hat out of respect



Tim's screaming now, no one can see.

No more new Plamegate testimony.

Dead men tell no tales, Timmy.

No book deals now, no more money.



Tim's crackling on a rotisserie

To the solemn applause of "Ghost Detainees"...

Your future free of rest and peace,

Worms in your brain a sweet release



Your wife, kids, childhood memory,

No don't look back Tim, you might see

across miles of dead Iraqi meat.

See what your whole life meant, really.



Tim served Cheney and 9/11,

Tim served Tim, a loyal pawn.

There's no escape now, your spin is spun:

What Tim's life could have been is gone.



Over and over Tim will see

images eternally.

Ride your childhood bike Timmy

into the land of nightmares sweet

One would think a "reporter" would track that fact before speaking ...

Oh, guess not ...

I worked 2 jobs for about 4 yrs. Single mom, I cannot tell you how I didn't have time to cook, let alone exercise. If the place didn't have a window, we didn't eat. I was not happy about it. I like to cook, eat organic, free range most of the time. If I wasn't so stressed out every fucking day, worried about my lack of employment(now), my health insurance running out, paying for college etc...
Maybe I could concentrate on myself and my health. FUCK THEM!!!!!!
An additional rant, when I am working I get up at 5am start at 7 home by 430, cook dinner, clean up
etc.. After working a 8hr day doing physical labor outdoors in the heat and cold I have no fucking energy left.

it's easy to blame fat people because we can generalize as to WHY they are fat and feel better ourselves. btw... i am fat. They don't want to admit that the cause of the high cost of healthcare is not because people are fat... it is because people don't get preventative treatment and check ups.... we also eat a lot of processed and otherwise manmade foods that probably do a number on our bodies. i am going to bet that this food makes a weight problem even worse and harder to correct.


Now take for instance a person like me who was always healthy and active when I was younger. I did not have access to insurance. I had a car accident in which i was ejected from the car and the car landed on top of me. Yes, i know... no seatbelt.... stupid.... the auto insurance paid for the hospital stay... I had all kinds of xrays and everything, but luckily had only a hairline fracture in my leg, though this was not discovered when they released me unable to even walk with no crutches or anything.... they found it when I came back two days later because the pain meds were making me vomit incessantly. but i digress.

I did not receive any sort of physical therapy or anything. And ever since then I have had problems with my knees. So it was hard to go for walks, which I once did all the time. And I never got on my bike again, either because of my knees. I had no insurance to go try to rectify these issues. And when I got pregnant with my first daughter, I gained like 40 pounds. after she was born I lost about 20, but beyond maintaining my weight, I had a hard time losing any. Then when I had my second daughter, I added weight again... and I suffer from depression too. I tried to lose weight, but it was like a cycle... And i was always so tired and my knees were killing me... added weight can't help that any.

I am not whining. I just wish people could realize that it's not all lazy people who sit around and eat all day. I wonder if I had gotten some sort of physical therapy and not had all the problems with my knees if I could have kept up the active lifestyle that I had. I will never know. All I can do now is hope that I can get back my life after I have this baby and lose some weight. My husband suggested I get my thyroid tested as that is a common problem that happens after one has kids....

I think it would have a calming effect on you.

"Average American Lifestyles today are not like in the 1950's where Mom stays home and packs nutritional lunches and has the family meal at 6:00 p.m. filled with lots of lively conversation and filled with the latest 'Food Pyramid/s Most Nutritious.'"?

First of all, there WAS no "Food Pyramid" back in the '50s. The "Food Pyramid" didn't come about until 1992. Even back in the '70s, what we kids in school were lectured about was the "Basic Four" food groups--meat, eggs and fish; dairy; fruits and vegetables; and breads, grains and cereals--and we were lectured to try to eat an EQUAL amount of each group each day; there was no talk of eating more from this group or less from that group.

