Cactus Juice

Can you still be an American if you lose weight?

There's an old joke that that the Japanese eat little fat, the French eat lots of fat; Indians drink almost no red wine, the Spanish drink lots of wine, yet their heart attack rate is less than in the United Status.  Conclusion? What kills you is speaking English.  It's been turned into a YouTube commercial for French language school.  The Mayo Clinic has validated it and a linguist has deconstructed that validation.  (Image: Potato eating contest.  As American as apple pie!)

This week, new evidence published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The article, "Changes in Diet and Lifestyle in and Long-term Weight Gain in Women and Men" (limited preview available), followed more than 120,000 men and women from 1986 to 2006 and ranked the diet and lifestyle datapoints associated with weight gain and loss.  Agendas on all sides have been rankled by the findings and the authors note that many of the associations are not that strong (although when you look at their chart, the fries pop out big time).  At the end of the day the most significant finding is the one that the study presupposed: As a group, the study subjects got fatter and fatter.

Per the article, "Whereas weight change associated with any single lifestyle factor were relatively modest in our three cohorts, in the aggregate changes to diet and physical activity accounted for the largest differences in weight gain."*  In other words, the simplest outcome of the study isn't that a particular food or lifestyle factor affects weight, but that Americans are getting fatter all the time.

I've said before that losing weight is positively un-American.  There are a host of other social and economic factors that come into play, and for the most part I'd rather leave those to the playground of the policy wonks and conspiracy theorists.  The study also noted that TV watching itself is not responsible for the weight gain, but promotes behaviors associated with weight gain.  Every day we face a culture that promotes weight gain and obesity.  The individual costs in terms of health expenditure, job discrimination and inability to work are clear, but the individual benefits in terms of social cohesion and purchaser reward should be just as clear.  The benefits to being fat and the ties that bind us into obesity are strong: how else would more than half our population be motivated to commit group suicide?

Forming a different tribe is part of the answer; trends away from obesity are contagious.  Weight Watchers helped me lose a large amount of weight, mainly because for the first time I met people who had done so.  These people are rare: you might see them in the paper, but a chance to speak to one day after day after day is less common.  A string of ailments left me feeling a little hopeless again, but still I've got my tribe: Someone I know has recently lost 40 pounds.  The boyfriend has lost enough weight for his coworkers to notice.  Another friend has kept her weight off for more than five years.  These people, including the policy wonks and conspiracy theorists (God bless em!), are the people who bring individuals back from the brink.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
-Matthew 10:34-38^

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*One fascinating surmisal of the study authors is that the benefits of behaviors associated with weight loss may be underestimated in longitudinal studies because people who have gained weight in the study interum period or who are responding preemptively to a tendency to gain weight may engage in more behaviors to control weight.  In other words, the people who most need to eat vegetables or hit the gym to control their weight are the people doing so, therefore behaviors which are in fact beneficial nonetheless show up as things fat people do.

^My priest spoke well on this passage Sunday.  It is one that every good Ellul-reading conspiracy theorist should know.

iPad: The Social Network, Part II of II

Today, instead of phones there is FaceTime and Skype.  Anyone who thought calling without warning wasn't fairly intrusive should get the message at this point: electronically showing up in my house, even worse.  FaceTime doesn't even have the choice to turn off the camera (you can turn the camera to the desk or navigate to another program, which leaves only the audio on), though Skype does.  Still, when everyone has a plan to spend some time together it is really truly fabulous.  When my 2-year-old niece was recently in the ICU, she Skyped with her 5-year-old brother to the great delight of both.  The beloved FaceTimes my cat every night, and sometimes they even talk to me.

So clearly video chat is for the very-inside-circle, but there's a lot of stuff for the wide circle as well.  LinkedIn, the professional social network.  There is not an iPad app and the iPhone app is eh-eh, so I've got a link to the website.  Then Meetup.com, the website for meeting in person with people you don't know over some subject.  There is an iPhone app which does a couple of things well, so I've got the app and a website link.  Finally, Yahoo!Groups, for not meeting people in person over some subject.

So that's what I've got.  Anyone else using a social network they couldn't live without?

