Lean and Hard

Do anything to lose weight that is temporary, and you will gain it all back and more when you go back to your normal eating habits. Guaranteed. That's the main reason diets are a waste of time. What works? A permanent change in the way you live.

Fox News - 8.22.13 by Christopher Wanjek

Indeed, the authors wrote that the only consistent fact in all the diet studies is that adherence is the element most strongly associated with weight loss and disease risk reduction.

What's the best diet for maintaining a healthy weight and warding off chronic diseases? Is it a low-carb diet, a high-carb diet, an all-vegetable diet, a no-vegetable diet?

Researchers say you'd be better off just forgetting the word diet, according to an editorial published August 20 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Two researchers Sherry Pagoto of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass., and Bradley Appelhans of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago call for an end to the so-called diet wars, because they are all equally as good, or bad, in helping people fight obesity.

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Hemera/Thinkstock

We've all heard of "the wall." It's a physiological and emotional barrier faced by marathon runners, typically at about the 20-mile mark of the race. Scientifically, it has to do with glycogen depletion. Here's an excellent description from HowStuffWorks:

Hitting the wall, at its core, could just as aptly be called glycogen depletion onset. It's less graphic, but more scientifically accurate. Glycogen is a variety of glucose that the body stores to produce energy. Think of it as the fuel for your body's engine. Your muscles need it, and your brain thrives on it. Unfortunately, there is a limited supply of glycogen that your muscles and liver can stockpile -- about 2,000 calories to be exact. [sources: Latta, Galloway]

The average runner burns approximately 100 calories per mile. It's no coincidence that many endurance athletes describe hitting the wall at the 20-mile mark of the marathon. That's the point at which 2,000 calories of glycogen fuel have been exhausted, resulting in an overwhelming feeling of heaviness in the legs, a lack of concentration and even feelings of outright despair.

There's a similar experience I face often. Maybe you do too. Some days, at around 4 PM, I start having discouraging thoughts about my planned workout at 6. I start thinking, "What's the point? Why am I doing this? Why not just go straight home and pig out? Who cares? I can make up for it later." Etc., etc., etc.

Perhaps it has to do with my blood-sugar levels, in which case a small snack can renew my determination to stay fit. At other times the cause is less clear cut and the solution more elusive than consuming an energy bar. Sometimes I just have to push through it. Or more in line with the metaphor, climb over it.

What I know in the rational part of my mind is that the feelings of futility are not justified by my reality. And better, I know that they are temporary. I know that once I change into my workout clothes and step up to the elliptical, with good workout music coming through my headset, I'll feel better.

So climb the wall, friends, and see how beautiful it is on the other side!

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I've long held the conviction that people being critical of my unhealthy weight did not help me in the least. Family, friends, doctors, anyone who just felt compelled to confront me on the fact that I was fat and ate too much, utterly failed to motivate me to change. Why? Because my problem was never one of motivation. And I believe this is true for most people who struggle with weight issues. The article below makes the point and will be a great one for you and people you know to read and understand.

NPR - 7.26.13 by DEBORAH FRANKLIN

Overweight people who said they'd experienced discrimination based on weight were more than twice as likely to be obese four years later than people who didn't mention such discrimination.

Don't try to pretend your gibes and judgments of the overweight people in your life are for their own good. Florida researchers have evidence that discriminating against fat people only makes them fatter.

"People often rationalize that it's OK to discriminate based on weight because it will motivate the victim to lose pounds," Angelina Sutin, a psychologist at the Florida State College of Medicine in Tallahassee, tells Shots. "But our findings suggest the opposite."

Sutin and a colleague checked survey data from more than 6,000 American men and women age 50 and older who were asked how often in their daily lives they experienced different types of discrimination. Examples ranged from discourtesy or refusal of restaurant service to not getting a job or promotion.

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No one has time to get exercise, right? So if we're going to get it done we have to be efficient about it. That means working out in such a way as to get the most bang for our buck, or the most results for the time and energy we put in.

To accomplish this, we need solid advice and a high level of motivation. Wasting time and energy on workout routines that produce next to nothing in terms of our fitness goals just isn't an option. Neither is the kind of motivation that only lasts a week or two. (I always say that it's easy to decide to eat less right after a big meal. But it's what you do when your belly isn't full that counts.)

This app is designed to help, both with advice and motivation. The developer says,

"Up your motivation, improve your fitness, and stay on track with Gymprovise - a powerful, versatile, and flexible workout tracker for the Gym and outdoors, which gives you everything you need to plan, track, and review all your fitness activity. Gymprovise is THE Workout, Fitness & Bodybuilding app for gym junkies, fitness enthusiasts, bodybuilders & anyone serious about getting fitter and stronger. This is the free, ads-supported version, with core functionality. Get the paid version for no ads and TONS of additional features! Gymprovise makes it easy to plan & track all your fitness activity, in the gym & outdoors. We have many features to suit everyone from beginners to advanced,"

Check out the screenshots:



Get it by clicking below!


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The Atlantic - 7.19.13 by Paul Offit

At least 15 studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn't treat the common cold.