The '50s are before my time, but the impression I get is that notions of proper nutrition were even less sophisticated then--there just seemed to be a general idea that "protein" (as in, a big thick steak) was good and "vitamins and minerals" were good, and that was about it. But no one worried about stuff like sugar, trans fats or cholesterol. So even in the '50s, Mom didn't stay home and pack lunches or cook family meals based on "the food pyramid" or sophisticated nutritional concepts. In fact, the kings of the '50s kitchen were packaged convenience foods, much as they are today, except not as many and a lot less sophisticated.

Also, there was not as much ethnicity or internationalism in American food then-dishes considered "foreign" were still highly Americanized (for example, many folks' concept of "Chinese food" was chop suey) and many ethnic foods were unheard of and unavailable in many places because they hadn't been mainstreamed into American life yet. For example, as late as the '70s bagels were still largely confined to places with large Jewish populations; you couldn't find a chain bagel bakery in every town or bagels in every supermarket.

If you REALLY want a feel for how Americans ate in the '50s, you need to visit The Gallery of Regrettable Food: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/

It will disavow you of any idea you had that there was EVER some halcyon past when Americans had the time and inclination to eat perfect little nutritious meals. It may also make your stomach lurch (best not to visit right after eating).

???? I did...and know the culture.. Perhaps you grew up then?

because the early '60s I did grow up in were not all that different.

I also know there was no "food pyramid" back in the '50s.

"fruit & veg" & "grain" being the other two.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Whatever-Happened-to-the-Basic-Four-Food-Groups?&id=6641

do you see that as superior to the pyramid?

thirty percent of the adults aren't formally obese, & 64% overweight, because they're too stupid to eat properly.

the cause is social. modern society is organized to make overweight the default "normal".

special effort is required to maintain normal weight into adulthood, & this is obvious since the majority of adults are overweight.

there were reasons for it

People ate THREE STRUCTURED MEALS, if they were MC... and the kids had snacks. Not this eating at all times... which you can do today.

Yeah, people didn't eat Chinese... which was heavily Americanized. You do know General Tso's dish is not Chinese? So says the creator of the dish, a Chinese, who is shocked at the amount of fat and chiefly sugar that it has. Of course this is the tip of the iceberg. In fact our "ethnic foods" are Americanized, nothing close to the original.

Of course don't get me started on the size of portions... lets simply not go there.

Oh and if you go to the American Heart and Lung association they have an EXCELLENT presentation on how our portion sizes are out of whack, and that includes that bagel, by the way.

is VERY fish & veggie-centric.

American-Chinese food is very different..as is American-Mexican food.. If you go to Mexico, and go off the beaten path and out of the hotels, you find LOCAL eateries with great food, and very healthy food, at that..

and for the person who said the food pyramid did not exist before 1992??.wrong-0... I was a kid of the 50's and somehow my futuristic 5th grade teacher knew about it and taught it to us :rofl:

As for portions.. Our daily meals are served on 8-10" plates.. The plate "looks" full, but the smaller size tricks the brain:) I rarely use the regular dinner plates these days:)

then when I got home I read its nutritional info.

Never in my life in Mexico did i see the ingredient SUGAR in it.

Then again, at times I make chile rellenos at home. I choose to make them with rice and not fried (one variation in the dish)

In the US the batter is so-thick at Restaurants I have given up on it.

Oh and food while growing up had a lot more vegies, fruit and other ahem fresh ingredients. Yes, there was cream and cheese as well... but in far smaller portions.

At times I think back to that... desert, you want desert? Cake was something we had six times a year, the four birthdays, and they Jewish New Year, day of atonement, and passover, ok my bad, actually eight, since mom bought the rosca de reyes for the Sixth of January. How many people can do that? Soda? You want soda? Only when we had visitors for dinner... it was a SPECIAL thing... or the apple soda if we had the stomach flu... (orders of the pediatrician)

cake was for your birthday..

pie was for company

sodas? rarely

chips? picnics

My one indulgence for the boys? homemade sopapillas with honey:)

and another one.. homemade applespice donuts:)

that people didn't feel inclined to overeat it!

And yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the "Americanization" of Chinese food, and the fact that what we eat at "Chinese" restaurants is usually far more full of fat and sugar than authentic Chinese. And some other ethnic foods as well. The good news? At least we have learned more about what is authentic and now there are places in the USA where you can eat authentic food from other countries. No, not at your mall food court, but elsewhere.

And yeah, portion sizes have become huge, at least at places where food is sold cheaply.

are adopting our ways with food, the French paradox will finally disappear.

Why they are thinner, apart of cities designed for walking? They still eat smaller portions and THREE MEALS... not eat whenever.

As to the unappetizing food of the fifties... no... it is not that, we really have gone into hyper palatable dishes in huge portions. As a nation we will have to go back to plainer forms of food, and smaller portions as a part of a national policy.

they actually had to get up and change the channel

to church, to friends houses, uptown to shop or hang out, or rode our bikes. We raked and hand mowed lawns, shoveled snow, played kick the can, street hockey, etc. Not much TV, no video games. During the summers mothers kicked their kids out of the house after breakfast and didn't see them again until dinnertime, usually around 5:00. We ate 3 meals a day, cereal for breakfast, sandwich at lunch, and a sit down dinner with the whole family which consisted of meat, starch and one or two vegetables. Usually no dessert except on Sunday. We drank milk and didn't have soda in the house until the 60's when we were in high school. Always had seasonal fruit in the house. Yes our diets were not the best, but there were no frozen dinners filled with processed foods and chemicals,(TV Dinners were introduced in 1954)and fast food restaurants were rare. So while the diet was high in fat, I think we were much more active than the average kids today.

She wanted me to stay inside.
If I went outside after school to play with the neighbors, she called it "running off".

She'd run down the sidewalk screeching at me with a bamboo switch in hand. I would hide by the side of another house and we'd laugh at her craziness.

She told me the neighbor kids were trashy, but she didn't give me an alternative, like the Girl Scouts, for example.

:wtf:

we walked almost everywhere, & when i went back & saw how far off campus some of the places i'd lived were, i was surprised at how far (miles) i routinely walked just to *get* to school, let alone while on campus.

everyone has their own car now, there are huge parking lots on campus, & lots more traffic in the town. consequently everything feels less intimate, more like a commuter college.

He's missing the gene that suppresses tumor growth. The disease is called VHL. He gets odd tumors in inconvenient locations. Because it is so rare he's part of a study at the NIH, so he gets regular exams. His father had no such government medical care, and died far too young. This disease is wholly independent of eating habits or BMI.

:sarcasm:

It's easy to ride the high horse over something half the population will never struggle with, and can look down their noses at. After all, fat is a moral failing!!!! All fat people are gluttons, pigs, don't care about themselves, lazy, stupid, on and on and on. They have no "self-control" or "willpower". One is not human in this society unless one is judged to be sexually desirable or "hot"; the fat aren't.

As someone has said previously, smokers were the scapegoat before, now it's fat people. There are millions more fat people than smokers at this point, so I expect the rhetoric will be ratcheted up to levels previously unknown to mankind. After all, there's not enough shaming and nastiness now. :eyes:

Nadine has been talking about "The End of Overeating". I wait for the day when it's widely known that food additives work the same way in the human brain as nicotine does.

TIME apparently ran a story on this during the week. And though they refused to name the villains the tittle, something about the cost of our cheap food policy, is enticing enough I will be picking it up tomorrow.

I have the feeling we are at the crest of a movement and like cigs, it will lead to the food producers sooner or later.

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Is that how you refer to gay folks?

Stop that!

:eyes:

It's not funny in any of the 3 or 4 ways I can try to take it.

Really... there is no humor there.

I can find something funny in most situations - this pic is just lame.

and they are trying to say it is the fatties, not perhaps our corporate system and all other elements on it.

Making us Pigs at trough...guilty for the lifestyle they forced us into. Monsanto/HFCS/Cloned Animal Farms/weird ingredient concoctions for taste and appearance...on and on. But, most of all you don't always get sick because of lifestyle. And why is it the Rich and Famous are given a pass for their lifestyles? Because they can afford the care ...plus the cosmetic surgery to keep them in the spotlight.

