Years ago, before the obesity epidemic, when we had to walk everywhere, when everyone had to walk to school, to work, to church, to the store, we didn't have nearly as much obesity. It had nothing to do with insulin. Today we have untold excuses for not walking. We say the mall is much too far to walk to, but when we take the automobile to the mall, we drive around looking for the closest parking space to the door. It is not about insulin. Using insulin as an excuse for our laziness is preposterous and absurd. :lol:

Well, in this day and age it is nearly impossible to get as much exericse as we did years and years ago (before cars, etc.) Exercise keeps insulin in check. But even if we go to gym a few times a week, that is not nearly as much as walking everywhere, everyday, and doing all chores by hand, etc. So keeping insulin in check through diet definitely can help. Also, in the old days, portions were smaller, there weren't all those hydrogenated oils and unnatural foods we have now. It is a variety of factors. I, personally, find it crazy and disgusting how many kids and babies these days eat nothing but sugar and preservatives. I thank god that my mother never bought me those pre-made snacks or let me have a lot of candy. etc. Before those things were invented people were a lot healthier. Just my own opinion!

Well of course but today its impossible to just walk everywhere!Which like mayalou said that helped keep insulin in balance PLUS they ate more fruits and veggies and meat then we do now!

Those who are active, those who are constantly moving, those people eat very little and those peole are not hungry. Consider all those who have manually exertive jobs. Their hunger is retarded. Not until they relax and do nothing does their hunger surface. So, today, because of automation, obesity is epidemic. And we are trying to solve it by controlling what we eat. It's absurb.Consider the Amish people, for example. They have the lowest incidents of obesity in America. The Amish ride horse & buggy & farm their own fields. They have no need for Zone books. :lol: Those who are constantly moving during the day have no time to eat, not even nibble. Those who sit behind a desk constantly nibble, have snacks in the drawer. And Gyms & 45 minute workouts are not the answer. They are excuses. They are cop outs. Gyms & 45 minute workouts are like not eating all day and then stuffing yourself in one timeframe. It's preposterous to call a diet a healthy lifestyle. A diet is no more than an alternative to a healthy lifestyle. Today's automation & culture have all but eliminated the healthy lifestyle so we diet to make up for it. Point being: Your priority should be to find ways to be active as much as you can, walk everywhere that you can, find hobbies & pastime that keep you moving, and stop making excuses.

:shock: So I guess we need to sell everything we own, buy little farms somewhere, a horse and buggy, slave 12 hours a day on the farm, keep the women cooking and cleanin and washin whilst the men folk tend the fields and forego your wonderful, informative posts in the forums, Muriel. Why are you here? It sounds from the tone of your posts that you hate the Zone concept, hate the fish oil theories and have all the answers for society's ills. So why bother us with your mean spirited rantings? Go post in Atkins forums or something. You sound like a reversionist who wants society to return to the dark ages where technology and science were looked upon as "black magic". Grow up, take your medication and go post somewhere else or start posting something worthwhile please. While there are grains of truth in your statements, your delivery is full of anger and contempt and I for one will ignore your future rantings. :lol:

:) Muriel, we are not Amish. Amish do not have computers. But, my family grew up on a farm. They walked A LOT. They worked 18+ hours a day. They ate fresh food that they grew, and in big portions. They did not watch carbs, fat, protein, or anything. My grandfather is fit and trim. He farmed full time until he was in his mid-70's. He is 81 years old and is still up at 4 AM, and builds beautiful (Amish-quality!) oak furniture. He golfs regularly, and got a hole in one when he was 78. He has never smoked a day in his life. He does not drink alcohol. He goes to church every Sunday, and is very conservative. (like the Amish--his Norwegian accent is so thick, you probably would think he was speaking the Pennsylvania Deutsch.) He takes regular walks. He still helps his son in the fields. He has not changed size since he was 21 years old. AND HE HAS HAD FIVE OPEN HEART SURGERIES. His last one was a quintuple bypass. (FYI, there are only 6 tubes to bypass, so that's 83 1/3% blockage.) I thank God for the blessing of every day of my grandfather's life. But I know better than to assume that I will be so blessed. I will take care of myself now, and hope that I get as much of a chance as he has. Life is precious, and I will be damned if I let negative people like you stop me from trying to make mine better by doing something proactive that is working for me. If you are not ready to believe in the Zone, get off the forums. We don't need this.

Hi all, I must say that even those that exercise a lot can still have high insulin levels if one's diet is not controlled by the proper intake of carbs, protein and fats. The diseases that can surface as a result of high insulin levels are high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes and they need not surface all at the same time. I for one experienced high cholesterol levels even though I worked out every single morning and also power walked on my lunches. To say the least I was horrified with by blood tests!! The culprit was my diet! I was eating mainly carbohydrates, low protein and low fat. When I discovered the Zone in 2000 and started controlling my insulin levels my lipid profile lowered within just 3 months. As Sears says a calorie is not a calorie in the Zone!! 8)

Muriel, to what do we owe the reappearance of your antagonism? The boatlift? It [b:806ebc33b7]is[/b:806ebc33b7] about insulin. And it's about the accessibility of foods, foods which contain corn sweeteners and transfats. 4 years ago I ate according to AHA reccomendations and bicylced everywhere, 100 miles a week. My cholesterol and triglycerides were off the charts. Life back in the old days was simpler in many ways, but having to walk less isn't necessarily the reason for today's "obesity epidemic". Think about city life in the 1920s: Not as many automobiles, no air conditioning or deodorant, primitive canning, frozen foods were brand new. People were overweight then. And they all smoked. They all died earlier too. Medieval Europeans ate only fresh food, never bathed, walked everywhere, and died before age 40. Which part sounds like Paradise to you? Farming with hand tools for 12 hours a day, or walking for miles to and from the field? My uncle lost a lot of weight at Auschwitz. You think he walked there or took the train? Austro- and Cosmonauts live in space in zero gravity for months and don't get fat. A few minutes of resistance training a day, and a high fat diet, and their weight is fine. Where are they walking? Ground control to Major Tom... The Amish and Mennonite communities around me practically live on pork gravy, cornbread, pie, maple candy. I think it's fair to say low obesity rates and healthy hearts have a lot to do with a simple lifestyle and a deeply held view of one's place in relation with the earth and its Creator. Don't underestimate the negative effects of stress. The world's healthiest heart rates belong to shepherds on the Greek islands, whose traditional breakfast is a shot glass of olive oil, meat, cheese, wine and fruit. Do you think their cardiac health is due to their diet or, say, I don't know, the fact that they live on a Mediterranian island and that their job is [i:806ebc33b7]tending sheep[/i:806ebc33b7]?! Think of that next time you're stuck in rush hour traffic in winter, stuffing a Zone bar into your face, worried about whatever your job is. My point is, (and I have one), that compared to even fifty years ago, our means of producing food that can last on a shelf for years, and our means of distributing it, were unheard of. Today you can go into any corner gas station and find chips, chocolate bars, soda pop, brownies, snack cakes. You will find the same ones in Maine as you'll find in San Diego. We no longer eat locally produced food and very little homemade dishes. Somewhere along the line during the last generation or two it became considered more convenient to boil a plastic bag of frozen spinach for 20 minutes than to steam a bunch of fresh greens for 3 minutes. Today our clothes and shoes weigh less and last longer. And so do we. It's the food. [i:806ebc33b7]What[/i:806ebc33b7] we eat moreso than [i:806ebc33b7]how much[/i:806ebc33b7]. Next time you're feeling all proud of yourself for walking across that mall parking lot remember that most auto-vs.-pedestrian accidents occur in mall parking lots. And try to make it past the food court without eating all those Cinnabons and pizzas (which were not around back in the old days)

Wow, It is great to see the the swimmers useing the powerheads to repell the SHARK White Light

I am the biggest skeptic of anyone on this board, and I will say without a doubt that the obesity epidemic is 90+ percent related to diet. I think it's both excess insulin and excess total calories (a lot of people would probably still be overweight even if they controlled their carb intake), but in any case it's mostly diet. WALKING is way overrated as far as calorie burning goes. You can't walk all that far in the first place; most people won't get 10 miles out of 3 hours of walking, and that's probably more time than the most active people spend on their feet.

I think the shark has left these waters.