Why didn't you eat it all?

brain

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:09:15 GMT

The “marshmallow test” demonstrated that if children were able to delay gratification, they would be more successful in later life. To resist temptation, we have to shift activity away from the “hot” parts of our brain to the “cool” parts. “The mind brain has two systems: one is cool, slow and deliberate, and allows for self-control, goal-setting and willpower. The other is hot, emotional and instinctual.
So when you see a chocolate cake, the “hot” part of your brain reacts to thoughts of the delicious taste, and the sugar rush that you have learnt a slice will give you. You need to activate the “cool” part of your brain by thinking about your goals and practising far-sightedness. Imagine the sense of satisfaction you’d get from fitting into your favourite dress in a couple of weeks’ time, or from losing your unsightly tummy bulge. It’s simple but highly effective.
Feasting your eyes on desirable food activates the hot system. “The problem with diets is they are also full of pictures of delicious diet food, and all of this is just priming the hot system.”
Stress has been shown to switch on the hot part of the brain and cause us to overeat. Develop an action plan to deal with it. This might involve taking healthy snacks to work or finding ways to cope better with your time and emotions.
Memory plays a significant role in overeating. If you habitually eat chocolate, then every time you see it, you remember the high. However, if you give something up, your cravings will actually decrease, proving that cravings result from habitually giving in to temptation.
So if you want to be slim, fit and healthy, it’s time to take control of your mind.

stuff on the net - pudgy

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:08:24 GMT

The louder crowd insists that slender women are bizarre anomalies who ought to be force-fed into obese conformity because the rotund figure of the average Australian woman is "normal" and thus ideal. The other side holds the view that the human body is meant to be lean and fit and disparages the fat lobby's attempts to re-rate our body shape standards to suit an unattractive mean. The average Australian woman is 5'4" (163 centimetres) and a size 14. These dimensions may be typical but they do not make a woman normal, they make her FAT.
Arguing that societal norms ought be drawn from the commonplace without regard for merit is completely indefensible. Excess weight is an undesirable condition from every aspect. Pretending otherwise doesn't change that. It just encourages complacency and dress size creep.
I won't bother with tired arguments about optimal health outcomes, if those worked obesity wouldn't be an issue. I'm making an aesthetic argument. As a nation we've let ourselves go something shocking. Looking around the local pool while enjoying a swim, I noticed how many of the teenage girls and young women in my midst were distinctly overweight.
We don't seem to care. Teenage girls are willing to flaunt their oversize bellies in bikinis. At some point, we seem to have misplaced one of the healthiest of human traits: vanity.
Five years ago, Mireille Guiliano, made a small fortune off the back of her bestseller: Why French Women Don't Get Fat. When she returned from an exchange year in the US fatter than when she left her father told her that she looked like a "sack of potatoes". Mireille got slim quicksmart and has stayed that way ever since.
French women - and men - prize looks and style over gluttony and sloth. They are unrepentantly vain and insist on vanity in others. A more accurate title would have been French Women Don't Dare Get Fat. And neither do French men. Consequently, the French are slimmer. They do daily maintenance.
A fat body is not a normal body. It's an aberration that we countenance to the detriment of our looks, health and self-esteem. Shifting the aesthetic goal posts to normalise a disproportionately high fat-to-muscle ratio on the basis of that figure type's ubiquity is equivalent to rewriting home building regulations to accommodate shoddy workmanship. Prevalence is no justification for acceptance. On average, Australians are not normal. We're fat.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:23:27 GMT

(found this somewhere else on the Net, can't remember where)

