Consumers are smart, shoppers is [sic] dumb. And I say that in a nice way.

Nice job from Yoni Freedhoff of Weighty Matters in taking on the health-washing on processed food labels!

Click to view video

Very interesting! And useful, if it turns out that, as suggested by other studies, the gut plays an important role in obesity. (Frankly, I’d welcome the prospect of fecal transplant as obesity treatment over pharmacology or weight-loss surgery.)

No, what’s annoying about this is of course the media write up. Here’s the lede from the industry blurb:

We’ve heard obesity can be “spread” between friends when we copy each other’s eating habits, but a new study in mice suggests obesity could actually be infectious.

That’s right, infectious. As in, something you can catch.

Thanks media … nothing like fanning the flames of fat stigma!

I’m not a traditional HAES girl (given my weight loss efforts) but I agree with the HAES folks that health comes first. I also agree that the childhood obesity billboards in Georgia are a terrible public health strategy.

So I’ve donated to Ragen Chastain’s Support All Kids billboard project. I thought I’d share here in case you’re so inclined. Read more about the project at Ragen’s blog.

Notice how the shape of the ramen noodle is still apparent on the left and the handmade ramen noodles on the right are no longer recognizable as noodles, even after two and a half hours?

That’s because Top Ramen is made to survive Armageddon. Our homemade ramen noodles are made to be eaten.

~ Stefani Bardin

If you need more evidence to be turned off of processed food forever, watch the entire video! Can’t wait until they do more.

1. Getting regular breaks during sedentary activity
2. Getting about 30 minutes of activity a day

Re the first recommendation, LifeHacker unfortunately says all you need to do is stand, but if you dig into this a bit more, it’s clear you need to actually move.

Re the second recommendation, check out this fab video if you haven’t already seen it.

As far as physical activity, it’s clear more is better (unless you’re talking chronic cardio). But if you’ve got a desk job, it sure seems like being intentional about building in activity regularly is well worthwhile.

I’ve been using a 20-minute timer on my computer for months now just as part of my back rehabilitation. Glad to know it may have other benefits!

Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror. … You’re in a spiral, you’re in a downward spiral. This is an ugly side of you, but you don’t have to be ugly. You don’t. You can take stock. Make yourself better. Okay? This is an opportunity for you to make yourself better, to change, to become better than what you were.

Reminds me a bit of that Cherokee story of the wolves within.

Wow. This is a MUST watch video. Yes, it’s a little geeky (his nickname isn’t Mat the Kraken for nothing), but most of it is pretty accessible.

Mat is a former vegan (2 years) and vegetarian (8 years), who has adopted a paleo-ish diet. But he almost didn’t, because he find some of the paleo “theories” less than satisfactory when held to serious academic rigor:

• Just because our genes are identical to paleolithic man’s does not mean our diet should be identical. How those genes have been expressed (epigenetics) are considerably different today and that makes a difference.
• Lack of grains/dairy and freedom from diseases of civilization is an observation … correlation is not causality.
• Just because a food wasn’t available before the agricultural age doesn’t mean we’re not able to tolerate that food. Rather “there’s been insufficient time and insufficient evolutionary pressure for complete adaptation to seed consumption to arise in homo sapiens and as a result, individuals that tolerate grains and legumes should be considered the minority, not the majority.”

That said, Mat’s not a grain fan (“the proteins are the problem”) and suggests that a diet of meat, vegetables, and tubers is a good baseline diet and from there, people should tweak.

Lots more good stuff there, so be sure to check it out!

Given the following:

* Most people don’t exercise very much
* Exercise burns less calories than most people think

The problem for the overwhelming majority is “how do I dispose of excess sugars, simple or complex,” not “how do I replenish depleted liver glycogen?”

Umm, yeah. To my mind, the value of reducing carbs in your diet (as I do) is not for some magical thing it does to your metabolism or what it does to your insulin levels, it’s what it does to general energy balance (read: I think there’s a pony in there somewhere). This is also why I don’t see the usefulness of eating tons of non-nutritive fats either while I’ve got lots to spare!

As they say, your mileage may vary.

Anybody who says obesity is as simple as, you know, too much fat or too much carbohydrate or something like that is either misinformed or is intentionally misleading you. It’s far more complex than that, but I can boil it down into one simple phrase, which is modern lifestyle + genetic predisposition = obesity.

I encourage folks to listen, but if you don’t have time, there’s a transcript on the podcast page.

Chris mentions that the practical implications are for a future podcast, but this is a great intro to a fairly complicated subject.

Speaking of Chris and weight loss, I’ll be starting his “Advanced Weight Loss” class this Saturday. It’s a special class that was offered to the first 150 folks who purchased his Personal Paleo Code last fall. The workshop will likely be available to others later this spring. I’m really looking forward to his take on this subject!

You need to start thinking about where you want to drive the boat and if you’re not, you’re shitting the bed.

LOL!

Be sure to check out the whole podcast and and particularly Robb’s answer to George (starting at 47:16). It’s relevant for those wondering just how many carbs an ancestral diet should include.