61 new of 82 responses total.
Hmmm. So caffeine's okay given the right source. Ditto hot cocoa. Unhealthy excess/addiction/pigging out on literally anything is not okay. How about ice tea?
Well.. first of all, you have to understand coffee and tea (black, most likely, not green) have a lot of other substances not exactly health-conducive *besides* caffeine. Second, they are far greater in their caffeine content than colas and other caffeinated soft drinks, and even more so than chocolate. The caffeine content in chocolate is relatively low-- but, it's possible to be addicted to chocolate. Iced tea is not okay. Herbal versions would be. Interestingly enough, being overweight is not going to cause problems as far as membership, although failure to avoid the others will. We've our fair share of fat folks. But-- it is a good idea to be trim and active, and careful observance of the Word of Wisdom *will* make this easier. The reference is available online: http://scriptures.lds.org/dc/89
re: overweight ... over whose weight? Who gets to decide what constitutes "overweight?
My understanding is that most "natural" teas (NOT the processed & packaged trendy ones) are considered relatively healthy (withOUT cream, sugar, etc.) and that they've less caffeine than most colas. (Having to brew the tea vs. just grabbing another 20 oz. cola would have an effect, too. Plus, i'm told that many serious tea drinkers re-use the leaves...there's virtually zero caffeine in 'em after the first use.)) If you think that chocolate has less caffeine (& a few similar chemicals with similar effects) than cola, it sounds like your dealer is cutting his chocolate with *lots* of cheap sweetener & fat. (Dim recollection is that real chocolate addiction is to a non-caffeine-family chemical in it.) How much updating do they do as our <cough> advanced <hack> food industry invents new guilt-free-'cause-it's-not-on-last-year's-list-of-things-bad- for-you junk foods?
I believe that's left up to individual interpretation. We're not quite that strict. Again, Walter, the prohibition was made against tea-- and caffeine most likely is not the lone culprit. Indeed, cola, Mt. Dew, etc., should probably be avoided, but that has been left to individual decision. I suppose the jury's still out on chocolate, although it is not specifically prohibited at all, but I do know most people are eating Hershey's (cheap sweetener and fat indeed) or some like commercial chocolate, and not premium chocolate like I had at Zingerman's when I was here. resp:24 I'm sorry, I didn't clarify. The sentiment was purely my opinion-- I would believe that clinical obesity would likely be avoided if the Word of Wisdom was followed carefully. Boy Scouts and new LDS missionaries at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) are encouraged to eat healthy and to exercise regularly, if that is a good reference point. Misti, this is lumen, just in a new user ID.
Hi, Lumen! There is no way that following nay particular regimine will guarantee that one won't attain "clinical obesity". If there were, there would be far, far fewer fat people. Fortunately clinical obesity isn't incompatible with radiant health, and eating and exercising well does up your chances of radiant good health considerably. ;) (One of my hobby horses ... I'm fat and I'm radiantly healthy and I get seriously annoyed when people assume that I can't be both. Believe it or not, when I weighed 350 pounds, a friend had a dim moment and told me that I "wasn't really fat". Excuse me?!?!?! <laugh> 350 pounds in *fat* by just about any human scale! But she had trouble with the concept that I could be fat, happy, physically active, and radiantly healthy. Her paradign woulnd't easily stretch that far.)
What is 'radiantly' healthy? All of us emit thermal radiation, are you hotter than most? The tannins in tea can be healthy in that they kill intestinal parasites, and there are supposed to be other compounds in green tea (the unfermented type) that are healthy (cancer reducing?).
I have heard of the health attributes of green tea. *shrug* I don't know. This is one I take on faith. Would you tell an observant Jew that eating pork is perfectly healthful?
Radiantly healthy refers to a different kind of radiance, Sindi. I am, as a matter of fact, better able to gnerate thermal radiation, but the radiance of good health has nothing to do with that. If you've never heard the phrase, I guess I can try to explain leter, when I';m not at work and have time to think it through.
I have been hearing 'radiant' and 'vibrant' more recently and wondered what they are supposed to mean, since they are not being used literally. 'Vibrant community', 'vibrant color', etc.
vibrant SYLLABICATION: vi·brant PRONUNCIATION: vbrnt ADJECTIVE: 1a. Pulsing or throbbing with energy or activity: the vibrant streets of a big city. b. Vigorous, lively, and vital: “a vibrant group that challenged the . . . system” (Philip Taubman). 2. Exhibiting or characterized by rapid, rhythmic movement back and forth or to and fro; vibrating. 3. Produced as a result of vibration; resonant or resounding: vibrant voices. 4. Relatively high on the scale of brightness: a vibrant hue. OTHER FORMS: vibran·cy, vibrance —NOUN vibrant·ly —ADVERB
source?
