Americans Exercising More, But Not Weighing Less and Other Health News

This has been going around all day yesterday in different publications, but honestly I think over the years our sense of what we are supposed to know about weight loss has been warped.

Americans may be reportedly exercising more, but they're still eating like crap. To lose weight, the most important component is diet. And it's not as simple as "calories in/calories out."  If it were, the weight loss companies would go out of business.

Recently, the CDC admitted that there were no adverse health risks from eating too much salt. Maybe we can get the USDA out of the business of giving us dietary advice and admit that 300g of carbs a day is way too much.

Speaking of which, The Atlantic has a dumb, overly long article titled "How Junk Food Can End Obesity." The author's main points seem to be the following:

1) Those who believe in promoting "real food" are wrong because it's not sustainable in the long run.
2) Poor people can't afford real food, so their only hope is processed.
3) Those who object to processed food only are only objecting to the fact that it's processed.
4) Real food also contains fat and carbs, so why bother?

And to each of these points, I say the following:

1) People need education on what's good for them in their diet.  and I think it can be sustainable.  You don't necessarily have to go organic, but just making wiser choices will go a long way towards better health.
2) You don't have to go organic to eat "real" food.  Right now, I can't buy grass fed beef because I can't afford it, but it doesn't prevent me from buying a steak when it goes on sale.  Better choices will go a long way towards your goals.
3) I object to processed foods because most of it has wheat in it (which I no longer eat) and because of the number of carbs in the food.  Because I'm diabetic, I can't even purchase "gluten-free" baking kits because they replace the wheat with starch, which is also a no-no.
4) He likes to demonize fat in the article, whereas I welcome the fat in my diet because it's one of the keys to me losing weight. The author is using outdated information on calories and fat to make his arguments, which is unfortunate.

Thankfully a lot of the comments on the article call him out on his cherrypicking of facts and outright misinformation.  Processed foods are not the answer, no matter who tries to tell you differently.

Update to my numbers dilemma

Had an appointment with my doctor yesterday.  The bad news is that my doctor won't switch my thyroid medication -- she said that the one I want to switch to is not approved by the FDA, so no doctor in the area would prescribe it to me.

However, the good news is that she's holding off on prescribing any cholesterol meds for at least three months to see where my new numbers are.  She told me that after she got off the phone with me earlier this week, she looked at my last numbers and saw that I was improving on this diet, despite the LDL numbers going up.  She was the one that suggested that it was most likely because my triglycerides went down so much.

After that, I received these articles from people on the Fat Head page on Facebook confirming it. So now my mind is at ease.

Until the next major health crisis comes along, anyway.

But I think the next time I go in I'm going to go in with my research printed out.  I'm against taking a statin because of the side effects, but the non statins have as many side effects, to them, as well.  My mom, who is currently taking a statin and had the dosage reduced recently, is going to be going off the med in about three months because her doctors want to be sure since she had a couple of mini strokes in April. My doctor said that if I go on, she wouldn't take me off because she wouldn't know if it was because of the meds or the diet.

So, if I do get prescribed a med in three months for the cholesterol, I won't take it, even if it's a non statin.  I refuse to get into that trap of my computer desk turning into an alternate medicine cabinet.  Right now, it's just the stuff that I don't mind dealing with -- one for my thyroid, one for the diabetes, and a vitamin supplement that is completely of my own choosing.

So, it looks like the diet change is helping.  I just made some changes to my routine, such as adding fish oil supplements to my morning routine, and hopefully things will improve when I get my next blood test in October.

Okay, my recent numbers...

Because I have hypothyroidism, I have to have regular blood tests done to keep my thyroid in check.  On top of that, they check my cholesterol, a1C, and other factors at the same time.  So here is a comparison of my numbers from between April and today.