About Cake

Here's more of the secret to lasting weight loss.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

What I mean by that is that you need to make a permanent change in what you eat so that you have permanent weight loss. You can't have everything you want. If you could, you may just self-destruct. (See Hollywood.)

I just read a story about a couple that has been struggling with weight loss for many years. The husband was up to 500 pounds. How did he get that heavy? He ate out for all his meals. That was his biggest mistake. You can't be healthy on a restaurant and fast food diet. There is MSG everywhere in the fast food and restaurant industry. MSG causes obesity. The food also has too many calories for the amount of nutrition. When you're starved for nutrition, It's going to be pretty difficult to control your hunger. 

So, this guy lost weight, then gained it back, up and down for years because he was using the wrong method. He counted calories. His wife got a gastric bypass. I'd never recommend getting that done. The ones that are successful long term are the ones that permanently change their diet. If you're trying to justify a gastric bypass as the motivation, or a boost, or a reason to switch to a healthy diet, you're doing it for the wrong reason because a gastric bypass doesn't make you eat healthy foods. Gastric surgery isn't a magic bullet. 

Health and proper weight is not about portion control or the number of calories consumed per day. Although this gentleman is a great example of losing weight this way. But he also showed that this diet takes much more work than choosing healthy foods. In fact, the healthier you eat, the more volume it takes to get the calories you need. Now this isn't a rule, but more of a trend because vegetables in general are very low in calorie density. But remember that you need more than just vegetables.

Physical health is like spiritual health. You can't just choose one commandment to obey that will gain your salvation. You have to obey all of them, or at least try to. Nobody's perfect. But there's definitely a difference between those that try to do their best, and those who just seek for pleasure.

Avoid Harmful Substances

 
Before I create a post about what you should eat, let me start out with some things to avoid. If I happen to list something you don't agree with, please do your own research. I'm not saying you'll definitely come to the same conclusion. You may even find material to back up your claim. But remember that many people consider these substances dangerous. Even so, some people still like to live dangerously.

Avoid harmful substances such as:

 

Tobacco

This one shouldn't need any explanation as to why it is harmful. The tobacco manufacturers deliberately add chemicals to make cigarettes more addictive. If you need help quitting, then consider the 14 and out program. Basically, you switch to organic tobacco (no added chemicals to enhance addiction) and that makes it much easier to quit in 14 days.

Drugs

There isn't much difference between a drug and a poison. Poisons work by inhibiting certain necessary enzyme reactions in the body. Drugs work by inhibiting certain targeted enzyme reactions in the body. The main difference is the dose, and which enzyme reaction is targeted. They both work by interfering with the body's natural processes. 

 

If you are taking drugs daily, consider that you are not addressing the cause of the symptoms, and that you will not be healed by a substance that is designed to work against your body.

Coffee and Tea

Before you come to their defence and cite a scientific study like the one that says people who drink more coffee have a lower risk of diabetes, you need to realize that studies like these are advertising campaigns designed to distract from the other harmful effects. For example, a hypothetical study says you get a certain health benefit from, say, raspberry tea. Wouldn't you then be able to conclude that you would get better health benefits from eating whole, raw raspberries?

If you wanted to avoid or treat diabetes, is drinking coffee the way? Obviously not. You avoid diabetes by a healthy diet. You can cure diabetes with a ridiculously strict diet. Did you know you can cure diabetes in 30 days? The diabetes industry doesn't want you to know that. They may lose customers.

 

Bleached Flour 

Alloxan is a chemical by-product from the bleaching process that causes type 1 diabetes. Why would you bleach your food? Isn't white flour white enough already? Do we really need bleach-white bread? As if stripping the bran and germ wasn't nutritionally dumb enough, now we bleach what's left? This is one of the dumbest things we do to our food. 