HEALTHY EATING PRINCIPLES
Mostly from Waistland by Deirdre Barrett:
+A lone individual can follow a strict diet in a society filled with crap food – u don’t have to wait for society to change.
+Have very absolute, clear rules, take it seriously how important these rules are and follow them consistently. U can lose weight/gain better habits/make major changes entirely on ur own.
+Willpower means resolutely following through on decisions without getting derailed by short-term temptations. It's a trainable skill. Lots of people have so little of it - you can train yourself.
+Rigid diets are not harder to follow than looser ones.
+Radical changes are necessary and are biologically easier than small or gradual changes. Reprogram your body, break food addictions, and ignore your attraction to "supernormal stimuli".
+Artificial foods often appeal to our instincts more than natural foods. Use intellect to get back on course.
+Ur brain’s pleasure mechanism can be shaped to what it will respond to. Derive ur pleasures from normal food and exercise instead of supernormal pleasures.
+It’s possible to pick a rigorous diet and exercise program and stick to it.
+You have to change ur food and exercise habits and thinking – change them radically, not moderately.
+The path to health is well-mapped, though lightly trodden.
+Get into healthy routines so you make good choices on automatic pilot and your conscious brain can think about other matters instead of distractions or temptation.
Waistland's main premise is that you can't just "trust your instincts" or "listen to your body" in the current food environment. We live in a world where images are beamed at us constantly. Our instincts are not designed for food courts. The sugary, salty and fatty foods that we are programmed to forage used to be hard to come by. Now they're as close as the vending machine. Refined foods affect us similarly to addictive drugs.
We need to learn to "listen to our intellect" before our brains evolve back to the minimum needed to locate the junk food in the grocery aisle. Barrett advocates radical change for those seeking to eat healthier and lose weight. Simply ordering the smaller size of fries or eating dessert twice a week is harder physically in terms of triggering hunger signals than eliminating them entirely: more painful in the first few days but ultimately easier to maintain because insulin, glucose, and leptin levels normalise.
Barrett trashes the "too busy to have time to eat healthy" argument. She has a "recipe" section that points out you can dump tuna over baby spinach or walk out of a 7-11 with nuts and fruit faster than you can get through the line at a burger chain.
She also has suggestions for society to change the whole food environment. She points out many foods should be banned, junk food advertising to children should be banned, and we should reverse subsidies for growing corn and sugar and set financial incentives to favour healthy vegetables.

WEIGHT LOSS
(From Waistland)
Calories: just drop cals until u’re losing weight. Exercise at least 1hr/day – Waistland.
Exercise is not as good as calorie restriction.
(From another source, can’t remember what) Junk food gets you with the stuff that’s bad in it. It clogs and chokes the immune system.

VISUALISATIONS
(from Waistland) +Imagine: negative: revolting cold puddles of grease on pizzas; vending machine foods as packets of damp foam rubber.
+Feel the highs of exercising – yearning to go; the impact of feet on ground; and the rush.
+Rewards = healthy lite foods (salads, broiled chicken, fruit), massage, dvd, yoga, meeting friends.
+Reward circuits in brain can be trained to respond to sugar in fruit or earned rest after exercise (instead of a day on the couch), to real friends instead of television “sitcom” friends.
+Get pleasure from activities for which our instincts were designed. Ignore supernormal stimuli and use your intellect to direct your thoughts and definitions of pleasurable foods.
+Retrain brain to want: normal stimuli in normal quantity and frequency.
+Zoo animals enjoy the greens and forget the sugar highs. We should enjoy natural tastes too.

SUMMARY
1.You can follow a rigid healthy eating program all by yourself. Be strict.
2. Watch out for stimuli – the media and billboards.
3. Reprogram yourself to enjoy “normal” flavours instead of commercial “supernormal” foods.
4. Train up ur willpower.
5. Get into routines so ur brain goes into automatic pilot to do good habits.
6. Avoid false over-stimulation from foods.
7. Use your intellect to get back on course if you stray.

IN THE KITCHEN
+Real food doesn’t need lots of preparation – only supernormal food does.
+Eat lots of dark fibrous veggies, moderate lean protein and fruit; small serve of nuts/seeds/grains/eggs; no trans fats, white flour or refined sugar.
+Keep it simple. No “supernormal” flavours.
+No need for recipe books. You don’t need to eat a large variety of dishes. Or use cookbooks with simple recipes such as the Caveman’s Diet.
+Soups, meat 2x/wk; vegetarian; fruit.
+Takeaway meals: packet of fruit and nuts; boiled egg.

