Fat Loss Urban Myths and Legends

I feel it's appropriate at times to dismantle myths and legends regarding fat loss, diet, and exercise. I picked a top ten list from a "fly on the wall" conversation.

1. "The older you get, the more your metabolism slows down. It's normal to be heavier as you age".
As you age you are less active. Thus your lean body mass decreases and the amount of calories you burn with activity using your muscles goes down. If you continue to consume the same amount of calories, you add fat. For an excellent article on this go HERE.

2. "More meals raises your metabolism".
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Thermal Effect of Food (TEF) is considered to be 10% with normal mixed meals. Many bodybuilding magazines and personal trainers suggest multiple small meals as a way to "stoke your metabolism". This is rubbish. A big meal gives a big burn, a smaller meal gives a smaller burn. When you add them up, there is no difference. Once again, I suggest you read the research. Check it out HERE.

3. "Take this pill, it will help you lose weight".
Everyone has the belief that some over the counter pill sold at a pharmacy, convenience store, or gas station will be their answer to weight loss. ( I always go to gas stations for health advice and pharmaceutical needs. ). Stimulants (amphetamines) will increase your pulse rate, blood pressure, and cause you to burn more calories. Ephedra, caffeine, and cocaine fall in this category. The jittery hands, racing pulse, and profuse sweat is a sign that it's working. I'd suggest you discuss this with your doctor and law enforcement representative. There is NO magic bullet. Billions of dollars are spent on 'diet aids' every year and we still have plenty of fat people. Check this article at Dr. Gabe Mirkin's site. HERE

4. " I just want to lose tummy fat!"
Fat loss is systemic. You cannot lose body fat in a particular region without losing it all over your body. Men gain in the abdomen and sides. Women gain in their hips, thighs, and breasts. During mid life hormone levels reduce for men and women. They begin to store fat similarly. Women gain more abdominal fat and men gain more weight in their chest regions. The cure of course is in prevention. Keep your body fat low and stay fit.
There is more data from Harvard. HERE

5. "Some people are naturally thin".
People vary in height, bone structure, coloration, and many other factors. Metabolism differences are not that dramatic. They don't have to be. If your friend burns 100 calories more than you per day, and you eat the exact same diet, you will be one pound heavier in 35 days. It's about calories in and calories out. PERIOD. The best breakdown of this law is found HERE.

6. "Carbohydrates stimulate insulin. Insulin makes you fat".
Without insulin, you would die. Many diet books and kool aid drinkers believe that only carbohydrates make you fat. Well your body is perfectly able to convert calories to fat without insulin. Read this article and get a clue. HERE.

7. "Sugar Alcohol is not sugar and does not go to fat. My protein bar says only two grams of sugar, but 24 grams of carbs".
Sugar alchohol has calories. Excessive calories above your needs will make you fat. Label it any way you like, it's still calories, and calories count.

8. "My diet balances Acid and Alkaline".
If you could vary the PH of your body too dramatically, you would die. It's carefully controlled like body temperature. Dr. Gabe Mirkin tears this ancient myth apart HERE.

9. "I went on a Detox Diet to detox my system and clean the decaying red meat out of my colon."
According to many people, detox diets caused them to lose weight, have better skin, and better well being. After all, a lower calorie, fiber rich, healthy diet should work that way shouldn't it? I'm fortunate to have special organs that detox me. They are called a liver and kidneys. I also have a colon. Remember John Wayne's colon was filled with 40 lbs of rotting red meat, wasn't it? Let's check it out HERE.
Then there is the whole concept of detoxification. Let's let professional skeptic Brian Dunning take a shot at it HERE.

10. "Weight Lifting gives women large muscles. They should practice Yoga or Pilates to give them long muscles".
The size of muscles is determined by genetics. It's largely how long the bellies of the muscles are and the abundance of muscle fiber. If you want big muscles, choose your parents carefully. When female bodybuilders or strength athletes display large muscles, it's the product of training and use of male hormones. The average woman does not have the hormones capable to build large muscles. Even most men are not capable of getting really big. Lance Armstrong and Tiger Wood are both weight trained athletes and yet are relatively slender. The statement that, "I don't want to lift weights because I'll get too big!" is interesting. It's like saying, "I don't want to jog because I'll be forced to run a Marathon or compete in the Olympics".
As far as Yoga or Pilates lengthening your muscles, these activities increase your range of motion around your joints and in some cases the stability. They do not produce longer muscles. To do that you would have to surgically detach the muscle and move it to a more stretched position on the distal end. That could be expensive.

Have any more questions or statements you wonder about related to fitness, longevity and health? Email them to Physicalstrategies@gmail.com

Is Cooking in a Microwave Dangerous or Unhealthy?

