Stunt for profit or positive change?

I ran across this picture along with an article.

Some people are complaining that girls will emulate the woman in the picture. Or worse, want to be even thinnner.

Excuse me?

How could anyone possibly view that as some kind of goal? I have a feeling that anyone that looks at that and wants to be as sick as she is, is already well on their way to un-health.

The photographer claims the stunt is meant to raise awareness. I hope it works - this just makes me want to feed the poor woman something. Anything!

Check out the article; the news is a little old, but it's still worth some attention.

Writing what I know

I feel compelled to write, but what should I write about? I've heard writers should write what they know. What do I know?

I know music, to an extent. I know games, and I know what it takes to make someone feel like shit.

I can lie, and sometimes I know how to get caught.

I know what it's like to be made to feel weak and worthless. I've also discovered what it feels like to be seen as strong.

I also know food. I know food like a lover is known; from head to toe in intimate fashion. And food, like an ever present object of desire, need and affection, is a monstrous and needy partner.

I simply can't keep her from killing me, yet if I quit her I'll surely die.

Weight-loss jumpstart

Ok, I promised info on how I get a headstart to get back into ketosis after a slip. A day turned into a few, but here we go!

First off, it's not my way to take planned binges. I can't seem to do them correctly. So, when I binge it's because I had a moment of weakness. My moments are usually followed by several more moments give or take a day or so. The best way to get back on track is to eat. Yep, eat alot. Eat to your hearts content. Find your favorite low carb foods and USE them.

Now, eating alot while low carbing doesn't always work for everyone in the weight-loss stage. Many still have to pinch their intake a little bit which is pretty easy since most don't get hungry eating as such. But that first day back in the saddle is not about losing - it's about about breaking the cheat cycle. For those of you who may binge like me (at least 2 meals in a row) it's a difficult task to get going again.

Now, after I've had a day to satisfy myself and start eating the right foods again I reinduct myself. Sometimes for a week - sometimes longer. As tmy appetite comes under control, I'll eat less and less for the first week and then continue that for the second. Then I adjust my caloric and carb intake so I lose at a decent speed.

It's been my method since way-back-when I weighed 385 pounds, and it's not failing me now even though I screw up from time to time.

Later in the day, I'll post my cheesecake recipe! I should have thought of that myself... shame on me. Now where is my recipe pile...

Medication Nation

As some readers may already know, I'm currently recovering from a back injury that left me with 2 slipped disks and a single ruptured one. These days the pain isn't so bad, but a few months ago the pain was pretty intense. I just started lifting above 10 lbs, and walk without too much difficulty. Thanks to a short regimen of prednisone, I recovered quickly - these days just 800 mgs (third of the max daily dose) of ibuprofen keeps me able to walk. Most days I'm able to lift, and the numbness in my legs is minimal. Enough background - here is what is on my mind.

After almost fully recovering, workers comp. finally approved a specialist to evaluate my injury and prescribe treatment. The appointment was in January 22nd. My injury occurred on August 10th. Good thing the general practitioner and my PT were able to get me to work again, I only missed a few days thanks to just 4 days of prednisone. If I had waited for the specialist, I would have been at home for months. It might seem decent to sit at home and collect a check, but I would have gone out of my mind! My work is very important to me, and I would have returned completely out of the loop.

Imagine my surprise when I finally got to see the "specialist" and he completely changed my medication after simply reading my case history that was months out of date. I told him carefully that I was managing the pain just fine with advil, but he didn't seem to mind stuffing me full of some pretty heavy meds.

To start my day, he wanted to take a pill for the inflammation. Handy since this is the source of the nerve pain - the disks are bulging against the nerves leading out of 2 vertebrae in my lower lumbar region and anti-inflammatories help a great deal. Since the stuff he wanted to me to take can cause bleeding, he prescribed Xantac to "protect my stomach". This apparently means "covers his ass". I used it for a week. Not only was I in immense pain for a few days because it didn't work, I felt like I was on some kind of mind-altering drug. Hey wait, I was!

That's not all; he also prescribed Neurontin. For those of you who are familiar with such a thing, you'll know this ALSO messes with your head. It makes you sleepy, dizzy and nauseous. But, no worries - the good doctor also prescribed some sleeping pills. Side effects? Dizziness and nausea. It seems that the doctor was well aware of the anxiety and restlessness that are caused by the anti-inflammatory, and simply decided to omit this fact from our 12 minutes spent together. That's right - 12 minutes. That includes the 3 and a half minutes I took to follow him into the hall after he tried to take off without explaining a damn thing about the crap he was giving me. His lame ass excuse for the drowsiness inducing meds? "You need a full nights sleep to heal properly." No kidding! Did he ask me if I was having trouble sleeping? Nope. He just assumed I'd be an anxious wreck from all the drugs, and did not tell me. Bingo! I felt like I was on cocaine just from the anti-inflammatory. Score one for the drug companies!