Artificial Sweeteners, Artificial Flavors, Artificial Colors

Artificial means man-made. I may have a skewed attitude towards this, but I don't think any man-made chemicals come close to the safety and nutrition of natural grown food. To me, artificial means "it's not food".

 

Artificial sweeteners have been proven dangerous many times. Yet we keep coming up with new ones. It's only a matter of time before we get enough evidence to label them as dangerous. If you need to add sweeteners, then you're missing out on the entire subtle medley of taste the way God created it. 

Artificial flavors is an interesting topic to research. If I see this on an ingredients label, what it says to me is this. This food tastes like garbage by itself, so we added chemicals to make it taste better.

Artificial colors are made from coal tar. Most coal tar colors have been banned, but the FDA still allows several varieties. Some of the remaining "safe" colors have been proven to cause behavioral problems in children.

 

MSG 

This includes anything hydrolyzed or autolyzed. It's also labeled as yeast extract, natural flavor, or any protein isolate. MSG is present in anything that also contains disodium inosinate and/or disodium guanylate because these two chemicals' only purpose is to enhance the flavor action of MSG. 

 

MSG works by stimulating the nerves on your tongue. It turns up the volume, so to speak, because this amino acid is a part of the chemical process of nerve stimulation. It's not the monosodium part that's the problem. It's the glutamate part. 

 

Glutamine is an amino acid that does not occur isolated in nature. It is always part of a larger protein structure. When broken down to an individual amino acid, it is absorbed into the body much quicker. Blood levels of glutamine can go 20x higher than normal. With this much concentration, nerves all over the body can be stimulated, sometimes over-stimulated to death. 

 

MSG can cause migraines, digestive issues, and heart problems. For me, MSG makes my heart slow down, beat unusually hard, and skip beats. It's especially noticeable when I'm trying to rest. I found what MSG does to me only because I avoided it for a while and then had some food with it and had a reaction. Being the scientifically curious person that I am, I repeated the test two more times and had the MSG reaction two more times again. So now I avoid anything with MSG. I read somewhere that ibuprofen is the antidote to MSG.

 

Another major problem with MSG is that it stimulates the appetite and causes obesity. Researchers know this, and when they want to study obesity in rats, first they have to find a way to make them huge. This doesn't happen in nature. But they found a way to make rats fat. They're called MSG treated rats. 

 

If you look, you'll find MSG (or hidden names for it) in many processed foods that aren't sweet. To me, it's no wonder there's an obesity epidemic. Aspartame and MSG are almost everywhere in processed foods. (The side-effects of aspartame and MSG are almost identical.)

Mercury, Fluoride, Lead, Arsenic

Many harmful substances are accumulative toxins. So-called safe levels of exposure may not be safe in the long term. Safe levels only take into account the effect of that single substance, and ignore the effects of multiple toxins present at the same time. So it's best to avoid any and all toxic substances.

 

Avoid mercury dental fillings. They are called silver amalgam to distract you from the fact that they contain about 50% mercury. The mercury keeps leeching out as long as it is in your mouth. 

 

Avoid living with five miles of a coal-fired powerplant. Most mercury pollution is from these powerplants. The mercury compounds rain down mostly within five miles of the source. 

 

Fluoride is not a nutrient. It is an enzyme inhibitor. It accumulates in the bones, making them brittle. Fluoridated water has been advertised as good for teeth, but the evidence is not convincing. Studies have shown that fluoride in water does much more harm than good. Fluoridated water even lowers IQ. It was used to control prisoners in concentration camps because it pacifies them.

The fluoride added to the water supply is actually industrial waste from smokestack scrubbers. This is often laced with other pollutants such as arsenic and lead. Naturally occurring fluoride in water is calcium fluoride. Calcium is the antidote to fluoride poisoning. But the fluoride compound most commonly added to water is hexafluorosilicic acid. The logical leap to go from CaF to SF6 makes about as much sense as saying food has carbon and nitrogen, so let's add cyanide and call it food. 

