Mom in the Middle

of menopause... her career... parenting... life...

It doesn't have to be like this


Updated 6.21.2015
This is stereotypical dieting story. And while I'm sure that plenty of people do this or have experienced this, it doesn't have to be like this. The scenes and sensations described occur mostly when a person decides to follow an arbitrary set of eating rules (ie fad diet— looking at YOU Whole 30) and is miserable. That's not what I did, and it's NOT necessary.

I've written before that I quit dieting in my 20s, and have maintained that stance with a brief relapse into low carbing in my mid 30s (thus explaining my anti-LC bias). I do not consider the path I chose to follow in my early 40s to be a diet. I don't limit what I eat, with the exception of foods that upset my gut, of course. I also don't track or limit intake, EXCEPT that I eat the amount of food that 4' 11" 50+ year old woman should eat if she wants to be my weight. It's not a starvation ration FOR ME, though it might well be for a taller, heavier person (healthy taller people will weight more than healthy shorter people).

This is what the health at every size (HAES) movement gets wrong. Absolutely persuade people not to starve themselves. It is what I try to do here. BUT be honest with people about the energy balance— and that's where the HAES falls apart. Because the amount that you eat (and if you're restricting a macronutrient — ie. eating low carb) is DIRECTLY related to the size that you are. It's not shaming to say this, it's a fact. And as I've said numerous times, if you're happy being "large and in charge" good on you, but you don't get to pretend that your larger size is unrelated to the energy balance.
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Quick notes for Mid June 2015


Updated 6.15.2015
Brief takes on recently open tabs in my browser.

There's a reason it's EAT LESS and move more.


The New York Times notes that if you want to be smaller, you need to eat less. There isn't much in the article that will be new to readers here. It is possible to lose weight by simply moving more, but it's much easier if you also eat a bit less. As bad as many are at being aware of the number of calories they eat, most are worse at estimating how many calories they burn while moving. The numbers just aren't very high. To create a calorie deficit with moving your have to move for much longer and much greater intensity than most people do or would car to do.
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Fast or easy weight loss, pick one


Updated 6.12.205
As diet gurus go, GoKaleo is one of the better ones. I don't always agree with what is published there, but she (and now her blogging partner) stick to the facts when it comes to diet and metabolism. They don't push any fad diet, it's basically an eat less and move more site, but with an emphasis on not overly restricting to get the eat less part. This is a recent GoKaleo post that I can mostly agree with.

I agree that weight loss can be fast (see any fad diet) or weight loss can be easy. They are still not pushing any particular fad for the fast part, basically the difference between the two options amounts to how carefully you're going to track your energy intake and output and how restrictive you will make your total calories. I'm not a fan of overly restrictive diets, they aren't much fun. And clearly, I chose the easier, slower route.

That having been said, I think that my method of slow and easy is much easier because it's not based on trying to establish or maintain any particular energy deficit. Rather, "my way" to lose weight (as I've discussed numerous times here) is to decide what size human you want to be, then use the NIH site's model to calculate how much a healthy human of that weight (and activity level) eats. Then accept that to be that size you need to eat that amount of energy for the rest of your life. Begin to eat that way and let your weight settle at its new set point, which will take a bit of time.
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Big food faces a big challenge


Updated 6.10.2015
This might be a good opportunity to use the phrase (cliche?) "death by 1000 cuts." Fortune reports that Big Food (large conglomerate processed food manufacturers) is experiencing declining market share. In this case, I am with those who celebrate this change. Not because I'm against companies who process food per se, but because I am against what that food has become.

My background is pertinent here.


I am a materials science engineer by training. Although I never did, one type of job such engineers can be hired to do is to tweak industrial processes so that constituents are delivered in factory at the correct temperature, composition, viscosity, etc. At the size of production at these food factories, the components are food any more, they're materials in a process. That's how all the preservative and chemical additives come to be used. Not because they are necessary for food prep, but because they are necessary for processing such a large mass of material.

