mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Z Trim - too good to be true?

Link: Z Trim - Welcome.

"Z Trim is truly a revolution - the new way to "do food" going forward - a zero calorie fat replacement gel made from natural dietary fiber.  It mimics fat in food preparation so well that most people cannot tell the difference between the high fat version of their favorite food and the naturally lower fat, higher fiber Z Trim version."

I dunno ... somehow this "new way to 'do food'" gives me The Fear bigtime--not least because of this hype-encrusted website. Then again, the actual product seems to bear some similarity to konnyaku, another no-calorie gel that I've been happily using for some time now.

Anybody out there have any personal experience with this Z-Trim stuff with which they would care to enlighten me?

The duck vs. the machine, round 2

The good news: I've exercised three times this week--twice on the stationary bike, once in a chair aerobics class at the monthly follow-up meeting of my HMO weight management program.

The not so good news: even that modest amount of exercise seems to have pushed me into the realm of "overdoing it." I'm feeling very fatigued today, and my left knee, the more screwed-up one, is doing that unnerving clicking-sensation thing that indicates its little meniscus tear is getting irritated. And I definitely don't want it to get any more irritated--that inevitably leads to seriously nasty pain that forces me off my feet for a good couple of weeks or more until the meniscus simmers down again.

The still-encouraging news: even that modest amount of exercise seems to have been enough to boost my metabolism and get my weight loss out of its stall.

Preliminary conclusion: I'm gonna give my trick knee a break from the stationary bike over the weekend and/or until it quits doing its annoying little click/lock behavior. If it's still doing it come Monday, I'll switch to the treadmill instead--still aerobic, but no major knee-bending involved.

The interim bummer: Damn! I was wanting to go dance my ass off at a Halloween party or two this Saturday! Oh well ... maybe I'll try a dance or two and see how it goes. After all, it's not like I was planning on any pogoing or slam-dancing (heh).

Postscript: no emoticon graphics on Typepad ... I don't know if I'm disappointed or relieved. :-)

Study: Losing fat stimulated anti-tumor defense in mice - CNN.com

Link: Study: Losing fat stimulated anti-tumor defense in mice - CNN.com.

Interesting. Including the fact that neither of the fat-reduction methods tried on the mice involved dietary restrictions--one group exercised it off while the other underwent liposuction (!). Yet they're generalizing to weight loss in general--and, even with white-coat caveats, tentatively applying the whole shebang to human weight loss efforts in general.

Heh. The day HMOs start recommending liposuction as a covered medical therapy for obesity is the day I run for cover--that procedure is, in its own way, just as risky a procedure as bariatric surgery. Not that I expect to see that anytime soon, but with active campaigns to make bariatric surgery an insurance-covered procedure, who the hell knows anymore?

All I know is that, when I had my hysterectomy, the doctors were all paranoid that my fat heightened the risk of infection--apparently post-surgical infection in fat tissues is a big issue. And what is liposuction except a huge surgical incursion into the fat tissues? Remember that post of mine awhile back about adipose tissue doing a hell of a lot more in the body than just insulation and storing energy ...

Which actually lends strength to the original hypothesis of this little scientific report, that reduction of fat tissues might also reduce certain cancer tumor growth. Perhaps that metabolically-active fat tissue is putting out some chemical that is interfering with apoptosis, as the referenced article suggests. Given my little cancer scare, and the history of breast cancer in my family, I can't help but pay attention to such news items. I just wish the experiment could have been better designed.

Seafood: experts mull how to explain risks/benefits to consumers

Link: Consumers Need Better Guidance To Fully Weigh Possible Benefits And Risks When Making Seafood Choices.

I confess this exact issue has confused me about buying seafood--in addition to my concern to avoid bad farmed product and threatened species. On the other hand, searching for fish with fewer problems has led me to some new discoveries, like bighead carp (a species many in the US consider an overabundant trash/invader species, but which many Asian people consider good eating if you know how to deal with it).

Anyway, this article does do a good (if dry) job of laying down a clear opinion about relative tradeoffs of including seafood in your diet in this day and age. You may disagree with its opinion here and there (I do), but at least it's comprehensive.

