Belly Fat Blues

I just started Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health through Coursera and found that measuring your waist to help screen for possible health risk is NOT the same as measuring for clothing size. Dang! If I measure correctly, I'm teetering on the brink of too fat around the middle. So now I'm signing the belly fat blues.

I've been measuring my waist for close to 50 years. My mom taught me to sew as a kid and my baby doll pajamas even won third place in the adult division at the county fair when I was only 8. I also took sewing in high school (remember Home Ec?) so I learned how to properly take measurements under the watchful eye of Mrs. Giovanetti. Well, from a belly fat measuring perspective, I've been doing it all wrong.

How to measure belly fat

Measuring for clothing is easy. Just wrap the tape around the smallest part of your middle and don't cheat by pulling too tight. That's it. Measuring your waist circumference for health assessment happens in a whole different area - lower, where you have more girth. Yikes! So instead of being a couple inches below the danger zone, I'm right at the limit with no wiggle room.

If you'd like to be depressed, too, just grab your trusty dusty tape measure and raise your shirt...and you'll probably have to lower you pants, as well. Feel around on your hip bones slightly to the front, looking for the highest spot of the bend. Don't cheat by feeling the highest part toward the back or your measurement will be wrong. Once you've found the right spot, measure around with your tape level. NOTE: You'll be measuring below the navel.

How fat is too fat?

Risk of things like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes goes up once your waist exceeds 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men. Remember - a larger waist doesn't automatically mean that you'll have health problems, only that you're at higher risk.

So am I too fat around the middle? Yep - probably so. I've always carried weight around my middle and this hasn't improved with age. Now I just hope the class gives me some doable ideas to edge back away from the precipice!

Care to join me?

Interested in Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health? It's not too late to sign up for this 6-week class, and it's free. Hope to see you there!

Free Online University Courses!

Did you know that you can take university courses online for FREE? Well, I didn't - at least not until I discovered Coursera, "...an education company that partners with the top universities and organizations in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free" and believes "...in connecting people to a great education so that anyone around the world can learn without limits." How totally too cool is this???

The first course that caught my eye was Diabetes: Diagnosis, Treatment and Opportunities through UCSF. As the granny of a lovely 12-year-old Type 1 diabetic, I'd like to know all I can about diabetes and am especially interested in Week 5: Frontiers/New Horizons, where I hope to learn about treatment options that may be available in the not-too-distant future. But this course doesn't start until October so I found two more to take in the meantime.

Right now, I'm taking The Social Context of Mental Health (University of Toronto) and will start Nutrition and Physical Activity for Health (University of Pittsburgh) mid-July. I wanted to get a feel for the learning platform and easily found many courses I'd love to take - and it was really hard, but I limited myself to just the two (so far...).

The site is pretty easy to figure out - if I can do it, so can you! I can either view the lectures online or download the videos for later viewing. One huge advantage to watching online is that the viewer allowed me to adjust the speed and I could race through the lectures. Beings I can listen faster than the normal video speed and can only watch online before 5am (bandwidth restriction), this was great! But downloading for future viewing is even better because I don't have to be up so early so often and can more easily pause and take notes.

There's also a forum for class discussions, which I will probably use minimally. After just a couple of days, there are already an overwhelming number of posts and I don't foresee myself taking the time to read through more than a handful. So I hope the other students use super-clear thread titles.

If you'd like to learn from topnotch instructors from big name universities, check out Coursera courses. Most courses are in English (currently 363 spread across 25 subject areas!) but there are a few in other languages, as well. You can either fully participate (discussions, homework, etc.) or just audit the course - you're choice. If you do turn in assignments and complete the course, you'll get a certificate of completion.

What are you waiting for?

15-Carb Candy Filled Easter Eggs for Diabetic Children

Our 9-year-old granddaughter was recently diagnosed with juvenile onset (type 1) diabetes, which makes the typical sweet-treat holiday festivities less enjoyable. She is allowed a 15-carb snack a couple of times a day, however, so I got the idea to fill plastic eggs with exactly 15 carbs worth of Easter candy. While it would be unwise and unhealthy to eat candy as a snack on a regular basis, I figured this was a way for her to not be left out and not have to calculate carbs in candy that she might eat.

To make these eggs, I bought a variety of Easter candies and did all the calculations to determine how many carbs were in each kind. I then filled a bunch of eggs with exactly 15 carbs worth. I did include some marshmallow candies in a couple of eggs but am afraid they may get sticky so probably would advise against that. It seems best to use candies that are individually wrapped but that isn't how favorites like jellybeans are packaged. So we'll have to take our chances and try to ensure that the plastic eggs don't draw moisture.

It was somewhat of a challenge to figure the carbs so better to have it all done ahead of time. The amount of candy in each egg is rather small but at least none go over the 15-carb limit. What really surprised me is that sugar free jellybeans had the same amount of carbs as regular ones. So don’t assume that sugar free means a diabetic can eat all they want!

Type 1 Diabetes Hits Close to Home

A few days ago our 8-year-old granddaughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, which is also known as juvenile onset diabetes. In retrospect, there were warning signs over the past few weeks but all could be easily attributed to other non-serious causes. Apparently, when the pancreas shuts down, it can fluctuate and may take a while before becoming a crisis. She had reached the crisis stage with a blood sugar level about 8 times higher than normal.

After spending several hours in the emergency room at our local rural hospital, she was taken 45 miles by ambulance to the next larger town to be flown to Sacramento as no hospitals north of there deal with paediatric diabetes. Fortunately it was caught early enough that it appears that the extremely elevated blood sugar levels and resulting ketoacidosis did no lasting damage.

After just a few days, she’s home now and learning to deal with her diabetes. This condition requires frequent finger pokes to check blood sugar levels and insulin injections after each meal and before bed. While this is a life changing condition, it is manageable and a lot of progress has been made in recent years.

Anyway, when starting this blog, I resolved to post 2-3 times a week. Obviously I’m a little behind and now you know why. For more information about juvenile onset diabetes, see the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Internation website.