Re: _Keeping it off_ book

Ig,

Since the book was written when low carb was going out of fashion and looked
at people who had lost weight many years in the past and kept it off, many
of their dieters were low carbers (including, for example, all those on
plans like Weight Watchers which was low carb back then).

No one in their right minds would have done a high carb, low fat diet in the
1970s since we all knew back then that bread and potatoes and cookies make
you fat, whether with butter or not!

-- Jenny - Low Carbing for 5 years. Below goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes,
hba1c 5.7 .
Cut the carbs to respond to my email address!

Jenny's new site: What they Don't Tell You About Diabetes
http://www.geocities.com/lottadata4u/

Jenny's Low Carb Diet Facts & Figures
http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/

Looking for help controlling your blood sugar?
Visit http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/Newly%20Diagnosed.htm

"Ignoramus26161" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article said:

Ig,

Reading that book (which I found in our public library) really helped

me.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Though the focus is on the psychology, there's quite a bit on the
physiology, too.

First of all, thanks for posting a review of that book that prompted
me to buy it.

There is not that much regarding physiology, in it. I personally
prefer to look at physiology because solutions in that area are more
concrete and can be evaluated. Psychology is more nebulous.

Quoted message said:

It was interesting to me that the successful dieters lost weight on all
kinds of different regimens and diets, but that the researchers found

the

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

common threads no matter what the food plan.

Yes. I liked that they mostly were absolutist regarding giving up
sugar. I was quite disconcerted by their conclusion that they were
almost all lowfatting, which would be a diet that I would not enjoy at
all.

Quoted message said:

I also found it helpful to see that contrary to what the people
selling gym memberships tell you, exercise was helpful mostly after
the weight was lost, and it was not necessary for the weight loss to
occur. Most women started exercising after losing a lot of weight
(like I did) and did very well.

But, Jenny, men started much earlier, I started walking in the first
days after my epiphany.

Quoted message said:

I know so many people at the gym who work out four times a week and have
only lost 2 or 3 pounds all year (these are people who need to lose 30

or 40

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

lbs.) So I liked having it made clear that exercise is NOT the magic

bullet

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

for weight loss, calorie restriction is. I also found it interesting to
look at the calorie levels at which people lost and maintained no matter
WHAT diet.

to me, exercise is a way to keep good mood, eat extra food, and feel
good and look good.

Quoted message said:

It's worth remembering that the book was written back when low carbing

was

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

just going out of fashion so many of the long term diet success stories

in

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the book were low carbers.

low fatters?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I am reading a book _Keeping it Off_ by Robert Colvin and Susan
Olson. This is an old book from 1985, I bought it used from Amazon.

The book is excellent and a summary of it is available at

http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/success.htm

The book is a great read and I highly recommend it. It describes what
is common amongst successful maintainers, which are defined as people

who

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

- lost over 20% of body weight
- kept it off for 2 years
- are not more than 5 lbs away from their lowest weight

The discuss the traits amongst those successful people, how they think
about weight loss, what they do, what they do not do etc.

There are very few books about weight maintenance, probably because so
few people can get to the point where they need to maintain weight,
and even fewer of them actually maintain the loss. According to
authors, only 2% of those who started dieting can maintain
successfully for 2 years.

Unfortunately, the authors are psychologists, and looked at those
successful dieters from only psychological point of view. (I am not
done with the book yet). I wish they tried to look at the somatic
differences, if any, between successful and unsuccessful dieters.

It also does not do a good enough job at comparing those successful
people with controls who have not managed to be as successful. So,
they could fall into a trap of describing their common traits that did
not make a difference. Both of them had prior clinical experience with
"treating" obese dieters, with little (average) success, so,
hopefully, they could detect those success traits based on their
experience.

All in all, it is a great common sense book that describes what works.

The great majority of maintainers lost weight on their own, not on
any sort of commercial programs. All of them had an epiphany at some
point, which has been my experience exactly. They are all very aware
of their current weight and they actively manage it. Again, my
experience. They moved away from food obsessions and food takes little
place in their life, which I cannot say yet about myself, although it
has been getting a tad better later.

i

"Ignoramus8743" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Maybe that is true, but that's not what the book says. It pretty much
said that the winners' strategy, in their words, is to drop as much
sugar and as much fat as possible.

Yes, that was the traditionnal way of doing diets in the old days... That's
actually what many generalists still advice nowadays in France. Drop sugars
and fats, then each doctor adds his peculiar obsession (drop pasta, drop red
meat, drop coffee, add vegetables, eat more breakfast...) to that framework.
Though the summary seems to point to the fact that the diet itself was not
really the important factor in the success or not of these dieters.