SO is a vibrant color a lively (bright?) color? I understand how streets with lots of traffic can vibrate.
resp:32 hey, I'd be interested to know which dictionary that's from, please =)
re #33 It is the one on Yahoo! I *think* they have an online version of the American Heritage Dictionary. re#34 That's right, Sindi. The word 'vibrant' can mean a bright color. Perhaps at one time someone felt that bright colors made things *look* like they were vibrating. Who knows?
Re: #26/28/29 My impression is that whether an "observant Jew" eats pork depends on whether he's Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, etc. At one end of the spectrum, literally adhering to the ancient rules is paramount, at the other it's quaintly amusing. I don't think that eating a *healthy* diet is considered a serious religious issue anywhere in the spectrum. (Premium (in the sense of purity) chocolate costs *nothing* resembling Zingerman's prices if you know where to buy. $4.50 will get you 16 oz., and trying eat a quarter of that will get you very seriously wired!) I think it'd be cool if LDS updated its religious rules as new data came in on old foods (and new bad-for-you foods were introduced or invented), but it's probably idle to hope that any human religion would actually do that. The artistic meanings of radiant & vibrant, especially in reference to health & color, have been around for as long as i can recall. Re: #27 Sure there are diets that will guarantee that one will not be fat...but sticking to one is considered a dangerous mental disorder. Last i heard, people have about as much control over their thinness/fatness as they do over their skin color. As with skin color, those born with the "right" genes look down upon those born with less fashionable ones, and loads of people spends loads of money & time trying to make themselves look "more right".
OK, put that way, I'd have to agree. An concentration camp style diet will indeed make most people thin (some it will kill before thin happens, but they're already suffering from other health problems.) Speaking of which, has anyone else been following the sotry about SouthWest airlines charging double rates for people they consider fat? Most alarming. The call is up to whoever is manning the ticket counter. They claim it's for a second seat, but if you check your tickets carefully, you'll note that you're paying not for a seat but for a trip ... that's why they can cancel flights, bump passengers, change seats, etc. with impunity.
I think a lot of airlines do that. I have heard they do anyway. Basically, if they dont think you can fit into one of their seats, they will charge you for two. *shrug* The real problem is allowing the ticket counter person to make the call. If I am going to have to pay double to fly on Southwest, that is fine but I want to know in advance because I'll book on another airline. If I had tons of money, I would start an airline that totally catered to fat people. I think it could be success because the things I would do would make the flight more comfortable for thin people too. I would make the seats wider, add more leg room, make the aisle a little bigger, make the bathrooms a little bigger, etc. I would have to charge more because of that, of course, but I think a lot of people would find the changes worth the extra expense. Look at the success of Midwest Express.
I'd certainly favor your airline, Lynne. I do a fair amount of flying in the course of a year, and having enough room to uncross my arms and stretch my legs would be wonderful!
People who want to pay more for airplane tickets can already do so by flying first class. Anyone eating a typical American diet, with lots of refined foods, is much more likely to get fat no matter what their genetic makeup. I got fat eating dorm food for three years and lost the weight once I started to cook for myself. It is difficult to get fat if you don't eat any refined foods or animal products. Refined foods include white flour, oil, honey, juice and anything else low fiber and with parts removed.
Yes, the typical American diet makes most people fatter. Many people suffer the "freshman 10". But the effect of avoiding refined foods and animal products varies widely, that diet will *not* keep many people thin, and i'd guess that many of the "very fat" wouldn't even lose weight by switching to it. Interesting to call honey a refined food. How about nuts? The cream anyone with a hammer & spoon can scrape out of many kinds of coconuts? Corn meal?
"Refined" isn't really a good word for it. Fatty sugary foods with few nutrients are rare in nature, and so most of them really are refined. I think that's where we get the standard hippie assumption that more "natural" foods are always better than less natural ones. But yeah, a diet of honey, white potatoes and coconut milk won't do anyone much good, and a (highly artificial) diet of enriched-flour bread, tempeh, reconstituted frozen vegetables, skim milk and fruit juice from concentrate will keep you pretty well nourished. So much for "nature" as the only guiding principle behind what you eat.