I've certainly told the story in person, but I'm not sure I've ever written it down and published it before. (No matter, really, given how few people read these pages.) A significant engineering problem is scaling, as in scaling up a process from the lab (or kitchen) to an industrial scale operation. It is never a case where a small batch process can simply be multiplied by a factor to be done on a larger scale.
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Treadmill Desk Update


Updated 6.10.2015
An update on treadmill desks, inspired by this New York Times article. The author seems surprised that it takes time to master a new task. This is the study upon which the Times' article is based.

Yes, you must adapt to using the treadmill desk


I have written numerous times about my use of the treadmill desk, and not always positively. However, I was always up front about the fact that it took time to get used to working while walking, and that it time to build up to working at a faster speed.

I continue to use my treadmill desk almost daily (depending on circumstances), and when I do I walk at a 2 mile per hour pace. Lately I've been walking a small incline, but that's an effect of a change in my running habits. Along with walking or standing while working, I am still running on my treadmill three times a week. I read something that running at a 2% incline was supposed to be closer to running on pavement, and so I set the treadmill incline there. I tend to forget to change it regularly, and so to make sure that I run on the incline I leave the treadmill set there. That wouldn't fly at a gym of course, but that's why I prefer to work out at home. I make the rules, and there's no monthly fee.
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The "Paleo" diet, the closer you look, the more it unravels.


Updated 6.4.2015
Periodically I have noted when voice in the "paleo" movement announce that they are leaving. I'm not the only one who's noticed that "paleo" isn't the answer for many. In this case though, it isn't the complaints of erstwhile gurus that are chronicled, it's the struggles of actually "paleo" dieters. The comments are taken from a closed Facebook group, which might be a violation of Facebook's terms of service.

Loren Cordain has been cherry picking for awhile. Here's a discussion of how he came to the conclusion that peanuts were not healthy to consume. There's a difference between nuts and their oils. So studies that indicate that oil ingestion might not be completely healthy don't really indicate that the whole nut is dangerous. Which is precisely the conclusion that the writer comes to, and then presents evidence that ingestion of peanuts has been associated with many positive health outcomes. The more I learn about Cordain, the greater my dismissal of his work becomes.
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Quick notes for mid May 14, 2015


Updated 5.14.2015
Quick comments derived from reading the various tabs open in my browser currently. Basically what interested me as I did my morning web reading.

Moving 2 minutes per hour offsets effects of sitting


Sitting for long stretches of time increases the risk of premature mortality (early death). A New York Times article reports that moving for 2 minutes out of each hour sitting could mitigate some of that. Standing rather than sitting was not associated with improved mortality, but walking was, which is another vote in favor of the treadmill desk.

However, what I find in using my stationary standing desk is that though I obviously move less than when I'm at the treadmill, I still wind up walking around more than if I would be sitting at a desk.

Push Ups are better than planks


I do both exercises, though I do push ups more often than planks. I was curious as to which was better, and at least according this site, the answer is push ups. Apparently once you can hold a plank for three minutes (I cannot) you've maxed out the benefit of doing a plank. There are a huge variety of different styles of push ups, which means not only will you not get bored with the exercise (an issue with planks) you work many more muscles. Good to know, especially if you're a runner because planks don't work the muscles that runners use.
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Quick notes for mid May 2015


Updated 5.12.2015
Quick comments derived from reading the various tabs open in my browser currently.

Exercise is absolutely part of a healthy weight loss.


The low carb high fat (LCHF) crowd has been touting an editorial published at BMJ (the former British Medical Journal) that argued that exercise isn't good for weight loss. I don't necessarily disagree having noted any number of times that you "can't outrun your fork" and that, "there's a reason eat less comes before move more." However, the editorial writers are LCHF purveyors who have written and sold books touting the diet, which they did not disclose. Someone complained, and the article was pulled for a bit and the disclosures were added.

Dr Tim Noakes (one of the authors) in under investigation in his home country of South Africa for telling mothers to wean their infants onto a LCHF diet— which is stupid on its face. I'm not going to waste too much time on the issue because this article takes apart the nonsense, and notes the evidence on the effect of exercise on diet.

Moving more is incredibly important while losing weight. Yes, you can lose weight using a calorie deficit alone. However, exercising and maximizing non-exercise movement (non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT) definitely helps offset any metabolic slowing. Moving more also gives you a buffer to maintain a energy deficit in the energy balance equation while eating or drinking a bit more. There are plenty of other benefits to exercise, of course, but to lose weight you must expend more energy than you ingest, and movement will help you do that.
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Low carb necessary after menopause? Heck no.