Preservatives

I've often heard the joke people tell that they won't need to be enbalmed because they are so full of preservatives already. I've never thought that was very funny. It's kind of sad, actually. If preservatives were re-named to what they really were, I'm guessing they wouldn't sell as many. Mold killer, antibiotics, and fungicide don't sound like appetizing things to put in food, but they are preservatives too. 

 

Basically, many preservatives are poisons, and some have been shown to cause cancer. Specifically, sodium nitrate (or nitrite) turns into nitrosamine compounds, which cause cancer. Nitrosamines are very useful in studying cancer in lab rats. You can get different nitrosamine compounds that cause cancer in the target organ. For example, if the researcher wants to study lung cancer in lab rats, he injects the rat with the proper nitrosamine compound, and the rat gets lung cancer. Most processed meats contain sodium nitrite (or nitrate). But since the food industry found that they can reduce the amount that converts to nitrosamines by adding vitamin C, the FDA still allows this preservative to be used.

This was only a partial list. There are other things to avoid. But the principle is to avoid anything harmful. It's difficult to avoid harmful substances if you don't know they are harmful. That's why I'm trying to spread the word.

The secret to easy, lasting weight loss (and I'm giving it away for free)

Before I tell you the secret to weight loss, be aware that you may just ignore it. I can tell you what works and you may just blow it off. It's like how to live happily: Live the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not that big a secret. You know you should, but some people would rather indulge in pleasure. And, like the gospel, you need to try living it to see any benefits and learn for yourself if it works.

The secret to weight loss isn't really a secret, but it's not advertised because you can't make money off it. I can give you a list of what to do, but you won't do it unless you understand why. For example, I can tell you to avoid MSG, but you won't if you don't understand how it works. Then if you really don't want to put the effort into getting healthy, and just want a quick fix, you'll be inclined to accept the food industry's disinformation campaign telling you that MSG is safe. 

 

So I'll present some concepts here and encourage you to do your own research on them to understand more. Research tip: try entering something like "health effects of artificial colors" in the search bar at google.com. After what you read, you'll probably wonder why they're still used.

While you're researching, remember that real health solutions are often ridiculed and suppressed by those who stand to profit from your ignorance. 

 

What I'll present is what helped me go from border-line obese to a healthy weight. Around ten years ago, I was kind of shocked when I saw a height-weight chart that said 185 lbs and 5' 9.5" tall was over-weight. It wasn't just borderline; it was smack in the middle of over-weight. I was not a muscular build, so I couldn't make that excuse. 

 

Through a series of fortunate events, I was able to get some really good information that allowed me to lose weight without getting hungry and almost without trying to lose weight. The effort was in learning how to eat healthy. Although I did go down to 140 lbs, I was at 145 for a few years. Then I decided that I wasn't going to watch the scale and I've been steadily pretty close to 150 lbs for the past six years or so. I check my weight and blood pressure monthly at work for their health incentive program. But I don't worry about checking my weight daily on the bathroom scale. 

 

I've found that I feel pretty good all the time. I keep getting offered junk food here and there, and it's become so easy to politely decline because I know that the junk food will make me feel bad for a much longer time than the short time pleasure from eating it. I get sick much less often. I no longer get a cold every couple months. 

Myth

Fat stored or burned is as simple as calories in - calories out

Reality

Not all calories are created equal. In a properly nourished body, hunger regulates the proper amount of calorie consumption, so you don't need to count calories.

 

Weight loss can't be successful long-term if treated only as a calorie problem, or an exercise problem. The approach needs to be holistic. You need to do everything for health. 

 

Calorie counting won't work because:

• It takes too much effort.
• You don't know exactly what you need in calories every day.
• It neglects all the other nutrients. 

To illustrate the point, here's an extreme example. If you lived on 2500 calories a day, but the source of those calories was sugar water, you would soon die a very miserable death because of malnutrition. Then if you added in all the necessary fats, minerals, and proteins, and you will still die because of the lack of vitamins.

