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Archive for May, 2012

Cooksey v. Futrell, et al

Posted in Nutrition on May 29, 2012 | 2 Comments »

If you’re not familiar with Steve Cooksey, the North Carolina blogger who received a “cease and desist” letter from the NC Board of Nutrition and Dietitians for blogging about treating diabetes with a low-carb diet, you may want to read the back story (here and here) or watch the embedded video below.

I’m very pleased to see that Steve has gotten some assistance form the Institute for Justice and they have now filed suit against the NC Board for infringing on Steve’s right to free speech.

Read the whole announcement for all the details, but I thought this the salient point:

[T]he First Amendment does not allow the government to ban people from sharing ordinary advice about diet, or scrub the Internet—from blogs to Facebook to Twitter—of speech the government does not like. North Carolina can no more force Steve to become a licensed dietitian than it could require Dear Abby to become a licensed psychologist.

Props to Steve … as you might imagine, I certainly hope this is resolved in his favor.

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Quote of the day

Posted in QOTD on May 23, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Yesterday’s QOTD and MrsS’ comment re perseverance compel me to post one of my favorite quotes: Calvin Coolidge on persistance:

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

I think we each need to decide whether we are climbing Mt Everest or tilting at windmills and respond appropriately. But as another of my fave quotes points out (in LOLcat style ;)


Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

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Quote of the day

Posted in Body acceptance, HAES, Weight loss on May 22, 2012 | 3 Comments »

From Big Fat Blog on loving vs accepting your body:

To me feeling love for the body is not as important as accepting it and honoring it. … Choosing to treat my body with respect and honor, to act lovingly towards it, is vital.

There are parts of my body I like more than others, but I have to say that I feel very accepting of mine. Part of that is because I am an old lady who wears purple … it’s very freeing to be past the age where your biological clock has stopped ticking so loudly. And part of it is my approach just leaves me feeling pretty damn good. I will take peace of mind over being a size 0 any day.

As an aside, I think HAES is a wonderful framework. And yet, here I am on a weight-loss journey. How do I reconcile it?

Well, I guess partially the way Debra of Just Maintaining reconciled weight loss maintenance and size acceptance:

So here I sit, living honestly a maintainer’s life (sans style), and yet knowing the veracity and compassion that is Size Acceptance. There is no question about reconciling them. They’re both truthful. I don’t need to reconcile that grass is green and the sky is blue.

For me, I suppose it’s my cockeyed optimist viewpoint. Although dieting is a terrible weight loss strategy (largely because the emphasis is typically on weight rather than health), that doesn’t necessarily mean (to me anyways) that successful weight loss is impossible.

No, I see this as a quest … one that’s a bit like a Chinese finger puzzle. As long as you try to solve the puzzle with the obvious solution, you fail. And so I persevere, exploring the less obvious.

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You, the eater

Posted in Diet, Psychology on May 20, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Interesting week. Aside from the paleo “shit slinging” (and re the person who stopped following me on Twitter because of it … all I can say is ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself), there have been some useful posts. I mentioned yesterday Paleo Pepper’s evolutionary perspective for women.

And there’s also Lindsay’s The Post That Was Going to Be Called “Fuck Paleo” But Isn’t who shares her experience with orthorexia and coming out on the other side.

While I’ve not gone into the orthorexia abyss that Lindsay did, I’ve lately been thinking about other aspects to ancestral health besides food. So here’s my contribution to the “it’s not just about the diet” theme that these ladies have started.

It’s not just what you eat, it’s also about you, the eater.

(more…)

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On being fierce

Posted in Ancestral health on May 19, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Wow … Pepper of Paleo for Women is on fire! First there was her great series on weight loss. And she’s topped that with her last post — The Evolutionary Perspective: Liberating and Empowering a Woman’s Self-hood — which makes the not often enough said point that ancestral health is not just about avoiding neolithic foods.

You must go to her blog to read the whole post, but here are the highlights of an evolutionary perspective for women.

According to Pepper, with an evolutionary perspective:

  • a woman does not work against but instead works with her body
  • a woman listens to her body
  • a woman does not see herself as separate from her body
  • a woman loves and respects her body
  • a woman is free
  • a woman feels good
  • a woman looks amazing and real
  • chins come up
  • a woman is fierce
  • things aren’t perfect

As I have the not being perfect thing down pat, here’s to being fierce!!

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More Weight of the Nation

Posted in Obesity on May 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I was fully committed to watching the rest of Weight of the Nation despite my disappointment with the first two episodes. This turned out to be a good thing, as episodes 3 and 4 are much stronger than episodes 1 and 2.

Episode 3 — Children in Crisis — looks at what’s happening to the kids. And it ain’t pretty.

Episode 4 — Challenges — starts off weak with a rehashing of obesity’s link to America’s lifestyle diseases. But it takes a turn in a better direction with a long look at evolutionary biology and the role that our ancestral past plays in terms of our eating behavior. It then spends a chunk of time looking at the problem with our current agricultural policy and specifically the subsidies that make corn and soy such profitable crops.

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Weight of the Nation

Posted in Obesity on May 15, 2012 | 4 Comments »

So, perhaps it’s a version of confirmation bias, but I approached last night’s debut of HBO’s Weight of the Nation skeptical and I’m afraid my skepticism was rewarded.

The shows are slickly produced and they’ve assembled quite a plethora of experts to weigh in (pun intended). And there’s so much packed into each episode that I think it’s easy for people to pick out bits and pieces they like and don’t like.

Marsha Hudnall, who spent the night live-tweeting the show, summed it up this way:

my take overall: #weightofthenation had some good moments but #weightstigma was fostered. too bad

Word.

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