Not sure how cognitive ability is different from clarity of mind, but either way, improved cognitive ability seems like a good thing to me.
If you’re not depressed or anxious, consider some of the other benefits of exercise listed in that link, such as positive mood, increased self-esteem, or more restful sleep (or decreased risks of becoming depressed). Or research the other benefits of exercise, which can be found in other studies.
If your blood sugar is fine and you’re not concerned about it, then why are you trying to lose weight?
Also, yes, my cite certainly does say what I think it does, which is that exercise has a protective effect against heart disease for type 2 diabetics. This is not a controversial statement. Don’t like that cite? Here’s another.
My blood sugar is fine because of my pills, obviously. (Though my doctor has gushed that if I keep up with the weight loss she’ll try taking me off meds entirely, which doesn’t really seem like a good idea to me.)
The extent of what your cite said about blood sugar is essentially what you said upthread about it - a spate of exercise will cause a sudden drop in blood sugar. Simple cause-effect, there. Which could be handy for a person who finds themselves running a little high and needs a quick fix, I suppose, but this is something that never happens to me. In fact my doctor cautioned me to be wary about my blood sugar going low - I shouldn’t miss meals and the like. With regard to that, exercise would be the exact opposite of helpful.
Your cite says that exercise is good prevention of heart disease in general. Not anything about diabetes specifically. And in fact your recent cite didn’t even link the two phenomena; they were just two separate things that exercise was supposed to effect.
Look, I know you like exercise. And I know it’s not bad for a person. But it’s not an effective weight loss tool and its effects on diabetics specifically (as opposed to other people) don’t seem to be anything special.
No, seriously, I’m interested in the answer to this question now. If your blood sugar is in perfectly good control, then why do you want to lose weight?
My previous cites show that you can reduce your risk of heart disease by exercising, which as a diabetic should be interesting to you, since heart disease is the number one killer of diabetics. You say you’re not interested in reducing your risk because you do not perceive yourself to have a problem. Well, in that case, why even bother losing weight? Weight loss also reduces risk of many of the complications of diabetes, but there are indicators that suggest that tight blood sugar control may be the main factor in avoiding the risk. So if your blood sugar control is tight already, why are you trying to lose weight? I mean, I’m certainly not trying to talk you out of it. But your primary reason as given in the thread so far is, “I want to reduce the risk of complications of diabetes.” Well, OK, but exercise also significantly decreases the risk of complications of diabetes, so why are you on board for the weight loss but think the exercise is stupid?
Denial?
I’m told that diabetes is a progressive disease. Right now I have “diabetes lite”. If I keep on the path that I was on, I could reasonably expect to continue to get worse, resulting in having “diabetes supersized” in twenty years, with the full gamut of regular insulin injections and blindness and amputated limbs and the like. I really don’t like the sound of that, so I want to avoid it.
Momentary blood sugar, on the other hand, is a non-factor. I mean, I want to avoid it getting crazy-high like it was when I was first diagnosed, when I was pissing maple syrup and my vision was blurring, but with the meds that’s not a problem at the moment. With the meds, high blood sugar is not currently one of my problems. So, consequently, I don’t worry about it.
In my opinion, heart disease is an entirely separate issue from diabetes. Let me repeat that. Entirely. Separate. In response you say, “heart disease is the number one killer of diabetics” - and in response to *that *I say “correlation doesn’t equal causation”. Diabetes happens to fat people. Heart disease happens to fat people. In combination, you can expect there to be a correlation between diabetes and heart disease - when the actual problem seems to be the fat, in my amateur opinion.
And I’m dieting.
ETA: Denial? Correlation != causation.
You don’t understand very much about your disease. I would recommend reading a basic book or two on the topic, because I don’t have the energy to try to educate you on a topic that you very clearly and obviously prefer to remain ignorant about.
I will simply point out that heart disease is also a major killer of type 1 diabetics, who tend not to be fat at all. In fact, every type 1 diabetic I’ve ever met has been rail-thin. I’m not sure if that’s a trend, but type 1 diabetes has nothing to do with being overweight, and yet they too suffer from early cardiovascular disease.
Anyway, good luck, and I do mean that.
And if I can put the brakes on the diabetes by losing the weight, I’ll be effectively edging out of that high-risk group. Unless of course my doctor is lying to me about how all this works.
Of course, I’m still a touch young for heart disease anyway, which might be why she never mentioned it and hasn’t been pushing for an exercise program. (Or alternatively she might not be well-read.) Regardless, I can worry about that later; at the moment I have other concerns, which are best served by dieting and to which exercise is barely a footnote at best by comparison.
You’re not in “that high-risk group.” You’re a type 2 diabetic. In my prior post I was talking about type 1 diabetics. I was working under the assumption that you were aware that there were multiple types of diabetes.
