Tag Archives: nutrition

Snackwell’s skullduggery

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myguitarzz via flickrIn what can only be seen as complete universal injustice, we here at ShrinkGeek have to hold down regular old nine-to-five jobs in order to put our healthy food on the table. Fortunately, the job that I’ve got is a pretty decent one – especially when you factor in the benefits. In particular, the employee gym we have in our corporate headquarters is pretty nice. I’m down there at least once a day, and it has helped me considerably in my efforts to refocus on my weight loss in the last year.

One thing we do not have, however, is a cafeteria. We’re a decent-sized company, but we don’t really have enough staff in our main location to justify that kind of expense. The only access we have to food comes in the form of vending machines, and as someone who traditionally doesn’t carry cash, that has never been a viable option for me… up until last week, anyway. We recently switched vendors, and now all of the food dispensary units in our break room take debit cards.

Unfortunately, many of the options in those machines can’t really be slotted into the “healthy choices” category. In fact, some of the ones that seem obvious choices in that arena are far from it.

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Socially acceptable starvation diets

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Image courtesy of Ethan Hein

Image courtesy of Ethan Hein

One of the things that I hear often at my WeightWatchers.com® meetings is that those of us on program are not “dieting” but attempting to change our lifestyle.  There’s a very valid reason they try to make that distinction.  For most of us diet is a four letter word, albeit one you’re allowed to say on television (Link contains profanity and is NSFW).   If you tell the world you are on a diet not only are you letting everyone around you know that you are not comfortable with your current weight (and thus do not “love yourself for who you are”), you also open yourself up to an uncomfortable level of scrutiny in social situations (“Are you sure you should be eating THAT?”).   So instead of packaging their program as “diet” (and all the negative baggage that goes along with it) the folks at Weight Watchers instead choose to say they are promoting a healthy lifestyle change.

The positive labeling trend seems to be catching on, but some of these new “healthy lifestyle changes” are nothing more than good old fashioned starvation diets wrapped up in a pretty name.

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User Queries : Dealing With Loose Skin

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Question Mark

One of the things I am having to deal with already in my weight loss effort is loose skin on my inner thighs, lower abdomen, and pelvic regions. I have looked around on Google and gotten a LOT of conflicting information that focused mainly around BMI and lean tissue vs body fat content.  I am not sure what to trust short of going to a dermatologist or Cosmetic Surgeon for a consultation and asking, “What do I do?”

– Anonymous Reader

Well, anonymous, let me state right off the bat here that if you want a definitive answer to this question you SHOULD go see a medical professional for a consultation.  I’m not a doctor, nor is anyone here at ShrinkGeek, and all of what I’m about to offer is simply a healthy mix of some internet research peppered with my personal opinion.  I don’t have the fancy letters after my name to prove that anything you’re about to read is true, nor do I have the malpractice insurance behind me if it turns out I’m completely wrong.

Now that I’ve gotten all those messy disclaimer things out of the way to cover my posterior let me state that I have, indeed, done a bit of research into this subject.  I, too, have wrestled with the loose skin question and have often said that I may end up needing to have surgery to remove it as well.  I have even gone so far as to have consulted a plastic surgeon about my predicament, and as such I’m happy to pass on what I have learned to you.

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Experts Argue For National Sugary Drink Tax

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Image by whalesalad

Image by whalesalad

I wrote here a few months ago about how Governor David Patterson of New York was pushing for a 15% obesity tax on sugary drinks (and about how I personally thought that was a pretty lame idea).  In a follow-up to that proposal Kelly Brown of Yale University and New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden have made the case for a national sales tax on sugared drinks in an article written for the New England Journal of Medicine.

If implemented as proposed in their article, the tax would increase the cost of sugared drinks by 1 cent per fluid ounce, which doesn’t sound so bad until you realize that a standard can of soda is 12 fluid ounces.  12 cents per can turns into an additional $1.44 in taxes on a 12 pack of soda!

According to the article, adolescents consume 10 to 15 percent of their calories in the beverages they drink.  The authors, in proposing the national tax, believe that the higher costs of sugary drinks due to the tax will not only cut down on those numbers but will also raise additional money that can be used to battle the costs of healthcare attributed to our expanding national waist line.

I can’t really argue with the logic here.  I personally can attest that cutting sugared soda out of my life was probably one of the largest contributors to my weight loss, and we wouldn’t be writing for this site if it weren’t for the fact that there’s a large number of people out there who want to lose weight.  I also recognize, from first hand experience, that higher taxes can be a deterrent to unhealthy activities.  Krystalle and I recently quit smoking as a result of the federal sales tax increases that pushed the cost of cigarettes here in Florida over $5 per pack.

I get the motivation behind it.  I really do.

However…

I really do have a problem with the mentality that in order for people to make healthy choices about their lives we need to tax the hell out of anything that is bad for them. Personally?  I’d rather see the Government be proactive in regards to healthy living.  Say, for example, by closing the loopholes that allow broadcasters to get away with putting all the Public Service Announcements they are required to run on the air when nobody is watching.  Or how about tax incentives to companies who manufacture healthy foods that would lower the cost of those foods and make them more accessible to lower income individuals?  Let’s actively educate and make it attractive to people to make better choices in regards to health instead of simply trying to tax them out of it.

Frankly, in the final analysis, if you don’t teach people how to live better they are just going to find ways to work those higher taxes into their budgets and all you’re going to end up doing is adding yet another source of income to the government coffers.

Unfortunately, that might be the point.