In the “better late than never” department, I finally tried this trick of peeling ginger with a spoon. It works great! Now I have some ginger in the freezer that’s ready for the grater when I need it … sweet!
Archive for October, 2013
Stuff I like: peeling ginger
Posted in Cooking, Stuff I like on October 30, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Quote of the day
Posted in QOTD, Weight loss on October 28, 2013 | 2 Comments »
Dilbert creator Scott Adams thinks systems are better than goals. In fact, he thinks that goals are for losers:
To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary.
If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure.
Foodist author Darya Rose agrees, and credits her success (in health and weight loss) to setting up a system she calls her healthstyle.
Semantics? Or meaningful difference? I must admit I tend to think that specific weight-related goals (“lose 10 lbs” or “weigh 120”) are less than ideal.
Quote of the day
Posted in Body acceptance, QOTD, Weight stigma on October 28, 2013 | 23 Comments »
File this one under “fat is a feminist issue” — WBUR radio host Rachel Zimmerman asks I’m Finally Thin — But Is Living In A Crazymaking Food Prison Really Worth It?
I spend an inordinate, and frankly embarrassing amount of time thinking about food, planning meals and strategizing about how to control my weight. It’s on my mind pretty much every waking hour of every day and the details are painfully banal: how many pumpkin seeds in my nonfat yogurt; will a green smoothie pack on an extra ounce or two; can I eat dinner early so my weight the next morning will be optimally low?
If I don’t exercise (Every. Single. Day.) I get depressed. If I stray from my short list of accepted foods, I can spiral out of control. My life is bound by a strict system of controls and rigid rules (maintained with a pack-a-day gum-chewing habit) that keep my weight in line. These include daily digital scale checks that set my mood each morning: 102.9 is bad news; 100.4 gets me high. Trivial? Yes. A shamefully first-world problem? Absolutely. But, sadly, true.
This reminds me of Amy Pershing’s term “robbery” to describe what happens when women obsess about their weight and appearance.
I don’t think this is a good way to live.
Quitting addictions
Posted in Food addiction, Research on October 27, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Stanton Peele, the psychotherapist who often writes about the flaws in the “addiction as disease” model, posted an interesting article for Psychology Today titled Unbelievable Things About Quitting Addictions. His chief unbelievable thing? That ‘heavily’ addicted people (e.g., drug addicts) often quit addictions more readily than ‘less’ addicted ones (e.g., alcoholics).
His conclusion (emphasis mine):
Forget everything you have learned about the disease of addiction. Then, and only then, can you begin to understand it. The most important thing Heyman found in remission is values, and being in a place in life where you can express and sustain them … And why do drug addicts quit more readily than smokers and drinkers? Because—as Charles Winick pointed out in “Maturing Out of Narcotic Addiction” in 1962—maintaining a drug addict career is too arduous.
As the quote suggests, Peele bases this in part on Heyman’s analysis earlier this year of “four major national US surveys of psychiatric disorders and problems related to substance use.” Heyman’s main findings:
- addiction is generally not ‘chronic’
- probability of remission the same each year of dependence
- treatment generally not needed
- dependence on legal drugs lasts longer
I’ll grant this model of addiction is controversial, but I find the concept that dependence on legal drugs (like alcohol and cigarettes) is more difficult very interesting. It reminds me of something I wrote years ago about a potential link between our diet and the endocannabinoid system: that the effect (of anandamide, THC’s natural relative) isn’t as strong (reduced potency) but it lasts and lasts and lasts.
Seems to me that it would be quite easy to maintain a career as someone with a dependence — or addiction — to food. And perhaps that contributes to what may make quitting that much harder.