Dude, you seriously need to read a book or something. Or ask a few more questions the next time you’re at the doctor’s office.
I knew there was a difference. However, either type 2 diabetics are a similarly high-risk group, or you were making a complete non-sequiter and talking complete nonsense. I was merely giving you the benefit of the doubt.
And that’s just an increase in muscle mass, not overall weight. I gain overall weight, maybe since I don’t have excess fat.
Rhubarbarin:
You only weigh 100 pounds? How tall are you, if you don’t mind my asking? I’m 5’2" and would like to lose 10 lbs (which are the hardest to lose!)
Hi Hazle, I am 5’5", and too thin no matter what or how much I eat. I’ve want to gain 10 lbs for the past 10 years - trade? 
I am focusing on optimal health over weight gain, though, so I eat mostly high-fat animal products with some fruits, vegetables and very limited starches etc. Probably 70% of my daily calories come from animal fats, and of course a ton of saturated fats. My lipid profile is perfect and I am never ill.
Cut out all sugar (and beer if you drink it). If that doesn’t take you down to where you want to be, reduce grains and starches. You should see big energy increases as well as some weight loss. If you run a lot, stop (a few miles a week is okay). Lift heavy weights instead. You should get a great figure from minimal weight training and diet.
This is for all the people who believe it’s simply ‘calories in, calories out’, presented by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
I don’t agree with him 100%, but he breaks down the basic issues very well.
This is getting pretty long. I doubt you’ll mind if I pick and choose here. I didn’t expect this- I fully expect the reaction to be ‘it is simply too weird for me’, and that would be it.
Other one what?
If you are just sitting there it would be meditation. Or- just sitting there. This won’t help you directly with your weight loss goals unless you’re meditating on what you eat. Or using it to replace eating.
Yes there is an activity going on there. Dude, you’d have to at minimum be a good sport about it. What doesn’t matter about the poses is how well you think you’re doing them- given that you’re following along and giving it a go. Some you won’t be able to do at all, or you’d do an easier version. It is part of the cleverness that it works no matter what level you are at- if you do it at all. They won’t kick your ass in the beginner class.
All right. The reason I think the clarity thing is not just in my head is because they tell you that is what they are going to do to you. At the end… dammit, they were right! More below.
So wear pants and a shirt then. Sweatpants would be good enough, the yoga pants would be better. You’d be more comfortable wearing something that is designed for exercise, since you’d (fictionally) be sweating.
And, it would be the solution to your weight problem, among other things. But really, going for a half hour walk once in a while would, theoretically of course, help. I don’t think I understand your hangup about any exercise whatsoever.
Hmmm. Even if your diabetes blows up on you and you croak in 15 years, that is still a lot of time. Short-term, if nothing else you have a new experience. It isn’t going to hurt you like you are expecting. Honest- it feels good, though there is some element of physical struggle. We’re talking about exercise after all.
Long term- One way or another dude, you will experience the long-term consequences of your behavior. Good, bad or non-existent, the long term will get here.
I wonder… do you like anything about your body? Aside from food/sleep/sex, have you ever felt markedly, physically good?
I’d rather avoid philosophical rabbit holes here. It occurred to me today that while you are not in denial, additional experiences very well might change your beliefs.
But your mind isn’t magic. Your cognitive state isn’t magic. The mind and the body affect each other- does that really sound so crazy? The nifty thing though is that they have found a way to zero in on this. Who knows how anyone ever figured it out. But there is a distinct mental aspect to yoga, and believe what you like, it does work.
In the beginner’s classes I took, the instructors talked a lot about the ‘monkey mind’- the mind chattering, chattering, chattering all the time in a constant dialogue. Sometimes sense, sometimes kinda sense, often nonsense. They would call your attention to it (it is plenty noticeable, isn’t it) and challenge you to get it to shut up. During the yoga, most of the instructors frequently remind you to not allow your mind to wander, but to stay focused on your breathing and only that. While doing all this stuff- it is a bit of a mental juggling act. At the end you just rest for a minute, (and how could I ever make all this up?) if the chattering isn’t altogether gone it is at least turned way down. That is the ‘clarity’ or ‘quietness’. It is possible to think of nothing whatsoever at this point- pretty mellow, no?- or else to think in a very deliberate way.
This is one of the things that IMHO make the activity especially good for a person who is trying to lose weight. The general opinion is that dieting it hard- your mind starts torturing you will ideas of twinkies or whatever and won’t leave you alone until you eat one. Get used to this ‘quietness’ and you can (maybe) see how you would be more free to think about whatever you want to focus on, and not twinkies.
The flip side is that it is actually kind of hard to maintain the focus they’re asking for. The mind seems to wander all by itself. The ‘insight’ angle is (in part) to notice what comes up when you are becoming distracted. It might be ‘this is hard, I think I’ll rest now’. Or… who knows, lots of things. Surely different for everybody. After awhile it seems like there are certain things that are repeating. So. You know you’re consciously trying to focus (if you are a good sport that is, in this fictional Shangri-La where begbert tries yoga), and yet the mind is coming up with something else anyway.