I wouldn't call honey a refined food by a longshot. If you want to call it refined due to the fact it is the product of bees digesting and vomiting flower nectar (gross, yes, but that's what it is), I can see that, but I wouldn't put in the same class as that food which is refined by humans. Scientists are technically right: it is a matter of calories. The averages are based on what the body needs alone, and how much activity the "average" person does. The averages are different for men and for women. The suggested amounts increase for people who are very physically active. If your caloric intake exceeds your body's ability to burn that fuel for physical activity and body maintanence, your body will store those calories as fat. You must decrease calories if you want to lose weight. However, there are many ways of going about that. It is true that retaining fiber in grains, fruits, and vegetables helps because the fiber is filling. It's also where most of the nutrients are stored. Peels, husks, and rinds are all examples. Even so, you can still get fat by eating too much of that. (How do you think herd animals get fat? They get fat on grass, grains, and other stuff that isn't refined or animal product.) The nutritional food pyramid seems to be a reasonable rule of thumb for a proper diet; not only does it suggest how much of each is good, but it gives proportions. I will note indeed that you and Jim are very skinny, Sindi. But I doubt all Americans necessarily want to be that thin, either. I suppose we could debate the virtues of bodybuilding, but I doubt they or other athletes follow such a strict diet (I dunno, maybe they should). At any rate, Americans do get far more protein than they need, and laying off the refined foods would be good. Refined foods, however, have become a way of life. They have better shelf life, they have more palatability (ease of chewing, taste, satiation, ease of digestion sometimes), and the food companies are always trying to find ways to process food for convenience (time, ease of preparation, etc., etc.) Not a very healthy way to live, but it's been found that Americans currently beat out the Japanese in the time they work; and in comparison with the rest of the busy life the majority leads (rat race, anyone?) I doubt many eat healthy. Hard to do back in the day when workers slept under their desks, anyway. I suppose this would be easier to do if more folks lived like you and Jim did, too. But.. it's not unreasonable to make some dietary changes.
Whole grains have a lot longer shelf life than flour, whether it is refined or not, as they are still alive. I find white bread pretty tasteless. If you eat a lot of refined foods you have to eat more of them in order to get enough vitamins and minerals, in addition to not feeling full. Also the high sugar content makes some people continue to feel hungry. Food that has more concentrated calories is more likely to make you feel fat because you can fit more calories in at one eating. Experiments on rats showed that they got fat when fed a diet high in sugar and fat. Cows and pigs are fattened not by being fed their normal diets, but by being fed a high-fat diet rich in things like corn and soybeans (often cooked first). Wild herbivores are not fat, just the domesticated ones. Geese used to be force fed to fatten them for the table, with bread.
Whole grains have a longer shelf life than flour, but I was referring to white rice vs. brown rice. The brown rice is more of a whole grain than white, but it won't keep as long. I'm not really sure if this is true of other grains; perhaps rolled oats vs. ...I don't know... what's the equivalent? White bread is rather tasteless, really, on its own. I think it's best with garlic butter or used for french toast (with milk, eggs, and cinnamon). From what source do you gather that excessive amounts of sugar make some people continue to feel hungry? List and cite, please. Yeah, I wasn't sure about domesticated animals. It doesn't surprise me that high starch and protein is being included. However, it's my understanding that animal meat has actually gotten much leaner in recent years; most cuts here in the US are much less marbled than say, Japan. Chicken is much more readily available, but take your pick-- free-range or farm fed (lots of growth hormones). There is beefalo, and Ellensburg, WA (Central WA area near where I live) is one area producing it. They are cross-breeding bison with Angus cows to produce a leaner cut of beef. Some folks go with game meat for a leaner cut. Elk meat is the red choice, and is very lean. Deer, I believe, is considered white. It's expensive, though, because of the cost in properly dressing it. You have to cut away membranes from the skin and meat or it tastes very gamey. Anyway, the USDA nutrition guide lists a meat serving portion as the same size of a deck of cards, approximately, and 3-5 is the recommended daily allotment. I doubt many people are even coming close to that.