Get the nutrients you need.

So how do I know if I'm getting all the nutrients I need? There is a very useful and free tool at http://nutritiondata.self.com/. You can enter in everything you typically eat in a day, and analyze the nutrient content. You can see if you're getting enough vitamins, minerals, essential fats, and proteins. Then search for the foods that are highest in the nutrient you are missing. But remember that it's incomplete data.

Whole, raw plant food is the best source of nutrition. (Not food for plants! That's dirt. I'm talking about eating plants as food). Cooking food destroys nutrients, including enzymes that help in digestion. But use some common sense here. Some food should not be eaten raw, like chicken. 

 

We're not done yet. 

My next few posts will continue revealing the secrets of easy, permanent weight loss. It's a permanent lifestyle change. You won't be able to return to your "eat for pleasure" diet and maintain a healthy weight. There's a big difference between eating to live, and living to eat.

GMO Propaganda in my Inbox

Yesterday, I opened my email to find a HowStuffWorks message with the subject "10 misconceptions about GMOs". I immediately thought it looked like a misinformation campaign. Then after reading it (and having my suspicions confirmed), I was surprised at how often the article contradicts itself. Let's compare their listing of so-called misconceptions, and how their analysis relates to reality. 

You can find their propaganda right here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/10-misconceptions-gmos.htm#mkcpgn=em16 

Their article starts off stating that scientists first began to test genetically engineered crops in the late 1980s. Today, 60-70% of processed foods in the US have GMO ingredients. Then they go right in to their first "misconception".

Supposed myth 10: Genetic Modification of Food is New

They said "not really". But they just finished telling you on the first page that genetic modification started in the late 1980s. I think they tried to justify GMO as a form of selective breeding. They way they presented it, you would think GMO has been going on since man started farming. According to their definition, if I chose who would be the mother of my children, then according to that definition, my kids are GMO. In this same article, they explain that the process of creating a genetically modified organism is completely different than selective breeding, or cross-breeding, or hybridization. In one method, they shoot DNA fragments into a cell and hope for the best. So yes, GMO is a new technique. Like they said, they've been doing it since the late 1980s. 

Myth 9: GMOs are Just a Modern Version of Selective Breeding

I have to congratulate them on getting this one right. They briefly explained how genes are shot into the target cell. They didn't come right out and say it, but they have no control of how many copies of the gene get inserted, or at what location in the DNA strand they end up. It's trial and error, hit and miss. You never know what you'll end up with. It's almost as bad as shooting computer code into a program and hoping it works. 

 

Weasel worded myth #8: There's Solid Evidence that GMO Foods Cause Cancer

Notice the word solid. Fact: their debunking got debunked. They took one study that showed GMO foods cause cancer and they attacked it. See the rebuttal here: http://www.sott.net/article/237064-GMO-Researchers-Attacked-Evidence-Denied-and-a-Population-at-Risk

The funny thing is, it was pretty close to the study used to approve glyphosate for the EFSA, but they extended the time of the study from 90 days to two years. It's amazing how long-term studies uncover problems that short term studies don't. Not only did studies find that GMO causes cancer, but there are other health problems as well that are attributed to GMO foods. Notice how they didn't mention other studies, like the study on pigs that showed severe stomach inflammation due to GMO feed. 

 

7 GMO Crops are Dangerous Since They Contain Toxic Substances

They only mentioned BT toxin and completely skipped over the glyphosate problem. The whole reason for creating Roundup resistant crops is so you can spray the crops with Roundup. The plants absorb the herbicide and you get to eat it. Try looking up studies on glyphosate that were not funded by Monsanto.

Don't let them fool you into thinking that BT toxin is non-toxic. The LD50 (oral) value for rats is 2.65 to 5g/kg, which puts it in the low toxicity range. But BT toxin infects the gut bacteria, transforming gut flora into BT toxin producing bacteria. BT toxin can stay in the body for months after ingestion, so you need to do some very long term studies to figure out the health effects.