On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News.

These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.

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Telegraph - 7.5.13 by Richard Gray

After analysing 480,000 sites in each persons DNA, they found 17,975 locations were altered on 7,663 genes. The human genome contains around 20,000 genes.

Photo: ALAMY

Scientists found that six months of regular exercise, such as cycling or aerobics classes, changed the action of genes involved in the storage of fat and the development of obesity.

The exercise added and removed chemical groups to the DNA in a process known as epigenetic imprinting, or methylation, causing the genes to be switched on or off.

The researchers found more than 7,000 genes were affected in this way as a result of exercise in overweight volunteers.

They also found that key genes involved in storing sugar from blood stream inside fat cells have their activity reduced by the exercise.

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Thought I'd share this with you, since I'm irritated by the public's gullibility and attraction to fads.

New Republic - 6.21.13 by Judith Shulevitz

I think that people who use cleanses may have had rough anal periods (see Freud, Sigmund).” Cleanses and their cousins, colonics, have about as much medical merit, declared Gershon, as the acts of penance done by monks who’d “walk across Europe and hit themselves on the back to purge themselves of the plague.”

Joe Wilson

One afternoon last month, I made a nervous visit to the office of Ghiora Aharoni, an Israeli sculptor and architect of some renown. The awkward part was that I hadn’t come to interview him about his work. I was there to hear about his gut. He had just finished a 21-day cleanse, the kind with supplements, protein shakes, and endorsements by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. (It’s called the Clean Program.)1 I’d been sent to Aharoni, who turned out to be extremely gracious, by a mutual friend, Ruby Namdar, an Israeli novelist whose skeptical intelligence and Falstaffian appetites made him the last person I expected to find on a celebrity diet. Indeed, the day I learned he was on it—over a dinner of baby carrots—Ruby was very hungry and very grumpy and at a loss to explain why he was doing this to himself, other than that Aharoni had talked Ruby into joining him and three other friends in the enterprise.

I wondered, too. What draws sophisticated and healthy people like Aharoni’s friends to commercial quasi-fasts? Cleanses, whether they last a day, a weekend, or three weeks, and whether they consist exclusively of fruit and vegetable juices or just a severe restriction of solids, are quickly becoming a part of what you might call the cosmopolitan diet, consumed in the more urbane sectors of New York and Los Angeles and Austin or wherever you find Whole Foods–levels of gastronomic consciousness and sufficient disposable income. (A three-week supply of Clean Program products costs $425.) Ask around, and you’ll probably find you know someone who knows someone who’s done a cleanse of one kind or another: Blueprint, Life Juice, Master Cleanse,2 Organic Avenue.

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We can debate the reasons for this all day long, but studies have repeatedly confirmed that, when it comes to fitness, example matters.


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Millions of us have tried going on diets. They are a huge waste of time and a virtual guarantee of discouragement and defeatism. Instead of going on a short-term diet, learn how to substitute. This is what makes for permanent success in the health and fitness arena.

Here's a quote from an article I read recently about Bret Baier, a well-known anchor on Fox news:

"after a while, you become accustomed to what is in your beneficial list and you make that your choice."

That's what substitution is all about. Not starving yourself or sweating bullets trying to stick to some weird set of restrictions (like, you can have as much as you want, as long as it's only the skins of grapes! As much as you want!).


Substituting is simple: You make a list of the stuff that's bad, and another list of the stuff that's good. Then you replace the bad with the good. Every chance you get. Whether you're cooking at home or eating out. What's bad? Simple carbs. What's good? Protein, good (polyunsaturated) fats and complex carbs.

You can't each as much as you want, unless you want just enough to maintain a healthy weight. I'm not that lucky. I don't get to eat as much as I want because, for whatever reason, I want more than I need. So I have to restrict my calorie intake, but eating as much as I need is not that difficult, and the benefits keep me motivated.

An added benefit, though, of substituting good foods for bad ones, is that your appetite is far more controllable. Bad carbs, as we know, cause sugar spikes and are somewhat addictive. The more you eat them the more you want/need them. Replace them with complex carbs and you'll see your cravings diminish to a level that you can control.

So try substitutions rather than going on short-term diets. You'll see that I'm right!

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It would never happen, but I wish fitness product ads would all have to have a big warning on the screen. Something like, "Please know that this product will NOT make you look like this model we paid to promote it. EVER!"

You can't get chiseled abdominals by using that gadget for only 10 minutes a day. Maybe 2 hours a day would do it in a year, but then you'd probably get a hernia.

These models got to look the way they look only by lots and lots of exercise, and some pretty serious portion control along with it. Believe it. And you can look like that too, assuming you're also 25 and willing to devote yourself to fitness and healthy eating.

When we see people who look good - I mean trim, strong, energetic - it's easy to assume they're just lucky that way. Don't believe that. They don't look that way by luck and great genes. They look that way because they're careful about what and how much they eat, and because they stick to a good exercise regimen.

The cool thing about all this - the fact that it's not about luck or good genes - is that you can do it too.

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