Case Study and Prediction

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Unregistered

Guest
Caucasian Male in mid-40s
Height 6'
Ectomorph
BP 140/95
Weight 190 lbs (which is overweight for an ectomorph at 6') Desired weight 155 lbs, or more, if muscle
Standing heart rate of 85 BPM
Drinks: average two per day

Suggested course:
1) Daily exercise of 30 minutes, most days of week
2) 90% vegan diet, with emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables, grains
3) No added salt; avoid processed foods with lots of sodium
4) Add dietary magnesium supplements
5) Reduce alcohol to max 10 drinks per week

After six weeks:

BP 135/85
Weight 174 lbs
Standing heart rate of 80 BPM

This is a six-month course. What are your predictions?
 
I would skip the booze entirely, dump all the carbs, go heavy on the meat, small salads, protein, do the exercise, and lose maybe 25 pounds in a month.

At least, that was what worked for me when I did Atkins. Lost 100 pounds in a year. Kept it off. YMMV.
 
Or you could eat whatever you want in moderation, get some exercise and accomplish the same thing. Typed with one hand while eating ice cream.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Unregistered said:
Suggested course:
1) Daily exercise of 30 minutes, most days of week
2) 90% vegan diet, with emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables, grains
3) No added salt; avoid processed foods with lots of sodium
4) Add dietary magnesium supplements
5) Reduce alcohol to max 10 drinks per week

After six weeks:

BP 135/85
Weight 174 lbs
Standing heart rate of 80 BPM

This is a six-month course. What are your predictions?
Click to expand...

Being a cynic, I predict way less than 30 minutes of exercise/day on average, eating too many fruits and way too many grains.

How do you define 90% vegan diet? A 90% fat-free diet would make you "heart attack proof". To accomplish that, you'd have to ditch all animal/fish products, dairy and oils.

I'm on that diet and feel great at 67 y/o, three years after receiving a coronary stent. Well, except for a bad hip injury I recently had when I fell... wait for it... while roller skating! Damn brain remembers how to do things the damn feet forgot! :redface: Walking has been my main exercise of choice, but I do it with a vengence 20 mins at a time, two or three times a day weather and other things permitting. Take a dog with you. :)

Steer clear of dried fruits too, and check your own blood sugar--you don't want to wind up as a slim, trim diabetic.

"Moderation kills," says Dr. Esselstyn, probably because it's really a license to steal for most people. So, cut out the biggies completely and limit the cheating to occasional transgressions that were never a big part of your diet in the first place. For me, that would be 3 Musketeers Bars and Peanuts as few and far between as possible.

dtuuri
 
NoHeat said:
What's wrong with fruit and dried fruit?
Click to expand...
Dried fruit, like raisins, cranberries, pineapple, etc. is all sugar and can spike your blood sugar over 140 which causes permanent pancreas beta cell death. The only way to know is by testing your blood after you eat it (the fruit, not the blood). ($20 test kit with 50 strips called Sidekick at Walmart).

It's easy to overindulge in other sugary fruit too, but it definitetly needs to be part of your diet. Esselstyn recommends three serving/day. I probably exceed that usually, starting with an apple before a small 7-grain hot cereal (one tablespoon dry with a handful of blueberries and strawberries, flaxseed meal and walnut crumbs) then later in the AM I'll have a banana, after a couple hours and blood sugar is back down near normal. Snacks of cherries or fresh pineapple, etc., when I have them round out the day. I only drink 2 oz. of orange juice to swallow some pills, then water, once per day too.

dtuuri
 
Lot's of carbs there. I'd try to limit carbs as much as possible, which eliminated alcohol, some fruits, and most grains. You need a certain amount of fat to avoid gallbladder and other problems.

Restricting carbs is the only way I've been able to lose weight and keep it off.
 
Eat what you want in moderation( serving size) this and a regular exercise routine is all you need to keep fit. I do an annual blood exam to make sure everything is within limits. I guess you could call it my annual:yes:.... I'm typing this with 1 hand and a 45lb plate in the other :rofl:
 
Hmmm...if I served myself dinner on a 45-lb plate, that would incorporate some more exercise into my day....
 