So, it comes down to this: a few advil a day or 2 drugs to do the same thing plus ANOTHER 2 to counteract the bad side effects. On top of it all, they didn't work HALF as well as just a few generic ibuprofen tabs.

No thanks doc, I'll stick with the ibuprofen.

Nicotine cravings associated with hunger cravings?

In a previous post, Food addicts shouldn't take a day off from healing, I discussed how the suppression of my hunger pains also seemed to reduce my desire for compulsive activities in general. Well, after seeing from the LA Times "Study links brain region to smoking addiction" I looked up the "Insular Cortex" in Wiki.

Here is a bit from the article:

"The insula has increasingly become the focus of attention for its role in body representation and subjective emotional experience. In particular, Antonio Damasio has proposed that this region plays a role in mapping visceral states that are associated with emotional experience, giving rise to conscious feelings. This is in essence a neurobiological formulation of the ideas of William James, who first proposed that subjective emotional experience (i.e. feelings) arise from our brain's interpretation of bodily states that are elicited by emotional events. This is an example of embodied cognition. Functionally speaking, the insula is believed to process convergent information to produce an emotionally relevant context for sensory experience. More specifically, the anterior insula is related more to olfactory, gustatory, vicero-autonomic, and limbic function, while the posterior insula is related more to auditory-somesthetic-skeletomotor function. Functional imaging experiments have revealed that the insula has an important role in pain experience and the experience of a number of basic emotions, including anger, fear, disgust, happiness and sadness. Functional imaging studies have also implicated the insula in conscious desires, such as food craving and drug craving. What is common to all of these emotional states is that they each change the body in some way and are associated with highly salient subjective qualities. The insula is well situated for the integration of information relating to bodily states into higher-order cognitive and emotional processes. The insula receives information from "homeostatic afferent" sensory pathways via the thalamus and sends output to a number of other limbic-related structures, such as the amygdala, the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex."

Surprise! The insula regulates subjective emotions, hunger, and various other body states. Due to the fact that I'm so profoundly affected by proper diet, reason leads me to believe that the low carb lifestyle I've chosen was truly meant for my metabolism. I wasn't imagining things!

Notice I'm not saying, "Low Carb Cures Addiction" even though it's the case with me. I've heard plenty of people tell me about how they have done the same thing through simply exercising. What I will stick to is that what we do to our bodies our bodies do to us; if we excercise and eat well we will be rewarded.

I'll be investigating this further, so stay tuned - I'll scrape up some research concerning specific diets and their effect on mental states.

Food addicts shouldn't take a day off from healing themselves

It’s become pretty clear to me that the “six day on one day off” approach to dieting doesn’t work, at least for me. I’ve heard people that have successfully used this approach to dieting, but for a person like me who is so soundly addicted to sugar and simple carbs it just doesn’t make sense. Have you ever heard of a drug addict using this type of approach? You don’t hear any doctors suggesting that a patient in a drug rehab program should “indulge” now and then.

If I have even one meal consisting of any carbs other than vegetables, my cravings for massive amounts of food kicks in and my willpower deteriorates. When I’m not “under the influence” of sugar or the like, I can quite easily pass up pretty much any kind of food if I shouldn’t eat it.

Also, when exercising, I find it much easier to resist binging. I also have some trouble with smoking – I currently smoke and I have plans to quit very soon. I know based on past experience that after a few weeks of eating low-carb I can also stop smoking with minimal cravings! It’s amazing, the connection between my sugar addiction and my various other vices. I feel so much more in control of my behavior when I don’t eat a ton of carbs. I feel less anxiety, I feel better about myself, and I sleep so much better!

When I was a kid, I was diagnosed with ADD – doctors also warned I could continue to experience symptoms into adulthood. I did, and I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Up until I started low-carbing, I had so little control over the way I lived my life. I had tremendous mood swings, insomnia, and simply wasn’t able to manage my life. Now that I’m older and have started taking better care of myself, the mental and emotional difficulties I experienced have slowly disappeared. I know it’s hard to believe, but I’m convinced – low-carb eating has alleviated the symptoms of serious mental illness. It did more than drugs or therapy ever did.

I am pretty sure that as time goes by, people will come to the realization that most of our health struggles (physical and mental) can be erased with proper diet and exercise. I think low-carb methods may not be perfect, but they have brought to light that we truly are still just barely scratching the surface as to how our bodies work as a whole.