This is a myth I put to rest in 1977. Luckily my late sister was a nurse at Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She had access to some of the best medical minds in the country. I asked her point blank about microwaves and she told me, based on evidence, the truth. I believe in FACTS. Peer reviewed. But if you have faith, you don't need facts. I also had my own group of experts. My teachers. What few people know is my background is not in Exercise Physiology, or Nutrition, or Theatrical Technology. I have a degree in Electronics. Most of my teachers had extensive experience with Microwaves and explained the physics to me with peer reviewed FACTS.

Two pieces of research that provide clarity-

Nutritional benefits of microwaving.

"Although you may think that microwaving is an "easy-way-out," using a microwave to cook your food has its nutritional benefits. More vitamins and minerals are retained with microwave cooking than with many other methods of cooking. This is because microwave cooking requires a shorter cooking time, covered cooking and little to no water. Too much water, surface exposure and overcooking can rob foods of nutrients."
-- Yale-New Haven Hospital

According to the American Institute for Cancer Research comprehensive report on diet and its relationship to cancer prevention (titled, "Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer")... whose recommendations were created by a panel of 21 renowned researchers and peer-reviewed by additional researchers:

"Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. They cause vibration of water molecules, which produces heat. There is no evidence that microwaves have any specific effect on food composition beyond that of heat."

On a more entertaining note is this article by Brian Dunning.

Death in Your Kitchen: Microwave Ovens

Today we're going to walk on the wild side and eat some microwaved food. You've never really lived until you've lived dangerously, so let's put our lives on the line by testing the claims that microwaved food and water are toxic.

First, a little background info. Microwave ovens work by passing microwave-band electromagnetic radiation over the food at 2.5 GHz. Molecules that are electric dipoles, of which water is the most efficient, rotate back and forth in this field. The friction between them creates heat. This is called dielectric heating. More complex molecules, which are not as clearly dipolar, are not affected. It's an efficient and clean way to heat food.

I first learned about the claims of danger from a chain email sent by a friend of mine who tends to believe anything that's anti-establishment or on the fringe. A few Internet searches of some keywords reveal a huge number of holistic, organic, and other alternative web sites repeating these same claims. Just to give you a flavor of how far-out these stories are, give a listen to this list of "Ten Reasons to Throw Out Your Microwave Oven". As I read these off, notice that not one of them makes a specific or testable claim; they are all merely scary sentences constructed using scientific sounding words. And, as you can tell from the brief description of how microwaves work, few of these have any remote connection to fact:

1. Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term — permanent — brain damage by "shorting out" electrical impulses in the brain, de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue.
2. The human body cannot metabolize the unknown byproducts created in microwaved food.
3. Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.
4. The effects of microwaved food by-products are permanent within the human body.
5. Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.
6. The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.
7. Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancer tumors. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.
8. The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.
9. Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.
10. Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.

One clue that might encourage you to regard these claims with some skepticism is that fact that ever since microwave ovens came on the market in 1954, not one person has ever exhibited a single symptom of any illness resulting from having eaten microwaved food, or from having used water that had been microwaved. Burns are the exception, but burns are caused by heat from any source; that's not unique to microwaves. But if you believe the claims by the anti-microwave fringe, whom I call the Microwave Militia, practically everyone on the planet should be gravely ill with cancer, radiation poisoning, malnutrition, and mental retardation.

The same chain email, and many of these web sites, also state that giving a plant water that has been microwaved will kill it. There is even a series of unsourced photographs of two plants, one of which withers and dies while its sibling flourishes. The awesome web site Snopes.com tested this particular claim. They took three plants of each of several types, and watered one with tap water, one with water that had been boiled over a stove, and the third with water that had been boiled in a microwave. Unlike whoever took the pictures that often accompany the chain email, Snopes actually controlled for other variables. I'm sure you won't have to stretch your imagination very far to guess how the plants did. They all did exactly the same. Snopes has complete details and photographs on their web site. Somehow these plants managed to escape the guaranteed death sentence that believers say microwaved water carries.

This whole paranoid suggestion is based on the presumption that a microwave oven somehow changes or poisons water. If true, wouldn't you be able to perform some kind of a test on water, and see if it has ever been microwaved? Water is H2O, whether it's ever been microwaved or not. But here's an even deal for you. If you truly believe that H2O carries some permanent damage as a result of being microwaved, and that it's possible to detect this damage through any means you choose, there's a million dollars in it for you. As you may know, the Skeptoid podcast is a qualifying media outlet for the James Randi Educational Foundation's Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge. I'll walk it through for you and I'll become your biggest cheerleader. Are microwaves really a danger to humanity? If so, it would be immoral for you to do anything else but take that million dollars and use it to educate and save the world.

Probably the most flagrant error that the Microwave Militia propagates is that microwaved food or water contains what they call "radiolytic compounds" — new chemicals created by the tearing apart of molecules in a microwave. These new chemicals are said to be dangerous, cancerous, radioactive, unnatural, or otherwise harmful. This is a demonstrably false claim. Radiolysis, which is a real process and which the Militia believes creates these radiolytic compounds, is the process by which molecules are dissociated under ionizing radiation. Water can be dissociated under ionizing alpha particle bombardment, which is a natural process. Microwave radiation, as mentioned earlier, is not ionizing radiation. It is thus scientifically incapable of causing radiolysis. The differences between microwave radiation and alpha radiation are huge. With the claim that microwaves cause dissociation of water molecules, the Microwave Militia is either deliberately lying, or they are grossly ignorant of the very subject on which they claim superior expertise.

