Name: Gina Davie
Age: 42
Occupation: Running Coach and Personal Trainer
Hometown: Concord, California

Start Weight: 300 pounds
End Weight: 175 pounds
Time Running: 9 years

I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life. When I was in first grade, I weighed 105 pounds. Kids were making fun of me, and my mom didn’t know what to do, so she took me to a nutritionist, who put me on my first diet at 7 years old.

While I did lose weight for a short time, it was confusing to be told to not eat certain things. I was celebrated when I successfully lost weight, and there was silence when I failed to lose weight. It definitely created a complicated and confusing relationship with food and dieting that followed me into adulthood.

By the time I was 28 in 2006, I tipped the scales at 300 pounds. My twenties were supposed to be the best decade. Instead, it had been one where I spent most of the time feeling worthless and ashamed about who I was. I had missed out on so much because I felt so bad about myself; I didn’t want people to make fun of me, and honestly I was tired of it.

My husband and I had been trying to have kids for three years. Around that time, I was told we couldn’t have children and part of the issue was my weight. I didn’t want to waste another decade and watch life continue to pass me by, so I decided to go to Weight Watchers in September 2006 and make a change.

This was everything I needed. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what to eat, but I needed someone to teach boundaries with food. The points system did just that. You can eat whatever you want, but write it down, track the points, and when you have used them all, you’re done eating.

By creating those boundaries, I learned to be present and mindful about what I was eating, how I was eating, when I was eating, and why I was eating. The way I ate before this was horrendous. I ate so much cheap fast food; a typical dinner order from McDonald’s was two hamburgers, french fries, and a large Coke.

Weight Watchers helped me feel hunger for the first time in my life, and learned to reconnect with my body. For me at 300 pounds, there was no connection to my body. If there had been, it would have been too painful, so I shut it off.

My diet now is vastly different. I am a vegetarian who loves salads, roasted vegetables, rice, beans, tofu, and coffee. I don’t deprive myself, but I also don’t want things I used to eat. I love that I can see immediately how food that nourishes my body gives me energy and improves my mood, and how food that isn’t so nourishing has the opposite effect.

Doing this helped me lost 65 pounds. I was also able to get pregnant. I struggled to stick with Weight Watchers as I was trying to eat enough for my baby. After giving birth, I struggled, but I was motivated by wanting to be a good example for my kids. This was the same as I had my second child.

After having two children, I was ready to try and hit my goal weight, but I was also plateauing in my weight loss.

Diet was essential, but I realized I had stalled because I wasn’t exercising. Running seemed like something healthy and fit people did, so I gave it a try in 2011—and it was a game-changer for my weight and for my life.

On my first runs, my goal was to simply run to some sort of landmark, walk for a few moments, and then run again. They were so hard, and I was so out of breath. I remember one run early on where something in my leg just felt like it snapped—I had to walk back home, and I cried the whole time because I thought that was the end of my running. After talking to a neighbor, he let me know the issue was likely my IT band and gave me some resources. A week of rest later and some new shoes, I began hitting my stride.

The big moment for me, the one that made me believe I was a runner, was my first 5K race. Before that race, I had never run three miles or completed a run without walking.

With my husband pushing our kids in a stroller and motivating me the entire way, I ended up running the whole 5K, even when my husband slowed to a walk. I crossed the finish line and wept. I wish there were words that could fully express what it felt like for me who had only ever seen herself as a fat girl who wasn’t really worth much to finish that race.

That moment flipped a switch for me and helped me to begin to see that the possibilities of my life were so much more than I had ever imagined.

[Discover how to run 10, 50, or even 100 pounds off with Run to Lose.]

In total, I’ve lost 125 pounds. I reached that milestone in 2011. Since I started, I’ve done marathons, becoming a RRCA Certified Running Coach, and started my own coaching business.

For me, I am so grateful for every single run because I know I may not always be able to do it, and I want to savor it for as long as I can. Running is just a joy for me.

To anyone who wants to make a similar change in their life, my advice is to take the chance on a life that you can’t even imagine. Running taught me to believe in myself, that I could change, that I could do hard things, and that I could run towards my fears instead of letting them rule my life and conquer them. It profoundly changed how I saw myself and how I see others. It doesn’t matter what you look like or the pace you run, what matters is that you got up and walked out the door and decided to make yourself and your health a priority.

The post Her First Diet was at Age 7. Decades Later, She Embraced Running and Lost 125 Pounds appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

Slow and steady is always your best weight-loss approach, but you can speed up the process.