Jim says he cannot stop eating things that have sugar added to them. He has no such problem with other foods. He also says he used to be fat and tried all sorts of diets to lose weight which never worked. His five siblings are all trying to lose weight and are relatively large, as was his mother. Jim at one point decided to eat healthy and lost weight without attempting to. Domestic animals were for thousands of years bred to be fat, because people had no other sources of fat except a few things like olive oil, which was not available in most places. Tallow and lard were used as cooking fats, for lighting, to make soap, and in industry. It is only in the past few decades that people are getting too much fat and are now trying to breed the same animals to be leaner now. Soybeans are high in fat and are fed to animals that would normally just eat grasses, to 'fatten them for market'. They eat grass in the west and are then sent to feedlots to put on weight. They cannot move around much so it is not muscle weight they are putting on. There is lots of fat in meat that you cannot see, not just the part that looks white. Jim's former co-worker was very fat. One day Jim ran into him and did not recognize him. The guy said he had not gone on a diet, he had just stopped eating meat. Other people report losing weight if they stop drinking soda pop - another source of calories without vitamins, minerals, or fiber. Not eating in restaurants or buying prepared foods might help people to lose weight - they have to cook something before they can eat. I include bread as a prepared food, along with milk and cheese and other things that do not need cooking apart from fruits and some vegetables.
(For what it's worth, the "lots of fat... that you cannot see" is called marbling, and it's considered desirable in good meat. It's not as if the meat industry is pulling a fast one on their customers here -- they're providing what the customers demand. Well-marbled meat is generally moister and more tender when cooked. Of course, that doesn't really justify the feedlot system of raising cattle. There's a lot of unnecessary cruelty involved, and you usually end up with lots of antibiotics in your meat along with the fat.) Look, sugar addiction is a real problem. Low-fiber diets are a real problem. Less refined sugar and less white flour is the best way to solve those problems. But that doesn't prove that natural foods are always better, or that the refining process is the problem. Look at it this way. White flour, a processed food, is less healthy than whole wheat flour. Wheat germ and wheat bran are also processed foods, and they're (by some measures) healthier than whole wheat flour. _Processing_ isn't the problem. The problem is that we tend to process foods by taking fiber and nutrients out and leaving the fat, starch and sugar, rather than vice versa. So I agree with keesan up until she says that natural foods are better than "manufactured" ones, but then I start disagreeing.
I don't recall using the words natural or manufactured. I did say that if you have to prepare foods before eating them you are less likely to eat as much or as often. We don't eat all whole foods - squash skin is not very palatable, nor are lettuce roots or oat husks. But what we do eat has a lot more vitamins and minerals than Coca Cola or fried chicken and we don't need to eat as much of it to feel full, and it takes longer to digest. Most vegetables and fruits need to be processed in some way - removing the seeds, or cooking. Candy bars do not need further processing and they mess up your insulin levels and can make you hungrier instead of the opposite.
I agree that carbonated drinks, including soda pop, are a real bane to a good diet. Most people don't understand that carbonation *alone* is a real problem. A friend of mine did research on a project that showed even diet pop is a problem: because your body must process carbonation first, as it is CO2 and would interfere with reoxygenation. Your metabolism slows down as your body processes the carbon dioxide. So.. diet pop can still make you fat. Daniel is right. It is hard to make meat moist and tender if there isn't much marbling. Thus consumers demand it. Much of food "processing" also has to do with palatibility, too. I think you both breezed RIGHT past my point. If you're working hard to grow your own food, cook it and prepare it yourself, chances are, yes, you'll probably be eating healthier and probably won't be as fat. Restaurants and *convenience* foods cater to those who are concerned with time or don't want to do the work themselves. Capiche? Oh, by the way, by restaurants, that would imply much more so for "fast food." Hey, do we have a gardening conference?
Yes, we have a gardening conference.
If you want meat to be moist, you can boil it. The fatty cuts are designed for roasting or broiling and I doubt it is actually moisture in them but melted fat, unless all that fat keeps the water from getting out as fast when cooked. From a nutrition book: 3 oz lean meat has as little as 9 g fat, 3 oz lean hamburg 16 g fat, regular hamburg 17.8 g fat, roast beef up to 26 g fat. One cup cooked (8 oz raw?) brown rice 1.2 g fat, one cup white rice .2 g fat. Carbohydrate and protein are 4 calories per gram, fat is 9 cal/g. One 3 oz serving of lean hamburger is 230 calories of which 9x16 = 144 cal are fat, or more than half fat. Lowfat cottage cheese is 2.3 g fat (22 cal fat) and total calories 164, or about 15% calories from fat. Brown rice is 232 calories per cooked cup of which 1.2x9 = 11 cal is fat, or about 5% of calories from fat. White rice even less. Lentils are about 5% of calories from fat. Fruits and vegetables 5% or less. Granola is 35% fat because of all the added oil. Peanuts 78% so we add nuts to our stir fries. Coconut milk - do you mean the sweet watery liquid in the coconut, which I suspect is mostly water, or the opaque white stuff which is squeezed out and is probably mostly oil?
