(08-10-2011, 06:46 PM)beverley.rose Wrote: (08-10-2011, 06:12 PM)dargona Wrote: Weight gain with these herbs is a problem for me because carbs make up a a huge portion of my every day diet as a vegetarian :X
I guess if you cannot vary the intake much then exercise is your only hope.
Beverley
That's a shame. The problem, as I see it, is that technology has moved faster than our culture has adapted to it in the form of food menus.
When I was a kid, _everyone_, unless they came from very wealthy families, spent a great deal of time walking, at least to bus stops. If you were lucky there was one car in the family; now, at least two is the norm.
In those days, you _needed_ starch in your diet to provide the energy required to do all that walking, or other drudge jobs that are now performed by white goods or power tools. (Has anyone here used a massive screwdriver to screw a shelf support into rawplugs? Or used a masonry punch and a hammer to make a hole for a rawplug, pre-hammer drill?)
So, kids needed their bowl of porridge because they were going to walk to school in the freezing cold. Nowadays, they get shuttled in one of the cars, (if for nothing else, because of the greater awareness of paedophilia around!)
But household menus have not kept up! So kids get their pop tarts, don't walk to school, eat their crisps, don't play sports because it's too competitive, eat their chips, get a lift home and sit in front of the TV/PSP/Internet/Facebook because by then they feel too bloated and fat to go out and play with the kids down the road, who probably wouldn't anyway because they have a screen to look at too.
The parents are no better. They sit in front of their PCs all day at work, under pressure from globalisation, they probably work a 10-12 hour day, they both work (thanks to the Feminist Enlightement), so the last thing they want to do is come home and cook or exercise.
So, pre-prepared meal time, raddled with carbohydrates because the medical orthodoxy have determined that the food pyramid is the holy grail. Completely forgetting that it was designed when people expended a whole lot more energy than they do now.
Most meals nowadays were designed when people still ploughed fields.
Think of it this way: you have a car and a job that requires you to commute 40 miles a day. You get used to filling up with fuel once a week.
You retire and you only travel 5 miles a day. You still try to put the same amount of fuel in every week.
Imagine the fuel tank is elastic and swells around the "waistline" of the car. What would it look like after a few weeks?
Similarly, human race has "retired" from travelling that distance, thanks to Bill Gates et al. But we are still trying to put the same amount of fuel in our bodies. And we wonder what is causing the obesity problem!!! and the government says: "let's tax fat!"
Completely not understanding that it is an excess of carbohydrates that puts fat on the body, NOT consumed fat.
I have an egg for breakfast _every_ day. My cholesterol which was (allegedly) dangerously high, is now almost normal. Blood cholesterol is correlated to weight, not food intake. For the last two years my everyday meal is (sorry) a slab of meat (beef, chicken, pork, lamb, liver, fish) green peas and leafy vegetables.
I feel the healthiest I ever have in my life since I gave up needless carbs.
I don't think that Vegans have a hope, unless they are fortunate enough to have the genes to have evolved from hunter-gatherer to agrarian, but maybe vegetarians who are overweight should consider eating mostly eggs, cheese, low carb vegetables and textured vegetable protein. Some pseudo-vegetarians are ok with fish, and I have come across those who eat free range chicken.
All I do know is that if a you want to eat lots of carbs, you need to sell your car and buy a bicycle, because no amount of post-work exercise will compensate for travelling by car.
TTFN
B.