As a continuing ed teacher of mine used to say (a bit too frequently), "Clear as mud, but at least it covers the ground, huh?" Actually, the article is much much clearer than that. Would it be too cute to say: as clear as seawater? Probably. Oh well.

Weekly weigh-in -- that did the trick

Went in for my weekly weigh-in a little early as this week is going to be busy. The numbers:

• Today's weight: 237.5 lb
• Change since last weigh-in: -3.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 96.5 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -2.47 lb

It looks like the increase in my exercise activity has succeeded in breaking this latest little plateau I had been stuck on. Since I last posted, I have stationary-biked and treadmilled a second day (Friday), gotten in some strenuous (for me) walking (Saturday), and had a day that, while including no formal exercise, kept me going from dawn till dusk (Sunday). So I'm glad to see all of that did have some effect.

It seems my bod, like most people's, does need a few bouts of intense non-dawdling exercise to kick up its metabolism into a higher gear. Nice to know that it does have a measurable effect on me, at least for the time being.

I expect that sometime further on down the road, as my weight continues to decrease, I will again reach a point where the my levels of exercise/calorie expenditure and food intake/calorie intake are once again in equilibrium, and I'll have to ratchet the activity level up another peg or two to drop more weight. Assuming I'll need to. It may well happen, at one of these equilibrium points, that I'll declare myself content with that level of weight and health and proceed from there. After all, as I keep on reminding myself, this is not about a particular magic number on the scale; it's about functional measures of health such as ease of movement and general wellbeing.

The duck vs. the machine

Went down to the exercise room in my apartment complex for the first time since my hysterectomy surgery. Yay me! Did okay on the stationary bicycle--stuck it out pretty well through one of its 15-minute pre-programmed routines, albeit on the lowest resistance setting. Then I tried the treadmill for the first time ... and in ten minutes flat, even on the lowest setting, it had kicked my butt. Ah well. Gotta start somewhere.

Weekly weigh-in: status quo; plus: bye-bye fat clothes

This week's numbers:

• Today's weigh-in: 241.0 lb
• Change since last week: 0.0lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 93.0 lb
• Average weekly loss: 2.45lb

I have apparently slowed to a plateau, but I don't mind, for all the reasons I gave at last week's weigh-in (i.e. given that most people post-surgery gain weight, I consider myself ahead of the game because I'm holding steady).

Plus, I have started to up my exercise efforts by little degrees. Today, for instance, I logged about 1/2 mile according to my little pedometer. This wasn't the most brisk walking I've ever done--I seem to be going through a cranky-joints phase as the weather around here keeps switching between balmy and unseasonably chilly and overcast. But the important thing is that I walked anyway, despite the stiffness and discomfort. And since I was walking the ocean-front path at Pacific Beach, it was a fun walk too! I have no doubt that, as I keep this up, my weight will continue to edge down.

And actually, while the big weight drops I experienced at the beginning of my project were kind of exciting, as faithful readers of this blog will recall I also found them kind of scary because according to my experience such weekly drops felt way abnormal, almost out of control, especially considering the moderateness of my program. It's a little more familiar, and safer-feeling to me from a health standpoint, for my body to be losing weight much more gradually.

So--hooray for contrarianism! Everyone hypnotized by the diet-industry "gurus" is entranced with huge fast weight loss; me, I'm relieved to be *not* doing that anymore!

In other news: the occasion of my church's annual rummage sale provided the perfect opportunity for me to get rid of more clothing that no longer fits me. I took a huge bagful down there today. Bye-bye, fat clothes! Not totally a burning-my-bridges-behind-me gesture, because of course one can always buy more clothes--in fact, I *am* going to have to buy more clothes, only in smaller sizes, because now the empty drawers and closet really emphasize how little I have left that fits me at my current size. But physically removing the too-large clothing from my possession is definitely another psychological milestone, a confirmation of my commitment to not go back to those size-30 camoflage-the-body-in-tents days ever again.