> "If you want meat to be moist, you can boil it" Well, if that's what you mean by moist, you can make meat as moist as you want just by hosing it down for a while. "Moist and juicy," as applied to food, refers more to its texture and feel in your mouth than to it's actual water content. Re #49: Okay, I agree with that. Re #50: Odd, I agree with that too.
What you are feeling is the melted fat. Dry bread does not have fat smeared on it, but the water content is no different from buttered bread.
Of course. Fat is soft and tastes great. It really satiates and satisfies. And some people are just going to love it, no matter what. And as long as sweet, salty, sour and bitter comprise taste beyond smell, people are going to enjoy foods that may not be good for them. "Rabbit food," "barks & twigs," and "real food" are going to be uttered by dieters forever. Keep saving the world, tho ;>
Sweet foods are good for you if you are short on calories, same for salt if you need that, it is just that Americans have too much food available of the type that would be good for them if they were starving but is not if they are already eating plenty. Bitter foods are not good for anyone unless they are eating them as medicines.
Radiccio and other bitter greens aren't good for me? I think you're confused about poisons versus bitter taste.
I suppose you could view bitter herbs as medicine, perhaps, but I think "digestive aid" is better, and you can eat them as *food*, not like many other substances medicines are derived from (willowbark, for example, for aspirin).
btw, you still didn't list and cite, Sindi, on that other item.
I cited Jim. People and other animals have evolved to be able to taste things that are bitter and therefore poisonous. Your liver can detoxify certain amounts of bitter substances so that you can eat foods containing them, which does not mean that the bitter substances in them are nutritious. The poisons can be useful under certain circumstances, such as things with tannin in them killing intestinal parasites. Sick animals seek out certain plants and eat them as cures. Rats fed foods high in fat and sugar eat more of them than they need to maintain their weight so they get fat. Rats fed a normal rat diet, also allowed to eat as much as they want, do not get fat. If people are around long enough to adapt to the current American diet, presumably those with a tendency to overeat will leave fewer descendants (due to dying of circulatory problems and cancer) and people will eventually not overeat when presented with the typical American diet. Which may make problems in times of famine.
re #60: Not that many die of circulatory problems and cancer before they reach the age at which they can breed. I think that's an obstacle to your evolutionary theory. If overeating leads to an evolutionary decline in certain segments of the population, it'll be because kids depend more on grandparents than is commonly understood. Kids who's grandparents died young will fall into swimming pools, run in front of cars, or starve in front of TV sets when no one brings them food, ending the evolutionary line of those with bad eating habits. I can't wait to see the empirical data showing this trend.
We have two friends aged about 50 who just had bypass surgery, both men. One of them plans to get married this year and have kids (not grandkids, yet). He eats in fast food places most of the time. Women who have kids up to age 45 are not going to do a good job raising them if they die of a heart attack at age 50. Kids don't raise themselves after you breed them, or at least they are less likely to survive if they do, even in a welfare society like ours. Through most of history kids without parents tended to either get sent to live with relatives, some of whom did not care, or to orphanages where many died.
Jim's a nice guy, but I don't think he qualifies as an academic/professional citation. Do you have reference materials?
Evolutionarily speaking, you're a success if you breed and most of your kids don't die. Most kids born in America these days don't die, regardless of their other circumstances. That's assuming they don't have a fatal genetic defect, of course. Even if your mother dies in childbirth and your dad chokes on a french fry at McDonald's later the same day, you'll most likely survive to adulthood. Fast food isn't improving the breed evolutionarily, any more than it's doing so nutritionally.
(In fact, I imagine -- although I don't know this for sure -- that being underweight puts you at a disadvantage in bearing kids.)
Kids born in poverty have a higher chance of dying in America, due to violence if not disease. So your point is that in affluent societies where kids are raised whether or not they have parents, there is no genetic disadvantage, as regards passing along your genes, if you are the sort that eats yourself to death by age 50?
Right. A genetic disadvantage is one which prevents you from having descendants which survive to have their own progeny. There's nothing in genetics about quality of life for you or those descendants, or about lifespan unless you do something to help your descendants survive and reproduce.
I'm causing drift in this item. I apologize.
Does anyone have statistics on the numbers of descendants of people whose parent or parents died young, versus those raised to adulthood by one or two parents, in the US, this century?
