From Glynis Barber's latest Ageless podcast:


Click here to watch the video.

Speaking of famous people taking Ozempic:




https://www.bet.com/article/cdwrq6/...pic-side-effect

An unexpected side effect!

Ozempic May Have Another Side Effect: Better Sex
https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness...djemwsjmagazine

See, once a person isn't thinking about FOOD so much of the time...

The article is behind a paywall, so I only saw the first couple lines of the article.

But yeah, when everything about your life is not pre-occupied with how hungry you are all the time (even when you just finished eating), you can think about lots of other things.

I've read ozempic breasts, ozempic butt, ozempic constipation, and ozempic blindness.

I'm happily married, I don't have big breasts, I wouldn't mind a skinnier butt, but I certainly wouldn't want to go blind. I enjoy looking at my beautiful wife of 46 years every day, and it would be a shame not to have the enjoyment of vision anymore.

Seriously, all drugs have side effects. Some minor, some drastic, some minor for some and drastic for others.

IMO, why take the chance if you don't have to?

If you are sick, and the only way to get better is through a drug, it could be worth the risk. But if your health isn't threatened, why take the chance?

Comparison: OK, I put 3 decks of cards together, and put in a couple of jokers. Pick a card, if one joker shows up you get a minor problem, and if the other shows up, you will be permanently blinded. But I'll take a pound off your weight for every other card you pulled. Wanna bet?

I believe over 95% of the people could control their weight through diet. It's a matter of finding which diet works for you, and sticking to it.

Over 30 years ago, I found what works for me. Fewer than 20 net carbs a day, and twice as much fat as protein. The only other variable is how much I'm eating. So I weigh myself every day and adjust my intake.

This was not the first diet I tried, some of the others, which work for other people, just didn't work for me.

Would I take ozempic so that i could eat all the donuts I wanted? No siree Bob.

Eating is one of life's pleasures, and it's a strong survival drive, too. But in excess or with the wrong foods, it can adversely affect your health.

Whether it's due to drugs, or the wrong diet, without good health, you have nothing.

That's the problem - most likely they've tried hundreds of diets and couldn't stick to any of them.

Most of them were likely low fat/calories in-calories out diets:

Cut your intake to 1,000 calories/day.
Eat no more than 1,200 calories/day.
Count every single calorie.
Fiber calories don't count.
Eat at least 45 g of fiber daily.
Eat 3 meals a day.
Skip breakfast.
Cut out snacks.
Eat 6 small meals a day.
Sugar is fine, just stay away from all fats.
Eat only polyunsaturated oils.
Stick to plain chicken breast and broiled white fish.
Throw out your egg yolks.
Fill up on vegetables and fruits.
Eat lots of whole grains.
Switch to a vegan diet.
Switch to a vegetarian diet.
For sweeteners, use only honey and maple syrup.
Eating organic is the only way to lose weight.
Nothing is off limits - you can eat anything you want, just count the calories.
Limit everything, including vegetables and fruits, because every calorie counts.
Don't eat too much protein - you don't need more than 54 g/day.
Use meat as if it's a condiment - a little goes a long way.
Cut out desserts.
If you're going to eat dessert, make that your meal.
Eat these overpriced pre-packaged meals - delivered right to your door.
Follow this complicated point system that allows you to eat almost unlimited amounts of individual ingredients, but as soon as you combine them, they use up half your daily points.
Eat lots of fiber to feel full.
Exercise a minimum of 1 hour daily.
Isometric exercise is more important than aerobic exercise.
Aeorobic exercise uses more calories than isometric exercise.
One type of exercise is as good as another.
Weigh daily.
Don't weigh more than once a week.
If you don't see a drop on the scale every day, you're doing something wrong.
Drink a glass of water before each meal so you feel full faster.
Eat less.
Take these supplements to promote weight loss.
Our supplements work better for weight loss than their supplements.
You don't need to change anything - just take this pill and the weight will melt off overnight.
If you're not sweating, you're not exercising enough.
Use small plates so it looks like more food.
Think about every bite you take before putting it in your mouth.
Remind yourself that nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.
Buy goal clothes so you have a tangible goal to work towards.
When you lose a certain amount of weight, celebrate and have a treat.
You can have cake, cookies and donuts, just count the calories.
If this diet doesn't work, it's your own fault.

I'm sure there's more.


They've probably even tried an assortment of low carb diets, and failed to stick to those too.

