Gaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! page 3

[paleo-bunny]

I appreciate, it is heartbreaking. Just try not to burden yourself with being responsible for converting your loved ones just because you are blessed with the knowledge.

[mrquick42]

I appreciate, it is heartbreaking. Just try not to burden yourself with being responsible for converting your loved ones just because you are blessed with the knowledge.

Exactly this. Ultimately, everyone is responsible for their own health. No-one else can do it for you. Unfortunately, our society doesn't teach this message. We get CW nutritional advice jammed down our throats by the government and are told to just do whatever our doctor's tell us to do. The government and the medical community is waaaaay smarter than you are so anything you do will just bork (Sorry Trish) things up even worse. No need for you to learn anything on your own. After all diet has little or no impact on health and disease dontcha know....

[nvizble]

I have to say that I was really disappointed to see the "Last Heart Attack" report by Sanjay Gupta on CNN which touts low fat diets and whole grains. At least he got the fresh veggies part right!

[Paysan]

I'm intelligent ... and fat. And standing with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. At that, I'm doing better than a decade ago when both feet were on a banana skin and the grave was urging me in. I have lost 60+ pounds on low carb, and see myself eating this way till I die. But I find preaching to others while in the ethusiaastic mode is pointless (altho' I try anyway). Why? Because I was there 30 years ago, an was unable to follow the Atkins diet, with hungry kids and a hubby to feed.Living w/o wheat was unthinkable. Flash forward 2 decades, after years of chronic sickness. I got a celiac diagnosis at the same time hubby got his diabetes one. NO MORE WHEAT, and very limited dairy. When the weight headed south, and I quit my death gallop, then the messages sank in. Not until. But still they can't resist "good homemade bread" and a free doughnut with filling. Mmmm mmm. Nuuuh uh!

[mrquick42]

I'm intelligent ... and fat. And standing with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin. At that, I'm doing better than a decade ago when both feet were on a banana skin and the grave was urging me in. I have lost 60+ pounds on low carb, and see myself eating this way till I die. But I find preaching to others while in the ethusiaastic mode is pointless (altho' I try anyway). Why? Because I was there 30 years ago, an was unable to follow the Atkins diet, with hungry kids and a hubby to feed.Living w/o wheat was unthinkable. Flash forward 2 decades, after years of chronic sickness. I got a celiac diagnosis at the same time hubby got his diabetes one. NO MORE WHEAT, and very limited dairy. When the weight headed south, and I quit my death gallop, then the messages sank in. Not until. But still they can't resist "good homemade bread" and a free doughnut with filling. Mmmm mmm. Nuuuh uh!

Exactly, a person has to want to change for there to be a possibility of self-directed change. Take smokers, they are bombarded every day with the message that their habit has real and serious implications for their health. They don't continue to smoke because they are unaware of the danger, they continue to smoke because they fear the difficulty of quitting more than some potential future illness. Those who quit (I am one) generally do so because they reached a tipping point where the benefits of quitting outweight the costs of not quitting. It seems like the same thing has to happen for diet. Many people make half-hearted attempts to lose weight just as many smokers make half-hearted attempts to quit. But a catalyst like a disease diagnosis can help to tip the scale.

Before that tipping point is reached any unsolicited advice is likely to be met with hostility, and any solicited advice is still likely to be ignored. When I was a smoker, I took the Dennis Leary approach. If someone told me smoking was bad for me, I would put an incredulous horrorstruck look on my face and tell them "Holy S%^+, are you serious? I thought these things had vitamin C in them!!!" It wasn't until my wife and I decided that we would like to have children that it became more important to me to get healthy than to continue smoking. After that it was pretty easy.

[June68]

Just think of it as very slow natural selection. Eventually SAD will kill everyone at an earlier and earlier age. Didn't some study say that this coming generation on average won't live as long as the previous one? Too bad it just takes so long with some people. Like smoking, most of the time I wish it worked faster.

[GeorgiaPeach]

It just seems the approach we inevitably have to take (ie waiting til the person is sick to say something) is like building a hospital at the bottom of a cliff instead of a fence at the top.

[paleo-bunny]

It just seems the approach we inevitably have to take (ie waiting til the person is sick to say something) is like building a hospital at the bottom of a cliff instead of a fence at the top.

Nice analogy.

[June68]

That's true, but everyone has to come to this in their own way. Certainly I followed CW like a good little citizen. I didn't question. I blamed myself for my failure. I blamed old age. I blamed genetics. It took a long time for me to discover it was all bullshit. If anyone had preached to me, I don't think I would have changed until I wanted to. No one likes to be wrong.

[mrquick42]

It just seems the approach we inevitably have to take (ie waiting til the person is sick to say something) is like building a hospital at the bottom of a cliff instead of a fence at the top.

Yes, it certainly would be nice to build a fence at the top of the cliff and call it good. Unfortunately there is a madman at the top of the cliff (CW-spewers and government agencies) taking an axe to the fence every time you try to start building it. The madman is also perfectly willing to put the axe upside your head if you get too strident about building the fence.