Dear Reader,
Have you sat with your plans for the New Year and included weight management? If you are suffering from arthritis pain and stiffness, and you are even 15 pounds over-weight, your plans will turn out better if they include weight management. The bloggers are full of advice on this topic. I would like to share some new research with you that may help you realize just how challenging it is to establish a new “normal” weight. You may forgive yourself for all that struggle without permanent results. You may decide to figure out what you must do to change your own future, a daunting but not impossible task.
Take heart. There may be an explanation for why we get stuck at certain weight.
In a recent study, scientists discovered a change in the appetite regulator in the brain that interferes with our internal conversation
The actual published abstract is here http://www.jci.org/articles/view/59660?search%5barticle_text%5d=obesity+&search%5bauthors_text%5d=schwartz
You may have seen Carol Ostrom’s report in the Seattle Times on 12/30. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017122171_brain30m.html
Scientific discoveries like this tend to make the obese shake their heads grimly and say “no wonder it is so hard to loss 10 lbs. and have that be my new ‘high'”. Their brain is urging them toward the old higher set point. More research needs to be done. An MRI scan of the brains of 34 obese individuals tells us there is inflammation there, but leaves a lot of questions. While they are rare, some people who drop 15 to 100 pounds are able to maintain their weight loss for years. In my own case, I spent eight years with a psychotherapist dealing with childhood issues, and at the end of that time I was no longer uncontrollably tempted by cookies in the house. I’ve been at my healthy body weight for a while now after many years of yo-yo diet struggle. There was a time when I couldn’t bring a box of cookies in the house and I certainly never baked them. I would plan my behavior carefully before attending a stand up party with hors d’oeuvres and deserts. I still eat a healthy protein snack before going to a stand up party. If I put on 3 to 4 pounds during the vacation, I drop it easily. Did my hypothalamus recover and establish a new, lower set-point? Could yours do the same thing?
When I first went into business as a wellness adviser, I held weight management classes in my home. The attendees came at lunch time for 8 weeks. I prepared healthy food, taught them about the way our body handles sugars, how the pancreas reacts to coffee/black tea/cola drinks all day long and how to recover from exercise so they could get up and do it again the next day. I taught them how to prepare and carry healthy snacks, introduced them to thin slices of jicama, Jerusalem artichokes, turnips, and bean sprouts. They learned about alternatives to wheat flour: rice bread, soba and rice noodles, rye breads, breakfast cereal of cooked rye, barley and oat flakes. Today the stores are full of gluten free foods.
My students fell into two groups: people whose metabolism had slowed down as they aged and one day they realized they had gained 15 pounds and needed some help to change their eating and exercise habits; people who had put on a lot of weight over the years and developed a real love/hate relationship with food. Learning these tools helped this second group, but did not guarantee permanent weight loss. Both groups found the extra weight caused creaky joins and discomfort. The first group relieved their arthritis pain considerably by following the dietary suggestions and moving more. The second group were discouraged. I was discouraged that I couldn’t seem to help them.
If you are in this second group and suffer from a chronic over-weight dieting cycle and you feel this weight is causing or increasing your arthritis pain, take heart from this new study. Inflammation is real. It is present whenever there is disease. The immune system can repair inflammation and does so every moment of every day. Perhaps, with careful healthy eating, even the hypothalamus can be repaired.
I take a lot of food supplements manufactured by the Shaklee Corporation. They have helped my body repair tissue damaged by inflammation. Food alone could not do the job for me. After reading this study, I wonder if 10 years of daily intake of extra nutrients provided by the Shaklee Wellness Program actually repaired the hypothalamus. I don’t think it can be done in 6 months or even 2 years. A long term approach is necessary. Perhaps you need the help of a top quality line of food supplements to pour massive amounts of nutrients into your damaged body. If you would like to learn more about the weight management program Shaklee has to offer, please email or call me. betsy@HiHoHealth.com or 206 933 1889. Wordpress doesn’t allow me to put an active link to my shopping website. I prefer to discuss these nutritional issues with you first anyway. So be in touch.
Be Well, Do Well, and Keep Moving.
Betsy
Watch for a review of an independent study showing how resveratrol and polyphenols can literally stop this inflammation process at the cellular level. I will present this information in my next blog.
BTW here is an interesting blog on weight management. I pass it along to you. http://kirbsfitness.wordpress.com/