A Weight Loss Journey

Well, here’s some good (IMHO) news for a change.

Seems like all we ever hear is that anything we like to do (or not to do), or anything we like to eat ends up being bad for us in one way or another.  Think about this . . . those fresh veggies we’re supposed to eat, turn out to be tainted with Salmonella.  Or, those low-carb diets that are supposed to melt off the pounds, probably end up plugging our arteries too.  Even, running in polluted city air fills our lungs (way deep down) with junk.  Argh!

News reported by the Daily Mail recently, describes research focusing on almost 20,000 women.  It found that study participants who drank a couple of glasses of wine per day gained less over time than women who didn’t.

The Archives of Internal Medicine published the results of the study which followed 19,220 women older than 38 for an average of 12.9 years. Some 41.3% of the women became overweight or obese during this time period. On average, women who didn’t drink gained 8 pounds while those who did gained about 3.5 pounds.  The report goes on to say that normal-weight women who drank 5 to 30 grams of alcohol daily gained less weight and had a lower risk of becoming overweight or obese than either teetotalers or those who drank too much. 

[I interpret this to mean that normal-weight women (not over-weight women)  gain less (not lose more) weight as a result of their drinking habits.]

Another interesting observation was that beer and hard liquor tended to be less beneficial (weight-wise) than wine.  One theory stated that the livers of those who drink regularly break down alcohol by turning extra energy into heat, not fat.  For example, if a woman were to consume 120 calories from a glass of wine, most of it would be burned off, but if she ate the same amount of calories of pizza, more of the calories would be stored as fat.

ABC News supposed that men don’t see any weight loss by drinking wine because men and women have different drinking styles.  Men add alcohol to whatever else they’re eating while women drinkers substitute alcohol for other foods, thus keeping total calories equal.

“Taking into account the potential medical and psychosocial problems related to drinking alcohol,” wrote the hospital’s Dr. Lu Wang and his colleagues, according to the Daily Mail, “any recommendation on alcohol use should be made for the individual after carefully evaluating both adverse and beneficial effects of the drinking behavior in broad context.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1256133/Forget-salad-WINE-makes-women-slimmer.html

TechCrunch50 was held on September 14 and 15, 2009 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse on Eighth Street in San Francisco.

TechCrunch50 celebrates entrepreneurship, and invites as many start-up companies as possible. This year, fifty companies participated.

HealthyWage, one of the startups that debuted onstage at the TechCrunch50 conference, is a startup that incentivizes users to stay fit by paying them a reward. Great idea!

The idea goes like this. At the beginning of the year, a person can submit their health basics, weight being the most obvious, and set a target at the end of the year. If they meet the goal, HealthyWage either pays them a reward, or matches and raises the user’s bet that they’ll meet their target.

With the nutrition data users enter, HealthyWage can track the protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium a person consumes. It also has a social networking function so people can get together in groups to meet a goal.

Their web site announces launch this Saturday. I sure plan to check it out.