No license to cheeseburger. This week, a major study on the impact of reduced fat diets on cancer and cardiovascular disease in women over 50, showed “no significant changes in risk despite years on reduced-fat regimens,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here to see a NewsHour interview with Barbara Howard, a lead investigator in the study and Dr. Peter Libby, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Remember, it’s the calories, baby. Dr. Libby elaborates:

“I think it’s very important that the listeners not take this as a license to chow down on cheeseburgers because the overall caloric content is probably as important if not more important than the specific food components, so unless your calorie intake equals your calorie expenditure, you’re setting yourself up for gaining weight. And we know that that has horrendous consequences for cardiovascular health.”

The measure of the man. “What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The measure of the girl. Damn and damn and damn. One Half Pound! A whole week of calorie counting and treadmilling and crunches and mule kicks and going to sleep hungry and the scale says One Half Pound! Okay. I mean, I am not scale-obsessed and I’m feeling really great these days — I did a 50 minute walk-run yesterday — and the clothes are fitting better … and I know everything is working. Still, I find myself sitting on the bench in the gym locker room thinking wistfully of how nice it is to have that oh-so-definite, cleanly quantified, neatly numerical mark of success when the scale bobbles, then settles on that new, smaller number.

I sit there, looking at my feet, feeling cheated. Of course, I brought this on myself. I knew that I should start the “program” not only by weighing in — so I could track my success in pounds — but also by taking my measurements — so I could track my success in inches. I knew it … but a fat girl hates the measuring tape only slightly less than the ultra-icky calpiers. Because the tape that will eventually tell you how well you are doing, first has to tell you just exactly how big your butt is. Sigh. Plus, to get the best measurements, you need someone to do the measuring for you, while you stand “naturally.” So someone else actually has to witness the exact size of your butt. Laurie’s been drafted. Husband Val doesn’t need an exact number permanently seared in his memory.

• • •

I’m getting measured tomorrow — so, to help me remember the places to measure, I go rooting around in my old workout binder and find my trainer’s chart tracking my measurements back in ‘96 when I fought my way down to 128 pounds of muscle. It took 18 months, and my trainer took my measurements every two or three weeks. The old chart showed that, even when the weight loss occasionally seemed stalled, the measurements proved that fat loss and muscle building was still going on. There it was — that lovely countable, chartable proof of success — and all I have to do to get it today, is to endure that first awful accurate moment of measurement. The truth will set me free. It will hit me on the head with a frying pan, and then it will set me free. But eventually, I will be free. Yeah.

So be it. Because nothing succeeds like success, I will stand (naturally) and let Laurie log my measurements. Laurie has already taken her Oath of Secrecy and I will be glad in the months to come, when I need to be reminded that it’s all still working.

Ready to bite the bullet and start a measurements chart of your own? You can find the instructions and tips at workoutsforwomen.com’s Tale of the Tape.

For suppleness: Workoutsforwomen.com’s neat stretch routines with video can be found here. Smart warm-ups and stretches for striders can be found at thewalkingsite.com. Encyclopedic: Stretching and Flexibility: Everything You Never Wanted to Know by Brad Appleton.

Winter winners. Laurie took us for a test drive of two Cooking Light* recipes this week. With a crisp and golden broiled salmon, she served the sweet and creamy Cabbage Gratin. [Cal. 91, Pro. 7.4g, Fat 3.8g, Carb. 7.5g] On another night she served us One-Pan Whiskey-Flavored Pork Chops. [Cal. 310, Pro. 29.5g, Fat 3.8g, Carb. 7.5g] So satisfying! and definitely on our Cook This! list.

Sickly sweet. The Accidental Hedonist gives us the nutritional reasons and the political reasons to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup. And, here’s the Hedonist’s list of foods and products containing the super-sweet maufactured molecule. [thx Val!]

Tender Baked Apples

If it can’t be pie, it could be this pie-filling-like cup of goodness.

2 medium Fuji apples, peeled, cored, cut in eighths
2 tsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. powdered cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. butter (that’s teaspoon)
1/2 lemon, seeded
large bowl half-filled with water
1 c. plain non-fat yogurt, well-stirred

You will need: a large bowl, a small mixing bowl, a small baking dish, plastic wrap, aluminium foil, 4 individual serving dishes

Preheat oven to 350°

Squeeze half a lemon into a bowl of water and add the rind. Peel, core and cut two medium apples into eighths, dropping the pieces into the water.

