…for an online “Fitness & Diet” guru (a RICH AND FAMOUS fitness & diet guru) to find a way to monetize the relatively new research backing up the “older people need more protein to maintain muscle mass” thing I was talking about earlier.<\/p>\n
You have to admire these guys and gals, at least for their unquenchable self-confidence and their enduring faith that the rest of us are the sheep they’re entitled to fleece.\u00a0 Last night I watched one of those ads *almost* to the end, because I knew the moment it started the famous guru in question was headed for “older people need more protein”.\u00a0 His take on it was different from mine, of course, because he had to find a way to transition from what he’s always said (I used to catch him occasionally back when M- was little and I watched more TV–he was on a lot of daytime programming promoting his training videos and and telling everyone they could look like him if only they did these workouts every day…)\u00a0 to the new gimmick. \u00a0 He had a sob story intro (always good) about having had an illness that wasted his muscles for awhile and how the reason he looks so good for 61 is that yes, he worked hard, but also…there’s this new discovery.\u00a0 So even people who can’t exercise, or won’t, can maintain muscle mass.<\/p>\n
But of course it’s not as simple as just eating more complete proteins, including plenty of those that contain leucine….no, no, no.\u00a0 That doesn’t bring HIM any profit.\u00a0 And anyway, he wants to capture the vegan market, and the protein sources particularly strong in leucine are…um…not vegan.\u00a0\u00a0 So part of the video shows him in a lab with several young, attractive people, male and female, and not all white, with the pouring of liquids or powders from this into that, and a magnetic stirrer whizzing things in an Erlenmayer flask, and little digital screens shining bright with mysterious numbers, and twice–TWICE–a chemical formula shown as a stick figure like the models we used in organic chemistry…very nice and scientific, Bubba.\u00a0\u00a0 And HE funded the development of the PERFECT mixture of the two chemicals, and HE insisted–INSISTED–on using only the purest and best of those ingredients, never mind the cost to him, and now, NOW, YOU TOO, can consume HIS wonderful, miraculous mixture and in no time at all you’ll have biceps and triceps and glutes of steel and an incredible body just like him.\u00a0\u00a0 And, of course, all the ingredients are sourced from plants, so it’s fine for vegans.\u00a0 If you need hip surgery, you’ll recover quickly, be back up walking in no time, even if you’re old and infirm.\u00a0 If you can’t pick up a sack of groceries now, soon you’ll be trotting around with three sacks and not even breathing hard.\u00a0 That sort of thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Once again a picture of the pure, powerful, wonder-ingredients being poured from A into B, and a cap being screwed on a large bottle of the final product.<\/p>\n
The ingredients?\u00a0\u00a0 A metabolite of leucine and Vitamin D.\u00a0 Nothing wrong with that, basically, because yes, both ingredients do enter into the body’s process of producing muscle.\u00a0\u00a0 And the evidence is solid and growing that increasing protein intake as we age is necessary for maintaining or building (or both) muscle mass, and muscle mass is needed to maintain strength and prevent incapacity from weakness.\u00a0\u00a0 Exercise alone isn’t quite enough to maintain muscle mass unless you can spend hours at it daily…and most people who are spending hours working on their muscles are also taking protein supplements or eating more protein from foods anyway.\u00a0\u00a0 So there’s nothing wrong with the formula as stated in the ad (or “infomercial”), presuming that it contains what was stated,\u00a0 except failure to mention that you don’t need a bottle of Famous Fitness Guru’s snake oil to accomplish the same thing .\u00a0\u00a0 Eat more complete protein (either animal based or combining various plants…that takes a steady application of math), take a Vitamin D supplement or add 15 minutes a day of sun exposure, and you’re done.\u00a0\u00a0 And Famous Fitness Guru won’t get a little bit richer at your expense.<\/p>\n
Why do I waste my time on things like that?\u00a0 Because for the last few days of the week I had a sore throat and some other upheavals and staring at the computer screen (because the TV hasn’t worked for years) was, if not therapeutic, at least distracting.\u00a0\u00a0 And because I did, at one point understand (OK…recognize, and could slowly dissect) chemical formulae.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, after an early nap, I woke up feeling much better, which better feeling was improved even more when something I’d ordered online arrived and…it FIT.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (A splurge for reaching the halfway point:\u00a0 Kerrits had a sale, at their website, on a mid-weight riding tight for chilly weather.\u00a0\u00a0 We’re supposedly going into the upper 30sF tonight, too.\u00a0\u00a0 My incipient migraine also fled with the higher pressure and dry air,\u00a0 and after feeding horses I actually tried jogging (very slowly) across the north horse lot.\u00a0 Would’ve made it twice except that Tigger panicked twice at the awful sight.\u00a0 (Rags?\u00a0\u00a0 You know the answer.\u00a0\u00a0 Kept on munching his hay and eyed Tig’s with interest when Tigger shied away from it.)\u00a0\u00a0 But in Tigger’s\u00a0 mind I am not supposed to run past him at any distance, or toward him (albeit on the other side of a fence!) at all.\u00a0\u00a0 I will check them later tonight and if they’re bothered (they weren’t last year) at this first real chilly night, they’ll get an extra flake of hay each.\u00a0\u00a0 Grass is still green in their enclosure (thanks to the rain) and very, very short (thanks to them).\u00a0\u00a0 Tomorrow the weather changes, the N\/NW wind (breeze, very light this afternoon) switching back to E and then SE\u00a0 and bringing back the Gulf airmass…by Tuesday we’ll be at 79F for a high with the nights back up in the 60s, and then here come the 80s again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…for an online “Fitness & Diet” guru (a RICH AND FAMOUS fitness & diet guru) to find a way to monetize the relatively new research backing up the “older people need more protein to maintain muscle mass” thing I was talking about earlier. You have to admire these guys and gals, at least for their Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[49,17],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}