The rest of us just "suck." We are the ones to be penalized.

This latest blame the victim attempt will also boomerang. There are drugs that can cause massive weight gain. If they push this enough, people are going to start speaking out and make the drug cos. (the ones that lied to drs and patients about the potential for weight gain)look like crooks that they..well..are.

My nephew was always very thin. He died at 42. Thin, but worked too long and hard.

We all die.

As far as eating good food: Corporations don't want to give up the profit on crap. Not much good food around, and not enough time to find, prepare it when you are busting your hump trying to keep a roof overhead with constantly falling real wages.

It's the capitalism that's fucking killing us off too soon.

That doesn't appear to make sense.

Intake 3,000 calories, expend 2,500, and gain weight.
Intake 2,500 calories, expend 3,000, and lose weight.

There's about 3,500 calories per pound of fat, so, somebody who's 10 pounds overweight has, over time, consumed 35,000 more calories than they've expended. Since there are 540 calories in a big mac, that's 64.8 hamburgers they had (and didn't need), when they could have skipped eating meals, or been more active.

I think what's partly at fault here is that people are eating 2, or even 3 (or more, with snacks and whatnot) times a day, when living very sedentary lifestyles. They may have two, or three, jobs, but still be eating too many meals, or, rather, consuming more calories per meal than they need. Three jobs as a clerk, receptionist, and web designer (for random examples) aren't jobs where regular eating, or even a few calorie-heavy meals, make sense. OTOH, a construction worker, farm hand, dock-workers more likely needs 2, or even 3, meals.

Of course, here's also genetic factors, but now that 2/3rds of the country has dangerously bad weight, I think it's safe to rule out the odd genetic issue.

>aren't jobs where regular eating, or even a few calorie-heavy meals, make sense.<

There's documented proof that it is better for the metabolism to eat several lighter and smaller meals during the day, than skipping food entirely. Skipping food entirely is the fastest and most effective way to make sure your body thinks it's starving, and acts accordingly.

>I think it's safe to rule out the odd genetic issue.<

Women on both sides of my family are large. Several generations back.

I also have a dead thyroid.

It's nice to know that you are an expert on weight and genetic issues. :eyes:

>Skipping food entirely is the fastest and most effective way to make sure your body thinks it's starving, and acts accordingly.<

I'm not seeing the problem. If you are effectively "starving" (also known as feeding) your body appropriately, it will become more efficient at harvesting calories, maximizing meals, and reducing both food costs and eating times.

Or, as people in the rest of the world know it:

Living healthy.

>Women on both sides of my family are large. Several generations back.<

So, there's a history. Since it's on both sides of the family, it may be genetic, or social, or environmental, or a mix. Genetics is more complex than that. Women and men in my family were overweight, that doesn't mean that I have to be.

>It's nice to know that you are an expert on weight and genetic issues.<

My father is walking dead, having eaten himself into an early grave, giving himself diabetes. My mother got to 335 lbs, my father to 315 lbs. I've never broken 135 lbs, because I was horrified at what they had done to other people, and themselves.

So, I studied up on the topic, to avoid foisting the cruelty visited upon my myself onto others.

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Some of us burn fewer calories than others, enough to gain
weight even when we eat a little less than others.
So exercise, walking, hiking, vacationing are imperative.
Unfortunately, walking can be a problem for many,
due to crime, pollution, overwork, and distances.

The loss of our vacation time is another big problem.
The labor unions, as I understand it, decided to
give away vacation time as health costs inflated,
rather than challenging the medical establishment
to try to keep health prices down.
And who else was there to take this problem on?

Then there's lack of access to health science.
Did Tim R know how serious his situation was? I expect not.
Like the poor folks with untreated high blood pressure
who, I suspect, never learn about the phenomenon of
enlarged hearts until they've developed one themselves.

