kitchen table math, the sequel

Just got this link from Chris....

Can a $400 Blender Change Your Life? Yes:

“I love my Vit-a-mix,” she continued, enunciating each syllable, before launching into a highly complimentary review of the company’s return and repair policy. “I love it so much, I would recommend it to the dead!”

My thoughts exactly.

Chris has lost 35 lbs.

35 lbs! Since June 6. Today is August 21, so that's 11 weeks.

I've lost weight, too, though I can't report how much since I haven't been weighing myself. At least 5 lbs, maybe more. Shorts that were too tight to wear at in June are loose now.

AND: I think I finally understand the Premack principle, which I'm certain is the basis of the VB6 diet we've both been following. VB6 is the first diet I've encountered that uses eating to reinforce not eating^* -- and it works, just as the principle predicts. I would never have guessed, even though I've been reading about the Premack principle for years. I wouldn't have guessed because until now I haven't understood the principle.

I am now thinking PP is the secret to life. (Unless response deprivation is the secret to life. Clearly I need a MOOC on radical behaviorism.)

I'll try to find time to explain tomorrow.


^* Or, more accurately, eating stuff you do like to reinforce eating stuff you don't like

For years I have puzzled over the weirdness of diets and dieting.

When you're on a diet -- when I'm on a diet -- I'm trying to not do something. Not eat ice cream, or not eat potato chips, or not take 2nd, 3rd, or 4th helpings, or not consume any one of a gazillion different things a person would happily wolf down if calories were not an issue. Conceivably, the list of things I'm trying not to eat is infinite.

This has always confounded me. Infinite notness: does that even make sense? I mean, sure, the universe is infinite and all, but does infinite notness make sense as a plan?

Say you're a human being confronting a challenge or pursuing a goal: don't you usually make a plan to actually do something?

Take a concrete step or two?

Formulate a plan of action?

Assuming the answer is generally speaking 'yes,' where do diets fit in? With a diet, the basic idea is to spend 16 hours a day not doing something, so is not doing something the plan?

Not eating junk 16 hours a day every day from now on?

Is not doing something doing something?

I find the whole thing mystifying, and I always have.

The best answer I've come up with is that not doing something isn't doing something, not really. And, as a corollary, not doing something when it comes to food is harder than doing something.

My foray into quasi-veganism seems to support my hunch, but until yesterday I had no idea what research had to say on the subject if anything.

Turns out the precision teaching folk figured it out long ago:

The Dead Man Test

The dead man test was devised by Ogden Lindsley in 1965 as a rule of thumb for deciding if something is a behavior. The need for such a test stems from the importance of focusing on what an organism actually does when attempting to understand or modify its behavior. It serves as a guideline for the identification of whether the "behavior" of interest could be performed or measurably demonstrated by a "dead man."

The question posed by the dead man's test is this: Can a dead man do it? If the answer is yes, it doesn't pass the dead man's test and it isn't a fair pair -– for example "behave appropriately 80% of lunch hour" -– then it is not a well written goal. If the answer is no, you have a fair pair. For example:

Suppose that you wanted a fair pair target behavior for "swears at peers." Let's say that you came up with the target behavior "does not swear at peers." Does this pass the dead man's test? No. A dead man could refrain from swearing at peers. What would be better? How about "speaks to peers without swearing"? This passes the dead man's test because a dead man does not have the power to speak.

Don't eat ice cream is definitely something a dead man can do.

On the other hand, Stop eating ice cream is not something a dead man can do.

sigh

I'm going to eat an apple tomorrow.

We also measured the brain, the hippocampus... What we found was that among the kids with Type 2  diabetes, their hippocampi are smaller in volume, very significantly. For those of you who work in Alzheimer's disease, the difference between the kids with Type 2 diabetes and the control kids [who were obese but did not have Type 2 diabetes] is about the same as that between a normal elderly and one with mild cognitive impairment. So the volume difference is around 12% So this is not a small, little thing. So what will happen to these children, whether we're actually seeing permanent damage or not, we don't know.

Their frontal lobe regions are also affected, and they have more overall brain atrophy than the control group. And remember, the control group was an obese control group.

Impact of Obesity and Metabolic Disease on Brain Structure and Function 5/5/11
Antonio Convit, M.D.
NYU

I haven't watched the entire lecture, but I gather that the reason he tells us to remember that the control group is obese is that we can also expect to see brain changes in obese teens who have not developed Type 2 diabetes, which would mean that the brains of teenagers with Type 2 diabetes are even more different from the brains of normal-weight adolescents.^*

The lecture - the few minutes I've watched of it - is horrifying.

I had no idea.

^*update (4/5/2012)

Right. Obesity in and of itself, without Type 2 diabetes, is linked to brain atrophy. Sounds like overweight may be as well, at least in people over 70.

They found that obese individuals [over age 70] had, on average, 8 percent less brain tissue than people of normal weight, while overweight people had 4 percent less tissue. According to Thompson, who is also a member of UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, this is the first time anyone has established a link between being overweight and having what he describes as "severe brain degeneration."

"That's a big loss of tissue, and it depletes your cognitive reserves, putting you at much greater risk of Alzheimer's and other diseases that attack the brain," he said. "But you can greatly reduce your risk for Alzheimer's if you can eat healthily and keep your weight under control."

btw, remember back when I was bugging everyone about vegan diets making you thin?

Well, they do. I adopted a vegan weight-loss diet in September 2009, lost 11 pounds, and have basically kept it off ever since -- without even being a vegan. I need to get back on track, but still: even part-time veganism makes you thinner than full-time non-veganism.

From time to time, I mention T. Colin Campbell's The China Study: a terrific book. A few minutes ago, I found what I think is probably the main abstract from the published study, so I'm posting the link:

Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China study.
Am J Cardiol. 1998 Nov 26;82(10B):18T-21T.

I went looking for Campbell & Esselstyn after reading Megan McArdle's post arguing that the biggest risk factor for heart disease is age. I'm pretty sure that's not true (as I recall, the biggest risk factor is diet), so I went looking for the incidence of heart disease amongst the Chinese peasants Campbell studied.

While I was at it, I remembered this passage from Esselstyn's book:

Autopsies of soldiers during the Korean and Vietnam Wars showed the effects of America's artery-clogging diet even on the very young. The arteries of Asian soldiers were largely clean, free of fatty deposits. But almost 80 percent of American battlefield casualties showed gross evidence of coronary artery disease--clogging and damage that, had the soldiers lived, would have grown worse with every passing decade. 

I think this passage, more than anything else I've read, was the shocker for me.

I've become a tad health-and-diet-preoccupied here in the New Year. But I figure I am not alone.

Just came across a Gallup poll -- How Americans Who Have Lost Weight Made it Happen -- and thought this was interesting:

Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare survey results reveal the top weight loss tactics Americans say they have used successfully. The 52% of all U.S. adults who say they have succeeded at losing weight at some point in their lives were more likely to credit dietary changes than exercise.

The top three diet-related tactics Americans said they used were eating less, counting calories/portion control, and eating more natural foods. In terms of those who relied on exercise, just working out in general was the most frequently mentioned form of activity.

Fitness in 6 minutes a week:

• 20 to 30 seconds highest intensity exercise you can stand (running, jumping, etc – not sure about weight-lifting per se)
• 4 minutes rest
• repeat 20 to 30 seconds of highest intensity you can stand
• repeat rest
• continue for 4 to 6 cycles
• repeat 3 times a week

Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?
by GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
June 24 2009

Fasting exercise:

• 3 groups 28-year old men
• overate by 30% of what they actually needed
• diet was 50% fat
• 1 group did no exercise
• 1 group did rigorous running/cycling exercise 4 mornings a week – two workouts were 90 minutes; two were 60 AFTER eating breakfast & while also drinking sports drinks during exercise
• 3rd group ate the same & did same exercise BEFORE breakfast – in fasting state
• no-exercise group gained more than 6 pounds, became insulin resistant, and began storing fat inside muscle
• vigorous exercise-after-breakfast group gained 3 pounds, also became insulin resistant & began storing fat inside muscle
• fasting-exercise group gained no weight, did not become insulin resistant, and showed increase in protein related to glucose transport in muscle
• exercise in fasting state burns fat, not carb
• probably any level of fasting exercise would be better than nothing

The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
by Gretchen Reynolds
December 15, 2010