Updated 5.4.2015; corrected 5.11.2105

Well, now that I've started telling my menopause tale, I suppose I should continue. Menopause and its effects aren't discussed nearly enough, and unlike almost any other topic you can name, this did not change as the Baby Boom generation went through it. It is still difficult to find good information about the myriad effects of menopause. No woman's transition to menopause is exactly the same as another's, but it would have been helpful to have read how others managed it. The few books that I did find on the subject always defaulted to hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

I was never a candidate for HRT because I have breast cancer in my maternal family tree, but I entered menopause shortly after the results emerged that showed the HRT increased the risk for cardio vascular disease (at least that's what I remember, its actually not worthwhile to spend the time googling the answer. I wasn't a candidate, but even had I been I'm not sure I'd have done it. Mucking with your hormonal levels is to be avoided if possible in my view. There are obvious exceptions of course. If I wake up one morning with type one diabetes I will take the insulin needed to live. But HRT was never "needed to live."
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Time to talk about menopause and gluten


Updated 5.1.2015
I have occasionally mentioned in passing on these pages that I minimize gluten in my diet. Please note the verb there, MINIMIZE. I have been tested for celiac's, the details of which will be discussed shortly, and I do not have celiac's disease. I do not think that I have any sort of wheat allergy either. So why avoid gluten? Because when I do, my gut is happier (I have no IBS symptoms).

These thoughts were spurred by this article in Vox, but I've lost count of the number of articles "debunking" the need to avoid gluten and/or touting how healthy gluten is. If gluten doesn't bother your, mangia bene— you can have my portion too because for me avoiding it has improved my quality of life.

tl;dr summary



Post Menopause


I have always meant to discuss my passage through menopause in these pages, the word appears after all in the tagline for this site, but for various reasons have not yet. That changes with this post (or posts depending on how long this gets or how often I return to the topic).

My gluten tale begins with my menopause. As discussed in more detail elsewhere, I went through menopause on the early side of typical. I was 42 the first time I paused in my menses, and was 45 at the point where I declared it finished.
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Quick Notes for Mid April 2015


Updated 4.23.2015
Short takes on recently read items. Not really mid-April at this point, but there you go.

Does eating many mini-meals per day matter?


Probably not is the conclusion of a recent paper co-authored by Alan Aragon. It’s a meta-study, which showed not much of anything. Per the discussion, any effect was the result of a single paper that showed a large effect, the other included studies did not. I'm not really sure how this paper got published, but Aragon et al did it because meal frequency is one of those things people argue about.

Fiber in the diet


Eat a diet high in fiber is a cornerstone of the dietary guidelines, and I have no problem withe the recommendation. I do have a problem with the focus on eating whole wheat. You do NOT have to eat whole wheat anything to get fiber into your diet. In fact, you don’t have to eat whole grain anything to get fiber into your diet. If you eat a lot of veggies and fruits, you’re probably good, even without the wheat and grains.

Even my vegetable phobic son, because he’ll eat kale chips is probably okay on the fiber front. At least now while he lives at home. And the fact that he will eat a carrot or some green beans or peas also means that his diet has fiber. And that’s before you get to the legume filled breads that we make. And why, oh why, do people only mention soluble fiber for legumes. Legumes have a shit-ton of INsoluble fiber too.
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People without kids should not advise parents


Updated 4.13.2015
In the Guardian, Lindy West has advice for parents, despite being childless herself. West is a HAES writer who’s moved on to more mainstream outlets. Here she’s attempting to tell parents how to deal with their kids if they are obese. And of course, she thinks that the very last thing a parent should do is tell the kid. At least she sort of allows that offering healthy food and getting them to move more would be a good thing.