"Ignoramus8743" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

My personal opinion, is that what it points out, is the possibility
that likely most of the interviewed persons did not have metabolic
syndrome/diabetes.

Well, people with diabete are still a minority, thankfully. I don't know how
many obeses also have a metabolic syndrom, and how much of their obesity can
be linked to it. You also have to consider that weight loss, at least for
some people, can reduce the metabolic syndrom to such an extent that it is
no longer a problem past the first few pounds. Even with diabete, weight
loss is very effective for some. My FBG returned to high normal within a
month of losing weight for instance. Right now, if I had not been tested
before, I would pass most casual diabete screenings (A1c, FBG) without even
registering as pre-diabetic. Of course, that would show on a GTT, but
they're rarely used nowadays.
It's quite possible that for some of these people with metabolical syndrom,
rapid weight loss put them into a range where insulin resistance was low
enough to allow maintainance.

Quoted message said:

It's not that I think that metabolic disorder people cannot lose
weight at all, but I don't think that a low fat diet is what would
work for many of them.

There is a whole world between no fat and no carb 😉 I still think these
people could lose on a traditional diet (i.e. a well established cultural
diet, not one designed by a doctor) with basic portion control. The
integrist low fat diet (all fats=bad, less than 25% calories from fats) is
so abnormal that it's a wonder people actually managed to lose on it (and
stay healthy).

Quoted message said:

Now, I know, that you consider yourself a counterexample, a diabetic
who became obese because of psychological issues that you are now
addressing, but, I don't think that you are on a low fat diet.

Indeed, my diet is getting closer to the traditionnal French diet, with a
few exceptions (I should drink more wine :p). It's certainly not low fat (I
eat quite a lot of nuts lately, along with olive oil and walnut oil and some
butter) and it's not high carb either. Some days are higher carbs than
others too.
Today was a rather high carb day for instance, but this might be linked to
increased exercise yesterday. I just bought a cardiometer [tr?] to use
bio-feedback for meditation, but I also use it for exercising. As a result,
I have added bursts of sprinting to my power-walking (heart going at 140bpm
on average [75% max], peaks at 167 [90% max]), for one hour yesterday and
half an hour today. This certainly felt great, but I did some serious
sweating as a result, and this did raise hunger quite a bit, and craving for
carbs (I guess glycogen stores were quite empty). But I don't really
exercise with the intent to lose weight, the goal is to improve my insulin
resistance.
I would actually say I'm a psychological obese who got diabetic because of
the excess weight (and total sedentarity during the past few years). 😉
Diabete probably helped me put on weight so quickly in the past years, but
only because I was eating an insane amount of food. The fact that my FBG and
A1c are going down through pure weight loss and exercise and not too much
diet seems to hint to that. Likewise, the fact that I have experienced
little reactive hypoglycemia (except when I was using Prandin), and that
what hypoglycemia I have experienced made me nauseous, make it difficult for
me to blame the overeating on it. 😉
I seem to lose weight about as easily as I put it on, it's really totally
symetric there. That's also something I share with my father, and maybe my
grandfather on my mother's side. Men in the familly (both sides) also build
muscles as easily (people often think wrongly that my father is into
bodybuilding), and it seems I have inherited that trait (I was always quite
muscular, even under the fat). So, it's really a matter of pushing the body
in the right direction, and being so sedentary certainly didn't push it
towards building muscles rather than fat.

Ignoramus5536 wrote:
||
|| Speaking of hypo... My MIL had a serious hypo attack at BG of 70
|| (sic).
||
|| To me, this is a quite normal level these days. I would experience
|| perhaps very slight shakiness, but would feel quite well otherwise.

If you do some reading on hypo, you'll discover that hypo is not merely a
low BG reading...they symptoms can be brought on by the rate that BG levels
fall, so the BG doesn't even need to be that low for one to experience hypo.

"Ignoramus5536" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/02/earlyshow/contributors/emilysenay/main620811.shtml

Quoted message said:

``Overall, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 38.7 percent in
moderately obese subjects and 49.7 percent in severely obese
subjects.''

Thanks for the link. Though it's a study on young obesity, which is a whole
matter in itself. And then, it's an egg and chicken problem. Is the
metabolic syndrom the source of the obesity, or it is a consequence? Or is
it just a cycle that feeds on itself once it is started.

Quoted message said:

Yes, it is great that you could at least stop your diabetes, I think
that you are still pretty young.