Growing Stronger in the Midst of the Diet Wars

No matter where you are--Atkins, Weight Watchers, Paleo, Primal, OA, vegitarian, vegan--there is a crowd busily pointing out how misguided or just plain stupid the other program is. For emphasis, the other people are unhealthy for some scientific reason and you can tell they are unhealthy just by looking at them. There is so much not going for this attitude, but one thing in particular is that many of the people doing the disparaging came from one of those programs.

An unending need to kick where you came from in the teeth represents an attack not just on that situation, but on yourself. If anyone came out of any of those programs and didn't learn anything useful, that's their fault and not the fault of the program. Even if that is what happened, isn't it time to forgive yourself and move on? This isn't to say that the programs shouldn't be judged on their merits. The recent U.S. News and World Report diet ranking, which was based on opinion rather than outcome, was the kind of travesty that is typical of how food plans have been evaluated over the last century. Bash that all you want.

But if you tried to eat according to the Food Pyramid and got fat, this tells us something: you learned what fats, proteins and carbs are and you learned how eating a high carb diet makes a person fat and possibly even diseased (hopefully you got out before then, if not at least you got out). A person who tried to follow the pyramid and failed is several steps ahead of a person who has no idea what they are eating, what nutrition is, and therefore no idea what needs to change. A person who has realized that none of this is working and wants to change is ahead of them all.

I followed Weight Watchers and ended up with serious difficulties, but I learned a lot about portion size and food management and how to take control over my own food. Since the Weight Watchers program depends entirely upon those skills, no one else does it better. If you need to learn those skills, you couldn't do better than to apprentice yourself to successful Weight Watchers members. Amazingly, you can do this for free on the Weight Watchers chat boards. Read and learn.

I'm currently hanging with the Primal people, and if I hadn't had my Weight Watchers experience I would be in very big trouble. I certainly would not be moving in a good direction with my health. I'm doubly fortunate, both because I did learn a lot from Weight Watchers and because I know it. On this day after Father's Day, I would encourage everyone to give themselves the gift of this same good fortune, not just in food but in life.

Facebook Etiquette: 10 Good Ideas

10.Set up your security the way you want it.  Remember you can put your so-called friends into groups and set who has access to what.  You can block people and they dissappear entirely... it's the bestest!  Don't complain that your pictures end up on the open internet if *you* never secured them to start with.  Now use the groups.  Need to rant daily about the mayoral election?  Filter that down to people who live in the same town.

9.  Good God stop with the memes!  Yes, I am one of the 96% who don't care, and actually its 99.9%.  And, you know what, it isn't even really that week.  And, you look like an idiot.  Especially when slapping down "Harpy Friefihgters Week!!!!" without even thinking about correcting the typos.

8.If you get fooled into having some rediculous thing posted on your page, or a "friend" posts it for you, delete it.  This includes "Jani Bean answered a question about you!"  Delete it.  Don't leave it there for your actual friends to get mixed up with.  A comment "don't click on the above FOR REALZ IT IS A HACKER!!!!!!!" does not help.  Just delete it.

7.You don't know what sort of friends, co-workers and bosses I have on my Facebook.  Don't post a political, religious, or any other category of rant on my page unless I started it.  Comments about how much fun we had at the beach on our sick day are also out.

6.  Don't post things you shouldn't post.  You know, complaints about your job.  Protected company information.  Medical information that could affect your insurance^.  Private information about your marriage and complaints about your spouse.  And your parents.  And, generally, your kids.

5.Remember that posts are for us as much as they are for you.  Once a day is probably enough.  Posts that start a conversation = good.  Posts that start a conversation trying to figure out whether you are about to jump off a bridge (the height of "vaguebooking") = bad.

4.Like anything that is likeable.  And throw out a few mercy posts, why not.  You'll need all that karma back when you are stuck in an airport for 36 hours violating good idea #5.

3.Put some farking clothes on and wash your mouth out with soap!  And no we don't want to see your toddler's fecal art project.*  We want to see you.  Occasionally without a beer in front of your face.

2.Read the post.  If you still don't get it, click in the person's name.  It goes to their wall.  So if 100 people have posted how sorry they are to hear someones goldfish died, don't post "OMG WHAT HAPPENED?!!!!!!!!"  First, the goldfish died.  We know this.  Second, if you click on the name, you can usually scroll down and find out what happened.

Because of this problem, people in crisis often find that they need to appoint a "minister of information" as one cancer survivor called it.  This is a person who will answer those questions for you.  If it were me, I would also give that person my password and authority to delete the most annoying posts.

1.  Don't post private stuff about other people!  "Jacki, that's terrible!  Especially after that abortion you had two weeks ago!  XOXOXOXOXO!!!!"  These seems to happen most frequently when someone is in crisis, because that is of course the very best time to broadcast their private information (???).  If I have ever have a crisis, the first thing I'm going to do is lock down my page so no one can post comments...  Not kidding!

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Thanks to my Facebook friends who made suggestions for this list!

^Psssst: All that medical privacy stuff?  It only counts for your medical records.  Anything your insurance company finds, say on the internet, is fair game to use against you.
*I have my doubts about this needing to be mentioned as a good idea, but my friends insist that it does.  I will take their word for it and hope I never have to find out why.

iPad: The Social Network, Part I of II

I have developed a bad habit of not carrying around my phone.  I'm pretty sure this put a phoning and texting friend's undergarments in a bunch recently, and this weekend it caused me some anxiety when someone knocked on my door at 3:30AM and I didn't even know where my phone was.  But people don't call any more.  Maybe great-Aunt Ida will call me without warning, once a quarter.  And the pharmacy.  The darned pharmacy that re-fills my drugs on the wrong dates and calls to tell me about it.  Not enough to be glued to the phone.

I've got handy old AIM on the iPad and the phone (and the laptop, why not).  It can text AIM people and it can text people at their phone numbers if they insist on paying $20 a month to, um, not use AIM (why???).  Messages go to my iPad, and my phone, and my laptop if it is on, problem solved.  Of course, these are the very small number of people whom I am willing to text (as in, less than 5, don't feel bad if you aren't on the list).  We text, of course, because phone calls are rude.  As if random texts are any less intrusive and obnoxious.

So, for everyone else, there's email.  Yay.  I thought that I read my email on Blackberry, but I'm learning that I didn't.  It's so much easier to understand on a larger screen, truly.  I've got my email coming into my iPad as a copy (just as I did on the Blackberry).  It then deletes from the server when I download the batches into Outlook on my laptop to delete automatically after 90 days.  Why do I do that?  Because none of the email systems I use will do an automatic delete after 90 days.  In fact, most of the make it about impossible to delete any other way.  There are emails to save, of course.  Those get forwarded to Evernote.

And then there is Facebook.  People still in the "push" phase of socializing don't understand Facebook.  Here's how push works: take my call when I call you.  Text me when I text you.  Read what I think is interesting when I forward it to you on email.  If a business acted like this it would be obnoxious.  If a person acts like this maybe they are 92.*  Facebook is where you can put all of that stuff you think your friends might be interested in and when they want to come coddle you over your deep grief for your dead goldfish they can.

This isn't as cold as it at first seems: how many people would you have to call before you found someone who had the time and inclination to share your dead goldfish grief?  But if you post it on Facebook, that person finds you.  And you haven't annoyed your 10 other friends who would have preferred to feed your goldfish to their cat.  You might even miss out on an afternoon of tears when one of them tells you so.  See, Facebook: win, win, win.

Then for that friend who wants to recite his political outrage (how outraged can a person be every single day, sigh) or explain why you just must, must, must buy a tablet device (my life is fine, thaaank yooou!, or so I've heard) there are blogs.  I wrote last week about organizing blogs since sometimes they are news, but sometimes they are social.  For when Facebook just can't contain it all.  Though, you can make your blog feed into your Facebook and thereby make paying attention to your rants one stop shopping for your friends.

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*Which is not an excuse since there are 100-year-olds with blogs, but 92 is the generally accepted age around here to just make everyone else conform to however it is you do things.  Plenty of 65-year-olds act that way, but if I were to change the accepted age to 65 then the pre-elderly set would be insulted that I'm the one that said they can't change.  So, 92-year-olds off the hook, everyone else get with the program!

Rocking the Grok-ing

So I was wrong: Myplate.com has already helped one person lose weight!  Seeing that website made me feel like a complete fat chump.  Closing in on one dead chump.  I know better, but what does that matter if I actually do sort of eat like that?  So I engaged in some serious de-chumpage and got back to eating properly.  My body is happy, my mind is happy, and I feel much less chump-like.

Except that I still am.  The "shop the perimeter of grocery store" bit doesn't work any more.  I already know about the nutrient deprived eggs and meats (omega-3 "enriched" eggs still have less omega-3 than the eggs your great-grandma ate... the food looks the same but it is not).  Now I'm learning a bit more about the vegetable insanity, like the sugar-enriched onions.  So, I'm being as non-chump as possible but agribusiness is still out to kill the rich (while saving the poor with increased crop yields, darn them).  In so many ways the fattage is stacked against me...

And there is also the matter of standing on the head of my food addiction.  Anyone with these issues knows that it is exactly as the Bible described it: you stand on the head of the serpant, and you better not move your foot or that snake will kill you!  After almost two years with the beloved watching me lose it over "just the once" or "this is a special treat/moment/event" he seems to actually get that now.  Which is very, very, very nice.  Now he can look on sympathetically each time I re-wrestle that snake into captivity instead of just looking puzzled.

And yes, I know I wrote a blog post a while about wanting to have a normal relationship with food.  Sure.  I want to have a relationship with something that is trying to kill me.  Sometimes people talk nonsense; there's an example.

And! I found the primal people, who are a bit more goofy but a bit less shrill than the scientific honestly people.  I like them!  Found here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/.  I like these graphics: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-to-succeed-with-the-primal-blueprint/.  I'm not even that primal with my Diet Sierra Mist (has handily replaced Starbucks,  may they rot in hell), my cheese (um, and more cheese people!) and my olives (OMG give me salt!).  But I am free of addiction foods and the poison found on a myplate, and losing weigh.  So, as the inventor of Grok would say, bite me Myplate.com.

Media Consumption: Should One or Should One Not?

I don't want to read the daily paper, but I have to do it.  Relevance requires interacting with the false and the absurd.  This is the primary reason I write very little about politics.  Why should I sit down and write something which I know will be relevant today and stupid tomorrow?  Especially when no one is going to read it today but someone who might have thought I was smart could read it in the future.  No.

If one wants to be relevant, one has to know the current conversation.  If one ignored every foolish and evil idea today, one would have more time and energy to be better educationed not only about the absurdities of the moment, but about everything.  And there is the problem with keeping up:  Relevance is directly contrary to knowledge.  So should you read the news?

Like all good answers, this one is "yes and no".  Relevance is important.  Note the existentialist reference at the top of the page.  Existentialism is about knowing that your experience is of your time and place, and one of the ethical outcomes of that is the idea that you can commit to time and place.  This is the philosophy version of "be here now."  It is your ethical duty to respond to evil, and that requires being educated in its workings which are closest to you.  This is explained in the news.

Knowledge is also important, and goodness is important, and to make room for these relevance has to be contained.  One doesn't need to be quite so pleased to be the first to know something; it is better to know the right thing.  And of course it is best to be the right thing.  One can step away from the conversation for a week or so and come back when the main points have crystallized and a few thinkers who are on top of that subject have already provided the context, that is, placed the relevant into a larger image of the world.

I mentioned in my previous post some good places to purchase context, such as the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.  As to linking the context to what is true, that's the readers' job.

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(Image: The Cordoba Mosque-Cathedral.  A historic structure which has been the subject of some recent foolishness.)

Ipad: Consuming the News with Flipboard, Pulse News, and Evernote

There are plenty of people who consume my weekly media diet before breakfast on Monday.  Whether my consumption level is good or bad and what the consumption of news media is good for anyway will be addressed in a future post.  This post is dedicated to describing what my current consumption is.

What is is an awful lot and some of it is awfully expensive.  I would be toast without a plan.  On the iPad, you can make a web shortcut show up as a button right next to your applications.*  This allows you to order your buttons in a way that organizes your consumption.  Mine start with what I consume multiple times a day, through my once a days, and into my occassionals.

Central to my plan is Twitter feed into Flipboard, both free (click on the screenshot above to see).  Where do you get your news?  Local newspapers, local TV stations, industry specific news?  Set up a twitter account and link in their feeds.  Here is what I follow, if you're interested.  Flipboard will also allow you to add some other "channels" (up to 18 total) including some pre-selected multi-streams such as "Lifestyle" that pulls from Apartment Therapy, Whole Living, bon Appetit and others.  You can also pull in your Facebook and Flickr feeds, and others.  Click on an article beginning and it takes you to the entire article in Flipboard.  Swipe up and you go to the webpage.  If desired, go over to the web browser to look at that page further.  And then go back Flipboard and it has saved your space.  For serious Twitter maniacs I have to note that it can be about an hour behind on your Twitter feed.

One of the problems with Twitter, Flipboard and the rest are lack of context.  So I also have buttons for a local TV station website and the two local newspapers. (Remember, you cannot get Kindle newspapers on the iPad.)  International newspapers such as the New Zealand Herald and the FP News (Canada) have free apps and can provide some perspective.

Context is the one thing you can buy.  Context has value.  How much value in dollars, I am not certain.  I currently subscribe to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on the iPad.  Some other options that I think would present similar value are The Economist and the Financial Times.

There are a few other apps I have found which give you some daily "stuff" (all free):

• Discover is an app that provides a visually attractive front-end to Wikipedia.  Every day it posts the random Wikipedia entry of the day.
• MyCongress provides the recent news references, YouTube postings and Twitter feed of the congress people you select (it helps you find yours using your zip code).
• Life provides the top photos of the week. (There is a different paid app for the magazine).

For philosophy and work there are (all free):

• Artsandlettersdaily.com, web link.  The feed just doesn't have the same effect.
• AMA News, web link
• Science Daily, web link
• NEJM App (weekly postings for free)
• Medscape (news and drug database)

For blogs I follow, I have gone with Pulse News, a free app which does much of what Flipboard does only differently.  Flipboard does it better, except for blogs.  Both pull in your selected blogs from your Google Reader account.  Flipboard then shows the posts in time order.  In contrast, Pulse keeps each blog in context on it's own row and allows 60 different blogs to be listed, 12 per page on five pages (compared to Flipboard's 18 channels).  Here's a screenshot:

Just like with Flipboard, you can click on an item to open a full view or go to the original webpage, or go out to Safari to view the webpage.

The final part of my media plan is Evernote, used for two purposes.  First is as a media trail.  If I don't save what I read, I will never ever find it again.  Anything that captures my attention goes into Evernote.  First, I go to the original article (in Flipboard this requires going into the article and then swiping up or clicking on the go to article link, or sometimes copying the link to Safari).  If there is a printable version, I select that.  Then I copy the article.  This is usually done by touching the blank space at the top of the page, but sometimes you have to select the text you want to copy.  Touch "copy".  Then email the article to Evernote, and paste the copy into it.

The second use for Evernote is read-it-later.  I could have all those articles go to different places (you just add the pound sign and the name of the folder to the email title), but I send them all into one inbox and sort them out later.  I keep a folder for articles that I would like to read when I have time to concentrate.  Instapaper is another way to do that and may even be better, I just haven't gotten into it.

I use the above two items for anything I read on paper also, using my scanner to put the articles into Evernote.

And that's my media consumption plan.  What is yours?  What are your tips?

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*In Safari, click on the arrow to the left of the web address and select "add to home screen".

Myplate: Ignore or stab out eyes with a fork?

It is so awful I would rather just crawl under my desk and pretend I never saw it.  One diabetes magazine editor noted wryly that every nutritional study that came out the week of its issue contradicted it.  Today's "helpful hint" on the Myplate website is something directly related to causing obesity. CNN is hosting an amusing iReporter contest which illustrates just how absurd it is.  There is nothing good to say.

The antidote: Gary Taube's Good Calories, Bad Calories.  It's a bit of a scientific slog, but at least it isn't complete...

Right then, I should just be ignoring it.