(That extreme case of an enlarged ventricle is from usmlwiki)

So, not walking, because you "might" be mugged, or breathe air, or have to expend energy, or not walking, and dying of heart failure...

I'm pretty sure everybody who dies of heart failure is glad that they were hypothetically mugged less, breathed the same air, and didn't have to do as much...

:sarcasm:

I have SEVERE asthma and we have many bad air days (we're one of the worst in the nation for pollution). I tried to exercise during one of those bad air days. I ended up in the hospital and very nearly suffocated to death and would have had they not given me prednazone intravenously. So, no, I don't walk because I'd have to breath the (bad) air. Perhaps you can look past your narrow-mindedness for just a sec. and realize not everyone is able to exercise. Just a thought.

I think we're talking about different things. I happen to have shitty lungs for a somewhat different reason (they spontaneously collapse, if I deal with it wrong, I have to get a chest tube inserted or I die), so when I exercise (move, breathe, walk, dance, cook, etc.) I have to keep in specific boundaries. On bad air days, I have to take it easier.

That doesn't excuse me to sit around and eat, while not expending those same calories. There certainly are reasons for safe exercise patterns, but there are no healthy reasons for not exercising.

Perhaps you view exercise differently, as something that requires strain or difficulty? Exercise is activity, it doesn't have to be stressful, or strain a given body. If somebody is actually incapable of walking, for example, rolling works. No arms, no legs? There's still a neck and a torso than can be kept in shape. Living in a really bad air area (say, Mexico City), and have a house with lots of air management, there's indoor exercise, indoor walking.

Fat Americans are profitable to big pharma, medical ins. companies, and the few giant agribusinesses that dominate the illusionary "many choices" of goods and suppliers in the store.

I remember when a bag of chips cost more that a head of lettuce. What happened? I saw FOOD INC. and it cleared up a few things that made no sense to me. Fat people are just another scape goat.

Republicans blame the victim. They're like the rapist who claims, "She was askin' for it... out alone dressed like that!"

How does a persons lifestyle prevent them from making healthy meals at home and taking them to work?

People don't really care about the psychological reasons for overeating or anything else. They see someone who is fat and immediately think "stupid, lazy, slob." The fact is, conquering food is harder than overcoming heroin, cigarettes or booze. You can give up the latter, but if a person is going to exist they must learn to live with the food demon every day. It's not easy. And it doesn't help when your government allows high fructose corn syrup in just about everything, including canned vegetables.

Alcoholics are bashed.
Smokers are bashed.

You even mentioned these groups, but I don't see "no overweight" sections in restaurants, or laws designating safe distances that the overweight have to stay away from workplaces, or rules that allow firing somebody for coming to work over-fed.

You are correct that people can choose to stop smoking, but not choose to stop eating. However, it's also true that people can choose to smoke in moderation, drink in moderation, and eat in moderation.

Unlike smokers and drinkers, though, we don't have a problem where two thirds of our society has a severe problem, so perhaps some more attention is being paid to the issues that more people are dealing with.

can give a restaurant filled with other people a dose of carcinogens is comparable to an overweight person sitting at a table eating a meal, I'd love to hear it. I'd also appreciate it if you would point me to the dialogue in the current health care debate that talks about alcoholism. The obese are being made the scapegoats in this whole debate. Supposedly, they use up 10% of all medical dollars. Funny how no one asks about that other 90%.

fat = healthy.

besides which, as america got fatter, rates of (e.g.) heart disease went down, not up.

the high point for heart disease in the us was approximately the 50s-60s.

everything we're told is bullshit.

She wanted sections:

Fatty Pattys
Skinny Minnies
Screaming Meemees (for the kids)
Smoky Joes (back then it was still legal)
Regular Folks

just to see the looks on their faces :rofl:''she had a tee shirt that said.."Yes. i KNOW I'm fat, so stop staring at me"

our fellow earth dwellers...picking apart habits, differences...and placing value judgments on it all.

