Debunking the Fat Myth

image via herbalsupplementreview.com

Here are a few must-reads and things to look at in reference to the myths surrounding obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Ground-breaking, enriching, thought-provoking ideas. I only share the best of the best.

1. The paradigm-shifting quote from Gary Taubes' book.

Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious--obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth--is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years.


It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world--while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat--but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who are fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested a half century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it puts the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.

------p. 81 Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes

2. An insightful article "Is Sugar Toxic?"  in the New York Times Magazine on sugar and its effect on not only obesity but every person's long-term health. Loved this read! I literally soaked up every single word.


3. A 90-minute video entitled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" by Dr. Robert Lustig an pediatric endocrinologist. He treats obese children and explains in depth the devastating effects of sugar on not only ourselves but our children as well.





This kind of information fills me up with a gospel-like zeal. I want to shout it to the world! Look at this! It is amazing! How exciting is this research? What an eye-opener! What a wonder!

I've struggled with the chubby factor most of my life. And I've read nearly everything I can about it. I've had a few AH-HA moments along the way. This is one of them. I felt like this book, article, and video synopsized so much of what I have learned the last year or two. They made me happy down to my TOES. I love, love, love insight and wisdom and light.

Take a look for yourself. Maybe you will find something enlightening as well.

More Rearranging

Can you tell what is different in my little place? 

It is big and white and takes up quite a bit of room.

The fridge! You guessed it! I moved the fridge out of the pantry/storage room where it has resided since I moved here. I just never thought there was enough room in my tiny kitchen/living room. The apartment came with the tiny fridge you see in the picture below.

The first week I went grocery shopping and came home and filled the little fridge thinking I would make it work just fine. Until the little fridge froze everything--all the meats, veggies and fruits. So, I bought my own fridge and brought it in but the only place I could find for it was in the storage room.

The storage room/pantry door is the one that is open. I was making that trek from stove to fridge or fridge to sink a thousand times every day. Uggh. Also, don't worry about the door behind the fridge. That goes into my landlady's storage room. She has another apartment in the other half of her basement with a door into that same storage room and that is how she always accesses that room. I think that particular door behind the fridge has only been opened twice since I have lived here.

Well, a few weeks ago, I realized the thing that drives me crazy, crazy, crazy is when I cook, I have to haul everything in from the fridge in the storage room first and then I make a million trips back and forth the whole time I am cooking. While the regular-sized fridge was a step up from the little fridge, it was still inconvenient where it was located but I've been living with it, thinking that I just didn't have enough room to accommodate that fridge in my kitchen space. Plus, wouldn't it look really weird to have a fridge jutting out into the living room and sitting next to my yellow chair?

Well, all that changed several days ago when I realized it mattered more to me now to have a convenient, more effective use of space when I am cooking. I would move the yellow chair out if I had to do it. The kitchen arrangement was more important now. So, I did it--with some amazing help from my mom, the guru of all things homemaking. She is a whiz and made the project fast and easy--and clean. I want to grow up some day to be like her.

I am so thrilled with this change. It makes my life more pleasurable in a thousand tiny ways. I want to cook more and clean up faster. I am so happy with this decision.