I'm 32. I'm still waiting a bit before calling it "stopped", my nutritionist
is a lot more optimistic than I am actually. 😉 After the ophtalmologist,
I'm still thinking about checking with a podologist (though my feet have
never been as smooth and healthy looking as they are now - even hairs are
growing :p) and a cardiologist. Though I will wait on the later until I get
a bit more control of my white coat syndrom, using the cardiometer as a way
to monitor my relaxation technics seem to work so far (I can drop my heart
rate from 80 to sligthtly bellow 60 with a little focus, very nice effect on
stress when doing job interviews and the like).

Quoted message said:

I regret that I did not do better blood sugar testing prior to
starting to lose weight, but my suspicion is that my blood sugar
control was not great, despite decent morning numbers.

Exactly. I wonder how many people were diabetic as obese, and just dropped
off the detection threshold from plain weight loss...

Quoted message said:

That makes sense. Diabetes, it appears, is in fact several diseases
that may have different etiologies. Yours may be different than what
happens to older people.

Yes, some people in alt.support.diabete report that weight loss did not do
much for them. But others point that it did an amazing job at improving
their control. The later also seem to tolerate carbs better. There is
probably a link between where loss of control happens the most, fasting or
post prandial. So, there are at least two different patterns. I guess it
depends on how much it's insulin resistance related (and how much of it is
weight related vs purely genetic) or insulin deficiency related.
The annoying part is that so many doctors and researchers seem clueless
about part of the diabetic population. Most of the studies seem to be made
on people with insanely high A1c, who are old, and who were detected at a
later stage of the disease (many with complications already).

Quoted message said:

Speaking of hypo... My MIL had a serious hypo attack at BG of 70 (sic).

To me, this is a quite normal level these days. I would experience
perhaps very slight shakiness, but would feel quite well otherwise.

I'm still high normal myself. 🙁 Hopefully, my FBG will start going down as
I keep losing weight (I'm still halfway after all). Or maybe some people
just tend to have a higher homeostatic glucose setting, either genetically
or as an adaptation (it seems some professional racing cyclists are into the
high normal range for instance, probably as an adaptation to the sport - or
high drug usage).

Quoted message said:

Are you eating absolutely all kinds of food? Or did you give up some
foods completely?

Well, there is still some food I don't like, so obviously I don't eat it. 😉
Other than that, I have not dared eating candies again yet, though I do eat
chocolate and some sweet specialties (like marzipan). I also have given up
on trans fats as much as possible, but this doesn't really ban whole kinds
of food, just some brands (i.e., I eat whole butter cakes rather than
hydrogenated oils cakes). Cutting trans fats seems to have helped my LDL
results a lot, so it's a small price to pay. Besides, butter cakes taste
better.
Next month, I will be following a training course that is hosted in a high
school. So, back to high school after 14 years away from it. 😉 This means
getting school meals for lunch. That's certainly going to be a very
enlightening experience. I have noticed they have hamburger+French fries
once a week (though the alternative was ratatouille and chicken with
tarragon), something that was unthinkable when I was a student. I'm really
looking forward to seeing how the young eats at school...

"Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

If you do some reading on hypo, you'll discover that hypo is not merely a
low BG reading...they symptoms can be brought on by the rate that BG

levels

Quoted message said:

fall, so the BG doesn't even need to be that low for one to experience

hypo.

That was typical when taking Prandin. At some point, I would experience
crash hypos, though I'm certain my levels where not trully hypoglycemic. I
read some diabetic report that they have felt some hypo symptoms when
dropping from hyperglycemic range to still hyperglycemic or high normal (for
instance, dropping from 200 to 110 very quickly).
I don't know if transitionnal hypos are felt with the full range of symptoms
(both somatic and neuro) or only a subset (only somatic would make sense)...

Lictor wrote:
|| "Roger Zoul" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
|| news:[email hidden]...
||| If you do some reading on hypo, you'll discover that hypo is not
||| merely a low BG reading...they symptoms can be brought on by the
||| rate that BG levels fall, so the BG doesn't even need to be that
||| low for one to experience hypo.
||
|| That was typical when taking Prandin. At some point, I would
|| experience crash hypos, though I'm certain my levels where not
|| trully hypoglycemic. I read some diabetic report that they have felt
|| some hypo symptoms when dropping from hyperglycemic range to still
|| hyperglycemic or high normal (for instance, dropping from 200 to 110
|| very quickly).

Right, exactly.

|| I don't know if transitionnal hypos are felt with the full range of
|| symptoms (both somatic and neuro) or only a subset (only somatic
|| would make sense)...

A lot about hypo is poorly understood. All I know if that if I go ride 60+
miles on LC, I'll have such a bad hypo that I can barely function.