Step Away from the Chalupa!

I'm not knocking Mexican food here or even a particular type of this ethnic cuisine. I'm just using this exhortation from a TV commercial a few years back with the little chihuahua making a police style bust on somebody eating a chalupa to illustrate a mindset that we all should have when we start to get those signals from our stomach telling us that our holding tank is getting full. The problem is when we're eating a tasty entree like a chalupa that our minds just don't want to hear it. We've got this head of steam going and all we want to do is plow ahead and finish off that baby. It's a case of  "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead". Right? Can you feel me here?  I know you can, because when it comes to eating lip-smackin good food like this we are not about to abruptly cut short the enjoyment. Ah, but there in lies the rub, my chalupa loving amigos. If you are at all serious about losing that excess baggage you've managed to accumulate over the years, this is precisely what you have to do... Step away from that chalupa! You have to be willing to listen to what your body is telling you in terms of where you are in relation to how full you are getting and pull yourself up short and say to yourself "OK I'm going to live to fight another day here". I mean come on, you can wrap that thing up and take it home with you. There's no law against that, is there? Just think what a great item you'll have again to eat at tomorrow's lunch or breakfast or even dinner. Think of the money you'll be saving! Heck, you just took what you spent on that chewy-gooey delight and divided it by two!! That's right you just cut your eating expense in half. You are now half again as much money ahead of the game. Now that's what I'm talkin about in this God-forsaken economy that we are all suffering through. It makes good economic sense too!

If you can train yourself to pay attention to how full you are getting and then heed the signal and stop yourself, you will have made a huge stride in being able to reduce your hugeness. If all those reasons I gave you above are not motivation enough for you to drop the chalupa ( into the wrapper, of course, so you can have leftovers), then you need to think about all the other problems that comes with being overweight.  High blood pressure, Diabetes, heart problems, failing joints (knee and hip replacements), even hemorrhoid problems just to tick off a few. So let the exhortation that is the title of this post be your rallying cry and mental marker to take a step back and reassess the situation thus allowing you to take charge of your health and well-being so that you can begin to get your weight in line with where you want it to be.

Hemorrhoids Brought about by Obesity

Here's another unintended benefit of being grossly overweight....Hemorrhoids. Please excuse the sarcasm there, but I only use it to illustrate a point. The point being that here's another good reason to get motivated to loose the excess baggage even if you are not currently suffering from this condition that is frequently brought about by obesity, because being obese puts you at high risk of (ahem) acquiring this dreaded condition. I mean that would be just what you need, right? It's not bad enough that you are dealing with the daily struggle of toting all those extra pounds around and all the adjustments you have to make to your life, now you have hemorrhoids and all the discomfort and bleeding that goes with them. Ah the joys of being overweight!

The good news here is that hemorrhoids brought about by obesity can most likely be eradicated by eliminating what caused the problem in the first place...i.e. corpulence. That's right. Lose the weight lose the hemorrhoids. It's not rocket science, people. So the best thing you can do, whether you as yet have these precious little tormentors in your nether region or not, is to make healthy life style changes and begin making the common sense choices outlined in this site dedicated to doing just that. If you can do that it will contribute to your overall health and not just the risk or actual pain of the "H" word.

New Diet Drug Recommended to FDA

A regulatory panel of advisers that the Food and Drug Administration usually follows the recommendations of gave the go ahead on further study of a new weight loss drug called Contrave despite heart risk concerns. It is made by a California-based company, Orexigen, that focuses solely on obesity drugs and has no other products on the market at this time. This news caused their stock to more than double to $12.20/share Tuesday after closing at $4.76 on Monday, December 6th. This is the third drug of it's kind that the panel has considered this year having rejected the other two which were Lorcaserin because of cancer concerns (seems it caused tumors in rats), and Qnexa shot down due to heart risk concerns also. The panel was not too impressed with the modest weight loss experienced by the test group of patients taking Contrave, but they went ahead and approved it anyway out of fear rejection could shut down development of any more such drugs when two out of three Americans are overweight or even obese. Staggering! They want the FDA to do larger clinical studies to examine the potential for heart risks over time.

So if I understand this correctly they want to see if the drug can kill you from a heart attack from losing the very weight that had you at risk of a heart attack in the first place. It sounds like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Apparently the test patients exhibited a slight increase in blood pressure and pulse rate versus those on a placebo. Despite these lack luster results and the undesirable side effects, analysts are saying if it comes to market it could hit $1.2 billion in sales by 2018!! I can't imagine that because I hate any kind of side effects from drugs, and I absolutely refuse to continue taking them if I experience any. That's just me though, and I've come to learn over the years that you can't determine success in the market place by my likes and dislikes. That just goes to show you the desperation of people who have gotten themselves in this predicament of being grossly overweight that they would subject themselves to these side effects depredations and exposing themselves to cardiac arrest for the loss of a few pounds they could very well achieve on their own using....you guessed it, common sense. Which leads me to say that I think turning to a drug like this would be another DOUBLE-DUMB weight loss choice.

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