Refuse to Regain
Refuse To Regain -blog
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I loved this blog from Refuse to Regain. Its in repsonse to a blog from the other day asking us questions about our maintenance and weight loss for an interview that is with Dr Oz kinda for Oprah. ;) Here's a link to "from 0 t o Oz": http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...om-0-to-0z.html lots of good stuff in the comments section. |
thanks, Judy. Everything helps- this is our long haul journey!!
E |
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Yup! It sure is!! :agree: We need more of this kind of stuff!! Your welcome!! |
One Against the Many: Time to Take a Broader Perspective Blog
One Against the Many: Time to Take a Broader Perspective
Posted: 03 Mar 2009 05:52 PM PST By Barbara Berkeley Yet another disappointing weight loss trial. On February 26, the New England Journal published the results of a study of 881 adults being treated for obesity with varying food plans. The purpose of this study was to determine whether certain nutrient combinations were superior to others in promoting weight loss. Patients were assigned to one of four diets and followed for two years. The length of the trial was unusual because very few weight loss studies extend past one year. At the end of the day, all the participants were basically in the same place. The media went into their usual frenzy, reporting that these results proved that no one diet was any better than any other. But a closer look at the data showed something very different. First, the study showed that, yet again, people lost weight and then began to regain it. Second, it proved that even under monitored conditions, people were unable to stick to precise ratios of fat, carbs and protein. In the end, participants could not sustain diets that required detailed counting nor could they really sustain calorie reduction. The average subject on any diet had lost about 13 pounds at 6 months. By two years, and despite group and individual counseling sessions, losses averaged only 7-9 pounds and weight regain was continuing in a seemingly inevitable upward path. Granted, these results are better than no intervention at all. At least the average participant was still at a lower weight than where he or she had started, yet the curve suggested that this situation was not to be long-lived. Writing in an editorial in the New England Journal, Dr. Martijn Katan commented, “The inability of the (study) volunteers to maintain their diets must give us pause…Even these highly motivated, intelligent participants who were coached by expert professionals could not achieve the weight losses needed to reverse the obesity epidemic…Evidently, individual treatment is powerless against an environment that offers so many high-calorie foods and labor-saving devices.” Dr. Katan then suggested a paradigm shift. He went on to describe a total–community approach that was tried with great success in two small towns in France. Called EPODE (a French acronym for Together Let’s Prevent Obesity in Children), the program used multiple fronts to bring down obesity levels in kids. “Everyone from the mayor to shop owners, schoolteachers, doctors, pharmacists, caterers, restaurant owners, sports associations, the media, scientists, and various branches of town government joined in an effort to encourage children to eat better and move around more. The towns built sporting facilities and playgrounds, mapped out walking itineraries, and hired sports instructors. Famillies were offered cooking workshops and families at risk were offered individual counseling.” Within 3 years, the prevalance of overweight in children in EPODE areas was 8.8% whereas it had climbed to 17.8% in neighboring communities. The program is now in place in 200 European towns. Dr. Katan concluded: “Like cholera, obesity may be a problem that cannot be solved by individual persons but that requires community action…The apparent success of such community interventions suggests that we may need a new approach to preventing and to treating obesity and that it must be a total-environmental approach that involves and activates entire neighborhoods and communities. It is an approach that deserves serious investigation, because the only effective alternative that we have a present for halting the obesity epidemic is large-scale gastric surgery.” This assessment rings completely true to me. Day after day I read about the successes of people like you who follow this website. But day after day in my medical practice, I deal with the realities of endless numbers of patients who can’t make permanent change work. These are sincere, determined people who very much want to change. But they can’t. Why not? I believe that it is because the modern environment is leaning on them like a crushing weight. It leans on most of them so heavily that they can’t be successful. Permanent maintainers are an unusual group in that they have found ways to shelter themselves from this pressure. This takes a certain unique level of determination, imagination and interest, and an ingenuity that may not be available to the majority. Even the most determined may be crushed when life circumstances divert their attention and make them more vulnerable. Unless one’s healthy lifestyle has become utterly ingrained, it is apt to be obliterated when a parent gets hospitalized, a child goes through a crisis or a divorce threatens. It’s clear that the individual approach to permanent lifestyle change is not working, but that doesn’t say much about either the approach or the individual if we haven’t given that person a fair chance. After all, how can we expect someone to climb a mountain when they’re saddled with a thousand-pound environmental back pack? As Dr. Katan suggests, let’s think about lightening the load. 1. Let’s have the new administration turn the tide by lobbying for new initiatives that would make taking care of your health “cool.” Bring back the Presidential Physical Fitness tests and awards that were part of every gym class during the Kennedy years. Appoint a Wellness Czar who would start nationwide health challenges and set an agenda for clear health goals we want to accomplish. 