Quote of the day
Posted in Ancestral health, Psychology, QOTD on October 24, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Rick Hanson, author of the recently published Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, spoke Wednesday to The Atlantic about why our evolutionary wiring can make it harder to ‘build’ happiness:
There was a lot about [hunter-gatherer life] that was very hard: there was no pain control, there was no refrigeration, there was no rule of law. Childbirth was a dangerous experience for many people. There’s a lot about modernity that’s good for the Stone Age brain. We do have the ability in the developed world—far from perfect, of course—to control pain. We have modern medicine, sanitation, flushed toilets and so forth and, in many places, the rule of law. …
… And yet on the other hand, many people today would report that they have a fundamental sense of feeling stressed and pressured and disconnected from other people, longing for closeness that they don’t have, frustrated, driven, etc. Why is that? I think one reason is that we’re simply wasting the positive experiences that we’re having, in part due to modernity, because we’re not taking into account that design bug in the Stone Age brain that it doesn’t learn very well.
This “design bug” is also our wired tendency to focus on the negative (got to be wary of tigers). Hanson’s solution? Making sure core needs — safety, satisfaction, and connection — are met and repeatedly internalizing these, taking “the extra 10, 20, 30 seconds to enable everyday [positive] experiences to convert to neural structure.”
You can read excerpts of the book on Hanson’s site.
Quote of the day
Posted in Food addiction, Psychology, QOTD on October 23, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis is off tomorrow for a 5-day meeting with the Dalai Lama and others on the subject of addiction … how cool is that! But just before heading out, he wrote a very interesting post on how choice really works. It’s his take on a paper by Marc Slors titled Conscious Intending as Self-Programming.
Slors’ contention is that our immediate intentions (or “proximal” intentions) don’t have as much effect on our actions as we like to think, and that what does is our longer-term intentions (or “distal”). He calls the act of setting distal intentions “self-programming.”
Here’s how Lewis sees this playing out in addiction:
The fact that you just love cocaine, and you’ve devoted about a billion synapses to fondling it mentally, is going to determine whether you get high tonight — not the choice you make in the next two hours. …
If we recognize that short-term, proximal choices are weak, meaningless or illusory — if we recognize that only long-term, distal choices actually determine our actions — then the only way to quit being an addict planning is to plan ahead. The only way to stop is in advance of the moment. …
Rules and plans are not only important for choosing to quit. They are almost the only things that work. … Proximal intentions don’t matter. By the time you are getting close to the point of action, the dye is already cast.
On the one hand, Lewis says that this isn’t “big news” for some, but on the other, there’s almost a bit of a Zen koan aspect to this. Anyways, I find it intriguing.
Quote of the day
Posted in Food industry, Public health, QOTD, Real food on October 21, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Claus Meyer, “gastronomical entrepreneur” and founder of Noma (the world’s best restaurant from 2010 to 2012), on his New Nordic cuisine movement:
If our movement is a threat against anything, I believe it is the transnational junk and fast food industry dominated by massive corporations that tend to ruin our health, undermine our independence, and potentially damage the planet.
The quote comes from Meyer’s contribution to week one of Coursera’s The New Nordic Diet - from Gastronomy to Health. I initially thought it was really a course about a specific diet, but it’s actually much more than that: it’s about taste, pleasure, seasonality, sustainability, and more. What’s particularly cool is that they are trying to take the lessons learned in Denmark and reproduce their success in Bolivia.
The class just started, so if you’re into real food, sustainability, and interesting public health experiments, check it out. It’s free!
About
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! More »
Feeds
May I suggest?
Twitter
- RT @whsource: Always Hungry? 11 reasons why it's probably not your insulin. wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2016/01/always… 1 week ago
- I don't agree with @GaryTaubes much, but seems very plausible to me that what makes you fat may make you sick. #InDefenseOfFood 1 week ago
- Wish @MichaelPollan's #InDefenseOfFood didn't start w "being overweight increases your chances of getting" diabetes. #causationvcorrelation 1 week ago
- RT @CarbSane: New post on ketones as macronutrient and evoking Hippocrates "Let food be thy medicine" carbsanity.blogspot.com/2016/01/ketone… https://t.co/… 2 weeks ago
Archives
Categories
Disclaimer