Remember that time when we didn't get caught up in this "diversity" stuff? How do we have "gatherings" when folks lifestyles cause one to have to prepare for so many different habits and preferences...lifestyles that none can even get together and eat hotdogs and hamburgers together for a brief "cookout." :shrug: And...there's always SALAD...but the meat and grease turn folks away and the rest want GOURMET! :D

Of course, now "they" wwant to kill us deader than shit.

Studies have shown that poorer people are generally fatter then richer people, because the less expensive food that poorer people buy tend to be more fattening, making it harder for them to stay in shape and feed themselves & their family.

the PRC... perfect people can't be engaged in any rational way.

Oh and by the way... when science contradicts faith it always lead to funny events.

... and maybe Dick Cheney too.

Working poor with 30 minute breaks for lunch where they must also fit in calls to their children have shitty choices for food other than fast food.

I think your OP is spot on!

It should make people think before they lambast "fat" people.

K&R.

Not just lifestyle, but endocrine and hormonal disorders in millions which are usually undiagnosed.

Usually a dead or low-producing thyroid, but sometimes overactive.

The most common cause of dead thyroid is Hashimoto's disease, which is an autoimmune disorder.

I have it. My thyroid croaked when I was a pre-teenager and I have to take Armour Thyroid the rest of my life. It runs in families, like many other autoimmune disorders such as RA or diabetes.

Excellent website: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com

I can't lose weight on a low-calorie diet. My metabolism slows down to match the lowered intake. No weight lost.

So what's the secret?? I think this is the secret:



Testosterone for Women
Contrarian Endocrinology: Testosterone for Women
by Karlis Ullis, MD with Josh Shackman, MA

Testosterone and Female Body Composition

A women in her late twenties, came to see me complaining about her difficulty in losing weight. After taking a medical history , it was very difficult to tell what the basis of her problem was. She was working out daily, with a balance of aerobic exercise and weight training under the guidance of a qualified personal trainer. Her diet was a basic low carbohydrate/ high protein diet. Even more perplexing, she had been taking a caffeine/ephedrine thermogenic stack and had previously experimented with some diet drugs as well. Something was obviously wrong. I did blood tests to check all of her hormone levels. When the results came back, all of her hormones were in the normal range except for, you guessed it, testosterone! She had very low free testosterone level. It was equal to that seen in a postmenopausal women. This was an obvious source of her fat loss problem .

While the role of testosterone in maintaining muscle mass and losing body fat may be obvious to bodybuilders and athletes, it is a basic hormonal fact that is often absent in the medical community. It is known that many women begin to gain fat rapidly about ten to fifteen years before the menopause and also after. The connection between low to absent testosterone production and the deterioration of a healthy body composition is rarely made. Most women are often only given estrogens and progestins as hormone replacement therapy, but not testosterone.

I have found in my medical practice that giving women estrogen and progesterone and not testosterone makes it almost impossible for them to lose weight/fat.

With the scourge of increasing obesity in the USA, one would expect the medical community to pay closer attention to these issues. Yet the connection between sex hormones, and body composition is highly controversial.

I also believe that testosterone and other androgens may have a critical role treating some types of female obesity - the estrogen dominant type. Precious little research has been done in this controversial area, but it is obvious that a major reason why women have more difficulty losing fat than men is due to their lower levels of testosterone. Since testosterone can not only help mobilize fat but also build muscle, women can attain higher resting metabolic rates.

This is in stark comparison to most diet drugs that result in loss of muscle and usually the return of lost body fat once drug use is ceased. While androgens will obviously have some side effects in women, hence the controversy, however these side effects are likely less than the often life threatening effects of Phen-Fen and other diet drugs. Testosterone as a treatment for obesity is probably much safer and actually more effective in the long term than liposuction. I really hope more research is done in this area, as I believe androgens are crucial in the war against the rapidly evolving plague of obesity in this country.


===================================

1850?

no evidence i've seen.

Americans aren't physically active enough to justify their calorie intakes.

as some folks have pointed out there is this thing called Thyroid malfunction. Then there are the side effects of some meds... I could go on.

