More Obesity Studies

I am quite interested in a lot of the studies that keep being published about obesity, genetics and so on. I read about one yesterday that looks at a genetic component that decreases the pleasure some people get from food, which may impel them to eat more to get more pleasure. Here are some quotes from one of the better articles about this, from WebMD. This discussion actually reminds me a bit of the articles about ear infections being related to obesity because they damage the taste nerve. Of course none of this absolves us of the responsibility of paying attention to what we put in our mouths, it's just adding another piece to the puzzle about why it's so hard to maintain a healthy weight, especially if you've already let yourself get overweight.

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"Some people carry a variant gene that dulls dopamine responses. These people, Stice found, are more likely to be obese. And even if they are not obese, they get less pleasure from eating -- putting them at risk of overcompensating by overeating.


"People with the most blunted reward circuits are at the most risk of overeating, and the more they engage in eating, the more you see downregulation of their reward circuitry," Stice says. "They eat more to get the same reward."


"Of course it is a vicious circle," says Pothos. "A person says, 'I do not get pleasure from high-energy food, so I am eating even more but getting less pleasure, I don't know what to do. So obesity and weight gain may result from what we may call addiction to high-energy food."
"The term "addiction" isn't a metaphor. Stice and Pothos note that the same vicious circle, involving the same brain circuits and the same underlying genetic susceptibility, occurs in people addicted to drugs.


"However, both researchers are quick to point out that a dysfunctional pleasure system is only half the answer to the puzzle of obesity. Metabolic functions that control body weight also play a major role.


"We don't want to say obesity is an addictive disorder and not a metabolic disorder. We just want to say, 'Pay attention to both,'" Pothos says.


"Stice is now looking at whether obese people who switch to a healthy diet can reset their pleasure circuitry. He finds that when obese people stop eating energy-dense foods, their craving for such foods goes down, not up.


"If we can get obese people to improve the quality of their diets and stay the course for long time, eventually they do much better in craving and their pleasure circuits should go back to their old balance," he says."
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One of the articles said that exercise helps in decreasing the cravings because it activates the same dopamine pathways that eating does. The other way to avoid the problem is to not start eating the junky stuff to begin with. Ha ha, too late!


A couple of other links to articles about this: Link and Link

Blowing It On a Phenomenal Meal

Sometimes, a meal is so amazingly wonderful that worrying about calories or fat content or anything "guiltifying" is out of the question. Last week, I traveled to Napa, California with a close friend and we enjoyed such a meal. We went to Ubuntu, a wonderful restaurant that prepares the best food I've ever had, all of which just happens to be vegetarian. Both my friend and I are vegetarian so we were really looking forward to being able to select anything from the menu.

They prepare what they call "small dishes" where a small amount of food is beautifully presented on the plate, and everyone shares and samples everything. I hope you're not too hungry, because I'm about to list the wonderful dishes we ate.

(The dish to the left is the fingerling potatoes.)

Chickpea fries with herbs and romesco sauce (vegan)

Heirloom tomatoes, assorted basils, 25 year balsamico, wild fennel crackers (vegan)

Chilled watermelon and lemon grass soup (vegan) - this was incredible.

Fingerling potatoes, lightly smoked, sauce gribiche, ficoide glaciale (that's a green of some sort), black garlic, capers (vegan)

Cauliflower in a cast iron pot, roast-puree-raw "couscous", vadouvan spice (somewhat curry-like), brown butter toast. Pictured at left.

Local stone ground polenta, finished with corn pudding, 3-day tomato soffrito, fried peppers (vegan)

Pizza with local chevre, torpedo onions and a romesco of friarelli peppers (we each had a slice and topped out, my husband got the leftovers)

Two ridiculously delicious desserts, the first with lightly roasted strawberries, and creamy things (at right), the other a chocolate number to die for.

I suppose it was very very touristy of me to take pictures of the food but I wanted to remember it.

31 Days of Gratitude

I keep a daily journal, and part of that is finding something each day to be grateful for. Some days are easier than others. Here are 31 days of gratitude:

1. I am grateful for back roads and red-tailed hawks on top of power poles.
2. I am grateful for Belted Kingfishers and interesting neighbors.
3. I am grateful for hummingbirds and my favorite coffee mug with my name on it.
4. I am grateful for the yellow roses that are blooming now, for the fall acorn crop and a quiet weekend morning.
5. I am grateful for my husband who is a pretty darn good listener.
6. I am grateful for breathing in, breathing out.
7. I am grateful for Emmy Lou Harris's phenomenal CD Wrecking Ball, what a balm for the soul.
8. I am grateful for my husband, my son, my parents, my sister, the ranch. I am grateful for my health and the fact that I have been able to cooperate with my body (and vice versa) to bring myself to health and fitness. I am grateful for my senses and the feel of cool fall breeze as I walked out to my car this morning. I am grateful for a boss that lets me talk to her about my frustrations at work. I am grateful for my copper tea kettle that whistles to me in the morning that soon my yummy coffee will be ready.
9. I am grateful for a celebration of women.
10. I am grateful for the tang of a changing season, a bit of crispness in the air.
11. I am grateful for washing machines, I just can't imagine how much work it must have been before.
12. I am grateful for this cozy house, even though it desperately needs cleaning. I am grateful for the back patio, even though it's looking a tad scruffy right now. I am once again grateful for almond butter and raisin toast, yum.
13. I am grateful for the musical genius of Frank Zappa, Dick Dale and Jimi Hendrix, and of course, that of my son Will. I am grateful for my son and I'm remembering that day 24 years ago when he joined us on this planet. I am grateful for silly birthday cards and ridiculous song lyrics.
14. I am grateful for my treadmill, it has steadfastly carried me through mile after mile, calorie after calorie.
15. I am grateful for the gardens at the ranch, the quince and pomegranate trees, and all the roses.
16. I am grateful for having this extra day off to enjoy here at the ranch.
17. I'm grateful for almond butter. I came to the conclusion yesterday that almond butter was my second favorite food now, after asparagus, which still rules my heart. So, I'm grateful for almonds, almond trees and the bees which do the work of pollination.
18. I could be typing for hours this morning listing gratitudes, I'm pretty much grateful for everything this morning. I'm grateful that scorpion didn't sting me. I'm grateful that the second thing I saw this morning (after first seeing my sweet husband's sleepy face, for which I am also grateful) was a cloud of hummingbirds sipping nectar. What the heck, I'm grateful that the New Scientist magazine showed up in the mailbox along with the Audubon Society's journal and Birder's World.
19. I am grateful for the prospect of a long weekend and enjoying the ranch getaway.
20. I am grateful for the beautiful home-grown pear that is sitting on my desk waiting for my afternoon snack.
21. I am grateful for the sweet (sorta) memories from my youth.
22. I am grateful for my women's group. I am grateful that my husband is doing so well with his exercise program and is enjoying it. I am grateful for the heat that actually feels really good right now. I am grateful that my company stocks Peppermint herb tea in the lunchroom and I get to have as much of it as I want for free. I am grateful that the rabbit hole goes up as well as down.
23. I am grateful for our spot in the middle of nowhere and all of our furred and feathered friends.
24. I am grateful for echinacea and zinc lozenges, and the prospect of going to the ranch this weekend for some artful rest.
25. I'm glad that I still am on the payroll, seein' as how I have to go grocery shopping tonight.
26. I am grateful for muscles. Or mus-kels as my Dad always call them.
27. I am grateful for my family and friends.
28. I am grateful for my Mom and Dad.
29. I am grateful for questions, mysteries, conundrums and bits of circular logic.
30. I am grateful for this season's fresh peaches, which I had such cravings for through the winter.
31. I am grateful for lentils and all that protein and fiber and I'm also grateful for the folks who grow lentils. I'm going to be even more grateful for them when I'm having my lunch leftovers later on.

Judging the Obese

The other day I followed a thread on a public weight loss forum about someone who professed to be so concerned about a woman she saw at her local market who was obese and thought she ought to talk to her about it and give her advice about changing. There was a lengthy description of the food in the cart (crap of course), the woman's appearance, greasy skin, poor clothes choices and the denouement - inability to gracefully get into her car, requiring a backwards plop! But the poster was very worried and really just wanted to help.

As a former obese person, I heartily object to this attitude. Two years ago, when I started down my weight loss path, I was so filled with shame and humiliation - we all know that eating too much food and eating crap food is the cause of our weight gain (in 99% of the cases). I vowed that I would not take it upon myself to start judging other people for their weight because I've been on the receiving end of the scorn too many times. It would be like continuing to hate myself in reverse, and I've done enough self-hating to last a lifetime!

All this brought to mind a conversation I had with a friend about a year ago, when I had lost about 100 pounds or more. She had also lost a good amount of weight but unfortunately had started gaining a lot back, for various reasons, I'm sure. She asked me if now I didn't look down my nose at her. Nope. No way. Been there. But I will support every effort and struggle to either 1. Lose weight and gain health 2. Love yourself anyway.

Ear Infections and Obesity Study

Did you read that news blurb about a new study that links a history of ear infections with obesity? As someone who did have many ear infections as a child and as an adult, and in fact had to have surgery to remove a cholesteatoma from my right ear, almost certainly as a result of a not fully-healed ear infection, I was intrigued by it, and did a little more digging. Quoting from a UPI article about these findings: "In one study, 6,584 people ages 16 to 92 responded to a series of health questions that determined their history of middle ear infections and their body mass index. The findings showed that those with a moderate to severe history of otitis media were 62 percent more likely to be obese." It all has to do with ear infections causing damage to the taste-sensing nerves which correlates to an individual then having a more pronounced taste preference for fatty and sweet foods. There also seems to be a correlation to increased obesity in children who had tonsillectomies. (I did.)

Fascinating. Obviously, we're all ultimately responsible for deciding what goes into our mouths, regardless of what our taste preferences are. But it is nice to know that maybe there are factors that make it just that much more likely to go down one path instead of another.

Perfect causation? Of course not. For me, it just underlines the requirement for me to remain devoted to healthy eating and exercise for the rest of my life. And that's OK, better than OK even.

Confronting Fear, Thoughts about Meaning

Goodness, it certainly has been a while since I've written a post for Praying Horse, I'm in the middle of writing a humongous document/manual at work (darn those paying jobs!) and haven't done much other writing besides my own daily journal.

(Pig picture from Project Gutenberg.)

I did write about a recent experience with confronting nature in all her awe-inspiring majesty, which ended up scaring the pants off me, during two close encounters with wild pigs. Obviously, everything came out OK, but what I've found fascinating is examining the stark contrast in the fear I felt while retreating from the pigs and the sort of undefined nervousness, or as one of my friends calls it, the "vague medium of anxiety", that I have experienced in the past on a frequent basis. I get it, that's what adrenaline is for, not for getting worked up about what someone else thinks about you, or whether your child is getting a B instead of an A in first grade, or whatever the issue du jour is. I'm starting to pause now when I get that quivery feeling - is this a wild pig, or is it a gruntin' ground squirrel? By no means have I sorted all of this out yet.

People I've talked to about it have said that I'm brave for going on hikes alone. Well, not really. It's just a walk, sometimes my husband doesn't want to go with me. I'm not going to stop doing walking just because he has something else to do. I'm also not going to start carrying firearms, as at least one person suggested. I will avoid the area where I saw them last however.

Also, I'm going to tell a story on myself here that for a few days after Pigapalooza II, I tried to figure out if there was some additional deeper meaning to it. I looked up wild pigs as totem animals. Etc etc.

This last weekend, I found a wonderful article in Tricycle Magazine, actually from the Spring 2007 issue, which we just received as part of our welcome for subscribing to the magazine, that more or less got me to pause a bit and wonder if I weren't indulging in the practice of Taking Myself Too Seriously. This is from an article by Lin Jensen entitled Wash Your Bowl: "To attribute meaning to an event or to a lifetime of events is an expression of dissatisfaction with things as they are. This is true of even the subtlest attribution. If I wash dishes as a practice in Zen mindfulness, I indulge my resistance to simply washing them in order to get them clean. I want the washing to be something more than what it is, and so I give it spiritual significance. I want my life to have meaning, and so I complain to myself and sometimes to others if what I do and what I am appears meaningless. Well, our lives are meaningless if we take meaning for a coherent narrative plot of some sort. When we strain to make our lives otherwise, we're merely telling ourselves a story. You and I don't manifest in the universe as meaning, we manifest as living human beings. We're not here to represent something else. We're here in our own right. A human being, or a garden hoe for that matter, is complete in itself."

Of Course We're Addicted to Food, We Have to Eat

I continue to think about hunger, having just come off a week of recovering from food poisoning (bad hummus, I think), of which two days found me with No Hunger at all. I then had a couple more days of very low hunger levels and found it really hard to eat much of anything and now, well it's all back to normal with me wanting to eat more than I really should.

Let me digress here by saying that during the initial throes of this thing I lost five pounds in three days, even though I did my best to stay hydrated. One of my friends called it Dr. P. Horse's Shit-a-Lot Miracle Diet, but that's really really cynical, just sayin'. My husband wasn't the least bit surprised, but he's always been aware how full of it I really am.

Back to the hunger conundrum. I realized that I was kind of liking not having the hunger drumming at me all the time and was complaining in my journal the day it all came back to normal about how I had been hoping that maybe this had finally broken the back of the addictive quality of hunger. And how disappointed I was that no, it hadn't.

I was on walkabout today, fiddling with my new camera (like the lock photo?), and thinking about Stuff and came to the earthshattering conclusion that we're supposed to get hungry. It should bother us, at least enough to get us to go scrounge around for some grub. Duh, because otherwise, we wouldn't bother to eat and as a survival tactic that's pretty lousy. Call me a slow learner.

Not that stuffing food till overfull and using it as a drug is a good way to go either. It's just that hunger itself isn't the enemy.