BG305 said:
Eat what you want in moderation( serving size) this and a regular exercise routine is all you need to keep fit. I do an annual blood exam to make sure everything is within limits. I guess you could call it my annual:yes:.... I'm typing this with 1 hand and a 45lb plate in the other :rofl:
Click to expand...

Yup

Ain't rocket science.

Just tell him to never buy food at Walmart and only at trader joes and have him join a crossfit.
 
BG305 said:
Eat what you want in moderation( serving size) this and a regular exercise routine is all you need to keep fit. I do an annual blood exam to make sure everything is within limits. I guess you could call it my annual:yes:.... I'm typing this with 1 hand and a 45lb plate in the other :rofl:
Click to expand...

James331 said:
Yup

Ain't rocket science.

Just tell him to never buy food at Walmart and only at trader joes and have him join a crossfit.
Click to expand...

I find these comments to be sadly naive. If they were true, G. W. Bush wouldn't have needed a stent and Bill Clinton wouldn't have turned vegan.

dtuuri
 
Nothing wrong with shopping at wallyworld they have plenty of organic and gluten free foods.
 
This diet works for me:

1. Decrease calorie intake.

2. Increase calorie burn.

A little over a year ago I completely quit soft drinks and my wife forces me to eat her Asian food, more steamed vegetables, green leafy things I can't pronounce, more fruit and more rice. Did I mention she likes rice? I try to follow a low sodium diet. Red meat is mainly bison, fish is mainly salmon and halibut, and only one serving of meat per day. Plus rice without salt, without soy sauce. Plain, unflavored rice. Sometimes the air in my mouth has more flavor than the rice she serves.

One hour a day 6 days of the week exercise including 30 minutes on a treadmill, the rest of the time on weights.

I ran an errand for my wife this morning. Please don't tell her I stopped at Taco Bell and had a 7 layer burrito....because yesterday she let me have a burger and fries for lunch.

Last November at my medical: 249 BP 175/85
Now: 225 BP 127/70
Goal: 199 by my birthday in April.
age: 663 months

I plan on retiring at 816 months old and I don't want to stroke out a year later.

EDIT: This may not work for you. It is working for me and also I
can stick with it pretty easily. Might not be the best for me at this time, but it is working for me..
 
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Mason said:
I would skip the booze entirely, dump all the carbs, go heavy on the meat, small salads, protein, do the exercise, and lose maybe 25 pounds in a month.

At least, that was what worked for me when I did Atkins. Lost 100 pounds in a year. Kept it off. YMMV.
Click to expand...

WOW! :eek:


How do you maintain the weight loss?
 
There seems to be some misconception that all calories are created equal. They aren't. On a calorie per calorie basis, you can eat much more protein and fat calories that carbohydrate calories for the same weight loss or gain.

The first thing the body does with carbohydrates, especially sugars, is turn them in to glucose, which immediately gets stored as glycogen. That which isn't burned off gets stored as fat. A small percentage of more complex carbohydrates are synthesized in to aminos for cell replenishment.

Proteins and fats, on the other hand, have to be broken down all the way from aminos, to carbohydrates, to glucose before they can be used for energy, and the aminos are preferentially used for cell replenishment first. The process is inefficient compared to carbohydrate metabolism, so much of the excess fats and proteins will just pass through. No excess carbohydrate calories will pass through and be excreted, unless perhaps you are in a hotdog eating contest and you're forcing undigested buns in to your intestinal tract.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Proteins and fats, on the other hand, have to be broken down all the way from aminos, to carbohydrates, to glucose before they can be used for energy, and the aminos are preferentially used for cell replenishment first.
Click to expand...
I liked the way Covert Bailey explained all this back in the 1980s in Fit or Fat. He said, IIRC, "Your liver is smarter than you, as if it's saying 'Go ahead and eat that terribly unbalanced meal, I'll straighten it out for you.'"

Sac Arrow said:
The process is inefficient compared to carbohydrate metabolism, so much of the excess fats and proteins will just pass through.
Click to expand...
I never knew how much until I went vegan. Let me just put it this way, if you don't eat meat or oils, you'll clean up on your toilet paper bills! :)

dtuuri
 
What dose magnesium?