Soak the pieces for half a minute, then drain the water. In a small mixing bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Sprinkle mixture over apple slices and toss until all the pieces are coated evenly.

Cover the apples with a piece of plastic wrap and set aside for 20 minutes.

Butter the small baking dish and arrange the slices in it, pouring any liquid from the bowl over the slices. Cover with aluminium foil. Bake 30 minutes. Remove foil, bake 10 to 15 minutes more, until liquid thickens slightly.

Put 1/4 c. yogurt in each serving dish. Top with 4 apple slices and a small spoon of baking liquid. Makes four servings.

Food values*: Calories 103; Pro. 2.75g; Fat .6g; Carb. 20g

*Recipes developed by bodyofwisdom.com are not lab-tested for food nutrient counts. Food values listed here are estimates, based on adding the food values of the ingredients.

Petsercise. The UK’s Pet Health Council offers advice on exercising with your dog.

For your playlist When Laurie and I saw them in 1981(!), Devo had actual treadmills on stage where they did their devolved choreo-march-ography thing. [Like this, this and this] Is it any wonder that Freedom of Choice keeps us pumping through the cardio workout like the good little calorie burning machines that we are. 80’s DJ Nah Pain/Nah Gain recommends Eurythmics Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) for your “Leg and Butt” workout soundtrack. The rhythm is so right and Annie Lennox’ ethereal wails almost make the burn bearable.

Goodbye 200. This week’s big three pound weight loss (woo!) puts me below 200 lbs. First time in four years. That’s right, 200, I am through with you! Vaya con Dios and don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out. And hey, lose my number. And by the way, Laurie has parted with 8-1/2 lbs. in the last two weeks, and it looks like a permanent break — they just don’t have anything in common anymore … Hey, 8-1/2, don’t feel bad, it’s not you, it’s me, really…

Keeping track. We use worksheet forms to help us track our daily food and water intake, our workouts, stresses, slips and successes. We fill out and keep a journal sheet for each day and use completed sheets in planning — this helps us repreat good food and workout days, and avoid reliving the bad ones. We also make note of the ways stress, schedule, mood and life itself affect the day — so we can begin to develop strategies that avoid pitfalls.

The journal that results from the collected worksheets is a powerful tool for making changes in your life. Try it: you’re invited to download and print your own two-week journal. Click here for more info.

Recipes for success. Here’s the thing: we don’t just like to eat, we are food enthusiasts. Good food — preparing it, sharing it and eating it — is one of life’s primary pleasures, and we’re just not willing to go on a pleasure-fast for the many months it will take us to reach our healthy weights.

It’s a commitment to cooking — and the variety and quality it brings — that makes it possible for us to stay “on program” for the long term. We also:

• Share dinner-cooking duties throughout the week. [That means that, 3 days a week, I have a beautiful “on program” dinner made for me by Laurie — one of my favorite cooks!]

• We are careful to build variety into our weekly plans. [I mean, how many broiled skinless chicken breasts can a foodie girl eat?]

• Like any good cooks, we make an effort to take advantage of what’s fresh and in season at the market.

So, we are constantly on the lookout for recipes and ingredients that are delicious, healthful and fit into our 1200-calorie day. Often, we adjust existing recipes to suit our tastes or use a recipe as an inspiration for something completely new. When we can, we link you to recipes we’re using, as we do for the squash casserole this sample meal plan.

But, sometimes we create something for ourselves. When we get the recipe fine-tuned, get the serving size, calorie- and nutrient-count estimates down and write the step-by-step instructions, we’ll post our recipes here. Some will be simple things, others more elaborate. There are just a few entries now, but many more to come.

Click here for a list is a list of currently posted recipes developed by Laurie and Kate for use on our 1200-calorie-a-day program. Enjoy! — KC

22 ways to be fitter and healthier from thirdage.com

Calci-yum. A 2005 food research round-up at the UNLV Rebel Yell reminds us that recent University of Tennessee research shows “a low-fat, calcium-rich diet can reduce body fat significantly when coupled with other foods such as leafy vegetables, salmon and oats, which are also high in fiber.” Milk and yogurt (the non-fat varieties please) pack more than 300 mg of calcium per serving and are also good sources of vitamin D, which assists the body in calcium absorption. In an article [here] that includes a handy list of calcium-rich foods, the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Source discusses some of the plusses and minuses of increasing your dairy consumption. And, here’s a .pdf of the USDA’s calcium content data.

The glycemic index demystified by the Yale-New Haven Hospital Nutrition Advisor.