6 GMO Crops Pose a Health Risk to People With Allergies

They cite an incident that happened during product development where the GMO soy with brazil nut genes caused allergic reactions to those allergic to brazil nuts. While they try to calm your fears, they also mention that the FDA doesn't require allergy screening for GMO products. I agree that allergic reactions may presently not be a problem (unless you're already allergic to the non-GMO version). But that doesn't mean that it won't be a future problem, especially with the attitude of putting profits before safety.

5 Altered Genes From GMO Plants Invariably Will Spread and Cause Havoc

They start out saying, well, it probably won't spread antibiotic resistance to bacteria. Well, it's good to know that GMOs probably won't turn in to man-eating venus fly traps either. Then they mention that cross-pollination is a problem. It's nice to see they found their way back on topic. Cross-pollination is a huge problem. It's like lighting a field on fire and hoping it won't spread where you don't want it to.

4 If Patented GMO Seeds Accidentally Grow on Your Property, You Could Be Sued

If a farmer "uses" Monsanto's GMO technology without paying royalties, then they sue the farmer. To date, Monsanto has pursued over 800 cases. But, Monsanto (out of the goodness of their hearts) has promised not to sue organic farmers if GMO crops contaminate their land. I guess it's because (and I'm speculating here) the organic farmer would have to destroy the crops, but the conventional farmer can still sell them.

3 GMO Crops Cause Catastrophic Honeybee Decline

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Take a problem with GMOs, exaggerate it, then attack the exaggeration to make you feel safer about them. Remember that BT toxin in GMO plants kills insects, including beneficial insects such as ladybugs and bees. 

 

2 Almost All Crops Today Are GMOs

Right, not all, but 80-90% of corn and soy grown in the USA is GMO. 70% of processed foods contain GMO ingredients. They said that they never grew GMO wheat in the USA. But the article in the following link directly contradicts that claim. (It also relates to number 5 above.)  http://newsdaily.cms.newscred.com/article/a5599505526172d7685fcc9fc6db8ba4/refile-kansas-wheat-farmer-sues-monsanto-over-rogue-wheat-release 

1 GMOs Are Unlabeled and Impossible to Avoid

This is a highly misleading claim. In the USA, GMOs are not required to be labeled! Just because organic foods are not supposed to have GMOs, and are often labeled as GMO free, it doesn't mean that GMOs are labeled. The only GMO label you'll see in the USA is one that says "NO GMOs". Then they admit that if you really want to avoid GMOs, you have to grow your own food in your own garden or move to Europe! Does that not just verify the supposed myth they're trying to debunk?

I'm getting the impression that the article was meant to fool the casual reader into only reading the headlines and ignoring the rest of the text.

Mission Statement

At the suggestion of a friend and leader, I was encouraged to set up a blog on healthy living. I've been doing my best to learn and apply the principles of health for the past ten years.

The mission of this blog is to both teach and learn. I'll do my best to:

• Empower you with knowledge. 
• Inspire you to action.
• Motivate you with reason. 
• Uplift you with encouragement.

I'll start you off with how I started my journey.

Principle #1: Make an effort to eat more healthy food, and less junk food.

It was my cholesterol test back in 2003 that "inspired" me to decide I needed a change. Since my family has a history of heart disease, and I didn't want to end up dead before 50, I decided that it was better to eat what was good for me rather than just eat what tasted good.

Principle #2: You need to learn more than what you think you know.

While this may seem obvious to some, others that need this advice most, may think they already know enough. I find this especially true the more educated a person is. Hopefully I don't ever get the attitude that I already know enough.

Why brotherandrews.blogspot.com? With God as our Father, we're all brothers and sisters. It's a way to remember to treat all God's children with love. 

I'll try to add something new once a week or so.