Unregistered said:
Caucasian Male in mid-40s
Height 6'
Ectomorph
BP 140/95
Weight 190 lbs (which is overweight for an ectomorph at 6') Desired weight 155 lbs, or more, if muscle
Standing heart rate of 85 BPM
Drinks: average two per day

Suggested course:
1) Daily exercise of 30 minutes, most days of week
2) 90% vegan diet, with emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables, grains
3) No added salt; avoid processed foods with lots of sodium
4) Add dietary magnesium supplements
5) Reduce alcohol to max 10 drinks per week

After six weeks:

BP 135/85
Weight 174 lbs
Standing heart rate of 80 BPM

This is a six-month course. What are your predictions?
Click to expand...
 
Anecdote: Absent any diet/lifestyle changes, a few weeks after adding magnesium supplements, my diastolic bp seems to have dropped by at least 5 mm Hg.
 
Whatever regimen one adopts had better be maintainable. One developed the unhealthy condition with an unhealthy lifestyle. If the lifestyle isn't changed the unhealthy condition will return.

Sounds fine to me so long as everything is done in moderation. 10% meat could be a lot or it could be nothing. 10% steak is a very different thing from 10% turkey.

Those busy dissing vegans should probably post up a photo of a fat one. Good luck with that.
 
Sleep is more important than food. Booze disrupts REM sleep.
 
Reveal:

I'm the OP!

Update:

Now at 165 lbs
BP is down to 130/77 on average
Still on 90% vegan diet

No fear of passing medical, which is coming up!

I added 30 mins of strength training, five days a week.

Unregistered said:
Caucasian Male in mid-40s
Height 6'
Ectomorph
BP 140/95
Weight 190 lbs (which is overweight for an ectomorph at 6') Desired weight 155 lbs, or more, if muscle
Standing heart rate of 85 BPM
Drinks: average two per day

Suggested course:
1) Daily exercise of 30 minutes, most days of week
2) 90% vegan diet, with emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables, grains
3) No added salt; avoid processed foods with lots of sodium
4) Add dietary magnesium supplements
5) Reduce alcohol to max 10 drinks per week

After six weeks:

BP 135/85
Weight 174 lbs
Standing heart rate of 80 BPM

This is a six-month course. What are your predictions?
Click to expand...
 
What is your current fasting blood sugar?

The hard part with buying the test is lances - hard to find in many spots without an Rx. But if you can - get the test kit and an A1c kit - and test them both.

Good job Ben - my HR is usually under 60. BP is a challenge daily even with that low HR. in the process of getting back down to under 170 - was 186 this am. Was 195 two weeks ago.

Weight loss is all in the carbs - cut them down and the lbs come off.

Once you make it - then you need to change your relationship with food - eat what you want - just less of it.

The thing I have discovered about alcohol is:

White wine: Bad. Lots of sugar.
Red Wine: Good- mostly pick the drier ones like Pinot noir, Zin.
Mixed drinks bad: most mixers have way too much sugar
On the rocks or neat: Whiskey, Tequila, Vodka - very good. Keeps FBG low.

The only mixed drink I can have is on the rock or frozen rita's made with fresh lime and lemon juice, triple sec and splenda. no blood sugar movement at all and leaves it lower than when I started.
 
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My numbers have gotten better over the last 3-4 months, too. I used to be a runner, 45 miles/week in my prime, but got slowed down by age and other factors to where I was doing about 5k every other day or so. Finally my knees wore out and I had to give it up - I'd run 3 miles, then limp around and barely be able to handle stairs for 2 days, repeat. This summer I started joining my wife in the lap pool (she's been swimming for decades and has a triathlon under her belt, so she blows me away in the water!). My weight has dropped a little, but my cholesterol numbers are better, and my fasting glucose has dropped for the first time in a decade. Exercise, combined with just not eating so dang much, has made a noticeable difference.

Not quite as dramatic a change as yours, but I'm happy with the progress.
 
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