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[OT] Sleep Apnea, Limes, Folic Acid and Weight Loss
I've been diagnosed with sleep apnea. I just saw the specialist about it today and he had my test results, which he didn't really explain very much. I have several pages of numbers, most of which I don't know the significance of. All he really said was that I had a bad case, explained that my blood oxygen level was down to 50% two hours into the study and started talking about brain and heart damage, which was scary.
One thing he said was that I need to lose weight. Like the stereotypical gamer, I'm fat. He started going on and on about limes. He wanted me to eat limes, drink squeezed lime juice in my water. The man had an obsession with limes. He said something about folic acid. The problem is that I don't _like_ limes. I asked about alternatives, but all he did was make a comment about being hard to please and start writing a bunch of notes. Like a number of doctors I've been to, he seems to be one of those who knows the One True Way to weight loss and will not consider any alternatives. His One True Way involves lots of limes. Another doctor was convinced I had to become a strict vegetarian and there was no other way.
Since there seem to be people here who know about fitness stuff, I want to ask what the big deal is with limes. More importantly, can I do something to get by without them? Perhaps there's a suppliment pill or something.
For the record, he gave me his rather vague version of the diet and exercise speech and I'm going to explore my options there. I'm just trying to figure out what the big deal is with limes.
Again, for the record, I'm supposed to be getting something called a Bipap machine to help correct the problems arising from the sleep apnea. According to my research and the doctor, the low blood oxygen is screwing up my metabolism, which I suspect is the reason all my previous attempts at losing weight never really got very far.
There are a number of alternatives to limes. Theres....
1) The Subway diet. As annoying as that Subway guy is, it worked for him.
2) Eat whatever you want, but stop eating at 4pm. This means you cannot eat or drink anything but water until you wake up in the morning. You will not become a stud-hunk with this diet, but you should lose weight by reducing your overall caloric intake.
3) The Atkins diet. This means absolutely no bread or sugar all day. So you can eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, a chicken cesar salad for lunch (no crutons!), and a cheeseburger (no bun or fries!) for dinner. Hard to stick to, but very very effective.
4) Start walking. A lot. Walk 3 miles away from your house, then walk back. Do not "reward" yourself for walking by then eating a Ben & Jerry's pint....that defeats the whole point.
5) Life weights...but you know this already.
6) Every hour on the hour do something physical - whether it's 25 push ups or 50 standing leg squats. It should give your metabolism a boost.
7) Eat really healthy for 6 days a week and then eat whatever you want on Sunday - it's your cheat day.
Whatever you choose - please do SOMETHING. You are apparently in a bad pattern and you need to change it up. Set small goals for yourself and realize that you might occasionally have setbacks. But don't ever give up!
Last edited by Zogg; 22nd August 2003 at 11:25 PM..
Go to the local pharmacy and ask the clerk to help you find a bottle of Folate pills. They're folic acid. I take three pills a day myself for another ailment (cholesterol related).
Green leafy vegetables also contain folic acid so that's why the one doctor recommended vegetarianism. Also consider including lots of fish in your diet. Tuna is good if you like it. Fish also contains folic acid along with other wonderful things that will help.
I'm not a doctor, but thought sharing that info about folic acid might help.
I have sleep apnea. Sorry to hear that you do too. The most important thing that you can to is to get used to that bipap. Use it every night. Clean it regularly. You'll find life a lot better! No idea about the limes though. Sounds a little extreme.
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If he wants you to ge the vitamin C just take a supplement or eat broccli or oranges.. I went on Atkins four and half months ago and I have lost close to 65 pounds I also started walking. And do weight exercises which has been found to help boost weight loss.
What ever you choose make sure you can eat this way the rest of your life otherwise you just gain the weight back.
There is a link between sleep loss and diabetes and metabolism. So solving your sleep apena should help you lose weight.
Originally posted by Elf Witch There is a link between sleep loss and diabetes and metabolism. So solving your sleep apena should help you lose weight.
This is interesting. I don't have sleep apnea but I do have a sleeping disorder, where I have a hard time sleeping , or go days without sleep every few months or so. I am also diabetic. And I used to have metabolism that was so fast I was underweight most of my life, which has unfortunately for me, slowed down the last few months.
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This is interesting. I don't have sleep apnea but I do have a sleeping disorder, where I have a hard time sleeping , or go days without sleep every few months or so. I am also diabetic. And I used to have metabolism that was so fast I was underweight most of my life, which has unfortunately for me, slowed down the last few months.
There was a study done where they took healthy college age students and deprived them off sleep after one week most of them were showing the signs of pre diabetes.
BTW you can have bread on Atkins there are several companies making low carb bread and muffins.
I've found that just keeping track of my caloric intake and excercising work for me. By cutting out the snacks like cookies and brownies and having carrots instead, I cut out alot.
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Originally posted by Djeta Thernadier I've found that just keeping track of my caloric intake and excercising work for me. By cutting out the snacks like cookies and brownies and having carrots instead, I cut out alot.
