YOU: ON A DIET?

Returning to some things I have picked up from the three books I mentioned earlier: The basic message is two fold:

• Forget diets!!! All the recent research has shown that diets work only temporarily, if at all, and most usually result in a return to the original weight or worse
• Regular exercise and adequate diet will make you younger relative to your chronological age and, with persistence over a year or so, will likely result in some weight loss. More importantly, you will feel great, look great, and have fewer aches and pains.

According to Crowley and Lodge, our bodies adjust the fat content in response to complex signals sent from the most primitive part of the brain (that bit just at the top of the spinal cord that we share with all vertebrates) to influence how fat is used and stored. We become obese when we send messages (via this primitive, unthinking brain) that are confusing to the rest of the body. What do they mean by this?
They ask us to consider the conditions to which we adjusted as we evolved over millions of years inheriting from our evolutionary ancestors highly specialized ways of managing ourselves in relation to the changing environment. For virtually all of this time we were hunter-gatherers, walking eight to ten miles per day searching for food. For the hunters, on top of this basic exercise, there would be the chase with its final burst to separate out prey. In the springtime, there would be plenty of game and the promise of gathering berries and fruits, as well as digging up roots. All creatures have learned this and the knowledge of this season stored in such a way in the brain to influence shedding of fat and increase in muscle mass. The increased activity of hunting and gathering as this season progressed sends a message to the primitive brain to set the body to dispose of fat and increase strength for the search for game and food, according to whether one were male or female.
Going now to the end of Autumn, game is scarce, there is little fruit and berries to forage; now the body's ancestry tells it to slow down. There is no point to searching for food so we stay around the remaining food sources (probably nuts) and near shelter. This diminished activity sends a message to the brain that it is time to lay up and store as many calories as possible as fat. Here is the nub of it: If the primitive brain "thinks" it is Spring, because of increased activity, most food gets directed to muscle growth. If we lead it go believe we are going into Winter, because of decreased activity, most food goes into fat.
What does this mean? The couch potato is telling the body that Winter is approaching and to turn food into fat if at all possible whereas the person who walks five miles each day and has the occasional game of tennis or rides a bike twenty miles each weekend is telling the body to turn food into muscle and bone wherever possible.
I think this new approach, based on our evolutionary history, is very cool and a great clue to how to manage our waist, and grow younger as we grow older.
Any comments?

Excellent Book On Managing Health and Ageing

I thought that the time here in Basalt with my daughter (Bronwyn) and granddaughter (Stephanie) would be a more or less idle interlude. I did take it easy for a day or so but a short bike ride with Bronwyn has introduced me to the excellent system of bike ways they have developed here in the Rocky River Valley. It is possible to ride the length of the valley witDiethout going onto the main road; fortuitous indeed as the traffic is very dense.
I have also renewed acquaintance with a neighbor and good friend of Bronwyn, Willie Sabarase. Originally trained as a biologist, Willie is quite an entrepreneur and very successful; he has quite wide interests. Meeting up with him again is an example of the privilege of traveling: the opportunity to engage with interesting people.
Willie has loaned me a book, Younger Next year; turn back your biological clock, by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. Chris is a 70 year old man who became a patient of Henry (an internist and gerontologist) about a decade back. If you read it, this will revolutionize your approach to exercise which they hold to be the secret to managing health, fitness, and to managing the ageing process. It is a great complement to the Real Age book, You: On a Diet: The Owners Manual for Waist Management.
Another great book to read in this connection is Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss--and the Myths and Realities of Dieting.
This latter is by Gina Kolata, a science writer for NY Times who researched various diets. All three books are written in an energetic style and chockablock with the latest information about how the body manages either for heath or illness. It seems we actually have a lot of choice available to us based on this knowledge.
Actually, the order I have mentioned these books is the order I recommend you take them up. They connect our hunter gatherer heritage of just a few thousand years back with the challenges life in our "civilized" complex society and the health problems the disconnect between the two bring our way.

In The Beginning

In the beginning, at a party, several people said, "Robert, you will have to start a blog so that we can follow you adventures..."
So, here we all are at the beginning of an adventure together. I will seem to be obsessed with what is next rather than what is passed away. We will all pass away but that can wait. One cannot drive well going forwards by gazing into the rear-vision mirror. You are permitted to display your own obsessions, should you have any, to do with the adventure, the journey we call life. All aboard!