I think the ‘something else anyway’ is the sub-conscious. Call it what you like, they aren’t intentional thoughts. Getting an understanding of and a handle on that is part of the ‘self-mastery’ I mentioned earlier (this and other things are my own terminology, maybe I’m not being orthodox or whatever). I would claim that it definitely helped me to finish that marathon, even though I was undertrained. I think it would be a big help, actually the help, for someone trying to escape from the compulsion to over-eat.
What’s the mechanism exactly? I dunno. I’ll try to ask somebody.
I can think of one move where the mechanism seems obvious. You probably wouldn’t be ready for this one at first, but it is the dancer’s pose. The instructors always seem to wait until the point at which you are the most worked up to spring this one. The key is in the way the centerline of the torso is bent in that particular way. (They say) that this stretches and flattens your aorta. So, while your heart is really pumping you try this, and obviously (I think…) blood does not reach your brain quite as easily as normal. And you get lightheaded. It is pretty neat-o that they devised a way to effectively hand some weight-lifting to your heart, as it is pumping against some resistance. And since you’re light-headed yet trying to focus, I can at least imagine that it is a sort of weight lifting for the mind, as you’re focusing against resistance.
Does any of that make any sense?
This seemed to be your main question and I need to go do something else, so let’s wrap it up…
I strongly doubt you’ll get injured. It won’t always be 100% comfortable, if that is your big objection- there’s no such thing as a free lunch, even in Shangi-la.
What if a malignant, invisible, intangible force threatened to cut off your foot if you didn’t do it?
I just don’t understand why. Getting fit would be the quickest route to your goal, and you’d like it.
Just your progress.
Again, the beginner’s class. If it hurts like that you’re over-doing it, and they’ll be clear about that.
Again I don’t know how anyone ever came up with this. It seems to be a part of the means to the end is all I know for sure.
But fit would get you a loooong way to thin.
Nope, I’ve already talked to you about it more than I’ve talked about it to anyone. My motive is I think it’d be an unfair world if you lived thinking there wasn’t a solution to your problem when you simply didn’t know what it was all along, and wound up with one foot.
Dude, why are you still trying?
Fair enough. At this point I am mostly probing for information to satify my curiousity, and you needn’t feel compelled to feed that need in me. 
So feel free to bail anytime (if you haven’t already).
Pull the other leg. The response was expressing incredulity to the idea that yoga is all breathing - an incredulity which was apparently merited.
Well, again, the problem isn’t the instructors. It’s me. Perfectionist, remember? If I feel that I am not doing well, that I’m not meeting my own internal imaginary high-bar standard, I am going to berate myself plenty even without the help of critical instructors.
That’s what they said to me about church and spiritual experiences. For reference, that never worked for me.
I think I already said that the yoga pants look alright. What hasn’t been solved is the problem that I’m going to think I look like a moron doing bad yoga. (The proposed solution of ignoring it or accepting that it’s okay to look like a clown is noted but rejected as not being effective due to my personality.)
And I still don’t accept that yoga or other exercise would be a significant factor in weight control - keeping in mind that I continually judge it in comparison to food control. Pretending for a moment that caloric counts are relevent, you can burn, what, two thousand calories a day with strenuous exercise? Now, go to the store and pick up any processed food and multiply calories/serving by number of servings. Good god! Yeah. Food selection and portion control is the key to weight loss.
And my “hangup” about any exercise whatsoever is that it’s unpleasant and, perhaps more importantly, it takes up valuable time. Coupled with the fact I remain uninterested in general fitness and remain completely unconvinced that it helps in weight loss, and I as a result have little inclination to do it. Which is not to say that I don’t exercise at all - though I hesitate to claim that I do because it’s extremely unclear to me what counts as exercise in this thread. I never bring myself to the point I’m pouring with sweat or suffering exquisite agony, that’s for sure. No running, no weights, and no yoga for me.
There is not a chance in hell it will feel good. I’ve done enough physical activity, even light (prolonged) physical activity, to know that being worn and physically drained sucks, and being physically strained can rapidly become painful.
And no, I’m not ignoring the fact that you’ve done it yourself. I’m just remembering that, so far as I can tell, you’ve never really been out of shape. I have no doubt that yoga would be among the easier exercises for a fit person. I’m not one of those people, though, and I don’t think your experience is relevent to me in this regard.
How should I know? It’s all relative. As far as I know I feel markedly, physically good all the time. Seriously.