A slow-and-steady approach to fitness and weight loss is generally your best course of action. No death-march cardio. No extreme, ultra-rigid diets. Enjoy some fro-yo once in awhile—it won’t kill ya. A four-pack and a little fun beats the hell of out of an eight-pack and a life of deprivation.

But now and then, you might get a little desperate. Maybe you’re getting married. Or maybe you’re sick of how things are and need a big change to jumpstart you into that slow-and-steady process.

Instead of diving down the faddish rabbit holes that crop up daily on the worldwide web, start with basic strategies most of us already know–and then do them more aggressively. You’ll shed pounds while maintaining muscle and performance. Here’s how to pull off warp-speed weight loss without losing your muscle—or your mind.

Move More Throughout The Day Instead of Chasing Tons of Cardio

You think cardio’s the answer with all weight loss, so you could spend hours upon hours running and jogging and biking. But the smarter approach is this: Increase your low-intensity physical activity throughout the day. And on alternate days, perform strength training and low-to-medium intensity aerobic work.

Too many guys still think of exercise as “anti-food,” hitting the treadmill in the morning in hopes of burning off last night’s pasta and cheesecake.

Surprise: exercise isn’t the biggest caloric burner in the average guy’s day. That honor goes to walking, housework, hiking with your dog, and other low-intensity movement. “Scientists call it NEAT– non-exercise activity thermogenesis–but it’s really just a fancy term for moving around more throughout the day,” says exercise physiologist Dr. Mike T. Nelson, founder of The Flex Diet, a modular system for maximizing performance and body composition. So step one when you’re looking to lose is to increase those activities.

Add in Weights for Best Results

While exercise certainly burns calories, its primary benefits play out in the longer-term. Strength work helps you build muscle mass, which helps you look better, perform better, and live longer. When you’re dieting—expending more energy than you’re consuming—strength work helps you maintain muscle. Aerobic work tunes up your, heart, lungs, and metabolism, helping you become a more efficient burner of fat.

Both approaches are essential when you’re trying to lose fat and gain muscle, so strive to hit the weights on nonconsecutive days three times a week, and low-to-moderate intensity cardio on three other days. But if you miss a workout, never fear: for all but the most gung-ho athletes, NEAT burns more calories day to day than your gym sessions. It also spares your joints, and might even earn you a few points from the people you live with, Spot included. Score.

Match Your Macros; Don’t Ditch Starchy Carbs

You’ve seen this one before: You cut out pasta, rice, cracks, potatoes, bread, and corn, and basically never eat anything that you might actually want. Carbs are the enemy to swift weight loss, the theory goes, so you have to get them near zero.

The better approach however, is to match your macros. Every few decades, it seems, a different macronutrient gets blamed for all that ails us. In the 80s it was fat. By the 2010s, carbohydrates were firmly in every dieter’s crosshairs, and remain there to this day–though you can start to see the tables turning on protein of late as well.

Don’t fall for any of it. We need all three of these macronutrients for optimal health, performance, and body composition. While there are no “essential” carbohydrates (as there are essential fats and amino acids, for example), carbs are critical when preserving muscle and strength are among your goals.

If you’re going hard, you need carbs!

“For high intensity activities, carbs are your friend,” says Nelson. Not only are carbs your body’s preferred fuel source during strength training, sprinting, and other high intensity activities—they’re essential for basic health as well. “When they fall too low, you’re actually stressing your body and reducing immunity.”

As noted above, regular strength work should most definitely be on the docket when you’re trying to lose fat. While you’re unlikely to gain muscle if you’re dieting hard, you’ll hold onto the sinew you have, thus keeping your metabolism and athletic performance up to par as you drop the pounds.

A smarter choice than cutting all starches, says Nelson, is to “match your macros”: go easy on the starches on your rest days and your cardio days, but include them before and after your strength training and high-intensity sessions. You’ll perform better, feel better, and ultimately lose more fat.

Don’t Go Keto; Chase Animal Proteins

In theory, if you reach a level of ketosis, your body shifts to burning fat as its primary source of fuel, exactly what you want. Thing is, it’s not always easy to get to that level of ketosis. And again, you’re cutting out the carbs, which hurts your muscle fuel.

For people uninterested in strength and power, a keto diet (high fat, moderate protein, super-low carbs) can work fine. But if you’re trying to hang onto muscle and maintain your strength while you burn off the fat, it’s not your best bet: carbs and protein are necessary to perform your best and recover from activities that build and maintain muscle.

Focus on Animal Proteins, and Everything Falls Into Place

A better choice: base each meal around muscle-building animal proteins like fish, chicken, whey protein, and lower-fat cuts of red meat: “Research has shown that it’s almost impossible to overeat protein and get fat,” says Nelson. Compliment that with a wide variety of veggies, some fruit, and whole-food starches around your strength and sprint workouts.

One thing keto devotees get right: healthy fats are a good idea—so eat some nuts, avocados, and fish oil regularly. “Don’t run from fat,” says Nelson. Still interested in going keto? Consult a doctor, he advises: it’s a tough one to get right.

Sleep More, Not Less!

Recommending sleep to someone trying to burn off a gut seems counterintuitive: shouldn’t you move as much as possible? And doesn’t caffeine help in those efforts? That’s why it’s easy and convenient to some people to stay up as long as possible, shot up on caffeine, in their efforts to lose weight.

But that only works up to a point. Sleep and metabolism are joined at the hip. “After just a few nights of poor sleep, your metabolism starts to resemble that of a diabetic,” he says. Blood sugar goes up. Insulin sensitivity—a measure of your ability to metabolize carbohydrates—plummets. Appetite regulation spirals, too, so it’s harder to tell when you’re hungry and when you’re full.

So along with your efforts in the gym and the kitchen, be sure you’re giving your body a break when the sun goes down. Read in bed instead of watching Netflix. Take an early morning stroll (the natural light helps reset your body clock so you’re sleepier at bedtime). You’ll beef up your fat-burning ability—and you’ll be more productive and alert during your waking hours too.

The post What You Need to Know About Extreme Weight Loss appeared first on MyMedicPlus.

• UNAIDS said it had surveyed over 1,000 HIV people in China and found that the coronavirus outbreak is having a ‘major impact’ on their lives
• HIV patients in China risk running out of life-saving AIDS drugs because quarantines, lockdowns mean they cannot replenish vital medicine stocks

• LONDON/BEIJING : HIV patients in China risk running out of life-saving AIDS drugs because quarantines and lockdowns aimed at containing the coronavirus disease outbreak mean they cannot replenish vital medicine stocks, United Nations AIDS agency said on Wednesday.

  UNAIDS said it had surveyed more than 1,000 people with HIV in China and found that the outbreak of the coronavirus, now known as COVID-19, is having a “major impact” on their lives.

  The outbreak so far infected more than 74,000 in China, and killed 2,004 of them. Outside China, five deaths and 827 cases have been reported so far.

  Nearly a third of the HIV positive people surveyed by UNAIDS said lockdowns and restrictions on movement in China meant they were at risk of running out of their HIV treatment in the coming days.

  Of these, almost half – or 48.6% – said they did not know where to collect their next antiretroviral therapy refill from.

  “People living with HIV must continue to get the HIV medicines they need to keep them alive,” UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said in a statement. “We must ensure that everyone who needs HIV treatment gets it, no matter where they are.”

  UNAIDS says that according to Chinese government sources there were an estimated 1.25 million people with HIV in China at the end of 2018.

  One HIV-positive volunteer AIDS campaigner in China told Reuters he has set up a group chat that includes more than 100 HIV patients, mostly in Hubei province – epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak – where he is helping patients to share limited stocks of medicines between them.

  Some HIV patients are scared of letting other people know why they are desperate to get out of the cities.

  “(Patients are) very panicked, very panicked, and in the group chat I have to comfort them constantly,” said the campaigner, who did not want to give his name. “For patients, medicine is important, treatment is important. This could be as important as front-line relief supplies.”

  Adding to the problem of potential shortages is an emerging practice of people not infeGcted with HIV appealing to patients with the AIDS-causing virus to share their medicine as potential experimental treatment against the new coronavirus.

  Although there is no evidence from clinical trials, China’s National Health Commission said the HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir could be tried in COVID-19 patients.

  That triggered a rush for drugs such as Kaletra, also known as Aluvia, which is drugmaker AbbVie’s off-patent version of lopinavir/ritonavir.

  UNAIDS said lockdowns in various cities have also meant that people with HIV who had travelled away from their home towns have not been able to return home and access HIV services, including treatment, from their usual providers.

The post China HIV patients risk running out of AIDS drugs in days: UNAIDS appeared first on MyMedicPlus.