Here's a list of low carb diets referred to on this site alone:

http://www.lowcarb.ca/atkins-diet-and-low-carb-plans/

Not exactly a short list, and each LC diet has it's own little differences.

I fully admit that it is not at all easy to stick to LC, especially at first when you're going through induction flu. And it can be difficult even after that because LC requires eating almost the exact opposite of what most everyone else eats, and definitely still not what dieticians recommend, or what most people would think of as a diet.

Over the last 50+ years, I was on and off (mostly off) LC at least 3 times.

There's unfortunately some crazy cult LC diets too (Kimkins - thankfully, I felt so awful on that after only a few hours that I decided it was definitely NOT for me). There's always some new diet craze out there.

The semaglutide drugs are just the latest.

And I think for some people they've tried so many diets so many times and failed at all of them, so these drugs are their only hope of losing weight because they've tried everything else and simply couldn't stick to it.

Agreed, it's not easy to stick to any one diet.

And with all the different ones out there, it's not easy to find the one that works.

But they are in general groups. So if two low-fat diets aren't working, don't try another. If a couple of fruit based diets don't work, why try a third?

On the other hand, if you get some results from one, another in the same class might work better.

Plus there is so much temptation with your friends, advertisements, relatives, and others saying, “Try this, it's soooooooo delicious.”

I still look at chocolate cake, key lime pie, blue corn chips, pancakes, potatoes fried in bacon fat, macaroni, sugary soft drinks, hot Italian bread, cinnamon buns, and lots of other foods, and think to myself, “I miss that”, but I remind myself I'm eating to live.

I think what helped me was that both my parents died too early, due to obesity related diseases, and I saw that as one possible future for me.

That's when I decided instead of living to eat, I need to eat to live. I buy good quality food, even if it means giving up something else in life. 100% grass fed and grass finished beef, wild caught fish, organic veggies, and things I believe are good for me. I avoid seed oils, sugars, simple starches and things I believe are bad for me.

I tried a half dozen different diets, and when Atkins gave me some gains, I started refining that. I looked into ketogenic diets, found my limits, and it's still working. I admit, there was some luck involved, if my uncle didn't go Atkins, I might not have tried it so soon.

Back on topic.

I just read another negative about ozempic. Scores of plastic surgeons have noticed that it ages your skin prematurely.

Again, drugs are not the best answer. Especially with something fairly new that hasn't been used long-term by millions of people, the side effects might be worse than the weight.

I like life. I'm happy, I love my wife, I love my job so much I am not planning on retiring and this life is a sure bet. I know priests, shamans, rabbis, and quite a few others promise us a happy-hunting ground when we leave. And I try to live my life so that if what they tell me is true, I'll go to the good place. But this life is the proverbial bird in the hand, so I want it to last as long as possible, and I want to be in good health as long as possible.

So my advice (for what that's worth) is this:

Don't live to eat. Instead, eat to live.

Don't give up. Group the choices according to their similarities, find the group that worse for you, then trim it down to the one that works better, and good luck finding it sooner rather than later. Eat to live.

All the bad advice confused me for a long time. A person gets a food version of learned helplessness, but we keep giving up, since any of these tactics are too miserable for a lifelong commitment.

But eating healthy is a lot more work, too. I won't touch the meat at one local supermarket -- it's so low quality I don't even want to look at it. Their produce section is where they put their attention. I'm fortunate that there are three other choices in a fifteen minute radius. And I'm not stuck with the hour drive to some giant megastore.

I had to stop eating chicken as a staple because as it got cheaper, it got worse. Now, it's got no taste to me. And spicing up something my body rejects is part of how we got ourselves into this.

That's not a big deal, in that I have access to ground pork and beef, which I prefer anyway. It's that I worry they keep trying to "corporatize" our food when it's hard enough to get when it's good.

At the same time they were urging us to eat Five a Day, which was a marketing project, they downgraded the produce. Cut costs there, to pay for the advertising, no doubt. I can't consistently get good fruit, I'm deeply skeptical about salad greens that wilt so I can't use them the second day, and so I buy from the local organic store, which stocks local stuff, and we don't eat much produce, comparatively. Mr WB loves apples, which are grown locally, and by some miracle, my store brand unsweetened applesauce tastes like apples. It must be made from fresh apples, since it will be stored as sauce.