Here’s the deal. Neither of my children wound up being obese, but we did take steps to ensure that their weight gain as they matured wasn’t too rapid. In other words, we PARENTED them, which meant paying attention to how they were developing and altered our choices as needed. The thing is, kids eat what their parents feed them. When we determined that our kids weights were rising a little too rapidly, we ALL changed our diet.
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Garbage in Garbage out


Updated 4.6.2015
This isn't a new sentiment or rant, but it's one I was inspired to write after reading this tripe. It is NOT true that calories or the amount you feed your child doesn't matter. NOR is it true that if you intervene in your child's weight gain while growing that the end point is negative. It doesn't need to be. I raised a (now professional) dancer, I absolutely intervened in her diet choices, both to help her attain her goal and to avoid any eating disorder. It can be done. But it takes consistent effort and monitoring… you know like most of parenting.

So many of these articles are a closed loop. An overweight or obese mother shares her experience and opines that she has freed herself (and her kids) from the tyranny of conventional wisdom. The following is a quote from the article (N.B: I don't like the way block quoting looks like for the template I've chosen, so I'm trying out changing the color of quoted text.)

That’s trickier to ferret out than you might think. The problem is that even the scientific literature is stuck in a chicken-or-egg discussion about behavior and results. Fat children are at higher risk for diabetes and hypertension, true. But it may be that obesity is a symptom, not a cause, of those diseases—and not always a reliable symptom at that.
I added the bold in the quote, and no. Just NO. The body compensates until it cannot. And that is true for kids as well. But goodness gracious, if kids are already stressing their bodies ability to compensate… heaven help us.
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How slippery is that slope?


Updated 4.9.2015
I natter on her quite often about calories and the energy balance, and how easy it's been for me to maintain my weight loss. I also blather on quite a bit about treadmill desks, standing desks and the importance of NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Even so here's another update— a quasi-update on the recent treadmill desk update and an update on my endeavor to lower my set point.

So after writing that circumstances were keeping from using my treadmill desk, circumstances changed so that I am able to do so for a good portion of the day. And so I revert to what I was doing at the end of 2014, which is walking while working for awhile, and then standing awhile working after that. But I decided that this is as good a time as any to review the calorie consequences of not being sedentary.

In the table below, I've listed the energy expenditure measured for humans sitting, standing, or walking at various speeds. The numbers are taken from the source listed below the table. The paper is from James Levine's group, and it's purpose was to measure the caloric effects of working while walking at a treadmill desk. It's important to note that this was energy expended per fat free mass, not total body weight. I'm not sure why they did this, but basically it means they were not considering the effect of a person's fat mass in these measurements. Only the second column in the table is taken from the paper.
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Whither the treadmill desk?


Updated 4.2.2015
Anyone who's read through this site will be aware that I am a treadmill desk user and proponent. However, I have also discussed problems with treadmill desks, and certainly have never suggested that they were a panacea. I haven't provided an update about my treadmill desk in a while, these thoughts were inspired by this NPR piece.

Full disclosure: Lately I have been standing at my desk more than walking because of circumstances beyond my control. Mostly, I have a need to be with my homeschooling son as he finishes high school, which is not easy to do while walking, but there is also the issue of my aging treadmill and how much noise it makes. Treadmills designed for the office environment are much quieter than the exercise versions. There is also the fact (which I’ve noted before) that my treadmill is in my basement. Thus when I work at the treadmill desk I get no natural lighting at all, and I much prefer working in natural light. So while I still use my treadmill routinely for jogging, of late I haven't used it much for work.

The comments at NPR are interesting. There are those who think walking while working is impossible (obviously it isn’t, though there can be a learning curve involved), but others are real objections to treadmill desks in professional settings beyond the cost of the desk.

This is why, though I still like the idea of a treadmill desk, I actually think a standing desk is probably them more likely solution for most offices— if a solution to sedentariness is sought. Standing desks would be far less expensive to implement. Standing doesn’t burn as many calories, but walking on a treadmill isn’t about the calorie burn. It's about getting off your duff.
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Parenting consistency is overrated


Updated 3.25.2015
I’ve hesitated here to write too much about parenting, because well I’m still in the middle of my parenting. So many parent bloggers write as though they have the answer or have found the one true way… I’ve never felt that arrogant. What I’ve done as worked (so far) for me and mine, but might not work for you and yours. Caveat Emptor.

This New York Times Magazine article was the inspiration for these thoughts. I’ve parented one through the teens years and one to adulthood, but with a couple more teen years to go. Neither has followed the standard track through childhood. The first because she is a gifted dancer the second because he needed more time to develop than the school system as it’s evolved after "No Child Left Untested" would give him.

But in neither case did I face anything like the anger the author writes of. I am not a single mother. I cannot over emphasize how important this fact is. Not because I’m some submissive demi-adult, but because I am not and never have been alone in this process. While I think single parents can be successful, I think parenting is easier when there are two people involved.

The woman writing this piece (and many of the parents whose stories she relates) are single parents. I think the single parent dynamic is so different, I’m not even sure it belongs in the same category AND YET, she relates stories from her own past (with an intact home?) that make me wonder.

It’s the physical aspect of the account that caused me to begin this response though, before I'd even finished the article— note that I did read the entire thing. Because with the discussion of parental physical force I think she did hit on something important. And it’s an aspect that dodged— because I had to do so.
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Rules for a Good Marriage


Updated 3.22.2015
This Yahoo article purports to instruct on small things that threaten a successful marriage. It is pure unadulterated bovine excrement. Becoming comfortable with the person with whom you are sharing your life is in no way a bad thing. Just how uptight do you have to be that you have to hide the fact that you experience normal bodily functions?

Of course Yahoo is never a source for useful relationship information, but this article is actively spewing nonsense. The best piece of advice I got when I got married was "remember to be nice to each other." Yes, it's very general— and yet it's all encompassing. If you're nice to someone you are also considerate, so you don't go out of your way to rude or crude in front of them. On the other hand, if you are nice to someone you don't over react if they happen to, oh, let's say fart in front of you.

And speaking of useless nonsense, there's this— also from Yahoo, from a "submissive" wife (claiming to be so happy…) about how hot her marriage is. And I'm sure she thinks that she is happy, which is her right. And it my right to denounce this article as a steaming crock of bovine excrement.
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Maintaining or Refusing to Regain


Updated 3.18.2015
I have talked before about weight maintenance, about how I haven't found it to be too difficult. Since the post linked there, the "10 pounds more than I thought possible" have returned, but I continue to maintain a roughly 30 lb weight weight loss. I've also written about my decision to try to lose a bit more weight and try to establish a new set point. That effort continues, though as expected progress is slow. My purpose here though is to discuss this blog post.

The author is a diet author who lost her own weight using a low carb (LC) eating regimen. Lower carb eating is what she promotes for maintenance, mostly because eating bread, cookies and other refined carbs is an easy way to blow a calorie budget. I was not, I am not a low carber, so to me her insistence that LC is the answer is simply easier calorie control. If you skip the breads and cookies you save a lot of calories. You can save as many (more!) if you skip the fat… but that’s for a different post.

I don’t agree with much this woman writes. But here she makes a point that I have made but in a different manner. That is that the body compensates until it cannot. It may be that the reason that I am able to maintain my weight loss with ease has to do with the fact that I was barely obese when I started seriously trying to lose. Once the body’s compensation mechanisms are overcome though, it would seem that significant changes occur and make maintaining more difficult.

That being said, I do read in the fatosphere, and if you do that carefully and over a long period you will see the writers admit the truth. They eat more than they admit, or they admit to binge eating. Binge eating seems to be a common factor frankly, and the thing about truly bingeing is that immense amounts of calories (multiple days worth) can be consumed. Eating that many calories can easily offset the benefit of any calorie deficit created in previous days.
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Mom in the Middle


Quick Notes for mid March 2015


Updated 3.12.2015
Quick comments derived from reading the various tabs open in my browser currently.

Scoring system for diets


Yoni Freedhoff suggests a new way to score competing diets. His concept is to try and indicate the enjoyability of a given diet. Because any diet (or way of eating) that isn’t enjoyable for you isn’t one to which you will adhere. It’s an interesting concept that is completely impossible to implement.

Someone who loves eating low carb might score that highly, whereas I would not because I disliked eating that way and only lasted about two months. Enjoyability is completely individual. I suppose you could include some sort of personality metric in the score, but I'm not sure that would add any value. I doubt all low carbers are similar in personality any more than are all vegans.

