Is it just me or are the "airwaves" flooded with "Lose weight fast" ads. One ad appearing in my email, promised a 35 lbs loss in a matter of days. Then, there is the 21 day diet which I've heard touted. And of course, there is the nuclear option, surgery, which includes cutting up your stomach and throwing away most of it as in the gastric sleeve (nevermind that the stomach is a critical digestive organ as these medical providers DO learn in school and probably doesn't work to digest a bunch of the 100 nutrients and micronutrients we need daily --after it's cut up) or cutting off most of the stomach to make a "pouch" (isn't that cutsie)... attaching this to the bowel, bypassing the business end of the small bowel (where the rest of the nutrients are digested) and this is supposed to kill your appetite and the pounds just "drop off" ... as in the gastric bypass. Well, after surgery when you feel like you've been hit by a train, you aren't very hungry but I know plenty of gastric bypass post ops who weigh over 300 lbs (those who LIVED that is... 1-2% of them die within 30 days of surgery - we never hear about this on TV of course).
None of this works of course, because the appetite centers are in the brain, not the stomach but everyone is looking for the quick way out. There IS NO quick way. As Beverly Sills, the opera singer has said "There is no quick road to a place worth going!" Even the Dr Nowzardian shows which greatly romanticize the weight loss surgeries, include a disclaimer "less than 5% are successful in keeping off the weight on the long term."
Mild calorie restriction and counting your calories every day, will cause a weight loss and keep it off - as long as you count your calories - they have good web clients which are free, like "My Fitness Pal".
Overweight is 60% genetic, so say the experts. And the American lifestyle consisting mostly, of fast food and high fat foods, is not only fattening us up but also clogging our blood vessels. The hospital where my husband got 5 surgeries to unclog his major blood vessels (including the coronary arteries, 4 out of 5 which were completely blocked), has lots of folks who are aging and either missing limbs or pretty sick. We don't see this on TV either. My hubby has been in the hospital since Jan 2016! As of this writing (Sept 2016) that's pretty near 8 months (he was home for the month of June)
In the early 1990's, Dr Dean Ornish who had come down with heart disease when he was 45, did a lot of research and wrote a book called "REVERSING HEART DISEASE". In it, he detailed 10,000 patients (including himself) who had reversed heart disease eating a low fat diet (10% fat) and exercising cardio at least 30 minutes a day. The surgeon general of the USA agreed and wrote a few papers to that effect, also. This was mostly ignored by the public despite the evidence based research and sadly, few people heard from their medical providers that this was good advice, leaving only a handful of us, often labeled "health nuts" to believe Dr Ornish (kind of a no brainer that what he was writing was true).
In 1994, at the age of 49, I went on the low fat diet and started exercising cardio, daily. This made me healthy but only took off 19 lbs.
In 2008, by serendipity I discovered that mild calorie restriction not only made my GERD go away but made me lose weight. I ended up losing 110 lbs and keeping 107 lbs off, ever since. And yes, I count my calories daily and I still exercise cardio 6 days a week.
And I, despite heart disease running in my family, and despite my getting pretty close to my 72nd birthday, am NOT in the hospital getting my arteries unclogged, .
Don't have the time to read Ornish's book? Here's a 3 minute video giving the Reader's Digest version - by Dr Ornish himself, still going strong, unlike his Dad who died at the age of 49.
Photo is of myself and hubby just before all the surgeries and what hubby looked like when he came back from getting a quadruple coronary bypass. Hubby is finally realizing that exercise should be a part of his life and exercising on his own (walking his wheelchair down the halls of the hospital). Photos of him are reprinted by permission. A word to the wise should be sufficient. "Who does not study history, is doomed to repeat it!"
