Don't diet but instead....Dive Into Exercise Today!

Why Diets Don't Work
By Wendy Bumgardner, About.com
Updated July 19, 2007

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board

When you want to lose weight, is your first choice to run to the latest fad diet? Often a quick 5 to 10 pounds will come off, then your old eating habits return. If you stick with it to attain your weight goal, you may still find yourself back at the same weight or higher in a few months. Why don't diets work?

A Diet is a Lifestyle, Not an Event

On many diets, you are not eating the way you will eat for the rest of your life. You eat foods you may not like very much and don't find satisfying. If you are determined enough, you stick with it until you reach your goal. But you know this is "just for the diet" rather than finding healthier foods you enjoy in amounts that don't cause weight gain.

Diets Can Be Downers

The very word "diet" is depressing to many of us. We think of giving up foods that are comforting and enjoyable. We think of sitting a party with celery sticks while others are eating the crab puffs. We may even stop socializing because food is a big part of how we interact with friends and family. We feel deprived, alienated and alone, except for others who are dieting. Eventually we give up and enter back into the world of happy uncontrolled eating, carrying negative feelings toward healthier "diet foods."

The Dangerous Yo-Yo Diet Cycle

Studies are finding dangers in the yo-yo diet cycle of losing weight, gaining it back plus a little more, losing, and gaining again. It is stressful on the body systems to have wide swings in body weight. We think each time that this time we won't gain it back, but the statistics show that most of us will.
Yo-Yo Dieting May Weaken Immune System

Control Issues

At first a diet can give you a sense of control. You are taking charge of your eating patterns. You may see success as the scale drops. But soon you are fighting cravings for forbidden foods, as well as hunger pangs and a lack of energy from the lower calorie level. Eventually you rebel against the diet and start "cheating." If your cheats are small you can still be losing weight, although more slowly. But soon you may go into full rebellion and return to your old eating habits.

Diets Slow Your Metabolism.

Your body reacts to fewer calories by slowing down your metabolism -- burning fewer calories each day just to maintain your body functions. If you don't add exercise along with the diet, you will lose lean muscle mass as well as fat and water weight. When you lose muscle, your metabolism is slowed even further and you would have to eat even fewer calories per day to continue to lose weight. It takes a conscious effort to increase exercise when on a diet.

If you don't exercise and then you fall off of the diet, the weight will come back on even faster, as your body is burning fewer calories per day. Even worse, the weight will come back on as fat rather than as the muscle you lost. Your body will look even less lean and healthy.

Solution: Get Active for an Hour a Day

Your first step to improve your health and appearance is to begin daily exercise. Clients of bariatric surgery clinics are prescribed an hour of exercise a day before they can be candidates for surgery. Some of them lose weight so successfully from the exercise that they decide not to have the surgery after all. The exercise doesn't have to be intense -- pick activities you enjoy such as walking, biking, or swimming. Get your body moving most days of the week. The U.S. Surgeon General recommends a minimum daily requirement of 30 to 60 minutes a day of walking or other easy-to-moderate intensity exercise for weight management.

SmallStep.gov

Solution: Make Simple Eating Changes

Find a 100-calorie change you can make for this week. Perhaps it is drinking one less can of cola each day, or having non-fat milk in your coffee instead of cream. Substitute string cheese or an apple instead of a bag of potato chips. Make a 100-calorie change each week for the next six weeks and you will have made a significant change in your eating habits. Don't think in terms of depriving yourself of foods you love, but eliminate empty calories you don't really like and find substitutes that you can enjoy for the rest of your life.

Moving from "Diet" to "Way of Eating"
Healthy Foods Instead of a Diet

By making these changes, you can tip your energy balance to building and maintaining lean muscle while burning and losing fat. This will probably be gradual rather than dramatic, but you will eventually notice clothes fitting looser, your waistline shrinking, and your energy level higher.

Rather than gaining a few pounds each year like most adults, you will be losing a little weight each year. Friends who haven't seen you in awhile will be impressed by the difference. Best of all, you will not have shocked your body with a deprivation diet, but instead have been feeding it appropriate amounts of better food while giving it the exercise it needs for health.

Source: Mann T, Tomiyama AJ, Westling E, Lew AM, Samuels B, Chatman J. "Medicare's Search for Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not the Answer." Am Psychol. 2007 Apr;62(3):220-33.

This is why no one should ever say the flu is "NO BIG DEAL"

I'm sharing this prayer request I received because I believe it's important and at the bottem of the email, they urged us to let people know. The flu is a big deal when it can do this to a perfectly healthy young lady. Get vaccinated when you can, if you can. Do what you can to prevent this and do what you can to protect your family. This my friends is why I have to take the precautions I do with my heart condition too.