I also use fine jams to flavor my smoothies. Because it's difficult to get good peaches, for instance. I buy seedless raspberry because most of the oxalate is in the seeds. It's the only way to get real flavor, consistently. A tablespoon is hedonistic, sometimes I use less, and about the carbs I'd get in the same flavor, from fruit. And cheaper.

Both cooked, both "processed," and yet it is consistently good, so must be made from fresh, with the same ingredients my grandmother used. This is the kind of thing corporate food wants to confuse us about.

Look at all the effort I put into these distinctions. And I'm glad, because I feel better and better all the time. It's not rice and beans and medical expenses.

Food as medicine is the best of both worlds.

For me losing weight and maintaining that loss has been not only about knowing what foods I can eat and what foods I need to avoid, but it has also been about changing the way I think about food. First and foremost I eat to nourish my body so that I can be as healthy as possible. Although I still enjoy eating foods I like, enjoyment is not my main priority, health is. This attitude includes regarding foods that do not nourish me and in fact cause me physical harm as poison not food. Finally instead of looking at the way I eat as depriving myself of things I like, I regard the way I eat as a gift I give myself, the gift of good health.

I think you may be simplifying the choices a bit too much. The primary choices are low fat/low calorie vs low carb, but there are so many variations available within those 2 categories - and unfortunately most people know so little about nutrition that they don't recognize that the hundreds (thousands?) of different versions of the same low fat/low calorie diet are essentially the same diet, just with slight variations that make no difference as far as sustainability.

Take for instance the many different versions of low fat/low calorie diets that Weight Watchers alone has promoted during the last 50-some years:




The most recent one on that list was from back in 2017 - but it gives you an idea of all the different plans - which were all still essentially the same diet: low fat/ low calorie, some just offering slightly different choices and ways to calculate how much you could eat of which foods. But it was essentially the same calorie restricted diet.

And that's just WW diets.

I recall reading my mom's women's magazines in the 60's (mostly Family Circle and Woman's Day). Almost every issue had a NEW diet, which was just a slightly different rehash of the same diet they'd published over and over and over. But of course they were always promoted as the most satisfying and successful diet ever. The same sort of "best diet ever" shows up on a regular basis in the women's magazines these days.


But if we go back to that list of LC diets, there's definite differences between them, some of the differences striking enough that I can see trying a few different ones to see which one works best for you, because if you start out with one that allows more carbs, such as The Zone (40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 30% fat) , decide that's not working for you, then decide to try out the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet (Two low carb meals, and the third meal is the "reward" meal - includes a carbohydrate-rich food, including any dessert you may desire), you may not see a whole lot of difference in the results or your ability to adhere to the diet.

However if you start out with Atkins, then go to Protein Power, you might find that one of them works better for you than the other.

It might also be worth trying some of the other LC diets mentioned, just to see if they work better for you. But that's because the composition of LC diets have varied macronutrient percentages, plus some (such as Atkins) allow some tweaks to personalize it to your individual metabolism, which really can affect results and ability to adhere to the diet. (As opposed to how most low cal/low fat diets are just minor rehashes of the same calorie restrictions, with little thought given to how it makes you feel, how easy it is to stick to, much less whether all the micronutrients necessary for health are even bio-available in the diet.)

Also, Atkins had guidelines and ways to reach maintenance.

Those magazine diets just told you how to start, as I recall.

You're right - none of them ever said anything about how to maintain the weight loss.

That's because they knew they were not sustainable diets to begin with, that as soon as you gave up on trying to stick to the diet (or more rarely actually lost the amount of weight you wanted to lose), you'd go off the diet due to vacation, holidays, or life in general, and gain it all back... just in time to buy the next issue of the magazine to get the ALL NEW PERFECT WEIGHT LOSS DIET PLAN.

At our local Publix grocery store, there is a better meat section in the corner, where I can get 100% grass-fed and grass finished beef. The taste is much better and the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio is much better. Too much omega 6 from corn feeding becomes inflammatory.

Chicken I quit completely, and only an occasional egg yolk. Why? Way too much arachadonic acid. Again, it's the corn that they feed the chickens. That's not their natural diet, they are supposed to eat seeds, bugs, and grubs. The A.A. is the main cause of arthritis pain. It's very inflammatory, and the chicken and eggs have about 5 times as much as any other food source.

If anyone needs the anti arthritis/bursitis diet, let me know. At low-carb we are more than halfway there.

It's too bad that factory farming has degraded our food supply in the name of corporate greed.