I did a quick search. Lots of stuff on orphan drugs, and an article on hummingbirds, and adoption of foreign 'orphans' (defined as anyone whose parents have agreed to let them be adopted), and one badly written and badly spelled article urging that all parents get married because otherwise they are 20 times as likely to abuse their children because they are not committed parents. One of the points in this article is that boyfriends are likely to abuse the kids of woman they are living with, which might lead one to conclude that fathers should not eat themselves to death by age 50 if they don't want their kids to be beaten up and burned with cigarettes. Poorer families (read single-parent) are also more likely to neglect their kids. I suspect that the actual percentage of boyfriends or stepfathers who abuse their stepkids is rather low to start with (20 times a small fraction is still a small fraction) but having two biological parents probably does increase a child's chances of surviving to have children even in the US. My father lost his father at age 12 but his three older siblings got jobs. They did not manage to go to college; he did.
(Re #68: John, drift happens all the time without your help. You were at most
an occasion for it this time.) 8-{)]
(An extended discussion of genetic effects in an item in the cooking conference on healthy food seems a bit of an excessive drift.)
So start an item on how eating habits cause genetic change if you like. I don't mind the drift in this one.
If no one objects, I'll withdraw my apology, then. (-:
Withdrawal of apology accepted. People of European origin seem to tolerate overeating better than Native Americans, who are particularly prone to diabetes when they start eating fried white bread and sugar instead of tortillas and beans. People used to die of diabetes instead of taking insulin, possibly before age 50.
I have heard about that-- I used to read Diabetes Forecast all the time since one of my sisters is insulin-dependent diabetic. It was made mention in an article.
Your chances of getting diabetes go up with your weight, no matter what you ate to gain the weight. Since there is probably also a genetic tendency, it would be advisable for overweight people with diabetic close relatives to watch their weight. Omni of grex was warned of incipient diabetes and promptly started losing 5 pounds a month and the diabetes is gone (along with a lot of weight - he cut out drinking soda pop).
btw, that's type II diabetic, there. It won't effect your chances of developing type I diabetes-- that's purely genetic.
From what I have read, Type I is often caused by an infection - is that what your sister has? The body develops resistance against its own pancreas while fighting the infection (autoimmunity). Type II develops with age, Type I can strike any age.
Yes, and infection? No, I don't think so, not from what I've read. If it was a mere infection, it would be cured by now. Indeed, antibodies begin attacking the beta cells (beta cells produce insulin-- if they attacked the alpha cells that produce anti-insulin, hypoglycemia would be a result) to the point that the pancreas can no longer produce insulin. Indeed, it can develop at any age, but it is more common to develop in childhood, hence the nickname juvenile-onset diabetes for type I. Type II is when the body cells begin developing a resistance to insulin itself. The pancreas many times produces more than enough insulin. Treatment may include medications that force the cells to accept the insulin, but weight management is indeed the main key. My father-in- law developed type II and managed to lose the required weight. He still has a little middle age spread, but Julie tells me he is much thinner than he once was. Gestational diabetes is different still, of course, and occurs during pregnancy. If a woman is overweight, she is at risk, and Julie was with Sarah.
Type I is thought to be caused when some virus or bacteria causes the body to produce antibodies which attack not only the infective agent but also the pancreatic cells. Kids are more likely to get infections and less likely to get type II diabetes. Gestational diabetes occurs when the fetus and the mother are at odds as to how the mother's body acts - the fetus wants blood sugar levels to go up to what is unhealthy for the mother.
Actually, you're behind the times with diabetes research. For years doctors noted the tendency for people to gain weight for several years before being diagnosed with diabetes. Because the symptom was that immoral change of shape, they assumed that the weight gain caused the diabetes. More recent, more impartial research, however, has shown that early stage diabetes causes weight gain, because the cells are't able to get the glucose from the blood, so it's stored as fat. I'm glad that Jim's diabetes is currently controlled, but rest assured: it's not gone. Type II diabetes is a genetically based degenerative disease. It can be controlled through reducing the stress on the pancreas, but that control is temporary. Eventually, depending on how far gone his pancreas was when he was diagnosed and how successful he is at controlling the glucose levels in his blood, thus protecting his pancreas from strain, if he lives long enough medicines will be required to control the glucose levels in his blood. Period. Weight loss was not the cause of the better control of his diabetes, it was a symptom of the steps he took to control the diabetes.
You have several choices: