Way off-topic, but I'm passing this along

Twenty years ago, a friend of mine, a physician at UCLA, told me that artificial light at night is bad for you -- so bad that she had started turning out the lights in her house at dusk. (I've forgotten, now, what specific concern she had -- it may have been increased cancer risk.)

I've been tracking research on light after nightfall ever since, and just found this, which took me by surprise:

The Relationship Between Obesity and Exposure to Light at Night: Cross-Sectional Analyses of Over 100,000 Women in the Breakthrough Generations Study

Emily McFadden et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming

Abstract:
There has been a worldwide epidemic of obesity in recent decades. In animal studies, there is convincing evidence that light exposure causes weight gain, even when calorie intake and physical activity are held constant. Disruption of sleep and circadian rhythms by exposure to light at night (LAN) might be one mechanism contributing to the rise in obesity, but it has not been well-investigated in humans. Using multinomial logistic regression, we examined the association between exposure to LAN and obesity in questionnaire data from over 100,000 women in the Breakthrough Generations Study, a cohort study of women aged 16 years or older who were living in the United Kingdom and recruited during 2003–2012. The odds of obesity, measured using body mass index, waist:hip ratio, waist:height ratio, and waist circumference, increased with increasing levels of LAN exposure (P < 0.001), even after adjustment for potential confounders such as sleep duration, alcohol intake, physical activity, and current smoking. We found a significant association between LAN exposure and obesity which was not explained by potential confounders we could measure. While the possibility of residual confounding cannot be excluded, the pattern is intriguing, accords with the results of animal experiments, and warrants further investigation.

Boy.

Dollars to donuts there's going to be some kind of relationship with staring at LED screens all night, too.

I keep thinking I need to go back to (paper) books...then I keep not going back to paper books.

VB6

C. has lost 10 pounds on Mark Bittman's VB6 diet!

VB6 ("Vegan before 6") is an amazingly user friendly diet: it's the first diet I've ever tried that uses eating things you like to positively-reinforce not eating things you like without causing the whole diet to crash and burn. I've spent years trying to make the Premack principle work for weight loss, and I think Bittman has actually done it.

The funny thing is, back when I briefly became a hard-core vegan (I've been a 'part-time' vegan since then), I started out by doing exactly what Bittman did: I stuck to a vegan diet during the day, then ate a regular dinner with the family.

But I saw my own 'VB6' as a way station to full-time veganism; it never occurred to me that you could actually lose weight on that regimen.

Turns out I was wrong.

Here's an excerpt:

Six years ago, the man I most trusted with my health said to me, “You should probably become a vegan.”

Not exactly the words I’d wanted to hear, and certainly not what I was expecting. But I’d asked Sid Baker, my doctor of thirty years, what he recommended, given that he’d just told me that at age 57, I had developed the pre-diabetic, pre-heart-disease symptoms typical of a middle-aged man who’d spent his life eating without discipline.

He’d laid out the depressing facts for me: “Your blood numbers have always been fine but now they’re not. You weigh 40 pounds more than you should. You’re complaining of sleep apnea. You’re talking about knee surgery, which is a direct result of your being overweight. Your cholesterol, which has always been normal up until now, isn’t. Same with your blood sugar; it’s moved into the danger zone.”

A more conventional doc would’ve simply put me on a drug like Lipitor, and maybe a low-fat diet. But Lipitor, one of the statin drugs that lowers cholesterol, is a permanent drug: Once you start taking it, you don’t stop. I didn’t like the idea of that.

Furthermore, its effectiveness in healthy people has never been established, and it’s also been implicated in memory loss and other cognitive complications; I didn’t like the idea of any of that, either. And at this point, low-fat and lowcarbohydrate diets have essentially been discredited: They might help you lose weight, but they’re not effective for maintaining that loss in the long term, and they may even wreak havoc on your system.

But becoming a vegan? A person who eats no animal products at all? Calling that a radical change to my lifestyle was more than a bit of an understatement. Yet it was clear that something had to be done. I asked Sid, “Is a compromise possible? Any other ideas?”

“You’re a smart guy,” he said. “Figure something out.”

The answer, to me, was this: I’d become a part-time vegan. And for me, this part-time veganism would follow these simple rules: From the time I woke up in the morning until 6 in the evening, I’d eat a superstrict vegan diet, with no animal products at all.

In fact, I decided to go even beyond that: Until 6 p.m., I’d also forgo hyper-processed food, like white bread, white rice, white pasta, of course all junk food, and alcohol.

At 6 p.m., I’d become a free man, allowing myself to eat whatever I wanted, usually—but not always—in moderation. Some nights, this meant a steak dinner; some nights, it was a blow-out meal at a good restaurant; other nights, dinner was a tunafish sandwich followed by some cookies. It ran, and runs, the gamut.

Whatever happened at dinner, though, the next morning I turned not to bacon and eggs or a bowl of Trix but to oatmeal or fruit or vegetables. For lunch, rice and beans or a salad—or both. Throughout the day I snacked on nuts and more fruit.

I called the diet “vegan before six,” or VB6. And it worked.

A month later, I weighed myself; I’d lost 15 pounds. A month after that, I went to the lab for blood work: Both my cholesterol and my blood sugar levels were down, well into the normal range (my cholesterol had gone from 240 to 180). My apnea was gone; in fact, for the first time in probably thirty years, I was sleeping through the night, not even snoring. Within four months, I’d lost more than 35 pounds and was below 180—less than I’d weighed in thirty years. And the funny thing was, the way I ate in the daytime began to change the way I ate at night.

An excerpt from Mark Bittman’s “VB6″

AND SEE:
I Answer Frequently Asked Questions about VB6
Help for the afflicted
Application of the Premack principle to the behavioral control of extremely inactive schizrophrenics

in which I am vindicated at last

For years Ed bugged me about exercise and weight loss (he is super-thin and exercises a LOT), and for years I said exercise did not cause weight loss for me and exercising more would not solve the problem.

I was right.

Hah!

Revised weight loss predictor

the dead man's test

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.

thinner, part 2

In the wake of my discovery re: weight and cognition, I've decided to harp on my vegans-are-thinner experience. Re-harp, that is.

AND SEE: thinner
AND: the Ed diet

brain atrophy in teens with Type 2 diabetes

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.

still off-topic: Gallup poll on weight loss

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.

off-topic - vegetables make you thin

Seriously.

They do.

Vegetables make you thin.

I'm starting to see fruits and vegetables (and legumes) the way people used to see diet pills back when it was legal for housewives to take amphetamines to lose weight: eat your vegetables, fruits, and beans, and you can eat anything else you want and still stay thin.

The reason you can eat anything else you want and still stay thin is that you don't want to eat as much as you do when you're not eating beaucoup fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Fruits, vegetables, and legumes are natural appetite suppressants.^*

Here's more evidence:

[R]esearchers from Penn State gave 20 men and 21 women casseroles made with varying amounts of purée — a strategy popularized by the cookbook author Jessica Seinfeld, who has encouraged parents to sneak vegetables into foods like spaghetti.

But in the Penn State study, the goal wasn’t to trick people into eating vegetables. Adding the purée bulked up the dish and resulted in fewer calories per serving. (You can see two of the recipes developed by the researchers here.)

In a macaroni and cheese recipe from the researchers, for instance, the cheese sauce is made with skim milk, reduced-fat cheese and one cup each of puréed cauliflower and puréed summer squash.

The diners were fed the casseroles during different visits. They ate pretty much the same amount of food during each visit and reported no differences in flavor or enjoyment. But when they were served the casseroles made with puréed vegetables, they ate 200 to 350 fewer calories a meal.

“We’ve been able to change recipes a lot, even baked goods, and we’ve been doing it for preschool kids and adults,” said Barbara Rolls, director of Penn State’s laboratory for the study of human ingestive behavior. “We had a huge effect on energy intake. We’re adding cups of veggies to recipes and people don’t even notice.”

Other research by Dr. Rolls, author of the popular diet series Volumetrics has shown that eating soup or salads before a meal can also curb the appetite and result in eating fewer calories over all.

But the stealth-vegetable approach allows diners to eat the same amount of favorite foods without ingesting as many calories.

[snip]

“We offered a Tex-Mex casserole, and we could get away with adding the vegetables much more easily,” she said. “Once you put in those spicy flavors, they mask other changes in calorie density and vegetable content. The people were totally unaware we were adding lots and lots of veggies.”

While the best option is to purée vegetables and add them to home-cooked meals, Dr. Rolls said she hoped the food industry would respond by offering more convenient canned and frozen vegetable purées and more foods bulked up with vegetables
Adding Food and Subtracting Calories
by Tara Parker-Pope
May 2, 2011, 5:03 pm

my rules:
animal fat makes you eat more
plant foods make you eat less



The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals
by Missy Chase Lapine

^* I'm not sure plant foods are natural appetite suppressants; it's a 'working hypothesis.' I'm 99% certain palmitic acid makes you eat more.

speaking of China

Nutrition Advice From the China Study
by Tara Parker Pope
January 7, 2011, 12:40 pm

The China Study is my weight-loss and don't-die-of-diabetes Bible.

My other favorite: Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.





thinner
Barney adopts a healthy new eating style
Bill Clinton, vegan
speaking of China...

the secret of my success, part 2

re: weight loss, Bill Clinton, and books

These are the books I read:

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell

Reversing Heart Disease by Calwell B. Esselstyn

Dr. Neal Barnard's Program for Reversing Diabetes by Neal D. Barnard, M.D.

Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss by Joel Fuhrman

the secret of my success - weight loss

Every few years I think I've found the secret of weight loss and maintenance.

One year it was Strattera.

Another year it was Seth Roberts and eloo.

Both Strattera and eloo seem to work, but eventually one of two things happens to people following any sort of diet regimen: either the effects wear off or your ability to stick with the program wears off.

This time around, I think it's possible I've found the secret not just to getting thin but to staying thin: quasi-veganism.

Seriously.

I adopted a heavy-duty vegan diet (no animal food, no added salt, sugar, or fat) at the end of September 2009. I didn't stick to it altogether, but pretty much.

Over the next six 5 months, I lost 11 pounds. Which for me is huge. The most I've ever lost on a normal calorie-counting and exercise diet is 5 to 7 pounds. While I was on the vegan regimen, fat just melted away; you cannot be overweight - you cannot even be middle-aged chunky - eating all plant foods with no added salt, sugar, or fat. Guaranteed. (update: or maybe not)

So I lost 11 pounds over the next six 5 months.

Then I promptly lost all desire to carry on eating all plant foods with no added salt, sugar, or fat.

So I switched to a quasi-vegan diet. Veganism (with salt, sugar, and fat) is my default setting, but I eat meat^* when the spirit moves me, or when I'm out and about.

"Out and about" means "in a restaurant." It's almost not possible to be a vegan inside an American restaurant. Inside a restaurant, everything is meat. The appetizer is meat, the salad is meat, the main course is meat, the side dishes are meat, the dessert is meat. Just about the only things in a restaurant that aren't meat are the alcohol and the rolls.

If you want to know just how much meat everyone is eating, try opening up a menu and asking yourself what you would order if you wanted to be a vegan. Which I realize you don't. But try the  experiment and you'll see.

We're eating a whole lot of meat.

When I switched to quasi-veganism, I figured: this is it. This is the point where I go off the wagon and gain everything back.

That was last spring. 

Now it's Christmas 2010, and I'm still thin. (Which you can kinda see here.)

As far as I can tell, quasi-veganism works. We'll see.

The weird thing is: I seem to be the only person on the planet who knows this. Assuming I do know it, of course.

Also, I seem to be the only person on the planet who can even conceive of quasi-veganism being the Holy Grail of weight loss and maintenance. I'll be sitting around a table or a living room filled with  middle-aged people who've gained weight over the years, and I will be obviously, manifestly thinner than everyone else except Ed, and when the topic of middle-age weight gain comes up and I mention that the reason I'm thinner than everyone else except Ed is that I have become a quasi-vegan, people stare at me blankly. Most of the time, no one expresses the slightest curiosity as to what I'm talking about.^*

Which is weird, don't you think?

If two years ago someone thin had told me "I've found a diet that's easy to follow and works even when you're cheating" I think that would have piqued my interest.

Anyway, assuming quasi-veganism does work - or, rather, will continue to work for me - I have an idea about the mechanism or mechanisms:

• animal fat spikes appetite so you eat more and gain weight (the corollary being that plant fat satisfies appetite)

• plant food calories seem to be different from animal food calories: people eating plant foods consume more calories but weigh less than people eating plant foods

As to appetite, you can test the proposition that animal fat stokes appetite for yourself just by observing what foods people do and do not binge on.

I binge on butter; I don't binge on peanut butter. That's what it comes down to.

If I eat one toasted English muffin dripping in melted butter, I want to eat another English muffin dripping in melted butter.

If I eat one toasted bagel dripping in melted peanut butter, that's plenty.

If I eat ice cream, I want to eat more ice cream.

If I eat a bag of potato chips before dinner, which I do, I spoil my appetite.

That's another thing. Remember when parents used to worry about kids "spoiling their appetites"? I have never uttered such a warning to my own kids because until I discovered quasi-veganism, I had never seen an appetite actually get spoiled.

I have now discovered that it is in fact possible to spoil your appetite, but not by eating ice cream. Ice cream makes me hungry for lasagne. Bring it on.

Junk food made with plant fat spoils my appetite.

Junk food made with animal fat does not.


random

These things may or may not be true:

• apples make you thin

• tofu makes you fat - no idea whether this is true, but when I come across photos of overweight vegans on the web, they seem to be of people who've put a fair amount of time and energy into knocking off fatty desserts using tofu as a substitute for butter and eggs.

update: I am not the only person on the planet who knows that quasi-veganism causes weight loss. It's me and Bill Clinton.


Junk Food Makes You Eat More

^* By "meat" I mean fish, chicken, eggs, meat, and dairy.
^* No one except Susan S, that is. Susan S was willing to read several dozen emails on the subject of veganism during my phase of maximum obsession. Thank you, Susan!