The least surprising news article of the year

So, the FDA and FTC have awakened from their slumber and sent warning letters (ooh, scary!) to the manufacturers of the HCG hormone, which is used in the popular HCG diet.

You know the one...where you either inject or ingest the same hormone produced by the placenta during pregnancy (human chorionic gonadotropin) and consume 500 calories a day for some amazing weight loss.

You think? It's called starvation. Look it up!

How do people come up with this crap? According to the Fooducate blog, it came from a study by a scientist in India about 50 years ago.

"Around 50 years ago Albert Simeons, a British scientist, in India studied the pregnancy of poor women in India who were living on very low calorie diets. Despite this, they were able to reach term and have their baby. Simeons, an endocrinologist, concluded that the HCG hormone was instructing the body to burn FAT from the mother’s body in order to save the baby.

Since then, the HCG method has been used in various settings and tested in various studies. The conclusion – no evidence that the HCG diet actually works. Obviously, consuming 500 calories a day causes weight loss at first. But it may cause severe health problems due to a prolonged period of malnutrition."

And do you think people are able to keep that weight off once they stop injecting pregnancy hormones and eat a regular diet? No. No, they are not. People on the HCG diet are also at a greater risk for gallstones, irregular heartbeat, clots in the lungs, depression, cardiac arrest, and death.

How about we quit looking for a quick fix and instead cook a vegetable and go for a walk. You'll feel better mentally and physically, AND you get the added benefit of not keeling over prematurely.

Such a deal!

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Workout of the Day

P90X Core Synergistics

After three years of doing this workout, today I was FINALLY able to stay up on my toes during the Plank to Chaturanga Iso move in the bonus round. It's the one where you hold in a plank for 1 minute total, and every 10 seconds you switch from regular plank (with arms straight) down to chaturanga (arms bent, close at your sides). I'm still making progress, even after all this time! That's why I love this program.

It takes a village to instill a little common sense

Last week I made the rounds to several school Christmas parties for my kids.

Drew's festivities kicked off Thursday with a special pajama-clad movie day when the kindergartners watched "The Polar Express." Along with the movie they had chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate with marshmallows.

After school, Drew told Zach he wasn't feeling too well, and said that "his cheek hurt." He's had that complaint before...right before he barfed. Uh oh.

That afternoon I was supervising the faculty kids for the district Christmas party, and Drew was scheduled to join us. He dragged himself in and half-heartedly took one piece of pizza from the 15 (not exaggerating) pizza boxes to choose from. He left the cookies alone.

A bit later he told me he thought he was going to throw up, so I took him to the bathroom, and then shortly thereafter took him home. (He never threw up, thank goodness.)

"What did you eat today?" I asked on the way home. "What did you have at the movie?"

"Um, we had some cookies and hot chocolate with marshmallows."

"How many?"

"Well, I had two hot chocolates with marshmallows."

"Oh, Drew...that's a lot of sugar. And cookies too?"

"Yes."

"Well, no wonder your stomach doesn't feel good. That's too rich and too much sugar for you."

Fast forward to the next morning, when he confessed to his dad that he had THREE chocolate chip cookies with his two hot chocolates with marshmallows. He confessed the same thing to his mother on the way home from school.

"DREW!!!" I said in what I'm quite sure was a very annoying Mom voice. "You CANNOT have that much sugar in one sitting! It hurts your stomach!"

I wasn't trying to scold, but he teared up anyway.

"Drew, buddy, I'm not mad at you, but this is something that you've just got to learn. I know it's hard to say no to cookies, because they taste so good. I like them too. But you've got to realize that if you have too many, your stomach is going to hurt."

He recovered quickly, and the tears were gone before he went into the house. But I was left wondering a few things. First, how do you teach a kid not to go crazy when presented with a giant platter of cookies. Or pizza. Or chips. And also...was anybody manning that cookie/hot chocolate table? Or was it a complete free-for-all, have-as-many-cookies-as-you-want fest?

I was still contemplating those questions the next day when I attended his class party, where the menu included large doughnuts decorated like snowmen, doughnut holes, Capri Suns, apple slices, grapes, and oranges. (Thanks for the token fruit! Too bad not much got eaten since it tasted "sour" after the doughnuts were gobbled up.)

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A friend of mine told me about her nephew (also a kindergartner), who blew through 20 bucks on his meal account in one week. How'd he do it? By getting an extra chocolate milk and an ice cream every day in addition to his regular lunch.

His mom found out what he was doing when she visited the school at lunch one day. I imagine she gave him a speech kind of like the one above, and then she went and visited the lunch lady.

She asked if they monitor what the kids buy and make sure that they're not subsisting on chocolate milk and ice cream alone.

"No," was the reply. "We can't tell the kids what to get or what not to get."

Hmm. Can't tell them what to eat? Or can't resist the extra income from the six-year-old with a sweet tooth who most likely doesn't even understand what "having money in an account" means?

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I do not think it is a school's responsibility to raise children. The public schools of America are designed to educate kids and prepare them to be contributing members of society. 

I am not against treats, nor am I against special occasions or parties. But is it too much to ask for a little common sense where food is concerned? Kindergartners are five and six years old. Not old enough, in my opinion, to make intelligent food choices, particularly in the face of cookies, pizza, chocolate milk, and ice cream.

We've gotten to a point where we treat our kids so much that it's not even a treat anymore. Pizza isn't a treat...It's a Tuesday. Cookies aren't for special occasions...they're for 3:00.

We need to offer a little guidance to the smaller members of society who haven't figured out that mass quantities of liquid chocolate, chocolate chips, and chocolately super chocolate with a chocolate swirl is going to make you have a stomach ache. And after they figure that out, we need to teach them what that sugar does to them and why we shouldn't have a bunch of it.

Time will tell, but I think this lesson had an impact on Drew. I figure he's got about two months before he gets put to his knowledge to the test at Valentine's Day parties.

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Workout of the Day

P90X Plus, Total Body Plus

Fitness Nerds in Love

How do two fitness nerds spend each evening since their P90X2 arrived in the mail?

Previewing workouts, of course!

Plus reviewing the schedules, perusing the nutrition plan, and inflicting pain on their muscles experimenting with the foam roller.

SO FUN!

You want to know just exactly how dorky we are?

We bought the same shoes:

These are Saucony Kinvara running shoes, and they are the culmination of approximately 14.6 hours of research and hand-wringing by the valedictorian of analysis.

I wasn't going to get matching shoes, but as the hours researching what type of shoe to get transferred into hours of research finding the best deal on said shoes, Zach found a great deal online on last year's model Kinvaras. That meant saving $40 on his pair. Then, lo and behold, they had very small sizes of Kinvara men's shoes on deep discount. I hit the internet for a quick size conversion from men to women and voila: I got myself a Sa-wheet pair of running shoes for $30.

These are some nice shoes, people. They are super light and also have a flatter heel, which we'd been looking for. I'll ask if Zach wants to impart some of the wisdom he gained from the hours of research on running shoes in a blog next week.

In the meantime, we'll just be watching workout videos.

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Workout of the Day

P90X One on One Vol. 3: Shoulders and Arms