Just watch the movie Supersize Me...that should do the trick.

"fat asses at work"
"the fat slobs will get you down"

"but the people who bring in office junkfood are my pet peeve"

Maybe we should just kill them all so they don't have to intrude on your life in this way. The nerve of those people!!

Sleep deprivation linked to weight gain
AFP
December 07, 2004

PEOPLE who run a chronic sleep deficit appear to be at increased risk for piling on the kilos, according to two new US studies that flesh out the association between sleep duration and weight gain.

Researchers have already established a link between sleep loss and weight gain, but these studies suggest that the mechanism may well be metabolic hormones that regulate appetite and tell the body when it has had enough to eat.

In the first and largest of the two studies, US researchers reported sharp fluctuations in the blood levels of the hormones ghrelin and leptin in people who consistently slept five hours a night, compared to those who got eight hours.

Over time, the sleep deprived group experienced a 14.9 per cent increase in the amount of ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone, by comparison with the second or control group.

The sleep-deprived subjects also registered a 15.5 per cent decrease in the level of leptin over time compared to their more rested peers.



Low levels of leptin are a signal for starvation and increased appetite.

The researchers also reported one other striking finding relating to the subjects who had insufficient sleep: their increased body mass index -- a measure of obesity -- was proportional to their sleep loss.

Further research will be needed to determine whether the observed hormone changes are sufficient to produce increases in body weight.

But the results of the long-term study indicate "an important relationship between sleep and metabolic hormones," said Emmanuel Mignot, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University.

"In Western societies, where chronic sleep restriction is common and food is widely available, changes in appetite regulatory hormones with sleep curtailment may contribute to obesity."

The findings were culled from a long-term study of more than 1000 people who were enrolled in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, an ongoing study of sleep habits and disorders in the general population.

A second, and much smaller study by researchers at the University of Chicago found that a dozen healthy young men who were allowed to sleep just four hours a night for two nights experienced similar dramatic hormonal changes.

The men's leptin levels plummeted 18 per cent, and their ghrelin levels soared 28 per cent, according to the paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The men also evinced a desire for calorie-dense, high-carbohydrate foods, such as candy, cookies, bread and pasta.

"We don't yet know why food choice would shift," said Eve Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. "Since the brain is fueled by glucose, we suspect it seeks simply carbohydrates when distressed by lack of sleep."

AFP

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A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes.
- Mark Twain

My own personal weakness is beer. I'm working my way through all the micro brews on sale at Trader Joes right now. Last night I had a couple of very fine Mendocino Pale Ales while wrapping Christmas gifts.

I took 8 weeks off because of injury, gettin hitched, and going on my honeymoon, and I'm now up to 150lbs from 135lbs at my racing weight.

Does anyone make a good low cal beer?

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"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

Here are my suggestions.

Write your goals down and put them some place you can see them a couple times a day, your car, refrigerator, desk, bathroom mirror etc. Stay focused on what you WANT, not what you don't.

Watch Ironman DVD or read sport related books that keep you focused and motivated.

Keep the crap out of your house. Don't buy it and if someone offers it just decline.

Stay away from it in the office. I bring all my own food and keep it in my office and rarely go to the kitchen. That way I don't even see it or get tempted. Out of site is out of mind.

Don't let yourself get hungry. Your craving for sugar goes up when you are hungry so eat every few hours and keep good food near you all the time.

I agree with Marisol, if you have to, write it all down. Guilt is powerful and coming face to face with double whopper with cheese, fries and strawberry shake on the page will not be fun:)

Remember it is harder to take that off then to keep it off .

Pick certain occaisions or gatherings you are going to allow yourself to relax a bit and stick to just those so you can enjoy yourself at those events.

Good Luck.. you can do it;)

"and its not that I want to work at the Playboy Mansion"

Not sure I buy this one.

A client of mine sent me a $70 box of chocolates today from Recchiuti Confections... this was literally the first piece of chocolate i've had this year but damn...



100% Hawaiian Kona coffee beans infused in fresh cream and blended with semi-sweet chocolate. Cast in a pure bittersweet chocolate couverture and finished with gold leaf.

I was wired for an hour but it was worth it...

Also, I just finished reading "Food for Fitness" by Chris Carmichael & highly recommend it. He gives lots of practical advice for an athletes diet, & realistic as well. I'm a total food nazi & his book provides sample diets that include dessert etc. Check it out & i'll give you a good starting point if you're interested in re-vamping your diet.

Busted :)

Double meaning-- get it??

*snicker*

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A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes.
- Mark Twain

One word... ASSIMILATION.

Don't do it. Don't fall into that trap of eating like everyone else in the office/house/wherever. Make your own path and know how great you're going to feel, how fast you're going to go, and how ripped you're going to be next season for NOT eating that junk. That should keep you motivated and eating the "right" things. Or, cut out photos of sculpted bodies and hang them near you so you can look at them every time old man temptation comes around. Keep the faith, Tri girl.

~AB~

Though I don't have any suggestions for supressants, I do certain things to avoid eating too much and/or eating too much of what's not good. First, I've learned the hard way that it's easier to completely avoid the weight gain than it is to gain it and try to lose it later. It's much easier gained than lost, and I only give myself a 5 lb. leeway.

To avoid weight gain all together, I don't "just try a little" of something on a regular basis. Again, it's easier to avoid it all together than it is to just have a little. For me, a little leads to a little more and ends up a lot! I don't completely deprive myself all the time, but I don't eat junk every day.

Second, no junk food in the house - no chips, soda, salty snacks, etc EVER. Even with three kids in the house, I never have any of that stuff. When there are cakes and cookies around, like now, I try to have them out of sight or not easy to get to. The pistachios, for instance, are on a high shelf so that I have to go get a step ladder to reach them, otherwise I'd finish the whole container within 3 days, small amounts at a time.

Last, I take notice if I'm actually HUNGRY or not. For me, this is key. I do a lot of eating when I'm not really hungry. So I try to take notice, and if I'm hungry, I'll eat - either a decent meal or a snack like a granola bar, banana, apple, hummus and crackers - or... a little junk food.

It's so hard this time of year, but I think it's important not to blow almost a whole year's worth of good deeds in a few weeks.

I remembered reading something about this in Men's Fitness. Here is the article:

Sleep or Die

Skipping sleep can dramatically increase your risk of obesity, heart disease, a weakened immune system--even death. How's that for a wake-up call?

Yes, you're a busy guy: Places to go, people to see, pecs to pump. So when there aren't enough hours in the day to fit it all in, you borrow 60-odd minutes from your night. Make that a habit and you may eventually fool yourself into thinking that six hours' sleep is all you need to cruise through life.



BRRRING! You can't hit snooze on this alarm. Depriving yourself of sleep is self-inflicted corporal punishment. How serious can missing a few ZZZs be? So dangerous that simply staggering around like a Night of the Living Dead extra may be the least of your problems. Sleep restriction wears down your body and beats up your brain, leaving you slow, soft, and sick--even dead--years before your time.



But don't panic (that'll only keep you up tonight). Instead, study the following six eye-opening reasons why you need to spend more time with the Sandman, then apply these tips we've provided to make the sleep you're getting even more restful.

Sleepless Side Effect: HEART DISEASE

Mounting evidence suggests that sleeping too little may increase your risk of coronary heart disease. Average less than five hours of sleep a day, a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine warns, and your chance of suffering a heart attack--or dying from one--nearly doubles compared with guys who put in longer shifts between the sheets.

Sleep It Off: Diffuse that ticker time bomb the way James Bond would--by going undercover. Every extra minute you spend sleeping helps suppress your sympathetic nervous system, the part of the body that creates "fight or flight" hormones during stressful situations. "Hormonal disturbances can raise blood pressure, increase heart rate, and disrupt glucose metabolism--all major contributing factors to cardiovascular disease," explains Harvard Medical School's Sanjay Patel, M.D. "Sleep gives the heart time to relax in a low-stress state." Which explains why prolonging your bed time may just extend your lifeline.

"The people who live the longest--and are the healthiest--tend to sleep between seven and eight hours nightly," adds psychologist James Maas, Ph.D., a sleep expert at Cornell University. To determine the ideal amount of time you need to doze each night, Maas recommends hitting the hay 15 minutes earlier than normal for an entire week. If you still feel sluggish midday, keep adding 15 minutes to your nightly sleep routine every week until you finally feel rested and energized. Convinced you're getting enough sleep? Don't bet on it. University of Pennsylvania researchers found that even the most chronically sleep-deprived men report feeling "only slightly sleepy."

Sleepless Side Effect: WEIGHT GAIN

Those love handles you're sporting aren't solely from that Krispy Kreme habit. Exhaustion is a main ingredient in the recipe for jelly belly. "Sleep deprivation disrupts your metabolism, seriously sabotaging efforts to maintain an ideal weight," says Jana Klauer, M.D., an obesity researcher at NYC's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital. Here's how it works: Fat cells produce a hormone called leptin, which tells the body how much potential energy it has stored. Since leptin production peaks at night, when you're asleep, sleep deprivation can throw levels of the hormone out of whack. The end result? Your body has no idea how much energy it has banked, so you end up storing fat instead of burning it.

Sleep It Off: The best way to trim the fat is to grab your 40 winks. So consider a full night's rest an integral part of any weight-loss regimen. Getting sufficient sleep will prevent lags in energy and help reduce carb cravings, notes Klauer. It'll also help build belly-busting muscle. "Sleep deprivation causes a drop in the production of human growth hormone," says Klauer. (This ensures the fat your body stores will make a beeline for your waistline.) "After a good workout, you get a lot more deep, slow-wave sleep, and it's this cell-repairing stage of sleep where up to 70% of daily growth-hormone secretion takes place in young men." Meaning, even if you're getting in your time at the gym, you still need to hit the sack to complete the biological process that makes muscles pop.

Sleepless Side Effect: POOR SEX DRIVE

Too little sleep may leave you soft in the head (that's right--your favorite head). "Sleep deprivation can increase your risk of erectile dysfunction," says Jon L. Pryor, a professor of urologic surgery at the University of Minnesota. That's because testosterone levels plummet when you don't get enough sleep, making it much tougher to get and sustain an erection. But you may be too tired to care, since low T also triggers a drop in men's desire for sex.

Sleep It Off: There's nothing like a rigorous romp in the sack to put you into a deep doze. Approximately 90 minutes after blissfully passing out, most men arrive in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. That's the dream state in which erections naturally occur--up to five times a night, when you sleep long and well enough. And why should you care about sleep-induced arousals? Use it or lose it, friend. Think of each erection as a sexual chinup: Every time your penis rises, it becomes stronger and less vulnerable to impotence. So strong that you'll sport wood whether you're dreaming of Elisha Cuthbert or Dame Judi Dench.

Sleepless Side Effect: WEAKENED IMMUNE SYSTEM

Mom was right: If you burn that candle at both ends, you're bound to get sick. Lack of sheep-counting time is practically an invitation for infection. Case in point: In a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that when 11 sleep-deprived but otherwise healthy men were given a flu vaccine, they built up just half the level of antibodies--proteins produced by the immune system to battle foreign substances--as fully rested guys given the same shot.

Sleep It Off: Make your sleep more restful. A study published in Psychosomatic Medicine profiled 25 office workers who spent eight weeks in meditation training before receiving a flu shot. The meditators experienced a 53% rise in antibodies compared with their stressed-out colleagues. But you don't need to visit Camp Yoga to improve the healing power of your sleep. Instead of getting all Zen, fortify your existing bedtime ritual: When you go to bed, immediately lie down and clear your head of all thoughts. (Keep a tablet by your bed. If you can't stop thinking about something, write it down.) When your mind is finally relaxed, close your eyes and breathe deeply until you fall asleep. You'll awaken more rested--and resistant to illness--in the morning.

Sleepless Side Effect: INCREASED RISK OF INJURIES

If you're shortchanging sleep in an attempt to get in exercise first thing in the morning, you may want to rethink your strategy. Add some jogging or a pounding in the weight room to your spine and you're much more likely to roll out of bed and herniate a disk than you are to break a personal record, Cornell's Maas says. Rising too soon also steals critical hours from time your body spends in stage-two sleep--the performance-enhancing phase of slumber that helps your brain perfect golf swings, tennis strokes, and three-point bombs from downtown.

Sleep It Off: Gradually adjust to vertical. Give your spine the morning to recalibrate before training. Just standing up and walking around for a couple of hours gets your body in good running, biking, or powerlifting form by noon. If you have to work out in the a.m., at least walk or jog a few minutes to help improve your flexibility and reduce your risk of injury. Better yet, go to bed earlier the night before so you can be awake a couple of hours before exercising. And say goodbye to those a.m. situps. Doing full-flexion exercises like situps in the early morning applies three times more stress to those discs than you'd experience a few hours after waking up. A better time to sweat: between 5 and 7 p.m. Sure, the gyms are more crowded then, but the post-work workout is when you're most alert and least accident-prone. Plus, you'll sleep better at night.

Sleepless Side Effect: MENTAL SLOWNESS

See that dimly lit bulb over your head? You know, the one where the great ideas are supposed to be coming from? Fatigue may be sapping its wattage. Sleep fosters the "offline" processing of data learned throughout the day into conscious knowledge. "Studies done on visual perception, motor skills, and creative tasks all show that if you don't sleep enough, learning just doesn't happen," says Sara Mednick, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute. Think she's exaggerating? The National Sleep Foundation reports that sleep deprivation impairs mental performance almost as much as being drunk--only without the funny stories.

Sleep It Off: Sleep longer, wake up smarter. Some of the world's brightest flashes of artistic and scientific insight came to their authors following sleep. And for good reason: Sleep is essential for creativity. German research shows that math students are up to three times more likely to figure out a hidden problem-solving formula after getting eight hours of sleep than while sleep-deprived. And for those without a creative bone in their body, sleep is just as important. Research from the University of Chicago shows that sleep improves your ability to learn vocabulary and language skills, while a University of Pennsylvania study shows that getting at least a few hours of sleep after learning a crucial skill--or staying up to cram your head with information--can help your memory "gel" so you remember things more easily. (Bet you wish you'd known that in college.) Can't catch all your ZZZs overnight? "A 60-minute midday nap can also help improve learning," says Mednick.

Just remember that nothing tastes as good as being fit feels. Raw almonds help too, they keep you feeling full inbetween meals and you only need about 10.

Enjoy the season....and drink lots of water.

I ate 37 mini candy bars last week. (I bring them in for treats, but usually just eat them myself). I've only gained 2 pounds this offseason and IMAZ training starts Jan 1) Yipeee....

Hey Tri Girl

If you keep fighting that urge to snack,and start to starve your body..you will suppress more and more the chemical Peptin( i think thats the word)which help to metablize fat in ones body.
Your best bet is to just join a YMCA and swim in the AM...and get an indoor trainer,and bike in the PM.
This keeps up your fitness base thru the Off Season and you get to eat whatever the hell you want....its what i have done for years.
I eat like there's no tomorrow, and still maintain 8 % body fat thru the winter. Swimming BURNS baby!
Look at the way Michael Phelps eats...doesn't that look like FUN.
As long as you keep the Hydrogenated Fats and Oils out of what you eat..don't starve yourself...Food GOOD....Diet BAD!

Good Luck!

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Seeing him in deep torment, I said. " You can have my last GU , but its been down my pants for most of the run". - John Hirsch

Take care of your body, its by far the coolest thing you're going to ever own.- Can't remember who told me this, but I love it.