On Saturday, 9/5/09, my son in law (Kelly Root) and my daughter (Stacy) lost their 19 year old niece (Taylor Brian) to pneumonia related H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus. Taylor was a senior at Denham Springs High School. She was treated for strep throat on 8/20, got better but still had strep on the 27th, began throwing up and was hospitalized in BR Gen on Bluebonnet, with a touch of pneumonia on 8/29. She was tested for H1N1 and the family was told it would take 10 days to get the results. When her fever got up to 105 over that weekend and she was placed in ICU. Her oxygen level got so low, she was given a paralytic drug and put on a ventilator Monday. Tuesday chest tubes had to be inserted. Wednesday, another swab for H1N1 was taken and a lab in BR, which as I understand will be dedicated for this type of testing, revealed Thursday she tested POSITIVE for H1N1. They tried to ween her off the paralytic drug in preparation for removal of the vent, but could not because the blood pressure and oxygen levels dropped. Everytime they would do anything to her, such as suctioning her lungs or bathing her, the BP and O2 levels would drop. The family received a call about 3 a.m. Saturday to return to the hospital as her levels dropped as she was being repostioned. This time they could not get her back and she passed away around 4 a.m.. She will be buried on Wednesday.

It appears this virus attacked her lungs with a vengence. The family was told her lungs were like one big blister.

The reason I am relaying all of this to you is so you will be especially alert if your child, grandchild, niece or nephew has any type of cold or sore throat, you can take immediate action. We don't know if Taylor had the H1N1 virus before getting strep or vise versa. In any event a perfectly healthy young woman died in a very short time.

Taylor was a precious young lady who always had a smile on her face, was a friend to all and a joy to be around. This whole ordeal has been like a nightmare for my son-in-law and his family. Please keep the Brian and Root Families in your prayers.

tips to help if you can't get the flu shot

Ok, I highly recommend anyone with an underlying health condition to get the flu shot but I know not everyone can get the flu shot. So, I thought I would post these tips I found to help prevent the flu when you can't get the shot and since we are still waiting for the vaccine for the swine flu to be released. The best thing is for people that are sick, to stay home so they do not expose others.

Can’t Get The Flu Shot! What Am I To Do?
By: James L. Holly, MD
Isn’t it amazing how supply and demand work, even in healthcare? When the supply is
limited, suddenly the demand becomes unlimited, even when the demand might have
been low, when the supply seemed unlimited.

The flu vaccine has become much more popular in the past few years, particularly as thescience has improved. Taking a flu shot decreases your probability of getting the flu by almost 90%. With over 30,000,000 people in the US getting the flu each year and with over 30,000 deaths from the complications of the flu, this is not an inconsequential benefit from taking a simple immunization. However, these statistics need to be balanced by the fact that almost 90% of people in the United States DO NOT get the flu, even if they don’t take the flu shot. A flu shot is
imperative, even this year, if you are in a high risk group. This includes:
• People 50 years old or above
• Anyone who lives or works in a college, nursing or long-term care home, assisted
living residence, or similar facility
• Adults and children (6 months of age or older) who have chronic heart or lung
conditions, including asthma
• Adults and children (6 months of age or older) who need regular or follow-up
treatment for a kidney, immune, blood, or metabolic disorder (like diabetes), and
anyone else who lives in the same household
• Children (6 months to 18 years) who are on aspirin therapy, because a viral
infection like the flu puts them at risk for Reye's syndrome
• Pregnant women who will be in their second or third trimester during flu season
• Doctors, nurses, hospital employees, home caregivers, and
• household members of people in high-risk groups

What If I Can’t Get a Flu Shot?

In the absence of a flu shot, common sense works almost as well. Statistically, two
things work almost as well as the flu shot:

1. Cover your mouth if you cough and ask others to do the same. Virus are spread by
droplets of fluid which are propelled through the air by coughing. Avoiding these
droplets is one way of avoiding the flu.

2. Washing your hands frequently. Viruses can survive on the skin for several hours.
With a virus on your hands from hand shaking or other physical contact, you can infect yourself by touching your mouth or nose. We’ll discuss more about handing washing later.

Other common sense measures

1. Get plenty of rest. Your own immune system can often defeat a virus’ attempt to
invade your body, but not when you are fatigued. Fatigue diminishes the effectiveness of your own immune responses. So, a good night’s sleep is one excellent anti-viral method.

2. Physical activity stimulates the blood flow in your body, the clearing of your lungs and the mobilization of many other factors in your body which improves your chances of not getting the flu. Stay active. Get exercise. It’s better than the flu shot.

3. Hydration is important. Drinking your 64 ounces of water a day will help your
body’s immune system fight off the flu. Don’t forget to get plenty of fluids before youare ill and if you get sick.

4. Nutrition is important. Eating a well balanced diet, which includes vegetables and
fruits is critical to avoiding the flu. Your immune system is dependent upon your diet. Junk food, fast food, fried foods and fatty foods, all impair your ability to fend off viruses.

5. Avoiding stress will help you avoid the flu. Stress impairs your immune response.
While it is not possible to control the things which happen to us, it is possible to control our responses. Learn to live with what you can’t change and change what you can’t live with. Of course, these strategies for avoiding the flu are important all year long, not just in the flu season.

