Yo-yo-mania
You know the drill or someone who has done it: The Yo-yo diet. It's not in and of itself a diet, but it's what we do. We try The Rice Diet, The Grapefruit Diet, The Beverly Hills Diet, The Zone Diet--whatever diet it is, we can have some success for awhile, then we plateau.
And we try harder. Maybe we added an exercise regimen so we amp it up. Maybe we look thoughtfully at our meal plan and we subtract or substitute something. If we were kinda cheating a little–we become more diligent. Then we may or may not see more progress. Whatever the outcome, when we get to the point of 'We're done' because we reach our goal, or we just wear ourselves out...a few months later or a year...we are right back where we started.
And in the meantime, our body's metabolism has taken a beating. It is lowered because we've taught it to survive on less. And that 'less' means we have set ourselves up for failure because when we go back to our eating habits--we are in a worse situation than when we started. Seriously, can't we catch a break here?
Maybe you're one of the lucky ones who was able to lose weight and keep it off. Excellent! I'm going to guess that you only tried less than a handful of diets and your metobolism was not compromised.
If you're like me, after trying 20 diets and losing and regaining 80 pounds or more--you are full scale Yo-yo dieting and possibly have hypertension and either are on the road to diabetes or have it already as you've gotten older.
Again, can't we catch a break? Arghhhh. It's so frustrating.
And for those of you who 'think' you have excellent blood glucose levels, think again. After doing a lot of research and knowing that some information in the medical journals don't become mainstream for 10, 20, or 30 years (for whatever reasons), if your blood glucose levels aren't around the 70mg/dl range, you might have higher insulin levels and not know it until you walk right into pre-diabetes or full blown diabetes.
Note I mention 'higher insulin levels' and not blood glucose. Because the liver is processing and storing glucose into all your organs like a superpower--and this excess glucose only spills into your blood levels after your organs are bursting at the seams. The body is amazing and it's trying–really trying to keep you operating–but it can only do so much before it implodes.
My husband was shell shocked when he got a diagnosis of diabetes recently–after years of being annually tested and showing no signs of diabetes. This year, his glucose level was 275 mg/dl. Freaking 275!
Another test they do to measure glucose level is the Hemoglobin A1c. His Hemoglobin A1c was 9.6 when the acceptable level is 4.8-5.6% and prediabetes is 5.7-6.4–He literally jumped from not having diabetes to full scale diabetes with no stop in between.
How did this happen? Funny thing...he didn't intend to, but he was doing intermittent fasting while working (have to give you a little background). He has the kind of job that makes eating a sit down meal challenging.
So he'd skip breakfast, skip lunch, and chow down on a huge dinner, about 6 or 8 cans of soda (I know, I know) and junk food. For over 15 years. I was astounded.
How could anyone abuse their body in such a way and yet, his lab work continue to be in the acceptable range for blood glucose. Healthwise, the only thing he had was hypertension (which he was managing with meds). It took me awhile to figure out how this could be. At first I thought it was genetics and a lucky roll of the dice.
Here is where the other shoe drops and what lead up to the diagnosis of diabetes:
He took a month off work due to a work related injury and he ate 2 to 3 meals a day and snacked. Essentially, he was not doing the intermittent fasting for a month. And since he doesn't do the gym (his work gives him a workout as part of what he does), he was not doing any physical activity during this month.
In the meantime, during the 10 years we've been together I was hitting the gym regularly, eating vegetarian (my husband is a meat and potatoes kind of guy), having zero cans of soda–AND I had hypertension for 20 years ... and 2 years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes?
I hadn't known that despite his lack of diabetes diagnosis, that it was lurking under the surface. And for me, my diabetes was going to show up eventually as well, because there were multiple things happening internally, leading me down that path (ohhh, if I had only known!).
Where are the facts? I'm going to give them to you and also provide the resources and info for you to go the source if you want more detail or to verify and figure these things out for yourself. I'm an avid reader and researcher of books (I've got over 1400 books on my GoodReads list) and articles and I want to share everything I've learned.
And no, not all 1400 books were about health–perhaps around 200 are health related, but I've also learned a lot from the rigorous class requirements like microbiology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, as well as working in the maternity and psychiatric wards when I was enrolled in the nursing program in San Francisco State University (and by the way, my GPA was great–I remember being so thrilled to get an A from an anatomy test where I had to memorize 800 bones and the insertion/origin points of the muscles).
That is when I learned that nutrition class I had enrolled in was considered an elective and not a requirement for nursing students or those studying to be doctors. That bit of info floored me.
I was a year away from getting an RN when I suddenly became allergic to over 40 common things–like grass! Yes, the kind you find in the park etc. Grass? I had red bumpy hives all over my body and looked like a disaster. Yikes. My mom realized that her dream for me becoming a nurse wasn't mine and that the stress was affecting me so she gave up her dream so that I could finally switch into different major and graduated with a bachelor degree in something entirely different.
