Thursday, December 13, 2007

What if bad fat isn’t so bad?

I'm working, and don't really have time to do this....but I had to post this!!

MSNBC has an article out that is pro fat! It's written by Nina Teicholz and notes that

Suppose you were forced to live on a diet of red meat and whole milk. A diet that, all told, was at least 60 percent fat — about half of it saturated. If your first thoughts are of statins and stents, you may want to consider the curious case of the Masai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania.

In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist named George Mann, M.D., found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.

Scientists, confused by the finding, argued that the tribe must have certain genetic protections against developing high cholesterol. But when British researchers monitored a group of Masai men who moved to Nairobi and began consuming a more modern diet, they discovered that the men's cholesterol subsequently skyrocketed.

Similar observations were made of the Samburu — another Kenyan tribe — as well as the Fulani of Nigeria. While the findings from these cultures seem to contradict the fact that eating saturated fat leads to heart disease, it may surprise you to know that this "fact" isn't a fact at all. It is, more accurately, a hypothesis from the 1950s that's never been proved. (Emphasis mine)
In the article, Ms Teiholz discusses how this theory became accepted as fact and the controversy that was heard at the time. She also talks about the findings of the Cochrane Collaboration, which did a meta-analysis of studies that met strict criteria.

"I was disappointed that we didn't find something more definitive," says Lee Hooper, Ph.D., who led the Cochrane review. If this exhaustive analysis didn't provide evidence of the dangers of saturated fat, says Hooper, it was probably because the studies reviewed didn't last long enough, or perhaps because the participants didn't lower their saturated-fat intake enough. Of course, there is a third possibility, which Hooper doesn't mention: The diet-heart hypothesis is incorrect.
Really, a very positive article! Check it out!


Maybe the tide really is changing?

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

28 days

Quit smoking record - 28 days

28 days gone!!! Whoo Hoo!! And a weight loss on top of it all!!




OK....on November 14th I quit smoking. I had been back on plan for just 2 weeks after having a short but intense binge. After the first week I gained 6 pounds, mostly water according to the doc. I had been using sugar free candies and lollipops to replace the cigarettes and decided enough was enough. As soon as I stopped the junk I lost a few pounds. When I started the tighter dietary restrictions I lost even more (even tho my daily calorie intake is up!). Final outcome, I am 10 pounds lighter than my heaviest weight at the end of the first week, and 4 pounds lighter than the day I quit!

I'm still up 4 pounds from my lowest before the binge, but I'm gonna get there!

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Day 25!

No smoking!! Day 25 now!




Doing good....some cravings, but not bad. Shut myself off on any sugar alcohols or artificial sweeteners for a few days, I was getting out of control!

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment

NEOCON JOB


Thursday 06 December 2007

There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr.. Bush has left us with tonight.

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole -- or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked -- at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so -- whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself.

After Ms Perino's announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear.

In August the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what "everybody thought" about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president Ahmadinejad:

"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon."

And as he said that, Mr.. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, Sir, to scare the Americans?

Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used, to scare us about Iraq?

In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, Sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.

A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.

Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Bush.

The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, Sir, that you see in the mirror.

And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised Intel as long as two weeks ago -- briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago -- who never bothered to mention it to his boss.

It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan's presidency it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes, string-puller.

Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president's evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.

What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation -- or a criminal one?

Mr. Bush -- if you can still hear us -- if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you're Remington Steele -- you must disenthrall yourself: Mr. Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts are optional, the Intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.

The problem is, Sir, your assistant is robbing you -- and your country -- blind.

Not merely in monetary terms, Mr.. Bush, but more importantly of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.

Mr.. Cheney has helped, Sir, to make your Administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860's and 1870's and 1880's -- the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland...

Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr.. Bush.

Presidents who will be remembered only as functions of those who opposed them -- the opponents whom history proved right.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland... Bush.

Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.

But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post's website.

It is staggering.

March 31st: "Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon..."

June 5th: Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons..."

June 19th: "consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon..."

July 12th: "the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons..."

August 6th: "this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon..."

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror -- but there may not even be a tree there...

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: "They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program..."

August 28th: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons..."

October 4th: "you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon..."

October 17th: "until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon."

Before August 9th, it's: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

After August 9th, it's: Desire, pursuit, want...knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003...

And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th...

And that's just a coincidence?

---

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true -- something like "what the definition of is is -- but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial... but ethically, it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr.. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

--

And more over, you have just revealed that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

---

You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August...

But you also knew... it was... accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent...

You merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside...

While you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of -- as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote "nuclear holocaust" -- and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: "World War Three."

---

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase "George Bush has no business being president."

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words... convicted by your own deliberate lies...

You, sir, have no business... being president.


Click to see the video on YouTube.



Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Quit smoking record

Quit smoking record

As some of you maybe aware, I'm in temporary housing (yes, I'm still waiting! but I just can't get started on that right now.), have just been told that I "definitely" have Rheumatoid Arthritis, and quit smoking.

This has been one of the easiest quits ever, initially I was using both the patch and Chantix, but now it's getting dicey. I stopped using the patch over the weekend, as I forgot to put one on, and now I'm starting to feel the effects of the nicotine withdrawal. UGGGG I want a cigarette, but I cannot have one!

So.....I decided I need to post. I'm not guaranteeing I'll post every day, but I will update the ticker at least every few days...Let's say at least on Wednesday and Saturday.

Here's my ticker so far:




Today, Wednesday, December 5th, is my 22nd day smoke free.

I am continuing with the Chantix and I will not smoke.

I am sticking with low carb, but depending way too much on "low carb foods". I'm using sugar free lollipops in place of cigarettes, and I've got the munchies all night!

Luckily the doc I'm seeing for the quit smoking is Dr Eric Westman, fairly well known in the low carb community. He's working with me on both the quitting and the diet. In fact right now I'm on, at his suggestion, a diet with several restrictions (nightshade veggies and grains mainly). I'm also supposed to minimize my use of artificial sweeteners, which I haven't been doing too well lately. The first week I quit I gained over 6 pounds, but I've lost that and since then my weight has been stable, which is good, but I'm not loosing like I wish I was....probably due to the junk I'm snacking on.