For most people, this is the most effective, and safest route to go. My wife lost over 60 pounds by putting together a diet based on recommendations from eDiets.com, and excercise. It takes some time, and you really have to make both a regular part of your life, or you just gain the weight back.
I'm looking to lose weight myself, and physical activity is a big part of it. If you exercise, even if it's a little, it helps a whole lot.
Patient care is part of medecine. If your doctor is neglecting that part (hard to please comment), I'd go see anyother doctor.
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Number one thing you should do is make your doctor refer you to a nutritionist. Developing a personlized diet with the assistance of a trained professional will be extremely helpful. Where the doctor was talking about limes, a nutritionist will tell you about meals.
My advice for getting exercise is to get a treadmill. You live in Texas, and I know from experience that it's hard to convince yourself to walk when it's HOT. My wife and I bought a nice treadmill recently. We rent TV series on DVD from Blockbuster, things like "Band of Brothers," "OZ," "Six Feet Under," and "Angel." Each afternoon, I watch an episode of a show while walking on the treadmill. I'm getting back into my routine now (I stopped doing everything while I studied for the bar), but I'm able to keep up a 3 mph pace for an hour. It's good cardio exercise and I'm getting to see great shows I missed while they were on cable. We don't have A/C, but the treadmill is just under a ceiling fan and it's not too bad.
If you can commit yourself to exercising everyday for a month with no breaks, you'll find it's much easier to maintain the habit, or so I'm told. It takes about 27 days to build a new habit.
I don't know if my exercise plan will work for you.
Lifestyle change. No diet, no this, no that. Examine the root cause of the weight.
Losing weight meant changing diet styles. Because I work so early (up at 5:50 to be at work at 6:42), I often didn't eat breakfast. Bad. The body then goes into conservation mode. Had to start eating breakfast. For me, it involved Slim Fast and other 'easy' foods. When I say easy, I mean stuff like whole grain cereal, yogurt and chopped fruits.
Next, lunch, I often didn't eat lunch either, just junk food. Soup, slim fast or other 'easy' food.
Next, smaller dinners. Red meat and fried foods had to be minimzed. Weight loss can be expensive as well since stuff like Olive Oil, Soy Milk (and other Soy products), Whole Wheat and other good stuff, is more pricey than normal stuff.
Lastly, exercise. At least a half hour three times a week. I was able to quickly lose weight by doing two hours, five days a week at Bailys. I did an hour of weights and an hour of cardio. Start slow though as there's nothing worse then getting a strain, sore or other pain as it becomes associated in your physical body that exercise = pain.
There was a study done where they took healthy college age students and deprived them off sleep after one week most of them were showing the signs of pre diabetes.
Elf Witch, could you cite a reference on that? I'm pretty up to date on sleep deprivation, but I've never heard that before, and would absolutely like to learn more.
Thanks!
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I may have had it worse then you even. I don't recall exactly, but I had about 240 apnea events per hour. An apnea event being I went at least 20 seconds without taking a breath. At my worst, I felt like a zombie. On my 30 minute commute, i was in micro-sleep about 20 minutes. Several times the rumble strips on the side of the road woke me up. The only way to make sure I stayed awake was to elevate my blood sugar by eating crappy jumk food - so my weight skyrocketed
At work once, I had to verify the size of a record in a file, so I tried to count the characters in it, to make sure it matched the spec. I could not count past 20 without falling asleep again. Finally, while visiting my Mom, she saw me fall asleep and the couch and watched me stop breathing, then wake up for just seconds, long enough to take my next breath. Lucky for me, she recognized the symptons of Sleep Apnea.
About a month later, I had my second sleep test, this one with the Bi-pap machine. I can still remember the next morning - I lierally felt like I was walking on air. My movements felt so light.
My weight problem leveled off at that point, but last year it started going up again. Last fall, my weight ballooned to 330 pounds. I decided it was time to do something about it. I didn't really follow any particular diet, but I did do the following:
1) started using my treadmill. We had purchased one several years earlier, but it was never used. What I did was I moved my Tivo upstairs, in front of the treadmill. I made sure that all my faovorite shows were recorded on that Tivo only. The only way to watch Buffy or Angel, or whatever was to start walking. After 8 months, I can now keep a 3 mph pace for an hour and a half, and I can run almost 3/8 mile at 5 mph. This is a *big* improvement for me.
2) I stopped eating second helpings. I had to teach myself all over again how to feel satiated. I knew that even if I felt hungry at the time, that I would feel better later. It took about 2 weeks for that to happen.
3) Cut back on carbohydrates. I don't follow Atkins, but I recognize that a lot of what his diet says makes sense. I cut out all pasta dinners, saly snacks, potatoes, etc. D&D night was my one weekness, though, I always ate like crap on those nights.
4) Cut out sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks. 90% of what I drank was water. At D&D, because of me, my group has gone from drinking tons of sugar soft drinks to nearly all water.
