Refuse To Regain

Overcoming the Centipede Syndrome

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

After reading all your comments and emails in response to Barbara’s last blog, the more convinced I am that maintainers share more in common than people realize. Many of your answers had similar themes, and I could relate to every one of them.

Maintenance feels like a secret society sometimes, only without initiations or secret handshakes. We’ve all paid our dues, though, and if there is one word I culled from your responses to best summarize weight-loss and maintenance it would be “patience.”

I’ve been thinking about one of the questions Barbara asked: “What is the one thing that you want to tell people who are losing weight right now?” I wondered about the 300-pound me and if she’d have listened to the 127-pound me. While I was in awe of and somewhat motivated by people who’d lost the kind of weight I wanted to lose, mostly I was intimidated. I never adopted the attitude, “If SHE did it I can do it” because I didn’t know for sure I could do it. After all, like many of you, I’d been down that losing road before and look where it got me. I wanted this time to be the last time. I wanted to be a success and keep it off for good, but until I developed patience, that wasn’t going to happen. And you couldn’t tell the 300-pound me that. I had to learn it by myself.

When I began losing weight in January 2005, I suffered from what I call Centipede Syndrome. When I was a kid, my bedroom was in the basement. It was a nicely finished basement, but a basement nonetheless, and no amount of drywall could keep out the creepy crawlies.

One night I was reading in bed and I felt something on my leg. I threw back the covers and a centipede was crawling up my calf. I screamed and brushed it off and, well, kept screaming. My dad ran downstairs and rescued me from the centipede I’d flung back into my bed, but all night and for weeks to come, I slept in pants and with the blankets tucked all around me.

When I “woke up,” so to speak, and realized I was 300 pounds, it was like a centipede was crawling up my leg. “Get the weight off me NOW!” was the frantic mindset I was in. It was like I was feeling all the years of weight-related embarrassment all at once and I was completely impatient with weight loss. Just as I was all the other times I’d been down the scale.

I tried and failed several times in those early months to shake that sense of the urgency. I celebrated the big losses and criticized the small ones. I developed charts and graphs that I used to estimate how long it would take me to get to certain weights based on my average losses. I pored over them day in and day out until something clicked. I don’t even remember what it was. Maybe I was just tired of the stress. But something caused me to slow down and stop looking so far ahead, and to concentrate on the day, the meal, and the moment.

I don’t know if patience is inherent for some folks, but it was definitely a learned skill for me. And I have to hone that skill every day. I recently had a root canal and was given a steroid shot afterwards. My dentist also treated me for an infection in one of the roots and I took antibiotics for 10 days. My weight went from 127 to 132 overnight and stayed there for a few days. Slowly it crept to 130, 129, 128 and finally, today, back to 127. It took almost three weeks to get back to “normal.” But surprisingly I didn’t panic. I knew I’d done nothing different in terms of diet and exercise and I trusted that my body was responding to the medications. A few times I wondered if aliens had taken the real me and replaced me with this person of some advanced patience. Then I realized that’s what comes with time and trust. Patience.

The 300-pound me didn’t understand that. I know I’d heard it. People said it all the time, “You’ve got to be patient with the process.” But I didn’t really hear it until I started living it.

Today on the elliptical I listened to the song “Gonna Fly Now” from the movie “Rocky.” There aren’t many words in the lyrics, but they are powerful, and combined with the dramatic furor of trumpets and drums and strings, they give me goose bumps. I thought about the 300-pound me and how an elliptical was as far away from possible as going to the moon, but somehow she thought she could. And she did.

So my fellow maintainers in this secret society, thank you very much for your willingness to share your insights and advice. I recommend you download the theme from “Rocky” and allow yourself to feel the good vibes for developing the patience necessary to do this day in and day out.

“Trying hard now
it's so hard now
trying hard now

Getting strong now
won't be long now
getting strong now

Gonna fly now
flying high now
gonna fly, fly, fly...”

