December Is an Opportunity

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Thanksgiving is over, and whether you stuffed your face or just picked at the holiday foods, it’s in the past. We’re back at work, back to our routine, for the next three weeks. There’s a tremendous opportunity here. What you do this month will determine what your 2016 health goals will be. Think about it.

Are you going to set a goal to lose the weight you’ve gained over the holidays, or will you just continue the healthy eating pattern you’ve begun?

  • Are you going to the gym to begin the path to . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Lack of Exercise

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After reading Thursday’s message, I’ll bet you all saw this one coming. Together with taking in too many calories, we just move way too little and it costs us. I specifically made the title of Thursday’s message “Muscle Aging” instead of “Aging Muscle.” The reason is that our sedentary lifestyle causes the muscle to age faster than it should. The solution is exercise. Here’s a partial list of what exercise does for skeletal muscle:


Better Blood Flow

Regular exercise increases blood flow to the exercising muscles. That allows nutrients in and more important, waste . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: Muscle Aging

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In the previous message, I said that there was one factor besides calorie intake that affected the rate of obesity in the United States. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, just take a look at the CT scans at right (1). These are scans of the thighs of a 25-year-old man and an 81-year-old man, matched for body weight and height. There are a couple of things that you can notice. The white area is the muscle and the dark area is mostly fat; the older man’s thigh has visibly less muscle mass . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: Vegetarian Diet

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Last week I talked about the causes of obesity as it related to food choices. It all comes down to calories in versus calories out. There are a couple of more points I want to make so I decided to continue the message arc this week.

Let’s begin with vegetarians. Do they have any advantage in the calories in versus calories out? Yes and no. Based on the available research, mostly done on 7th Day Adventists, vegetarians have lower average BMIs than non-vegetarians. The more vegetarian the diet, the lower the BMI, with complete vegans having the lowest . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Data

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The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES for short, is large-scale survey performed by the CDC every few years. I’ve written about studies that have used the data many times. I like the survey because they use a dietary recall from the previous 24 hours instead of a food frequency questionnaire; there’s still potential for errors, but most people can remember what they ate yesterday. It’s also open-access data, meaning that if you have the credentials, you can use the data to answer questions. A couple of Cornell researchers did have a question: did . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Beliefs

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Fried food. Refined carbohydrates. Soft drinks. High fructose corn syrup. All of these have been independently examined and implicated in causing the obesity epidemic and associated conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Just last week, Dr. Robert Lustig and his research group published a study on children and sugar intake. The researchers lowered the sugars in the diet to 10%; they continually adjusted the kids’ food intake to give them the same number of calories but with starchy carbohydrates such as pizza, baked potato chips, and other starchy processed foods. The researchers found improvement in factors associated . . .

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The Cause of Obesity: The Wrong Call

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Three weeks ago, I wrote about the improbable finish to the game between Michigan State and Michigan; the point was that nothing is over until it’s over. Hard to believe that 21 days later, a similar finish went the other way for the Spartans. There was one big difference: the final score was aided by the wrong judgment call by an official. Would it have changed the outcome of the game? Hard to say because Nebraska was on a roll. But a judgment call determined the outcome.

In the official’s opinion, an MSU player contacted the Nebraska player . . .

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Holiday Stretch: Your Way

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Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question about how you’re planning to keep the weight off during the holiday stretch. I think these strategies are terrific. The one thing they share is that everyone has thought about it and decided on a plan of action. Working the plan day to day will be a challenge, but those readers know what they will do. Read them all for ideas that you can put in your holiday stretch. Some readers wrote very extensive emails, and I thank you all for that; I read every one. I edited . . .

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Holiday Stretch: My Way

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The past three days, the temperatures in Grand Rapids have been in the 70s with glorious sunshine. It’s going to be that way today but cloudy. Rain is coming and sooner or later, cold weather and snow. The sidewalks that are clear will become snow covered and icy at some point. I know that now. Just like I know that Paula and I will be baking Christmas cookies next month. So as the holidays stretch out ahead of us, how do I plan to avoid holiday weight gain?

My holiday stretch plan is to get 45 to 60 minutes . . .

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Here We Go: The Holiday Stretch

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The final two months of 2015 are upon us. Winter is approaching. Some lucky people will be packing up to flee south. Depending on where you live, you may have leaves to rake, bulbs to plant, trees to prune, and winterizing tasks all over the house.

It’s also the busiest eating season of the year. As soon as you recover from your Halloween candy coma, here comes Thanksgiving, holiday parties, eggnog, pumpkin pie, Christmas cookies, Christmas dinner, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and month after month of sports playoff parties. No wonder the holiday seven has . . .

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