Bluebonnet Health

Welcome to the Bluebonnethealth Blog!

~ For the main blog, stay right here!

~ For the Austin Blog and the Recipe blog, click on "Profile" (in the bar above) and then click on the blog you want from the list on the left-hand side of the page.

Short-term goals

Had a good meeting of the weekly follow-up group this past Tuesday.

One of the issues that keeps cropping up is the difficulty in setting the next goal once a person has achieved a significant amount of weight loss. For the first month or two, the goal is the weight loss itself. Since the weight comes off fairly steadily, there is a "reward" every few days. It is easy to keep working at it.

Once a person has lost 10, or 30, or 50 pounds (depending on the person), the weight loss slows down or stabilizes. What should the next goal be? To say that "I will lose 4 pounds in the next 4 weeks" does not always do the job. The time frame is long, and there is not enough change in the daily weight to keep up the morale. It is too easy to freestyle (cheat!) for a day or two or three, thinking that one will make up for the freestyling in the next few days and still reach the goal. The problem is, unplanned freestyling for two or three days in a row just brings back the Type 2 hunger, and then it is is easy to slide.

At the meeting on Tuesday, we talked about setting a repetative short-term goal instead of a long-term goal. The short-term goal is simple- I will eat sensibly until my next freestyling day. That's it.

This is an achievable, simple goal. It uses the "happiness trumps pleasure" principle. It provides a positive feedback every few days. The weight loss is no longer the goal! I have tried it over the past few days, and it has made my eating decisions very simple.

I think we are on to something. 

Exercise is NOT a good weight-loss tool!

In our program, we recommend gentle exercise a few times a week. The exercise should be vigorous enough to increase the rate of breathing, but not so vigorous that one cannot carry on a normal conversation. A brisk walk is great!

We recommend exercise because it improves heart health and general all-around fitness, but NOT as a weight loss strategy. In our experience, too much exercise can actually prevent weight loss by increasing hunger.

A few months ago, TIME magazine published an excellent article on the subject. I am including the link below. Take a few minutes to read it. Conventional wisdom is not always right!

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857-1,00.html

It has been a busy month.

Last week I was in San Diego, doing a presentation for a group of CEOs. In addition to the "base" talk- the stuff about the mechanisms of hunger, the actions of insulin, conversion of carbohydrates into fat, the effects of ghrelin and leptin, and so on- we talked about anti-oxidants, and omega-3 fats, and fiber, and exercise.

The audience has a lot to do with the energy that builds up during the talk, and the CEO group was fantastic. They asked great questions and made me take the talk in a whole bunch of different directions. It's always a lot of fun doing impromptu explorations in different areas of healthy eating, fitness, and weight loss, letting the audience lead the way. 

I also did a couple of talks for the staff at the League City Intermediate school. I think we had about thirty people at each talk- teachers and counselors and nurses. Again, great audiences and great questions- but the questions were very different from those the CEO group was interested in. Here we talked about the glycemic index of rice and pasta, and high-fructose corn syrup, and juggling a career, family, and healthy cooking. A different audience, a different ambience, but just as much fun!

The next month also looks busy. I am doing a workshop later today, and another one next week. There are Phase 1 (basic) presentations and group meetings every Tuesday evening. I have been asked to talk at three other schools in the first half of February, and also at a company luncheon. In between, I am trying to work on a couple of books.

Of course, life is not all about work- even if the work is fun! My wife and I have been adding the Viennese waltz and Polka into our ballroom dancing repertoire. The Viennese waltz is fast and difficult- we can just about do the basic steps to slow waltz timing. It will take some work. The polka, though, is a blast!

Well...I am off to the workshop.

What did he learn?

I thought I would start with some feedback that I got yesterday.

"I very much enjoyed your talk last night and more
importantly actually learned something about weight management for the
first time in a long while. I have been working in research for
almost 20 years. I have "googled" just about every diet and program
there is and tried most of them. It was exciting to learn something..."

Good to know that one is connecting with people.