Obesity Continued – Part IV (& Final Part ;))

This is a bit of a lengthier post than normal,  I did not want to break up this information especially on a topic that is an ‘Achilles heel’ for a huge number of people.  Particularly addressing those that do not see weight come off, and why that is, so bare with and stick with me 😉

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“….Published results for still more intervention studies using a low-fat, whole-foods, mostly plant-based diet (10%, or less, of diet being non-plant-based)

• About 2-5 lbs lost after 12 days
• About 10 lbs lost in 3 weeks
• 16 lbs lost over 12 weeks
• 24 lbs lost after 1 year

All of these results show that consuming a whole foods, mostly plant-based diet will help you to lose weight and, furthermore, it can happen quickly.  The only question is how much weight can you lose.  In most of these studies, the people who shed the most pounds were those who started with the most excess weight.  After the initial weight loss, the weight can be kept off for the long-term by staying on a whole foods, primarily plant-based consumption, which most importantly losing weight this way is consistent with long-term optimum health.

Some people, of course, can be on a plant-based diet and still not lose weight.  There are a few very good reasons for this.  First and foremost, losing body weight on a plant-based diet is much less likely to occur if the diet includes too many refined carbohydrates.  Sweets, pastries, pastas and alcohol won’t do it.  These are high in readily digested sugars and starches and often times very high in fat as well.  These highly processed unnatural consumptions are not part of a plant-based diet that works to reduce body weight and promote health.

Notice that a strict vegetarian diet is not necessarily the same thing as a whole foods, plant-based diet.  Some people become vegetarian only to replace meat with dairy foods, added oils and refined carbohydrates, including pasta made with refined grains and sugars.  These are referred to as “junk-food vegetarians” because they are not consuming a nutritious diet.

The 2nd reason weight loss may be elusive is if a person never engages in consistent physical activity.  A reasonable amount of physical activity, sustained on a regular basis pays vital dividends.

Thirdly, certain people have a family predisposition for overweight bodies that make their challenge more difficult.  If you are one of these, I can only say that you need to be especially rigorous in your whole foods plant-based, “non-junk-foods”, diet and exercise.  In rural China, we noticed that obese people simply did not exist, even though Chinese immigrants in Western countries do succumb to obesity.  Now as the dietary and lifestyle practices of people in China are becoming more like ours, so too have their bodies become more like ours.  For those with genetic pre-dispositions, it doesn’t take much bad food before their change in diet starts to cause problems.

Keeping body weight off is a long-term lifestyle choice.  Gimmicks that produce impressively large, quick weight losses don’t work in the long-term.  Short-term gains should not come along with long-term pain, like kidney problems, heart disease, cancer, bone and joint ailments brought on with popular diet fads.  If the weight was gained slowly, over a period of months and years, why would you expect to take it off healthily in a matter of weeks?…”

More China Study clips Here

Consequences for the Adult – Obesity Continued

A clip from ‘The China Study’ by T.Colin Campbell

“…If you are obese, you may not be able to do many things that could make your life more enjoyable.  You may find that you cannot play vigorously with your children or grandchildren, participate in sports, find a comfortable seat in a movie theatre or airplane, or have an active sex life.  In fact, even sitting still in a chair may be impossible without experiencing back or joint pain.  For many. standing is hard on the knees or hips.  Carrying around too much weight can dramatically affect physical mobility, work, mental health, self-perception and social life.  It isn’t completely about death, it’s also about missing many of the more enjoyable things in life.

No one desires to be overweight.  So why is it that 2 out of 3 adult Americans are overweight?  Why is 1/3 of the population obese?

Going on special weight-loss diet plans and popping pills to cut our appetites or rearrange our metabolism have become a national pastime.

This is an economic black hole that sucks our money away without offering anything in return.  Imagine paying $40 to a service man to fix your leaky kitchen sink, and then 2 weeks later, the sink pipes explode and flood the kitchen and it costs $500 to repair.  I bet you wouldn’t ask that guy to fix your sink again!  So then why do we endlessly try those weight-loss plans, books, drinks, energy bars and assorted gimmicks when they don’t deliver as promised.

I applaud people for trying to achieve healthy weight.  I don’t question the worthiness or dignity of overweight people anymore than I question cancer victims.  My criticism is of a societal system that allows and even encourages this problem.  I believe, for example, that we are drowning in an ocean of very bad information, too much of it intended to put money into someone else’s pockets.  What we really need, then, is a new solution comprised of good information for individual people to use at a price that they can afford….”

The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell – To Be Continued

This YouTube video (some of you have seen it before) goes through the top 16 killers of people and how 15 of the 16 are avoidable by eating plant based, an intelligent, comical, dry, factual delivery:

Uprooting The Leading Causes of Death 2012

More China Study Clips Here

1-Pan Tamale Pie YUM!

Talk about comfort food on the cheap!  Oh my gosh and SO GOOD!  Chances are everything you need for this recipe you already have in your kitchen.  If not it’ll cost you less than $10 bucks to throw this together.  YUM!!

I couldn’t believe how super tasty this came out!  Corn meal, rice milk, daiya cheddar shreads, a few other things, equals your topping. Underneath it’s a black bean, corn, pinto beans, tomato, spices, moistness concoction that is out of this world!  Whomever you serve this to will be A SUPER HAPPY CAMPER 🙂

The Recipe is Here

A House of Proteins

 

A clip from The China Study by T. Colin Campbell

“…Nothing has been so well hidden as the untold story of protein.  The dogma surrounding protein censures, reproaches and guides, directly or indirectly, almost every thought we have in biomedical research.  Protein, the most sacred of all nutrients, is a vital component of our bodies, and there are hundreds of thousands of different kinds.  Proteins wear out on a regular basis and must be replaced.  This is accomplished by consuming foods that contain protein.

Various food proteins are said to be of different quality, depending on how well they provide the needed amino acids used to replace our body proteins.  About eight amino acids that are needed for making our tissue proteins must be provided by the food we eat.  Food proteins of the highest quality are, very simply, those that provide, upon digestion, the right kinds and amounts of amino acids needed to efficiently synthesize our new tissue proteins.  This is what the word ‘quality‘ really means: it is the ability of food proteins to provide the right kinds and amounts of amino acids to make our new proteins.

Can you guess what food we might eat to most efficiently provide the building blocks for our replacement proteins?  The answer is human flesh.  While our fellow men and women are not for dinner, the next most efficient is by eating other animals.

This would be well and good if the greatest efficiency meant the greatest quality, meaning greatest health.  We now know that through enormously complex metabolic systems, the human body can derive all the essential amino acids from the natural variety of plant proteins that we encounter everyday.  Unfortunately, the enduring concept of protein quality has greatly obscured this information…”

More clips from The China Study Here