Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group A muscle spasm question

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I've gotten muscle spasms in my abs by getting stuck inside my sweatshirt trying to get it off over my head when it did not want to let go of the turtleneck sweater underneath, but it did not involve any pedometers.
I walk about 2 hours a day minimum outside and it's more like 3 to 5. But it involves farm activities.
Assuming a 2 foot stride it sounds like Dr Footy wants you to go about 3 miles per day. You could just go for a brisk 20 to 30 minute walk and knock off quite a bit of that and get it over with. I hope he doesn't have you on one of those truly dreadful low fat high carb weight "loss" diets (yeah right...) because those things are fattening. The expression "low fat" on any manufactured food item should be avoided like plague because the body metabolises the carbs they substituted for the fat differently and tries to store them for posterity. Trust me, I'm from the dark side, we are over there sucking down olive oil and mayo like crazy trying to hold weight.

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Yes, I get midriff spasms or contractions sometimes. Also cannot take proton pump inhibitors or some bartituate med's as they will cause it.

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platy, aloha

i think your doctor has a complex...'the worshipful reliance on extraneous, silly hardware'

as windy noted/extrapolated 7,500 to 10,000 paces is about 2-3 miles in distance...it is a known without
the assistance of the pedometer...and having been a fatty myself...kid, losing 60-80 lbs isn't walking
2-3 miles a day; it's eating substantially less food...

and that much vaunted and flogged 'low fat/mucho carb diet' is the same formula used to fatten cattle for slaughter.

btw, your body needs and craves fat...fat tells your body that 'yes, you did eat'...many folks on those low fat diets
believe they can eat unlimited quantities of the 'good foods list'...eat small quatities of everything often.

and to get back to your first post, i don't know that scopes in both ends will discover a muscle tear in the diaphram;
and being 60-80 pounds overweight makes it nigh unto impossible for a doctor to feel a hernia.

all the best
aB$h

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I really, really, really need an icon right now that shows me banging my head against a wall. But not hard enough to hurt myself.

When you walk, you are moving your mass a measurable distance. The farther you move your mass,and the faster you move (accelerate) your mass, the more force it takes. The more force it takes, the more energy expended, or used up. The more energy used, the less leftover energy fuel can be stored. The less fuel stored, the less the body has on deposit.

So this "the distance does not matter, it's just the number of steps taken during the day" is just so much hogwash. (oh yeah, I read the study where they have now come up with people that just move more during the day can maintain fitness, and I have an opinion of it...)

In conditioning animals such as horses for competition requiring fitness, there are two approaches to covering distance. Long and slow, and interval training of short, quick,and more intense exercise. One type increases stamina, and the other type increases speed and strength, but to have stamina, you must also have the ability to sustain short bursts of speed. A well- conditioned animal actually expends less overall energy travelling at higher rates of speed covering distance because it took LESS TIME and it had more momentum. Please note I said WELL conditioned animal.

Muscular flesh burns more fuel than fat deposit flesh. Muscular flesh requires more basic fuel AND exercise to maintain itself. So, in other words, once you've got a lot of non-muscular flesh storing a lot of fat, your body does not need as much exercise, nor fuel, to maintain that size. But to move that non-conditioned body, it takes more energy/effort because the muscles are weaker and the the cardiovascular system is not as good at moving oxygen.

There's fat, there's protein, and there's carbohydrates. IF you consume more carbs than your body can burn off immediately as fuel, your body stores them the easiest of all.
If you have a hormonal issue, you most likely have a metabolism that is geared towards storing carbohydrates instead of burning them. Go ahead and do some research on PCOS syndrome, for example, and read what diets actually work for sufferers.(hint, it's not low fat) Unfortunately hormones are skewed by already existing in a state of largeness as the larger body cannot produce enough insulin to handle simple sugars anymore. Thus it becomes self fufilling prophecy...."I'm large because of my hormones, but my hormones made me large..."

Dieticians make up diets for the 30% of the human population that do not gain weight on diets that include larger amounts of carbs and lower amounts of protein and fat. And when it doesn't work for the other 70%, they don't have enough brains to be able to explain why.

I am very familiar with larger sized people complaining they cannot eat as much as smaller sized ones and really complaining they cannot eat as much as wiry ones. That's true. They cannot. They've gone and put themselves in a body form, the large form with a lot of storage, that requires almost no exercise nor food to maintain. Most of those wiry ones (not me, but I have 2 siblings and several cousins that fit that description) are actually quite hyper and muscular. They are actually eating a lot more but they are also moving a lot more. But people look at them and they don't acknowlege the extra movement. And the other thing you will see is that they don't pig out on carbs if you watch them carefully. They are frequently are caught "pigging" out on fats and then getting berated for it. "how can you eat that?!"