Of course our addled sense of what a portion is, well that is part of the problem.

I mean for lunch we had a portion and a half of protein, quick how much is that? (6 oz, a portion is a 1 inch steak that is about the size of your palm) and some peas, which is about 1 oz, (one portion of carbs), and carrots... which I didn't add enough, about quarter of a cup, half a portion.

No potatoes, nothing like that.

Most Americans would think we ate too little. Those are very small portions by American standards.

Oh and we considered adding a little margarine, for flavor, but passed.

Now I suggest you actually look deeply into WHY things are the way they are. It is not that simple, really. I wish it was.

Oh here is another one for you. You know why those last 10 pounds are so damn difficult to loose? Well for every pound you loose you need 20 calories less... so it does become a struggle to get there, especially for the obese... (Quick what is an obese person? 30 BMI or more)

In fact, and this came as a surprise to me, but recent research is showing that obese people burn more calories than we thought they do... yep basal metabolic rate is actually higher than their thin counterparts. Granted, folks eat more than this Basal rate, but think about this, for each pound lost they go down in need by 20 calories... see how you can get to a point where you will not lose more? (We call them a plateau, but that is another story).

It is time to stop judging and THINK... what the hell is going on? I will say this, not popular for the PRC... but FOOD ADDICTION is part of the problem, and though it probably happened by accident... it is now done on purpose.

So many people are on anti depressants and narcotics now for all kinds of problems.
We don't have the close family and spiritual network that people up until the 50's were accustomed too. Life isn't simple any more. There are more challenges, more competitiveness in the workplace. Stress related to looking younger, being thin, having money, being successful, the list goes on.
It just so happens that food, alcohol and drugs which are the biggest escape for this kind of situation and these same things perpetuate ill health.
At my company, which is fairly large, they have recently implemented a mental health initiative to assist employees specifically with these kind of issues. In face we all just finished doing a survey about our feelings on our work environment and how that reflects on our mental health at work. It's a good start at least.
I hope more companies will think about utilizing this plan to help workers who find it difficult to cope at their jobs and/or at home

as well as a slew of other problems.

The US needs to rethink its vacation policy for example. We are highly overworked, and highly stressed.

So absolutely. We have created what I like to call a toxic mix, which is literally killing us. And we need to understand the mix and stop judging people for it. In fact, we need to find solutions.

As to the drugs, yes, you are right. People are taking a slew of meds, and mental health is still pretty low in our priority of treatment. And we have also medicalized all kinds of things, to the point that they become "excuses." That is a whole different post though... and a whole different rant. I also suspect that some of these new medical conditions, like ADD, are partly related to the chemicals of modern life, and partly genetic. What came first, and what made it worst?

Mine is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, most common cause of hypothyroid.

Others are diabetes, RA, Sjogren's syndrome, lupus, adrenal fatigue, there are tons of 'em.

Possibly caused by toxins in environment, stress, etc. We have immune systems that are not healthy so we get chronic diseases where our bodies attack themselves.

Genetic problems, portion sizes, hormone problems, etc.

As far as portions, I NEVER eat a whole meal when eating out. I take one-half to two-thirds of it home.

I have never eaten very much. I have to do protein shakes to get enough protein.

If I cut down on the calories I eat, I cannot lose weight b/c my metabolism slows down as a reaction to starvation.

Exercise helps me to get in shape but doesn't do much for weight loss. A few pounds but not enough to change my BMI much.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0100.pdf

I don't get why people still refuse to accept what ought to be common knowledge about health care expense distribution. In any given demographic slice, 5% of the population accounts for 50% of total health care costs. 15% accounts for 85% of total costs.

The average American, overweight or not, is just not very likely to get expensively sick, period. So for those of you sneering at other peoples' supposed bad habits, get over yourselves! Basic reasonable health is not some sort of special achievement; it is the norm for developed countries. If you want eat and exercise the old-fashioned healthy way, move to some 3rd world country where you will never get old enough to develop degenerative diseases.