Category: health
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A Few Quotes
These are quotes that have stuck with me lately, so I thought I’d share. “[E]ven extremely obese women still have a longer life expectancy than normal-weight men.” — Paul Ernsberger, Ph.D. “Yet, we are not being inundated with scares about the deadliness of being male, millions aren’t spent to eradicate maleness, and men make up a fraction of bariatric patients.” — Sandy Szwarc, BSN, RN, CCP (commenting…
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Minnesota Starvation Experiment
When a healthy, normal-weight person loses 25% of his body mass and looks emaciated, we see it as semi-starvation. When a healthy fat person loses 25% of her body mass and still looks fat, we see it as, “Oh, well, you still have more to lose” — even though the affect on mental health and metabolism may still be the same.
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Overweight Doesn’t Mean Unhealthy, But Lose Weight Anyway!
Sarah Mahoney’s article on MSNBC (and Prevention magazine) looked promising: The overweight debate: Healthy and heavy? Has science overemphasized the danger of a few extra pounds? The article itself? Not so much. It does start off well, noting how people within the CDC’s “overweight” BMI range have longer life expectancies than those at “normal” weights … and adds However, no one’s debating that weight loss can be…
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Fit or Not Fit
This came in as a comment to one of the “Day in the life” posts. One movement involves leaning forward; this irritates my lower back so I substitute something else. Jesus! You’re practically crippled by your weight. A normal person would be able to do this easily. It”s enough of a workout to get my heart into the aerobic range If a bit of shuffling around gets…
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Being Fat and Fit
I found this on an “expert q&a” on exercise on the New York Times site with Steven Blair, an exercise researcher and former president of the American College of Sports Medicine. Can someone be fat and fit? Yes. We began in 1995 to look at fitness and fatness as predictors of mortality, separately and together. What we found then, and continue to find in ongoing studies, is…
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HAES book: “But not dieting is harmful, right?”
You may have read about the study Linda Bacon conducted comparing a standard diet program with a nondieting, “Health at Every Size”-style program, or my post about Bacon’s book (Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth about Your Weight) yesterday. This is a story from the book that I wanted to shout from the treetops. :) Dr Bacon describes how she asked her mentor, Judith S. Stern,…
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Supportive Shoes Rock
This is from an article on sports injuries, but I thought it generally relevant: Many foot injuries are, in fact, the result of wearing the wrong shoes or the wrong shoe size.
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…and the other reason why I exercise
It’s called, “Use it or lose it.” Last fall* I pulled a muscle in my right leg. Kept up my daily walks, pulled it again – or maybe pulled another muscle. This aggravated the occasional pain I would have in my right knee, and added some hip and thigh pain too. By November I was noticeably limping much of the time. I couldn’t walk without pain. I…
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“Do the math”: Exercise & Weight loss
It’s something you commonly see. Example: “The average person walking half an hour a day would lose about 13 pounds a year”. Recently a study actually had sedentary folks start exercising an HOUR a day, 6 days a week for a year. One would think they’d lose, what, more than 13 pounds on average, right? Nope. The women lost an average of 3 pounds and the men…
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Small update
I had been slacking on working out this week. (Something about starting this blog that eats up my free time… !) But after writing the post about the aerobics tape last night, I went ahead and did it this morning. It felt good :) The suprise is that I’ve been feeling kind of congested / sick the last few days and taking it easy. I think getting…
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A bit more on asthma….
It’s been great hearing that others have run into the “You mean it’s asthma, not just that I’m fat?” experience. Thought you would be interested in this, from the American College of Physicians Home Medical Guide: Asthma …. Main symptoms of asthma: Wheezing: May occur with or without shortness of breath in response to a trigger or for no obvious reason. Shortness of breath: Often associated with…
Living ~400lbs 