SOUPS (adapted from Science of Cooking http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/)
Low-fat healthy creamy soups can be made from starchy, fibrous vegetables (eg. butternut squash soup; pumpkin, parsnip). Their starchy contents absorb liquid and swell, adding natural thickening to the soup. Follow steps strictly in THIS order for the best results.
1: sauté aromatics, onions, leeks, or garlic in a small amount of olive oil. While these ingredients aren't noticed in the finished soup, they add to its underlying character. As they sauté, their cell walls soften, releasing their flavours and aromas. The fat or oil used in sautéing carries their (now mellowed) flavours and also the flavour of any spices you add.
2: Peel the vegetables and cut the flesh into cubes. This results in a faster transference of flavours into the liquids.
Combine the aromatics with the cut vegetables and soup stock. Use roughly 2 cups (500ml) liquid to 4 cups (1litre) of chopped vegetables.
If you are featuring just one vegetable and it isn't particularly starchy — broccoli, for instance — add 1/2 cup (125ml) of rice. You won't notice it in the finished soup, but it works well as a thickener.
3. Simmer gently until the vegetables are tender.
4: Puree the slightly cooled mixture in a blender. Or puree just half, leaving the remainder chunky. The process of pureeing releases starch and fibres, which thicken the soup.

SUGGESTED HERB COMBINATIONS
Grated ginger and sautéed shallots with carrot soup
Coriander with broccoli
Nutmeg with parsnips.
Curry powder with squash soup.

[Edited excerpts of an interview with Deidre Barrett by Katherine Hobson, http://health.usnews.com/]
QUESTION: You also say that contrary to popular belief, our societal ideal of thinness is consistent over time - and for a good reason: it's healthiest.
BARRETT: It's comforting to think that if your body isn't ideal now, it would have been in an earlier era. But that's not true. All those claims that Miss America has gotten skinnier over the years? It's not true. It's been remarkably consistent, except for a small dip in the 1980s. What all but a handful of [too thin] actresses and models, as well as female athletes, look like is what you'd see in the current hunter/gatherer tribe. They're all at the very slim end of the recommended BMI [body mass index] range. That is what is absolutely the healthiest, if you're achieving that by eating small servings of food and getting exercise. You should focus on healthy habits, not on the absolute weight. That means it's not healthy to achieve thinness by vomiting up meals or taking speed.

INTERVIEWER: You say that eating healthfully is largely a matter of habit.
BARRETT: We get into routines. Brain imaging has shown that if you have no routine and are trying to change - say you're in the cafeteria line thinking, "There's the ice cream; do I want to stick to my diet today?"- the upper area of the brain involved with conscious thought is active. If you're in a real routine, whether it's a bad one or a good one, the lower basal ganglia, which isn't associated with conscious thought, is active. The upper area of the brain can be thinking about something else. So if you always order the salad and the bowl of berries, you don't even think about the banana split.
QUESTION: Are you optimistic we'll change our ways?
BARRETT: In terms of larger society, at some point it will be clear that our habits are killing us, and that will lead to radical change. We waited so long on smoking.

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:52:13 GMT

If you look at the truly successful people in life, it's not the smart ones or the beautiful ones who win, but the ones who are willing to pick themselves up again, failure after failure, and keep chasing their dreams, when so many people are afraid to chase them at all.

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:47:25 GMT

still up and down at the moment. am cooking more good food and buying good stuff.

but i have one good day, then a really bad day. so no balance yet. am stressed about several things so i'll have to get calm.

am gymming a bit, eating good a bit... i seem to be working into it now. it's taking my head a while to get into a sensible routine.

drinking water/Waistland book review

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:18:40 GMT

i get low energy problems and I drink lots of water and today I was reading if you drink more than about 6-8cups a day (depending on ur size) it can make u v fatigued cos it takes the salt out of ur body. (book called: "101 things ur GP would tell u if only there was time" by Dr Gillian Deakin). Just thought I'd mention it if anyone is drinking heaps of water and finding no energy left to exercise. or, u could add more salt to stuff (I tend to add lots of salt.)

Also, tks to whoever on this list mentioned *Waistland* as a great book to read - bought it today and it's brilliant for thinspo. Even has a few pages on positive things that can be learnt from ana and how being thin is a great thing. It says all those ads about "normal" body weight are WRONG! she recommends, *depending on ur height*, a BMI of between 15-17, as being ideal/healthy. but if u're under 16, the BMI should be even lower.

also, if u're v thin and get a pot belly whenever u eat something, she says the way to deal with it is more exercise to build up more muscles. then over a couple of weeks, the pot belly fat will move to the arms and legs, but in a toned way.

anyway, well worth buying. she talks a lot about motivation and self-control stuff too, with inspiration/tips (she's a harvard psychologist). And, best of all, from the photo, she's v thin!

[sorry this is so long, but there was lots of good stuff]
stay strong!!
xxx