I've decided to put these two together. I'm nixing the 90-minute workout in favor of a 10-minute walk/run with the dogs and 4 high-intensity cycles of jump-rope.^*

Will let you know how it goes

^*Speaking of jump rope, today's jump ropes, the ones with the "precision" ball bearing handles are awful! They spin too fast and too erratically, so much so that my sister calls them "spinny." What happened to the old jump ropes with hollow wood handles & the rope threaded through? Apparently someone's going to have to reinvent them. Fortunately, I discovered today that it is possible to get a very good workout jumping rope without the rope. All you have to do is imagine the rope.

exercise before breakfast:

The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance — their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently — and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently. “Our current data,” the study’s authors wrote, “indicate that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet.”
Phys Ed: The Benefits of Exercising Before Breakfast
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
December 15, 2010, 12:01 AM

This year's New Year's Resolution.

I've been mulling this year's resolutions. So far I'm thinking they may have to be mostly about 2 of the kids:

• daily PSAT prep for C. (which means daily math, mostly)

• daily GrammarTrainer for Andrew (we were going great guns until I fell off the wagon)
  

• teach Andrew to pedal a bike (so not looking forward to that one)
  

Still need a resolution for me. Possibly: make enough money to pay somebody else to do test prep. That would be good.

Actually, this is the one I'm gearing up for:

A year ago, the Lincoln, Neb., artist and writer was so disorganized that she spent much of her time looking for misplaced supplies in her office clutter. To find all the Web sites where she had posted her artwork, "I often had to Google my own name," she says. But she made a resolution last New Year's Day to get organized, and now, a year later, she is sticking to it. With the clutter gone and her deadlines and routines under control, she says, "my life is so much easier."

A Cheat Sheet for Making New Year's Resolutions
by Sue Shellenbarger

Speaking of office clutter, we bought Billy bookshelves at Ikea today. The corner combination. So, clearly, I need a resolution to go with.

And, speaking of resolve, I am now basically a strict vegetarian.^* Well, strict except for the Swedish meatballs. I've lost 7 pounds.

It took me three months to stop eating meat, chicken, fish, dairy, eggs, refined carbohydrates, salt, and olive oil,^** but after a quarter century of trying I still can't organize my office.

That is preposterous.


^* I refuse to use the word 'vegan' in public.
^** still eating some salt & vegetable oil

Yesterday, Ed and I were experimenting with our groovy new, life-extending Vita Mix blender when we noticed Andrew systematically emptying the refrigerator of vegetables. We did what we often do: ordered him to Stop and then, after spending a few seconds discussing the mystery that is Andrew (deciding in this case that Andrew must be collecting vegetables because he wanted to watch us blend stuff he wouldn't drink on a bet), went back to what we were doing and forgot all about Andrew, who had by this time left the kitchen. Out of sight, out of mind.

Andrew has never eaten a fresh vegetable in his life. He ate baby food vegetables when he was little, but when he stopped eating baby food he stopped eating vegetables. He doesn't eat fruit, either. Or noodles or rice or eggs or Chinese or Japanese food or hot dogs or hamburgers, and so on. In short, Andrew has an eating disorder. Two eating disorders: his autistic eating disorder (eating disorders seem to be common in autism) and his feeding-tube-as-a-preemie eating disorder (not sure whether doctors believe such a thing exists, but I do).

The reason we have a groovy new, life-extending blender, in case you're wondering, is that my sisters and brother and I have been scared straight by my mom's heart failure,^* and my brother's scheme for not getting diabetes and also not getting heart failure was to buy a commercial-strength blender that makes commercial-strength smoothies and the best potato soup my California sister says she's ever eaten.

That ought to do it.

After I'd spent about 60 seconds considering the life-extending properties of the Vita Mix, I realized that the person in the household who really needs a life-extending commercial-strength blender is Andrew. For years I've been worried about his horrifically poor diet, and I've hatched various schemes to try to force some vegetable juice down him, none of which got off the ground. Andrew will have no truck with V8 juice.

But a commercial blender -- wow. Suddenly I could see a way to start small and work up. Start with something Andrew likes (grocery store apple juice), combine it with a tiny bit of something he doesn't like (any form of actual fruit) and have him drink it the same way he drinks pink antibiotics when he has to. Not willingly, but he gets it down.

