Oatmeal and Fruit: Okay the official title of this McDonald's breakfast is Maple and Fruit - but it is oatmeal. I saw a sign for it at the store so I came home to look it up. As I was browsing/searching the online menu I was distracted by the Cinnamon Melt. The oatmeal breakfast is not so bad with 290 calories and 7 g of sat fat (the cream adds some). I do not know the weight of the meal and cannot tell if this is low energy dense or not. The Cinnamon dish has 460 calories and half the sat fat that you or an average person who does not exist would need in a day.
Living Large and Aging: I seem to recall that Elizabeth Taylor lived a big life. She and Zsa Zsa Gabor are examples of how that can catch up with you. Today I watched a movie, The Whales of Autumn which stared two Hollywood megastars from years past, Lillian Gish and Bette Davis. The movie was made in 1987 and they played women in their 80s. As I watched them move about with tentative steps and stooped postures, I thought of two women of similar age that are important to me. They are my father's sister and my mother. The women in the movie were frail like my aunt. She has enjoyed her food and drink and a sedentary later life. She is also a breast cancer survivor. However, there was zero resemblance between these characters and my mother. She is fit and hardy and healthy and active and robust. Clearly her real age is decades younger than her given age. How we live has everything to do with how we will die - most of the time it correlates, but before anyone challenges me, yes there are exceptions. I thought more about this post when I was eating dinner and wanted to add, my Mother's good health does not appear to be related to genetics - in case someone is going to suggest that! She has several siblings with diabetes, two of which are deceased. One of her sisters died of lung cancer. Yes that aunt was a smoker and my other maternal aunts liked their sweets and their seats. Just to emphasize, my Mom's Facebook status earlier this afternoon was, "just got back from riding my bike, it was a little windy but I did it." Crazy madness :)
The Resistance to Avoid: Resistance training involves exercises that increase your strength. Resistance training has a positive impact on weight, agility, balance and ones continued ability to engage in activities of daily living - i.e. independence. The type of resistance you do not want is insulin related. Insulin is released in the body when there is excess sugar in our blood. We all have too much sugar in our bloodstream after certain meals and the body regulates that for us, usually without any problems. Persons who are overweight and who do not exercise AND who sit for long periods of time will increase their chances of having insulin resistance. If nothing is done to reverse this problem, i.e. eat better, exercise daily AND sit less, then one's risk for diabetes increases. Diabetes can lead to vascular disease - a disease related to blood flow and this can negatively impact many systems and organs. (see the note avove about my aunts)
Marketing: In yesterday's blog there was a concept model that listed the environment as having the potential for being obesogenic. This is a relatively new term that is used to describe conditions that make obesity easy. Being exposed to cheap, high calorie food in your school, work and neighborhood is one of those factors, as is marketing. I say this just so I can include a quote from my newest favorite researcher, Boyd Swinburn from Australia. He has recently published the results of research on children in that country. The rates of overweight and obesity have come down a few percentage points. In a news story, he is quoted as saying, ''The marketing of junk food to children ... is still an enormous force undermining parents' attempts to create healthy diets for their children and regulatory action by government is long overdue.''
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