Heh. And the most ironic thing? I'll be shopping that church rummage sale this Saturday, for clothes that fit me now, to replace the clothes I gave to that same sale that no longer fit me. Talk about recycling! It'll especially make me smile to see my clothes turn up on the backs of other church members. I know all too well how damn difficult it is for super-size women to find decent clothing that fits well and doesn't cost a fortune, so I'm hoping every item I gave away will find new homes with women who really love them.

The latest anti-obesity drug: rimonabant

Link: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Anti-obesity pill aids weight loss.

Ah, yes. Here's yet another diet drug whose effects are modest at best, whose side-effects are nasty, and whose cost will rip the lining out of somebody's wallet somewhere, but the manufacturers will try their damnedest to sell the damn thing anyway, and people will buy it because they're desperate and not getting good advice on weight reduction.

More on rimonabant here.

1998 NYT article sheds light on deadly E. coli variant

Link: Detective Work and Science Reveal a New Lethal Bacteria - New York Times.

One of the key details given short shrift in the recent spinach-contamination furor--and it really bugs me that it's been so dreadfully ignored--is that it's NOT all E. coli bacteria that are at fault. Normally, E. coli is a benign, even beneficial, bacterium that lives peacefully and in great numbers in the guts of many mammals, including homo sapiens. It's only a couple of rare, mutant strains of the bug that cause the potentially-deadly problems--and the story of how E. coli O157:H7, the culprit in recent US contamination crises, probably evolved is a fascinating and instructive one.

One of the reasons the extreme unclarity about this bug, well, bugs me, is simply that I'm a science geek and I hate bad science reporting, especially from news outlets on which millions of people are depending for potentially life-protecting news. But another is that implementing a fix for this problem will be greatly aided if all parties concerned (including we the people whom the fixing agencies are meant to serve) actually understand the true nature of the problem.

Meanwhile, those of us who have made a commitment to health by adding large quantities of fresh vegetables to our diets need to exercise caution in our commitment, as in my opinion those fix-it agencies are still only succeeding in sticking bandaids onto an extremely leaky food-conduit--mainly because they are not empowered or funded to achieve anything more than that. I think it's just plain old common sense that a huge corporate farm enterprise like Natural Selection--no matter how  well-intentioned--will simply have more points where things can screw up than a local organic farm, simply because the former is a much bigger and more complex organization.

Indeed, it wasn't even one of Natural Selection's dozens of organic brands from their own fields that was at fault, but spinach from another, non-organic, farm that Natural Selection bags under contract to another company's brand. With all those dozens of brands and raw-material streams, Murphy's Law can have one hell of a "field day" (yeah, pun intended).

All other things being equal, the odds of getting safe veggies are simply higher when one buys them minimally processed from smaller, local farms.

Weekly weigh-in -- plus: info about post-surgery weight gain

Interesting week. First, the numbers:

• Today's weigh-in: 241.0 lb
• Change since last weigh-in: -0.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 93.0 lb
• Average weeky weight loss: 2.51 lb

I'm pretty certain at this point that my slowed rate of weight loss is due to post-surgical recuperation. I got some support for this notion from this webpage. The fact that many womens' problem is gaining weight makes me feel pretty good that my weight is still going down at all, however slowly.

But it does also point out that I need to get a little more achtung about my favorite thing (insert glyph of sarcasm here), regular exercise. No more of this counting hauling laundry up and downstairs and grocery shopping, with sporadic unplanned bouts of walking, as adequate exercise. I'm a little more willing these days, thankfully. I very recently discovered that I can now walk several blocks without gasping for breath or feeling joints start to seize up. I have to go slow and step gently, because there is some joint discomfort, but the pleasure at walking just that little bit better is ample motivation to keep moving. I think I may have turned a corner here.

I want to make this exercise thing as attractive as possible, so I'll get kick-started into doing it. I do have the gym on premises, but nothing beats walking in pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods for making me enjoy exercise. I may indulge myself by driving to attractive walking neighborhoods. Yeah, there's something ironic about driving somewhere to walk. Welcome to Southern California.

Actually ... speaking of SoCal, I think I'll make my first walking jaunt at Ocean Beach, my favorite of the beach communities. Too bad I missed the farmer's market there today...