Then I had a second brainstorm: positive reinforcement!

the plan: Blend half a box of apple juice in the Vita Mix and show Andrew that the other half is still inside the box, unadulterated & correct, waiting to be his once he swallows the blend.

It worked!

Andrew has now eaten (well, drunk) the first 7 grapes of his entire life. Also the first 3 slices of banana.

It's a miracle.

So back to yesterday afternoon. As I say, we forgot about Andrew and went back to what we were doing, which was figuring out how to make commercial-quality smoothies in the privacy of our own home.

A little later in the day I went upstairs to Andrew's room and found a brand new Barney tableau: vegan Barney.







Somebody's going to have to tell Andrew tyrannosaurus rex was not a herbivore.

^* update 7/3/2011: My mom didn't have heart failure as we learned much later.

off-topic

I was talking to my tennis teacher yesterday about Ed.

My tennis teacher is a big Italian guy who is frequently trying to lose 30 pounds. Since I am frequently trying to lose 5 pounds, we talk about food and weight a lot.

For the past month I've been keeping him apprised of my efforts to become a 'vegan.'¹

The latest news: Ed, who has no interest in becoming a vegan, has lost weight. Three pounds, possibly 4.² He has lost weight entirely because he is married to a woman who is interested in becoming a vegan. Which is annoying because Ed was already extremely thin; Ed was already so thin he is borderline too thin for my tastes. Now he's thinner.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the Ed transformation, the Times ran an article on the Calerie study, a project looking at people who reduce their daily calories by 25 percent for two years.

For me, the most amazing finding of the study is the fact that its subjects have actually managed to remain in the study. That is the revelation, not the fantastic drops in cholesterol and blood pressure, etc. Although I've lost weight a number of times over the years, I'm not sure I've ever stuck to a reduced-calorie diet for more than a few days in a row; the notion of living on a restricted-calorie diet for two years is inconceivable.

But the Calerie people have done it, and apparently we know the secret of their success: they all switched to low-energy density foods. Vegetables, fruits, and soup: ³

Apples are superb in this regard. At the medical centers running Calerie, you see a lot of people walking around eating apples. Even subjects who disliked apples have discovered that calorie restriction, which generally has the effect of making food taste better, has given them a surprising desire for the fruit.

[snip]

When I asked Susan Roberts, who runs the Tufts study, if there was a danger in Americans trying calorie restriction on their own, without a dedicated team of medical experts offering advice, she suggested that there are built-in safety mechanisms. Roberts said she didn’t think anyone would be successful by reducing portion size. “If you don’t change your diet to a high-satiety diet, you will be hungry, and you will fail,” she told me. A high-satiety diet, she said, was bound to be a healthful diet with a lot of vegetables, fruits and insoluble fiber — the kind found in some breakfast cereals, like Fiber One — that her research indicates has a unique effect in helping calorie-restriction subjects feel fuller, probably because they activate certain receptors in the lower intestine. Roberts added, “If people are doing this on their own and succeeding, well, I’d be surprised if they’re eating a lot of Hostess Twinkies.”

I don't happen to like apples, particularly. Or fruit, generally.⁴ I so lack a taste for fruit that I have to set a formal goal of consuming 4 fruits a day & keep a running tally to hit the mark. Even then, likely as not I won't make it.

Ed, on the other hand, loves fruit.

Yesterday Ed mentioned that he keeps a bag of apples on his desk at work. A bag. He snacks on apples all day long; he eats at least 4 apples a day, he said.

I had no idea.

Something else I didn't know: since age 22 he's been eating soup for lunch.

Every day.

And apples. Four apples, at least. Every day.

I didn't know.

He basically invented the Volumetrics diet when he graduated college & didn't think to mention it to anyone he happened to be married to who might be trying to lose weight.

So I was telling my tennis teacher about the Ed diet. Soup and apples, I said. The Ed diet. We should all try it.

My tennis teacher said I should write it up, and now I have.
__________________
¹ How I dislike that word! Who came up with it? And why? Do we know?
² I've lost 5, but I've been trying.
³ Barbara Rolls is always cited for her work on low-energy density foods & satiety.
⁴ I do like Twinkies.