In this case I doubt it. It’s not like there’s any shortage of anecdotes in this thread alone from people stating that given a sustained exercise program they’ve gone from a legless invalid shuffling on stumps to an olympic athelete. Nonetheless I don’t seem to internalize it much. Not to mention I know that dieting works, but I don’t believe it will work. So yeah. (Shrug)
I’m not sure I want to turn off my thoughts. I count on those monkeys on their typewriters to make shakespeare for me.
I thought the monkey-mind was the subconscious. Well, regardless, the twinkie impulse wouldn’t matter much while doing yoga because there aren’t twinkies in reach when doing the yoga. The time I need to resist the twinkies (well, cookies; twinkies are a bit much for me) is when shopping. If I don’t buy it, I can’t eat it. And I can’t even picture you doing yoga while walking through the store pushing a shopping cart, much less shy old me.
I wouldn’t call that weight lifting for the mind, I’d call that getting high on oxygen deprivation (assuming it works the way you theorize). Which could work, but doesn’t make it appealing to me. If I wanted to acheve altered mental states by damaging my mind’s ability to function, I’d drink booze.
I don’t think I’d get injured. I think it would hurt like hell. You may be surprised to learn that, when you’re not physically fit, it’s not at all difficult to suffer due to non-injurious physical stress.
And of course there would be physical stress - you don’t sweat buckets due to being too relaxed and comfortable. You may like that sort of thing, but to me that’s a strong suggestion of a pretty expensive lunch.
Yoga isn’t a cure for diabetes, if that’s what you’re implying. Heck, it’s not even a weight loss strategy, aside from the fact there are no twinkies in reach while you’re doing it (which I do concede could make a difference. A small difference, but a difference.)
Nonsense. Getting fit is an arduously slow process, there aren’t quick fixes for it.
And my goal has zippo to do with fitness anyway. My goal is to lose weight. They’re only tangentially related.
Which I would not detect. So to me, there would be be no progress.
Pheh, when it comes to exercise, if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t help.
Hey, you’re the one that said breathing was all that it took to do yoga.
I admit I can’t take this breathing stuff seriously - it sounds like the realm of meditation and alternative religion, which I tend to habitually dismiss out of hand. From where I stand yoga still looks like it’s all about getting yourself in funky positions - and if that causes sweat or burns calories it’s going to be because those positions are physically strenuous, not because you’re breathing in any particular way.
Only because nobody would consider you fit until you were thin too. Despite the fact that the fat is a separate problem from muscle tone, breath control, flexibility, or balance - the stuff that yoga directly addresses.
The solution to my problem is to lose weight. The solution to my weight is diet control. Looks like I’m all set!
Yoga is a solution to a different set of problems - problems which I don’t think I have. For example, I don’t mind being unable to hold my breath for eight minutes. It’s just not a problem for me.
begbert2, what has your doctor said about exercise? Just curious?
And no, you don’t have to “sweat buckets?” What about just freaking walking around the freaking mall?
Guin, come on. Why are you implying that begbert should win the Olympic decathlon? It would be much easier for him to not win the Olympic decathlon, and only a very few people are capable of winning the Olympic decathlon. Statements such as yours, which show your mistaken belief that people should go out and exert superhuman effort and nearly kill themselves in the effort to attain some sort of “fitness ideal” are outrageous and false.
“Walk around the mall” indeed. Pah.
The last time I went to the doctor for my six month checkup, she casually mentioned that my “good” cholesterol was a little low, so I should try to maybe freaking walk around the freaking mall once or twice a week. No mention of it in the earlier visits, and no hint that it has squat to do with weight loss.
The bucket-sweat is related to the yoga business, wherein it was an advertised feature.
As for freaking walking around the freaking mall, would this count as exercise to you? To others? How long would I have to walk for you to be satisfied? How fast? May I stop and look at things at regular intervals, or are you not talking about walking around the mall at all, but instead a time-wasting walking-for-walking’s-sake sort of excursion?
There are really several strains of discussion going on here, which are getting tangled, and among the obfuscating factors is precisely what degree of exercise are we talking about when we’re talking about exercise. All the cites you’ve given, and everything I’ve heard, suggests that for casual health maintenence you want to do minor walking now and then for relativelyt brief periods. (20-40 minutes 3-4 times a week was given in one of them, I believe.) And then on the other hand, you’ve got people talking about burning 2500 calories a day. In my mind, those two are pretty different, don’t you think? For example, the former certainly won’t have any significant impact on your weight. Do you agree?
Absent clear statement about which degree of exercise we’re talking about, I have to assume the worst: if there’s any possibility that you’re thinking 2500 claories a day, then I definitely don’t want to get anywhere near that, for a variety of reasons.
I do, on the other hand, shop. Is that good enough for you? No? I thought not.
Cite for someone in this thread who has talked about burning 2500 calories per day?
One of the “obfuscating factors” in this thread, as you so succinctly put it, is that you keep making up crap that you claim other people have said, when in fact nobody has said any such thing.