From 0 to 0z

By Barbara Berkeley

In the spring of 2008, when Lynn and I first put this site on line, our readership was zero. Luckily, Lynn’s existing blog already had loyal readers and some of them were kind enough to visit Refuse to Regain. This is how we got our first few followers. But as time went on, one question persisted: were there enough serious maintainers to populate a site like ours? Now, almost a year later, we have our answer. Refuse to Regain has hundreds of daily visitors including readers who come from all over the world. We are incredibly grateful for this community.

But we’d love to know you better. We’d like to hear more of your comments and pass along more of your bright ideas. And let us remind you that we are also anxious to hear about your frustrations and about the things that aren’t working. Being a POW (previously overweight person) almost always means that there will be rough periods.

I’m bringing this up now because in the next couple of weeks, our RTR community will have a chance to be heard. I have been invited to appear on Dr. Mehmet Oz’s radio show on the Oprah Network. We will be taping the show in New York on March 11th and I will let you know when it is due to air. As part of the pre-production for the show I’ve been asked to submit a set of topics that I want to discuss. One of the major things I want to talk about is you.

If you would answer a few questions, I will review all of our answers and formulate them to represent our community.

1. What is the one biggest change you’ve made that has allowed you to maintain? (In other words, what makes a weight loss success become a maintenance success?)
2. If you are successfully maintaining at least 30 pounds of weight loss, how many attempts did it take (how many cycles of weight loss or how many years) until you were able to get to this point?
3. What is the one thing that you want to tell people who are losing weight right now?
4. What is the one thing you’d like Dr. Oz to tell Oprah about her recent regain?

You can put other things in your answer of course, I’m always glad to have more information, but please at least give me these four. And those of you who’ve been lurking on the site but don’t usually write, PLEASE do! I will try to incorporate as much of your input as I can into the interview.

Other Commonalities

By Barbara Berkeley

It’s interesting that Lynn picked last week to write about the things that maintainers have in common. I had just been thinking about the very same thing, but for somewhat different reasons.

Every couple of years, spring ushers in what I call “CME Season.” Luckily for patients, medical boards require that docs keep up to date with the latest in medical science, a process called CME or Continuing Medical Education. When it’s time for a doctor’s license to be reviewed, he or she must also produce proof of being up to date with those CME activities. I have a little folder which houses the certificates that attest to the fact that I’ve attended conferences, watched presentations, or sat through grand rounds. But this year, I got a jolt. My total hours fell a few short. At first I thought, ‘Well, it will be fine. I’m sure that researching and writing a book will count.’ But since I wasn’t sure, and I really like to sleep at night, I headed for the great big supermaket of CME, the internet; you can pick up just about anything there.
 
As it turns out, one of my favorite sites was offering a series of lectures on obesity and one, in particular, caught my eye. It was a talk by James Hill, co-director of the National Weight Control Registry, on weight maintenance. These internet seminars are really terrific because they include the audio and slides from original presentations done elsewhere. So, for the past hour, and right before receiving Lynn’s blog, I’d actually been listening to James Hill describe the things that successful maintainers have in common – at least in the opinion of the NWCR.

As we have a very sophisticated readership, I’m sure most of you are familiar with the NWCR. Just on the odd chance that you are not, however, the National Weight Control Registry is a study of people who are trying to maintain a weight loss. It was begun in 1993 and is a joint venture of Brown University and the University of Colorado. In order to join (and I always urge successful maintainers to do so), you must have lost at least 30 pounds and have kept it off for a minimum of one year. Most members of the registry have achieved much larger losses and have been successful over far longer periods. Because there are now over 6,000 people in the study, researchers have been able to collect a large amount of data on commonalities between study members.

So, now that Lynn has brought up the topic, here are the common behaviors of NWCR maintainers as described by Dr. Hill. Do they seem to reflect you? And if not, why not? I have added my own thoughts in italics after each one.

1. They eat a low calorie, low fat diet.
Actually, the fat percentage given was 26%. While this is lower than the national average, it is not actually that low. The Ornish diet, for example, is about 10% fat. Despite touting the low fat diet, Hill showed a slide from a recent New England Journal of Medicine study that showed statistically better weight maintenance at 24 months on either a Mediterranean or low carb diet than on a low fat one.