5) Cut out most red meat from my diet. Ate a lot more chicken breast and fish. Still no more then one serving per meal though.
6) Started weight Training. I started by doing pushups - standing against a wall, squats, dips, and situps. nothing fancy, but I started out easy, and worked my way up.
According to my measurements, I've lost 60 pounds and gained 10 pounds of muscle. My goal is to get down to 15% body fat. I figure it will take a couple of years, but so far so good. For further reading, check out Covert Bailey's Fit or Fat books. They are pretty good.
Good luck to you, and also want to re-iterate someone else's point. Clean that machine regularly, or your going to find you get sick more frequently.
Zub
There's lots of diets out there. They all have one thing in common - paying attention to what you eat. They may each have a different prescription as to exactlywhat you should chow on, but they all agree that you must be paying attention.
That suggests something that a number have doctors have since told me - the real, functional part of dieting is not exactly what you eat, but that you pay attention to what you eat.
The safest way for most folks to lose weight is to simply reduce caloric intake and moderately increase activity levels. The main point of the diet is not specifically what you're eating, but that you have a plan and stick to it.
Cut snacks, decrease portion size and number of portions. Go to the gym or just go for long walks. Not much more is usually needed.
I've never heard about a Lime Diet, but that sounds like a fad diet. Most fad diets are fairly bunk (usually depriving one of various food groups, only eating one food, eating at certain times of day, and never mentioning exercise or overall wellness). Note: I'm not bashing the Atkins diet; it may be effective for a while, but eventually you have to get your carbs. The waste products from forcing your body to burn fat instead of both fat and carbs are not entirely healthy for the long run.
Anyway, back to weight loss. I'm studying athletic training in school (which is sports medicine), and weight loss and control is one of the many things I have to learn. Plus I just had a class on this very topic!
Two classic things are excellent for weight loss; exercise and a healthy diet. Reducing your calorie intake is good, and it's a start. But don't starve yourself. As has been mentioned, then your body starts to think it needs to conserve energy and your metabolism slows down. In order to burn calories, you would like a faster metabolism. So don't skip any meals.
To cut down on your calorie intake, start simply. Skip the second helping, or just eat slightly smaller portions. If you can't kick the junk food habit entirely, then try to compromise. Instead of having a small bag of chips, have half the chips and a few carrot sticks. The next day have the rest of the chips and some more carrot sticks. Take more veggies as your meal and take the smaller steak. That kind of thing.
Try to increase your activity level (that increases metabolism). The 20-30 minutes, three times a week is a good place to start. Make sure you warm up first (say, five minutes on an exercise bike or light jogging, enough to break a sweat), then stretch out really well. Toe touches, hurdler's stretch, Achillies stretch, etc. Do 3-4 repetitions of each stretch and hold them for 15-20 seconds each. Then do your 20-30 minutes of exercise.
Make sure you're doing an exercise that's fun for you. If jogging or biking just drives you bonkers with boredom, see if your local health club has some alternatives (aerobics, water exercise, or anything else). Be sure your exercise does push you somewhat. You can't get any stronger/faster etc. unless you're doing more than you normally do. Sweat a little. On the flip side, don't gray-out, go until you collapse, or otherwise try to overdo it. That's counterproductive to having a good exercise session.
After your exercise, cool down for 5-10 minutes the same way you warmed up, and stretch out again too. It'll help with post-exercise soreness.
The days you don't do more intense exercise, try to remain more active. Take a nice brisk walk around a block or two. Do some yardwork or cleaning. Park farther away from the store entrance. The whole point is to remain more active overall. Try to get someone to exercise with you, and you'll both remain on task more easily.
In regards to the sleep apnea, my father has that rather badly. He sleeps with a sleep machine that goes into his nose and mouth to basically prevent the snoring. He was, pre-machine, essentially waking up dozens of times a night and never getting really deep sleep. Hence poor metabolism, irritibility, etc.
Anyway, just exercise. You will lose weight even if you continue to eat mostly crap. Cardio makes your heart beat faster, and developing muscle consumes a lot if energy (i.e. calories). Start your workouts off with cardio, then get on the machines, then finish up with cardio. It really stops being a difficult habit to get into. Good luck.
Oh yeah, instead of cutting foods out of your new diet, just try eating less of it. My brother lost 100 pounds in a year this way, and by regularly going to the gym.
My brother had to increase his folic acid intake because of a sleeping disorder. I believe it helps you take up more oxygen in the blood. He was fine taking folic acid pills, which you can get in a pharmacy. No limes necessary.
Diet whatever way works for you. I'm sure your doctor would say the same thing, or quite honestly he's not a very good doctor.
![[OT] Sleep Apnea, Limes, Folic Acid and Weight Loss](http://www.enworld.org/forum/iconimages/general-rpg-discussion/ot-sleep-apnea-limes-folic-acid-weight-loss_ltr.gif)
On the flip side, don't gray-out, go until you collapse, or otherwise try to overdo it. That's counterproductive to having a good exercise session.
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