2. There is a lot of talk about being more responsible. Banks, investors, mortgage holders and big business all have suffered from going beyond their reach; consuming too much. The same can be said for Americans regarding their health. Besides reorganizing our insurance industry, we need to call on our citizens to become responsible about their health. That means setting national standards and trying to get there. Responsibility is “in.” We should extend the message to taking care of our bodies. That, much more than electronic medical records, will ultimately have the greatest impact on the cost of health care in the future. 3. We should reduce the amount of food stimulation in the environment by getting rid of food ads for kids and by running nutritional information in a crawl at the bottom of the screen over food ads for adults (as they do in France). Cigarettes have a warning and so should many food ads. 4. Our stimulus package spending should include the building of bike paths, walking courses, community fitness facilities and other wellness related projects. 5. We should move lots of people (the community at large) toward wanting to take better care of themselves. If everyone wants to do something, no one person is an outlier. I believe the way to do this is to incentivize healthy behaviors. That might mean giving insurance discounts, bonus pay or other perks to people who keep their weight stable from year to year, or to those who can prove they have attended exercise sessions, or to people who are successfully keeping off at least some of the weight they have lost. 6. Having just worked on a project that created six weeks of menus for a magazine, I can tell you that I was amazed at the calories in most of the foods we eat. We could make it a lot easier for people if all restaurants were required to post calories next to their menu items. 7. And what about one of my favorite ideas (although most people don’t like it): the food-free workplace. Food in the office would have to be confined to designated eating spots like break rooms or cafeterias. Second-hand food exposure is a major environmental “lean” for people who are trying hard to control weight. Like second-hand smoke, the presence of food where it’s not wanted triggers all sorts of brain and gut responses. Since obesity causes as many deaths a year as smoking, why don’t we take it equally seriously in the work environment? I believe that creating a healthy America will ‘take a village’. At a time when bold new projects seem to be in vogue, there couldn’t be a better moment for action. http://refusetoregain.com/my_weblog...erspective.html |
I think things like the Presidential Fitness tests are great. I was terrible at it at the time (except the gymnastics part), but now I have a barometer. Hey, I could not run a mile in high school and now I can run 10! I had no idea they didn't still do this...
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Food Free Workplace
Refuse To Regain
The Food Free Workplace: A Sore Subject Revisited Posted: 09 Mar 2009 06:31 AM PDT DR. OZ UPDATE: Barbara will be a guest on the the Dr. Oz radio show this Wednesday, March 11, however, the show will air anywhere from a day or two to as much as a week after taping. The only way to find out when it's on the schedule is to check under Dr. Oz on www.oprah.com/radio. It will air on XM channel 156 or Sirius 195 (if you have the Sirius/XM package). XM offers a free month of listening on their web site. We will keep our eyes on the schedule and let you know the air date. Quote:
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I thought this worthy of bringing here:
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Some interesting stats in there!! |
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I really enjoyed reading her blog today. I do think that those of us who are maintaining, don't give ourselves enough credit for what we're actually doing. :agree: :thup: |
I follow the Refuse to Regain blog too, and have just ordered her book Refuse to Regain!: 12 Tough Rules to Maintain the Body You've Earned! I'm really looking forward to reading it :)
As enomarb so eloquently put it: Quote:
There's currently so little guidance and advice out there for those of us on maintenance, that I tend to devour anything that I do come across. |
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I know....it felt like I was like navigatng through a mine field when I first got there. :daze: very scary!! :eek: |
I dislike the concept of a mine field. It Seems like the word isn't scary enough, and that you can't see what you are about to get into.
I compare it to navigating the dog walk at an Interstate Highway rest stop. You can see dog poo everywhere, and if you step in it, it gets all over you and it takes forever for you to get it off. Kind of like body fat. :( |
:lol: I'd much rather step in dog poop than a mine field! At least you can wash it off your shoes....whereas in a mine field, you just may not need shoes any more.
