Mad desire

I watched a news segment this week about the best ways to quit smoking. The one thing that was not mentioned, and what I feel is most important, is that to quit you have to want to more than all else. When I kicked that horrid habit years ago it was because of my mad desire to have children. I knew I had to cleanse my body of years of nicotine build-up. I did it cold turkey, it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I kept the image of me cuddling a darling baby in my thoughts, and that image won out.

I was thinking about that segment later that morning driving to work, when all of a sudden when one big "a ha" hit me in the face. For years, I have been reading about how harmful belly fat is, but like teens who think nothing bad will ever happen to them, I kept kidding myself into thinking all is well with my apple shape. It took my husband's recent medical issues, quickly followed by a dear friend's similar problems, to wake me up. I have been carting around too much belly fat for years, and above everything else, I have to rid my body of my spare tires (notice the plural). And I want to do it yesterday, but not because I want to look good (although that is a good motivator), but because I need to stop wrapping my organs with fat.

I have spent hours the last month reading everything I can about what can possibly be clogging the arteries of someone with perfect blood pressure and low cholesterol. By no means do I have the answers I need, but from what I can gather, new research points to our high sugar and bad carb intake, which causes insulin resistance, internal inflammation and low levels of leptin, the appetite controlling hormone. And, of course, heredity.

And one more tidbit I picked up in Prevention's "Flat Belly Diet!": A Kaiser Permanente study compared people with different levels of abdominal fat. Those with the most abdominal fat were 145 percent more likely to develop dementia, compared with those with the least amount. I so don't want to be that crazy, obese grandma the kids wheel out for family events and then stick in the corner. So yes, that image has replaced me cuddling a newborn. Scary, huh? But it's working.

One goal this week:

Real simple: Stay on the Belly Fat Cure diet and check-in daily with diet buddy Ann.