But my love of science didn't end. I learned so much valuable information while I was a nursing student. One of the things was to watch for the controlled tests and how they were conducted and who conducted them because it made a difference.
And we try harder. Maybe we added an exercise regimen so we amp it up. Maybe we look thoughtfully at our meal plan and we subtract or substitute something. If we were kinda cheating a little–we become more diligent. Then we may or may not see more progress. Whatever the outcome, when we get to the point of 'We're done' because we reach our goal, or we just wear ourselves out...a few months later or a year...we are right back where we started.
And in the meantime, our body's metabolism has taken a beating. It is lowered because we've taught it to survive on less. And that 'less' means we have set ourselves up for failure because when we go back to our eating habits--we are in a worse situation than when we started. Seriously, can't we catch a break here?
Maybe you're one of the lucky ones who was able to lose weight and keep it off. Excellent! I'm going to guess that you only tried less than a handful of diets and your metobolism was not compromised.
If you're like me, after trying 20 diets and losing and regaining 80 pounds or more--you are full scale Yo-yo dieting and possibly have hypertension and either are on the road to diabetes or have it already as you've gotten older.
Again, can't we catch a break? Arghhhh. It's so frustrating.
And for those of you who 'think' you have excellent blood glucose levels, think again. After doing a lot of research and knowing that some information in the medical journals don't become mainstream for 10, 20, or 30 years (for whatever reasons), if your blood glucose levels aren't around the 70mg/dl range, you might have higher insulin levels and not know it until you walk right into pre-diabetes or full blown diabetes.
Note I mention 'higher insulin levels' and not blood glucose. Because the liver is processing and storing glucose into all your organs like a superpower--and this excess glucose only spills into your blood levels after your organs are bursting at the seams. The body is amazing and it's trying–really trying to keep you operating–but it can only do so much before it implodes.
My husband was shell shocked when he got a diagnosis of diabetes recently–after years of being annually tested and showing no signs of diabetes. This year, his glucose level was 275 mg/dl. Freaking 275!
Another test they do to measure glucose level is the Hemoglobin A1c. His Hemoglobin A1c was 9.6 when the acceptable level is 4.8-5.6% and prediabetes is 5.7-6.4–He literally jumped from not having diabetes to full scale diabetes with no stop in between.
How did this happen? Funny thing...he didn't intend to, but he was doing intermittent fasting while working (have to give you a little background). He has the kind of job that makes eating a sit down meal challenging.
So he'd skip breakfast, skip lunch, and chow down on a huge dinner, about 6 or 8 cans of soda (I know, I know) and junk food. For over 15 years. I was astounded.
How could anyone abuse their body in such a way and yet, his lab work continue to be in the acceptable range for blood glucose. Healthwise, the only thing he had was hypertension (which he was managing with meds). It took me awhile to figure out how this could be. At first I thought it was genetics and a lucky roll of the dice.
Here is where the other shoe drops and what lead up to the diagnosis of diabetes:
He took a month off work due to a work related injury and he ate 2 to 3 meals a day and snacked. Essentially, he was not doing the intermittent fasting for a month. And since he doesn't do the gym (his work gives him a workout as part of what he does), he was not doing any physical activity during this month.
In the meantime, during the 10 years we've been together I was hitting the gym regularly, eating vegetarian (my husband is a meat and potatoes kind of guy), having zero cans of soda–AND I had hypertension for 20 years ... and 2 years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes?
I hadn't known that despite his lack of diabetes diagnosis, that it was lurking under the surface. And for me, my diabetes was going to show up eventually as well, because there were multiple things happening internally, leading me down that path (ohhh, if I had only known!).
Where are the facts? I'm going to give them to you and also provide the resources and info for you to go the source if you want more detail or to verify and figure these things out for yourself. I'm an avid reader and researcher of books (I've got over 1400 books on my GoodReads list) and articles and I want to share everything I've learned.
And no, not all 1400 books were about health–perhaps around 200 are health related, but I've also learned a lot from the rigorous class requirements like microbiology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, as well as working in the maternity and psychiatric wards when I was enrolled in the nursing program in San Francisco State University (and by the way, my GPA was great–I remember being so thrilled to get an A from an anatomy test where I had to memorize 800 bones and the insertion/origin points of the muscles).
That is when I learned that nutrition class I had enrolled in was considered an elective and not a requirement for nursing students or those studying to be doctors. That bit of info floored me.
I was a year away from getting an RN when I suddenly became allergic to over 40 common things–like grass! Yes, the kind you find in the park etc. Grass? I had red bumpy hives all over my body and looked like a disaster. Yikes. My mom realized that her dream for me becoming a nurse wasn't mine and that the stress was affecting me so she gave up her dream so that I could finally switch into different major and graduated with a bachelor degree in something entirely different.
But my love of science didn't end. I learned so much valuable information while I was a nursing student. One of the things was to watch for the controlled tests and how they were conducted and who conducted them because it made a difference.
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