Swiss vegetarianism advocate Dr. Hans Hertel is perhaps the most vocal of the Microwave Militia fringe group. He is quoted in virtually every book written on alternative foods or holistic health. A top-selling book on Amazon called Perfect Balance, by an author known simply as "Atreya", writes:

In spite of the political pressure, Hertel has continued his studies and won the support of many other scientists in Europe for his findings and methodology. Hertel concludes that microwaved food alters the blood chemistry of people who eat it. The manufacturing companies are trying to keep this information suppressed through court orders.

Dr. Hertel seems to have managed to gain this claimed following even without producing the most basic of information that prospective groupies should request: a specific, testable claim about what this change in blood chemistry might be; or a single victim. He is best known for his most publicized test. In 1989, he and seven fellow vegetarians confined themselves to a hotel and consumed only milk and vegetables, prepared in different ways, for two months. When he emerged, he announced his results: That microwave ovens cause cancer and degenerative diseases, despite no cases of cancer or illness among he or his group. His research, if you want to call it that, was never peer reviewed or published in any reputable journal, and yet it has become the foundational magnum opus of the anti-microwave agenda.

You'll also find that there are a large number of studies out finding changes to the nutritional content of food that has been microwaved, and the Microwave Militia loves to point to these. Chemical reactions happen whenever any food is cooked, so this has more to do with cooking than with the cooking method. Moreover, such changes are generally well below any perceptible threshold, and have always been found to be safe.

The Microwave Militia also makes claims such as microwave ovens are illegal in Russia or other parts of Europe. This is just a straight-up lie. Microwaves are perfectly legal in Russia and everywhere else in Europe. In fact I was not able to find a single country in the world that bans microwave ovens. They're regulated, of course, like all electric appliances; but regulation should not be mischaracterized as a ban.

So what's the sum total of our evidence? Billions of people have been eating microwaved food for decades, with no ill effects, and no plausible expectation of ill effects. The best evidence put forward by anti-microwave activists is based on shameless lies and irresponsibly bad science. Thus, a truly skeptical process leads us to the conclusion that there's nothing at all wrong with microwaving your food. However, I'm drinking coffee right now made from microwaved water, and it's entirely possible that this has caused profound mental aberration, and made me spout nonsense.

Source: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4080

Oatmeal is the breakfast of choice!

This is a great way to prepare it
by Robin White & Tom Furman

Oatmeal Part One



Oatmeal Part Two



Tom and I like to cook our Old Fashioned Oatmeal in the microwave for 3 minutes on high, fill to top of oats with water, covered with a paper plate. I add my chopped strawberries and blueberries afterward. He likes his cooked on the bottom, so he puts his in with the oats covering it.

After the oats are steaming from the microwave, we add in protein powder, chopped almonds, wheat germ (all optional) and mix them altogether for a breakfast that will hold you for four to five hours and is very nutritious and healing to the body.

Oatmeal is high in Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) is an essential fatty acid (EFA) in the omega-6 family that is found primarily in plant-based oils. Some clinicians and preliminary clinical research suggest that gamma linolenic acid (GLA) and may be useful in the treatment of: Diabetes, Eye disease, Osteoporosis, Menopausal symptoms, Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), Eczema, Allergies, Rheumatoid arthritis, Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Alcoholism, Cancer, High blood pressure and heart disease and Ulcers. GLA is also found in the plant seed oils of evening primrose, black currant, borage, and fungal oils. Spirulina (often called blue-green algae).

Hope you'll try this recipe. Let us know your thoughts!

Diane Seekamp is 81...and going strong!

by Robin White



I met Diane Seekamp this past Friday in Delray Beach at the Arts Arena Gallery. She was helping her daughter lug around several heavy pieces of art from the car to the gallery. She was dressed in the latest fashion and I thought, this is a vibrant, lovely lady! And how sweet she is to help her daughter. Somehow we got on the subject of health and diet, and she mentioned she had just had open heart surgery in March. "Wow", I said "you look good." Then she said, "yeah and I am 81". That's when I knew we had to bring her to the attention of our readers!

People often think what Tom and I preach about is science fiction. Then, when I meet people who are so vibrant and healthy, both physically and mentally...I feel we need to highlight them, so people know...THIS IS POSSIBLE!

Diane said she feels like she is really more like 40. And she moves and talks and looks like it too. This makes me realize even more how important your body image really is to your overall health. YOUR BODY WILL OBEY WHATEVER YOUR MIND TELLS IT. So, if you adjust your mind to say "I feel young, I feel active, I feel flexible... you will be!

Diane, you are an inspiration to us all! Keep shining.