Low fat diet is better for losing body fat
Kevin Hall PhD (of the NIH calculator of which I am so fond) presented new research comparing low fat and low carb diets in terms of fat loss. It’s a metabolic ward study, the results of which perhaps indicate that NuSi will have a big problem if it tries to fudge its results. In this case, they put their subjects (mean BMI 36) into a metabolic ward and fed them the test diets. They were each fed the diets with a wash out period in between.

The results of the study indicate that a low fat diet is better for fat loss than a low carb diet. FAT loss, not WEIGHT loss— weight loss is dependent on calories. They are looking at the effects of manipulating macronutrient levels, which is something body builders have know about for years. If you want to have less body fat, then you must eat less fat.

An important limitation is that they did not address how easy or difficult the diet was to stick to. Adherence as always is the most important thing when it comes to diet. If you don’t like how you’re eating to lose the weight, then you will not continue to eat that way and will put the weight back on. That’s the dirty little secret the fatosphere downplays. Weight loss IS possible and it CAN be maintained, but not if you go back to eating the amount that you did when you were larger. And if you hate the way you're eating, you will go back.

Debating fat?


The new guidelines backed off the limitation on cholesterol, I think the keep saturated fat levels low is still in place. The Star Tribune thinks differently, thanks to Nina Teicholz's revamping of Gary Taubes' work. I can’t identify with either woman mentioned in the piece. Teicholz's diet of 70% fat sounds ghastly to me. And I eat bacon and eggs and plenty of meat. I eat rice, potatoes and pasta (albeit gluten free at the moment). I keep going back to that Greger video about the saturated fat intake and LDL. and at 70% fat, your sat fat intake has to be elevated. I keep remembering that and thinking that in a few years the race back to high fat will result in a health catastrophe. Although, if Boomers suck down ample fat, perhaps they won't be as expensive to care for in their dotage, because a greater percentage will have dropped dead of a heart attack.
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New format, new organization


Updated 3.3.2015
It took a bit longer than I would have liked, but a new web design software package has been chosen and the site redesign has begun. Since I have to reformat the site, I also revisited the organization of the site. The page was intended to be a subsection of the greater arena, but as things turned out, it's really become the principle landing page for the site. The reason this is that it's easier to rant and pontificate than it is to research topics and craft weighty essays.

However, I do want to return to the original arena concept, and thus this section will remain, but new Mom in the Middle content will be published first on the front page of the Prima Arena, and secondarily here as an archive. So all the links will continue to work, it's just that the freshest writing will be on the PBA front page. In fact, maintaining working links is why most of the older content will likely keep its older formatting. Not that anyone does or will, but going through the files of this site is a trip back through my sloppy attempts to learn web design— really not a pretty sight.

Keep moving forward….


Nutritional Cleanses and kids


Updated 3.32015
This rant, and that’s what this is, was occasioned by a Facebook (FB) post of a college friend of mine. This college friend in the past year has become a fan and seller of “nutritional cleanses,” and thus pollutes my FB timeline with success stories of clients and “inspirational” marketing blurbs for the product she sells. To be clear, I don’t know precisely what the damn product is or what the brand even is, because I’ve never asked. Nutritional cleansing is a SCAM. If you have a functional liver and kidneys (and I am in that lucky group of humans) NO other cleansing is required by the body.

So a FB friend is involved in pushing scammy products onto other adults. I’m disgusted by her career choice (she’s newly an empty nester and clearly seeking some sort of meaning for her life now that her prime mommy days are past) but I ignored the posts and/or rolled my eyes about some of them. That is, until last night when I was confronted with the before and after pictures of an 11 year old girl.

Note: I did not snap a screen shot of the offending post because not only should 11 year olds not be marketing fodder, their images should not be exploited in rants either. So there is no hard evidence of this heinous FB post.

The post was a split screen photo of the child before and after the "cleanse," and the accompanying text was congratulating her on losing 25 lbs in 3 months. I will note for completeness, though it really doesn't change any thing in terms of my argument here that though the child looked maybe a tad chubby in the first picture (in that pre-puberty way girls often have) she was by no means hugely fat. In both pictures she was wearing a school volleyball uniform, so that child was not completely sedentary.
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