I suppose it depends on your point of view. :) |
Refuse to Regain Blog:
April 13, 2009 Going The Distance By Barbara Berkeley I loved this entry on Jonathan’s www.jack-sprat.net blog. With his permission, I’ve reproduced it below: Persister While I was out running this morning I tripped and had kind of a tough spill. But fortunately, other than my phone, nothing was damaged. (Well, my pride was a bit wounded.) I have a bruise on my chest and a scrape on my knee, but no blood was shed, no muscles pulled, no joints twisted, etc. so all things considered, it was a relatively fortuitous fall, and much less scary than when I have tripped and fallen in the dark running on a weekday morning. I was able to get right back up and continue on, even if I was a little bit shaken. As I continued, and got back into the rhythm of running, I started to get annoyed. I noticed that time and again, someone would run right past me, sailing forward as if I were standing still. It really began to bug me that they could all go so fast, so easily. Regardless of age or gender, everyone seemed to be just cruising along at top speed while I felt as though I were plodding. All of my running and training and efforts, and here I was, slow as the proverbial tortoise. So I’ll be honest and tell you that at that point, I strongly considered giving up. My phone is smashed, but I can still use the keypad, and I thought about giving Devin a call and asking him to come get me. It was a sort of petulant, pouty feeling, one which I often had as a child. This week, in the blog “Refuse to Regain,” Barbara Berkeley talked about her dissatisfaction with the word “maintenance” to describe the process of remaining slender after having lost weight. She noted that it didn’t really do justice to use the word maintenance to explain such an “interesting, compelling, challenging process.” I agree that it’s hard to come up with just the right word. I’d suggest “persister” if that was a real word. Because what I did today after first falling and then being passed by a whole bunch of runners was stop and assess the truth of what I was feeling, acknowledging the frustration and difficulty….and then I JUST KEPT GOING. In the end, I ran over six more miles until I got home, and as I was getting pretty close to finishing, I had that blissful, “this is the best day ever” kind of feeling. Legs pumping, lungs pulsating, eyes and ears taking everything in around me — it was awesome. That’s what weight maintenance is like to me. There are lots of times when I trip and fall and think about giving up. There are times when I get angry that “everyone else has it so much easier than me.” There are times when it just seems too painful, too unpleasant and too scary to keep moving forward. But then I pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep going. And I never, ever regret it. One of the most important mental attitudes any maintainer can develop is the confidence that he or she can persist. Like any of the skills of maintenance, this confidence comes with practice. Getting to this feeling may take awhile, which means many moments of simply forcing one’s self to keep going without being at all sure of success. Many of you have written to describe this experience in relation to exercise. You started off by simply forcing yourselves to do it. You grew more confident in your ability to persist. Finally the persistence morphed into love. There is a commercial currently running on TV which shows a man going out in the morning for a run. He heads onto a wooded path and begins to jog. In the first mile of his run, roots trip him and plants send thick vines out like lassos to wrap him up and keep him from moving on. But he persists. As the early going passes off, he breaks through the sabotaging foliage onto a clear, wide path. The rest of the run is laid out easily and joyfully before him. The topic of persistence has particular meaning in the days following holidays. This past week, with its Easter and Passover foods, tends to be a hard one for the dietarily remodeled. Holidays link food with family, love, ritual and even the divine. Special foods have always been part of cultural tradition and none of us want to completely sever that connection. Yet we learn to persist through the moment even if those chocolate bunnies nip at our heels or those matzoh balls plop pounds of weight on the morning scale. Even if we cannot control the moment, we manage to stumble back from the fall. The path lies wide and joyful ahead of us and we can truly say that “this is the best day ever.” |
hi Judy-
Thanks for that last post. I really enjoy reading the new and different things you find. I agree- it does take persistence and practice and commitment to get to the confidence that you can do it. And do it and do it and do it and....... |
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Your welcome Eno and Thanks!! It kind of funny to me that these ladies want to find new words for what we do now. In my experience of this whole thing, I do think that someting actually clicked inside me as I was in weight loss mode. I started to realize that I needed to find many types of foods that I likede so that I would not become bored with my new way of eating. Its important for me to not be bored or I wander. So I began to try many new things. The word sustainability is key for me. Having a wide range of foods to be able to chose from is what makes this sustainable for me. Also, being to very willing to get on that scale and actually monitor my weight, was key to being good at maintaining. I also had to learn that when I made rules for myself, that I could and would follow them....and I do still do that 3 yrs into my maintenance. :cool: I don't really know which plans those ladies at Refuse to Regain used to lose their weight. But from reading some of it and seeing how much exercise they say they do, I tend to think that they do low fat, high carb plans. But I don't really know. :) |
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