Medications for the Flu

If you can not get a flu shot and you are exposed to someone with the flu, you might ask your doctor about prescribing an antiviral drug to help prevent you from getting sick.These flu drugs include:
• amantadine (Symmetrel)
• rimantadine (Flumadine)
• oseltamivir (Tamiflu)
Although usually only prescribed for seven days after your flu exposure, they can also be used long-term for the whole flu season if you are considered high risk for getting seriously ill from the flu and you did not get a flu shot.
These flu medicines, along with zanamivir (Relenza), can also be used as treatment if you get sick with the flu. As a flu treatment, they can shorten the time a person infected with influenza feels ill by approximately 1 day, if treatment is started during the first 2 days of illness.

The drugs aren't perfect, though. Up to 10 percent of people taking amantadine
experience side effects including:
• nausea
• dizziness
• insomnia
These problems are less common with rimantadine. People with kidney disorders and
certain psychiatric conditions may have a serious reaction to these drugs. In addition,they aren't foolproof, because the type A virus can develop drug-resistant strains.In 1999, a new class of flu drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors came on the market,zanamivir (Relenza) and osteltamivir (Tamiflu). The newer drugs have some advantages over the previous ones:
• they suppress both types of influenza (A and B), and
• they inhibit most strains, not just the strains of the season.
Like the other antivirals, neurmaninidase inhibitors only work if you take them within the first 48 hours, and they generally shorten the length of a flu by about a day. They also have side effects to watch for: People with chronic lung conditions such asasthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may have trouble breathing or feel like their lung capacity is reduced while on zanamivir, and should keep a fast-acting inhaler handy. Osteltamivir produces nausea and vomiting in about 10 percent of people, and some of the less common effects include vertigo and insomnia. The FDA also recommends that osteltamivir not be given to infants less than a year old.

Echinacea and the Flu
Finally, Echinacea has been reported to boost the immune system, and some studies show it can reduce the severity and length of cold and flu symptoms. In one study, a daily 900-milligram Echinacea supplement during a bout with the flu significantly reduced patients' symptoms, including weakness, fatigue, chills, sweating, sore throat, muscle and joint aches, and headaches, when compared to both a placebo and a lower dosage (450 mg).

Other Tips to Avoid the Flu
Whether or not you got a flu shot, since it isn't 100% effective, you should follow these steps to help prevent you and your family from getting sick with the flu.

Wash Your Hands

One of the most important thing that you can do to keep from getting sick is to wash your hands often. Unfortunately, many people, especially kids, either do not wash their hands often enough or don't do it correctly. You should wash your hands often. Probably more often than you do now because you can’t see germs with the naked eye or smell the, so you do not really know where they are hiding.

When should you wash your hands?

One of the most common ways people catch colds and the flu is by rubbing their nose or their eyes after their hands have been contaminated with a virus. By washing your hands often, especially:
• before, during, and after you prepare food
• before you eat, and
• after you use the bathroom
• after handling animals or animal waste
• when your hands are dirty, and
• more frequently when someone in your home is sick
you may avoid getting sick yourself and keep your kids from getting sick too.

What is the correct way to wash your hands?
• First wet your hands and apply liquid or clean bar soap.
• Place the bar soap on a rack and allow it to drain.
• Next rub your hands vigorously together and scrub all surfaces.
• Continue for 10 - 15 seconds or about the length of a little tune. It is the soap
combined with the scrubbing action that helps dislodge and remove germs.

Protecting Children

Routinely clean, with soap and water, and disinfect surfaces, toys, and objects that
younger children may put in their mouths. It may also help to wipe surfaces with paper towels that can be thrown away or cloth towels that can be washed afterwards.
• Use disposable tissues to wipe or blow your child's nose.
• Teach your children 'cough etiquette', which the American Academy of Pediatrics
describes as teaching 'your children to turn their heads and cough or sneeze into a
disposable tissue or the inside of their elbow if a tissue is unavailable'.

• Avoid close contact with people when you are sick.
It isn't really possible to completely avoid people who are sick, so it is likely better if you just avoid exposing other people to your germs when you or your kids are sick. So don't go to school, daycare, work, etc., if you are sick with the flu.
Avoid unnecessary contact with a lot of people for your younger children. It isn't easy to always tell when people are sick and some people are contagious even before they start to have symptoms, so don't expose your younger kids to large crowds of people if you don't have to. Since the virus can survive on surfaces for hours -- wash your hands as often as possible. If you can't get to soap and water use a commercial hand washing preparation. Studies show these are highly effective at killing influenza and other viruses.

Airplanes and the Air in the Plane

What about the air you breathe on planes? It passes though the same type of filters used in operating rooms - highly effective at keeping viruses from circulating. But the filtration does not protect you from nearby passengers, rude enough to not cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze. Your greatest risk is going to be in very close proximity with somebody that, if you will, kind of showers your airspace with their virus. The expert advice is try to change seats and don't be shy about complaining if you can't. It might allow you to end your trip as healthy as you were when you started.

Conclusion
The good news is that we will survive the flu season and you will too. If you get sick,contact your physician immediately. Few people, aggressively treated early, will
succumb to the flu virus. Remember, it is your life and it is your health.