Looking Ahead (no, really)

There is trouble in the eat-less-move-more camp.  Water is pouring into the tent, and they are forced to move out of the wash they placed themselves in, running for cover.

Ah, yes, the Look Ahead study.  Here's a nice re-cap.  I went to theHeart to get their latest blurb, and it mentioned that in addition to NOT reducing strokes, heart attacks or losing much weight, there wasn't even a reduction in death either.  They go through all that crap and lose like 10 pounds?

Eleven years of exercise, and listening to a registered dietitian droning on about healthywholegrains and satiating-whatever.  Satiating.  Wow, do I hate that word!  Who else uses that word?  One more reason to ban (most) dietitians from my life.

I loved some of the comments.  Like, surely the sucky results are because of poor study design that failed to show what we all know to be true.  Like, surely not that it could be the sucky recommendations.

One hundred and seventy five minutes of exercise a week, time they could have spend meditating on and eating bacon, and for what?  Just thinking of how many [redacted] points what would amount to.  All that wasted time racking up points that can't be traded in for any actual anything, just like the real [redacted] goodies.  Good for a memory, or for a laugh, but it is not a real goody.

OK, today's post is chocked full of amusing personal stories.  I used to work with this guy who just got another MBA, and he used to wave his hands and throw out the word "salient" when he wanted to weasel out of his responsibilities and evade the point I was trying to make.  Nobody uses that word except a few months after some MBA class.  And, it is always used as a redundant set, a "salient point".  Hear the word, and you know BS is sure to follow.

Oh, anyway, where was I?

I used to work at this place where they had creativity workshops, and one day we were supposed to do this visualization and imagine we were in a hot air balloon drifting over the company.  Now, if we weren't being so meditative with the new age music accompanying the directive, this would have been a hilarious metaphor for the company, since it was so full of the hot-air of the newly-minted MBA's and the company was so adrift.  Oh, anyway, where was I?  Oh, and we were supposed to look into the imaginary windows and see what was going on five years into the future.

Well, that was fun, as I drifted above, and saw some interesting things.  When we were asked to share, I jumped at the chance to recount the salient points of my balloon ride.  As I described what I saw, the leader looked visibly surprised.  Yep, I nailed it.  I accurately described a current super-secret project going on in the very building that I floated over, even though I didn't consciously know anything about it.

OK, fast forward to about 16 years ago, when we were sitting around a large table enduring a lengthy design review.  It was time for lunch.  "Should we order pizza?" 

So I say, "Well, soon you'll be able to order a pizza and then the pizza place will just send a wireless message to your insulin pump for just the right amount of bolus."  And, hardy har har, we all had a good laugh over that until the VP of engineering said, "Hey, you're probably not too far off," but he wasn't as alarmed about it as that visionary balloon guy.

Of course, now we all have wireless and smart phones and cloud computing and everything is sent all over, but at the time, closing all the loops seemed undoable.

Oh, anyway, where am I?  Well, there used to be lots of talk about diabetes and its progression, and the prevailing viewpoint at the time was just coming on the horizon, that T1DM was an autoimmune thing.  And I remember some people arguing violently against this concept and arguing violently for their illness.  The thinking at the time was that T2DM was caused by overeating pizza, being overweight (and also inactive.)  After hearing that again at the pizza party, I just blurted out,

"No, getting fat doesn't make you diabetic.  Diabetes makes you gain weight."   And we all looked around at each other and realized that we were all getting fat and probably creating our own diabetes and secretly thinking that we had better get cracking at a cure for diabetes before we all got it and had to take our own medicine and get our feet cut off or something.

So, people tried to eat even more diet yogurt, washed down with Diet Coke, and entering bike and road races sponsored by the American Diabetes Association so we could lose weight and be more healthy.  And for what?

So, today I am reading here and there about diabetes and wondering why so many of the comments are still peppered with the idea that drinking lots of sody made us this way, and wondering when people are just going to look ahead more carefully.

OK, where am I?   Try this visualization.

Now, look at me, look at Stan's post, now look at me again, now go back to Stan's post and click the link on the training materials.  Imagine yourself sitting with a group of fat pre-diabetic people listening to a presentation of this material by a big balloon of hot air.  Imagine yourself poking holes in both the presenter and in the concepts.  Imagine the balloon of hot air collapsing and the sucky training materials getting smaller and smaller, and soon out of view.