Yup, life's unfair and then you eat the wrong thing and get bigger. Or smaller.

I've compared diet very intensively (it was fun, really) with a very disciplined devotee of the low fat high carb type of diet regimin. She told me what she ate to keep herself at running weight (she's a hobby distance runner and runs 5k's and 10k's) and I explaned to her that if I still ate like that, I would be regularly passing out in a dead faint because my body did not process carbohydrates the way hers did. She finally, at the prompting of another friend, a professional diet person who was writing some research paper, agreed to, as an experiment, to eat something like an Atkins type of diet for a few weeks, keep a diary, and see what her weight did. She hated it, BUT, what surprised her, is that she wasn't HUNGRY on it. And she did not gain weight. But she was relieved to go back to her usual very low fat eating pattern because that is where her tastes were....but really, not everybody has the drive and discipline to RUN several miles a day and then 6 miles on weekends so they can treat themselves to a sugarless low fat popsicle and a cup of popped popcorn (yuck) daily and not gain weight.

While I applaud Dr. Footy's approach to get his patients to travel greater distances under the guise of "not really exercising, just taking more steps," thus making exercise SEEM easier, or not even formal "exercise"... it's still exercise. I was merely commenting that a more efficient approach to a goal of weight loss would be to up the intensity of the workout, covering more distance in a shorter time frame, which, in training phase, not conditioned phase, needs more fuel expended and would most efficiently use up those excess carbohydrates the body would otherwise continue to send to storage. Almost any form of extra movement is good compared to less movement. Movement is the heart and soul of physical condition.

I was taking a wild guess that you did not eat much fat or oils and I am sorry if you misunderstood my intent, which was to point out that reducing the carbs, increasing fat to promote a feeling of fullness instead of hunger, AND to provide slow burning, steady energy that does not cause spikes in blood sugar (just like we do with some horses and even some...gasp...humans) and moving a bit faster might get you better results. But now I see from your response you didn't believe me, and that's okay too.

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Hi Ben,
In Australia there is a diet at the moment that recommends 10,000 steps a day to lose weight, in conjunction with the healthy eating plan. It is in the newspaper every week and gives you a weekly menu to follow. I think it may be low carb to start with. I can't remember because I didn't take much notice.
I know with me, if I eat grains etc, I can put on 2kgs overnight. They make me retain fluid. I used to do low fat, now I eat a fair bit of it. I feel great, look healthy and am at the lower end of my BMI. Also have energy to burn. When I ate grains and things I would be falling asleep on the couch really early and had no energy to save myself. If someone had to told me to eat fat a few years ago I would have thought they were crazy. Now I realise the mistakes I had made all those years.
Kim

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Hi Maggie,
I can't figure out how to put quotes in the little boxes! Anyway, I used to believe in the low fat diet, exercise and healthy food pyramid. I would power walk 8 kms every day, go to the gym and circuit training 3 or 4 days a week. Run for kms on the treadmill. Fat was poison. I maintained my weight and looked pretty good. Then life changed, divorce and having to run a busy business by myself. I started eating more bread etc as a quick filler upper, I hadn't eaten much bread before that. Just vegetarian things. My health hit the deck. I was in pain, I put on weight, felt like death.
I read Carol Sinclairs book and thought she had written it about me. Then I discovered Kick As and NSD. Now I live off probably 3 of the 5 food groups and feel absolutely wonderful. I'm allegic to dairy, have been for years. I've had my bone density measured and it is stable. I don't power walk madly around the block. I barely have time to walk the dogs. I'm not scared of fat anymore. I eat tuna in oil, chicken skin and I eat like a (I was going to say horse, but they eat grain) and don't exercise much but feel 100% better than I did.
I just think we listen too much to the "experts" and not enough to our own bodies.
People in the Western world listen to the "experts" and are becoming the most obese and diabetic ridden society in this world. When I was low fat and following the "experts" I suffered badly from low blood sugar episodes. I would collapse with sweating and shakes. Since following my own "expert" bodily needs I haven't had this.
Weight loss and a healthy body are one of the hardest things to achieve. I would just say listen to yourself and don't take what the "experts" say as gospel. I was once 30kgs heavier than now. So I do know how hard it is. I'm 47 and I just wish that I'd discovered Kick As and the diet forum sooner.
A funny thing happened last night at work with a new young baker. I'm not one to blow my own trumpet being basically a shy person...but he thought I was 10 years younger!! But I do feel so good that I could be 10 years younger.
Listen to your own body and don't be afraid to cut out food groups. It hasn't hurt me, it's made me better.
Anything is worth a try I believe when you are in pain and feel like crap!
Kim

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