In terms of calories, members are reporting an average of 1385 calories per day, plus or minus 500. That’s awfully low and Hill assumes it reflects underreporting of the true calories consumed. What makes that interesting is that this inaccuracy then casts doubt on other reported measures, such as fat consumption.

2. They are very ‘restrained’ eaters.
This is Hill’s choice of word. I believe he means that maintainers carefully calculate what they eat and limit choice.

3. They are consistent.
Hill illustrated this point by saying that the researchers wondered if maintainers used the technique of taking “days off” and having holidays from their eating plan. He was clear that this was not usually the case and that most of those reporting ate the same way every day.

4. They weigh frequently.
75% weigh more than once a week. 44% weigh daily. 50% still count something (calories, fat grams, etc..)

5. They are highly active.
OK. This one is really interesting. Hill and others in the study have frequently said that they believe physical activity to be the biggest key to successful maintenance. However, when you look at their data, the breakdown is actually this:
27% exercise A LOT: more than 90 minutes a day
25% exercise between 60 and 90 minutes a day.
26% exercise moderately, between 30 and 60 minutes a day.
25% exercise less than 30 minutes a day.
Assuming that there is some overreporting here, we can see that probably upwards of 50% of maintainers in the registry don’t exercise all that much.

6. They eat breakfast
This is one of the Registry’s favorite maintenance tips. Don’t forget that successful maintainers eat breakfast. What do you think of this one? Do you think that eating breakfast helps you to maintain better?

7. They watch less television
62% claim to watch less than 10 hours per week (national average is 28 hours).

So here’s how one particular maintainer (me) compares.
1. Low Fat, Low Cal? My diet is, in fact, low calorie and low fat, but it is also almost devoid of modern carbohydrates, so it’s a different kind of eating.
2. Dietary restraint? For sure.
3. Consistent? Yes. Key for me.
4. Weighing? Every day.
5. Exercise? Yes. I find it vital to maintain.
6. Breakfast? Not unless you consider coffee and skim milk to be breakfast.
7. TV? Definitely on the money. I’m pretty much down to CNN and the Cleveland Cavs.

Are there other ways to maintain? I’m not sure. Pretty much any successful maintainer I’ve ever met fits the profile above in most respects. But there are sure to be outliers. Let us know if you have found another – perhaps more clever – way to keep it off. In the meantime, I’m going to print out my CME certificate, watch Wolf Blitzer, and get a good night’s sleep!

Apart from Diet and Exercise, Other Random Things Maintainers Have In Common

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I get tagged a lot by friends on Facebook who’ve filled out quizzes such as “Which ‘80s movie are you?” “What rock band are you?” “Who were you in a past life,” “25 random things no one ever really needs to know about you.” Things like that.

Often their answers are similar to mine, which accentuates the fact that my friends and I have many things in common, thus the reason we’re friends.

In the year Barbara and I have been writing this blog, I’ve observed that maintainers share many similarities. One of the most apparent is that we work out, or if we don’t or can’t, we know to keep caloric intake in line with caloric output. We’ve also done a lot of soul searching, both during weight loss and now in maintenance,  and have changed old habits that kept us in an overweight mindset. We’re often students of nutrition and the latest medical research. I love that you share so much of your information and questions here.

This blog entry is about the things we have in common that aren’t so apparent. I’m guessing we share several similar habits, must-have foods, attitudes, rituals, etc. In the following list  are eight things I do, am, have become, and observed of myself in maintenance. I hope you’ll share a few of yours, too. Just like junior high, let’s compare notes!

In no particular order…

1. I can’t let clutter accumulate anymore. I start to feel kind of anxious when stuff piles up, and I mean that physically and emotionally. It’s harder to think clearly. It’s second nature these days to put or throw things away after I use them or read them, and to address issues as they come up rather than allow them to fester in the back of my mind until they manifest themselves in a bowl of mashed potatoes.

2. My father’s motto has always been, “If you’re five minutes early, you’re late.” During my obese years, I dragged my feet a lot and was often late to meetings, events or parties, if I went at all. I was the queen of last-minute excuses. Without 170 extra pounds, I’ve found that not only do I want to attend a scheduled event, but I’m on time and often a little early. My dad is so proud.

3. I get up at least once in the middle of the night for a bathroom break. I drank a lot of water while losing weight and still do now. I’ve learned several tricks for falling back to sleep.

4. I don’t get sick very often. Aside from the 24-hour stomach bug I picked up after Christmas, I haven’t been sick in years. No colds, no flu, nothing. This doesn’t mean I won’t get sick or somehow can’t get sick, but I have a feeling my diet and exercise regimen work to fight off a lot of would-be bacterial or viral assailants.

5. I’m a serious food planner. How I mean that is planning my meals is a priority. Not in the old days. I used to stick my face in the fridge, pull out whatever, cook it up and eat. Now I balance everything and make sure the cupboards are stocked with staples like vegetable broth, canned tomatoes, beans, Almond Breeze or soy milk, things like that. The refrigerator and freezer are always filled with veggies, fruit, yogurt, homemade soups and sauces. It takes time and three trips to the store a week on average, but

6. I’m a pretty darn good cook who takes chances. I can mess with a recipe and, not to sound like an American Idol judge, make it my own.

7. I’m also good at saying no to food pushers, and I’ve gotten more assertive when it comes to sticking to my dietary needs when I’m at a dinner party. I simply tell the host/hostess that I’m a vegetarian who eats a low-fat, low-sodium diet and that I in no way expect them to cook anything special for me. I always offer to bring something for myself.

8. I can take a compliment most of the time. Used to be if someone paid me a compliment I’d say, “Thanks, but…” Always a “but.” Now, I smile and (most of the time) say “thank you” and leave it at that. I’ve gotten much better at taming that old self-deprecation.

So do any of these things ring true for you? What do you suspect many of us maintainers have in common? As always, leave a comment or send an email. You know we love hearing from you!

The Optimal Human Diet or Can’t We All Just Get Along?

By Barbara Berkeley

It’s a tough crowd out there in the optimal eating community.

I just finished reading The China Study. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but a friend gave it to me after being impressed by its conclusions. Basically, it’s a treatise based on the work of T. Colin Campbell, a Cornell researcher who spent many years on an exhaustive study of eating habits in China. At the end of the day, Campbell concluded that animal proteins were associated with the diseases of modern society and that the optimal human diet was clearly vegan.
 
Campbell’s study and the other evidence he presents pose intriguing questions but point out the difficulties in making connections between diet and disease. There are so many variables involved in large population studies of this kind, that it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions. For me, the more fascinating aspects of The China Study are the sections of the book that chronicle the fate of doctors who dared to suggest that these dietary therapies might prevent or effectively treat modern disease. For example, Campbell tells the story of Caldwell Esselstyn a well-known surgeon and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic (now retired) who was able to document effective treatment – even regression – of coronary artery disease on a plant-based diet. Despite being married to the daughter of the revered founder of the Clinic, Esselstyn was unable to get the Clinic’s cardiology department to consider serious use of dietary therapy for coronary disease. He was essentially marginalized.

Just today, I spoke with a patient whose brother died of a heart attack at age 42 and whose family had a strong history of premature coronary disease. She had been treated by a preventive cardiology service for some years but reported that she had gotten no useful guidance from their dieticians. She was simply told to “lose weight.” The idea that specific dietary guidelines might prevent or halt heart disease had still not reached the level of clinical acceptance. I noted the same phenomenon when I recently consulted my own cardiologist for routine follow up. I had not been to the office for five years and his nurse wanted to update my medical history. I was asked detailed questions about my medications, exercise habits, frequency of physical activity, smoking, alcohol and other health habits. At the end of this thorough history, though, not a single question had been asked about what I routinely ate.

Doctors like me who believe that dietary interventions are powerful medicine – perhaps the most powerful medicine of all – are looked at as less than whole physicians. Meals, after all, are not pills. To put it bluntly, we are looked down upon.

But the criticism and looking down doesn’t end there. On the site “Beyond Vegetarianism,” for example, reformed vegetarians are highly critical of Dr. Campbell and his vegan hypotheses. Readers of online diet sites can be incredibly disparaging . Of some pretty mild maintenance advice attributed to me in Women’s Health OnLine, one reader wrote, “This is horrible... and she's an ‘MD’... no wonder America is fat. This woman should be fired.” The discourse surrounding diet can be vicious.

The Vegetarian community thinks that the Paleolithic community is full of it. The Weston Price people think that all whole foods are terrific, fat and cholesterol be damned and are highly critical of vegetarians. And of course, those eating the Cheesecake Factory diet believe that those of us who try to eat healthily are judgmental food-Scrooges who want to prevent everyone else from enjoying life.

Of all the choices we make it life, why do our dietary choices provoke so much antagonism? There are probably as many reasons as there are diets. For the scientist, the idea that dietary manipulation might cure disease is too simplistic. For the pleasure eater, the idea of dietary restriction is too threatening. For the vegetarian, the idea of meat eating is too political. Whatever our agenda, one thing can surely be concluded from the ferocity of the debate – food is powerful! Diet is meaningful! And the foods we choose to incorporate into our body make a statement about who we are that declares itself to the world.

Savoring Food

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

After an emergency root canal yesterday, I’m rediscovering how much fun it is to eat.

So much of the time, eating is rote. While I plan and prepare meals, and mostly when I’m eating, my mind wanders in all different directions except to the food at hand. What emails do I need to write? When’s the last time I called my mother? Did I feed the birds? Don’t forget to vacuum. Stuff like that.

But when you only have half your mouth and taste buds to work with, at least in the first few hours as you wait for the Novocain to wear off, how to eat becomes front and center. And when the Novocain wears off and your jaw will only open a few inches because it’s rebelling against being held wide open for three hours by some medieval jaw-stretching device, choosing the right foods and eating them slowly becomes a priority. 

A leftover veggie burger was the first to go down. I was grateful I’d taken the time when I made them to chop all the veggies finely and not rush through the process and settle for using big chunks of carrots and onions. I’m impatient that way. It took about 15 minutes to eat it, and a little ketchup was stuck on my lip for about an hour because I couldn’t feel it, but it was much tastier than I remember it being last night. Why? Because last night I was eating dinner while watching “Jeopardy.” I can’t concentrate on Alex Trebek and a veggie burger at the same time, and Alex was more appealing at the moment.

Next I ate a banana dipped in PB2 (a powdered peanut butter I mix with water). Usually I just run the banana through a dish of PB2 while I work at my computer. This time I had to cut it up and add it to the PB2 and eat each little bit slowly. All the while I thought, Why don’t I do this more often? Savor the joy of eating? 

String cheese is a lot of fun when you peel it. Fresh raspberries taste much better one at a time. And Tic Tacs really don’t have to be chewed the minute you put them in your mouth. Who knew?

Back in July, I blogged at Lynn’s Weigh about what I consider finger foods. I reread it today and remembered it’s fun to eat broccoli or clean out a pudding cup with your fingers! I’ve put steamed broccoli on the menu for tonight along with a tomato and red lentil soup I haven’t made in ages.

It’s good to be reminded that eating should be fun, even if it that reminder comes in the form of a root canal. I’d like to incorporate less drastic reminders into my day, though, and would appreciate any tips you have. In what ways do you savor food? How do you stay present when you eat? Thanks, as always, for your ideas!

On Those Who Embrace Hunger

By Barbara Berkeley

In the January article that detailed her weight regain, Oprah famously mentioned the doctor who suggested that she “embrace hunger .” This was not a suggestion to which Oprah took kindly, nor would most of us. Yet there are a group of people who do welcome the sensation of an empty stomach. These are the practitioners of CRON, or Caloric Restriction with Optimal Nutrition.

The CR movement is a fascinating one. It is made up of people who believe that they can attain superior health and longer life by eating less…a lot less.

In the “60 Minutes” segment I wrote about last week, part of the focus was trained on caloric restrictors. This is because the subject of the segment was life extension. Significant restriction of calories has been shown to prolong life and promote vigor in almost every species tested to date. Humans, however, have not yet been studied. The major question that remains is whether eating a lot fewer calories wil also cause humans to live longer. No one yet knows. In a very real way, CRON practitioners are doing this experiment on themselves.

Why should a life of semi-starvation extend lifespan? The possible answer lies in the SIRT gene. This gene seems to prolong longevity when it is activated and caloric restriction appears to activate it. (As I mentioned in my earlier post, the chemical compound Resveratrol may also cause activation.) But why should such an adaptation exist? Perhaps this mechanism was designed so that a species could slow down aging in order to get past a period when food was scarce. This would give the species a better chance of reproducing and passing along its DNA. Another possibility is that the act of eating and processing food has a destructive side. Free radicals, for example, are destructive electrons that are thrown off by the body which damage cells and tissues, a process called “oxidative stress.” Perhaps when eating is curtailed, the damage is less and aging proceeds more slowly. At the present time, the exact mechanisms are unknown.

One of interesting sidebars to the caloric restriction saga is the story of Dr. Roy Walford. Dr. Walford was one of the first people to try to extend life by eating less. He also was a member of the crew of the Biosphere, an experiment you may remember. The Biosphere was a totally enclosed environment which grew its own food and recycled its air and water. A number of problems arose during the time he spent inside the Biosphere. Later on, however, Dr. Walford became a devoted practitioner of caloric restriction. Along with his daughter, he wrote a number of books about his belief in CRON. Unfortunately, Dr. Walford did not achieve the extended life he hoped for. He developed ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and died at age 79. He is said to have believed that the Biosphere experience, and not his diet, caused his illness. There is no way to know.

Animals such as monkeys and mice who are fed very limited calories are described as more youthful and vigorous then their well-fed peers. They have shinier coats and appear to be more energetic. You can make your own judgement about the human CR practitioners shown on “60 Minutes.” In my view, they did not look to be youthful, energetic or even particularly well. For a look at younger CRonies (as they call themselves), you can look at the CR website. These people look quite a bit healthier.

The question of what constitutes the optimal lifestyle remains unanswered. I wonder what you believe it to be? One thing is certain, there is not enough scientific evidence to provide any definite answer. As a result, optimal lifestyle practices remain a matter of opinion. Despite the built-in uncertainty, people who practice select lifestyles are often adamant about them and believe vehemently that their choice is best.

Early studies of CR practitioners reveal that their blood pressure, cholesterol, sugars and other health markers benefit from their lifestyle. But is it necessary for any of us to go this far for health? There is no question that those of us who maintain lowered levels of visceral fat and who eat diets that are closer to our original diet (vegetarian, Primarian, Mediterranean and other similar diets) have similar health benefits. Perhaps our goal should be healthy life, rather than extended life.

Grapes or Gold?

By Barbara Berkeley

You may (or may not) have noticed my absence over the past couple of weeks. Many thanks to Lynn for holding down the fort! I’ve been on a big adventure in Argentina where Don and I were invited to a family wedding. Since then, we’ve been traveling with our cousins Doug and Dolores in Patagonia, the southernmost region of the country. As I write this, I’m sitting in the empty restaurant of our hotel – one of the few spots where I can pick up the internet. Amazingly, I am staring at the very end of a huge and ancient icefield: the Perito Merino glacier, which stops suddenly at Lake Argentina. Each day, the glacier calves off huge chunks of ice that fall into the lake with bangs, pops and ear splitting roars.

Earlier this year I wrote about the smaller size of people in France, and I must say that I’ve observed a similar phenomenon here. Argentinians are not generally overweight, even though their diet is heavy in beef, pork, lamb, cheese and other foods that Americans tend to think of as no- nos. As in France, the life here remains closer to the earth. More people eat primary foods. There is very little fast food and there doesn’t seem to be much eating between meals. On the other hand, obesity must be increasing because there are diet gurus establishing themselves and celebrities doing public weight-loss make-overs.

At our last stop in the beautiful mountain town of Bariloche, we had the opportunity to spend several days on an “estancia” which is a sort of country estate. There we met Ines and her husband Jorges who were on vacation from Buenos Aires. Ines said that, with the exception of weddings and other social events (where huge quantities of food are served), people in Argentina tend to eat in a restrained way. She herself is a follower of physician Dr. Maximo Ravenna, who is a very well-known figure here, perhaps a kind of Argentinian Dr. Atkins. His low carb diet is much debated and discussed. (It was interesting to read some of the local blogs about him.)

Ines told me that her average day includes mostly fruits, vegetables, fish and a kind of light, soft cream cheese that is popular here. She has had some difficulty with her weight in the past, but is slim by American standards and watches herself. Ines and Jorge are both elegant people with tremendous warmth, a characteristic that is common to most of the Argentinians we’ve met. Just as we observed in France, there seems to be more value placed here on simplicity and restraint than we have in the U.S. For us at home, so much is about consumption and grandness. This has gotten us into trouble both financially and physically.

At the estancia, a good deal of each meal came straight from a large vegetable garden. Raspberries were abundant, so we were treated to every form of raspberry concoction, from raspberry sauce, to raspberry tarts, to raspberry sherbet. All of the greens, vegetables, tomatoes and tiny potatoes were home grown and most of the meats here are grass fed, making them slightly tougher, but extremely flavorful. Argentina also has some excellent wine making areas and produces very good merlots, malbecs and several white wines. I generally don’t have wine every day, but have been drinking more here while on vacation.

In the midst of all this wine consumption, Lynn wrote to ask whether I had seen the recent 60 Minutes segment on resveratrol. For those of you who are unfamiliar with resveratrol, it’s a substance found in the skin of red grapes. It appears to have a powerful antioxidant effect. More provocative, though, is its ability to activate a gene which may retard aging: the Sirtuin gene. Its effects are only manifest, however, when doses approximate the amount of resveratrol found in 1000 bottles of wine per day!!!

Much has been made of resveratrol and it has been the topic of much speculation. I’ve never been sure just what to think of it. The 60 Minutes piece only adds to my ambivalence. You might say that I am not a fan of cures that involve a “magic pill.” While I am not opposed to truly miraculous medical solutions for our ills, experience remains a good teacher. Individual potions, pills, nostrums and even scientifically proven cures tend to approach only one tentacle of a complex problem. The body, being a highly diverse and redundant mechanism, often responds by creating another problem.

David Sinclair is a Harvard biochemist and that gives him a good deal of credibility. I have enormous respect for the Harvard medical community which is generally one where brilliance and high integrity flourish. Perhaps Sinclair has really discovered something. But the 60 Minutes piece does not give me the evidence. In fact, it raises a number of red flags.

First, many people postulate that red wine is the reason for the so-called “French Paradox,” the seeming contradiction between an atherogenic diet and a low incidence of heart disease. Sinclair himself discusses the fact that he was excited by finding that resveratrol was present in wine, as it might explain this paradox. But how can resveratrol at the tiny doses found in wine have any effect if it takes doses that are many thousands of times greater to see any effect experimentally?

Second, the Sirtris scientists claim that their new pill can treat the diseases of aging. They then reference a study of 96 diabetics in India. While some effects were seen in the way treated diabetics handled dietary sugar (as measured by a glucose tolerance test), there was no statistically significant change in their fasting blood sugar measurements when compared to controls. Statistical significance is the name of the game in scientific research. These results are not mind blowing, that’s for sure. Perhaps there was no additional time to address other studies but one would think that in this forum the strongest results would be presented. In this particular news segment, the mouse that ran further on the treadmill was the most robust evidence presented.

Third, my computer, receiving a signal in Patagonia, froze up on the part of the tape that showed the data regarding the Indian study above. While I was waiting, I had time to read the papers which were displayed on the screen. Both showed reports of the study that were published, not in scientific journals, but in announcements of meetings for investors. One was publicity for the JP Morgan Society Health Conference which is described as follows on its web page:

This event is the premier conference of its kind, bringing together established industry leaders, emerging fast-growth companies, innovative technology creators and globally minded service providers. This year we expect more than 300 companies, both public and private, to deliver presentations to more than 3,500 investors. The format is 30-minute presentations followed by 30-minute Q&A sessions in a separate room.

As the 60 Minutes segment makes clear, Sirtris is big business. It’s sale to GlaxoSmithKline brought a neat three-quarters of a billion dollars. This figure says less about the potency of this wonder drug than about our American desire to have our cake and eat it too. Any savvy drug company knows that a pill that promises us a way to eat French fries, cheesecake and hamburgers while staying eternally youthful will make them eternally rich. Resveratrol just has to work modestly to be a winner.

Look, I could be totally wrong and resveratrol could make us all live to 250. But as I sit here looking at this glacier, a field of ice that is millions of years old, certain things seem to me to be painfully obvious. How can we deny that we are part of this huge, wild, overwhelming planet? And why would we want to? Eating more naturally, getting out into nature, following the rhythms of the planet, staying the lean beings we are designed to be: these are the true measures of health and balance that I see. And they have the added benefit of allowing us to feel truly balanced and whole. From where I’m sitting, we can’t “beat” nature. Perhaps we need to align ourselves with it, not find ever more ways to fight against it.

Through the Ringer

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

I wear two rings – a wedding band and mother’s ring – and I really put them through the ringer with all my weight gain and weight loss these last 10 years. Seems like they’ve spent more time at the jeweler’s than on my fingers.

It wasn’t just my waistline that expanded when I went from 190 in 1999 to 300 pounds in 2003. My feet grew from a size 8/8½ to a 9/9½ and my ring fingers went from a size 6 to a 7½  on one hand and 8 on the other.

In the case of my wedding ring, I refused to not wear it and so I had it sized up whenever it became a struggle to get it on and off, and sized down when it got too loose. Poor thing went to the jeweler at least seven times. As I lost weight, I tried using one of those springy sizer insert things, but I have really sensitive skin and it made me itch like crazy. Ergo, it got resized.

My mother’s ring was a different story. I’d always admired my mom’s mother’s ring – a lovely white gold band with each of her five children’s birthstones circling her finger. It was such a cool symbol of love and family. I mentioned to my own kids once in awhile that I’d like to have a mother’s ring, so when they and my husband gave me a lovely ring of two triangular stones – one aquamarine for March, one blue topaz for December – for Mother’s Day when I weighed about 200 pounds, I got all teary-eyed and mom on them. It meant the world to me.

They’d bought the standard showcase size 6 and it didn’t fit, so I had it sized to a 6½. It fit for 20 more pounds before it got too tight, and once I got it off (after using a goodly amount of Vaseline and soap suds), I put it in my jewelry box where it lived for eight years.

During that time, my kids often asked me whatever happened to my mother’s ring. I always felt bad telling them it was in my jewelry box. “It needs to be resized,” was my standard response. But I always forgot. Why this wasn’t a priority for me I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, but still, the jewelry I wear usually has some sentimental or emotional significance, like the thin chain bracelet I wear on my right wrist. When my youngest daughter gave it to me, I couldn’t clasp it because my wrists were too big. Now it dangles nicely and I wear it as a reminder of what was and could be again if I don’t stay mindful. So how could I let my mother’s ring, the thing I professed I wanted and cherished, sit lonely and unworn in my jewelry box?

Two weeks ago, I pulled my head out of my bum after one of my daughters asked once again, “So why don’t you wear your mother’s ring?” I finally brought it to the jeweler for one more resizing and I picked it up on Saturday. Now we’re getting reacquainted.

It feels strange on my finger and my typing’s a bit off, but I’ll get used to it. I’ll make sure I do. This ring and my wedding ring, like my body, have been through the ringer, and we’re all looking forward to same-sizedness for a long, long while.