Wow!  Imagine yourself feeling better and better.  Your cortisol is already reducing, along with your weight and insulin level.  Now you are thinking of satiating bacon, only it isn't satiating.  In fact, you don't even know what that word means, only that you are enjoying the bacon and then put the package away and then don't think about eating anything for awhile.  You imagine walking on the beach with your friends and not having your exercise-tracking software update itself.  As you get closer to the water, you hurl your fitbit into the waves and watch it bounce up and down with every wave.

Am I in the Binder?

I haven't blogged for a time here because I am busy with other projects.

The bagrada bug is on my mind recently, and whether it is OK to put fertilizer with ground-up cottonseed into an organic garden.

If agriculture isn't the reason for our demise, well, then maybe complicated agriculture policy is.  I still will probably vote for prop 37, to label foods with GMO's.  It is interesting to see the list of donors against the prop.  Bumble bee tuna?  Isn't that just tuna?  Um, tuna with all that wonderful natural vegetable broth made with GMO-soy?  Mars also donated to stop the plan, which is really fascinating since they bought an organic seed and food company, which nobody buys from anymore cause they got so expensive and they are really a candy-bar company.

I acquired a button (perfect for the farmer's market basket, no?) shouting, "GMO-free hottie".  Not sure on either fronts, but I think I do know the reason for a 5-dollar head of organic broccoli and it is not due to all that fancy and expensive labeling.

It's this bug.  Apparently, fresh broccoli is like msg-laden trans-fatty gliadin-laced red-hot Cheetos food-reward-wise to these visiting critters.

Seaweed.  Yes, seaweed is in our future because the bagrada bug hasn't figured out how to eat it yet.  Those epi-paleo folks will be missing their cilantro this winter, too.   Lovin' me's sea-spinach!!

Anyway, I haven't had any time either to search for my name in any of the binders full of women that the paleosphere keeps handy just in case anyone actually wants to hear anything pertaining to women that doesn't involve reproductive status.  I am sure it is there, just that it is easier to search amongst their own kind and continue to have all the boys speak for us, while they trot out Joel Salatin like they invented him or something.

The Tuna Boat just Sailed In!

What a nice half-way-around-the-year reminder of my "Paleo on 100 dollars a month" challenge.

A friend called and mentioned that her friend's son went out fishing near San Diego and caught this huge tuna.  She was offered some, but was unprepared for two details.

First, she was given a ton of it.

Second, she found she doesn't like tuna.

Did I want to take it off her hands?  Sooooooo, here I am, after an unsuccessful market run looking for suitable epi-paleo eats on a budget, and an entire platter of freshly-caught tuna just drops into my lap, right before dinner.  Already perfectly seasoned.  She told me to keep the platter, too.

Since it was already seasoned in a rich blend of garlic, lime and some kind of Middle-Eastern seasoning blend, I decided not to eat it raw.  I didn't have to do anything except plop the huge slabs of tuna in a pan and lightly steam it until it was cooked enough to flake.

Mmmmm!  Tuna for dinner.  Tuna for breakfast.  Tuna all week.  Tuna coming out of my ears.  Tuna making me friends with all the neighborhood dogs and cats.  Tuna making me happy, too.

Real Housewives of Paleo

Thanks Woo, for saying what needed to be said.

Yes, we have our Kelli, and the bat-sh$t-crazy New Jersey.  Someone put the book on the table, some prostitution whore?

It took an "anonymous" blogger to finally say HEY!  THIS IS NOT OK!

I am going to go and eat my meat, veggies, and seafood now.  Not tuning in to Watch What Happens either.

C-C-C-Cold?

The ocean temps this time of year are still warm, but that didn't stop me from trying to get my cold on at the Crystal Cove and other Orange County beaches.
I hadn't really been a fan of the OC before, since I associate it with Irvine traffic jams, but the coast is still quite pretty.
At first I didn't want to get in the water near the rock outcroppings, but soon realized that the waves are calmer there.  I could just sit in the water and not get washed away.
There weren't many swimmers, just me and the kids and some surfers with wet suits.  The water wasn't as cold as I can get from the tap, but it was still fun.
We also visited Laguna Beach, so if you are the type that saves the live feed from the Laguna Beach cam, you can see me out there swimming.  I wore my bright orange swim cap, and some beach bum rode by and commented that it was the best hat on the whole beach.  I looked sort of like a water polo player minus the ear things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmhps0uktrY&feature=related